confluence

Well that was fun! When Curated Quilts announced January 2 as the deadline for their next Mini Quilt challenge, I knew it would be tight. I mean with my frenetic holiday sewing and the actual holiday activities and all, I got a really late start. But that's the great thing about mini quilts.... just a few hours does the trick.

The theme was Curves, and the color palette white, spring green, moss green, burgundy, fuchsia and teal. It had been a while since playing with improv wavy curves, and they were calling me, so that's the direction I headed.

When it came time for quilting, I was in a real quandary about what color of thread to use and finally opted for Aurifil Monofilament, which I'd used with success earlier in the year. At first, I was regretting my decision, not really liking the look. But the farther and denser I quilted, the more I liked it, and crazy enough, it kind of sparkles in the light. My only real frustration was that almost every time I used my automatic thread cutter and lifted the presser foot, the filament unthreaded from the needle! With my old eyes, this isn't at all helpful! I finally got into the routine of grabbing the top thread immediately after cutting, before lifting the pressure foot, and that little trick saved the day.

It's not an exaggeration to say that this little bit of sewing over the weekend was seriously refreshing, and a great way to close out the year. A faced binding seemed a good finish for it, and in the end, my entry, confluence, measures just over 12" square.

Remembering that my smallest quilt of the year will be hanging at QuiltCon, I just want to remind you that everything we make doesn't have to be huge. In fact, making small - impulsive yet focused - can be really, really good.

Crop Circles

When I started working on this quilt, I may not have expected to enjoy sewing the curves as much as I did, but I totally knew I'd relish working with those greens!

Even though I really wanted to make this quilt, inspired by a photo of crop circles I'd seen online, I was having second thoughts, considering all those curved blocks. But using Latifah Saafir's The Clammy 12" ruler made this project very doable for me. What a relief!

For backing, I pieced together even more of those stashed greens.

Quilting was a dense grid with a delightfully variegated Aurifil 50wt #3320 (Spring Green), which was subtle, blending here and showing itself there .... all quite perfect.

Crop Circles finished at 60" square, and was a really satisfying project. Actually, it's proof positive that if you get a quilt idea, you might as well go ahead and try it!

This quilt is my first finish from my Q3 Finish-A-Long list! Linking up with 2016 FAL Q3 Finishes Link-Up.

Crop Circles

One of the projects I've been working on lately was only imagined when I added it to my Q3 Finish-A-Long list, so it's been fun to make some real progress on it! If you remember, I started with a big ole stack of green prints.

It was fortuitous that when I was inspired to make an all-green quilt, the green stack in my stash was also the tallest, so I had plenty to choose from! I was surprised how few "green green" (kelly green?) prints I had, but for this project, I found quite a range worked well together.

The Clammy 12" from Latifah Saafir has been my sidekick for this, and even making full circles has been a breeze.

I've been fairly random about putting the greens together, making 10 different block styles. 

The one negative about this kind of scrappy-style process is once you put all the blocks together, no matter how you arrange them, you see the same fabrics too close, etc. So I'm still fiddling with the final layout, though I don't expect to mess with that too long. I'm anxious to get all these together and start quilting, whatever that might look like.

When I was first smitten by the original design, I was kind of regretting that so many curves would be involved. So I'm a little surprised how much I enjoyed making all of them! Isn't it great when that happens?

Circles and Curves

While creating this month's Bee Sewcial blocks, I told you I tried my hand at my first six-minute circle. Ignore the cross in the block below, as that really has no part in this discussion, but you can see my perfectly imperfect circle. I took the advice of my bee-mates and went sans the freezer paper suggested in the tutorial, and it all worked out just fine. yay. If you haven't tried the technique, take six minutes (ok, maybe 15) and give it a try!

So then Stephanie/Spontaneous Threads goes and shares her own tutorial for sewing curves, and I asked if I could show a bit about it here, as it's too good to miss, and a companion of sorts to the above circle. When it boils right down to it, both technique are quite similar.

See those beautiful improvisational curves?

photo by Stephanie Ruyle; used by permission

Check out Stephanie's tutorial to learn all.

photo by Stephanie Ruyle; used by permission

It's always good to have techniques like these in your quilting 'toolbox', right? I've come to realize, no matter how long I've been quilting, there's still more to learn!