Well, different for me, anyway. As my hand, full of tiny fabric scraps, hovered over the waste basket I thought “Why not sew them all together willy-nilly and see what happens?” So I did.I didn’t plan, measure, or square anything up as I went. I didn’t even use my iron! This was really out of character for me but it came out kind of cute so of course I pushed on a little further.
Voila! Wooffles’ new play quilt (well, the top at least – it still needs quilting). You see him in the picture on the right for scale.
That row of vertical stripes was supposed to be much less regular than it ended up. Considering all the effort I have to put in to avoid wonky crooked blocks, you’d think that going wonky would require less work. Not so. Getting a crooked result on purpose was actually quite challenging! It didn’t even get as crooked as I wanted.
The bottom section was inspired by CW quilts’ Jelly roll 1600 quilts. I just sewed all my leftover bits of 1 1/2” bright strips together end to end, folded the resulting strip in half tip to tip and sewed along the long edge. I cut the fold and opened up a new wider but shorter strip, which I then folded and sewed and cut again. This was really the only way for me to sew all these bits together randomly, because otherwise I would have thought through every placement and it really wouldn’t have been random at all. Am I making any sense?
Also, I want to point out that the little purple triangle in the white border was – ahem – totally intentional. It had nothing whatsoever to do with sewing on a border strip a little bit over from where it needed to be and needing to fill the gap. At no time was I – ahem- tempted to pull out a seam ripper to reposition said strip. It is supposed to be totally improvisational after all!
This was a fun little side trip for me, but I’m going to head back into my comfort zone of carefully planned quilts for a little bit. Here’s where the flying geese quilt stands, waiting for one last seam and then some sort of borders. (No prizes for guessing where the scraps for Wooffles’ quilt came from!)
I had thought of doing pieced borders with all the various colours, but now I think that would be overpowering. Maybe two adjacent blue sides and two adjacent purples? Or maybe not. Perhaps I need to bring the top in to the quilt shop and see if any appropriate fabric finds me.
I love both quilts! The little one is so fun and the big one is gorgeous! You did a great job on both!
ReplyDeleteThat's a fun idea, and you know what? I saved some silly, tiny scraps today just so I could do that same thing sometime; I'll probably never get around to doing it, but.....I do think it would be fun. Your creation turned out really cute. Your beautiful geese are in perfect order! Now this next thought is really silly, but I see the geese flying over and under high rise interstate highways, such as the "Mix-Master" in Fort Worth or Los Angeles and other big cities! (Didn't I warn you it was silly? *giggle* I think I had too much chocolate today!) You have done a great job with them, really! ---"Love"
ReplyDeleteWooffles' quilt is great! Good for you trying something out of your comfort zone. And I completely understand about making wonky blocks taking more effort than you'd think. Your geese quilt is amazing. Beautiful. Incredible. Will you put a skinny white border around everything before colors? Whatever you do for borders, I can't imagine it taking the eye away from the awesome center.
ReplyDeleteI heartily approve of using up scraps and it's even better that Wooffles gets to have his own quilt. It looks great! ann :-)
ReplyDeleteOh, goodness, I love them both. Super graphic and brilliant colors! You've got two winners there!
ReplyDeleteLiri