Nothing wrong with a bit of ambition

My biggest challenge this year will be simply to maintain momentum and to make sure I don't waste precious time when it is available to me.   However, here, in no particular order, are some of the thoughts/ideas/plans that have been buzzing around the back of my head.  

• I have enjoyed sticking with a shape over several quilts recently.  I made several with variations of a chunky wedge shape and it was enjoyable and challenging to come up with a new way to take it each time.  I am now on my second top using an improv quarter circle as a starting point.  I think I want to keep on with this shape for a quilt of two more (though not necessarily all in a row!)
  

• I have a number of small elements that have occurred in earlier quilts that I would like to revisit.  Here's an example.
  
  
  
• Also, more denim, more printing words, and maybe making a quilt to go with one of the titles that have occurred to me and never been used.
• Finally, though I may not hold myself to this, Ann's post has made me want to consider making a quilted coat. 

Of course, it will be good going it I meet any of these challenges, but I am choosing to aim high.  Wish me luck!

Plans for 2023

 Happy New Year everyone!

Ann and I have been setting challenges on this blog since January 2017.  We have noticed that recently fewer people have had the time/inclination to follow the prompts, though in some cases we know you are still working on prompts set some time ago.  With that in mind, we are not proposing to set a prompt for the first half of this year.  Instead, we're going to suggest a monthly topic.  Hopefully this will prompt some interesting discussions around quilts and quilting.  

Of course you are still welcome to post your quilts here and to share other ideas/thoughts/inspirations as you feel inclined.

So, to kick us off, I'm inviting you to post about your quilting hopes and plans for this year.  I hesitate to use the word "resolution" because I know that's not everyone's cup of tea, but is there a new technique you would like to try, a quilt you want to make or  a project you plan to finish?  Is there something you've done already that has left you with an itch to scratch?  Have you already spotted the first squirrel of the year?  Or maybe you just need to figure out a way to carve out more time or space.  

I'll post mine in a day or so, but feel free to chip in any time.  

The gratuitous quilt picture shows four of my tops done in response to challenges: Two blocks, Tulips, Symmetry and Sun.

The way I see it now

Thanks to everyone who took the time to post suggestions in response to my previous post; it's helpful to see all the different options you came up with.  I have been pondering this QAL a lot and, although I don't have a fully-fledged answer to my tulip dilemma, I do have  clearer sense of how I need to think about the whole project.

I realise that it makes much more sense to me if I think of Ann's monthly posts as a series of prompts rather than sets of instructions.  Thus, month 1 was 'make string blocks' and month 2 is 'make tulips'.  I could choose to ignore a prompt and veer off in another direction if I wanted to, but if I want tulips then I should get over the questions of technique.  I am mostly a piecer, so I want to piece tulips.  I am improvisational by inclination, so I'm going to have a go at improvising them. 

What I know for certain is that if this doesn't work, it will just be a step on the way to something that does.  Sitting here scratching my head for too long, on the other hand, won't get me anywhere,

Love tulips, don't like to applique

Here's a puzzle for you to consider.  I like Ann's tulips a lot.  I like to applique much less (actually I like how it looks, just don't want to do it). So I have started making these little string blocks for a tulip quilt, knowing from the off that I want to applique as much as I want toothache.

I have been searching the web for inspiration but so far nothing hits the spot. 

I could EPP, but that is not a thought that fills me with joy and lately I don't much want to do anything that isn't adding joy to my life.  

I could piece, but the only examples I have seen are very block-y and tulips are such a lovely, elegant flower I would prefer to come up with something more curvy.   I love the simplicity of  Audrey's latest tulips, but of course those are appliqued.

What to do?  I have no answers as yet, but did come across this interesting post on one of Barbara Brackman's blogs that gives me pause for thought.  

Any bright ideas?  

Thinking about flowers

I have a plan for this, even if I have nowhere to start working on it.  

First steps,  I pulled out all my flower-y fabrics and washed them.  I never used to bother but now they are always going to end up in a quilt with old shirts, so it makes sense.

