Here is a detail of the purple Amethyst quilt. I thought you might like to see some of the fabrics.
Here is the almost flimsy. I say almost because I plan to add a 6" border of dark purple all around, and the fabric hasn't arrived yet.
Here is a detail of the purple Amethyst quilt. I thought you might like to see some of the fabrics.
I got most of the HST blocks up on the design wall and then worked on fine tuning the layout, one quarter at a time.I'm webbing the quilt together, one quarter at a time too.
My light purple fabrics came in. I ran them through the washer and dryer and made new HSTs.
My lavender fabrics are due to arrive on Friday and I have to do something in the studio while I wait, so I went through my bin of scrap slab triangles and got this up on the design wall. This is far too predictable, and I will definitely tinker with it.
It has been quilted in a lovely holiday design, and is ready for me to add the binding and the hanging sleeve.
Here's the hanging sleeve. I always make sure all elements work together. This fabric choice for the hanging sleeve is no accident.I was pretty sore the first part of this week. I went out and did an errand Tuesday morning, and was really sore when I got home. I was so sore on Wednesday that I never got dressed, and spent the day mostly sacked out on the couch. My ribs were incredibly sore and it really hurt to yawn and sneeze.
Thursday I got up still sore and decided to take a soak in my big tub. That made a heck of a difference, and I think it was a big turning point, as I began to feel almost normal after that.
I trimmed all the blocks I made.The first part of Saturday was terrific. I went to Night Owl Quilting Studio, my LQS, which had a whole lineup of demos and games. It was great fun, but I forgot to take pictures.
I bought this thread cutter, which has now become my favorite quilting gadget.We all have good days, and sometimes we have bad days. Sometimes we have both. On Saturday I had both in the same day. The good stuff, I will write about later, but I'm going to start with the bad part, and you'll figure out why as you read. It's basically a cautionary tale.
Saturday was National Quilting Day and I spent the morning having fun at the Night Owl Quilting Studio. That was ALL GOOD.
My car was parked a block away, and down a side street. I waited for an SUV with a storage container attached to the roof drive past before I attempted to cross the street at a crosswalk. Now, it's March in New England. The ground is thawing and this causes the pavement to buckle and break. We call them frost heaves. They create potholes, and uneven pavement.
You can see where this is going.
Alas, I did not.
I tripped and fell face first into the (very fortunately rarely traveled) side street. I watched as the pavement got closer. I fell with both my palms flat on the street, but that did not stop my head from hitting the pavement. Somehow I also fell against my side.
I was startled, to say the least. I rolled over onto my back and tried to get my bearings. I looked over and realized I was in the street. I sat up. The young woman driving the SUV had turned around, parked and came toward me. "Are you OK? Are you hurt?"
I had a lump on my head just above my eyebrow.
My left side hurt like hell. I had abrasions on both palms and the ball of my right palm was bruised. My glasses were scratched.It's kind of annoying when that AWFUL TASK you were putting off for so long turns out to be easier than you thought, and took much less time than you expected.
Such it was with my taxes. Instead of the ordeal I expected, it only took an hour and was relatively painless. I had, however, made sure to have all the documents and information I needed nearby.
Oh well.
That meant I could go into the studio and play with purple. My finished HST's will be 3" so I knew I needed 480 of them. Since I could get 8 HST's out of one square of fabric (above) I calculated I'd need 60 squares. I had 20 dark purples, so that part was easy. (3 of each). I didn't have so much light purplish fabrics, so I scoured my stash and did what I could to get the right number of light squares. I got them all cut out pretty easily.
Then I paired them up, which you can see in the photo above. I didn't want any group of 8 HST's to be duplicated. No problem there.
Then I mated them and drew the cutting lines on them and clipped them together. I grabbed a random stack and sewed and cut triangles.You all know that I don't start any quilt unless I kinda sorta know where I am going to go with it, and I don't work on more than one quilt at a time. With the Carnelian quilt done and its backing ready, it was time to start thinking about the next quilt, the purple one.
Just like I had never made an all Orange quilt, I have also never made an all purple one. So a few weeks ago I ordered a stack of purple fabrics. I ran them through the washer and dryer and pressed and folded them all, but I had no idea what I was going to do with them. I did know I wanted to do something I had never done before.I sewed a long strips of leftover blocks together. I would use that to make the backing wider, but that wouldn't be enough. I decided to cut 12" across the backing strip along the bottom, add some extra orange fabric to it, and sew it to one side of the backing, then I'd insert the strip of blocks into the backing.
I often forget to use my great big dining room table as a work surface, but I put it to good use trimming the backing fabric. Before I could sew something to the side, I had to trim it straight. A great big long table is really useful here.