BLOG 385

BLOG 385

Another busy week for me, accompanied by glorious sunshine, bright blue skies and viciously bitter temperatures. But all that considered, isn’t it great that Spring is gradually edging closer? I can hear the birds singing territorially and enjoy the many spring flowers that are evident. Little do they know that more snow is just around the corner as we continue to experience a ‘proper’ winter this year. Mind you, the lengthening daylight causes me a bit of a dilemma because now I feel guilty sitting down and reading with an early log fire and my late afternoon cup of tea! …But I’ll get over it!

I have continued to make the panels for my Contemporary Welsh 2 quilt. Now I know what I am doing (!), I have found that this repeat project is going more smoothly. All the skills I have fine-tuned over the years are finally coming together in these latest pieces; it is very satisfying and should keep me interested and occupied for a little while.

 

Contemporary work

 2 BARGELLO QUILT My second Linus quilt started life as 1 yard of a very uninteresting piece of fabric. It is graded in colour from reds, through to browns to olives and beiges and it is certainly not my usual choice of fabric. When I bought it years ago, I was doing a lot of hand applique and I suspect I chose it because of the subtle tonal changes! I probably thought it would be useful at the time but it has remained folded, unloved and unused in the bottom of a storage basket. It’s time to shine has now come!


I ironed the fabric with RS together and with both selvedges lined up accurately. After both edges were trimmed, I sewed them with a ¼”seam to join the fabric in a complete circle. The seam was ironed open and the fabric was ironed flat for ease of cutting as many 2” strips as I could from the fabric (16).

             Shaded fabric

              RS together

             
               2” strips




 I turned all the strips RS out ready to sew. I measured 3” away from the seam on my starting strip and put a pin there. I lined up the seam of my next strip so that it lay RS together on top of the pin to produce a staggered effect. I sewed along the long edge to join the strips together ‘in the round’, allowing the machine to do what it is designed to do without introducing any tension; it went together accurately and easily. I repeated this process for every strip, always making sure that the colour sequence was the same way round each time.

          
 RS out 

                    

              3” stagger

               ¼” seams

             Staggered effect 



Still ‘in the round’, I eased the strips onto the ironing board and pressed all the seams in the same direction. I also pressed a sharp edge so that I could cut the circle of fabric open to reveal the Bargello effect. This has turned an uninteresting piece of fabric into a rather attractive design and it was so easily done! Having re-created the fabric, I now had to figure out how to make it into a quilt top of an acceptable size; at the moment it measures 42” x 24”.

               WS

                Iron seams

               Press and cut

               Bargello
 


After some deliberation and auditioning of fabrics, I decided to use the cat fabric that I had used in the previous Linus quilt. This necessitated a bit of reverse sewing (unpicking!) so I could fit in some extra vertical lines but I am happy with the result and particularly like the linear style of this quilt. Job done!

            Auditioning fabric
 

    
                   Completed top