WIP Wednesday: the one with passacaglia

Most of my work was in two areas this week: the Passacaglia, and the Oh My!

WIPs

no movement

• Do You Know Where You're Going To? (the one with the arrows)
• Mondrian's Nine-Patch

Millefiori Passacaglia


I'm starting to work out my colour schemes: I haven't really been following the colour schemes in the book - which I might have to start developing.

I made a 'ring of rose' and tried it with the orange star and the green star-diamond ring.


Not so good, I think. Stick with the white.


Or go with a different centre colour:


I also need to start sorting them into the various Rosette types. And working out just how much I'm actually going to need for a couple of these. There are several Rosettes that don't need to be as big as they've been specified - most of them will get cut off in the assembly.

I gotta type up my notes from the other night, put them in an excel spreadsheet for organisation. Then I'll have a better idea of what I need before I need it.


Oh My!

Blocks are done, just have to work out a layout.


Dammit, I didn't take any photos of the various layouts I had in mind.

I don't think I like this one square:

On point might work better...

To Do

The Great Aussie Destash

So my attempt at a destash failed very very miserably. I only sold about $100 worth of stuff and none of it was the stash I acquired on Thursday.


I'll be putting a few bundles up on Instagram, but I've decided to put most of it up on the Australian FB group 'SEW you're destashing!' Lots of quilting fabrics that aren't really my style and are harder to move on instagram.

We'll see how it goes. :)

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Linking up at Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday!

WIP Wednesday: the one where I fail at so many things...

It was the long weekend (a very long weekend for us here in Australia) and I...didn't do as much as I hoped. Or the things I was planning to do.

WIPs

Do You Know Where You're Going To? (the one with the arrows)

Yeah, nope.

Mondrian's Nine-Patch

One word: UGH.

Millefiori Passacaglia

Still going!


Rosette 2, half-done. I needed to replace the dark green diamonds between the stars: not enough contrast. They'll end up somewhere else, I think - probably another couple of star centres. I'll do some sewing of this on...Friday. Yes. Friday.

Oh My!

Apparently my watchcry is: when procrastinating on show quilts and trying to destash...why not start a new project?


And I do love the colours of Sanae's Oh My line: so bright and saturated and bold!


To Do

The Great Aussie Destash

I, um, acquired someone else's stash on Thursday night. *flinch* It tends more towards traditional fabrics than moderns, which is a bummer, but it's all quilting cotton (even if it's not all the high-end stuff).

Eight garbage bags' worth. EIGHT GARBAGE BAGS.


I need my head checked. Seriously. Checked.

Anyway, I think this will mostly end up being sold via a FB destash group rather than the #greataussiedestash on Friday, because the Instagram crowd wouldn't be interested in this kind of stuff.

Sometime before Friday, I have to get things into bundles. And weigh them. And work out postage. You know, really? I suck at this destashing business...

Incidentally, I'm seldear over on Instagram, although I'm thinking of setting up a second account for destashes like this. Not that I have many Insta-friends outside of quilty/crafty circles...

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Linking up at Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday and possibly other places as I spot them!

WIP: the one with millefiori madness

WIPs

Do You Know Where You're Going To? (the one with the arrows)

Going nowhere. I've been focusing on other projects lately - namely the Millefiori Passacaglia - and haven't done a thing towards this.

Plus, I'm having layout angst. That feeling when you only have a vague idea of the design you want, but you don't know whether or not it will work? That.

Mondrian's Nine-Patch

Nothing to see here either, carry on!

(I will make a concerted push this weekend to get stuff done, because Australia has an Easter extra-long weekend. Progress will be made - on the nine-patch if nothing else. It's easy, right? RIGHT?)

Millefiori Passacaglia

(Also known as the "Insanity: Passacaglia version 1.0" quilt.)

This quilt design was popularised by Tula Pink on her instagram. It's from the book "Millefiori Quilts" by Willyne Hammerstein, and there are some lovely handsewing patterns in there! You can photocopy-and-print the pieces yourself, or paperpieces.com sells them (for the Passacaglia, anyway) by the bucketload. Or you could probably do really funky things with one of those devices that cuts things for you, but I don't have one of those.

Hand-cutting it is!

I photocopied and printed, but I also ordered in the paper pieces, because after a while you get tired of cutting out teeny tiny triangles, and this quilt is already tricksy enough!

Right now, I'm basting the pieces during my commute to and from work on the trains, and stitching them together on the weekend, while catching up on episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (And, oh boy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier - talk about a game-changer!)

This is the productivity of 2/3 of my commute - I didn't pack enough pieces that morning, and ended up finishing all the basting I had.

This is the productivity of an entire commute:

And here is one I prepared earlier!

