Pizzazz is a Flimsy at Last!

 

I added a border to the Pizzazz quilt. Now it's a flimsy. I'm really happy with it.

Pizzazz, All fixed and finished

 

Here I have circled the blocks that were wrong. I knew about the three at the lower left and only one at the upper right.

In this picture, these are at the blocks at the upper right. I have tried to make notes on the blocks that are wrong.

Here I have fixed all the mistakes, and added an extra vertical row at the far right. Now the flimsy is 60" wide, which is the width I prefer.

Almost Perfect

The flimsy Pizzazz, is complete.

I think I counted about 40 unique fabrics before I got confused. I really like it.

After I put it back up on the design wall I sat back and looked at it.

And found four mistakes.

Oops.

Three I will fix, but one I shall leave as it is. And I'm not telling you where they are. 

Oh well.

Next up: winding bobbins.

 

Where & How

 

My Rail Fence quilt is made according to Sujata Shah's instructions in her book, Cultural Fusion Quilts, which is still in print and available at quilt shops, and many online places, including Amazon.

It was Sujata's technique of cutting pieces with gentle curves that let me to this. I love the technique and have used it several times, including Lightning in the Night Sky, Waltzing Matilda and Carnelian.

Sujata suggests "gentle" curves in her book, but I rather take that to the extreme. I like them really cuckoo and extreme. As always, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), but I think the technique makes much more interesting quilts.

Here is the quilt so far. The left half is all sewn together. The right half all the blocks are sewn into rows, but I haven't put them together yet.

One friend thinks this has a lot of Pizzazz, and I thought that was a great name until somebody else suggested Shockwave, which I think I like better!

Incidentally, I have updated my profile picture. This is what I really look like now, with longer hair!

Ready, Set, Sew!

I've done a lot of tinkering on this. You'll have to enlarge the photo to look more closely, but I have worked hard to ensure that the same fabric does not touch each other throughout the quilt. It was quite an undertaking. After a lot of work, this is what I will sew together.

 

I don't sew a whole long row of 14 blocks together. I sew half of it. It's easier (for me) to sew two big chunks together rather than do long rows of 14 blocks, which is about 56 inches long. In the strip above, there are seven blocks, and 14 unique fabrics.

As we all know, a design tightens up when sewn together. Here are seven rows of 7 blocks each. This is looking really good.

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Fourteen blocks equals 56 inches wide and I like my couch quilts to be 60 inches wide so I have set down an extra block at the far left edge of each the top ten rows shown above. I'm not 100% sure I'll add those extra blocks. I'll make that decision later.

My pal Cherie says this quilt has a lot of "pizzazz," and indeed it does. I think she has named this quilt.

Moving Along

 

I figured out the pattern for this quilt design and worked out the easiest way to finish the design of the quilt.

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I made an assortment of blocks. I had them on the recliner,

the table near my design wall,

and the stepladder.

I've covered the design wall with blocks and while the pattern is complete, now it's time for some tinkering and fine tuning to get this really humming.

And yes, I know this is crazy.

Black Rail Fence Variation

 

When I conceived this quilt I knew I was not going to make traditional rail-fence style blocks. I knew I wanted to make long zig-zags, like this quilt, River of Light, that I made back in 2023.

My plan was to have the zig-zags that go from corner to corner be bright prints on black, and on either side of them will be brights on white and then I want ever other zig to be whites on black, and then another zig of black, and then the brights on whites, etc, which you can sort of see in the photo above.

Now, when you make strips for this quilt, you pair a light with a dark, but in order to divide the white zigs into colored ones and black on white ones, you have ate be a bit sneaky. Which of course you all know I love to do. So notice the fabrics in the zig-zags above - they are not all the same fabric. My goal (in pretty much every quilt I do) is to make you LOOK and notice things. I try to use different fabrics that LOOK the same but aren't.

Anyway, that's the plan.

As you can see, I have a lot of work to do.

New Year, New Quilt

 My studio is clean, and I took a small break from working in there. I wrote a few quilt stories, but writing isn't the same as working. I'm planning a new tutorial, but that won't happen just yet. I didn't know what my next quilt would be.

Inspiration always pops up though. This is the back wall of Studio C, where my Chair Yoga class is held. I've been taking the class for the last ten weeks and looked at this wall when I walked in the door, and it never really hit me until yesterday. That arrangement of three windows over two has possibilities, so before class I got up to take a picture. Needless to say everybody wanted to know why. I don't know what I'll do with it yet, but that's not my concern. Something will pop up.

I was writing the story of the Lightning in the Night Sky quilt, and I love working with those curved blocks. I thought, I'll make another one! But as my friend Janet said to me the other day, when I commented about the size of my stash, "You have to think of it as, 'I can't die until I use that all up!'"

So I looked at my stash. What did I have a lot of that I could use up?

The answer was Brights on Black. And what to use with it?

That answer was Black on white, but I also wanted to use up some Brights on White.

Now fear not, those aren't the only fabrics I chose. Each pile of fabric has ten strips in it, so you can't see 90% of the fabrics I chose.

The object was to cut as many strips as I could from the fabrics that I chose, like this one. I can get one WOF strip. The rest I will cut into Macnas sized blocks for a quilt sometime later. Although this did reduce the quantity of those fabrics in my stash, I still have a lot of quilts to make before I made a serious sized dent in the stash. But one step at a time. you don't eat a whale in one sitting.

This is a small preview of where I am going, but even this doesn't tell the whole story. This was as far as I got, but hey, I cut 70 dark strips and 70 light strips in one day! 

Happy New Year!

Pizzazz!

 

Julie decided to send me this flimsy last week. The package got delayed an took an extra five days to arrive. I spread it out on the bed and I knew what I wanted to do with it. I knew the quilt needed a border, and I knew just which fabric I wanted.

This is a Kaffe Fassett fabric, Guinea Fowl. I did a quick online search, and knew it was in stock at the Portsmouth Fabric Company, a little over an hour's drive from my house. The PFC is located in the middle of the busiest part of Portsmouth, just down the street from Market Square, which is guaranteed to be busy on a lovely Saturday. I knew I wanted to get to PFC as early as I could so I could get a good parking spot, so I left the house about 9 AM. I was able to park right across the street, and found the fabric I wanted right away.

I chose this print as the backing. I like big prints for backings, and I didn't want anything too dark.

The quilt has a lot of Kaffe fabrics, and I thought I should choose one for the binding. I chose this one. It's pretty unusual that I get the backing and binding at the same time, but the selection of fabrics was so great, I decided to go with it.

Now that I had bought what I went for, I was able to look around. I don't usually buy fabrics when I don't need any, but I sometimes fabrics can be inspiring. I picked these two.