Australian fabrics

Triangle fun.........

I got my Australian fabric triangles quilt designed yesterday while my 2 friends were here.  After lunch our committee of 3 did some fine tuning and then it was ready to sew.

I had to do some thinking about how to sew it together since the large squares broke up the rows.  I sewed the vertical seams to create many sections.

four berry pie.jpg

At 2:30 we took a break to eat some four berry pie that one of them brought.  This is my piece for today.

Last night I started at the bottom and sewed sections together, again with just vertical seams.  I have to figure out the pressing sequence before I can sew the horizontal seams.  I could have sewn one more section which is 3 rows that go continuously across the quilt but I knew my limits and stopped.

Playtime.........

It has been a little over 2 months since my 2 friends have been here to sew and they are coming today.  I am going to play with the Australian fabric pieces sooner than I thought.  It is great to be back at the design wall.
I have these pieces to play with too.  I may get 2 quilts designed; I may just play and have nothing ready to sew.  It will just be a fun day.

Alternate blocks...........

My littlest great-grandson and his mom visited me yesterday morning.  The little guy is a confident walker now and he moves fast!  I think he enjoyed playing with the toys without his big brother being here.  Later in the day I cut some 10.5" and 5.5" blocks to alternate with the triangle blocks that I have been sewing the last few nights.  Now the quilt should be closer to 60" x 80".
It was too dark and gloomy to take a photo of the first cactus bloom 2 days ago.  Today the sun came out for awhile so I had plenty of light.  This is one of my very favorite plants.  I love the pale pink.

I have moved all of my shipping boxes, tape, etc. out of the living room now that the first pop-up shop is closed.  I will be doing the photography for the second one for the next few weeks, lots of detail shots.  I will still have plenty of time to play with my fabric and design walls.  The only question is what to work on first.......I have about 5 that I want to work on.

3 ways to make Hunter Star quilts.........

One way to do Hunter Star is in scrappy format with 8 different triangle sections making up each block.  I really like it and probably will continue making blocks like this.







Another way is to have all 8 of the triangles that make a star block of the same 2 fabrics.  This is the first Hunter Star quilt top that I made in 2015.
















The third way was the layout of my most recent Hunter Star quilt top.  In this one the quarter square blocks are 2 triangles from the same fabric combination sewn together and placed diagonally across from each other and a second combination is in the other 2 corners.  In this quilt each fabric pair is in 2 blocks rather than all in the same block as in the photo above.  That makes this one look a little more scrappy but not as random as the first photo.



You can see that a little more clearly in the shot of one block.

I hope this gives you more ideas for playing with the blocks if you make a Hunter Star quilt.






I'm going to add this notice to the bottom of every post for a few days.  I realize that cellphone readers don't see my sidebar unless they click on "view web version" so they would miss the opportunity to sign up.
Take a look at the new sign up form on the right side bar of my blog (or click on the link).  I'll be opening a new online store soon and will be offering quilts, quilt tops, fabric kits and more.  I'd love for you to be first in line when the store opens.

Top sewn!!...............



Here it the sewn top.  I love the texture that the Australian fabrics have with all of their little dots.  It is close to 59” x 70” and all of the edges are bias so I’m not sure what the finished size will be.  I think I should add a border to stabilize it so I’ll look today to see what I have that would not take away from the pieced blocks.  I have already staystitched but that isn’t enough to keep the edges straight but it will keep them from stretching.

Take a look at the new sign up form on the right side bar of my blog.  I'll be opening a new store soon and will be offering quilts, quilt tops, fabric kits and more.  I'd love for you to be first in line when the store opens.

And I chose..............

I chose to sew the right side layout.  Thank you for all of the comments and votes yesterday.  24 chose the right side layout, 11 chose the left side (see yesterday's post if you don't know what I'm talking about!). 10 people like both sides equally well or were undecided.  I just turned 2 quarter blocks a half turn on every big star block on the left half to be the same as the right half layout.  Then I noticed the dark squares touched the top and bottom of the quilt but the ends right and left were only half a square.
I took half blocks from the left and placed them on the right edge and now I was really happy with it.  Now it is ready to sew.  Well, not really, there is one quarter block turned the wrong way in both of these photos.  Actually I moved a couple blocks too after the first photo was taken.


Here is a large view and a small view so you can see how different it looks.  In the large view the star points seem more prominent and in the small view the plaid or gingham effect is more visible.

Half and half..........

I finally made it to the design wall yesterday.  I started doing the layout wrong and changed to what I thought was the correct way.  Then I decided to put the other half up the way I thought was wrong and see which way I like it best.

On the layout on the left the star points alternate, light, dark, light dark.  On the layout on the right there are 2 dark, 2 light, 2 dark, 2 light points.  I think I have seen both of these layouts before and never noticed what the difference was.

I know it is an optical illusion but the stars seem closer together in the left layout.

Some of the stars are low contrast because of the busy prints.










With the plainer light prints the contrast is higher. 




Which layout do you like best? (I probably won't answer comments today but would love to hear from you)

Playing with more leftovers.....

I had some leftover cut pieces from a quilt that I made before I had my Studio die cutter.  I decided to sew up a few orphan blocks for my collection.  I probably have enough batik blocks to do another orphan block quilt now.



 
There are still more triangles to sew together and some squares too so there might be a few more blocks.  This is just fun relaxing sewing. 










I also sewed the last 2 rows for the Australian fabric table runner.  It is 10.25" x 23.75" right now.  It could probably use a border all around.  There are 60 different Australian fabrics in the 2" pinwheels plus the yellow alternate square fabric for 61.

Last seams next........

I just have center seams left to sew on the last 16 blocks of the Australian fabric Hunter Star quilt.  Then I can start playing around with the pairs that will make the full star blocks.  There will be 2 blocks alike of each combination.
Last night I knitted while I watched 2 episodes of "Anne with an e" on Netflix.  It is based on Anne of Green Gables which I just read for the first time about 3 years ago.  They have the perfect girl playing the part of Anne.  

I give the multi-skein dishcloths to my youngest granddaughter.  I knitted about a third of the multi-skein one and half of the new one on the needles.