Away we go!

The zig zag star quilt was bound, washed, dried, and sent on its way. This is probably the truest colour representation.

It was approximately 54" wide by 72" long. This is the size of a double bed but it will be meant for a couch quilt.

The navy Bali was my starting point. I made the stars with a variety of teal fabrics but the star itself is a soft aqua with some mauve shadings. The centre square was a bright aqua. The zig zag was squeaked out of a mottled fabric that had some teals and touches of purple. It went well with the Bali and I did a bit of piecing to get my last triangle. You cannot cut a pieced block in half for the edges. You lose the seam allowance so they were especially made as half blocks.

The quilting was done with a variegated blue thread. I'd have preferred a better, more subtle blend of the blues but I had 2 spools of it and I wasn't as smart as I am now. lol A touch with a permanent marker fixes up a few troublesome stretches of the very light blue on the very black background. ;^) The quilt needs to be soft. I use cotton batts but kept the quilting about 2 inches apart so the quilt is pretty cuddly.

The backing was pieced and I would pay better attention to the fabric edges as the backing thread needed to change colours. Toile is such an excellent backing as the thread just disappears whether it be light or even the darker thread colour. This was left over from another quilt backing and it was really wide. I wish I had more and other colours but who knew how great it would be!

I hope I've answered a few questions about my process. The wee bit of pieced block peeking out from my design wall is probably my next project after I get my WIP blocks all pieced and the layout confirmed. Something to look forward to as spring approaches.

I'm off for a winter weekend away. I'll be thinking about my weekly journal quilts and the possibility of making them colour studies. I'll post this weeks quiltlet next week because I won't get to it till then.

Collecting/Making

I spent yesterday organizing, sorting, selecting colours for the colour class.

This was part 2 as we used the colour wheel to identify various colour groups. The class itself was the bonus as I had already begun to identify some glaring gaps in my repertoire!

According to my file folders I collect particularly strong complimentary colour groupings.

But according to my actual quilts I make monochromatic or analogous colour schemes.

It seems I play it way too safe.

I think I want to change that.

Have a look

This is the colour palette for the 3CS Colour Palette for the month.

When I saw the colours I knew I wanted to make my spring placemats with these fabrics. I have 8 of the 12 place mats sewn together. Four more to go and then the MQing. The shape is a bit odd but I needed them to be more square so I could get 12 people at the table.

Very busy day here. My bathroom flooring is finally going in.


Good thing my handy dandy hubby has a helper. It gives me a minute to post my own progress report! And I hope to have a very exciting report on Monday.

Good ol' college try

The 3CS has a number of challenges that I like to participate in. I am hampered a bit by being on dial-up so some tutorials can be an issue. The Technique of the Month is transferring colour and I tried a few things but I need to get the transfer medium. My trip to the city has been delayed so I won't meet that deadline but I did do some 'fooling around' with various things including a new box of crayons.

That didn't work so I wondered 'what if...'

I found the Faber-Castell PITT artist pen worked the best on fabric and I drew a border and then filled it with a little scene. Now this may not look like much but I'm actually impressed. Then I got my iron working on the fabric to heat it up and used several of my 64 colours to add some colour. I ironed the cloth with parchment paper between the iron and my drawing. Kinda cool! oh, I guess it should be, Hot Stuff! lol

The Flicker Group for the TOM is here.

The 3CS Colour palette challenge is a favorite combo of mine. I wanted to revisit some curved piecing so I dug out some old class notes. I did these with no pinning.

This is a little preview and I should have my spring place mats ready for viewing tomorrow.