Back in the swing of it

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Now that the room is up, I’ve been making time to spend down there. I also got some Craftsy classes, including Quilting Negative Space. I’m a HUGE fan of Angela already and this class is just great. I’m really enjoying it, even though I listen along as I’m making supper.

Tonight I had the itch to quilt so I decided to practise some patterns from Angela’s book along with encouragement from her course. I already had a baby quilt laying in a sad pile waiting for me to figure out how to do it. I took Angela’s advice to break it up into smaller sections. It’s improv pieced so there’s no real background, but since it’s so wild, I figured it was a great chance to practise different techniques all over it.

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Here I did two long pieces near the middle to start off and warm up.

 

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You can see the loops, back and forth (love this) and some swirls.

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Close up of doing the all over leaf pattern in the next “block”.

 

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In this block I marked a single line diagonally across then followed it to make the sunburst effect. I love how it feels.

 

 

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Two more long strips gave me the opportunity to try the swirl scroll and woodgrain. The scroll needs some work, but it’s good enough!

 

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And there’s all the work I did this evening. Halfway done!

It was quite fun doing a different design in each section or strip.

 

Update: I actually went through a whole bobbin last night, did a quick bit this morning and ran out of the *second* bobbin,

Ayla’s quilt

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Ayla is my newest grandbaby (number two!) and it’s taken me a while to decide on exactly what kind of quilt to make her. Being born at the end of July really helped ease the pressure to produce a quilt right away too. 😉

I finally decided on Brioche and Baguette but the pattern is mail order and I did not want to wait.

So I winged it.

With the general idea of the pattern in mind (I will buy it later), I used a bunch of charm squares, a fat quarter and a bunch of 2.5″ strips – jelly roll sized. I was also of out white fabric with most of it buried in a storage container miles from here, so I also hassled my mom to see what was in her stash. The fabric is from Riley Blake – Apple of my Eye and mostly Pretty Little Things by Dena Designs for Free Spirit

Progress so far:

The white fabric is actually the support panel from a bedskirt. I got a little cutter-happy and wound up cutting waaaaay too many 2.5″ strips, but given how much I love to use white, I’ll use them elsewhere.

By the time I got the the laying out stage, I realized I really did want wider border on the side. I was going to just use the 2.5″ strips all around but for me, I visually did not want a skinny quilt. Unfortunately, there was barely enough white left. I would have liked to have cut the wider side sashing a full 5″ like the charm squares and the strips of fat quarter in the middle, but it was just a wee bit short. I wound up with 4.5″ strips but overall I don’t think it will too noticeable.

Except to maybe other quilters. 😉

For the center area, I really loved the trees fabric and made sure the pattern was matched up where I cut it. I could have cut the fabric shorter to not make the overall quilt so skinny, but I love the fabric so much! I wanted to show as much as I could.

This is going to bite me when I work on the back, but I’ll cover that next post. I only got the white fabric last weekend, and had made my mind up a couple days before that. Sometimes I don’t sew them up this fast, sometimes I just can’t help it.

The only reason I stopped today was because I had to cook supper and eat it. I hate when that happens.