Octagon Nine Patch Progress

Octagons to Snowballs - Jan 2015
Octagons to Snowballs – Jan 2015

Progress is being made, but I have still only worked on the snowball blocks since the last post.

There is certainly a lot of pink! And, secondarily, a lot of warm colors. I used most of the cool colors on the Russian Rubix and want to use what I have.

The good news is that I have to make the 9 Patches, so I can use more cool colors there if the design warrants it.

I am adding the corner pieces using the leaders and enders method. Adding the triangles to the corners makes the octagons look really different from the octagons in the Russian Rubix quilt. I am glad, because it keeps the piece from being boring.

Octagon Nine Patch

It makes no sense to me to work on a project and not use leaders and enders to save thread and get some other rote piecing done. To that end, as I worked on the Stepping Stones, I also added grey triangles to the leftover octagons so I could work towards the Octagon Nine Patch quilt.

Octagon Nine Patch Test
Octagon Nine Patch Test

I kind of wanted to remind myself what mine would look like so I made a mockup in EQ7.

Something looked off so I went and looked at the picture and my piece and realized that I reversed the foreground and background from the original that I saw at PIQF. I was a little upset, but I quickly realized that I had to do it this way, because of the way the octagons were made. My octagon patch is a foreground piece. In Dina Carmiel’s piece, A Touch of Autumn, she used background fabric for the octagons, because they are a base for some applique’. I would have had to completely remake the octagons with the background grey if I wanted to mimic her quilt. The point of my piece is to use up octagons that I already cut for the Russian Rubix quilt.

Octagons to Snowballs December 2014
Octagons to Snowballs December 2014

The sewing of the corner triangles takes a lot of time and if I didn’t like the cheerful colors so much I might give up. As a result, this work makes great leaders and enders piecing. Progress still takes a lot of time.

This is the third quilt I have made with these fabrics and I am really eager to have all three side by side to see the differences.

PIQF 2014

TFQ came down for a visit and we went to the Pacific International Quilt Festival on Saturday. In the past we have gone in time for the Preview on Wednesday, stayed over night on Thursday and Friday and really indulged in quilt show ecstasy. TFQ was not able to come down for the last year or two and I didn’t stay over at all last year. This year we just spent one day and that seemed fine.

Overall, the quilts at the show seemed dark. I think I have been looking at a lot of quilts with white or light or light grey backgrounds lately. These are the feel of quilts I have been making lately also, as you know. The show quilts seemed darker to me. There were a lot of pictorial quilts and a lot of quilts with serious surface design.

Dinghy by Shelly Burge
Dinghy by Shelly Burge

I took a few photos of quilts that struck some chord. One was a quilt depicting dinghies, which would normally fall into the not so appealing pictorial quilt. TFQ was the first one to notice this quilt. This one, surprisingly was interesting because of the use of color.

I really like that violet solid on the left side of the hull. I also like the oars and the inside of the hull on the left side of the left hand dinghy.

I am on the fence about the water. I like the bold choice of the red, but I can’t decide when it was a good choice.

Sheila Walwyn, South Africa, Still Life with Copper Pot
Sheila Walwyn, South Africa, Still Life with Copper Pot

I am not sure how this quilt will look to you, but it was really appealing to me from a Tarts Come to Tea point of view. As you know that quilt is on my list to finish and one thing stopping me is how to quilt a couple of the larger vessels.

If you look closely at the tall, gold pot, you will see the quilt and it makes me wonder if something like that would be suitable for the Tarts? The roundness of the circles would echo the roundness of the large teapot. If it is appropriate, could I actually do the quilting?

In terms of this quilt, I like the still life idea and I also like the use of different fabrics for the background.

Dina Carmiel, Israel, A Touch of Autumn
Dina Carmiel, Israel, A Touch of Autumn

I have been thinking about the leftover octagons from the Russian Rubix. I thought of making them into snowballs, but wasn’t 100% happy with that as a finished block only. When I saw Dina Carmiel’s A Touch of Autumn I got a new idea that would make the piece much better. Take out the hexagons from the piece on the left and add some nine patches and I think that it could be an interesting project and an interesting donation quilt. I like the secondary pattern and it would give me a good opportunity to work with the same colors I have been using. Another series, I guess.

In a way I was looking for true inspiration for current projects and I didn’t even really know it. I found inspiration for 2 projects and, possibly, a third.

It was a great opportunity to visit the vendors. I hadn’t been at a quilt show, really, in awhile and it was appealing to see a lot of different fabrics in one place. I was really looking forward to seeing the vendors. There were a lot of the same vendors who have been there forever, but some new ones as well. We saw some really bright and cheerful fabrics. One of my favorite booths was Quiltin’ Cousins. I love the look of their booth as well as the fabrics. The other booth that was great was Beyond the Reef, which sells rolls of Hawaiian fabric, though in recent years they have brought different fabrics to PIQF. They were really nice and cheerful in that booth. They seemed to be having a great time. I bought some Flatter along with some fabric. I have been wanting to try it and it just seemed like a good time to get some.

Civil War Elegance by Linda Bergemann
Civil War Elegance by Linda Bergemann

We did get inspired by one quilt and may start a joint project based on that quilt. The quilt is called civil War Elegance by Linda Bergmann of Elk Grove, California. Stay tuned for more info.

 

 

**Copyright notice is for photos only not for quilts

Continuing to Choose Colors

I wrote about choosing colors a few weeks ago. If you recall I am looking to make my own Jelly Roll (Jaye Roll??) to make another sample for the Super Secret Project. Since I wrote about that I took the Bill Kerr class and that class helped to inform my additional choices.

Philip Jacobs Print
Philip Jacobs Print

Since I took the class I tried to apply the principles Kerr taught to my attempts at selecting the 40+ fabrics. I have to say that it is difficult to apply the principles we learned at the Fabric Smackdown, because I didn’t start with two completely unrelated fabrics. I started with one Philip Jacobs. You saw it in the previous post as well.

Remember I also had a lime and a couple of orange solids?

What I did NOT want to do was think of the PJ fabric as a focus fabric and just pick matchy-matchy fabrics to go with it. This fabric was to be the jumping off point, but not the full color spectrum for the quilt.

Choosing Colors
Choosing Colors

I still had the essence of the class on my mind, so I grabbed some additional fabrics….

I was going to say “that I thought would work”, but that isn’t quite right.

The fabrics I chose do work together, but I don’t think they would be typically considered “a group.”

Keep in mind, not all of these fabrics will definitely stay in the group. They might, but they might not. I think the group is interesting and it makes my eyes move around. The ones that bug me are the dark pinks from the Notting Hill group (upper left, second column). I don’t hate them. My eyes are drawn to them. I don’t think they are quite right.

I also need some more medium scale prints. Dots? Ta Dots?

I am moving forward and making progress. I need at least 12 more fabrics, if not 15. I think I am going in the right direction. I am not there yet, so I’ll keep working at it.