I realised as I was sorting how much smaller my stash has become since I switched to my current way of working. I knew I was buying less yardage but this brought it home.  I wondered briefly if eventually I would stop buying quilting fabrics altogether but I think it's unlikely (though if the pound continues to plummet...; I like the mix of shirts and stash and how it works for me.

Where, you might ask, is the shirty part of this plan?  The happy answer (and one I've never been able to use before) was that it was sitting in a box waiting  for inspiration to strike. I started these little butterflies a year or two ago in a half-hearted leader and ender-y sort of way.  I liked them, but ran out of steam before they amounted to anything interesting.

Now they are out of their box and I am hoping that they will come together nicely with some of my flower-y bits.  It's a start at least. 

Red is a Neutral

Since I'm not doing much actual sewing I thought I'd keep my blogging muscles working by doing a quick post reflecting on the Red is a Neutral challenge.

This is where I got to in the end.

Sadly it seems to be a difficult top to photograph and the bright sun here has washed out the colours too much.  I'll try again when it's cloudier.  In real life there are a pale green and a lovely lemon-y yellow which are virtually indistinguishable in this picture (though you can get a better idea here).

It's been an interesting exercise for me but I think on balance I'm happy that I met the brief.  There is a lot of red in this quilt but for me it works to enhance the blues, greens and yellows rather than demanding to be the centre of attention.  It's a useful notion to have up one's sleeve - that red can be used instead of, say, low volume options. 

I have also learned that if I stick with the same block for too long I get bored, then I kind of lose the will to sew at all, so if I want to work along these lines again I will need to build in variety, either by making more than one block or by changing scale or some other jiggery-pokery.

Starting without a plan

Finally I get to Red is a Neutral, though I have literally no clue now what I am about.  

I found these shirts:

and teamed them up with some reds from my stash (no pictures because I have shoved them in the washing machine, but there is an old Grunge and a couple of Oakshott bits).

So far so good, but it seemed very red.

So I added these:

I'm thinking that the bits of green, black, white and tan give me some options in terms of what else I will add.

These two could open it up even more.

I am torn since the one on the right almost deserves a quilt all to itself.  It's in the mix for now though.

Here they are all together.

Now I've got to team them up with some not-so-red fabrics and see where that gets me.

Mapping Challenge, done for now

I've finally finished this top.

If you want to know more, here's the link to my blog post.

Once I get over the sheer relief and joy of having reached the finish line I will try to find a moment to reflect on what I have learned in the process.  

Mapping - so near and yet...

I am so, so close to being done with this but things are conspiring.  My exhaust pipe is currently making dire noises but I can't get it seen till the end of the week, so my driving is limited.  As long as I keep below 30mph it's okay, but that rules out getting to where I do my piecing, unless I want to make myself very unpopular on the backroads of Nottinghamshire!

As it happens, I don't think the extra time thinking but not doing will do me any harm at all. This is the last photo I took and I can tell right away that all sorts of things are not working for me.

First off I don't like all the white sashing over on the right, second of all I am trying to stretch what just won't stretch.  I've added in new bits and pieces and more of the dark green but it feels rather like I'm forcing things. What I am pondering now is taking a more radical approach - maybe making the last bit pretty much all dark (maybe the dark blue and green in squares with lighter sashing, maybe keep the blue sashing but still go much darker in the squares).  Or even find a completely different and mis-matched fabric to fill in.  

Still plenty of time to come up with ideas, as I can't see much hope of getting back to this before next week.  

What I learned on my holidays (1 month of maps)

One month into this map project and no sewing yet but I've been away so that's my excuse.  There was a tiny bit of holiday stitching (more on the blog) but since this is our regular AHIQ date I thought I'd share a couple of map-related moments that got me quite excited while I was away.

We went to Denmark.  I had visited Copenhagen before, but nowhere else and this year we booked a place to stay in East Jutland, on the Baltic Sea.  I'm not going to bore you with an account of the whole holiday (though I liked Denmark a lot) since a lot of it was pretty standard holiday stuff, but we did make the trip to Billund to visit the Lego attractions.  Not so much a theme park person, me, but there is a relatively new thing called the Lego House, which is all about building/making rather than rides and that was genuinely pretty cool.

