Oops, I made a quilt top

Back in April I was seized with the sudden impulse to bleach some fabric.  I was totally inspired by Rossie and you can read about my method here.  These are the results - on the left is a fat eighth bundle of Indie by Art Gallery Fabrics and on the right is the bleached version.

After bleaching I cut each fat eighth into 2" wide strips and sewed them into sets of four, matching each bleached fabric with its unbleached pair.  Then the strip sets sat in a box for several months while I waited for inspiration to strike.  Initially I thought I might make another equilateral triangle quilt, but it felt a little lacking in originality and didn't really take maximum advantage of the play between the bleached and unbleached fabrics.

At some point last week I had the idea of cutting the strip sets into quarter square triangles and then matching them up to make these dynamic boxy shapes.  I pulled the strip sets out just to see if it would work, and then on Saturday I found myself cutting quarter square triangles and sewing them up into blocks (and yes, I really should have been working on other things).  I think this stripey look makes much better use of different colours created by the bleaching (and I've been wanting to play with stripes for a while).

Because I had pre-washed all the fabrics and I was cutting a lot of bias edges, I used a bunch of starch before cutting the quarter square triangles and that definitely helped with the handling of the fabrics. I also squared up all my blocks.  I don't often bother with this step any more, because my blocks are not generally way off and I'm pretty good at fudging things if need be.  However, when I measured these blocks they were not particularly uniform in size or all square so it was definitely worthwhile.

Once I put all the blocks together it was still missing something.  I was thinking about using Essex Linen in Natural in the equilateral triangle quilt, so I added a wide border of it onto this quilt.  I've seen this fabric used in several other quilts which also feature Indie - it seems to have some magic property which just makes the Indie collection look awesome.

In case anyone is interested, here is a little diagram of how I cut the quarter square triangles out of my strip sets.  Basically you just cut at a 45 degree angle so that you get two quarter square triangles out of each strip set.  You'll see that I also got 2 half square triangles out of each strip set - I have plans for those too but they will have to wait.

I think this project works pretty well with this month's Le Challenge theme, stripes, so I'm linking up.

Now, I have a couple of questions for those of you who routinely pre-wash fabrics.  Because I had to wash the fabrics I bleached, I also washed the other fat eighth set of Indie fabrics, and because linen is prone to shrinking more than cotton, I pre-washed the Essex Linen too.  Now that all the fabrics in the quilt top have been pre-washed, I'm wondering whether I should pre-wash the backing and binding fabrics too - if I don't, maybe I'll get some kind of crazy crinkle going on where the back shrinks and the front doesn't.  Also, should I pre-wash the batting and go for a quilt that will stay really flat even when it has been washed? So many questions!  This whole pre-washing thing has just opened a huge can of worms for me!
 

WIP Wednesday

This week, I am working on finishing the quilting on this quilt I'm making for my grandmother.  I haven't blogged it yet, because I haven't had a chance to get good photos, but I will definitely take photos once it's finished.

 

I'm using the Flower Power design from Angela Walters' book Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters, also covered in her Craftsy class.  Honestly, I can't recommend this class enough.  You do need to know the basics of free motion quilting to start, but I am still using the designs 6 months after I watched it and I will definitely keep using them in the future.

The difference between my flowers and the ones Angela does (apart from my rather wonky quilting!) is that my centres are a bit more of a swirl.  I'm finding this design really easy to do and it adds a lovely texture to the quilt, which is just what I wanted.

This is the back.  I absolutely love this fabric - it's from Bari J's Bijoux collection for Art Gallery Fabrics.  I'm glad I'll be able to keep the left-over backing fabric - expect to see it in a project soon!

I've been working away on my Sailboats quilt too - more pictures to come soon. If you follow me on instagram (my user name is adrianneonthewindyside), you might have seen some progress shots already.

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced:

By the way, some of the links in this post are affiliate links (if you click through and buy something, I get a teeny tiny payday).  I only link to products I've used and loved myself and would recommend to friends and family.

Fabric experimentation

Have you seen the amazing things that Rossie does with fabric, dye and bleach?  Like this, and this and this.  All these posts made me start thinking about doing a bit of my own fabric manipulation.  I was put off by my lack of knowledge about how to actually go about dyeing or bleaching fabric (and the thought that to do it properly, I would need to make a big mess and invest in several products to properly set the dye or stop the bleach).

Then, I read this post by Sarah aka Narcoleptic in a Cupboard, which linked to this post about bleaching fabric by Elizabeth Hartman at Oh, Fransson!.  Well, that seemed like something I could do.

I had a fat quarter bundle of Indie from Art Gallery Fabrics that I have been wanting to use now that the weather is getting colder - the colours feel very autumnal to me.  I cut each fat quarter into two fat eighths, so that I had two fat eighth bundles.

For bleaching, I mixed 6 litres of cold water with 750ml of household bleach (21.5 grams per litre sodium hydrochloride) in a plastic bucket.  I then added one of the fat eighth bundles, making sure the pieces of fabric weren't all clumped together, and stirred it around to make sure all of the fabric were completely saturated and under the liquid as much as possible.

I watched and stirred the mixture for about 15 minutes before taking out some of the lighter coloured fabrics like the yellows, oranges and light pinks.  At that stage I rinsed them by placing them in a separate container under cold running water.  I left the other, darker fabrics in the bleach mixture for about another 5 minutes before taking them out and rinsing under cold water as well.  I then threw the whole lot, together with the unbleached fat eighth bundle, into the washing machine and ran it through a normal cycle (I have a front loader which I suspect reduces fraying quite a bit - if you have a top loader with an agitator you might want to pink the edges of fabric before pre-washing to reduce fraying).

In this photo, and the one above, the bleached fabrics are on the right and the unbleached fabrics are on the left.  I really love how the fabrics turned out - maybe because the colours were so rich to begin with, rather than looking washed out, the bleached fabrics are really bright and vibrant, almost fluorescent in some cases.

I was going to try and take photos of all the fabric pairs, but the wind picked up and I was in danger of having all my lovely fabric blow away.  I think you can get the idea from this picture though - here the unbleached fabrics are on top and the bleached fabrics are below.  In the material I read about bleaching, people seemed to say that blue fabrics hold their colour well, and that was certainly my experience.  The dark blue fabric above definitely held its colour the best out of all the fabrics in this collection.

I'm really excited to use these fabrics in a project - I am going to keep the fabric pairs together for what I am hoping will be quite interesting results!

Have you ever tried bleaching or dyeing fabrics?  Any tips for the next time I get the urge to go crazy and alter some fabric?

Blue baby rainbow

I wanted to make a fresh, modern, baby quilt for a colleague who is pregnant with her first baby.  I did not want to include novelty fabrics with trucks, cars, or sports references.   Rita's Indian Summer Quilt provided the inspiration.

This quilt uses fabric from a number of ranges.  I love the raindrop fabric on the back and used for the binding which is from Tula Pink's Prince Charming collection.

Also included are a number of other fabrics from Tula Pink's Prince Charming range, some blenders from Riley Blake, a Michael Miller check, one of the Floral Elements fabrics from Art Gallery Fabrics, a couple of prints from Valori Wells' Nest collection which I had left over from another quilt, and an indigo japanese quilting cotton.

I cut the fabrics into 8.5 inch long strips ranging in width from 2 inches to 3.5 inches.

  

Simple straight line quilting randomly spaced in a turquoise thread that blends with some fabrics and stands out against others completes the look.