Piece by Piece

 

I've been sewing the blocks of the Jewel toned Macnas quilt together the old fashioned way. In the photo above all the blocks are sewn together into rows and except for the bottom two, the rows are sewn together in pairs, so all, (you know, that pesky "all") I have to do is sew those together and the flimsy will be complete. This one may or may not have a home yet. I haven't quite decided. 

This is the backing fabric I have chosen for the Yellow Macnas quilt,

 and this is the one I have chosen for my nephew's quilt, Dancing Jewels. Both are quilt backings, so quite large pieces. I have to iron them and get them organized. 

This past weekend my local art museum, The Currier Museum, had a show where garden groups from throughout the state were invited to do floral arrangements based on artwork in the museum. This is one of my favorite pieces in the museum, and you can see the floral arrangement beside it. I am always interested in how artists get inspired, so this was a great show to see. I was fortunate enough to be there when the floral designers themselves were available to discuss their thought processes that led to their creations.

Decisions, Decisions

 

I shifted some of the blues, all three of the reds and two of the purples. I was happy with this.

Then I tried to zig zag the design, but I got to this point and decided it didn't bring anything at all to the party, so I put the blocks back.

Again, there's nothing wrong with the zi-zag, it just didn't ring any bells for me.

So now I'll be sewing this together.

I meant to show this photo the other day, but apparently I forgot. These are most of the fabrics in the quilt. (I see I accidentally chopped off the fabric I paired with the blue at the far right. Sorry about that.)

More More More

 

As you can see I've been making blocks and adding them to the design wall. 

There is one teeny tiny problem.

The design wall is just a bit too narrow for all the blocks to fit. You can see some of them hanging off the edge in the photo above. (They are at the far right.)

The bookcase that stores my fabric stash is right next to my design wall, but the bookcase leans forward a bit, and there is a space behind it. You can see it in the photo above - it's the dark area above and below the watermark in the photo. In theory this is not a problem, but I have had some blocks fall off the wall and slip BEHIND the bookcase, which is the equivalent of disappearing into the Pit Of Doom. Since I have a finite number of blocks and have used up every last inch of some of the fabrics, I could not afford to lose even a single block, so rather than work from the center to the right, and risk losing blocks into the POD, I went back to the far left of the quilt and worked from the left edge to the middle. Once the blocks pairs are sewn up, there will be space on the wall for the pieces to adhere and not hang off into space and be at risk of falling into the POD.

Because the pattern shifts half a block over, some of the block pairs are split up, with the dark part of the block sewn at the far right edge of the quilt, and the corresponding light part will be a the beginning of the next row. (This pattern LOOKS easy, but that's deceptive.)

I have sewn all the blocks together.  Don't get excited. I still have tinkering to do.

Growing

 

The quilt will be 60" x 72" which means eighteen rows of fifteen blocks across. So the pattern of Black-Red-Violet-Blue-Green will get repeated three times in each row. So I need 3 different prints of each color, and eighteen different lights or creams to make up each dark/light pair.

Like these.

I couldn't use scraps because I needed eighteen 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" blocks of each of 32 fabrics, so I had to use fabrics from stash. (Oh gee darn.)

I had already made some pairs and had them up on the design wall, but I wanted to know the colors and fabrics would look okay before I invested all the time in sewing up the blocks. I had already determined each pair combo had to be unique and I had had to unstitch a dozen or so blocks and I wasn't eager to have to do that again.

Once I chose my fabrics and the lights, I cut out all the pieces and then matched one pair of each color combination and lay them across the top of the design wall in the order I thought I wanted them.

That was OK, but it's time consuming to get up and down off the ladder to arrange blocks at the top of the quilt. so I arranged the cut pieces on the design where I could reach them. I set out three rows because I thought that would give me a good idea of what the design would look like.

I already knew I didn't like the way the red blocks in the long diagonal row above attracted too much attention, but I figured once I had the blocks made and the design wall covered it would be an easy enough fix to swap one red for another.

