Back to my PHD

Currently on the design wall

I have finally come to terms with the fact that I lost an entire month of quilting time and that one third of the year is over, yikes. It is now time to move on and get back on track with my 17 in 2017 list, perhaps with a few adjustments made to the line-up of my PHD  ‘projects half done’.

To be perfectly honest, the current project on the design wall has been sitting there, waiting patiently, since the beginning of April and now that I’ve cleared my other top priority commitments, I’ve been able to get back to this one. The center portion of each block had been constructed ages ago and were just waiting for the corner triangles to be added but, because I had chosen a complicated floral fabric featuring a variety of colour and pattern, I stalled out on it and set it aside about a year ago. It was one of those quilts that definitely required design wall space, as the placement of the blocks and that feature fabric is crucial in the overall concept. In the above photo you can see most of the blocks are without the corner triangles and the ones that have their corners sewn on are scattered randomly. After completing only a few, I realized that this project needed to be seen in its entirety, on the wall, before continuing to add the rest of the triangles.

One of these things just doesn't belong

Whenever I’m creating a scrappy project, I find the design wall is my most useful tool. I can happily sew blocks together for days and weeks but when it comes time to stitch them all together, I really must move into my large studio and get those blocks up on the wall for proper placement. That is the stage when most of the design work becomes apparent and also when something ‘not quite right’ will jump off the wall and smack you between the eyes. I need to be able to step back quite a distance to see what needs to be edited, and in this case it was only one weirdo block that didn’t quite work with the rest. It was easily replaced with a new block that flowed much better with the others.

Placement progress

After cutting out all the necessary triangles, I spent an afternoon placing and replacing them until they were Goldilocks-just-right and now I’m ready to start attaching them to their centers. After pressing and trimming each block it will be a breeze sewing them together, and I can’t wait to see them ‘tighten up’ as a quilt top.

Today Lori at Humble Quilts opened up her linky party for the doll quilt exchange and I would highly recommend checking that out.

Tomorrow I will be participating in the Spring Fling Quilt Show at the Plenty United Church from 2:00 until 7:00, where there will be soup, sandwiches, sweets, and coffee served. A few local home-based businesses will have various goods for sale and I will have a table of quilts and pincushions for sale. Although the Plenty Piecemakers are a small group and haven’t gathered officially since last summer, there’s sure to be a lovely selection of quilts on display – I’ll be sure to bring my camera. I can’t wait to see what everyone has been working on over the winter.

As always, carol

 

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