Row, Row, Row

Procrastination is my middle name. Instead of working outside in the gorgeous spring weather on that endless list of chores, I'm choosing to fiddle around on the computer. Where's my willpower?

I created this original design two years ago for the local quilt shop. I then taught a class whereby the students learned how to cut & piece one row a month & in so doing, the object was to learn 6 new techniques. I was actually able to incorporate more than 6, so they got a little bonus.

My favorite row was the diamond-shaped log cabins. They are all paper-pieced. It was very time consuming & I certainly wouldn't want to do an entire quilt in this block. But it was still enjoyable & oh-so-accurate!

The quilt shop owner suggested I use their just-in Civil War prints, so that was a real challenge. I tend to use brighter colors in my quilts & my absolute favorite fabrics are the 30's prints.

Time to get busy outside!

PS. I think I need a class in photography!

More Japanese Puzzle

On the left is phase two of my Japanese Puzzle quilt. This photo was taken after I had trimmed each of the four-patches using the diamond template, but before I began sewing everything together. Notice how much more square it looks as compared to the previous picture. This is one quilt that I absolutely had to keep on my design wall while I worked on it. It would have been really easy to mix things up & sew them in the wrong order.

The picture on the right is of the completed quilt top. I'm reasonably happy with the way it turned out & might make another one sometime in some higher-contrast colors.

A New WIP

This is my latest project, although really more of a diversion. I signed up to take this class through the Learning Fiber Arts Yahoo group. It's called Japanese Puzzle & involves sewing four-patches together, centering an off-kilter diamond template on each four-patch, trimming & sewing them back together. The biggest key to success for this pattern as far as I can tell is to use fairly high-contrast fabrics. I'm not sure mine will work (too many mediums, a problem many quilters encounter), but I thought it would do for an experiment.

I found this fabric at Walmart, go figure! Yes, I do buy fabric at Walmart sometimes, especially for something like this that is just an experiment. All the blue & green prints were prepackaged as 8 fat quarters for less than $10. I bought the light blue & light green to use as borders, but decided today to incorporate it into the quilt as well.

Let me know what you think. It's still on the design wall so it would be easy to change. But once I start sewing, forget it! Un-sewing is NOT my passion!