Tops Ahoy!

I could have posted a few times during the last few months to document the progress I have made on Allietare, but I didn't. Oh, well.

Here is what Allietare looked like on January 28:

The borders are on!

More recently, I found a block of time I could use for the next couple of steps. Last time I reached this stage I had a bad experience with spray baste. I researched this step further and decided to go with pin basting. I used Warm & Natural Needled Cotton batting. So far, I have been very pleased with the batting, though I haven't washed it yet. I used refrigerator magnet clips to clip the quilt sandwich to a utility table. Then I pinned the sandwich.

My next step was stabilizing the quilt sandwich by stitching in the ditch. It has been a while since I have done that. I started out going crazy fast and had practically no control. I kept having to slow down. I finally remembered that I have a speed control on my machine.

I used my walking foot and and it did a good job. I did not have any bunching this time. I only ran into a safety pin once. 😅

I finished that part today:

I'm having a hard time to deciding how to quilt it. I will be doing some type of free-motion style quilting. I will be using gold/yellow thread. That's all I know.  It almost looks like I could get away without further quilting, but I want to at least quilt the large squares and the large white pieces along the edges. And there is no way to avoid quilting the black border.

I finished the En Provence top on June 15. It's going to sit on the back burner now until Allietare is all done.

Lessons learned:

• Save the spray baste for small projects.
• Don't skimp when pinning.
• SLOW DOWN when stitching in the ditch. 
• Use the speed control, too.

Le Jaune, Enfin - En Provence Part Seven

Rabbits!

The final pieces to be made used yellow fabric. I really love the fabric with the rabbits on it. It is part of the same collection as the lavender fabric with the horses. It seems so French to me.

 
These hourglass pieces are just the same as the ones from Part Six, except we are using yellow instead of lavender. In addition, I had to cut some plain yellow squares. (I have a few more hourglass pieces to make, but I wanted to get this post done in time for the final linkup to Bonnie's Blog.)

And this is the link to Bonnie Hunter's Link-Up Page. Visit her page to see what others have done with En Provence. You will see En Provence made with other color palettes, other fabrics, and more.

Yippee! 
All of my pieces are done now!

Difficile - En Provence Part Two (#4)

These pieces were hard.

I used the Tri Recs Rulers.

I preferred the Tri Recs Tools to the  Marti Michell templates. The fabric didn't move around as much while being cut. The Tri Recs Tools can be used to make many different sizes of the "triangle in a square" piece.

Tri Recs on the left, Marti Michell templates on the right.

Using these tools I was able to cut quickly and with relatively little waste. However, I ended up having to rip out and redo 10-20% of the pieces because of problems at the top of the neutral triangle. Either the pink pieces did not line up or the space between the tip of the neutral triangle and the top edge of the piece was too small.

I am picky about stuff like this.

 
Lessons Learned:

Take the time to pin these pieces before sewing, and make sure they don't slip around while you are sewing them.

Watch youtubes before using a new tool. I learned that the little notch on the tip of the right triangle (the Recs Tool) is a placement guide, and it makes your job infinitely easier.
 

Beaucoup - En Provence Part One (#3)

I am now working on my third set of pieces for the mystery quilt. (This was Week One for most of my sister quilters.) For me it was a good time to stay home and sew.

If my car could talk, it would say "Stay home!"

 When I did last year's mystery quilt, Allietare!, I felt I made it a little too scrappy for my taste. I thought I would try to go less scrappy with En Provence. It seemed like a good idea in the abstract. It turns out that "Week One" calls for a large number of neutral four-patches. This presented me with two challenges.

First, I became aware that in order to make a half-size quilt I would need much more than half the number of four-patches specified for the full-size quilt.  It would require close to 75% of the number needed for the full-size version. Would I have enough fabric?

The first six neutrals I bought for En Provence

Second, and of greater concern, I was beginning to wonder if my idea of "less scrappy" was going to work for all the four-patches. Would I get enough variety with only 6 neutrals? To make a piece like the ones I made for weeks five and six, 6 neutrals would be more than adequate. But to make a variety of four -patches, I was going to need more fabrics.

