My daughter took photos of a few of my quilts with the natural daylight from the east window. Most of the photos on my blog are taken in the basement with daylight fluorescent bulbs. The ''real" daylight is so much better for true color and value changes. This is the Trip Around the World I finished in January. You can check back here as to how it looks with daylight bulbs.
Here is another one which shows the richness of the colors of the plaids and stripes. I finished it in March.
My daughter made the mosaic tile framed mirror on the wall behind me.
The redbuds are in full bloom now.
The cranesbill has its first flower. I have 3 different varieties of it and this is the earliest bloomer.
I dug up some hostas to share. There are 6 plants in that box. I took a few more garden photos that I will show tomorrow.
Last night I sewed the last 10 seams and finished this top. It is 70.5" x 93.5". The distance view is dramatic but close up I enjoy all of the wonderful 30s reproduction fabrics. I made a smaller quilt very similar to this 30 years ago and finished it with prairie points matching the color sequence all around the edge. I don't have any plans to do that again but never say never........it might seem like a good idea some day.
It is so easy to match all of the intersections in this quilt because they are only 2" apart. As soon as I sew onto one, I match the next one and put my finger on top of it and ride it all the way to the presser foot. Then sew across that seam and match the next one.
I got 12 more long rows sewn together last night.
I spent part of the day doing a little sewing for a friend and then errands. It was chilly but is going to be up to high 70s by Sunday.
I was gone most of the day yesterday but I worked on this quilt last night. I unpicked the rest of the pieces and then started sewing some long strips together. It has already shrunk 3" in width. It will be a total of 23" narrower by the time all of the strips are sewn together.
My granddaughter came over late yesterday afternoon to work on her quilt so I did some unpicking in the times that she didn't need my help. I have 4 more strips to add to the right edge and the rest of the pieces for the bottom half. I decided to go with the yellow center because that gave me the lavender breakpoint that touches the center of each side of the quilt. I have to cut loops from the 5th strata for the rest of the pieces.
Dana, you have questions......you are a NO REPLY. I have an email link on my right sidebar.
There are 24 fabrics in this Trip Around the World so I needed to unpick 24 loops to be able to decide what will be the center. In this photo it would be the lavender.
I can move the strips from the left edge to the right edge and see every fabric as the center. Look at the bottom right corner above as it changes by one square in each photo.
Since I had predetermined that I want all 4 of the same color as a center I just took photos of a set of 4 strips moved to the right until I had seen every color as the center.
This last photo shows the last color as the center. I think my two favorites are the lavender and the yellow as centers.
Some of the strips in this Trip Around the World aren't full width. If I had enough fabric I cut one extra strip and then cut a piece from it to finish the length. In the case of the second pink fabric I only had enough to fill in on 2 stratas. I went to my 30s repros scrap bag and found a substitute that is about the same value. I will have a few strata loops left over so I'm not sure how many times it will appear in the quilt.
The cactus with the orange blossoms decided to have one more round.
Next week I'll have 2 more blossoms.
Thanks everyone yesterday for your kind comments about Otis and his quilt top. I hope he read them.
Here is my 86 year old friend Otis with his finished Trip Around the World quilt top. It is 78" x 98" and you can see by his smile that he is very pleased with it and happy that it is finished as of yesterday. It will go to the quilter soon and then he will gift it to a family member.
I finished cleaning the basement and baked the cookies and had time left over to cut one strata of my 30s Trip Around the World. Some of the fabrics weren't full width and had to have a piece added. I had to cut around the break and only got 19 strips out of a strata. I need 5 more pieces from the next strata to have 1/4 unpicked and ready to decide what the center will be. I have always wanted to have a TAW of 30s reproduction fabrics so this marks one off my very long list.
I started designing this with the solid color at the bottom of each color group. I think I might like it better with it at the top so that means reversing all of the strips I have up on the wall. After the art quilters leave I will move this over to a double design wall and flip the strips.
