Design Wall Monday - August 31

Oh wow, it's the last day of August. Tomorrow I take son #2 back to university for another term.  And there are dead leaves scattered on my front lawn this morning. I think fall is definitely on its way.

I've been a busy little beaver in my quilting room this week. No more finishes to claim, but I do have this top done. This is "Fox and Friends" and I'll be teaching a class on it later in September.

A new experiment has started.  This is supposed to be a city skyline, reflected in the water. What do you think?  It's not done yet - lots more rows to add, but I think the theory is going to work out.  I'm not sure yet if some sort of division between the buildings and the reflection is needed.


And of course I'm still working away on my leftover twister top, and making scrappy pineapple blocks. I have 17 now, which means I'm almost halfway to my goal of 35 blocks for that quilt.

Drop by Patchwork Times for more design walls today.

Stash Report

I missed last week's report, so I have a few little finishes to report.

I made 3 convergence tops - that used a total of 3 yards of fabric. And my double twister top used 4.5 yards.  Plus I have a backing for a quilt that I dropped on the longarm a week ago - 5 1/2 yards there. Nothing in this week, so my totals for the year continue to improve.

Stash totals for the year:
95 3/4 yards in
195 1/2 yards out
Total: 99 3/4 yards out
 
Drop by Patchwork Times for more stash reports today. 

Plus, I have a real live finish to show today!  I finally finished the binding on my Kaffe Fassett quilt.  Made mostly with shot cottons, although the background is a Peppered cotton instead.

Oops

Oh no! I completely lost track of days this week, and forgot about Throwback Thursday :(  Never fear, I'll be back next week with a new (old) quilt.

Step 3 and done!

My new little twister quilt is now complete. The end result looks just like I hoped, although the process to get here wasn't quite as simple as I wanted it to be and the quilt is larger than I expected.

I started with 10 inch squares, and made a traditional twister top. After I finished step 2, and had a quilt top with the expected pinwheels, I wanted to twist the blocks one more time, to create the flower shapes. I saw this quilt in a book, but I was hoping that I could use the 2 sizes of twister rulers, rather than making the templates that the book called for.  Unfortunately, that was not to be. The size differential between the large and small twister is too big for the second cut to work out with the smaller ruler.

So instead, I decided what size I needed the twisted squares to be (6 1/4"), and created a template using one of my square rules. I carefully marked the twister lines using masking tape on that ruler and use those guides for cutting.  I had to do a little of bit of easing/stretching to make the seams line up for the little petals, but it was close enough that everything worked out and the quilt top lies flat.

As a bonus from this quilt, the second cutting step gave me 3.5" squares, already twisted.  So I'm putting these together into another top. It was a little bit small (18" square) so I took the leftover square from the first twister step and cut them to make a few more twisters for the bonus top.  This will be 21" x 24" when I'm done (I ran out of squares) and should make a good donation quiltie.

Step 2

Step 2 of my new project is now complete. Some might call this a finished top, but I'm trying something new with this one, so I have another set of cut & twist to go. 

First, I added an extra border, so that I won't be cutting off all the purple in the next step.  I think this quilt is going to finish larger than I expected (about 40x40), so I'm not sure where it's going to end up. Originally, it was to be a quiltie (24x24") donation.

I'm hoping to get this one done this week, but I just committed to make another quilt on a very short time schedule so this one might have to go on hold.

Layer Cake Fun

I feel like I'm avoiding something. I have no idea what, but I've started about 4 different quilts in the past 2 weeks, and I don't really know why.  I showed two convergence quilts the other day, and then I made this one this weekend.

And when that was done, I did this. This is step 1 of a new project. I didn't actually make this from a layer cake, but I cut my own 10" squares from fat quarters. It's too bad that you only get 2 10" squares in a fat quarter. Lots of leftovers from that - but maybe they'll become part of a final border or the backing for this quilt.

I'm trying an experiment here, so I'll show steps 2 and 3 as they progress.

In the meantime, I'm still working on the scrappy pineapple quilt, using those blocks as leaders and enders for all these new projects.

More Convergence

In cleaning up my scraps, and working on my scrappy pineapple, I decided to sort through my bucket of fat quarters.  I was feeling bored with making pineapple blocks and cutting scraps, so I thought I would try a quick convergence quilt. I made one years ago at a class (see yesterday's post), and I bought Ricky Timm's convergence book when he was in town in 2013.

I pawed through all my fat quarters, hoping to find a four-some which would work for this project.  Not a lot of luck there, but I did put together a couple of options.  I found 2 oriental fabrics that I've been trying to come up with a project for, and 2 matching fabrics in the fat quarter bin. Perfect!  But when I went to iron them and start cutting, I realized that the 2 matching fabrics were not full fat quarters. Rats!  Just one more reason to clean up my bins - apparently I dropped a number of fabric scraps in to the fat quarter bucket.

I thought I'd try it out anyway - how bad could it be? I simply sized the prints a bit wider, and matched them with the narrow pieces I had.  In retrospect it probably would have made more sense to simply make a smaller project, and cut all the fabric to the same size, but I went ahead with this plan.  It didn't quilt work out as I had hoped.  Seems that when you use odd sized pieces, you end up with the same fabric next to each other in some areas of the quilt.  

And then, I wanted the bird in the lower right to be comlete - which meant ensuring it was enclosed in a 5" square. That made for some non-standard cutting dimensions, and I see now that the second set of cuts were too uniform.

So this convergence isn't quite what I had envisioned - but it is a top, and used about 1 yard of fabric.  Now to figure out exactly how big it is, and add some borders to it.

And then, I was having so much fun I just kept going. I had a package of fat eights - hand dyed fabric from Vicki that I won a year or so ago.  I decided to play with it and try one of Ricky Timm's other convergence variations.   I should have planned the layout a bit more - instead I just made some free-form cuts to turn 4 fat eighths into a panel, and then converged it with another 4 eighths.  One last 8th (not sure why there were 9 in the set) plus a lucky find in my stash to create the two side borders, and voila!  I call this "Sunset".

I'm linking up with WIPs be Gone today.