Wednesday, 12 February 2020

February 2020 goal achieved!

On Friday 7th Feb I posted and linked my One Monthly Goal, today I achieved it.  All those flying geese are now firmly sewn into their blocks, ready for trimming and setting into the final layout.  At least one block has some of the background fabric 180 degrees out of phase, but in the end I left it like that.  If it had been 90 degrees out it would have been ripped out and resewn as that really would have grated on the eye.

Here are all 43 blocks sat on the yellow sashing and brown cornerstone/border fabrics.  The yellow colour is in the pattern of the cream "sky" parts of the flying geese, and it was that sky fabric that turned out to be uni-directional.  The border brown has red details in it to go with the red in the main blocks.



More trimming, cutting and sewing will happen after my next business trip.  Just for once I will not be changing time zones or crossing international borders for a site visit!

So nice to achieve the One Monthly Goal after a looong break!

Friday, 7 February 2020

2020 quilting again!

After a long hiatus I'm back, though I make no promises for this to be a regular or common occurrence.  In 2018 I travelled a lot with work which means no sewing machine and 2019 felt particularly fragmented with travel and personal stuff.

During this period I have been doing some quilting and knitting as well as dyeing both fabric and yarn - I'll probably write about those in future postings.  For quite some time my quilting mojo just up and left me, but during an enforced cleaning and voluntary reorganisation of my sewing area I seem to have found it again. Since then I have finished a baby quilt (always good for some instant gratification), made another 2 baby quilt tops and sandwiched them - a shout out to the Tuesday QBs where I was able to use big tables and extra hands made short work of the pinning, and I have also got my teeth back into a commissioned quilt.

Ah, yes, the commission, this has taught me a lot over the last year and a bit.
1) when possible work with colours that spark joy in you - if they don't they may sap your mojo
2) buy more of the fabrics than you think you need for the quilt - there may be extra items like pillow shams to consider
3) don't choose directional fabric when you are making hundreds of flying geese!

All that brings me to February's One Monthly Goal.  This month (which for various reasons means the next 7 days) I aim to turn these:




into another 20 of these:



which should be sufficient to complete the main panel of this quilt.  As you can see LOTS of flying geese!

I'll report in after the end of the month with my progress!