To complicate matters further, I wanted to make every strip with one "darker" neutral and one "lighter" neutral. I was aiming for a subtle checkerboard effect. (I probably got something less subtle than intended.) But this plan really limited what I could do with the four-patches. I picked up a couple of extra darker neutrals and I fished through my paltry scrap collection for some of the lighter neutrals from Allietare!  (not shown)

After making dozens of four-patches and using up several of my fabrics, I decided the only way to do this was to buy more neutrals and mix them in before I finished any more four-patches. I didn't want to end up with two groups of four-patches, each lacking variety.

The day after a big snowstorm I went to a quilt shop and didn't find any fabric that I hadn't already seen. The roads were bad so I decided to skip the other quilt shops and stop at Jo-Ann's, which was more or less on my way home. I found some nice fabrics from their Buttercream collection and quickly retreated to my snug little sewing area to make more four-patches.

The top 3 and the bottom fabric are from the Buttercream line. The fourth one from the top is from the same collection as one of my lavenders and one of my yellows.

So, it took a while, but I finished a gazillion neutral four-patches, and I learned some good techniques in the bargain.

Bonnie had some great tips for cutting and for making the four-patches nest perfectly so that the center seams lined up exactly.

Perfectly nested

Bonnie also taught a very easy way to "spin" the seams on the back. I had learned a difficult way to do it and I always dreaded having to do it. No longer.

Spin, span, spun. Fun!

Here are the fruits of my labor and here is a link to Bonnie Hunter's En Provence Link-Up

A whole basketful

 
Lessons learned:
Scrappiness depends.
The line on the ruler goes up on the fabric, not next to it. 
Direction matters.

Facile et Rapide - En Provence Part Five (#2)

Week Two for me, Week Five for everyone following along with the mystery in real time.

This was an easy week because Christmas fell during the week. I just had to make a relatively small number of half-square triangles. I used Bonnie Hunter's Essential Triangle Tool and the cutting just flew along.

Here is the link to Bonnie's Link-Up.

It is so much fun to see what fabrics others have chosen.

Mon Début - En Provence Part Six (#1)

It's been a while since I have posted. I have been quilting a little, and I have been traveling a lot. I think I am just going to start from here and move forward and not worry about trying to fill in the "missing" posts from the past.

I had another Sewing Day, and it was so much fun. I invited several people to come over and sew with me. It was just what I needed to get back into a sewing frame of mind.

I have been dying to work on Bonnie Hunter's new mystery quilt, En Provence. I was in Europe for Weeks One through Four and all I could do was read the clues that were published each week.

I was back home for Week Five, but I had not had a chance to buy the fabric. I am not a person with a large stash, so a project like this requires a lot of shopping. I made one trip to a quilt shop right after I got home and got a few pieces of fabric. I naively thought I could get all of my fabric there because I knew exactly what I wanted. The only problem was the fabric in my mind's eye was not in the quilt shop.

A few days later I went to some quilt shops with Susan. One shop was closed. 😞 Three were open and I found more fabric, but I still didn't have enough.  (At some point during this expedition I lost my clip-on FitBit.😧) 

You have to go around to all of the quilt shops and see what is there, then you sometimes have to go back to buy fabric after you have seen everything. So, after Susan and I had hit two shops we decided to go to the one I had already been to. I did find a couple of additional fabrics on my second visit there.

The next day I broke down and went to Jo-Ann's. I found a handful of prints that I could use. Some of them were not good quality fabric, but I have been everywhere in town. It's often a choice between good fabric quality vs. colors and prints that I like.

So here we are at Week Six and I am just joining the party. Here is a link to the party: Bonnie Hunter's Link-up

Here are my fabrics.

The colors

The neutrals

As I did last year, I will be making a half-size version of the quilt.

I had no trouble making the units for Week Six. I used Bonnie Hunter's new Essential Triangle Tool . It worked great. I like it better than the Marti Michell templates. It is easier to use because you are working with a large tool rather than a small template. You don't have to press so hard and it doesn't slip on you.

Week Six units

I did not remember to take photos of the all the projects that got worked on during my Sewing Day, but they were all impressive.
  Barbara (Our Third Thirds) made these clever wine glass coasters for her book club:


Lesson learned:
Sewing is better with friends