Design Wall Monday

     This is what is currently on my main design wall.

       This is for a commission I am working on. I am trying to make an interesting cloudy sky background out of Kaliedoscope blocks. WW1 airplanes will be appliqued onto the sky. Here is my drawing.

    
     It still needs quite a bit of work. I was feeling that it needed some more clearer, lighter, slightly green blues, so I bought these:

     Having all of the white showing at the corners of the blocks, is causing  some confusion, but I don't know how else to do it. I had the same problem when I have used this block in the passed. I think I just need to play with it more. It will help a lot when I start sewing. Lately, I have been distracted by other spring time "must do" chores. Hopefully, I am close to getting all of those things caught up.

     One really fun thing I did last week was to present a program to the Common Threads Quilt Guild in Newnan, GA. They were a fun group, and I had a lovely time, spending the evening with them. I want to thank them for their kindness, and hospitality.

    In my quieter, low energy moments, I am working on getting sleeves put on a couple of quilts that are finished, except for their sleeves.

     When I get the sleeves put on, I will be able to hang them, and get a good photo, so I can get them posted on my Etsy site. 

     I used to sew one of the sleeve sides in with the top binding. Since I sell my quilts, I have decided awhile ago that, from then on, I will hand stitch both sides of the sleeve down. That way, if someone wants to remove the sleeve, and not see a sleeve when they turn the quilt down on the bed, they can do that easily.

     That is what I have been up to. There are always lots of interesting works in progress to see over at Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times . Check it out!

     Thanks for stopping by!

Continued

     As I was saying.......
     
     I laid out each group of strips, and decided what order I wanted them in. If they didn't come out to be 10" wide, I added a strip. 

     Then, I trimmed each strip set down to a 10" square. Here are all of my light strip sets, already trimmed and ready to go. Seeing them spread out on the table like this made me think it would be fun to make a low contrast quilt out of light neutrals.

     I took a dark strip set and a light strip set, and pinned them with right sides together, so that the strips run perpendicular to one another. In the last quilt I made this way, I used 2 different color families instead of light and dark.

     Here is a photo from that quilt from last year, showing a stack of strip sets pinned together. The colors are different from the quilt I am working on now, but the technique is the same.

     Then, just sew the usual 1/4" seam all the way around the outside edge.

     Next cut a big diagonal "X".

     You will end up with 4 large half square triangles.

      I love this because, making 4 blocks at once, it goes quite fast. You can do anything with these blocks that you would do with a log cabin, in much less time.

     I love when I am able to get everything to make a quilt top out of my scrap bins. It make me feel like all the sorting of fabric scraps I have been doing is paying off. It is nice to actually get to USE them!

     I have not gotten much sewing done the last couple of days, because I got a new rug to weave, and have been setting up my loom.

       Last night, I started weaving.

    I don't design the rugs I weave. I work for someone else, who does. Her name is Lyn Sterling Montagne, and you can see more of her beautiful work at:http://lsmweavingstudio.com/

     So That is what I have been up to lately. Tomorrow, we are supposed to have some nice weather, and I am looking forward to playing some tennis! Hope you get to do something you love. Thanks for stopping by!

2 Design Walls-1 Quilt/Design wall Monday

  Here is what I have on my 2 design Walls. I just played around on EQ until I came up with this layout.

     And the missing corner is on my portable design wall.

    One of the things I am most proud of about this quilt is, that it came completely out of my scrap bins. 

     I wanted a variety of strip sizes, so I went in my  "less than 1 1/2" strip bin and cut 4 strips 10" long, and pinned them together like this.

     I like to work assembly line fashion, so I actually made 46 dark groups, and 46 light groups.

     Then I went in my "1 1/2" strip bin and cut 3 strips that I thought would look pretty with the first 4 strips of each group, and pinned them to the groups.

     Then I went into my "1 3/4- 2" strip bin and cut 3 of those strips that would look nice with each group and added them to each group.

     I didn't remember to take any photos while I was sewing the groups of strips, so I will have to make another group, and take pictures of them for you for the next post.

      That is what I have been up to. There are many more WIP to see over athttp://www.patchworktimes.com/2015/03/02/design-wall-march-2-2015/

      Be sure to go over, and check out whats happening there.

     Thanks for stopping by my neck of the woods!