Pyramid Quilt..1st quilt finish of 2014

I find it slightly hard to believe that we are half way through February and this is my first quilt finish of the year. I finished this on Saturday and dashed out between the downpours today to get some picture. Happily, finishing it appears to have kick started my sewjo and I finished another quilt yesterday which I will be showing off tomorrow.

I called this beauty Pyramid. I love, love, love it. It is everything I hoped it would be.

 Love those rows of triangles although they nearly broke my heart. As you know, I had some doubts about using the low volume triangles and breaking up the pattern but now that its all done, it really truly works as I hoped and draws the eye through the quilt and make the brights pop beautifully.

This is, to a degree, an I Spy quilt. I fussy cut loads and loads of the triangles and there is so much there for a little girl to look at.

For the back, I had a lovely Zoology print in my stash - unfortunately not enough for the whole back, but a little bit of pink brought it up to size. I was hoarding this for the right project, and this was definitely it.

 Love the pink and grey and those pretty giraffes and elephants.

I originally planned to quilt this in a pattern of multiple loops in the white/grey triangles, and tried it on the first few rows. But it really didn't work for me and I didn't like how it looked. So instead I went with a loopy stipple quilting pattern and this worked much better. I used a pure white Aurifil 50wt thread and its sunk into the quilt beautifully with the slight shrinkage after washing.

 

Perfect texture, I think. Rachel's little pals agree.

I put out a question on Instagram and Facebook last week, asking for opinions on binding options. I was really surprised by the number of replies I got, and it was really interesting to read people's opinions. A big part of me wanted to use the grey fabric binding, but when I put it against the quilt by itself, it didn't work like I thought it would and kind of sucked the life out of the bright prints. So I used the pink, and although as I said at the weekend, I felt it was a bit obvious, it's really grown on me and I feel it was the right choice.

So little miss Rachel finally has her own proper quilt for her room. This is not really a baby quilt - its more of a little girl's quilt and will grow with her, coming in at 72" x 48". I hope she gets lots of use out of it.

 

Ode to Triangles....part two

I promise, I will not be grumpy tonight about the triangles. Well, maybe only a teensy, tiny bit. I was encouraged and not a little bit comforted by all the comments I got on my last post; its good to know I'm not the only one who finds triangles a complete PITA.

I set about the piecing on Friday night. All those rows. It seemed to take a long, long time. Then I pressed them. And remembered the trimming...all those little dog ears that needed to be trimmed back. So I did that. I may have muttered a bit about it under my breath and then remembered my decision to embrace the process after the last post, so I stopped muttering and pasted a smile on my face.

Then it was time to piece the rows together, to assemble the quilt top. And I remembered what I really, really dislike about working with triangles. It's so blindingly obvious and in your face that I hadn't even thought about it, stupid as that may sound.

Matching the points.

I made a decision not to freak out about it. Unless they were absolutely apallingly off (half an inch or so out), I wasn't redoing them. That did give me a certain freedom, and I rattled through the assembling at a ferocious rate. Given how un-exacting I was being (I still was pinning, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't being over the top about it), they came out surprisingly well. I think I only had to rip back 2 points in the whole thing; pretty good going. But I'm not going to show you close ups. There's a lot of slightly cut off points in there, as well as slightly off matching. I doubt anyone will notice though once its done.

 

Then I pressed (and cursed my careless seam matching again when the seams weren't going the way I wanted them to). And then I shook it out, in all its glory and fell utterly and totally in love.

 

I'm sorry the pictures are not great - the weather here thinks it is in monsoon country apparently so there's no getting outside for nice light. But I think you can see how it works. I really was worried about those grey triangles grouped together, whether that would work or just look stupid. Possibly I should have made a big triangle out of the low volume ones but maybe that would then look too even and regular, I did want it to be random so as to draw the eye through the quilt. The low volume totally breaks up the look of the quilt - I did not want even rows, I wanted something with movement and depth and I think that I've achieved that. The brightness of the print fabrics is not jumping out of this picture, trust me when I say that the colours are absolutely vibrant and bright and beautiful in real life.

