Birds at MQX Manchester

We had a good time making birds at the MQX show in Manchester yesterday.

 The place was really hopping.

I thought to myself, "wow, I've arrived!"

More on the birds later!

3, 2, 1... GLORIOUS!

Here I was pinning the last seam.

Here it is.. Glorious, a collaboration quilt between Julie Sefton and me.

The lighting may not be the greatest, but this quilt is really pretty.

The last two pictures are really big, so you can click and then double click to see all the details about all the fabrics.

All I Have To Do...

All I have to do to finish the Glorious flimsy is sew these pieces together (five seams),

And then sew these two big chunks (the one on the left is ready to go)

to this. Seven seams. Woo hoo!

It is SO much prettier in real life.

(Reminder: you can click the pictures, and then click them again to enlarge so you can see lots of detail.)

Diamond Construction

When I've sewn the Diamonds quilts together I've sewn the blogs into diagonal rows, but they are awkward to work with.

My design wall isn't quite big enough for the side edges, so I laid them out on the floor.

This gave me the idea of assembling a large central diamond, and then sewing the corner sections around it.

These six rows will form the center of the big diamond once I sew them together. It isn't a typical square in square, so it's a bit finicky, but I think it'll be a bit easier to sew together this way.

A Detour

I finished sewing the binding to the Tickled Pink quilt. Now I just have to fold it over and hand sew it down on the front. Yes, I do my final stitching on the front. I was taught how to do it so it doesn't show. If you want to know more about how I do it, click here.

It will be nice just to sit and do some hand sewing.

Two Hours Thirty-Seven Minutes and 32 Pictures

It's no secret I wasn't happy with the latest iteration of the diamonds quilt for Julie. At first I thought it needed more darks. After I got out of the shower on Friday morning I went over to look at it while I dried my hair. A big pink print sitting in my stash taunted me. So I put my towel down and cut a big diamond and stuck it on the wall. 

Then I spied a big orange and yellow print. It was a fat quarter. I cut two diamonds and put them up on the wall.  It was a light bulb moment. The big diamonds demand LARGE SCALE prints. These make up the backbone of the quilt, and they need to be strong enough to do that. A busy print won't work.

After dinner that night I called Julie. About half an hour into our conversation I drifted into the studio and we talked about the quilt. Suddenly this large print (the backing for Ola Pola) caught my attention.  "Oh Julie, look at THIS!" I snapped a photo and sent it to her.

I put the phone on speaker, set it down and cut a big diamond. Then another...

We both loved it.

Over the next hour I cut diamonds, moved them around on the design wall, and took pictures to send to Julie.

The only things we moved around were the large diamonds.

We talked for two hours and thirty seven minutes and I sent 32 pictures. We decided what to move, made suggestions, and changed our minds over and over.

An hour later, we were happy with it. "Now I'll have to take the medium diamonds and the four patches down so I can put them back up properly," I told Julie.

 "Show me!" Julie said.

 We spent the better part of the next forty minutes fine tuning them. Making sure there weren't too many darks in one spot. Making sure the colors weren't clumped together. Making sure the same fabric wasn't duplicated in the same row or column (like a Sudoku puzzle). Making sure the flowers weren't all facing the same direction.

This is the final layout, and both Julie and I are happy with it. We started with 13 prints, and six of the original 13 remained. We added seven more from my stash. We had not originally included much orange or yellow in our selection. We had also avoided pink. As you can see, all three of those are in this final version.

"This isn't the kind of quilt you can make just from your stash," Julie observed, "and you can't plan it out on paper either."

You have to have a design wall to work this out, and you have to be willing to sacrifice what isn't working, no matter how much you love it.

"So," I asked Julie as we were saying our good byes. "Is it still Glorious?"

"Oh, absolutely!" she replied.


(A reminder that you can click the photos, and then double click to see lots more detail.)

Hindsight

They say that hindsight is always 20/20 vision. Looking backwards, it was obvious the yellow plaid wasn't "bringing anything to the party." Julie and I both knew the quilt needed something.

I have written here often that "I do my best thinking when I'm not thinking."  The other night. I was up late for whatever reason. It was past 11 PM when I decided to walk into the sewing studio to look at the quilt on the design wall. Julie was going to send me more of the light orange and green big print, but I didn't know where I would put it. 

I rummaged through my stash and found this large print. I had rejected it earlier because I felt the yellow was too harsh.  But in the you-never-know-till-you-try mode, I cut a large diamond and put it up over one of the plaids. As soon as I stepped back, I knew I had it.

It was 11:45 PM.

I cut three more diamonds, set them in place, took pictures and sent them to Julie, but I knew I didn't need her answer.

I know why you all didn't like the yellow "plaid," and this large scale yellow print is better, but I don't think this is the final answer. I am going to have to ponder.

