Weekend sewing...and un-sewing!

Here's a pic of my first Grandmother's Choice block.  I finally settled on purples, with black sashing.  I find its a good idea to sew the sashing on as the blocks are made; makes less work when your ready to set the quilt together!  I'll be using the same background throughout the quilt...its part of the reason I decided to go with the purple colours.  I bought about 5 yards of this background fabric, thinking it was a lovely tone on tone background blender.  But its got this odd grey hue to it, everything I've tried to put with it so far has just not looked right,...but purple and black seem to be the one colour that plays nicely with this background.

[caption id="attachment_1127" align="aligncenter" width="296"] Grandmother's Choice, week one[/caption]

 

The other project I got accomplished this weekend is getting My Whimsical Quilt Garden blocks sorted out.  I got them separated from the batting, and made setting blocks.  I think I'll be calling this quilt Garden Fence.  There'll be a light inner border and a red outer border.

 

[caption id="attachment_1128" align="aligncenter" width="404"] Garden Fence layout, hand-applique blocks from My Whimsical Quilt Garden[/caption]

Would you cut up a quilt?

I did!  I tried to quilt the Whimsical Quilt Garden...really tried!  I put a nice free motion curvy stitch on the skinny border frame, I put some nice doodling loops around the applique after outlining the shapes.  But, as seems to be happening to me too often, lately,  I just wasn't into this quilt...I didn't like it, and as a result my stitching wasn't as good as it could be; my enthusiasm for getting it quilted, that enjoyment of seeing the quilting stitches bringing the fabric to life - - was not there.  Yesterday afternoon I hung it on a hanger and shoved it to the back of the closet.

A few hours ago, I felt that darn quilt calling me again.  Those applique blocks were a lot of work, the effort and thought that has gone into the quilt so far...I didn't want to leave it mouldering in the back of the closet.  I brought it back to the machine, sat down and gave it and me a good talking to - what lovely applique stitches!  the quilting will bring it all together!  someone will really like this quilt when its done!  But shortly after starting, that gloomy feeling returned.

I took a deep breath, flung it on the cutting board, and proceeded to cut it up!  I cut out 13 blocks, enought to re-set it with the ideas I have n mind.  The rest I'll keep to maybe make a mini or something.  There will need to be some unstitching done.

I feel great at having done this, like a weight is off my shoulders.  I can start fresh when I'm ready, and no longer have to think about how to work on the quilt as it was!

Whimsical Garden progress

I did come up with some great applique setting designs in Electric Quilt, but they couldn't be used as the applique elements in this quilt overlap on to other blocks.  Eventually, I had this idea, to apply narrow sashings between the blocks, which I think worked well enough to make some difference in the quilt's overall appearance.

 

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I made narrow strips of the fabric that's in the block frames...a clover bias tape maker that I usually use for making stems gave me the finished edge.  I cut 1/2" strips from the fabric and sprayed with Best Press. Put the fabric through the bias tape maker, and voila!  instant narrow sashing!

I "quilted" it on to the quilt with a narrow serpentine (curvy) stitch, following the seam line between the blocks.  In this picture it looks like its not quite on centre, but I don't think fussi-ness is necessary in this quilt, because the whole thing has a folk-art-primitive feeling.

"fun" with Whimsical Quilt Garden

Yesterday afternoon I made a terrible mistake and shared with my husband that I hate a quilt.  This quilt....
This is Whimsical Quilt Garden.  It did look like this.

While preparing it for quilting, I kept feeling like something was off with the setting, or the applique, or the colours, or something.  I delayed about three weeks finishing the sandwiching while staring at the quilt laid out on the bed.  Finally I  decided to leave it alone, and began quilting it.  Well, hardly...it sat at my machine for a week or two while I played with a bit of quilting on it, mostly some free motion anchor stitching on the narrowest inner block frame.  This quilt was just not making me happy...this seems to me happening a lot to me lately!  Making a quilt then changing my mind!

The background here is more of the true colour...if it was as white as the picture above, I think that would have been a better background choice.

I ripped off the borders (while the quilt was still sandwiched!) and sewed on new narrow navy borders.  I was thinking that those diamonds didn't seem to fit, and there should have been a wider band of navy between them and the centre of quilt...I had tried to do that when first adding the diamonds but the math didn't work without making the inner border too wide or the diamonds too small.  So off went the diamonds!  On went a narrow border!

When Mike came home, I showed him the quilt and tried to explain .... while I like the pattern of the applique, I think I chose the wrong colours for the "modern" feel of the pattern, the setting seems dark and crowded, and I just don't like it.   He said that it was a fine quilt, and plenty of people would be happy to have it...maybe so I said, but not with my name on it!

I went to the kitchen to make coffee, came back to the living room, and Mike and the quilt were gone!  He had taken the quilt across the street to a neighbour and showed it to their 14 year old daughter!!!  Oh I was mad.  According to Mike, she liked it and wanted to have it after it's finished. I knew that there wasn't anything terribly wrong with the design, but that it could be improved.

I came up with some great drawings on EQ, but now realize that because many elements of the applique lean on to another block....re-setting is not likely an option.  Still thinking!

My Whimsical Quilt Garden - Top Done!

I found myself stuck on how I how to quilt the sashings on the Honoring Emma quilt, so I found myself working on the borders of My Whimsical Quilt Garden.

It was very hard for me to settle on a border design...almost immediately after posting a design here, I changed my mind.  Something about that original design was not right.  I ended up with about 18 border designs in EQ, everything from checkerboard, to triangles, various pieced blocks.  Then once I decided on the diamonds, I played with extra borders and sizing and such. 

I thought about adding an additional border of blue (like the sashing) or background in between the quilt centre and the diamonds...but I couldn`t get the math right to keep the smaller size diamonds that I wanted...adding the additional border would have caused bigger diamonds, or a bigger border, neither choice which I wanted.  Then I thought about adding an additional skinny border between the diamonds and the outer plain area,  but that just made the outer border look out of place.

I`m pretty happy with how it turned out!

Stitch good thoughts!