Fractured and fabulous

Well, here is the sliced and re-made number. It weighs a ton, waves like the Queen on Christmas morning and I will have to quilt it down ferociously before it even looks remotely square .... but I like it! The very strong horizontal isn't great, but I couldn't find a way to avoid it with the pieces that I had. Now on with the hand quilting! Straight lines I think, so that some exist on it, somewhere.

And Tonya, you have created a monster. I made a liberated chinese coin top this week because I felt like playing with scraps and when I reached the outer border I said to myself "You know what this quilt needs? Words! LOTS OF WORDS!!" What have I become???

Well, this sucks

The post title is a favourite expression in our house - after watching 'Madagascar' a million billion times - we use this slightly inelegant phrase in all cases of general displeasure or disappointment. Or, in my case, when you have a brilliant quilting idea that turns out hideous.



I wanted to replicate the very strong diagonal effect of the small triangles in the original quilt, and instead just got these clunky blue crosses and slightly disturbing star/triangles things. No, no no. I shall try something else entirely and put this in the 'special shelf' for disastrous projects. Waaaay up high.

Not avoiding the difficult bits this time

What a fabulous idea for a new challenge - I'm in it. I love the idea of working in series (doesn't it sound ARTY) so I'm going to use this one for inspiration again.

But this time, instead of avoiding those little half square triangles, I'm going to make them. I'm going to make lots of them, and they're going to be small. Oh my goodness. At least I won't have to worry about them being wonky. My little triangles are always born with a certain ... natural liberation.

Lynley

Little pink pig is finished!

Hello everyone - Lynley here in Australia. That title sounds awful, as if I'm ready to truss it up and send it off to be made into bacon. Not so! Here it is, quilted and bound.

This well-travelled little quilt has been to Samoa and Sydney, and I finally finished the binding at the daytime quilters meeting last week. I finished it in time for show and tell - Canberra Quilters don't really go in for gasps of delight but I did get a few chuckles at the words.

No matter where I am I can still put my foot in my mouth though. I was explaining the quilt-along concept to the woman next to me and that it included adding words, and said something like "I don't like using serious words, it seems a bit silly on a quilt, so I just put this" ... she nodded politely and showed me the "faith, hope and love" she'd spent the last year beautifully appliqueing on her very very gorgeous quilt. Why do I say these things, especially to the only woman with words in a room of 90 quilters?

And here's a close-up of my dodgy quilting. As predicted, I went with straight lines in the border because I wanted it finished!

Stitching the piglet

Hello everyone, Lynley here in Canberra, Australia. I've started handquilting on my little pink pig, although I don't know if I'll be finishing it any time soon! It's nothing complicated - just outline quilting in the pinwheels in a starburst style with navy thread. The pink and green blocks are getting freehand baptist fans. And I'm using a nice bright pink thread as someone suggested.

No idea about the border yet; we can wait and see how it progresses. At this stage I'm thinking something complicated and completely unrelated to the piecing of the border - like a cable, or feathers .... but I suspect I'll be getting sick of it all by that stage and it'll end up being straight lines. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I think the little pink piggie is done

Hello again - Lynley here from Canberra, Australia. I added some more pink to my pinwheels crib quilt, in a border, and I think that's where it will stop! I used a liberated blunt sawtooth border which was heaps of fun to make, and gives another splash of colour round the edges.

I had no end of trouble trying to think up words ... everything I thought of was far too serious for this little quilt. Even putting my initials seemed too sober, and anything in uppercase was completely out of the question. So, some days, you end up with a little pink pig.

The photos are of the quilt on the batting and backing, just before I pinned it this afternoon. Now it's in the queue to be hand-quilted. I can guarantee that stage will be a bit slower, especially given it's in a line behind two queen-size quilts ... and TV is just terrible at the moment. No reason to sit on the sofa every evening and quilt!

It needs more! More pink!

Hello everyone, Lynley here again in Canberra, Australia. This is the top so far - I took for my starting point #107 which is pinwheels with feathered edges and lots of a lovely plain denim blue . The denim blue is kind of there (it looks much lighter and less grey in real life than in the picture). I cut the pinwheels off centre and feathered the plain setting blocks rather than the pinwheels. Plenty of unresolved triangle borders there!!!



The large plain areas look so good in the finished amish quilts and so boring in my own half-finished tops ... I need to have more faith that the quilting will make it look good, and resist the urge to stick more lairy colours on it. Actually, I won't be able to resist the urge, and I'm thinking lots more of the pinks in the next border to wrap round or beside my words. Maybe pointy pinks, say a sawtooth border?


I really like the pink and the turquoise together, it's not something I would normally think of doing; but I dyed a lot of blues and greens and they looked deadly boring with just each other. I had done a few plain yellows but they were too washed out. But the pinks were already sitting in the shelf .... waiting.

Big triangles, little triangles

Hello everyone, this is Lynley from Canberra, Australia. I love the idea of this get together! All my favourite things in one spot - solid colours, liberated quilting and a bit of show and tell! I'm going to use #107 the pinwheel crib quilt for my inspiration - I like the concept of big triangles, and little triangles. Big and little - sounds like my preferred (low) level of design complexity.

I'm not sure if I'll feather the pinwheel blades though, I might use the little triangles around the whole pinwheel, or even around the setting squares. No need to worry yet, I'll just make a bucket of those tiny little triangles and see where they want to be.

No thoughts on colours yet either - but I've bought the fabric already! Here it is ready to go ... how's this for a blank slate?