An improv placemat finished

My strings and tulips have not progressed very much in the last couple of months, but I haven't stopped sewing.

In June I made this placemat for the Table Scraps Challenge:

It's improv using purple scraps and half inch strips of yellow scraps.

I saw a tutorial for the technique on Debbie Jeske's blog and decided to try out fine line piecing straight away. To see more pieces using this technique check Instagram #beesewcial .

There is more information on the process of this piece on my own blog. 

And now to the strings and tulips .... !

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Backs and fronts

As I pieced today I was thinking about one or two aspects of quilting with shirts that give me pleasure, but that can also  be quite handy, so I thought I'd do a quick post and share them.

First of all, if I am using a fabric that I was sure would work but it just seems a bit...well, a bit too much (and actually works for yardage as well),  I have been known just turn it over and use the back.  Sometimes, like with this lovely blue, I think you'd be hard put to tell which side was meant to be the front (it's the all blue version).  

I know there are one or two prints that I have used in several quilts but always wrong side up,turning them from slightly garish to tastefully understated, or at least to less garish.

The second is that many shirts, even quite cheap ones, come with a lined yoke.  Occasionally this is just the same as the rest of the garment but often they are carefully co-ordinated.   The two fabrics in this centre strip came from the same shirt

as did the two on the right hand piece here

Someone else has matched the colours and thought about how the two designs complement each other; all I have to do is cut them apart and sew them together again.

Some of This; Some of That 6/2/21

Hello, I know it's been awhile. Days are so different right now.  Not too much time for quilting as I am caregiving my 95 year-old Mom who has progressive dementia.  My sister takes two days and I take two days - my brothers do the other three. My stressor is I live an hour away and the traffic is terrible. That's what I dread. I've taken to spending the night between my two days to cut down on the driving.  I wish I could have her at my house, but she wants to stay with her things around her, so we all agree it is better this way for now.  We are grateful she still remembers all four of us. When I'm home I do try to do some sewing even if it's only 10 minutes a day. So here is what I've managed to move forward on:

I finished quilting my medallion quilt.  It still needs to be bound. Got the strips cut - just have to join them and get to it. Geesh -no photo of the front taken - here's two that kind of show the quilting - LOL did too good a job in picking thread that blends.

I'll post the front when it's bound and finished.

Also got a baby quilt done that I'll be sending to Little Lambs as my contribution to Sarah's Hands2Help challenge for 2021.

I hope you are doing well and keeping safe. Blessings to you all,

 

ESS Blocks done

 Hello. This is my first post here. I'm Angie Nudge and I've been quilting since 1986. I have a blog. If you want you can read it here.  I happily stumbled across Ann's blog and have been fascinated by her many creative quilts that so appeal to me - they are so colorful!  So I decided to try my hand at her Tulip quilt. I just happened to have a large garbage bag of strings, so I pulled it out and made the outer border for this project.  I tried so hard to be improv, but I kept changing things - strips that is - lol.  Oh, well, think they came out okay.  I found that the telephone pages I used for my paper shrank. Just an 1/8 on two sides, but this was easily fixed by just using my 6 1/2 square ruler to square the blocks up to 5 1/2".  

So here they are:

Now to make the string blocks to make the tulips!  Thanks for letting me join the group. Blessings!

Tulip Mania, completed top

This is on my blog, of course, so I thought I would just do a recap here of how it relates to  Ann's original challenge.  I wanted to keep as many elements of her original quilt as I could, whilst doing my own thing.  I certainly went all around the houses to get there, but  I have tulips and they are string-pieced and I have string blocks.  I also have, more or less a medallion layout; it may not look especially like a medallion at first glance, but it was constructed in rounds, working out for the centre.  

Of course I could have abandoned any of these elements along the way and would have done, if necessary, but I like that I didn't have to.  In fact, I didn't start with a medallion layout but using the tulips in a block as a central starting point was a key moment in figuring out how this was going to work.  

This has been a big old headache a lot of the time, but it has been a good exercise for me to have to think more about value and the way it relates to colour, and about the ways that I can get rhythm and movement into a piece.  Definitely not time wasted, then, but I am heartily relieved to get it to a point I am happy with! 

Forty-Six - the Flimsy

And then, 

after all of the machine appliqué was completed,

 there was a flimsy on the design wall.

(no fusible was used - 

just lots of pins to hold the shapes in place)

I'm very pleased with the string pieced tulips

and the way they sway back and forth.

Their consistent stems

and pairs of scrappy leaves make me happy.

* * *

The top finished at approximately 48" x 60"

Quilting will happen later this year.

Quiltdivajulie

AHIQ QAL - A Pocket Full of Posies

Borders are now on my small quilt last posted April 25th!

A Pocket Full of Posies

If you follow my blog you will have already seen this photo,
for those of you who haven't I took a little time coming to a decision
with the border treatment.

I had decided on using Spot in the Autumn colourway and spent some
time deciding whether one narrow border or a wider border would
fit the best. Neither of the two options seemed to work,
in the end I decided to split a wide border using a narrow insert
of the fabric used to cut the flowers for the centre collage.

I'm more than happy with the result.
The little quilt now measures 45 and 1/2" and will be hand quilted.

Thanks to Ann for this prompt, I have never used the string paper pieced
method before, I enjoyed it, I like the effect of the four blocks together,
but I found the bias a little tricky. I will definitely use this method
again and be a little more aware of the bias issue.

Maureen