I chose the binding for my colorwash and sewed it on. I have 2 sides of hand stitching done.
It looks a little lighter in this photo than in real life. It is a grayed purple.
I also moved the black/gray/white TAW strips to the double design wall. I moved a few more strips and decided on the bottom right as the center of the quilt.
If you have never made a Trip Around the World it is probably hard for you to visualize the center from the photo above. I unpicked a few more strips so you can see it better.
What you don't see in the photos above are the beautiful tone on tone black prints.
Here is another one.
There are several of them so the quilt will have much more personality close up than from a distance.
I rarely watch the Oscars because I usually haven't seen any of the films but I had seen one of them this year. Last night I decided to turn it on and listen to it while I ditch quilted a colorwash wallhanging. I did finish the quilting right at the moment that they announced the wrong film winning the Oscar for best film. What a shocker. One group had to leave stage and the other bunch come up there and try to recover and give their acceptance speeches. I'm sure there will be replays of that on the news several times today.
This is my strata before pressing. They are all batik fabrics.
Here are 20 strips unpicked and up on the design wall. I thought I liked the center (lower right) but now after seeing a photo I'm not sure. I need to move the strips to a double design wall so I might play with them a little longer to be sure.
The two ladies who came to work on theirs yesterday are both making table toppers. Some strips have already been sewn together on the left sides and were at the sewing machines when I took the photo.
I started making the pinwheel blocks for this quilt in May 2013. 19 of the blocks have hand dyed fabric by Vicki Welsh, the rest of the fabrics are by Westminster fabric designers, Kaffe Fassett, Brandon Mably, Philip Jacobs and Martha Negley. The finished size is 58.5" x 71".
I was happy that I had a large enough piece of a dark Kaffe Fassett fabric for the back.
Continuing from yesterday......I found all of these long strips that were trimmed from quilt backings. They range from 4" to 20" wide and from 64" to 105" long. Lots of times I need to just add a strip 18" wide to a backing so now I have some choices. There are 3 Kaffe's, 1 Brandon Mably, 1 batik, and the rest assorted quilting fabrics. I will find a storage box for them and make a label with large letters so I can't lose it.
I worked on the hand stitching on my binding and am 3/4 done with it. I needed a break from it so I cut strips for a couch size Trip Around the World quilt. I peeled one set back to make sure I like the order of the fabrics. I got one strata sewn last night but haven't pressed it yet. I have 2 ladies coming over to work on their TAW quilts on Saturday.
I searched through my Kaffe Fassett fabrics for about an hour and auditioned them for binding. In the end I used leftover backing fabric. It has just enough black in the print to finish the edge nicely. This one is a special quilt so it is getting a hand finished binding. I am about 1/3 done with it.
I know you can't read the little label because it is written in pencil but it has the size of this piece written on it. I have a lot of backing leftovers in long strips and I haven't kept them all in one place. When I decide I want to use several of the strips together I can never find them. I decided now to cut the leftover to an even width and square off the 2 ends and label them. They will all go into the same box. All I will have to remember is which shelf I put the box on.
Finally at 6 p.m. last night I loaded this quilt and started quilting it.
It is my favorite randomly spaced straight lines again. I don't feel a need to quilt every quilt with a different pattern. I rely on my favorites over and over. I think the straight lines are a good choice on a geometric pieced quilt design.
This shot shows the texture.
This is my favorite block.
After I trimmed that quilt I pieced batting for the yellow quilt. I use a 3 step zig zag to sew the 2 pieces together. I had to be sure I had 2 straight edges first and then butted them together and stitched over the seam. A plain zig zag will create a ridge where the 3 step zig zag lays nice and flat.
I sewed this top together while I watched Scorpion last night. It is 48" x 60". I think it needs a yellow back and a yellow binding. Part of the back will be the fabric with the white background and squares of yellow in the print. The yellow with white dot will probably be a strip to make it wide enough. If you go back to this post you can see the one in the book that inspired me.
Yesterday morning I found the backing for this quilt and chose the thread to quilt it. The piece to the left is all that is left of the backing yardage but there will be a long piece to cut off the side of the backing after quilting. You can go here to see the full shot of this top. Did you notice the date on that post? This one has been waiting a long time to get quilted.
In the end I just couldn't do the matchy-matchy blocks (see yesterday's post). I played with the quarter blocks on the design wall and decided to group the blocks by value changes in the yellow backgrounds. The colors are truer on yesterday's photos too. This is all ready to sew together today.
We have broken the high temp records for 3 days in a row with the 60+ degree days. Now they are predicting 70 for Wednesday. I'm hoping the flowering trees and bushes don't get their buds all formed because we will get cold weather again starting next weekend.
