43.1 “Handwork” to avoid carrying around my machine

A small sewing group meets about once a month and I have been able to be a part of it. I took my pinwheel blocks, which are leftover from as swap from 2010 or 2011 and decided to ask if I could learn how to “spin the centers” of the back of the pinwheels

Somehow I had a little bit of a struggle. One, I misheard and started pulling apart the backs of the last seam instead of the next to last seam. Things went crazy. The block was re-sewn.

Eventually I did get it figured out, with the help of my friends. I didn’t cut off my dog ears before sewing these down, which actually made it decently easy to pop the opposite seam (both sides) and flatten it out. I sat the afternoon and got most, if not all, the pinwheels popped. I had 88 pinwheels to do.

Then, sometime the last few months in between projects, I got some sashing, cornerstones figured out and cut to size.

Which meant I had to trim up my pinwheels to the same size.

I was able to use some offline time away from my machine, away from internet to work on these. It was sorta tiresome, but the perfect opportunity to do a little bit of offline sewing.

Advertisement

38.8 Winslow’s Corners quilt an Arkansas Crossroads pattern

The end of 2015 was surrounded by creating quilt tops of the “scrap” genre.

Quilts with lots of different fabrics in them, sometimes color controlled, sometimes completely random.

I readily obtain many 2.5 inch blocks by my “cut out strips” method of using fabric for projects. I know the value in 2.5 inch squares and so tend to cut squares into this shape when I have no set purpose for these squares.

 

I have posted about this top a few times already, but I did finish the top at my recent Arkansas retreat.

I was trugging along, trying to get everything sewn down, I knew how I wanted the borders to match the rest of the quilt.

As you may be able to see the quilt is a simple idea.

• Alternating 16 patches filled with all the scrappy 2.5 patches I sewn together earlier the past summer
• Alternating x blocks made of 4 album blocks “pointed” inward together
• Borders consisting of each piece being a “half album” block with the two corners together

This is how I organize this quilt in my head when making it.

I have noticed it is starting to become “popularized” – aka I have been seeing it on some websites, or mainly the quilting group on FB as a single block, rather than 2 blocks of different styles.

Either way works, it depends on how the maker would prefer to work on the designs.

I made my album blocks by a simple paper piecing method. Very easy to paper piece.

In fact, I would recommend this quilt to anyone who wanted to learn a little bit about paper piecing. Not too many tiny paper pieces, the quilt seems satisfying in scope when done.

In any event, while at my November retreat, I was in a rush to complete the quilt and I didn’t consider “row placement”.

I ended up with my X blocks (four album blocks) on the outside corners. All of them.

So the very corners are these silly little hour glass type things.

I finished the quilt top, but I didn’t really like the corners of my Winslow’s Corners all that much.

But then later that month, I was thinking. And thinking.

I figured out a relatively easy way to correct the corners on Winslow’s corners.

Since both edges ended up being off, if I would remove the last row on one side, move it to the other side, scooting it down some, remove both small borders.

I had some “downtime” aka non-internet non-machine sewing time planned for the Thanksgiving holiday, I could unpick all the edges, get the quilt prepared, and then just had to do a few quick seams after black friday.

So that’s what I did, picked off one border, took a whole row including the border, scootched it over to the opposite side of the quilt.

The left over border on my “left” in the picture above is good since I removed the “offending row” and put it on the right.

And scootched it down by one block.

You can see from here, I still had to pick out the extra X block, and I had to quick make an extra 16 patch block.

But only minor changes from this point and now the quilt top has much better border corners.

No funny corners on my Winslow’s Corners quilt.

Did I mention why I am calling the quilt Winslow’s Corners? My annual fall retreat is in Winslow, Arkansas. And the quilt pattern is sometimes named Arkansas Crossroads.

 

37.1 Not Exactly as I Expected

I am an admitted perfectionist.

So, I have a hard time resetting my mind to “growth mindset” when I do something that doesn’t quite work as well as I would like.

And yes, I realize I should not like this trait. I don’t always.

