UFO Sunday #2

Still on the English Paper Piecing Project. Two more rows of little squares....will post photos when it is finished.

Not going too quickly but the end is in sight. Thinking about some quilting designs. The first thing that came to mind was to simply follow the shapes:



 

That would actually be quite an easy finish and go well with the ordered arrangement of the pieces.

 

I am also still looking at an overall design...maybe something like below, although the spacing would have to be a bit wider. I like this design but have not done it before edge-to-edge because I tend to loose orientation easily when  sewing. With this little quilt though that could work because of the shapes...I could literally count off the rows and place the loops neatly in the little squares (sorry, was too lazy to re-draw this a bit wider and more spaced out). Would have to practice this a bit...

 

 

Alternatively, I am thinking I could use an overall floral design... or maybe Baptist fans like Danielle from Fresh Off the Spools suggested...decisions, decisions. Well, I can think about all of this while I am completing this, as it is probably still going to take another week.

In terms of UFOs, this is what's on my list

- 'practice' quilt: on-going as part of Leah Day's Quilt Along Wednesdays
- Table runner: to be tackled after the English Paper Piecing Adventure
- Craftsy BOM: embarrassed to say that I stopped in March; the issue seems to be with the size of the blocks. I actually do not like to work with 12"blocks (shouldn't I have thought of this beforehand!), so I am currently considering re-working them into smaller size blocks. Now that would mean I have to start again - to be decided
- 'Arrangement of Small Pieces' quilt: decided to stop this project; I had chosen 30's fabric for this quilt and having had a break and re-looking at it, I actually do not like my choice of fabric and also have already moved on in my head to a more exciting use of this block. I am going right back to my more familiar choice of fabric, darker and more contrasting colours. As I have made some blocks, I could sew them up into another table runner. The rest of the fabric I am thinking of sewing up into Nine Patch blocks, put them on point and have alternate plain fabric blocks in between. This will then give me the opportunity to practice some fancy FMQ motif in those blocks
- Cat panel wall-hanging: this has been around for a while; I followed the major outlines of the picture using the walking foot and have a thousand and one threads to sew in...this was before I had enough confidence to FMQ straight lines; I could use this to continue to practice FMQ on this to just finish it off.

No wonder I am confused. Going to link up to Leah Day's UFO Sunday on the Free Motion Quilting Project

Until next time

Karin

UFO Sunday

Well, tada...here is my progress on the English Paper Piecing project. I know it does not look like much but let me tell you this is not for the faint-hearted.

Not sure what possessed me in starting this, but I am determined to finish this. I do like the fabric and must say a project like this is ideal while watching TV. It is quite relaxing but very, very slow. I had a packet of 50 hexagons which by now are almost used up. I thought I would like it a bit bigger and had a try on recreating that template in EQ7. Now, that did not work, so I painstakingly made my own template using a leftover hexagon as my guide. Ha, ha...that took ages but I managed to get an exact copy and am using leftover printing paper to cut out the shapes. Again, very time consuming and not something I would do for an entire project. However, as I got some fabric left over I thought that I would extend this by one or two rows...(remains to be seen whether my patience carries me this far).

My question in relation to this project is around the quilting...

- how do I best quilt this?  I do not want to hand quilt this as I am no good at it and actually do not enjoy it either. I know the Quilt Police will be gasping, however this is just for me and I think I can live with it being machine quilted. I was thinking maybe to just follow the seam lines in a curvy way on the inside, but not sure about this...wondering about whether that would be too much.
- also, this appears to be quite fragile in its construction and I am wondering whether I should be using an iron-on batting to secure the piece and then I could 'bag' this little quilt rather than attaching a binding. If I was to follow that idea, when do I quilt it - before I sew on the backing or do I 'bag' it first and then quilt over the finished product?
-on the other hand, maybe I should add a small border...

Any suggestions??

Karin