WIP Wednesday : Quilt Design

Happy Wednesday!  Feeling like I am making progress this week on some of my to do list!  Today I am guest posting on the Modern Quilters Ireland Blog the second post in a series on quilt design software.  I am exploring Touchdraw, an app for iPad and Android tablets and runs on Mac computers too.

Touchdraw on a Mac

Touchdraw on tablet

If you are interested to read about these quilt designs please pop over and visit the MQI blog!

Touchdraw is a favourite of Lynne’s from Lily’s Quilts who has written tutorials on her blog using it.  I find it a very useful tool for playing with shapes and creating images for patterns and online sharing.

In other news,  Reflections is quilted!  I took Yvonne's advice and quilted the background sky with a squiggly water pattern, quilted vertically to give the feeling of rain.  Poor dragonfly getting pelted (not sure they can fly in rain!).  He is also strictly the wrong size in proportion to the raindrop but hey I'm taking poetic/artistic licence on this one!

The dragonfly is a motif I learned in Ann Peterson's Crafty Class on free motion quilting and I was a bit nervous quilting him - one of those take a breath moments again!

I used YLI 50 weight variegated purple thread and I just love it.  Quilts up beautifully!

I love Yvonne's suggestion for this, it was absolutely the right decision - thanks so much!

I started quilting the ripples in the water with my walking foot but had difficulty in the tighter circles so I free motioned it.  The lines are not perfect.  I am telling myself they are organic looking and trying not to look closely at them!  I used white and added in some rainbow colours in the ripples to fit the Reflections theme.  Just have to trim and bind this one now.  Should finish about 36" square or thereabouts!

As I am still a bit under the weather,  I stayed pretty close to the fire in the cosiest room in the house, the living room.  The dogs joined me on the sofa while I decided to do some comfort knitting. Comfort knitting is not that comfortable when you have a Basset Hound trying to eat your Merino wool!

Still, I had made G a cabled hat with this pattern found on Ravelry and somehow he managed to put a giant hole in it.  I think he's blaming the dog!  I have no idea how to fix this save frogging it all out.  Any ideas?

So having two balls of Debbie Bliss Rialto Aran on hand in a very manly charcoal colour I decided I'd knit him another.  It really is a very quick pattern to do!  Just as well too as we got some March snow!

Then finding my knitting groove I dug out this lovely denimy coloured yarn from Loop Knitting and decided to make myself a cabled waistcoat/vest to keep me warm at the sewing machine!

I chose this pattern Cloud Chaser by Amy Swenson and managed to get a little bit started.  This one might take a while!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday & Let's Bee Social.

WIP Wednesday–Lots going on!

Lots going on around here at the moment!   I guest posted about using Microsoft Word to design a quilt over on the Modern Quilters Ireland blog this week and I've got 3 projects with deadlines in the next few weeks on the go, so have been busy sewing, pulling fabric and buying batting!

Sorry I haven't had too much time to spend writing and sharing about the projects but here's a not so quick progress report.

Techniclolour Galaxy
I uploaded my colour scheme to the Palette Builder tool on Play Crafts and it helped me pull colours off my Kona colour card.  Some were spot on and some where the new colours added recently which I don't have so I picked a good few chips that were pretty close to what I wanted.  I found curry and sunflower too close to each other in reality so opted for butter and sunflower instead!
These are the fabrics I chose from my stash that are close to the colours the palette builder suggested from the drawing.  Some are really close and some a little off but still perfectly usable.  Really happy with how this this worked out!

The fabrics are shot cottons I bought from Craftsy.  They had a sale on last year with quite a bit off and I bought both the light and dark fat quarter bundle of the Kaffe Fassett collection.  They are very close in colour to my Kona colour card chips!

I definitely don't have enough blues! I will need quite a bit of blue for this and managed to pull 4-5 fat quarters.  I've heard shot cottons shrink a bit when washed and am not sure how to mix them with other fabrics.  Anybody used these fabrics before?  Any advice?  Hawthorne threads and Cotton Patch has them for sale by the yard so I will have to purchase to supplement what I have on hand.

I'm not sure yet if this will be an all solids quilt or to mix in some prints.

For the moment though, I have enough to get started with block number one which involves cutting templates and using a white bias strip to cover the joins and hold the pieces in place.  I've bought a clover bias maker 3/8", steam a seam lite 1/4" fusible strips and some Moda Porcelain ( a gorgeous off white) from my local quilt shop (The Limerick Quilt Centre) and will let you know how I get on with this next week (first time doing this!)

Reflections
The Irish Patchwork Society & the Northern Ireland Patchwork Guild have a Hands Across the Borders exhibition and this year the theme is Reflections.  The quilt has to be maximum 1m square.  I've had an idea of a raindrop creating a ripple and the light reflecting through it in my head since the theme was announced and I just can't shake it. 

In the making, the triangle seemed too harsh a shape for the curves so it changed quite a bit to the natural tear drop shape of rain.  I chose the light and blue fabrics from the architextures range which I bought from Fluffy Sheep Quilting.

I had intended to make this about 21" (the length of a fat quarter) but in talking with G we decided bigger might have more impact in such a simple design and go mad with the quilting (eek!) so I up sized it to about a yard square.

I sewed the dark fabric onto the light blue about half way down and folded it back to have it layered over the lighter fabric.  I used a print out of my design to create a template to cut away the top dark fabric with my rotary cutter (scary moments!) and reveal the lighter fabric underneath.

In keeping with the curvy ripples the raindrops became less angular and more curvy applique pieces. So now I just have to stitch the raindrops, baste and quilt it - all by March 13th!

This is the quilting plan so far.  Circular quilting echoing the ripple and adding in some rainbow colours, wavy wiggle on top maybe?  I'm going to try and quilt in a dragon fly too.  Nervous about this one - not sure I can pull it off as I imagine it!

Oh well, it's only fabric, what's the worst that could happen?

Lost in London 84" quilt for Make Modern
And the last project but most important is to get my submission quilt for Make Modern Magazine finished.  Pattern is written, blocks are made and am onto piecing the quilt top - hope to baste it on Saturday for quilting all next week!  I am going to attempt to quilt this on my home machine all by myself!  No pressure then.  Just needs photographing by March 15th!

I can't show you pattern details but here's the fabric I'm using!

So that's what's going on around here, what are you guys up to?  Any WIP's you really must get finished?

Linking up to