To Do Tuesday #44 - Playing Around With Shapes

My list from last week included:

- continue on my freemotionquilting project✅

- continue and hopefully finish my sock❌

- make another cat block or two✅

- re-think my Australian Christmas tree quilt. It is ready to be pinned and basted but I am now thinking of maybe just doing a pantograph over it rather than doing an involved backfiller as I am not really sure what I am going to do with that quilt. As I got other projects to finish I am thinking that this will just hold me up unnecessarily.✅

- deliver the charity quilts and pick up a new lot.✅

I finished my backfiller project! Just have the handstitching of the binding to do...

Some close ups...

Very happy with the end result even though I had a few problems with it. I stitched this with 100wt Invisafil and had some tension issues which was annoying as well as unusual. I put it down to using a small orange spool which kept on getting stuck at the top of the spool. For a while then I put the small spool on the horizontal spool holder but that also did something to the tension. So all in all there are some unsightly tension issues on the back particularly in the orange sections which in the end I decided to overlook. A first for me!

I did stretch myself a little bit with this piece and deliberately tried designs that I had not done before. I cannot remember exactly how many designs we went through in Bethanne Nemesh' Breaking Boundaries class but there were many...ok, just looked it up...over a 100, so as you can imagine, you do not really practice all of them in one go. I remember trying most of them, but then discovered pretty quickly some favourites which I then started concentrating on. So going back over the class I chose a few that I had not done that much before and some where I had some problems with so this whole project became a bit of a practice piece. Attaching the binding was a joy as there was so much to look at...I could see some of the designs that I executed really well and some of the others where I was a bit challenged. Some designs were a surprise like the white right corner in the second photo. The design is called tree rings and looked interesting so I gave that a whirl and stitched it out on a diamond grid. If I was to do it again I would stitch the grid first and then do the rings but in this piece I did everything in one hit so it is a bit more wonky in places. I really like the look of that...just very interesting if you include a little pocket like that. I think had I stitched the grid beforehand I could have concentrated more on where I start my rings as sometimes they just melted into each other. But still, good fun and easy to do.

After this I had a bit of a break, but managed to make a few more cats

I am determined to get this done! Have actually one more cat, so all told 13 blocks so far. Just need to continue to put one day per week aside for just making cat blocks. Undecided at the moment whether to go for 20 or 30 blocks. We shall see...

Spent also some time thinking about the Christmas quilt and started looking for an allover design I could do on that. Spent countless hours on the internet looking over my favourite shop 'Urban Elementz' for a suitable pantograph. Still looking...also thought I could just do a larger scale swirly design on it, but just a bit undecided at the moment.

While looking around on the internet, I came across Elizabeth Hartmann's new pattern 'Cats in Pajamas'. Very cute indeed, but what really caught my attention was the allover quilting design. Her quilts were quilted by Emily Hoppe of So Sunny Quilts using Julie Hirt’s 60s Mod Butterfly. Went all over the internet to find that design but could not find it in a format where I can self print this as it is for longarm machines where you load the pattern into the machine.

However that sent me into exploring my rulers, so today I played all day with stitching out something similar with the HQ Petal Pusher Ruler.

Obviously not the same, but could look really nice on a little baby quilt. I offset my petals just for the fun of it and marked a grid on my fabric and literally just stitched out the vertical lines and then went over it putting the petals in. Such a simple idea and looks quite nice.

Also tried the other shape

My grid was too large which I only realised once I had already started. After that got out the star rulers and started playing around with that and so the day went, just playing around. I am always looking for new ways to use my rulers particularly doing allover designs. Not sure with this as there is some marking involved obviously, but for a smaller piece, that could work. I did deliver all my charity quilts last week and picked up a new stack. If there is a very small baby quilt amongst that lot, I might give that a try.

So this was my week. I am always very disorientated once I finish a more involved project and it takes me days to settle down to do something else, so for the coming week I will keep my list as modest as I can.

- hand-sew the binding to the backfiller project and create a hanging sleeve (otherwise this will end up in the cupboard)

- finish the sock!

- pin and baste the Australian christmas quilt.

Heading over to Quilt Schmilt for the To Do Tuesday Linky Party #44

Karin