More to the point, look what I found there.

 Fine line piecing anyone?

Or this.

The idea here was that you found a base block, made your building/tree/structure, dropped it into an empty gap and the board lit up, joining your tiny square to all the others.  This has me thinking about starting a quilt in a similar way: making the individual elements and finding a way of joining them in a grid.  I think this might be a fun way to work with children too or on a group project.  

Next up (and I got properly over-excited at this one) was Jelling, site of a rune stone considered to mark the birth of the nation of Denmark, under Harald Bluetooth, and of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I have Norwegian antecedents,which have always formed a part of my family's sense of who we are, though in somewhat convoluted ways, I think.  This place felt like a tangible connection for me between my history, my family and this notion of mapping.  Anyhow...

There used to be a huge wooden stockade around this Viking site, now marked out with these white concrete pillars.

Every dark dot marks the location of a wooden upright. (If you would like to see what the wooden original would have looked like, check this out).

Within this stockade, granite slabs (now replaced with white concrete) marked out the shape of a 350 metre long ship.  

Best of all was the way they had marked out the position and details of the three longhouses on the side.  A huge area of white concrete sits where each one stood,with the findings of the house marked out on it; dark lines mark the walls, dark circles the places where wooden pillars stood.

This is just begging to be the starting point of a quilt.  

I think I am going to stick, for now, with my original plan and let this simmer, but I think you can expect to find this topic coming up again.

Next thing is to get some actual sewing started.

Making Progress - Slowly!

Moving on from my first post on this dedicated

blog I have made a little progress on my 'un-finished'

quilt. Kaja left a comment saying that she hoped I would be able to

make some progress, this was the push I needed to get on with it!

Below was the state of play on the 28th June.

Playing around in my 'spare parts box' I found a strip of

6" Churn Dash blocks made for an earlier quilt (never used).

I cut the strip in half

and this gave me just enough for two borders.

Thinking time needed, I wasn't inclined to make more

 Churn Dash blocks so decided on something completely

different for the remaining two borders, this echoed the

previous round of borders in that two different blocks were used.

I opted for 6" kaleidoscopes.

Just the one border to go and then corners to fill in, I already have a plan for these.

I've also decided on a name for this little quilt

'Playtime'

Hopefully the completed top will be posted within two weeks,

after that I can devote time to making plans for our new

Maps and Mapping challenge.

Happy Quilting

Maureen

Playing with Scale

Since this is the 4th Tuesday of the month and would previously have been link up day I thought I'd do a quick round up of my Playing with Scale challenge stuff.

My first go was based around wanting to use a large scale green and black print that I'd had for ages, with the additional challenge of using much bigger individual blocks than I would tend to.  I have started quilts before intending to keep things large, but my natural inclination seems more to be for working smaller and smaller and smaller.

This went okay for me. It turns out I didn't mind the bigger blocks, I liked how the green and black fabric worked and I learned a bit about balance: when there are fewer components you have to make sure each one is in the right place and pulling its weight; when there are loads of much smaller pieces I think it's easier to have one or two less than perfect bits and still get a satisfactory overall look.

Since the challenges this year are running for 6 months instead of 3, and I find that they provided a focus and  impetus that is really fruitful for me, I thought I'd try to keep elements of the playing with scale theme in the next quilts I made. So, with Findhorn I deliberately played around a bit with the scale of my flying geese...

and in the current project I am using two different sizes of block. 

Overall, I think that I have learned a lot about placement during this challenge and have articulated some things that I probably knew on some level already, specifically about movement and rhythm in my quilting, about how using similar units in different sizes helps to create that rhythm and about the impact you can get from working with larger units (yes, I know this last one should have been pretty obvious, but sometimes it just takes me a while).  

I'm looking forward now to finishing the latest quilt off and being ready for Ann's challenge next month.

On a practical note, I am assuming most people will just put up posts when they want to, but if you have a post on your blog already, you can just post the link here and ask us to visit.  If you can't currently post on this blog and would like to, get in touch and I'll send you an invitation.

Kaja