Monday, July 20, 2015

April Giveaway Results

I have been beyond busy with piecing and quilting memorial quilts. This is no excuse I know - but honestly it is the only one I have!

In April I showed you how you can make over 100 different quilting designs just by using straight lines. For me it was a really useful exercise - it showed me that you can make so many different designs using one 'element' so to speak. If you are looking to push yourself and your free motion skills doing something like this can really show you how many options there are.


I've also made some similar samplers using just an arc, a loop and a hook. Each sampler showed me how far you could push a design just by using one shape. I hope to share them with you soon (when I have discovered the secret of sourcing more time magically!)

Anyway - enough of my wibbles and excuses. The lucky winner of the book from April - selected by the ever handy Random Number Selector - is Margaret. (Full disclosure Margaret is a member of my our guild the NYC Metro Mod Quilters - but I promise you no bribes were received!) Margaret is more than an amazingly and talented quilter and I know she will do something amazing with the information in this book.

One Line at a Time by Charlotte Warr Andersen is available on Amazon both new and second hand.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Lost in Convergence

I really wanted to make something beautiful from the fabric my kids made but I feel like my plan did not quite materialize quite as I had hoped.

I followed the instructions in the book. Here is how it went (in pictures.. bad photos are courtesy of my cellphone!)


I took the spiral on the right to work with - the colors are a touch more muted now they had been washed & dried. 




Erm ...... I was really unhappy with the result. (To me it just looks like a little bit of a mess.) So I began to play with the arrangement. 


No ....

Sigh .... 


Envision telling my girls "I've cut up your beautiful fabric darlings but it isn't working." ... cue lots of tears and disappointment.  



This last one (above) was my favorite but I still didn't feel that it was pretty enough. So the next day I bravely took a rotary cutter to it and made 4 large log cabin blocks with a purple peppered cotton. I was so much happier with this result. 


I'm still going to try the ideas from the convergence book again. Perhaps we will take the knife to these smaller pieces of fabric next.