Taking Shape

I made lots of progress on my Christmas quilt over the weekend.  We've had great quilting and sewing weather lately, cold and lots of snow, best to stay inside.  Earlier, I showed you what one block of this quilt looks like:

With18 blocks finished, you can see how the design comes together.  (The blocks are not sewn together yet.)

 

 

Unfortunately, the design wall I made out of insulation board and batting got ruined while in our basement over the Christmas and New Year's holiday.  I was storing it down there to get it out of the sewing/guest room during my Mom's visit and left it there while on the trip to Hawaii.  While I was gone, we had the hardwood floors in the first floor of our house replaced.  The process dislodged a lot of dust and gunk from the basement ceiling, now all firmly lodged on the design wall's batting.  Yuck!  I'm going back to the design bed, using a white flannel sheet spread over Miss Main Street's bed.  With her away, I won't have to pick it up every night in order to sleep in the bed so it should work out better than it did before.  

 

Back to the quilt in progress...the design is from Modern Bee by Lindsay Conner. 

 

 

  

Design Wall 2.0

Last year, I made my first design wall - two pieces of insulation board from the hardware store covered in batting.  Not much to look at but very useful.

 

But now I have have this rod for quilt display hanging where the design wall was placed.  The clip-on curtain hooks gave me a new idea!

 

What if I hang a piece of flannel from the curtain hooks?  Easy to put away when the room has to revert to guest room...

...and it does the job!

 

I still have the insulation board design wall, stored in the basement, just in case I need it. 

 

 

 

Many Trips Progress

I've made some progress on my Many Trips Around the World quilt but I can see where this one will be somewhat slow going.  First, the pieces are 2" squares.  Secondly, it has to be laid out on my design wall before sewing together.  This is what I have so far:

 

upper left quadrant

 

across the top, not at all straight

 

 

I was running out of room on my design wall so decided to sew the upper left quadrant together and then lay out the rest of the design.  

I am sewing the pieces together in blocks of 5 by 5.  I thought of doing 10 by 10, but was afraid of what an unsewing job it would be if a piece got out of place.  5 by 5 is more easily controlled.

Here's a finished block back on the design wall.  There is considerable "shrinkage" after sewing.  What started as a 10" square becomes 8" when sewn (will be 7.5" finished). 

The design wall is a relatively new addition to my sewing space and I can't imagine making this quilt without one!

Many Trips Around the World

First there was the Great Granny Along then Scrappy Trips.  If you read more than a few quilting blogs you can't have missed these online quilt alongs.  I certainly paid attention and was tempted many times to join in - another case of so many quilts, so little time.  In the meantime, I saw another quilt I liked, on the Bemused blog, and just could not get it out of my mind.  Then it came to me!  Here was a project for the Fig Tree Harvest!

Yes, I am making a Many Trips Around the World quilt using my Fig Tree stash.  It has taken some time to plan this out properly, and funny enough, while I was planning it I was also planning our next vacation.  But no,  not a trip around the world!

 

I had to buy the solid I'm using for the diagonal between blocks (I call this the "trellis"); it is a raspberry color but I don't know what it is exactly because the bolt was not labeled.  I hope I bought enough!  I'd like to make a bed size quilt but will settle for a throw if it all gets to be too much.  There is quite a bit of work involved because the squares are only 2" cut/1.5" finished.  Must get cracking!

 

 

 

Moving On To Plan B, or Plan C

My daughter attends the same independent high school where my husband teaches and each year, I have made a quilt in the school colors to donate to the Parents Association Auction.  Here are a couple examples from prior years. 

The school mascot is the falcon so I want to do something with flying geese blocks.  This is what I have on my design wall so far but I am not loving it. 

 

The geese finish at 3" by 6", the same size as the blue rectangular blocks which I have arranged like bricks or subway tile.  I need to cut more "tiles" to fill in the empty spots if I am going to finish this but I am seriously considering moving on to Plan B.   Plan B involves a different arrangement for the flying geese, where they would form a border around a plain center.  I have about 80 of the flying geese made, which I think will be enough for that plan.  

