When I visited Cowslip workshops recently, I was tempted by a batik jelly roll. Jelly roll quilt, must be a doddle or so I thought. Sadly, doddle it isn't, especially for someone like me who doesn't do planning in advance! The fabrics, of course are lovely, made up of light, medium and darks, patterned and plain in lovely toning greens and purples. I thought it would be easy to sort the strips into the appropriate value pile, but I soon discovered that there were a few obvious lights, obvious darks, but the vast majority could have been either. Indeed, sorting fabric according to colour value very much depends on which ones you put next to which. What I find hard to believe is why I was surprised by this fact, given all the colour studies I've done.
Anyway, I decided on using a nine patch pattern and combining the darks and lights in a random way so that, with luck, no two adjacent squares would be the same. Good plan as it went, but what I've ended up with is a quilt of many squares and my nine patch pattern is lost, because I didn't use borders around each block! BUT at least I managed to improve my sewing technique, matching the seams so most of the corners meet correctly! The quilt will not be finished for a while because none of the strips were long enough to make a binding that goes all the way round so I've had to send off for some more fabric for the sashing and binding.
So, what have I learned from this? Apart from yet again realising that I'm rubbish at planning! Well, first, all the strips in a jelly roll are not the same length; some are not cut as straight as you would wish and having every strip different means you have to buy more fabric for the sashing and binding for anything other than a small quilt. On the plus side, it's a wonderful opportunity to play with colour mixing and to practice piecing techniques. I was tempted to buy a book to help use up the jelly roll, but didn't because I'm supposed to be designing my own rather than doing projects designed by someone else! After all, having been persuaded to join the contemporary quilters group, I must play the game!!!!
An email arrived from Creative Grids announcing that they now have online videos showing how to use their newest rulers designed for cutting trianlges from jelly roll strips, or cutting your own strips. The one that caught my eye was used to cut trapezoid shapes and in the video, these were put together to make a friendship braid. Looks simple enough, and I thought it would be a good way to use up the rest of my jelly roll. Well, like a lot of piecing techniques that look simple when someone else does them, this one wasn't at all simple when I tried it!! So a swift google search brought up three ot four different methods, all equally incomprehensible. Thank goodness for Chris at my quilting group on Tuesday, who showed me how in a much simpler version. So I now have a mini braided quilt just waiting the finishing touches and nearly all the jelly roll used up!!!
Chris must have decided that I didn't have enough to do, so she invited me to join her latest challenge. This is to take a book, any one will do really. Turn to page 55, line 12 and use the text as an inspiration for a quilt! My page 55 didn't have any text, so we chose page 25 line 6 which says "lines as shown". Yep, that's it! So I've accepted the challenge and as soon as I've finished Kay's postcard. I'll make a start.
Now I'm off to play with my embroidery module embroidering a quilt top for Isobel's fifth birthday which is on the 1st of June! Tomorrow, it's of to the Quilting Museum in York for a workshop with Hilary Gooding making lacy scarves.
No pressure then!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment