Look What She Did!

It's a good thing, trust me ;- )

Our Fearless Leader set Janet and me up to do an intuitive swap. This is what I sent to Janet:

While I worked on the block she sent to me - wait, did I ever show that here? I'm pretty sure I shared my process on my blog... hmm. Anyway, eventually this little package showed up in my mailbox:


And in it was THIS!


In the card she sent with the quilt top Janet says that first she went round it with the white print and then the scrappy purple border. "It was looking fabulous, but too much like a round robin quilt... I knew I wanted to add the green and white HST's but what to do first? With a sense of daring I slashed across the block and inserted the dark purple strip." Which I think is kind of funny since I got to a point with her top where I had to gird my loins and just cut into it too!

Janet continues: "This didn't really improve things... so I slashed again down the center of the purple strip and turned the pieces so they were facing out. Added the white strip in between and sewed them together." This process turned the whole thing into a parralellogram. Not wanting to leave me with that she tried the scrappy piano keys to one end but felt they needed some separation from the piecing I'd done so inserted those long strips first. At this point she felt it was time to add the half square triangles. Then, because she liked the stripes and the the way they echoed the piano keys at the top, she added the multicolor stripe along the bottom edge. Now I get to figure out how to fill in that corner - and decide how much bigger I want the final product to be. We're not sure whether we'll be swapping these tops again. It won't be any time soon as we both have other projects in the queue that need attention. I, for one, am working on a mini quilt for the "Something From Nothing" swap here. I thought I had a little top almost ready to layer and quilt but it turned out not to be quite the right size. And then it magically got TOO big! Ah well, that just means I get to play another day. :- )

I Don't Know...

I made some liberated stars just for the fun of it but with my intuition swap project in mind. Janet says she likes bright saturated colors.


Then, based on input from you guys, I made some sticks blocks with the cat print as the background. I also made a strip of sticks (bright pink check on the right side of the picture below).


I played a bit with the blocks I have so far yesterday. Can't say that I'm in love with it but I do think it works on some level. Just not sure what to do next. It's reading as pretty busy to me, if not downright chaotic. I think I may want to space out that cat print further, put more room between those blocks. Thoughts?

Playday

All the planets must have lined up just right for me yesterday. I spent nearly the whole day sewing! (What a great way to spend Valentine's Day!) The day before I'd made this set of blocks using the stack, slice, and shuffle method. From past experience I knew they would be a little on the boring side so before I sewed the final seam I added narrow strips.


They were still kind of bland. Blocks like these usually get trimmed down a good bit, and that will help, but I decided to see if I could take it a little further.


In the photo below, the block in the upper left corner was not one of the original set. I made it after I had been playing with sticks for several hours. Basically I started out with a chunk of the light blue, cut it in half, and then inserted strips in each half before sewing them back together again.

Here are the sticks blocks I was playing with before then:

I also layered two prints, sliced through them to make two freestyle nine patch blocks, and then decided to spice them up a bit before I reassembled them.

I made other nine patch bl0cks too:

All this play was inspired by my Intuition Quilt swap with Janet. I still don't know what I'm going to do with her block but now I have some parts to play with!

Auditions

This is what I had my design wall most recently:

This is two larger sections, two small sections, and a few strips just laid in place. I think I mentioned that I won a set of house blocks in Beth's recent give away. Just for kicks I put a few of them on the wall with my intuition quilt sections:

I was really pleased with how well they worked together so I tried another configuration and a couple more blocks:

I think there's real promise here. My task now is to make more fabric. And yes, Victoria, I'll be sure to get more angles in there! ;- )

Hmmm

You're right, Victoria, I have a lot of straight lines going on in my Intuition Quilt.


I kept trying to put the peace signs into the mix but never liked how they looked. I really wanted to keep the focus on those skunks and the peace signs kept trying to grab all the attention.

I had this configuration on my design wall most recently. I liked the way it was looking but obviously there were gaps that needed to be filled in. Then I took the parts down to photograph some other blocks (I won a collection of house blocks from Beth's give away!).

Who knows whether they will go back up on the wall the same way or not. Since I'm running out of some of the prints I began with I will be forced into adding other fabrics to the mix.

Now that I think about it, I wonder how one or two of those house blocks would look with these parts? And I seem to think I have a birdhouse block around here somewhere... that would refer back to the print I started this project with. Hmmm...!

Step Two

I don't know how much longer I can keep this up! I'm way ahead of what I'm showing you here, although I am taking a break from this project for the moment. One of these days there's going to be a big jump between what you've already seen and what I'm showing you next. For the time being, however, here's another of the three sections that started my Intuition Quilt. You may recall that the white with birdhouse print was my jumping off point. Rather quickly I added the brown with the pink leaves and the lime green to either side. The next thing to go on was another strip of the brown at the bottom. I think it's kind of fun the way the two bird heads make a right angle in the lower left corner. Of course at least part of one is going to disappear into a seam allowance eventually. I tend to get stuck on details like that and hate to lose them.


There was a bright pink strip from V's scraps I wanted to add to the section I showed in my last post. It didn't go there but ended up in this "block." And then a wide bit of the contemporary print.

Too wide. I cut it down.

And then I added this fun bit to the right and skunks along the bottom to anchor the whole thing.

I have three "blocks" under construction. It's hard not to treat each one as a composition in and of itself. Right now they are on my design wall, all mushed together, trying to learn to live together as a cohesive whole. I think I need to build some fences to go between them. Fences are supposed to make good neighbors, right? ;- )

First Steps

Of those vintage prints I showed you in my last post the smallest piece was the white with the blue birdhouses so I figured that would be the best place to start. I cut it into three sections. I guess only two of the sections are visible in the photo below.

It's been quite a learning experience for me to remember to stop and take photos as I work. I think the trick is going to be knowing when to shoot and when not to bother!

For this post I've decided to just show you how one section developed. Obviously the cute little skunks were added first.

I auditioned a couple of strips of white and blue across the top of the section and then down the left side. You can see that I ended up using black instead! A blue calico went on the right side, just as it came out of the envelope of scraps from V.

I still wanted to address the top however. I liked the pink:

But I really hated to cut off the top of that birdhouse. I have to confess that the blue calico didn't behave well under the iron either. The solution? Cut it off!

No more birdhouse, no more blue calico. Had to fill in that side though. I happen to love the way this contemporary print fits in. :- )

Finally it was time to add a strip across the top. But it turned out not to be the pink... that ended up elsewhere.

I've added another print on the left side since this photo was taken; you'll see that later. This is only about a third of the work I've done so far (maybe less). Because I had three sections to work on I always had one under the needle while I auditioned pieces for the other two, thus avoiding the issue of long threads at the beginning and end of each seam.

I'm seriously having second thoughts about sending this off to Janet to play with. Only because I'm loving it so much and want to keep working on it myself! Besides, it will be fun to start another intuitive quilt. ;- )