Another kind of Grandmother's Flower Garden

I can't believe what I am about to write: "A 200 piece English paper pieced quilt  is a quick project!"

Here is my latest quilt top. It took me less than 5 days to make it.

It's a cloudy day here and I am disappointed that I can't take better pictures.

The colors are brighter than in these pictures.

I enjoyed so much to make it...

and I am thinking about new designs and fabric combinations.

Here is the back.

And here are a few WIP photos:

The sphere is 30" (75 cm) in diameter.

The back with paper templates still there -  it looks good (idea for a new design!).

I enjoyed even removing the basting stitches and pulling out the paper templates.

In love forever with the fabulous English paper piecing technique!
Wishing you a great weekend!
~Geta- definitely  wiser, after the making of this project! And more aware than ever of her biggest fault: the impatience.

Making progress...

...on my new quilt.
I thought that basting the fabric onto paper templates  is the most time consuming step. But now I don't think so.I basted the 200 pieces in 2 days.

This project teaches me how to be organized.

I am so grateful  that someone so clever invented this technique.  It doesn't matter that you need time for hand stitching. Then you need time to remove the basting stitches. The most important thing is that you can make perfect pieces and it is so easy to stitch them together.
 

Now to sew mine!
~Geta ~

PS. Thank you all who nominated or voted for my quilt in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival. You still can vote for your favorite quilts, here ( Viewer's Choice) and here (favorite quilt in 15 categories).

New Project

New Quilt! I would like to make it in a week, but this is just a dream.

English paper piecing, paper templates,  hand stitching and 200 pieces, no way to make it so quickly.

I selected the fabrics from my precious Fusions fat quarter box.
I have in my stash even enough  fabric (from the same line) for the two backgrounds.

I have to wash them, meanwhile I am playing with the colors, hoping that my quilt will look as nice as these pictures.

Have a great weekend,
Geta

Fabric file folder

After all the "solid fabric" projects  I made lately, I feel the need to use some beautiful prints from my stash.
And I made this quick and easy project.  Sometimes I have to go out and keep some documents flat and I thought this fabric folder would look much better than a regular plastic folder.

It's an A4 size. It is very stiff,  between fabric layers I used a thin but stiff interfacing.

I have many spools with little variegated thread (that it is not enough for a quilt)and I am glad I found an use for them.

More ideas coming soon. I hope!

Orphan Dresden Blocks

I continue to make (and collect orphan!) dresden fan blocks.
I made these blocks a few weeks ago, for my green quilt. I wasn't too happy with them and I put them in a box. Some day I will try another version.

The only thing I am sure about is that I want blocks that look like circles and not blocks that look like octagons. You can see in the photo below the difference between the blocks.

My quilt would look like this:

If you like rounded blocks too, here are the measurements of the strips you have to piece.
I made two sets of strips, cut wedges with the fan ruler and combined them.

The measurements include seam allowances.

Set1

Set2

The trick to get rounded blocks is to use the same fabric for the top and bottom strips of the set  and for the background (the squares in the corners of every block). 

The final block measures about 15.5'' x 15.5''.

I received a lot of requests for a tutorial on how to make the dresden fan block.

Cindy wrote a tutorial here (Thank you, Cindy!).

Here is the tutorial on how to turn the dresden blocks into octagons then in squares.

The possibilities are endless.  Happy Quilting!

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

It's "Bloggers' Quilt Festival" time again. Lots of quilts to see and enjoy! Visit Amy's Creative Side and be inspired. Thank you, Amy, for offering us so much inspiration in just one place.

And here is my entry - my latest shadow trapunto quilt.

I combined in this quilt the things I love most:

 - color  and circular design; these are raw edge Kona cotton hexagons glued on a background;

 - trapunto design, made out of organza and batting;

Two tops = one quilt, here is a detail:

 - Color and contrast  -

It was an adventure to make it and I learned a few lessons. The most important - "the patience".
More pictures and information about how I made it -  here.

Enjoy the festival's quilts!

The anatomy of a quilt

Do you remember this top ?

And this top ?

They became this! My largest shadow trapunto quilt -  55'' x 55''.

When I started working on this quilt, there were two options: if everything goes well, I will make a beautiful quilt. If something goes wrong, instead of one quilt, I will make two- an applique quilt and a simple shadow trapunto.
 
My concern was that the trapunto design wouldn't fit perfectly over the applique design. With almost 500 applique pieces and so many intermediate steps, no wonder I was worried.
But everything went perfectly, unexpectedly easy!

 I basted the layers on the floor. I thought that I will have to match every single point of the trapunto with the corresponding applique point, but it wasn't the case.  I did this only here and there.

Looking good!

I suppose the reason that everything went perfectly was that the 2 tops were very accurately done.
I did not transfer the applique design on fabric. I glued the pieces on a blank top. The paper pattern was underneath and I could see the lines without any difficulty. And I did this in the artificial light. I love light colored fabric.

And I printed the hexagon templates directly on fabric.

And, of course, best of all -  the paper is the best stabilizer! That is why the trapunto design was perfect.

Working on this quilt I realized how much weights the cotton batting (in the middle layer).
It was very difficult to move the quilt under the needle, even though I used my industrial machine, which has big space under the arm. 

It was the first time I used such light colored fabric for background. But I wanted the focus to be on the colored sphere and nothing to distract from it (that's the reason I ripped out stitches for 4 days).

The quilt was incredible flat after the quilting was done, but not so flat after washing. But I kept smoothing it on the floor and it became flat again.
I did not bother at all trying to keep the circle perfect and the outer border square, but they look good. 

Do you like it ? Because the cats like it. Whenever I don't watch them, they are right on top of it. I used a lot the lint roller.

This was the original design. I wanted a light gray fabric but it was always out of stock. 

I would like to see the quilt with your eyes. Wouldn't be great to be possible to remove the memories of the last months (the hard work, I mean) and see just the finished quilt, for the first time. Without any WIP memory ...  I am wondering what would be my feeling. For now, the quilt is already...old.
Definitely, I have to roll it and hide it for a few weeks/months. Maybe then it will be new for me too...
Well, I am sure that this happens to all of you, right ? 

Do you like the technique? It is from my book.