More Bargello play

Yesterday I wrote about a new Bargello play time and left you with the top laid out and ready to piece…..

In the light of the new day, it was time to start piecing it together!!

The first step was to piece the two sections together…..

…..to form one long strip and then to put two strips together…..

This is where I ran into a small problem!!

As I had pieced the two strata, I had been careful to have the seams pressed to alternating sides. If I were sewing this like a normal bargello, that would have meant that each seam would nest beautifully.

But, since I was messing with the order of the strips I kept coming upon intersections where the two seams were going in the same direction…..

I didn’t like that so I carefully folded back the top seam…..

….and sewed it in place…..

When I started ironing the long seam, I spritzed the top fabric with water….

…and re-ironed the seams so that they fell in the correct direction….

The other issue that I encountered was trying to figure out which of the seams I needed un-sew so that I could add it to the top of the strip!!

I spent a lot of time referring to my photo and then stuck a pin in at the bottom of the piece where the seam needed to be ripped out…..

That simple solution made the piecing a lot easier!!

In no time I had the bargello top finished……

It was time to add borders but those had to wait until I was in my studio and could view my ENTIRE stash!!!

In the end, I added two borders…..a purple one to pull out some of the purple hues in the piece and a green one to frame it…..

I am pleased with this second bargello!!

BUT…..now it is time to start thinking about the Bargello Challenge that is due in December. How am I going to make a Bargello quilt that reflects my feelings during the COVID mania??

I had better start thinking!!!

Bargello Play #2

Last month I wrote about the first of my Bargello play quilts…..

While at my Guild Retreat, I decided that I would try it again with some variations.

My original thought was to figure out how to make the lines twist and turn but I finally realized that I could buy a pattern for that so why did I need to reinvent the wheel!!

Actually…….I was just being lazy but the excuse sounds better!!

I found a jelly roll in one of the many bags of fabric that I had brought to the retreat and picked out two sets of fabrics…..

These gorgeous pinks…..

…and these luscious greens…..

I sewed each set together into a strata and then started sub-cutting…..

I did not keep any particular order for the cuts….they were all different sizes. But, I was careful about cutting the same size strip from each stratum.

Now came the fun part of laying out the strips…..

It was interesting to see how much difference it made when the strips were sewn in different orientations!!

At this stage, it was bedtime so I left this pinned to the design board….

and headed for some good sleep.

Come back tomorrow for the finish!!!

Let’s take them all the way around

On the weekend, I posted about piecing arcs and half-circle designs.

The question now is can I piece an ENTIRE circle???

The first step was to cut two squares that were 12-1/2 inches and fold them into fourths…..

This time the ruler had to be lined up along the “folded edge” line for BOTH sides…..

I made the cut here and for the background fabric and ended up with these two pieces…..

I carefully matched the edges (more about that in a minute) and sewed around the entire circle and LOOK…..

A PERFECT circle pieced inside a square!!! I am SO excited!!

I cut out two more pieces and started again…….

By now, I was feeling more comfortable with the process and settled into a pattern for pinning and sewing.

I decided to match the arcs and glue at 8 points along the circle….

I also added a pin to each of these points but did NOT glue down the entire circle.

Once it was all glued and pinned…….

….I moved to the sewing machine and carefully sewed between each pin!! I found that it helped to use a stiletto to keep the fabrics lined up…..

When I finished sewing it was a bit wrinkled…..

…but spritzing it with a bit of water before ironing made all the difference…..

It turned out beautifully…..

OKAY…..that was piecing a BIG circle……could I piece another circle INSIDE of this one??

I folded the fabric where I wanted the new circle to be……

….and made my cut…..

I just followed the procedure that I had set and had the circle inset in no time…..

AMAZING!!

Now that I had all of these blocks that were (magically) all the same sizes, I had fun playing to design a layout and borders for this great charity quilt…..

Now it is time to plan a serious quilt using circles!!!

Putting the curves to use

This past weekend, I shared some of my victories with piecing arcs and curves…..

Playing with pieced arcs

SOOOOO…..maybe I should add a “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul” quilt to my To-Do List…..

What do you think…….

Have you ever made one?
AND, probably more importantly, would you make another one???

Piecing Half Circles

Yesterday I posted about how easy it was to piece arcs!!

After I accomplished the single arc, I moved on to double arcs……

….and then headed into half-circle territory!!

For these, I cut two pieces of fabric that were 6-1/2 by 12-1/2 inches…..

The first step was to fold the fabric in half, perpendicular to the long edge add place the ruler on top…..

This time I had to be very careful how the ruler was placed!! The one folded edge had to line up with the “folded edge” line and the raw edge lined up with the “1/4-inch seam” line…..