Satisfied, I cut all the pieces I needed from each fabric, and stacked them up, ready for a session of power sewing.

Stay tuned!

Oh and, yes Cherie, I might make these do some zigging and zagging, but that's another thing that's easier to do once the blocks are made.

This needs a name. Any suggestions?

Regular Rows

 I've been working on the Jewel toned Macnas quilt. The colors I am using are Red, Violet, Blue and Green. I added the Red because otherwise it would have been too dark. The Green is at the far right and it's pretty dark in the photo, but not quite as dark in real life.

I am also adding some brights on black fabric, as you can see at the left.

The pattern of colors has been established, Black, Red, Violet, Blue, Green, Black, Red, Violet, Blue, Green, etc. You can see one very bright busy light print. I shall have other bright colors on white prints in the quilt, so this won't be the only one. Also, there is no guarantee that this will be the exact arrangement of fabrics. Things may will shift.

Home Work

 We've all been there. When the house gets just a little bit messier than you can stand and you have to stop everything and clean it all up so that's what I focused on last week. 

I cleaned up the various places in the house where stuff had piled up. I tamed the paper tiger in the office and did all the shredding. I got all the paperwork together to get my taxes done, and I actually dusted all the rooms in the house!

That and I did my taxes.

After that was done, I decided to review an idea for a quilt I had that didn't work. Back in December I was making a Macnas quilt using Jewel-toned colors and grays. It just didn't work. You can see that here.

I wanted to see if I could incorporate some of those jewel-gray pairs with some of the other jewel toned blocks I had cut with some white and neutral lights. I thought it would be fun if I could arrange the blocks like the Blitzen quilt. 

I put some of the gray pairs on the wall with some the jewel toned blocks and some of the lights I had already cut. The result was underwhelming, as you can see above. I had hoped that diagonal rows of colors would work with different fabrics, but it didn't. I knew I would have to make the diagonal rows of blocks in the same fabric to get what I wanted.

In order to make the blocks the way I had wanted, I had had to take apart some of the blocks I had made previously.

Here I have removed the pieces that weren't working and I have made three diagonal rows of blocks - purple, blue and green. The photo is dark, but the idea works and I will carry on with it.

Side Flaps

While "watching" TV last night, I decided to sew the side triangles to my scrappy slabs. The quilt looks so much different, and better, with them. I still have made half the blocks I need. There are more to come, but having them on the wall is better than having them in a stack somewhere.

I have triangles to make that are equally dark (Violet & Blue Violet) and some that are a bit lighter (Green) and some that are a bit brighter (Blue Green). I have to make sure I have a balanced chorus. I can't have too many Divas (Gold, Yellow Green) competing against each other. It's going to get interesting.

Like Yogi Berra said, "If you don't know where you're going you'll end up someplace else." I do have an idea where I am going, but I'm not married to it. And as the chorus master, I can kick the Divas out if I want to!

Gold!

The little accessory box of Gold scraps didn't have much in it, so it was quick work to sort through what was there and made fabric slabs and cut them into triangles.

I've arranged them in rows the way I cut them from the "slabs."

Here are all the gold blocks up on the wall. Remember I have to make triangles for Blue Violet and Violet, so this is by no means an accurate distribution of colors or values.

Inspiration Location

You all know how I keep harping on looking around and keeping your eyes open because inspiration, or answers to your creative challenges can often be found close by.

In my case, the solution to my latest creative problem - the dark blue and red violet triangles were too dark and needed other colors - was hanging around my neck.

This is a necklace I bought at one of those off-price stores last summer. I wore it yesterday with a black turtleneck. It was only when I took it off that I realized it held the solution to my dilemma.

It held all the jewel tones I had planned to use in this quilt.

See them? Violet, Blue Violet, Red Violet, Dark Green, Turquoise, Yellow Green, and Gold.

Yes!