Monday 4 September 2017

September WIP roundup (Part 1)



Happy September to you all and back to school/college/university/work.  I am appalled to see that it is over a month since I blogged - where did August go? I have written lots of posts in my head but totally failed to get down to actually hammering the keyboard to share my sewing activities. Apologies and I promise to try harder this term!

So much has been happening recently that I think I will probably break the posts down in to smaller chunks for easier digestion.  Bear with me while we see how it goes. I think I will work backwards to give my memory a chance to recover!

I have been away a few times this month on sewing related treats so I have come back energised and inspired to tackle some new projects, but especially to finish and clear away some old ones; so this week just past has involved digging out a number of WIPs.

I still have the quilting to do but I have managed to get the following tops together:



In reverse order, this was last night's little treasure, a mini version of a quilt in Edyta Sitar's book Friendship Triangles (it still needs a final pressing). I had the trimmed off triangles from a large Thimbleberries quilt stitched together but screwed up in a bag.  After pressing they looked like this, 



and after trimming to 1 1/2" they looked like this. [Please excuse colour cast from camera flash as I took this photo at night].



I played around with the layout but had always been attracted to Edyta's design, Medallion Quilt which is made with 420 x 2" (finished size) half square triangles; her quilt has quite wide borders and measures 59" square.



My 'quilt' is made with what I had leftover which is 184 x 1" (finished) HSTs plus a few neutral triangles to fill in the gaps and make a straight edge. It measures 15" square.  I debated whether or not to add a border and have decided not to, so it is just waiting to be layered and quilted: hardly a massive job! 

My only other comments are that the trimming was well worth it in terms of getting all the points to match, and as well as my Bloc_loc ruler I gave thanks for my tank steam iron and Best Press spray which flattened out all the seams - so bulky in proportion to such small units. 

Here are the before and after photos for one of the quarter segments.







This next top is a little bigger, measuring 27 1/2" x 31 1/2" and was made from a bundle of offcut triangles and strips from a large quilt I made many years ago, which I am embarrassed to report is lying layered and machine basted upstairs, waiting to be handquilted.


I managed to trim the HSTs to 2 1/2" square and there were enough for thirty 4" (finished) blocks of 4 matching HSTs, set 5 blocks x 6, with 3" wide borders cut from the remaining 2 1/2" strips. I thought this block was called Birds in the Air or Flock of Birds but I haven't so far managed to confirm that: anyone out there know?


Backing and inner border/binding from stash plus a wadding offcut means a small 'free' quilt for someone out of a sad plastic bag of bits. My favourite kind of sewing as I feel thrifty and that I am tidying up at the same time as making a mess!



That's all for now. Hoping to post again tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who drops in to look at this blog from time to time - I met some of you at the Fabric Fayre in Great Bookham the Bank Holiday weekend and it was so good to catch up. Keep on quilting!

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