In the meantime I have three diamond quilts to bind, a class and a lecture to prepare for. Like I said at the top, I do my best thinking when I am not thinking, and this is a perfect time to put that to the test.

As Cherie said in a comment yesterday, "I am always amazed at the work it takes to bring beauty from a jumble of color and patterns."  Hear hear.

This or That

I made a couple of changes. I know which one I prefer, so I don't need your help, but I am curious to know what you think, and why.

This one?

Or this one?

Quilted Dairy Cream

The Dairy Cream (with Sprinkles) quilt has been quilted. Here is a detail. I have to trim it down, and add the binding, which I have already chosen.

Millie, naturally, is doing the Quality Assurance check.

Rip & Replace

I've told you how making this quilt happens one piece at a time, and even then it isn't a done deal. I got up the other morning and this was on the design wall from the night before, but there was something bothering me about it.

(Note: the dark area on the top of the pictures is a shadow. The quilt isn't really that dark.)

 
After looking at it, (really LOOKING) I realized what made the quilt looked so "lost" was there weren't any dark areas anchoring it down on the lower part of the quilt. The two Art Noveauish big diamonds weren't pulling their weight. They had to go and be replaced with something that read "darker."

So I changed them. I rejiggered a few other pieces, and shuffled around some of the small four patches, and this is where it sits right now.

I have more four patch diamonds to make (I need about ten more on each outer edge) and they won't be where they are now. I need them as a kind of a guide to place the medium diamonds, to help me figure out what works and what doesn't. For example, the medium diamonds that have a white background don't fit, but ones that have a cream background are OK.

Julie and I have been texting back and forth about all of this, and she's sending more of her fabrics for the medium diamonds that I have found to be most successful. We've also ordered more of one of our giant prints, and one other, so I am far from done.

Here's the thing. We both know what I have (photo above) is GOOD, but I know it can be BETTER, so that's what we're going for. So this is going to sit right here for a few days.

Piece by Piece by Piece

Sometimes you're just too tired to think. So I went to bed the other night, and finished wrestling with the layout of the big diamonds the next morning. Arranging the big diamonds is like playing Sudoku. The same fabric can't be in the same row or column as itself.

By the way, for those of you who can't quite grasp how big these giant diamonds are - here you go!

 Once I get the big ones all set, I start placing the medium sized diamonds. I had to put up a four patch diamond to get a sense of how the background fabric for those would look with the medium diamonds. I want the mediums to kind of blend in, so I have to know what to look for.

Here I have placed a lot of medium diamonds. Many of them are soft greens of some kind or another. Julie also sent some lovely fabrics to use as medium diamonds too.  Remember you can click the pictures, and then click again to look at all the little details.

This was what it looked like after dinner. It was OK, and it was getting close, but it wasn't quite singing the way I wanted it to. I have several more yellows, oranges a blue and a plum to cut up into four patch diamonds, but at this point I wondered if I needed some DARK diamonds.

I liked the dark diamonds, but this is too many. It's feeling muddy, and I was getting tired after working for over eight hours. Time for bed.

Shapeshifter

It's one thing to cut out the big diamonds, it's another to lay them out and start playing.

I started adding the medium diamonds using a lot of the fabrics Julie sent. It was OK, but it wasn't singing.

I hadn't added any of the hummingbird fabric, but when I put it in I knew I'd have to add more.

By this time, I was sending Julie photos and we were exchanging text messages. Neither one of us was particularly thrilled with the darks. I had already removed the peacock fabric. The sunflowers were looking too dark too. "What else do you have?" Julie asked. "What other big prints do you have?"

 It was my turn to run back and forth. I had this big print from the quilt I made for  my Mom.

"This could work" I texted Julie. She wasn't sure.

We got rid of all the darks, and it was much better, but it still looked confused.

 Since the medium diamonds were placed because I liked the way they looked next to the big diamonds, when I moved the big diamonds around, the mediums didn't fit, so I took them off.  It was almost midnight. The quilt is changing, but it was time for bed.

Diamond Cut Up!

Here is one of the fabrics that Julie and I chose for her Diamond quilt. It looks like a spirograph.

 This is really quite a glorious (pun definitely intended) fabric. (Remember you can click the pictures, and then click them again to enlarge them and see all the detail.)

This is what the fabric looked like when I was finished cutting diamonds. You don't think I cut them all the same, did you?

You'll definitely have to click to enlarge this photo to see all the ways I cut the diamonds from this fabric. Actually the design was a bit smaller than either Julie or I expected, but it was much more beautiful than either of I expected also.

To get nine diamonds out of this fabric, I needed to do a tiny bit of surgery. This wasn't a cutting mistake, this was just a way to get another diamond out of limited yardage.