So, Heres the thing....

I broke my machine.
                                 I am very sad.
                                                       i dropped on the floor and cracked its little head.
the repair guy says he can fix it, believe me hae's seen worse.
                                                                       goodness only knows what this is going to cost my purse.

Star Adventure #6 finishing up

 At least of one top, anyhow.

I thought of using all the blocks on one quilt but it was such a cacophony of color that I had to break it up into two

This works much better and isn't such a blast

Still a swirl of color but the black in between gives your eyes a rest

I suppose I could have composed this one better but you know how it is at the end of a long project.

The desire to get it done and off your table is sometimes more important than design

I was also running out of the original 'Grunge' black i was sing and at this stage I couldn't find more for love or money.

Well Poo!

so the next best thing will have to do and eqilter had just enough to finish but not much more!

Well heck!

This is why the back has that batch of pieced leftovers from the quilt I made my husband for his birthday a few years ago.

I need a volunteer to get a better picture of the finished quilt. I tried to get on by standing on a chair outside but no happy.

So I should have better pictures after I finish quilting the other top. I've got the back mostly pieced, funny story but I'll save that for next time

Stainglass quilt

 I diiid iit Myyyy waaaay!

This is so simple it should be illegal!

Trace pattern onto  steam-a-seam, cut pieces

Iron steam-a-seam to fabric, cut-out fabric pieces

Iron pieces onto background and

Voila!

                                   Done!

These are so easy I've done 3 in 4 days




Isn't the pattern divine?

Its from the hawaii shop-hop on big island.
they do it the whole month of february

This year was a coordinated pattern that fit together to make a whole top.

Instead of individual blocks with coordinated fabric so if you miss a few shops no big, Like in washington's version.

It makes more sense to do it that way here
but on big I, there are only 6 shops,
easier to do it this way.

You have to hit all the shops so everyone gets shopped

And you get a nice tour of the whole Island

so far so much fun!

I'm thinking of running a class at Gathering fabrics on the technique.

I'd need a simpler pattern though, this one does take a learning curve.

using the blank side of the steam-a-seam for a starter, ironing on the wrong side of the fabric,
making sure you iron a sharp seam the size of the piece so you have a guideline to follow...

The star adventure part 5

so here we are at the last set of blocks in the series,

I think there may have been one or two patterns more but honestly I'm stared out.

Time to put them all together. Funny thing, I made 18 blocks all together and it turns out I've enough blocks for two whole quilts!

so off we go to the fabric store to find enough material to finish the sashings and then I'll worry about the backing and binding.

I wish I could have done a better job matching the corners on this one

But as I discussed before I had a limited amount of fabric to work with and as I predicted one mistake and you end up with not enough to finish a block.

Well I finish this one but had to monkey with the corners so they are way off, P-hoo!

The star adventure part 4

And again, Not quite the look I was going for in block one but getting better.


I would have helped if I had had some goldish star fabric bUt no. ad no I am not going out and buying more!

I'm very proud of myself, all the quilts Ive completed in the last year have been from my scrap bin and yet there is more.......

My goal is to buy as little fabric as possible and then just for finishing purposes like the back, sashing or bindings.


so far so good!

This one was fin to do as its constructed with all HST's
(half square triangles)

but a real challenge to keep straight while putting together

For my piecing wall I tend to use the louvered curtains in the front room where my sewing stuff is.

This is handy because I can fold and unfold them as needed to the full length of the sliding doors

which is a hundred inches + wide so I can easily do a king size quilt up there, it would just drag on the floor a bit.

The other nice thing is the morning sun does wonderful things to quilt blocks.
I'm almost tempted to make  a curtain for it, almost.

star adventure part 3

So these are the next few blocks in the challenge.                                                           the larger blocks in this series are the first ones tried  and so are a little off.                                                                            I'm learning more about that whole  don't put too many busy fabrics together thing.

                      It's the difference between a muddy looking block and a crisp block.                                                                   In the two blocks I made smaller you can see each fabric even though the picture is half the size.

Also tones were important here, I thOught I was going the graduating colors rout but that was not where I ended up.
They are still nice serviceable blocks but not the clear crisp outlines I was going for.

finished the Russian fairy tale quilt

So this got done in between all the star making

yay!

Each block has a border of ribbon, Each ribbon border is different.

I did this mostly to cover up the yellow I used to make the blocks the right size to fit the sashing.

To quilt the large border squares I used a template for the first time to do feather quilting, one big feather on each rectangle.




There is a learning curve, a new foot for bernie and some grey thread that blends really well with the many, many colors I used.

Here is a close up of one of the blocks and the ribbon I used.

I sewed it down on either side and folded the ribbon at the corners.

it works really well to cover that ugly yellow fabric.

The backing (isn't it gorgeous?) the blue and gold sashing were the only things I bought for this quilt.
so I'm still on track to buy ALMOST no new fabric for finishing.

And Molly approves so it must be good.

The star adventure

You may remember this pile of fat quarters fro the last post


but I need a refresher on how all this silliness started

so back to the beginning I go

I have since used all those fabrics (yay!)

and am now putting the whole blessed mess together

Ive had fun with this project,

I find it interesting how you can make the same pattern do different things by changing the color, tone or pattern of fabric

and finding out what works well together and what does not and what just looks like a hot mess might be mitigated by the border you put around it


I also didn't follow their directions exactly,

as you will notice, if you care to go to the site, there is a lot of waste and overcutting in her directions. so I took short cuts.

Mostly because I had a limited supply of my focus fabrics and one mistake,

like cutting a quarter inch to small or wide meant I might not have enough of a fabric to finish a block

So I did a lot of re calculating to use my stash to its best advantage.

The most used techniques in this whole challenge are flying gees and Half square triangles so once you have a good grounding in those ( a chart doesn't hurt) you're off an running