Tag: piecing

Posted in sewing

Stash-Busting Border

Posted on by Laura Kate

I’m onto a new project that, I hope, will enhance my home while using up a ton of fabric scraps that are stacking up in my studio. It all started when I got tired of looking at the naked drapery rod over my bedroom window.

So I did what any practical woman would do. I browsed images in Pinterest to find out what is trending in home decor these days. Here’s what grabbed my attention:

QUILTED BORDER ON PLEATED DRAPES

I like the look, but wasn’t too keen to make this curvy pattern. Instead, I seek to emulate the look of slate mosaic, like the tile border in my shower.

Settling on a pattern of 1-inch squares surrounding a 2-inch center, I pulled all the gray, beige and white fabric left over from my past quilt projects. Next,I sliced them into 1 and 1/2 inch strips, then sewed these together in twos, and fours.

The white strips will serve as sashing between blocks.

Strip sets on the work table.

Attaching the strips to the center, cutting back extra.

After three sessions, I have 25 blocks made with low volume, neutral colors. My estimate is that I will need about 30 for the two borders, depending on how long my draperies end up.

Time to lay out a few to see how the border might look.

Gosh this would be easier if I had a design wall (sigh.) Maybe I’ll have room for that in the next house.

Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2023 Round 6: So Close

Posted on by Laura Kate

It’s the last round of the Stay At Home Round Robin quilt challenge and I’m feeling glum. By the time I finished sewing on the coping strip, row and setting triangles of round five, my scrappy quilt measured 90 inches tall by 68 inches wide.

It is large and full and colorful. Clearly it wants to be a queen-sized bed quilt. And it’s crying out for more areas of background fabric to give some calm in the storm.

I am having trouble imagining how I could wedge in some pinwheel blocks as selected by Quilting Gail.

SAHRR Round #6

But I’m no quitter. I made four not-big pinwheels, trusting that they will fit in.

Somewhere.

One thought I have is to insert the pinwheels into square-in-square blocks of background fabric, then slip those blocks into the corners of the last rows.

Anyway, I’ll try to cheer up. After all, I have almost two weeks to finish the top before the quilt parade deadline.

Posted in quilting

2023 SAHRR Round 3 – Hourglass Block

Posted on by Laura Kate

This week Chris Knits and Sews is choosing the block and providing the linky party for quilting participants to post their work in the annual round robin challenge.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/32776/posts/4536905279

I approached this round with a plan to give some rest for the eye from the colorful center. Here is my quilt at the end of the last round.

I used two colors of background fabric to make the hourglass blocks. Here is one row attached to my quilt.

For the corner blocks, I cut the centers out of some pineapple blocks.

They are about 3 inches square. Next I sewed strips of light grey fabrics around all four sides to bring the corners up to the correct size.

I think they are pretty.

After attaching the corners to the last two strips of hourglass blocks I stitched them to the quilt.

What I learned from this round:

1 It pays to work slowly in sewing the blocks together to ensure a very accurate seam allowance. If one seams is too narrow or wide, it’s worth it to rip back and re-sew.

2. Sometimes it’s okay to press a seam open, particularly when sharp points are involved. It can help diminish lumps and bumps.

So far I’m having lots of fun making a stay-at-home round robin quilt. If you’d like to sew along, here is the list of the hosts and rounds.

Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2023 Round One: Spool Block

Posted on by Laura Kate

This week’s prompt for the Stay At Home Round Robin quilt challenge comes from Home Sewn By Us and it is the spool block. This is one I haven’t tried yet, I believe it’s one of the easier blocks to make. And I have a good idea for using fabric from my orphaned quilt blocks for this challenge.

Using my seam ripper, I removed the corners from several of the blocks. (Can anyone tell me what this block is called? It’s a sort of square in a square with at least four iterations, but then stripped corner pieces were sewn on.) Anyway, I took these triangles and sewed two of them with long edges together. This gave me a square about 3 and 1/2 inches which formed the “thread” part of my spools.

To support the center pieces, I cut pieces from four dark colors and two shades of the background fabric. Three of the dark colors were left over from my Creation quilt. The brown fabric was used in my Badlands art quilt.

Here is my first block all sewn together.

I like the way the diagonal lines on the spool look like spiraling thread.

Eventually I made four 5-inch blocks in four different colors. My original design would have the spool blocks in a continuous border. When I started positioning the blocks, it became clear that there would be too much visual clutter. I settled on using three blocks on each side, leaving the corner areas available.

I will reserve the corners for the next round, or fashion corner posts using background fabrics.

To learn more about SAHRR 2023 and see what others are making, here is the link to this week’s round.

https://www.homesewnbyus.com/index.php/sahrr2023-prompt-1-spool-block/

Posted in painting, quilting

The Creation Fiber Project: Work continues

Posted on by Laura Kate

It was a cloudy day when I staged and photographed this image. It documents the assembly of my latest quilt project, tentatively called “Creation.” From a few feet away, the piecing looks fine. All points that are not exactly matched are at least closely matched. You can see on the right one border attached.

At this point, I really needed a break on lining up and sewing points. So I moved on to the border’s corner blocks. In reading about medieval manuscript paintings, I learned that the owners of the missals often had their family coats of arms painted at the corners. Here are examples.

I desire to do something simpler. (Only partly because I don’t want to spend several years of my life painting an elaborately decorated border like the example!) I have a fascination with symbols, so I decided to place historical and ancient symbols of God and/or creation at the corners instead. After a bit of research, I got busy.

Three out of four are complete. They are painted on the same golden fabric used as used for the scenes of Creation. I used watercolor pencils again. Behind and to the left you can see my border fabrics.

Perhaps tomorrow I will get back to sewing.