Monday, October 10, 2011

Snowball Rail Fence. Quilt-As-You-Go quilt

I started a class last week Tues at The City Quilter in New York.  This one is a Snowball Rail Fence, and it is constructed as a quilt-As-You-Go quilt.  I'm having such fun with it.  I can make my mismatched seams and wonky lines, and it looks adorable.  Clearly I'm not meant to be a traditional quilter.  I'm too innacurate for that, but I have mastered wonky.  Not by choice, but because that's the way I sew.  So here's a pic of what I have so far.  I don't think it will be much larger since it's meant to be a little wall hanging.


Those turquoise corners turn the square into a snowball.  Neat, huh?  Yep, all you experience quilters, I know.  This is not brain surgery type of quilting, but it suits me just fine.  There will be a little bit of that turq fabric put in where the blocks come together.  Cute and fun as can be.

Here's another layout:


I'm using all batiks.  I just love them to pieces, literally.  And the colors are glorious.

So which do you like better?  I'm leaning toward the top layout.  I did try alternating vertical and horizontal blocks, but it looked too mish-mash for me.  If you look at each block, you'll see that none of my stripes are the same width.  This was actually done on purpose.  I decided to embrace wonky-ness.  Also, some of them are on a bit of an angle.  That was also done on purpose.  OK, I lied.  That's the way I sew, but I've also embraced that bit of off centered stuff, and I like it.

Am I ever going to be an ace quilter?  Are you kidding?  But I'm having the time of my life with this.  Elder DD already wants a real quilt made this way.  For that, I'd make the blocks bigger.  She'll have to pick out fabric with me.  It's a tough life, but someone has to make these decisions.  And then I thought I could make place mats using this strip method.  A busy print on the other side (these things are reversible), which would hide the Hub's food messes (evil laugh here), and an assortment of something or other on the front side.  Again, I'll have to make the sacrifice of buying more fabric, but I'm tough and can handle that.

Knitting is proceeding apace.  I made an idiotic mistake on the charting for Arachne's Delight (see previous post), but I think I fixed it.  DragonYady, the poor soul, gets to test knit it, so keep your fingers crossed that I've repaired my goof.

Otherwise, I'm making socks for me.  Nothing exciting, in fact I'm using some of my patterns which are on Ravelry.  I like the patterns, haven't knit anything beyond basketweave in many months, so I'm happy to repeat some of what I've already done.   Pics?  Boring.  They are just cute socks.

Sharon - I wonk; therefor I am, I guess.  I think wonk comes naturally to me, precision is totally not me.
 Henya - It's not particularly difficult, the problem lies in my inability to both cut straight lines and sew a straight seam.  So, to compensate for that, I've decided that wonky quilts will be my forte.  If you can't beat 'em, you might as well join 'em.

5 comments:

SharonO said...

I think it is looking beautiful. I think I am liking the top layout better but would be happy with either. Don't you just love batiks? I don't think they can look bad.

I think you are right to embrace the wonky, even if that isn't what you are going for. :)

Henya said...

I love it! And it looks like rocket science to me!

Jen Mc said...

That is gorgeous!!! I can't wait to see your progress on it.

Karen - Quilts...etc. said...

I love this layout.
Karen

Teena in Toronto said...

So cute!

Happy blogoversary :)

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails