Friday, January 15, 2016

It has to be Widdershins

I don't know why I even considered clockwise when widdershins was an option...

Block 1 of Quilty 365 is the red and white one on the lower left.  I've dated it with my starting date 12-31-15, and I dated the next one (to its right) with 1-1-16 (and "Happy New Year!").   They proceed in order to the right, then make a counterclockwise (widdershins!) turn and head off to the left.  You can see that I made a partial seam so I could keep adding blocks to the working end of the strip.


And since I've reached the point where I'll be turning again, I've done a mockup of what I'm up to.  I pulled the starting blocks up a little to get them out of the way, then set down some squares to represent the next blocks .  I'll be running three across the end of the strip I've got going so far, then will turn again and head back around.


And here are my blocks for the first 14 days, all sewn together.


I'll be joining yesterday's block with today's and tomorrow's, and will sew them across the end, using a partial seam again so I'll be able to keep adding blocks as I go.  Eventually it will get a bit unwieldy, but at least I won't be waiting until the end to join the blocks together.  I think it will be fun to watch my orange peels dance in bigger and bigger circles.
I'm alternating light and dark backgrounds (and there will be occasional mediums standing in for either), so each day I'm choosing two fabrics - one for the background and one for the peel.  I do consult the blocks that are already done (like the other day I realized I hadn't used any green yet, and was appalled because I like green!).  At first I wasn't going to do that - it was just going to be a choice based on how I felt at that moment.  But then I realized that in real life my todays are always influenced by my yesterdays, so it made sense for my fabric choices to be affected by the colors already in that area.  (I'm probably overthinking this.  It's what I do.)
If you look closely at those peels, you'll notice they're not really uniform in size or shape.  Since I knew going in that I was going to end up with some variation (it's been a long time since I did an applique project), I decided to just embrace that and roll.
Instead of tracing around my template and cutting out on the line, I'm just holding it on the fabric and cutting roughly around it with scissors.


Or I'll use my rotary cutter if I'm at my studio.


This has the additional benefit of not wearing out the edges of my template, and since I'm going to be using it 365 times, that's a big plus.  (I first learned quilt making techniques back in the Middle Ages, before rotary cutters were invented, where we had to trace around a cardboard template for every.single.piece of the quilt.  The template would wear down and get smaller and smaller as we went along, so that the last pieces cut were a whole different size than the first pieces cut.  Sometimes they were a whole different shape by that time, too...)

And speaking of 365 times, here's my other daily project - the Challenge 365 blocks.
Today's block didn't make it into this picture, but it'll be included in the next batch.


I'm really loving these tiny little blocks.  Eventually there will be 6" blocks to make - they're going to seem huge after 3 months of these little guys!

So, for both of these projects, that's 15 down and 350 to go.  Piece of cake!  (Sometime around the middle of August, I want y'all to remind me I said that...)


4 comments:

Vic in NH said...

Cool project! I'm ignorant, are you needle turn applique-ing the orange peels to their respective backgrounds? I ask because I bought the orange peel fancy-dancy ruler but I haven't used it yet.

gayle said...

Oops! I should have said that - yes, it's needle turn. It's fun doing some hand sewing; it's been a long time.

Chantal said...

Good progress on the "circle" quilt. ;^D
I did quilt with cardboard templates too. If you put duct tape around your shape it won't "shrink" as much. (Old trick from grandma.) Whenever you need something; reach for duct tape lol. Enjoy the slow stitching. ;^)

Shelina (formerly known as Shasta) said...

I remember those middle ages when you came up with a completely different shape than the original. You came up with a great solution.