WIP Wednesday - Designing Paper Pieced Stars

Seeing as I won't make the deadline for the triangle-a-long this weekend, I figured, as it's a Bank Holiday here this weekend, to try and make some headway on my baby Medallion quilt.  The last round planned for this are some stars and 4 hearts in the corners.  The whole design when finished should look like this:

Yes, it's very busy and I hope very colourful. I'm not even sure how to begin toning it down if I ever wanted to!

I scaled up the 3" hearts in the inner border to 4" and 6" for the last two borders. I've been playing with star shapes trying to figure out what will work best for the quilt.  The last border will be 6" and my original design above had a fat star with 6 points.  There are lots of ways to make a 6 pointed star, EPP diamonds, piecing with triangles or inset seams but to try it out quickly I decided to paper piece. 

After a bit of trial and error I came up with a fat 6 pointed star and a skinnier 5 pointed star using both Quilt Assistant and EQ7 which now runs on my old Macbook.

Paper piecing was quick and I think I can get 2 stars from each 10" layer cake so not too wasteful of fabric.  The fabric I'm using for the Stars is a layer cake from Me and My Sister with Kona snow for the background.

With only a few seams it went together very quickly and what's great about paper piecing is all the points are protected, especially nice when making star shapes!

 So now I've got 2 stars made, I need to make a decision.

I'm leaning towards the second one on the bottom.  I'm hoping when pieced together they will make a lovely chain around the quilt to finish it off.  What do you guys think?  There'll be 40 stars in total so 39 more to go!

Linking up to

MQGI Medallion Quilt-A-Long update

 

It's been 3 weeks since the last update on the Baby Medallion quilt, where did those weeks go to?  At this point we should be finished border #3.  Even with the extra week given to us by Cindy I'm only just finished border #2 and about to start border #3!  Now it's not all bad news, it's coming together nicely if a bit slowly.  All the math's are working out so far and paper piecing the diamonds turned out to be a good decision as they are all so straight and pointy!

And I got my clouds made

And my balloon stitched down!  Just need to add some tails to the kite and the centre panel will be finished at last!

We are following Melanie's guidelines (Catbirds Quilts Medallion series) and she suggested to take the time between borders 2 and 3 to make sure everything is squared up.  This turned out to be great advice.  After the first checkerboard round things were a little stretchy.  Adding the plain frames to grow the dimensions to a number divisble by 3 for the diamonds really helped.  I trimmed back the inner border to 2.75" all around and added the pink 1.5" strips.  I made sure the length cut was correct for the width and height and used a lot of pins to add this frame.  It eased in any stretchiness (?) and pulled the quilt into a more rectangular shape.  I have to admit I was a bit nervous making the cut hoping I hadn't gotten the math's wrong but sometimes you just have to do it and see what happens.  All worked out in the end ok, so now round #3!

I had great intentions at the weekend but then ended up a tad under the weather and did nothing for the whole weekend!  So this is where I'm at:

The plan for this round of borders is to add flying geese!  86 of them + 4 more hearts!  I bought a charm pack and a layer cake of Hubba Hubba by Me and My Sister and this will be used for the next 2 rounds.  I've used a lot of scraps from Me and My sister fabric ranges in this already and their designs are really child friendly, bright and happy which is what I'm going for here.

Only question now is which method of Flying geese do I use to make them?  Flying geese are traditionally twice as wide as they are high.  (Quilters cahce and Instructables have nice explanations of these methods with diagrams and step by step instructions if you are interested in making your own.)  I'm looking at using 4" wide x 2" high for this border.  I'm not sure what the quickest method is. 

A is charm pack friendly, has a little waste and requires sewing them all up individually
B has no waste and does make 4 at a time, all identical and will need them sewing up individually
C, Foundation paper piecing,  makes them up in strips as you go along and guarantees perfect pointiness, but will inevitably have more waste.

I'm leaning towards C.  What do you think, what's your preferred way to fly?

Linking up to  Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland

WIP - Another border on the Medallion Baby quilt

The insatiable fabric monster, aka Hexie Baby Medallion Quilt, is chugging along.  I've been working on this and only this and am still behind for today's status update with the MQG of Ireland Quilt-A-Long!  Oh well, I  am making progress - did I mention handstitching hexagons is a slow, easy going kind of a thing?  I still need to stitch in the balloon/basket lines and add the clouds in the centre panel. I have watched 17 episodes of Persons of Interest while making this so far, plus the odd episode of Midsomer Murders!

The chequerboard border took 2 fat quarters and is not as square as I would have liked (lots of seams!)  I'm  hoping it will straighten out as I add more to it.  The next border is made up of a frame to grow the quilt top, to make the Maths easier, to add the outside row of 3" diamonds.

I had hoped to make the diamonds all from scraps but did in the end have to cut into a charm pack from Me & my Sister.  The centre panel hexagons are entirely from scraps.  Last year, the MQG of Ireland had a pin cushion swap and I got this beauty from Rosie, along with some fabric and I've used the fabric for the centre panel and managed to make it stretch for some diamonds too.

I like the idea of the fabric linking the MQGI projects to each other!

I used a low volume polkadot for the frame to keep everything soft and I'm thinking it might be a little too soft.  One of the things we've been learning in Stitched in Color's class, Colour Intensive, is fabrics with a lot of white in them can tone down the saturation of neighbouring colours.  I can see this with my border choices above and though it was a deliberate decision I'm thinking of adding in a skinny border to frame the centre panel and help draw focus inwards. 

What do you think?  Pink to the rescue or not?

 

So this lot needs to be sewn up and then its onto flying geese for the next round.  So glad we have 3 weeks until the next check in because I have 86 of them to make!  Did I mention yet that Medallions use a savage amount of fabric? 