But it explains why I am slightly disappointed in the results after firing my glazed pots from a couple of weeks ago.

I know now why not many pots start off with the dark colors as the base, it’s hard to tell if the glaze is done “thick enough” to be dark.

Some areas of these pieces I did well, but mostly I am disappointed with the coverage of my coating.

Which the lady at the shop told me would happen.

Anyway, here is my plate after glazing & firing.

It’s not so bad, but just not exactly as I expected or pictured in my mind. I did the design great. But I did not do the coverage of the glaze great.

That’s okay, I can use this plate & be reasonably happy with it.

The mug I am less happy with, I should have stopped at one item that day.

Here is the flower side:

And here is the border side:

Learning experience, yes I know. And now I can have a flower vase for the next time I ever have flowers.

I think the dark just doesn’t work quite as well because it’s so hard to tell if you have a good coating.

Actually I could tell I was getting tired of sitting there, and wanting to go while I was painting the mug. The wide brush strokes I was doing on the mug and the warning that using a little goes a long way I convinced myself at the time it was fine.

The right thing to do to keep on painting until I also got the mug done.

Actually, the right thing to do would have been to plan the mug better and go back another time.

Luckily, it’s not all that expensive, it’s just a tiny bit challenging to get off work, get all my food stuff done and then drive there to go out & paint.

But I still have the dream of the red & black mug that matches my King’s Puzzle quilt.

So I will plan to go & do that sometime.

My 15 minute a day March-A-Long challenge isn’t going quite as well either, but I have been working on hand applique about 5 minutes every day. And I cleaned up some stray fabric I had out & about in my sewing room that was starting to drive me nuts.

How’s your month? Better?

 

35.7 Dancing Ribbons corner quilting not turning out

Okay I have been living with some darker fabrics next to my dancing ribbons quilt, trying to make the fabric decisions on what will work best for the corner blocks.

And then on a whim this past weekend, I decided to start cutting up and using an even lighter fabric for the corner fabric, making my lightest color fabric on the left in my picture above now become the darker of the 2 blue fabrics.

Then I have everything cut out, and all my sets of pieces cut out, sewn together & trimmed.

This means all the paper pieces are trimmed and all the fabric is sewn together in groups of 2 trimmed.

But you know the old saying “Measure twice, cut once”? Yeah, I don’t think I did that.

See how much smaller my completed corner is from the size of the quilt? I forgot to double check my measurement of my quilt block before printing out the EQ7 paper piecing.

I had put in the center block to being 20 inches instead of the 23 inch finished size. I was hoping to go large and then cut back, not the other way around. 😦

Sad trombone.

Also, seeing exactly how bright I went with the brighter fabric now this “way lighter” corner thing looks really out of place.

If I manipulate the one corner I have done in photoshop to see the quilt as it may appear (with the too small corners) it will look kinda like this.

I don’t mind lighter corners, but this seems too light. I think I may rethink this redesign. I may go with the original darker fabric to tie it better to the original colors. I was “this close” to using the darker fabrics Saturday, but then “on a whim” (which sometimes works) I said that I liked this lighter fabric too much and I wanted to use it.

Since I have to redo the corners anyway for being too small, I will switch back to the darker fabric & purchase more of the ‘medium’ I have in this piece.

The dark from the corners of this piece will become the light in the next part of the fabric. The time I spent working on this quilt, there were limited hours for in-person fabric shopping. So this quilt will sit another week during the thinking stage.

The yellow bright corners may be too bright for this quilt, I have a duller version of the yellow. Possibly, I am going to rethink the actual corner colors.

I did have a thought about adding borders to the corners to make them fit better, but I don’t really want to try to mess with that.

I don’t mind too much about this setback. I DO really like the four corner colors that I have created.

So much that I decided to complete the four corners as a small quilt of its own. With a minor change with the inner star which I will highlight with the quilting stage.

This is a cute little happy blue quilt. I will have a quilt plus the reverse of the same thing in the corners of the Dancing Ribbons quilt. With different colors.

Just not destined for this quilt at this time. Very pretty!