But then there is Plan C.  I found a pattern online, ordered it, and am awaiting its arrival in the mail (should be this week).  If I go with either Plan B or C, the pieces I cut from the blue fabric can be put to another use (I'm thinking string quilt).

Decisions, decisions.  Stay tuned for an update.

More Crossroads

Between sessions of hand quilting, I made some more Crossroads blocks.

Thirteen blocks are finished.  I need 18 for the quilt.  But I'm not sure whether all of the finished blocks will be part of the final quilt.  The lower block on the far right doesn't look quilte right to me.  I used a red and green holly print, thinking it would read as red.  But it looks more brown from a distance.  We shall see, after I get more blocks done and can audition them with the setting triangles and border fabric. 

I do like the black with the red and green!

Crossroads - First Block

It hasn't been all hand quilting around here. I've managed to sneak in some machine piecing here and there. I finished the first block for Crossroads and have it on my design wall. Each square in the nine-patch finishes at 1.5 inches and the block finishes at 10.5 inches.

So far, so good. Seventeen more blocks to go, then the sashing, and the setting triangles, and the borders...OK, lots more work on this one!

Crossroads is a pattern from Bonnie Blue Quilts/Red Crinoline Quilts.

My New Design Wall

I finally have a design wall!  Up to now, I have been using the "design bed" to lay my blocks out before sewing them together.  The design bed is a large piece of white flannel I lay on top of our queen size bed.  The real problem with it is that I need to fold it up and put it away at night to go to bed.  I got some ideas from a few blogs and turned this "before"

into an "after."

The tubs of fabric and the straw hats went into attic storage and my husband removed the hooks from the wall.  The room I sew in is a bedroom that doubles as our guest room.  This section of wall is six feet wide, between the closet door on the left and the window at the corner of the adjacent wall.  The entrance to the room is to the left of the closet door. 

I had two 4' by 8' pieces of insulation board (purchased at Home Depot, in the lumber section) trimmed down to 3' by 7' to better fit the space.  I "bound" the edges with duct tape and taped the two pieces together along the long edge, also with duct tape, putting the tape on just one side so it acts like a hinge and the two pieces fold together, right side facing in.  Making the wall fold in half makes it more portable in case I want to move it around, plus I can take it down and store it under the bed when a guest uses the room.  In use, it just leans against the wall. 

I used spray adhesive to apply a piece of batting, which I then trimmed at the edges.  That part did not go as smoothly as I hoped and the batting actually tore in one spot.  So it is a little rough but it functions. 

You can see five blocks from my current project hanging there, without any pins.  After taking this photo, I finished five more blocks and have blocks 11 to 15 in process.  This design wall is going to be a godsend when it comes time to add the sashing and sew it all together!

March of the Tools - Design Wall Alternative

I don't have space for a large design wall in my sewing room. The room doubles as a guest room so between the bed, the doorway, the closet door, the windows, and the large bookcase on the only wall that doesn't have a door or window, I don't have the necessary expanse of wall space. But I found an alternative that works for me - the design bed.

I put a large piece of flannel (a twin size flannel sheet works well) on my queen-size bed and put the quilt blocks on the flannel. I can move the blocks around until I have a final layout then they stay in place while I sew. And if I don't get the entire quilt pieced before bedtime (for some reason, Mr. Main Street objects to sleeping under an additional layer of work-in-progress), I can fold the flannel up with the blocks in it and they won't shift around much.

The photo above shows the flannel spread out on the bed with some blocks in place.

The margin of flannel on the left side is folded over the blocks.

Then fold the margin of flannel on the right side over the blocks. Do the same at the top and bottom. Then fold in each side again.

Keep folding until you have a little bundle like this, small enough to sit on your sewing table or where you want to store it temporarily. When you want to work on the project, place on the bed and carefully unfold, one side at a time. Some blocks may shift slightly but it is easy to see where they go.

If you don't have space for a design wall, I suggest you give this alternative a try.