Sewing With Sharon

 

It's been awhile since I last shared the gorgeous creations coming off Sharon's sewing machine. We often tag-team our sewing. We make the same pattern at the same time - as in Lucy (Sharon's and mine) and our Double Irish Chains (Sharon's and mine), for example. And coming up in July, we each have planned to do yet another Double Irish Chain. Red and white. Yes, can't wait. *grin*

Because we have known each other for so long and so well, our quilting preferences often run in similar veins. We get on "kicks" pretty often, and the Kaffe Fassett "kick" is strong on us currently.

 Sharon is making her own version of Ocean Ripples, which I made earlier this year. Take a look at the deliciousness coming off her needle! She made the two halves (one is shown above) and sewed them together on Wednesday.

This looks yellowed, but the window was behind the quilt, so it has an "illuminated" look to it. 

She has now moved on to the smaller HSTs for the borders. They are made, so just the attaching to be done. To be reminded of the KF original, here's a pic from the book Quilts in Burano.

Here's my Ocean Ripples from back in  March, when I finished the flimsy.

We will be unable to sew together for the next couple of weeks as DH and I are going to be on vacation. I am sure we will be in touch with texts and social media, but actual in-person sewing time is on a 2-week hiatus.

Hope you are getting in some good quality sewing time! 

Happy Quilting, Friends!

 

Ocean Ripples Goal Met

One of my goals for 2022 was to make Ocean Ripples, a quilt from an older Kaffe Fassett book, Burano. After finishing Cottage Green, I dove right into the blue KF fabrics at my disposal and with great fervor made HSTs - lots of HSTs - big ones and little ones. The process of beginning a much-anticipated quilt began again.

This post from March 14 (11 days ago), shows that I'd made quite a few of the large triangles, but at that point, not nearly enough. In between binding Cottage Green and Red Jacob's Ladder, and tidying up the cutting table, my anticipation of making this new quilt intensified. 

Today, I've finally attached the small triangle strips that serve as borders. Done. Well, the quilt top is done. The quilting will be down the line a bit. Backing decisions will have to be made first.

With all these triangles, the very best thing I did was to trim every last one of them to size. Even with that, I had two or three places where I had to ease fullness. The smaller triangles which make the border seem as though they will be wavy, but I'm hoping that once it's quilted and bound that it will lay reasonably flat.

 We shall see.

Here's the picture of the quilt in the book.

I knew I wanted it to be larger, and I knew I wanted to rotary cut my pieces rather than use templates. I recently read that because all of Fassett's books are published in the UK, he has to use metric measures. Secondly, because so many of his patterns are designed block by block for optimal, artistic color placement, they opt to use templates so that they can fussy cut, or select a portion of a fabric based on the predominant color or shape. 

Conversely, I am interested in making quilts FAST. I did some moderate figuring for the best, most economical use of the layer cakes I planned to use. The results are as follows: cut 6" squares for making the large HSTs; cut 3.5" squares for making the smaller, border HSTs. I trimmed my large triangles to 5.5", and, yes I did trim every single triangle. The smaller triangles were trimmed to 3" and I made way, way more than I needed. Even with the extra border row on each side (not the top or bottom, although I could), I have over 100 HSTs left over.

Did I mention that I trimmed every single triangle? It was time consuming, for sure, and tedious, but construction of this quilt top came together nearly perfectly. I am glad I made myself do all that trimming.

Here is my quilt top pinned to the design wall. I should have spread it out on the bed, but I had a day-date with DH, so I had to be satisfied with this. Maybe a few more pictures will be forthcoming.

Now, it seems a good time to re-examine the 2022 goals, and I am happy to say that less than 1/4 way through the year, I have 1/3 of my goals met. So far, I can mark off 1 -  Teter Baby Quilt, 6 - Temecula Baskets, and the subject of today's post, 11 - Ocean Ripples. Additionally, I am ahead of schedule for 14, as I have quilted 7 this calendar year. And that last item, 'Numerous TBA Quilts,' will cover my  4-Patch Delight and Cottage Green. 

Wonderful!

Hope you have a relaxing, productive weekend! Will it include some quilting? Mine will!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Ocean Ripples

It's a beautiful Monday! Even with recovering from the loss of an hour due to the time change, I am energized this morning because the sun is out and the temperatures are warming up! Three inches of snow covered this land on Saturday morning. Today, not a sign. Bring it, Spring!

I mentioned in the last post that I'd been super busy and today I want to show you part of what I had going on. A good while back I shared that I'd selected quilts from various Kaffe Fassett books that I wanted to make this calendar year. Here's the post; it also includes my goals for 2022.

To my way of thinking, Ocean Ripples seemed to be the easiest and fastest to make, so I set to work at cutting two layer cakes. I have had to alter the size of my HSTs from what this pattern calls for, but I couldn't bear the thought of wasting any part of the layer cakes, so it was a fair alteration in my way of thinking.

One layer cake consisted of more purple than blue, but put together, I thought they'd be perfect in this quilt. So from each 10" square I cut one 6" square and three 3.5" squares for this quilt. With the bit of layer cake that remained, I cut 2.5" squares that went into my scrap collection.

I drew the diagonal lines, stitched on either side, pressed open, and trimmed. That's a lot of triangle trimming! I am making a bigger quilt than the pattern calls for, so major production time over here!

This picture shows all the larger HSTs from one layer cake. Below, after using the second layer cake to do this many more HSTs, the look has a lot more purple in it.

So what I did was to root around in my KF tubs looking for blues and greens to filter into the mix. I have now made about 30 more large triangles and perhaps 20 small triangles. They are at the trimming stage.

Not a bad fabric dive, right? I have these greens paired up with various blues, and that will hopefully remove the purple overload. I will lay the whole thing out on the bed when all the triangles are trimmed. At this point, I couldn't even say how many I've made or how big this quilt will be!

Trimming takes forever, but I know when I begin construction, that will save me a lot of frustration. This pile is all that is left from 2 layer cakes and trimmed triangles. 

I am off to spread some cheer to a friend suffering an illness. I hope you all are having a glorious Monday!

Happy Quilting, Friends!