Showing posts with label curved piecing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label curved piecing. Show all posts

Friday, 29 August 2014

look, mum, no pins

Just a short post today – I’ve finally managed to get into my sewing room this week!

Piecing curves is apparently one of those things that quilters avoid.

I have a very good teacher but she likes pins – lots of them. She also clips the concave curves.

Today, I found two videos on YouTube about piecing curves without the use of pins.

 

I tried the first way but the second way works better for me – except I press towards the quarter circle.

Have to go – I have more curves to piece! See you next Tuesday.

Monday, 21 July 2014

lest you think I no longer sew

My last few posts have been heavy with knitting, which is my primary stitching craft. However, most of my followers are quilters so I thought it was about time I talked about my quilting-related projects!

I have not yet touched my “Something Old” project for this month but I have big plans for tomorrow!

I have been stitching. I have finished piecing and cutting all the pink pieces I need for my Scrappy Drunkard’s Path row; and am about halfway through the purple piecing. I don’t have any photos to show you of the pieced segments themselves but this photo shows most of the scraps left over from making the pink segments.
2014 pink DP leftovers
Some of the pieces I have already trimmed and started sewing in an improvised way into the beginnings of some blocks.
2014 pink DP leftovers becoming blocks
Here are the purple pieces that I have so far – they’ll be turned into improv blocks next.2014 purple DP leftovers
This is supposed to be my “leader and ender” project but I get carried away and keep stitching, pressing and trimming to the exclusion of other activities!

I was going through my stash of “"donated fabrics” to prepare for making a bargello table runner. My drawer of green fabrics is almost impossible to open or close. I couldn't find enough “width of fabric” pieces in there to make my bargello but I decided it was time to deal with the shopping bag full of smallish pieces. On Saturday and again this afternoon I pressed what seemed like hundreds of pieces. If the piece was larger than my new scrap basket, I folded it and added it to the drawer with the larger pieces. This is what my ironing board looked like after I finished pressing all the smaller pieces.
2014 sorting the green scraps 2
This is the basket containing the odd shaped pieces, the ‘bricks’, the squares and the triangles.2014 basket of green bits
The pile of “strips” (anything much longer than wide) will be sorted by widths. There's no way that pile will fit in my new basket.
    2014 the green strings
The shallow basket is supposed to fit in the drawer on top of the larger pieces of pressed and folded fabric. There’s no way that I can close the drawer like that. I need to use some green fabric – soon! 2014 too much green
The other thing that I got started today was my “Something New” project: a blue bargello table runner. I have designed it myself so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. It is being made from donated fabrics plus a couple from my own stash and will end up on the fund-raising table at the Airing of the Quilts next year. I hope someone likes it enough to buy it. Here are the nine fabrics my teacher and I chose for the project. The one on the left is a pale blue damask, a lovely fabric that doesn’t photograph well.
2014 blue bargello strips
So that’s what I've been been working on in July; most of it being done in the last few days after sorting all that yarn.

How’s your month going? Are you meeting your goals or are those of you living in the northern hemisphere enjoying summer too much while I freeze here? ;-)