Fabric of the Year – Chunking

FOTY 2015 - Chunking
FOTY 2015 – Chunking

I blew through the layout stage and am on to piecing.

Well, relatively anyway.

I gave myself a certain amount of time to do the layout. The time period was about two weeks and during that time, I didn’t take my cutting table or other in-process projects out of the fabric closet. I only allowed myself to work on other projects as leaders and enders and focused on getting this laid out.

This year’s piece was harder to arrange, because the fabrics I used were really different colors than each other. I am not sure why, because individually they don’t look different. The differences in each hue don’t really show up until you put two oranges or pinks next to each other and try and decide which has a lighter and which has a darker value. It is very strange. If I had thought of it I would have kept track of manufacturers and designers to see if I bought different ones this year than last year. I didn’t know that this would happen. It would have also meant that I would have had to keep track last year as well. More data would be needed.

The too-small design wall was a real problem this year, I think. I did not cut the patches down to accommodate the design wall as I did last year. I just crammed them all on the wall. That means that I found some places where I was short. You can see some white spaces on the bottom (near right hand corner). This problem showed up when some of the fabric was taken up by seam allowances and I was able to line patches up more evenly. I have to rummage through my leftover pieces and find some to fill in.

Most of the piece has been sewn into chunks. The chunks are not even because I had some rectangles arranged horizontally and some arranged vertically. With the squares it made for interesting piecing.

The difficulty was what it was and I got the feeling that it was done at some point and started sewing. I talked a little about the sewing when I posted about the Peacock. It is all about leaders and enders, because I only want two unsewn patches off the wall at a time to ensure the piece stays laid out the way I intended.

You can find out more about the FOTY quilts on the series page.

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

5 thoughts on “Fabric of the Year – Chunking”

  1. Gorgeous! I don’t know exactly what you moved around, but that lavender/purple area just glows and makes me so happy. I also love the pale blue and the tiny bit of pink. My eye keeps traveling in that circle and taking it all in.

    1. I could, but I am lazy. I take pictures with my phone and refer back to those quite frequently. The only time it doesn’t work is when the fabrics are too close to tell (solids are a problem) which goes where.

  2. Did you try taking a b&w photo with your phone to determine the value of the pieces? It usually helps me a lot. It’s coming together nicely! I didn’t realize the pieces were not all rectangles until I took a closer look of the photo.

    1. I have done that in the past, but didn’t this year. I found that pieces that I moved because they were the right value looked weird in the finished piece, so I tried just working with my eyes this time.

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