Sunday, February 25, 2007

I told you I'd get some photos of of what I've been working on in the studio. Here are some more of the blue/green Ohio Stars I've been working on. I put them all together here with the ones I already showed you so, two sets you've seen before, three sets are new. Not a very good photo as I had to use a flash and it washed out the colors. And just for the record, that dark spot on the floor isn't dirt, it's a permanent stain left over from when this was a teenager's den of who-knows-what activities. I'm thinking I like them on point like this


This is my sewing machine table. You can see another project I'm working on in the middle of it, my first attempt at making a doll without a pattern. This is about as much as I can bring myself to show it to you. I'm just winging it, it's not coming out the way I expected, and I've changed directions on the details I want to add three times already. I don't like the beginning of the learning curve, it's painful for me to struggle through that whole "reinventing the wheel" bit - but I decided if I didn't jump in, I'd never get past it to the funner part. (Funner?)


The last thing I've been working on has been cutting out floral blocks. I've accumulated quite a pile of strips.


And here are the blocks themselves. To the left are two sets of ten blocks each, one set of light prints, a second set of dark prints. All florals. To the left are two more sets of ten light prints each and two more sets of ten dark prints each. Sixty prints in all. I was going to spread them all out for you to see but after doing two sets I decided that was too much work. You'll have to be surprised at all the different prints I've used. There are no duplicates.


I keep changing my mind on what to do with these blocks as well. They're currently 9" squares. Originally I was going to just make a simple charm quilt out of smaller charms, maybe 6" each. Then I decided I liked the softness of the floral prints combined with the sharpness of triangles, so I cut the charms larger so I could cut them into half square triangle blocks or hourglass blocks.

Then tonight I looked at them and thought maybe it'd be more fun to do a mix and match "crazy quilt" block. I don't know the name of the technique but basically you carefully line up a stack of blocks, not too many, just enough so you can still rotary cut through them. Cut through them in wonky and somewhat random directions. Then mix and match the prints with each other and sew them back together so that each block looks like a crazy quilt block. Do the same with the next stack. And so on. Anyone know a name or website that shows this type of project?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yep, what she said. I am making a quilt of all sorts of blues and greens (batiks) using this technique... Quilt is for Kristen and Rob...

Mrs. Kristen

Jaye said...

http://www.straw.com/quilting/articles/slashstars.html

I call this technique slash stars. The above is not the site that I used when I did my Katrina quilt top using this method, but it is by the About.com quilting guide, so it is probably fine. the one I used was by a woman who used to put out a quilting newsletter who is active on QuiltNet. I think her name is Selhoy Westhofer or something like that. My advice on the STack and Slash is to use one active print. The pieces run together if there isn't enough contrast. It is a fun and quick pattern, though.