Saturday, January 21, 2012

Whole lot of cutting

I spent both yesterday and today at a mini-retreat at the local quilt shop:  quilt all day, go home to sleep and come back to quilt all day again.  Though I brought my sewing machine I didn’t do much sewing.  I sewed a few units but I mostly cut, cut and cut some more. I discovered that the cutting table at the retreat is at a much nicer height for this task than my kitchen table.  Since there are 882 pieces in this new quilt I decided to use the better table while I could!
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I managed to cut 596 pieces, and have 78 other pieces cut that need to be subcut into 156 kite-shaped things.  When I went back this morning I remembered to bring ziplock bags to sort all the pieces into before they ended up scattered all over the workroom.
There is still the matter of trimming points on most of the pieces.  I did try skipping this step but found it too difficult to figure out how to match up angled sides without the trimmed points.  The trimmed points match up beautifully with each other so despite the tedium of trimming it will save time and gnashing of teeth when I start sewing.  At least I can trim points a few at a time as I am ready to sew them.
So far I have this sewn:
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I am making a serious dent in my blue stash!  This will turn into a version of “Kyoto Garden” by Judy Martin from her book “Stellar Quilts” (thanks for the book, Mom!).  The colour selection and placement in her version are very carefully  planned, but I decided to try random and scrappy.  As I placed everything on the design wall tonight I started having second thoughts about that, but all those pieces are cut so I’ll press on the way I started!
I’m not sure when I will have progress to show on this one.  I have two quilts to baste and start quilting, I need to sew the backing to the back of the prairie points on the leaf quilt (the blocks are all quilted!), and I’m toying with the idea of painting the kitchen, and maybe the living room…

6 comments:

  1. Wow! You never cease to amaze me! That's a very interesting pattern! Sounds like you had a couple of successful and fun quilting days. ---"Love"

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  2. Kudos on getting so many pieces cut! I love the look of the scrappy blues. It's going to be a beautiful quilt.

    Don't know if this would help for your kitchen table, but some of the girls at the guild bought bed risers to put under the legs of their tables. They say it raises the table up to the perfect cutting height, though I haven't tried it myself.

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  3. Very pretty. I googled the pattern because I was curious how those pieces to together and it's going to be stunning.

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  4. Raising your table with tins works too, like fruit tins or jam tins, or even dog/catfood tins.

    i love all those blues, it will be stunning.

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  5. I am making this pattern now and I am cutting each piece individually using the templates (after cutting strips of course). I tested my 1/4 inch seam and it is pretty much perfect. I still cannot get these stars to come out right. My points when attaching the two B-B templates are running to the edge of the block almost every time. My finished block is pretty much exactly the right size. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? I have made 10 blocks and not one has been right. Also would be great to see progress from this post 5 years ago if you have some photos.

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    Replies
    1. Hello Christina - I hope you check back for a reply, as I couldn't locate an email address for you. It's been a while since I made the quilt, but I definitely remember that trimming all the points and using those trimmed edges to help line up pieces helped a lot. Also, finger pressing instead of using my iron until the whole block is together. I think I sewed from the outside of the block towards the center, but I'm not sure... I hope this helps! There are several posts in 2012 and some in 2013. My last post about it is here: http://www.canuckquilter.com/2013/08/just-needs-binding.html

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