I love it. I really, really love it.

Now its time to start thinking about getting this baby finished for the birthday girl on Wednesday. (Not a hope, but sure I'll keep trying.)  I have some Michael Miller Zoology fabric in pink and grey for backing, but only a yard and a half, so I need to size it up a bit as this top measures about 72" x 48". I'm considering chopping up a pink flat sheet I have if I can't find enough fabric in my stash. And I need to think about quilting now. I can't face wrestling with my machine to do straight lines on the diagonal, its being very temperamental at the moment. I was thinking some sort of FMQ - maybe with loopy loops in the white triangles? Suggestions and inspiration most most welcome.

Triangles are really not as much fun......

As they look.

Seriously.

Don't get me wrong, I know they look lovely. They look amazing actually, in my opinion. I love them. And, in the end, they are worth the work.

But, O.M.G., are they a pain from a process perspective. (Warning: this may be a slightly grumpy post. Read at your peril)

If you haven't been on Instagram, the background is that this is a quilt for my little baby girl Rachel who turns 1 next week. I made her a pram quilt, but now she needs a proper cot/bed quilt. I wanted to make something eclectic and lovely, girlie but not too sweet; I wanted something with a little depth and interesting to look at - for me, as well as for her. It absolutely needed to incorporate my favourite prints for little girls. And it needs to be a decent size so it will grow with her. Easy peasy, right? It's *supposed* to be part of her birthday present, but next Wednesday is catching up on me very fast. Still, she won't notice if its a few days late.

This is where I started, lots and lots of triangles. Of course, being for the apple of my eye, I had to fussy cut most of them. This was VERY slow. Plus I always think triangles are wasteful of fabrics as opposed to more regular shapes.  (things that annoy me about triangles, no 1).

Next, I started to lay them out. I got about a quarter of the way on the playroom floor, until I was defeated by toys, glitter, Barbie hair spray, kneeling on tiny little lego pieces and lots more minor irritants.Not to mention serious lack of space in the post-Christmas full-of-my-kids-and-their-multiple-friends-all-day-long playroom.

So I neatly stacked all the rows I'd done, took it upstairs, unstacked them and laid them out (again) on my bed, and then spent a whole afternoon laying out the rest. It took a LONG time. It's not like laying out 12 or 24 blocks. Every. single. little. piece. needs to be laid out. And because I was incorporating low volume triangles in places to break up the look of it and draw the eye through, I needed to lay out all the white/low volume pieces too instead of just assuming they were all white background. (Things that annoy me about triangles no. 2: you need a huge space to lay it out because none of them are pieced. And they are fiddly to handle and work with. And, if you live in my house, there is no space where you can layout a quilt over a period of time. You have to get it done and back up off the surface as quickly as possible. Or people will have to sleep on the floor.). 

So, after laying it all out, I jumped up and down trying to get a couple of quick photos (hence the crap quality of the one above) and immediately started to stack it all back up and pin my rows together. Which left me with this:

It does look like a pretty little pile, doesn't it?  (See, I'm starting to come around now).

But then, I started piecing it. I forgot, until yesterday, how annoyingly easy it is to sew seams in the wrong direction on triangles. (Things that annoy me about triangles no 3). Firstly, I got distracted watching the Sherlock mini-episode on the iPad and matched the wrong seams the whole way through the first row:

Then, once I got piecing properly, as usual, I got mixed up on what way I should have the seams going on a number of rows so I know when I come to assembling them I will be cursing my own stupidity. (Things that annoy me about triangles no 4).

But. but..... Look how lovely those rows are looking. They're just so, well, so pretty. (Things I LOVE about triangles, no 1-100) I can't wait to get assembling.

So, there you go. I'm really hoping I might get the final 3 rows pieced tomorrow morning and then get the quilt top assembled by Sunday evening. I do hope it's going to look nice, even though you lay it all out, you never can tell until its all pieced.

Oh - and I promise not to moan about triangles any more ;-)