Improvalicious

A few months back, I attended a Craft Salon at the Fairfield Woods Library with Denyse Schmidt. It was a fun class on how to hand stitch small nine patch blocks. I never did finish my blocks, but I did buy one of her scrap bags that day. Attending one of her classes has always been on my bucket list. A friend of mine told me that one of the exercises is to grab fabrics out of the bag and sew them together into blocks as fast as you can. The idea being that you don't spend too much time thinking about how everything goes together. With this in mind, I decided to try it on my own with the scrap bag. I did spend a little time matching the fabrics, but not too much. I also just sewed them together and trimmed, no squaring up involved.

Here are some of the blocks, I did eight in total.



Next, I cut some strips of a neutral solid that I had laying around, and sewed it on to make them into sashed blocks.



Here they are, all laid out.




I think that I'll square them up next, but keeping the centers a bit wonky. Planning on it becoming a throw. Its so mentally freeing to make the pattern up as you go, a relaxing departure from the triangles. Must get back to those today now that my brain is rested.

Triangles Everywhere!

I'm loving the Hex n More ruler, as well as the Toes in the Sand pattern. Not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I stink at lining up points. I am more into the whole inprov idea. This is why I usually steer away from these types of projects. Using this ruler makes it super easy. There are a few types of shapes that are cut from strips, and then sewn together. They just end up lining up. I think this one is my favorite.



Excuse the shadow! Its rainy outside today, so not much natural light around here.

The best part of making this quilt is that you make two triangles at a time. I am definitely stressing out about which fabrics to put together, but trying to take it one step at a time. I figure that I'll make one, then get the treat of picking the fabrics for the next one. Super fun!
This is where I am so far:



I'm taking a break this afternoon for a little improvisational piecing. Photos to come.

Fabric Shopping

I was checking out the classes at my local quilt shop the other day and saw the class for this fantastic quilt by Jaybird Quilts. Its called Toes in the Sand. I had purchased the Hex N More ruler a while back, but hadn't made anything with it yet. After all the fun I had with the curve ruler, I thought I'd give this one a try. 



The pattern calls for 51 fat eighths. I figured that 26 fat quarters would probably do, but I couldn't find that many in my stash that all looked good together. I always get nervous at the prospect of picking out fabric. I usually wimp out and go with something similar to what the pattern uses, but this time I wanted to just go for it. 
I took a ride up to The Quilt Shop in Danbury today. What a lovely shop, chock full of fabrics. They even have shopping carts. I started piling up the bolts until they were about to tip over. Lois was super helpful as she is just finishing up the sample for the class. I wanted to use mostly modern, geometric designs, with some solids and florals thrown in there. After nearly two hours, this is what I came up with. 




I love the blues and greens with the orange and pink. I'm a little nervous about how I am going to arrange this, but I think its best to just dive in. Stay tuned!

More Bag Photos

Now that its daytime, thought I'd add photos of the back and interior of the bag. For my WYWL friends. I will be taking orders for bags if you want one. 



This back is basically improvisational patchwork, not sure what I would do the next time.



Future iterations of this bag can be made with either an interior zip pocket, or patch pocket.

Quilt As You Go

Sorry its been so long since my last post. Those last weeks of summer got busy with my girls being home. Not much crafting was going on around here. Now school is back, and I was able to try out a technique that I have been wanting to try for a while. Quilt As You Go or QAYG as they like to call it. You basically make the quilt sandwich first, laying the batting out onto the backing. Then as you sew the on top, and quilt each as you go. Its a great way to make straight line quilting look more interesting. Each piece can go in a different direction. 

I am a member of the Westport Young Womens League, and a while back I was asked to make something to be raffled off at the first meeting of the year. I had seen this pattern by Elizabeth Hartman, so I thought I'd give it a go. My friend Kathy has the most amazing embroidery machine, she did the logo for me. Here is the finished product, don't look too closely, but I'm happy with the result. 

More photos tomorrow in the daylight!