Watercolour Bound

Editted to add:  Linking this up to Judy's UFO page today (June 30).  This wasn't the official UFO for the month, but it is the one I finished.

Binding is done, on my watercolour star!  I started this quilt back in September, and have worked on it somewhat regularly since then.  It is nice to have it complete!

I had actually planned to bind it with the same fabric I used for the backing.  But I completely forgot about that when I went to cut the binding, and I picked up one of the whites I'd used in the border instead.  I'm actually glad this happened - I think it looks better than the blue binding would have.

And on the back, the white border is a nice accent to the backing fabric.

I quilted the star with feathers - one of my first attempts to do this.  I still haven't washed the quilt, so if you look closely (or even not that closely) you can see all the pencil marks where I marked the feathers.

I really like the style I chose for the background (waves, radiating out along all the star points). But I do wish I had thought a bit more about the outer border before I did that.  I left a narrow white border, which messed up some ideas that were considered for the final border.

In the end, I went with more feathers, for the final border.  They certainly aren't perfect by any means, but I'm pleased with the end result.  Now to take a deep breath and toss this into the washer - with a few colour catchers, just in case some of the scraps I used were not previously washed.  Then, I'm going to post this on Etsy and see what happens.

Almost finished

I finished quilting Orca Bay last night, and put the binding on it today.  Just have to tack down the back and it will be done.  I'll show some pictures after I get the binding finished.

And, I finsihed the quilting on my watercolour star.  Judy's feather lessons started yesterday.  I watched the first couple of videos, which were about feather borders.  Then I plucked up my courage, and decided it was time to finish the star - with a feather border.

Following Judy's instructions, I sketched on paper first.  Then I pulled out the quilt - and my courage failed.  I could not bring myself to freehand the feathers on my machine, so I drew them in all around rather than just on the corners.

Then, I loaded up the machine with the right thread, and started out.  It went better than I expected, and I finished the feathers on the outside of the spine following my drawing.  When I moved to the inside, I had obviously become more confident, because I completely ignored the markings in many places and cleaned up the feathers to a better shape than what I had drawn.

I'm really happy with the end result - and I think I might even have enough nerve to do the next feathers without drawing them in.  I'll baste the Carpenter's Star tomorrow, and be ready to join in Judy's lessons next week.

Here are some pictures of the border on the watercolour star.  And a couple of shots from the back, although I'm not sure that shows up any better.

So much quilting....

So little time.

I just realized how much has been going on in my sewing room since Monday, that I haven't posted about yet.  So here's an update on my quilting this week.

I did some more work on my watercolour star. I'm looking for inspiration now, for the final border.  Not sure how I want to quilt that, to complete what was done in the center star and background. If you click on the picture you can see a bit better.  I did feathers in the star itself, and a wavy design in the background which follows the direction of the star points.  Now I have the borders to go.  One narrow white, the narrow blue, and the wide white border.  Any thoughts on how I should quilt the borders? I'm going to bind it in blue, if that makes any difference to your thoughts.

In addition to that (while I wait for inspiration on the quilting) I'm working on a pieced backing for my Carpenter's star.  Need to have this done this week, so it can be basted and ready for Judy's feather lessons in June.  I'm also making this quilt 6" longer, because I'm a soft touch.  My oldest son saw it and asked for it for his bed.  It's just a touch short, so I'm going to add another row of triangles above the red triangles and extend it that way.

Now of course my youngest saw it and also likes it.  So there may be another star in my near future.

I'm linking up at Freshly Pieced and the Needle and Thread Network again this week.  Drop by to see what everyone's up to.

Design Wall Monday - Oct 10

Happy Thanksgiving, to all my fellow Canadians!  We celebrated yesterday, because I like to have a day of rest before heading back to work, after making the big dinner.  I've put my long weekend to good use.  First, the star is done!  It still needs a border, but the center is complete.  And it's going to take a rest off my wall for a bit, while I ponder how I want to handle borders.

I put the pack of 10 fat quarters that came home on Saturday to good use.  Here they are, all cut, sewn, and arranged on my wall.  I've decided on a 2-sided quilt for Hallowe'en.  One side will have the panel I showed yesterday, with a row of blocks down each side.  And the reverse will be 30 orange/black/white blocks.

And the best news?  I re-read the October Monochromatic Challenge post, and I found that it is 2 colours plus a background.  So, here is my orange & black with white background, quilt for October!  Yay!  I didn't think I was going to have a chance to play with the monochromatic group this month.

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their design walls.

Seeing stars

I've been sewing together 4" blocks tonight - it's like I've escaped from the land of Lilliput :)  I've finally reached the out edges (before the borders, anyway) of my star.  As I moved out, I increased the size of the background blocks, since I decided to do a scrappy white background, rather than attempting to do more colourwash.  I thought that might detract from the star (and I was really tired of 1" blocks, I have to admit).  So, the farther out from the star I moved, the larger my background blocks are.  All the way up to 5"x4" (there's an odd number of 1" blocks in the star).

The right side is all assembled into 8" squares, and ready to finish.  Still a bit of joining to do on the left, but if it falls off the wall tonight, I have some hope of being able to put it back without pulling my hair out :)

I haven't decided on border treatment yet.  My head tells me that a colourwash 1" border is the way to go, but I don't know if I have the energy or the scraps to do that.  I'll see what the quilt says to me once it's all in one piece.

