Good evening and welcome to an experimental joint diary for WAYWO and DK Quilt Guild. Since both groups have trouble getting volunteers for diary duty, I volunteered for this week, to do ONE diary for both groups. Here are the reminders of group objectives:
DK Quilt Guild: A place for quilters to gather, share ideas, projects, and to make the world a better place, one quilt at a time. Join us and share your thoughts, projects, questions, and tips. Quilters here are at many different levels of skill. Beginners and non-quilters are welcome, too!
What Are You Working On is a community diary series for all things crafty, in a variety of mediums and techniques.
Since quilting is one of the "crafty" media of expression, it fits well with the broader objective of WAYWO.
Join me below the fold for a tour of a project I'm currently working on.
The Red and White Challenge
Most of you have seen some of this before, but this updates you on the status of my red and white challenge quilt. The "challenge" of this quilt was issued by my real-world quilt guild. Each year we have one or two challenge projects. This year one of the projects was to create a quilt in only two fabrics, one red and one white. The theme was chosen because we have a raffle quilt prepared for our June show in red and white, which in turn was inspired by this lovely antique:
I designed my quilt late last year but needed to make more progress on the graduation quilt before proceeding with it. I used EQ7 software to design it. The block is called Wedding Ring, or is sometimes known as Crown of Thorns.
The software would not let me draw the border triangles to scale, but they are the same size as the triangles in the blocks. All told, there are 1521 pieces of fabric on the front of the quilt, not including the binding. The quilt will measure 69" square. Each block finishes at 7.5", and each patch is 1.5".
A couple of weeks ago I finished the top (phew!) and showed off a slightly doctored photo of it. The doctoring simply allows it to be shown straight on. The color is slightly off. The background actually is WHITE, rather than the pinkish color you see here.
To get that far, I made hundreds of half-square triangles. These are simple square patches that have half of the square in one fabric and the other half in a second fabric. The square is split diagonally down the middle, into two triangles.
For the border, one strip of half-square triangles was just too short. Each square should be 1.5" from seam to seam, but my squares measured less than that, by a little more than a thread-width each. ??? Obviously I had not been careful with them. I had two choices: I could take it all apart and re-stitch them with slightly narrower seam allowances, or I could cut a whole new set and start over. That actually was the easier option, and fortunately I had plenty of fabric to do that.
This week I was able to "build" the back to the challenge quilt. That just means I stitched together lengths of the plain white Kona (brand name) cotton. For long-arm machine quilting, the back needs to be at least 8" longer than the top in each directon. For a 69" quilt side, I need at least 77" square. To get this dimension, I used two widths of fabric (assuming I get 40" widths after washing), and 2.25" yards (81") of length.
The Current Status
The quilt is loaded on the frame and I'm about to start quilting. I'd hoped to get farther than this during the week, but there were other challenges I was trying to meet that took priority. If I get time on it between now and the close of the diary, I'll post some photos in comments.
What are you working on this week?
Tell us what your current project is. Crafts, fine art, textiles, sculpture, jewelry, music, writing? How is it going? What is your inspiration? Are you working on deadline? Do you sell your output, use it yourself, give it away?
NOTE for future diarists:
Intimidated by the idea of writing and hosting a future diary? Check this great link for the group
New Diarists. This particular link has the list of the group's diaries. They include things like writing, formatting, including photos, adding tags, and other helpful hints. In fact, I just learned the cool trick of how to do headings there. Go ahead,
TAKE THE PLUNGE!! Writing is fun, and after the first couple of times, actually pretty easy. And groups like this can't exist without new writers.
We WANT you to join us!