Tag: Curves

A bump in the quilt planning

I have been continuing to work on the Australian Fabric quilt and “thought” that I had planned my border and was basically ready to finish it up…..NOT!!!

My plan was to put a narrow border around the center section and then add 10 inch blocks around the outside.  These blocks were going to be curve pieced just as the smaller ones had been.

I spent a good deal of time going thru the leftover Aussie  fabrics and looking for ones that would allow me to cut another large block…..12 inches to start with.   Since many of the fabrics that I had were only fat quarters or half-yard cuts, I had to be very careful with the cutting process. 

Since I wanted to use the Aboriginal designed fabrics for the binding, I decided to go ahead and make a long cut from each of the fabrics as well.

Additionally, I wanted to use up as much of the fabrics as I could so was planning to put any leftovers on the back of the quilt.  I started cutting these pieces at the same time.

THEN…..

I started piecing the large border blocks, but they looked horrible…..

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I felt that it just made everything look muddled!!

So, the first thing that I tried was to change the inner border to a brighter fabric and that helped some…..

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….but not enough.  So, I went downstairs to eat lunch and think about it a little.

As I thought, I started wondering if the problem wasn’t that there was too much movement in the blocks and that they were simply too big.  I went back upstairs and started folding the big blocks down so that there was only one curve in each….

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Now I was getting somewhere!!!

Since I didn’t have a lot of fabric left at this point, I knew that I was going to have to cut down these blocks so that I could use them as well.

It was a bit difficult to do, but I tried to get at least 7-1/2 inches out of each block.

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On some I even went to the trouble of re-pressing the seam allowance to give me that extra 1/8th of an inch…..DSC01206

In this block, the stripe was too large so I cut it down and re-pieced it to be smaller……

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So, as of quitting time, it was looking much better and I am more encouraged about the border…..

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I am thinking that I will place the blocks so that the stripe continues around the quilt, but will decide that once I have them all pieced

 

On an aside, I was really wanting to use the Indian fabric that had been bleeding in my last post, so I decided to see if I could wash it out.   After THREE hot water rinsings, the water looked like this….

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…..and after 15 or so rinsings, it looked like this……..

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I am still conflicted about whether or not to use it for the inside border, but will get there and see…..

Piecing those pesky curves

 

I have been enjoying working on a quilt that I first posted about in May.   I had pieced a few blocks back then but hadn’t gotten any further….

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Last week, I started making more blocks and adding them to the design wall, but it just didn’t look right.  I finally realized that the curves all had to go in the same direction.   Much better……

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I have had a lot of fun piecing the blocks and have found them to be fairly easy to do.   I was trying to figure out how to describe the piecing process, but decided instead to do a video.  Here goes…..

 

I taped this several times to pick which one I liked best and realized that in one of them, my daughter’s dog (Marley) was photo-bombing me!!…..

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After each curve was stitched, I spritzed it with water and then ironed it flat. 

The final step was to cut the block down to a 7-1/2 inch square.  There were a few that weren’t quite big enough, but I was able to add bits of fabric here and there to make it work.

I then put them all up on the wall…..

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As I looked it over, I realized that there were a few blocks that stood out too much, such as this gold one…..

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I pulled two such blocks and added another stripe in a different fabric to tone them down.

Finally, I knew that I wanted to add some accent pieces across the quilt so started adding small strips of red fabrics….

DSC08866Then I noticed that there were bits of red color on my ironing board cover…..

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Uh-oh….something isn’t color-fast!!!!    The offending fabric was a piece that I had bought in India and was one of my favorites……DSC08869

….but I couldn’t afford to leave it in the quilt, so I cut them out and replaced with other fabrics.

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At this point, I need to decide what borders to use.  I am thinking about using larger blocks that are also pieced in curves but to have the curves moving around the quilt.

More fun to follow…….