Monday, August 20, 2012

Design Wall Monday 8-20-12

OK, in my zeal to use up fabric on my Paperweights pattern, I think I cut up one of the remaining two borders for my Jack and Gourdy Throw a Party quilt.  Aughhhhhh!  I found a piece of one border but not the other border.  I can kill myself for that act of stupidity!  Can you believe I did that?

In other news, I finally have Dan's quilt and the lizards off the quilt frame in my dining room.  So I can put another on there and actually get some work done again.  I rummaged through my EXTENSIVE UFO top collection and came up with a couple of possibilities.  I finally settled on the Dogs.

I started Dogs as a Planet Patchwork New Year's Day Mystery and finished it in the next month.  This was about 4 years ago maybe.  So it went into the pile to be quilted.  You probably can't see but the black is bones and the beige is Scotties, Spaniels, Setters,  Retrievers and Dalmations with red clothes and leashes.  It is 80 x 80 so it needs to be on the frame.  That means an overall pattern, which is fine, I just want to move some of these pieces out and get some stash used up for backings.  Dogs takes 4 1/2 yards of backing material!  Yes.  I have to piece several dog fabrics to get coverage, but that is perfectly fine!

And on my machine piecing portion of my quilt room, I began work on a new top called Paperweights by Aardvark Quilts.  It is pure love.  Until.........

And I am using up a lot of stash stuff there as well.  I had a very large learning curve with the piecing and cutting.  I ruined 3 of the circles before it finally hit me what I needed to do.  I cut up some fat quarters because she calls for 1/4 yard of 14 fabrics.  Never thought about it, but you cannot use FQs, it must be length.  So last night I was in there cutting up some more fabrics.    You would think she would put that little note in her pattern tips, but no.  I would have appreciated that bit of knowledge before I cut up my fat quarters.

I have ordered a kite ruler and that should be here on Monday.  I thought a tri recs ruler would do for the background parts, but you need a 45 degree ruler, which NO ONE IN THE ENTIRE CITY HAD.......so I had to buy a petal ruler and am making do.  Sigh.

The Paperweights are testy things, you have to do every thing so perfectly and that is not really how I sew.  This may be the thing that gets my goat.  But so far, so good.

glen:  patience is a virtue, especially in quilting


7 comments:

  1. For me perfect quilts make cranky quilter - I like doing art quilts because you can screw it up , then cover it up. I so admire those "real quilters" that do the patchwork. I have done my share of patchwork but tend to get frustrated because I want instant gratification and thus take to many shortcuts, thus ending up with a wonky quilt. Of course that's ok for me. Next post, show a close up do the dog quilt so I can see the fabric, sounds cool. I like it very much. Good luck with those paperweights - how many are you doing?

    I'm off to jury duty today, the picking for trial part. With any luck I'll get a dog abuse case (not that I want to hear the details) but I so want to tell the judge to throw the book at the a__________!

    Have a good day!

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  2. Mmm again not sure about this one.

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  3. ohhh my gosh - we are a pair aren't we? Of course you mentioned Kill and I'm just slapping - but still who knew that quilting was so violent!! OK - let's just say we are both going to have a better week!!

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  4. Your "Dogs " quilt is cool. I love novelty fabrics. As for the Paperweights pattern, unfortunately I find a lot of books & patterns lacking in direction these days. I think a lot of self-published projects never get looked at by an editor and it shows. Good luck on this one -don't let it get you down!

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  5. I do so understand your frustration about using a fabric from another quilt, I have done that twice with prety much the same result. That's why I put ongoing projects in project boxes, so the fabric all stays together and can't be used for something else. Live and learn, I guess.

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  6. I love your dogs quilt...especially love that background fabric you used!

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  7. I love the dogs quilt, I have a friend with a scottie and that's just too cute! I have a few fat quarters with scotties on them, so I gave them to my friend since she's a quilter too.

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