More purple for my rainbow

This week I made two more paper-pieced blocks in purple for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge hosted by Angela. The patterns for the blocks can be found at the blog "Sewn by Leila", along with an excellent foundation paper piecing tutorial.

This first one was going to be purple with yellow, but I got distracted while cutting and cut a third pair of yellow triangles. Not wanting to waste them the block became yellow with purple! I like the result.

 

As I didn't find this QAL until February and hadn't made any of these blocks in January, I also made a blue block.

Further this week my sewing endeavours have focussed on preparing  my "Rainbow Bears' Square Dance" for quilting. It's now layered so hopefully will be finished this month as that's my goal for the month.

I'm linking to

so pop in over there to see more purple goodies.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Modern Pink

Each month Angela at Soscrappy gives a colour and a lot of quilters focus on using their scraps in that colour: the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. October's colour is pink.
I've made two pink blocks this week for the "make a block a week challenge" for the Dutch Modern Quilt Guild.

The block patterns have all been submitted by guild members. Some are traditional but most, I believe, have been specially designed.

These are both foundation paper pieced, and far from using up scraps, generated them! I'm useless when it comes to foundation piecing! Enter Mr Murphy and his famous law: it can go wrong, and it does!! So for all the fabric you see in the photos there's an equal amount reclining in my lovely new pink basket!

I made some progress on my improv floating squares quilt this week too, until I ran out of navy solid. Not only did I run out, but the LQS had also run out! That's life! Fortunately they agreed to give me a call when it comes in, so I'll be spared another trip for nothing. No recent photo yet of the floating squares quilt which is approaching lap size.

I'm interested to see which colour is coming up for November. I've got way behind with my sewing this year, and I really need to catch up with the missed colours, so maybe I'll be concentrating on them.

I'm linking up to the RSC link-up where there are already a lot of pink beauties to admire.

 

Click on the button to join the party.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Optical Illusion 2

A few weeks ago I posted about this project here. In the meantime I've been working pretty solidly on it. Ten days ago it looked like this:

progress to 2 January

Now we're here:

progress to 14 January

The ten strips on the left are stitched together, as are the four on the far right and the four very narrow strips in the middle. The other two are hot from the needle and they will be attached tomorrow morning before I start on the last three strips.

In my first Optical Illusion post I showed the sewing area. Not much has changed, except there are even more little pieces of fabric floating around. However I did have to make some changes in the fabric organisation in the form of eight pasta-sauce pots, labeled with the number of the colour on the swatch chart.

sewing set up

As I'm working with ten colours (four shades of yellow, five of green and one purple) some of which are very close together in value, I was constantly checking that I really did have the colour I wanted in my hand. All the fabric strips that I have cut are now kept sorted, and only once have I dipped into the wrong sauce-pot! Isn't unpicking paper piecing the devil of a job? This is a very time consuming process as I'm cutting each piece separately as I go, and thinking", "There must be an easier way!".

Some of the pieces are only about one third of an inch wide which makes sewing straight difficult, one side of the foot being higher than the other

Trying to sew a straight seam
when the seam allowance is almost as wide as the whole piece.

I hope I will have finished the top by the beginning of next week. Then quilting. How would you quilt this one?

I'm linking up to:

Let's be Social at Sew Fresh Quilts

WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

The links are in my right-hand side bar so go and have a look at what others are sharing today.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Green, but a red block repeated

Variegated Sedge in a pot on my balcony

For the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month's colour is bright and light green. This is unfortunately all the green I can show this week!

Do you remember I showed a photo last week of the kaleidoscope block in red, that turned out the wrong size.

6.5" finished size

Well, this week I made another in the same colour scheme using the same pattern.

6" finished size

But this time it's the right size. I used the same paper-piecing pattern from Sew Mama Sew, but changed the size. I had printed the pattern again, but couldn't change the size on my printer. The photocopier at my work can change the size of documents, but the setting works on percentages. No advanced mathematics here, I'm afraid, as I just couldn't remember the formula for converting a vulgar fraction into a percentage. (Please feel free to tell me if you know; I knew it once too!)

Highly unscientific mathematics now:

What I did know was that:
6 1/2" is 1/13" larger that 6"
1/10  =  10%
1/20  =  5%
Therefore
1/13  =  somewhere in between (highly scientific!!) but closer to 10% than 5%. Let's try 8%.

So I set the photocopier to -8%. Bingo! The sewing line on the outside of the newly printed block is exactly 6".
If you try doing this

BEWARE: the distance between the sewing line and the cutting line is NO LONGER 1/4 ". 

The difference is negligible but just to be safe I cut the pattern out using ruler and rotary cutter (old blade) and adding 1/4" outside the sewing line.

I'd like to thank those of you who commiserated, and offered suggestions for possible uses for the oversized block. I was toying with the idea of making my own design following the design-your-own-quilt tutorial by Sarah Schraw at Sew Mama Sew(again!) and this will be the basis of my first block. All orphan blocks now go into their own box to be incorporated into my design. I had too much going on when the Quilt Along started in April, but I've taken pencil to graph paper and have made a start. I shan't be relying on orphans, but will be making most of the blocks deliberately to fit into the design. The next large project has announced itself!

After all this powerful maths I didn't get round even to looking out green fabric, let alone making any blocks.

I'm linking up to:

  


so head over there to see what else has been going on in quilting land.

Happy sewing

Marly.

July was red in the RSC

The last July block was kaleidoscope. Isn't it super?

Kaleidoscope - oversized!

Unfortunately the unfinished block measured 7" square instead of 6.5".

I used the paper-piecing pattern at Sew Mama Sew, and even checked the paper before I started piecing. So what went wrong?  The checking square on the pattern sheet was exactly right, and I measured the edge of the block when finished: 6". BUT  I used my 12.5" square ruler and must have been measuring from the WRONG SIDE! Ugh! I tried cutting back, but because it's paper pieced it's exactly right and taking off 1/4" all round meant I'd be cutting through on the points. 

Now I have an orphan block, 6.75" square with 0.125" seam allowance and a self-draughted pattern following Angela's instructions. I still have to start sewing it. It's a pity I cut away the seam allowance before I realised it wasn't going to help because I like the cushion cover pattern on Sew mama Sew, and this could have been my first block. Aah! ...live and learn!

Monday It's my turn on the Round the World Blog Hop so be sure to check here from Sunday evening.

Linking up to:

Nip over there and see what others have been doing this last week.

Happy Sewing

Marly.