Sunday, 7 February 2016

BLOG 286


BLOG 286

Another marathon ironing and cutting session produced an empty basket and fuller bags of strips, graded according to value. I just can’t explain how therapeutic this process was. These scraps have been accumulating in the drawer for years and to have made them into something useable now is like getting something for nothing! (In a small way, this may have been akin to how the early quilters felt, making a quilt from left over scraps!) But I jump the gun; the scraps have yet to be made into a quilt so there is more hard work ahead!

                 Empty basket

            Discarded bits


I settled at the sewing machine with a bag on my lap and a pile of 7” squares of wadding. I string-pieced the strips straight onto the wadding using a sew-and-flip method.

                     
             String piecing

 
On the cutting board, I reduced the squares to 6 ½”.

            The squares

 
I wasn’t fussy about the strips being at right angles to the edge, I wanted them to look haphazard. All I needed was one straight edge per strip; the next strip sewn on tidied up the other edge.

             Building block


I sewed two squares of each value at a time so I had the full range of values to play with. The first decision was to place one square at right angles to the next for the ease of construction.

              Rotated squares


Apart from that I know not where I am going with this project.  On the design wall, I started to play around with placement.

             Darks to light

             Dark to light, light to dark

On Wednesday this week, I will be the Artist in Residence at the Royal Pavilion in Llangollen, 10am to 4pm. I will be demonstrating my free-form method of applique ….. And that reminds me that some preparation needs to be done! …… I look forward perhaps to seeing you there.

 

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