Hot, Awesome Mess

Look at that quilt top, floating in a snow globe. Oh wait, that's only half the quilt. Do you know how hard it is to photograph a king size quilt top?

Yes, I made another king size quilt. I couldn't help myself. Last week I needed to flex my improv muscles. Not that I needed practice at improv. No, I needed the therapy of just sewing for the sake of sewing. Mindless, no planning play. It did wonders for my mood (and my cold). And before I knew it I had enough blocks to more than fill my design wall.

Once the blocks were up on the wall I started the puzzle piecing to get it all together. I only went by size, filling in gaps and squaring up as I went. I paid no attention to colour or direction. In fact, the only design decision I made was to make sure the feature fabric was on each corner of the finished top.

Then I made it bigger. At first, it came out to about 83'' by 103''. It seemed like such a funny size, and a few more inches meant it would cover our king size bed nicely, with extra quilt for snuggling. So I added another 11'' on one short end. It seemed totally crazy to make it even bigger, but felt right. And seeing as making this was a form of therapy it only made sense to make it the way that felt right.

This quilt began at Quilt Con last year. I was lucky enough to get a spot in Denyse Schmidt's Improv class. See more about that experience here.

About 6 months ago I made some more blocks with the scraps I had from the class and new fabrics I added at home. Then I packed them all up and they joined my WIPs. My thirty something WIPs. It was such a thrill to pull them out and put them upon the design wall. More of a thrill to get to playing again. Every night last week, after the kidlets were in bed, I entered my studio and exhaled.

Play, play, and more play. Then I totally took advantage of my time with a part time babysitter. Deadlines met for the week, I took a whole day to get the top together. Another couple of hours at night and it was done. Then another hour to add that final strip. 

Sometimes I look at the top and think it is a hot mess. And other times I get giddy with all the little bits that pop out at me. It may be a king size quilt, but there are so many tiny scraps in there. Big and small, they all play together. I do love the way it looks, but I think this quilt's value to me is definitely in the process.

Now, hopefully I can find that value when it comes to basting it.

Giant Hexagons Update

In need of some mindless sewing and a real break from work - yes, even I go to quilting when I need a break from the work of quilting - I pulled out these old blocks. With a million (or 40) WIPs sitting in my sewing room it only made sense to grab one of those projects instead of starting something new. I'd always had it in my head to add a coral block to these giant hexagons so I went ahead and did it. Then I added that low volume grey, and a yellow one. 

You can see more of these in my interview with Alex Anderson.

When it came time to playing with layouts I tried something new. There is a lot of bias in these blocks and I didn't want to handle them that much. Plus, as you can see, there is also some other work on my design wall that a certain five year old is not ready to remove. Needless to say, I was quite excited to find some hexagon graph paper!

The internet is a wonderful thing. Sure you can make it yourself, but the chances are someone has probably already done it for you. That was the case when I typed in a few choice words into the search engine the other night. And up pops a PDF of graph paper that is exactly what I need. A little more digging and there are sites where you can create and print your own graph paper in many shapes and sizes. It is a quilter with a penchant for colouring's dream!

http://www.freeprintableonline.com/categories/graphs
http://www.printablepaper.net

Have fun!

Now, I'm only waiting for the rest of my perfect background fabric for these to arrive. Then I can add this to the pile of quilt tops ready for attention.

Good Times with Alex Anderson

Last week I had the pleasure of chatting with Alex Anderson about my books, quilts, non-obligation sewing and finding the pleasure in quilting and the craziness of life. This first bit includes a lot about how I like to slow down and sew, and how you can too. Not to mention some gorgeousness and advice from the book.

Check it out here! And stay tuned for the second part.

Just Playing

Sometimes you just need to play. Start with something, anything, and see what happens.

In this case. I started with a jelly roll and some charms, serious temptation from two lovely designers.  When I was head down on that king sized quilt and buried under slabs I caved at some point in August to play. I sliced the charms in half and cut pieces of the jelly roll down to match. Then it was a matter of sewing pairs together. A lot of chain piecing and pressing. Then rows, then chunks like this. There are more chunks to go as there is more fabric to be used, but I am liking this so far. I have yardage of a subtle text print that will serve as background. You can just see bits of it used on the edges of this chunk.

No, if only I could find more time to play again.