Thursday, October 10, 2013

Inspiration and Another New Start.

I got really inspired last week to make another quilt - or at least a flimsy.  This is what inspired me.....


It's called single Girl.   I thought I could use up some of my extensive stash to make it for one of my single girls daughters.  Here's a close up of another one in bits.....


I have also been wanting to make more scrappy quilts using stash fabrics for some time.  I have a lot of fabric and quite a bit of it has been around for some time - some is even vintage stuff that was gifted to me.

This is just 1 of my tubs....

 

So I spent the weekend going thru my fabrics and trimming off the ends to even them up.  I have in the past not cut a strip of a piece of fabric just to get a square - I cut the square out. 



That has left a lot of fabrics with odd shaped ends.  Those trimmings were then cut into 1.5", 2.5" 3.5" 4.5" wide strips,

   


and anything that I did not or could not class as a strip was put in a pile I called snibbles.  I also made a pile of bits that were not strips but were wider than 4.5" but up to around 6".  Confused??


Each of these piles are individually bagged up.  I now need to find somewhere to store them.


I had recently bought 4 pale grey fabrics to make my Single Girl quilt.  I had decided that I would make the curved piecey bit and then applique it onto a pale grey background.  I drew up my own curve - surprisingly they don't match on each side.  These are the pale grey fabrics I got......



And this is the first of my pieced curvey bits appliqued onto 1 grey 9.5" square....



I only used 1.5" strips in this one - it needs more variety in the widths so I will make more curved sections with both 1.5" and 2.5" strips, like this....



At this stage I am not too sure I like my stash fabrics with the grey fabric.  I think the underlying tone is wrong.  Maybe it will look better once I have made up quarter blocks with the other grey fabrics.  Each main block will have 1 of each of the grey fabrics in it.

I have been using my hand drawn 'pattern' to sew the strips together just guessing the angle needed to keep the curve going.  I then sewed a piece of lightweight iron on interfacing to the curved piece, trimmed it and turned it thru.  After finger pressing the seams I used the iron to attach it to the background square and then used a blind hem stitch (don't like that) to permanently attach it.  I think a straight stitch would be better.  I will not attach it by hand.  I have enough hand sewing to do with my Cali Mum's Hexi quilt, thank you.  This is what I have so far....



Speaking of which, I have the next lozenge finished and have made a start on my third one.  One of the Cali Mum's is going really strongly with hers and I feel I have to keep ahead of her.  She has 3 lozenges done so I better get a move on. 



There were 6 of us doing this quilt, but 1 never got around to getting her fabrics, another had her fabrics but is not motivated to get sewing and a third made a start but has also lost motivation.  Might need to see how we can get these girls back to sewing.....