Saturday, November 7, 2015

Nov. 2015's A Lovely Year of Finishes project

I can't get over how quickly these past weeks have gone - in less than 2 months, we'll be saying hello to 2016!  Of course, the positive thing about these ALYoF posts is that I have an ongoing record of the projects I've worked on and / or completed this past year.  Sometimes I just finished one aspect of the project (piecing a quilt top, or doing the quilting on an already finished top, for example), and sometimes I've had enough time to actually take a project from beginning to end.  I haven't always completed my goal, but I have finished most of my challenges.
Now that we're getting close(r) to Christmas, I have my doubts that I'll actually be able to pull off my chosen project for November, but I'm going to do my best!
I've been doing a large-scale floral Disappearing 4-Patch swap with Cathy since January.  I didn't have a lot of appropriate fabrics when we started this swap, but a few trips to various quilt shops and a few quilt shows have remedied that situation, and I now have quite the "floral" stash!  We'll be putting our quilts together after we swap our blocks in December - at least, that's the plan...  In the meantime, my floral fabrics are starting to pile up.  I have 2 basic options - either decide on a storage option (do I store them by their main colour, or do I keep them all together in a "floral" drawer or bin?), or find a way to use them up (and save myself some sorting!).
A few days ago, I was looking for a specific fabric on my sewing table, and I came across a picture of a quilt that I'd found online somewhere - and it was the perfect solution to my dilemma!  It showed a strippy quilt - rows of a chosen solid coloured fabric, interspersed with rows of "bricks", joined together with a contrasting solid sashing type of strip.  It was the perfect project for my flowered fabrics!  I spent an afternoon cutting my floral bricks, and then auditioned several Kona cottons for my alternate fabrics.  I finally settled on a cheery yellow for the sashing strips, and a terracotta colour for the contrasting rows.  I sewed a few brick / sashing units, and added the terracotta fabric between the "brick" sections, and Voila!  It looks great!
So, my chosen project for November will be putting the top together.  It should make a top fairly quickly (I'm going to let the row width determine the overall size), so I should be able to accomplish my goal.  If I'm doing really well, I may even go for a complete quilt, but the goal will be just the assembled top.
And, just in case my description made no sense to you, here's a photo of the first 3 assembled rows, with a few of the solid strips and some of the brick sections:
By the look of my sashed brick sections, I may even have enough rows to make a 2nd quilt!  No promises though!
I'll also be sharing some pics of the last blocks I made for Cathy, and my current guild project, so check in again in a few days...  And, as always, I appreciate you stopping in to see what I'm up to!

1 comment:

  1. It looks fabulous. How big did you cut those bricks? I remember you talking about it quite clearly, but the details didn’t stick. Did you cut the complete remainder of each fabric into bricks?

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