Another landmark passed.
All the Scinteallate blocks are now quilted and trimmed out. You can get an idea of how the finished texture will look, although the teal sparkly sashing will have quite an impact, I think.
I’ve started to cut the many, many pieces required for the front and back sashing. I planned the cutting quite carefully so that offcuts from the backs of the blocks could be used as sashing on the back. There weren’t quite enough, but still, it helped to cut them as I went. What size you cut and how many depends on how you plan to join the blocks, so that was my first decision. This quilt is a row shorter than my usual size, so I couldn’t go straight to the default process. However, it shouldn’t be too tough; I’m still minimising the number of long, cumbersome seams.
More cutting tomorrow. I’ve found it quite hard to spend a lot of time at it with a pointy black nose suddenly inserting itself under my arm to see what’s happening on the table. High time I got my cutting table up on its blocks to make that a bit more difficult, or there’ll be a nasty accident with a rotary cutter one of these days…
And now I must go and check the cumquat juice…. It sounds like a code phrase in a spy movie, doesn’t it?
Looking good! And I think I just learned something new – you quilt stitch each block separately?
Yes, this is a process called Quilt As You Go (QAYG). It makes the quilting process much easier, but conversely, you then have to join each block together separately with sashing on front and back and build up into one whole. It makes sense for a quilt made up of pieces contributed by different people, and the relief of not having to sandwich and then quilt a large piece is considerable!
This sounds a very good alternative to the great bulky fraught process of stitching a hundred metres of fabric at once!!
It definitely is. I make most of my quilts now using this or a variation of it where I piece larger sections together.
Your wavy lines have worked their magic again.
When you show all the blocks together my eye is always drawn to the star that is now in the middle of the bottom row. I liked it when I first saw it but can’t remember who made it – was it one of yours? I’d love to add it to my ‘library’ of paper piecing patterns if possible.
That’s one of Lynda’s blocks, and I agree, it’s a real beauty. I don’t know what the pattern is, I’ll send you her email address so you can ask.
That is beautiful! Stitches of love ~
Every time I start an ovarian cancer quilt, I’m blown away by the generosity of the contributors. There’s a lot of love stitched into all these quilts.
Looks awesome as always …. waiting for the end result…. and the pointy wet nosed inquisitive boy is adorable ♥️
He is…. but wait for tomorrow’s post!
Haha I’m even reading quilt posts now hoping for a mention of Mouse… gold!
He’s a bit of a star, my lovely black satin boy 🙂
I can’t wait to see it with the sashing, it is already lovely, that will be the perfect touch!
I think it will look good, each star will be framed and stand out more.
This just keeps getting better and better with the addition of that curious little black nose. 😉 I love quilts but I think I love good dogs and cats even more. Shame on me. ;( Love the QAYG way. It makes a lot of sense.
Quilts come and go, but a dog is family and is with you for his life. I’m becoming used to the pointy nose under my arm, nudging me to ask what’s going on and is there anything to eat?
Chuckling here. 😉
🙂
Another stunner! Congratulations to everyone involved. The wavy lines are prefect, as they do the job without being intrusive.
As the end of stage 2, I’m really happy with how it’s going. But I have stage 3 to go, the joining and binding, and I’ve just been told they need a photo by 9th August for the publicity material. Eeek!
I appreciated the explanation of quilt as you go. I had seen it explained as adding each block to a large piece of wadding and backing and quilting it down, then adding the next block and so on.
Anyway it looks good, and I am sure Mouse’s help and advice was critical.
That is only one way to do it, and I find it a bit limiting, since you’re still working on a large piece and having to wrangle it through the machine. If you want a tutorial for the way I do it, have a look at this post:
https://talltalesfromchiconia.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/qayg-for-beginners
It’s really just creating and quilting individual sandwiched blocks, and then a neat process for joining them all together. Much less like hard work!
OMG–August 9?? That’s soon! But you are really getting a lot done and I’m confident you’ll be ready. Tell Mouse to watch from a bit of a distance!
That is indeed soon, and it’ll be a bit tight, but I think it might be OK. If I can get a lot of cutting done while Mouse is snoozing, that should help. It’s his nose in close proximity to rotary cutter, pins and hot irons I worry about.
Thank you for making this process so fun, Kate. As always we hold our breath for the finish. August 9th? I know you can do it!
I think I can (I hope I can). It’s just the surprise of suddenly having a week cut off my schedule. It was already silly timing, and now it’s just absurd. How appropriate!
Stunning !!
And hopefully it will become even more so.
I recently saw the stripology ruler somewhere and it looked really useful for those times when you need to cut a lot of strips because you don’t have to move the ruler to cut multiple strips but cut through slots in the ruler after placing it on folded fabric. It should save on (boring) cutting time.
And the quilt already looks great and it’s not even finished yet!
I’ll take a look – it would need to do 1.75 inch strips and 2.25, as those are ‘odd’ sizes I use a lot. Thanks for the tip 🙂
I think you can do 1/4″ increments by first cutting the strips double that width and after cutting those strips moving the ruler and doing a second cut to get the size you need.
Righto. I’ll see if my local quilt shop has one. Otherwise it’ll take too long to order one for this particular quilt. Thanks for the info.
It’s looking so good! Ah those canine helpers . . .
I’m in love!!! Another tantealating quilt for this great cause. You are the best best best!!!!
I think it’ll look better still once it has its teal sashing and binding. I’d better get a move on!
Geez, good luck with that deadline. Can you Photoshop a binding on? 😉
I have all the sashing cut, and I can start assembly later this afternoon, Mouse and Husband’s schedule permitting. I reckon I can get it done, even if I photograph with the binding just pinned back, as Lynn suggested.
love those wibbly lines. so friendly.
Keeping things real…. 😉
I am so glad my little black nose is too close to the floor to reach rotary cutters. As it is, I worry about dropped pins. Thankfully, hubby usually finds those with his bare feet before the dog does.
The husband rarely approaches the danger zone, let alone in bare feet. I have established a perimeter of safety in the sewing room for Mouse, and he’s really pretty good about staying on the ‘safe’ side of the table.
Looking great!!!!
Thanks!