Monday, 10 August 2015

Purging the greens and planning a new learning curve


 I have made 395 green/brown pinwheels for two projects from the pre-cuts.

 There were a lot of two patches and four patches over from The Big Green One. 

 The four patches were dubious, so I made them into 240 six patches, I have a plan for these. 



 I made 347 4 patches from the remaining two patches, with greens that are better matched in each block, to be put by for a future project TBC.






A lot of the two patches have been hand sewn,  I took them on holiday about 5 years ago!  It made for very easy seam spinning of 395 sets.









I used some of the very odd four patches, (here the centre blocks are really brown and yellow!) to make scrappy nine patches to join the pile of over 100 I have already.




Thirty seven of these made, you can't really tell they contain a green/neutral four patch.







I have  chain sewn sets of triangles  for Box Kite, to be pressed:  I  made 14  blocks so far.  I really like this block. The top centre one doesn't fit with the others as the blue is too pale. There will be enough for at least two quilts, so I can sort them into tone block types when they are all done.







I also did a few Perkiomen Daydreams blocks.  I will be pressing the ones I have to check the accuracy (it's difficult to determine without a press as they finish at 1"). If I am not happy  I will abandon this project. I can't work out why my pinwheel accuracy is almost always spot on, but simple squares seem wonky.  This is Bonnie's  block and its perfect! 





I have been investigating one block wonder quilts. They are not a difficult to construct as I thought, helpful videos found on Youtube.    Bruce Seeds's Flickr page shows some informative pictures about fabric choices.



I found these in my stash, good quality fabrics bought at silly sale prices as backing.










I also bought  several metres in the sale from Lady Sew and Sew ( UK), one of my favorite online shops, of this Makower fabric that I think will do well, lots of colour and shape variation. Don't know about the size of the print yet, as it hasn't arrived!

I stashed some ideas on my Pinterest page too.



2 comments:

Sewing Junkie said...

I don't feel so alone in my efforts reading your posts. I make lots of 4-patches and 9-patches with fabric I have,You have a better plan for the final quilt. I do it to de-stress. I don't cut fabric to make just one quilt. I do use Bonnie's cutting system, but tweak it with the size strips and squares I enjoy working with. I encourage to keep up the good work. Chris

starflash quilts said...

thank you Chris, I am definitely a de-stress sewer! Chugging my way through piles of stuff at the moment to distract me from 'life'! I have lots of tops waiting FMQ, but feeding king size through the little gap in my machine means most of it is slung over my shoulder and it's way too hot to be wrapped in a quilt and fight with it at the same time at the moment!