Linking up to Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland and

WIP Wednesday - Checkerboard & Hearts Border Baby Quilt

I'm still working on hexies, they are not finished yet though I now have a cloud to go with my kite, some flowers and a bee!  But I decided to take a break from them and make up the first border on my medallion quilt for the MQG of Ireland Medallion-A-Long.  The guidelines from Catbird Quilts for the first border is to have it maximum 4" so with my dimensions of 18 x 24 three seemed a good number.


So I cut strips 2" wide in the pale pink and blue from some fat quarters of Tailored by Annette Tatum.  Cut them 2" wide and made 12 for the top and bottom border and 16 for the sides.

 For the corners I had the idea to add a heart.  As they are 3.5" unfinished, 3" when sewn in, I thought some of the corner pieces that define a heart shape would be very small so the easiest way to make them would be to paper piece them.  My first attempt was a little too angular and not quite heart shaped so I modified the top a little (bottom heart on the picture) and was much better.

I sewed the squares into 4 patches and here they are so far.

The border is not yet sewn into the background fabric and I need to sew on my hexagon shapes and add some grass for the flowers but getting there!

I need to remake the bottom heart as it was made with template #1 and I should have just enough to do it.  I was a little worried I'd run out of fabric on this border. Medallions use a lot more than you would initially think! Then again there lots of seams in this chequerboard but I like the effect.  

The template I made from EQ5 is here if anyone wants to make 3" hearts!
Linking up to 

WIP Medallion Baby Quilt

It's a real work in progress here today.  I'm making my centre panel using hexies for the Medallion-A-Long hosted by the Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland.  It's open to anyone to join in.  It's tons of fun but I'm a little behind schedule.

I'm supposed to have a centre panel and the first border on by now bringing this up to 24.5" square.  Well, I'm not following path 1, I'm doing the slightly improvised while still following guidelines path 2!  My centre block is rectangular measuring 18.5 x 24.5" already without the first border on and will hopefully measure 24.5" x 30.5" when border 1 is done.

I have a balloon and a kite all basted up and ready for joining.  I underestimated the time it takes to hand piece hexagons so still working on these guys!

There will be clouds in front of the sun (this is Ireland after all!) and I found this lovely cloud like fabric in a new bundle of Tailored by Annette Tatum.  I bought this on sale from Craftsy and it has lovely pastel colours going through.  Very baby quilt friendly.

 The guidelines are to introduce as many fabrics as you want to use in the quilt in the first third and as I'm making this from a mixture of scraps and stash I've gone a bit mad.  I've got multi-coloured flowers and will have 2 little bees from the pastel fabric buzzing around them.

So far the plan for the first border will be a chequerboard with hearts in the corner.  I'm going to need 3" hearts so I'm hoping to draw up a template and paper piece them! 

 So a bit behind but making progress.  Linking up to Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland and

Medallion Quilt Along

The Modern Irish Quilters are having a Quilt-A-Long.  It is for a Medallion quilt and there are two choices.  Follow along building borders around a central panel of 15", like a star or a paper pieced centre, or do your own thing, following guidelines from Catbird Quilt Studio's series on how to make a Medallion Quilt.

I have ideas for both and I'm really intrigued by the design hints on both streams. The centre panel should be 1/4 to 1/3 the size of the quilt and there are hints for framing the surrounds and adding borders.  I am hoping to learn a lot!  The idea that is buzzing around my head the most is this one for a baby quilt with a centre panel made using hexagons; Something like this:

It came from playing with hexagon shapes in Microsoft Word and I ended up with a brightly coloured balloon. 
The sun and the grass came from the Craftsy 2012 BOM with Amy Gibson.  Her Block "Sunny with a chance of Hex" was used to teach Paper piecing Hexagons and she challenged us to make our own version and that's were the bees and flowers came from.   The ideas from these blocks stayed with me so adding the balloon seemed like a good idea and to add a curve to the grass and then to fill the space with a kite and some clouds maybe.

Playing with borders is giving me this so far, though it will probably change as I make it.

 

I want my centre panel to be rectangular not square and to fit all of the hexagon designs I'm going to make it 18" by 24".  To make the balloon and flowers etc I've had to learn a little about the geometry of Hexagons.  If you have no interest in Maths you can skip this bit!

You can print templates for Hexies from Incompetech and they look like this:

You enter the length of the side you want and it calculates the rest and gives you the template to cut the hexies to the correct size.

For the balloon above I wanted it to be about 5" high and there are 5 hexies stacked to make the balloon at it's highest point, so I need my individual hexies to be 1" high.

The height is the square root of 3 multiplied by s.  The square root of 3 is 1.732 (1.732 x1.732=3) so if I want a 1" height I need to divide 1 by 1.732 to get s which is 0.58".  Putting 0.58 into the website gives me this template.

I have a 5" high balloon and it will be  just under 6" across.  (W=2x0.58 which is 1.16 and there are 5 hexies so 5 x 1.16 is 5.8")

So I now have 5 templates printed for the 5 different sizes I need (balloon, flower, bee, sun, clouds).  I'll worry about the kite next week!

So for the rest of the week, I'll be busy cutting up the templates and stitching tiny hexagons together!

And for the original idea of a star centrepiece in case you are interested this is the Mosaic of favourites I found on flickr.  I am hoping for some border inspiration from these gorgeous quilts.

1. Swirling Medallion quilt top - side view, 2. Marcelle Medallion - advice please, I'm stuck, 3. Border 8, 4. Modern Medallion Top, 5. FO: Marcelle Medallion, 6. Mystery Medallion Quilt - Border 3, 7. Baisakhi Medallion Quilt, 8. Medallion Quilt detail, 9. Medallion Quilt detail, 10. Medallion Quilts on Craftsy, 11. Medallion Border #6, 12. My Quilt  

Linking up to Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland and