Work in Progress Wednesday: a new quilt!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 6:07AM | Sharon B | 7 Comments | in Ribbon crazy quilt, Work in Progress Wednesdays It's about time I instituted my work in progress reports again. They are a useful tool to make me focus on what has been done in the past week.
My first work in progress report for the year consists of new quilt I have started.
I have just finished piecing these strips which after embroidery will go together to form a quilt. This quilt I am going to call "the ribbon quilt" because it is made up of a number of long strips. I have created a category for it and people can trace its progress that way if they choose.
As you can see the pieces have both straight and curved seams. I aim to embroider all the horizontal seams but leave the long vertical seams free of embellishment so they form a hard edge in the design. I plan to add more lace and encrust the stitching. Once the quilt is assembled, and has a border, hopefully it will be quite dramatic. Of course I am talking about hand embroidery so it will take some time to work.
I plan on rotating two big projects. This little pile looks modest, but it is in fact half the number of 7 inch blocks which will make up another quilt.
Once again they are a mix of straight and curved seams, they use a lot of lace as a result of this wonderful gift from Margaret.
I am trying something slightly different with the colour scheme as I am aiming for soft Victorian colours - not just pastels but interesting muted tones. I am not aiming for sickly sweet pastel colours but what I have here looks a little dull in the photograph. They are not I assure you, as they are quite rich in a subtle manner. So this quilt is something different for me.
I have made about half of the blocks I require and have come to realise that the lace Margaret gave me, combined with gifts like this one from Marilyn and my hoard will be enough for 3 if not 4 large crazy quilts.
For the moment these are going to be my two main projects - both are slow cloths and I hope they will make an interesting journey.
The last thing I have is a finish.
I needed a large tote. I was using a big green recycling bag. Aussies will know the sort of bag I mean, they are available in supermarkets for groceries and intended to be used instead of plastic bags. I have oodles of them as they are so handy.They have a very wide base. It seams to me all sorts of things just fit in them neatly. From books to cameras, to sketch books and art gear, including shoes! I found I was using this type of bag as tote. I decided to make my own bag out of recycled jeans.
It has oodles and oodles of pockets and very wide base. I should have lined the bag up on the grid but you can see how wide it is from this side view.
I lined it with denim too and made sure there was lots of pockets. I took it to the Embroiderer's Guild on Monday and I have feeling it's going to become my regular bag!
Reader Comments (7)
Oooooh Sharon, I love the colours in your ribbon quilt! I am embarking on a journey CQ wall hanging and have just this afternoon been wondering (though that stage is a long way off for me) whether to stitch the joins when you are talking about the exact same thing on your blog. This will be the first time I have ever pieced together any CQ blocks so it could well be a huge learning curve in which I might be using the search button here often!
Hi Shelly great to hear you are starting crazy quilting - the main thing is to have fun with CQ. Usually seams are covered with stitching that is why I mentioned that I was not going to stitch the long vertical seams on this quilt. But Crazy quilting has no rules so its not being so rebellious!
Hi Sharon, I love the denim bag you made. All of the pockets, flaps, tabs and zippers make it just great!
Thankyou Sharon, I've only ever done single blocks before, so getting them all to work together will be a challenge and, hopefully, more fun than fraughtness!
your quilt is going to be wonderful.
but this time I love your jeans bag most, it is the most beautiful jeansbag I have seen ever. Thank you so much for sharing your idea! I will try to make a similar one for myself, I have already collected a lot of old jeans.
I love your blog and I am reading it regularly. you are a great artist!
And I always appreciate all the links you are giving us!
Best wishes from Austria and please excuse my poor English!
It is so exciting to see these two new projects underway!!!
I too really like that new bag of yours too...great proportions, sturdy, and stylin'..
Your information about the embrodery and crazy is very interesting for me. I love the recicled bag. Regards from Spain