This is a new book from C&T Publishing with some fast projects. I rarely buy precuts but I have a couple boxes full of 2.5" strips that I cut with a rotary cutter and I have dies for my die cutter for 5" squares and 10" squares.
This is my favorite quilt in the book. I have a lot of strips from older fabrics, mostly from the 1990s that I need to use because they are getting ravelly in the box.
I am using all yellow prints for the light fabric. This is one layout with the fabrics matched within the 4 quarters of the block.
I had to try them mixed too. I think maybe matched will win on this one.
I wasn't paying attention and got the center strip sewn in wrong on 2 of the 4 quarter blocks in this combination. I unsewed them and fixed them last night. This will just be a small quilt, 20 twelve inch blocks.
I put the last hand stitching in the binding at 10 p.m. yesterday. I like this one a lot and think it is one of the best batik colorwash wallhangings that I have ever made. It is 35" square.
The photos below show the binding on 2 edges. I think that print worked very well.
Yesterday afternoon I ditch quilted this colorwash wallhanging that I basted 2 weeks ago. I chose the binding and hope I like it when it is sewn on. I left 1/8" of batting and backing extending so I can sew the binding on with a 3/8" seam. I also cut 2 backings and pieced one of them and cut one batting so I'm getting closer to more finishing.
My begonias are blooming on the kitchen windowsills. I think maybe I'll be able to keep them alive long enough to plant them in a pot for the porch in May.
I think I need to re-pot both of these groups of begonias. The white one has been blooming all winter. I think I need to pinch them back because they are getting a little leggy. This weekend when it is warm I may take them outside and re-pot them there to keep the mess out of the garage.
While my friends were here yesterday I sewed the redwork quilt top. It is 33.5" x 44.5" so one width of fabric is plenty for a back. How nice to not have to press 5-6 yards of fabric and seam them together.
I quilted this tablerunner several years ago and it has been waiting for binding. I finally cut it and sewed it on last night.
These placemats are even older, quilted a long time ago. I wanted to use the same black with gold metallic stars for the binding but I couldn't find the small piece that was leftover. Then I would find the binding fabric and couldn't find the placemats. This went on for years.....and finally one day I found both the placemats and the binding fabric and I could finish them.
The fabric on the back has gold metallic on it too.
It was a good day to sew since it turned cold for one day. We are expecting 60 degrees on Saturday through Monday. I plan on trimming bushes over the weekend. I always want to do the trimming before they leaf out and it is usually too cold in the winter to do it.
I pieced quarter square triangles and did a layout that gives the impression of on point blocks.
A NO REPLY commenter wanted to know where I got the redwork designs. They are an old Cactus Punch package from the late 1990s.
Then I turned the quarter square triangle blocks one turn to the right.
I decided this is the better of the two layouts with the limited contrast between the two darker red 30's reproduction fabrics.
This is a better photo of the colors in the prints. Since the redwork blocks are one way designs it made sense to use the Lily of the Valley one way design for the plain squares.
My two friends are coming over to sew today so I hope to work on this project.
I have some more blooms in the inside garden. There are 2 orange blooms and a bud close together on this one.
There was one more bud on the champagne color cactus and it bloomed yesterday too.
The last three seams are sewn! I got a little truer color in the photo this time but it still doesn't show the richness of the darkest colors. It ended up 61" x 84" after trimming the sides. I found another piece of flannel for the back, a half width left over from the backing of another quilt.
My design wall is almost 7' tall and I'm just a little over 5' tall so it was a real stretch to get it pinned up that high. I usually turn the quilts sideways and pin them to the wall for the photography and just rotate the photo.
If you go back to yesterday's post you can see the side edges that needed to be trimmed.
I started this quilt on February 7th, cutting the tumblers with my Accuquilt Studio die cutter. The tumblers are 3" and 6" finished size. Flannel is linty so I wanted to finish cutting and sewing in short order so I could clean up the studio.
I'm linking to Scraptastic Tuesday. Check out all of the other scrappy projects.
Pictured below are some of the quilts that created the scraps for this quilt.
The camera insists on dulling all of the rich brown, rust and gold flannels in this quilt. It is so much prettier than the photo. I had 3 seams left to sew last night but it was too late to do them. I started looking for a flannel to use for the back and I have one that is long enough but not wide enough. That means piecing it so I'm still looking for the other piece or pieces.
All I can say at this point is that this is going to look a lot better when I can start sewing rows together. I have decided on a single 6" row at the top and bottom of the quilt. I still have one more section of 3" tumblers to sew into rows and they will make a double section of 3" blocks at the center of the quilt. I need to swap that bottom double row of 6" blocks with the 3" tumbler section. I need 1 more row of 6" tumblers and I will have to get out my yardage to cut the tumblers because I'm officially out of large scraps to use.
