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!
 

Toffee pincushion

Have you checked out Le Challenge yet?  It is the brainchild of Lucy at Charm About You and Nat at Made in Home, and is a monthly challenge and link-up.

When I read that the challenge for July was "toffee", my first thought was "mmm, sticky toffee pudding...", and my second thought was "huh?!".  Toffee is a pretty delicious inspiration word, but it was also quite tricky to come up with something suitably toffee-ish.

In the end I went pretty literal with this pincushion that is intended to look like a wrapped toffee.  It was very hard to cut into this very adorable Heather Ross fabric, but to me it was a lovely rich toffee colour that I just couldn't go past for this project.

This was a pretty quick project to whip up, and it was fun to use my long dormant gathering skills (last used many years ago when I sewed clothes).  However, I'm not completely satisfied with how this turned out - the stuffed part doesn't fill out the "wrapper" quite as nicely as I would have liked and frankly, it's not a terribly practical pincushion.  I'm still pleased I gave it a go though.

Did you make anything for the July Le Challenge? And do you have a major craving for toffee now?

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