Late Friday afternoon, I decided it was time to stop pussyfooting around with pencil and paper and actually put scissors to fabric for the lavender quilt. It was kind of scary since I've had this fabric for a while and might not be able to get more if I screw up.
I'd decided that the best way to use this fabric (the one on top - there's only a yard of it) . . .
. . . is to cut it apart horizontally along the different sections. This made 360" of stripes, 180" of daisies, and 144" of lavender field. Experienced quilters will probably know that 360" is enough for a border on a good-sized quilt, but the stripes will finish only 1" wide. I could cut the daisies in half to make 360", but this, too, would finish only 1"+ wide and it would diminish its effect. And I'd probably make a mess of the cutting. Ditto on the lavender field section.
I plan to make "vignettes" with the lavender field section. There's enough of it to make 24 blocks. The stripe will become a narrow border or binding around the quilt. The floral section would be really cute as half-square triangles (making a diamond shape where 4 blocks join), but there's not enough of it.
Here's what I've come up with, so far:
The hex flower block on the right is the first one I made. The flower is just pinned on. It seemed to need something around the flower to make it "pop" against the background fabric. Note that I included the selvedge (through mindlessness) when I cut the background fabric and will need to re-do it.
The vignette block in the middle is not even constructed - it's just pinned together to see how it would look. The vignette didn't "pop" much against a print background, so I tried a white-on-white for the background. I'm not liking it much, so if I have enough of the print background fabric, I may use it, after all.
The hex flower block on the left is nearly finished; I want to do some embroidery in the yellow center but haven't worked out what/how to do it. It would be cute with some french knots or short fringe/chenille, but . . . .
This is going to be a bed quilt. For my bed. I don't want to feel knots and tickle-y fringe when I'm trying to sleep under it. Plus, I don't want to tie 100,000 french knots, and I'd like to get it done before I die. So, the yellow center will get something simple, like blanket-stitching. Maybe.
The hexes and the triangles are being cut with a Go Cutter. The Husband gave me this tool for Christmas at least 5 years ago. I played with it a little bit, and The Granddaughters had a big time running scraps of fabric and paper through it, but I have not used it in a project until now. It's a handy little machine. I haven't tested for the maximum layers of fabric that it'll cut at once, but I already know that it will cut through at least 4 layers of cotton fabric at a time.
I still haven't decided what to do with the daisy sections. I might be able to use it for triangles on some of the blocks - haven't calculated it, yet - but I foresee all kinds of mishaps and miseries in trying to do that.
I may cut more hexes and triangles this week, but the sewing will have to wait, as I have cakes bake and decorate. I played with fondant last week to see if I could sculpt little 3-D girl gymnasts to tumble around the sides and top of #3's cake but made a mess of them. 3-D gymnasts may be a "no go." Yesterday, I printed out some gymnasts and used them to cut out 2-D gymnasts from rolled fondant and painted their features and clothes on them with gel food coloring. This might work. More experimenting ahead.
* * * * * * * *
We did not get any wood chips moved to the garden this weekend. It rained, and we didn't want to rut Nanny's yard with the tractor. It rained again this morning, so there's no telling when we can move it with the tractor. I could move it one wagon load at a time, but - damn, that driveway is long and those wet wood chips are heavy . . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment