Tag: Hand Piecing

Month 12 arrived and I did a bit of cutting, but thought I could do the rest when I went to Sew Day. I was almost able to finish, but not quite. I spent some time that same day to finish after I got home, but before dinner. That was exciting because that meant I could start working on M12 right after dinner. ( yes, I lead a simple life. Partying for me is an evening with John Barnaby and my DH. 🙂   )

It was a bit of a trial to cut and baste. I didn’t want to use the Squirrel or Raccoon fabric. Because I am determined to use the fabric, I tried really hard to fussy cut around the squirrels and raccoons. I couldn’t find an appealing angle that would give me enough of the shapes I needed. It didn’t help that that shape I needed was the largest pentagon.

I switched the fabrics out when I got home. I used the coneflowers instead of the raccoons and the Daydreamer flamingo fabric instead of the squirrels. I alternated the flamingos with another part of the fabric that included more blue and green to help with the transition between rosettes. Apparently, birds are not animals in my crazy mind and I don’t mind them looking at me through eternity.

Anyway, I am super excited to be working on this project again.

Month 12 arrived and that means 6 months to go after this.

At first glance I was not that excited about the fabrics this time. Lots of Tiny Beasts and, as I have said, I do not want animals looking at me for eternity. Also, I have had enough green. I want more turquoise. I need to balance those feelings with “I already bought the fabric and need to use it.” I took a good look to see what I wanted to change out with the fabrics.

As I looked closer, I found that there were some possibilities with most of the fabrics, though there are a couple I will change out.

First I got out the fussy cut mirror** to look at different aspects of the stag fabric. This required me to take a good look at the fabric. I found that there were two kinds of orchid type flowers I could use instead of the stag’s head.  The first one was ok, but the second was very appealing. I particularly like the middle.

I am still cutting, so I haven’t done it with all the ‘suspect’ fabrics, but will.

I also decided I would use the ombre little fluffy clouds/sunset (PWTp 177-Dragonfruit from the Daydreamer line) fabric for the middle of the stars. Pink Door had white for those centers. I want the whole star to be one color.

The racoon fabric from Tiny Beasts will probably go as it is basically a tone-on-tone if I eliminate the racoon motif. Same with the squirrels, though there are some interesting vine patterns that may work for fussy cutting. However, they are green.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Another month under my belt! Good thing, because I received the notice that Month 12 is about to ship.

This was a pretty easy month, though I did cut and re-cut fabric for some of the pieces a couple of times. I couldn’t decide what fabric to use to replace the Alice faces. I don’t want animal faces looking at me and I certainly don’t want Tula’s little sister as Alice looking at me for eternity!

Pink Door’s Sandra sent a new layout that shows all the rosettes we have made. I think Month 12 will use a lot of blue. Hooray!! I plan to add (substitute?) turquoise if there isn’t enough for me.

 

On a separate Life note. I know today is bad for women. Power has temporarily won. While we regroup:

I am making progress on the rosettes and edge pieces that comprise Month 11.

I showed you the first rosette from Month 11 the other day. I have continued to work on the month and this is what my workspace in the living room looks like while I am sewing in the evenings.

The particular sections I show above are not quite as satisfying as some of the other months. It is so fun to see them grow, however, and I am so thrilled with how the project is progressing.

After some false starts with basting, I have made some progress on the first part of Month 11.

The lacy looking bits in the middle ring are what gave me some trouble. I cut pentagons using the flower motifs from parts of the Alice fabrics, but I didn’t like the alternating look. I saw that someone else did all of the white and yellow motifs, so I did that as well.

There isn’t a lot of contrast in this block, which is fine with me. I think I avoided the bee look (black and yellow) pretty well despite the black and yellow in the this block. It doesn’t scream bees at me.

Tula doesn’t use a lot of yellow in her work, so I know Pink Door had a hard time with the yellow rosettes.

I usually don’t start my basting the second the BOM monthly package arrives. As much as I would love to drop everything and start cutting and sewing, I have stuff I need to be doing, such as work.

I also pre-wash all of my fabric, including the small pieces for this project. The point is that it takes me a little bit of time to get to basting. The good thing about the delay is that I get to see what other people think.

One thing that happens is that people start complaining about not having enough fabric. I have talked about my strategy before, which is to just buy more fabric if I don’t have enough. I always think it is me.

The complaining started even before my pretty pink package arrived, so when I got ready to baste, I knew I had to be careful. I also challenged myself to get all the pieces I needed out of the fabric given. I cut the skinny triangles one at a time, lining them up carefully next to each other.  I didn’t have  yards left over, but I ended up with enough to cut a few more skinny triangles.

My expectations are not that we get yards of extra fabric. I am happy to get just what I need. Who knows, though? I never participated in a BOM before. So far, I am satisfied.

I joined the three rosettes I talked about the other day. It was hard because I couldn’t grab the two pieces properly.

I think it looks pretty good. I wasn’t as stunned by the completion as I was after the first join.

This entire piece is about the same size as one of the larger rosettes. Obviously, it isn’t the same shape.

Yay! Month 11 is here! The pretty pink package arrived the other day and I getting ready to baste.

This was supposed to be a beast because Pink Door had to move some of the rosettes due to shipping delays. It doesn’t seem awful to me.

There is a lot of fabric, however. This is the first month that will include Tula’s new line, Tiny Beasts.

The rosettes also include the Alice fabric. The directions say to fussy cut her face, but I am going to skip that part. I’ll figure out a way to use the other parts of the fabric.

All the fabric is washed, so I can get started as soon as I have a spare minute.

This is a La Passacaglia heavy week here on the blog.

You can see the new fabrics I highlighted in my post “That was Then This is Now” the other day in the Month 7 rosette (upper left).

If you look at where the Sew Tites are placed, you can see where I will join the two sections (Month 7 to Month 6 and 10).

I spent some time the other night adding the various pieces I needed to Months 6 and 7 so I could join them to Month 10. The yellow arrows point to the star points as well as the star points/diamond combination (middle top).

I am ready to sew the three rosettes together. I was going to do it Friday, but got home too late and was tired.

I definitely get a different view when the rosettes are even set together. This realization makes me wish I had spent more time looking at the rosettes together.

As mentioned, I had to change out some of the fabrics on Month 7. Month 7 looked like:

Notice the light green Fruit Snacks fabric on the pentagons on the right?

Now this rosette looks different. I didn’t want Fruit Snacks to be next to other Fruit Snacks, so I changed out the pentagons to the emerald fabric I used in Month 9.

I like the way it looks and the Fruit Snacks star points can be seen.

The other day I talked about joining two rosettes. This achievement emboldened me to join another piece to those two rosettes.

Of course, joining more rosettes gets more complicated, because joining pieces are required. What I call ‘joining pieces’ are pieces that need to be added in between the rosettes so there are no holes. I am not sure why these weren’t included when we sewed the other rosettes, but it doesn’t matter.

It was easy for me to add one more rosette to those two rosettes I joined the other day except I had to include a joining piece.

When I set the three together, I saw the hole. I went and looked at the layout map we received and also at the book. The book, not clear in the best of circumstances, was pretty clear on this point.

This meant I had to figure out what to do. Or do nothing.

Laying the rosettes out allowed me to look at them to see how the rosettes fit together.

The circled point is where I had to fit in a fabric. I wanted it to look as though the rosettes fit together well. That spot is not is not ideal as it is not really any part of any of the three rosettes. 

The start point was already cut and basted. It is attached to the bottom rosette with a clip so all I had to do was decide on a fabric for diamond.

After looking at the whole piece I decided on the peach hexagon fabric. Look carefully in the middle to see it laid together in the spot. It kind of looks, which was my intention, like the peach and orange rosette is peeking through from behind the green rosettes.

I got distracted by finishing the Take A Stand bags, so I haven’t joined them together yet. I still may be able to do it before M11 arrives.

 

I finished Month 10 a few days ago. As mentioned, I am waiting for Month 11 to arrive. I started looking at the piecing directions for all of the rosettes and decided to dip my toe into joining some.

I was a little stunned after working out the details and doing the sewing. I am not going whole hog into joining all the rosettes, mostly because I have nowhere to store larger pieces. I do plan to join more as I have time.

I think the two look great and I can’t wait to see more of what happens as I join the pieces