Design Wall - Oct 3

Three guesses what's on my design wall.  And if you've been reading my blog, you probably don't need the first two :)  The star is still there.  I spent a lot of time this week finishing my tic-tac-toe quilts, so the design wall didn't see much activity for most of the week. But I completed quilting the second quilt yesterday, and managed to spend several hours working on the star.  As my back can attest, it's a lot of work sewing those itty bitty pieces together.

I don't think there's actually a lot of difference that you can see in this picture, over last week.  But trust me when I say I did a lot of work today.  I've started adding the background pieces now, and I'm working my way out to a point where I have nice orderly (large) squares to work with for the final assembly.  You can see some of the background squares in the lower section, because the design wall there is brown rather than white.

I have one more quilt basted and ready to go, but I haven't decided how I want to quilt it yet, so the star will get some concentrated attention this week, while options for quilting my indigo quilt stew in my mind.

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their design walls today.

Moving on

I've been working steadily on my star quilt for a couple of weeks now.  But it's almost the end of the month, and I really want to finish at least one quilt for the UFO challenge.  So I gathered my nerve, shifted my sewing table 3-4 inches farther away from the design wall (about all the space I had), and tackled the quilting on one of my tic-tac-toe quilts.

I backed this one with polar fleece - I've had it for years, and it was the perfect colour for the green tic-tac-toe.  I didn't add any batting, because I think the fleece will be more than warm enough.  This quilt is *so* soft and flexible, I love the feel of it.  To keep it that way, I decided on very light quilting around each block.

I managed to complete all the quilting without knocking the star off the design wall!  Next up, binding, and I may even get this one done before Friday.

Design Wall Monday - Sept 26

My design wall continues to hold my 1.5" squares.  More and more, every day.  However, I have finally reached the point where I can start putting some of this together.  That means I can worry less about someone (or some cat) coming in and knocking all my hard work off the wall.

It doesn't look much like a star right now, as I've started assembling chunks and the spacing is all off.  But I don't think I've lost any pieces yet.  I'm putting together 4-patch, then 16-patches, and I may go as far as 64-patches before I start on the background, but I haven't decided yet.

My entire sense of scale has been altered by this quilt.  I needed to make a square for a friendship quilt yesterday, and it was to be 9.5" unfinished.   So I planned the block, and started assembling.  The 4 quadrants weren't too bad, and I even used some of my 1.5" squares for the star.  But when I put it all together, it looked gigantic.  After working with all those little pieces, and making 16-patches that measure all of 4" finished, it was like I had forgotten what 9" looks like. In any event, the square is complete and ready to send out.

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their design walls today.

Stash Report - Sept 25

Not much activity in the stash this week.   3 yards out, for the backing for my indigo quilt, and nothing in.

I did make a lot of progress on the itty bitty squares quilt, however.  The final 2 points are laid out, so I can start creating some pieces that are larger than 1.5" to put it together.

Totals for this year:
Overall, 21.75 yards in, 67.25 yards out.
Net for the year:  45.5 yards out.


Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have done with their stash this week.

Still going

Another couple of days, and the next part of the star is pieced.  I still have some arranging to do, to get the light -> dark flow a bit smoother.  But progress continues to be made.

I am making a lot of use of my digital camera, and the photo editting feature on my computer.  I haven't decided if I think that's cheating or not, but it is certainly making it easier to tell if the shading is really correct.  There's been a lot of back and forth, up and down stairs between the computer and the sewing room this week.  It would be nice if the camera had a black & white option in the special features, but apparently it doesn't.

In between playing with little tiny squares, I've managed to baste one of my quilts.  But I realized that my sewing table is too close to the design wall to quilt it safely.  I'll end up with all the bits on the floor if I try, so I need to get the star moved along to the next stage before I start quilting.

Making Progress

The design wall is making progress this week.  I now have all 4 main points complete.  The picture isn't great, but I think you can see where it's going.

I started sewing some of the squares into pairs, and then into 4-patch blocks.  I may regret this, because it's making the next 4 points really hard to visualize. But I didn't have much choice since my design wall really isn't big enough to hold all this.  I think I'll stop at the 4-patches, and start placing the next points.  Then I can hopefully merge it all together when they are done.

In the meantime, the batting I need to quilt my next 2 quilts is in the closet - behind that door which has the design wall tacked to it.  I didn't plan that very well :(  I'm hoping to sneak in there soon, without knocking all the squares off the wall, so that I can baste the next quilts and get them ready for quilting.

Design Wall Monday - Sept 19

My design wall has gone through a few transformations this week.  Last week, it looked like this.  A random assortment of many-coloured squares.  1.5" squares, that is.  Which means that a reasonably sized quilt is going to take upwards of 1600 individually cut and sewn pieces.  Maybe I should have done the math before I started on this adventure :)

During the week, it went through this phase.  I decided I liked the idea of a star, graduating from light to dark.  I plotted out an eight-pointed star based on square blocks and came up with an arrangement that I think works.

I played with the idea of a single colour for each star point, but decided that wasn't going to work.  Mostly because I don't have enough of eight different colours to make a rainbow star.

So now my design wall looks like this.  I think I've settled on a design, and here are the first 2 points for an eight-pointed star.  Unfortunately, the wall is not large enough to hold the entire star in raw form.  It's about 48 blocks across, so 72" roughed out with 1.5" squares. I'll have to work on it in pieces and wait until all the points are done before I can see it all together.


In the meantime, off the design wall I've been working on another tic-tac-toe quilt.  This one will use up the rest of the blocks I won last year.  It's ready for basting now, so I hope to get that done this week if I can make time for it.

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their design walls this week.