Finished, and photographed from above in more natural lighting:

I think I need to make better colour choices for the long, thin diamonds surrounding the centre star. Maybe I'll use Kona Ash instead of Kona Steel around the centre stars, so the star pops better? I didn't much like my original colour choices for the centre star either:


So this is why I haven't gotten very far on my two show quilts! (Well, this is the sewing-related reason, anyway.)

To Do

Coasters Of Geekitude

Sewing all these little pieces of the Passacaglia - particularly the stars circled by bands of colour - along with my recent viewing of Captain America: The Winter Soldier made me realise that I could make not only a 'Captain America' star surrounded by concentric bands of colour, but also a 'Winter Soldier' star - scarlet on grey steel.

And then I thought of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. patches I made last year:


So that's one for Nick Fury, and one for Maria Hill (who's my favourite character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - I love the quiet female characters who are full of surprises). With the Black Widow (a scarlet hourglass on black), and the Falcon (no icon), that makes six. Which is a full coaster set!

I'd have to work out a Falcon icon, though - perhaps a silver-grey wing on black?

I'd make two sets, give one away, and keep the other for when I have geeky guests. :D

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Linking up at Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday and possibly other places as I spot them!

Millefiori Madness: The Quilter's Edition

Oops. I think I posted this without actually having anything in it the first stime: rectifying now!

So, a couple of months ago, I mentioned buying Willyne Hammerstein's book Millefiori Quilts. I first saw it on Tula Pink's instagram, where she was doing a very modern, bright one, with fussy cutting, and very precise piecing. It looks amazing.

I went and bought the book, because, shiny! And I like a challenge and that quilt was very pretty! :)


The one she was making is called The Passacaglia:


Which is also the one that I decided to make. Because it's pretty, it only uses five pieces, and I like the effect. Plus, quite a few of the other blocks in the quilt could easily be done in more conventional quilting methods - ie. a template, a rule, a rollercutter, and a straight-stitch sewing machine.

I got printouts of the pieces, cut them out, and picked my fabric - Reese Scannell shot cottons.


Currently, I have an hour-long commute from home to work, changing trains twice. It's awkward trying to open my computer every time, and this is something that whiles away the 15 minutes of a train trip between station A and station B.

I actually got a lot of pieces done while on the train:




And then there was the laying out:






Only I decided I didn't like the centre star - not enough contrast - so I ended up sewing yet another one for this combination:


Apologies for the bad lighting, we've just gone out of daylight saving and I work most hours that the light is out, so my light sources are not exactly reliable.

The interesting thing about these templates is that they're very much not limited to just the pattern of the Passacaglia:

I've just seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier this last week, and have been thinking about crafting a set of mug coasters around the emblems in the movie.

Those of you who follow my blog regularly will remember the SHIELD logo I made for my Melinda May cosplay - they would work nicely enough as coasters with a little bit of backing! One for Maria Hill and one for Nick Fury - excellent! An hourglass is easy peasy for the Black Widow emblem.

And using the Passacaglia pieces it's possible to make both The Winter Soldier's scarlet star on steel grey, and Captain America's star - made here in Kona White and one of the Kona blues (possibly Pacific?):


And then the only difficult one is the Falcon, since they didn't show an emblem for Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie's character).

The things we do for geekitude...

Meanwhile, I'm learning all about needles and which ones are better for which fabrics, which cotton thread, and which tasks. It's quite a learning curve!

Nearly one Rosette down...um...I don't know how many to go! *eeps*






edit: sorry, this post is kind of a WIP in and of itself. Will be finishing it later tonight.

WIP Wednesday: the one with exhaustion

Things have been crazy at work and recovering at home, meaning I have no time to put up a WIP Wednesday post.

This is the late late version, and going to be pretty brisk.

WIPs

Quite a few projects still on the go:

Do You Know Where You're Going To?

I got the arrows sewn together!



Given my energy levels lately, this is a BIG THING.

I was going to work on the layout. no time, no energy, no space.



Maybe next week?

Mondrian Dreaming

No progress, alas!

The Passacaglia (a.k.a. "Are you freaking insane?")

From Millefiori Quilts by Willyne Hammerstein.

I photocopied the pieces out of the back of the book, and got them printed out onto some 100gsm paper for paper piecing. Cutting them out was a bit of a bother. And then I discovered that paperpiecing.com actually sells them pre-cut! *facepalm*

I ordered some of those, too. In the meantime, these are doing fine!



I started this on Saturday, and began sewing bits together while commuting to work on the train. It makes the trip go pretty fast, and I seem to get quite a bit done!



The low-vol pentagons, and the stars (scarlet pentagons, orange diamonds, and grey points) were all done on the train.



...I think I have to work at taking pictures in better light. No wonder nobody likes my instagram photos!

To Do

Uh, sleep?

Oh, a new long-term scrap project - Dancing Stars on charcoal, thanks to Amy's Creative Side:



Going to be scrappy, and use up this low-volume which turned out not to be quite as nice as I hoped it would be.

Hope your week is going better, and that you're geting plenty done! Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!