Quilts And All Things Fabric...

As an avid fabric enthusiast, a blog about quilts and all things fabric just seemed the obvious thing to do.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Celtic Solstice Step 2


Week 2 of the Celtic Solstice Mystery Quilt brought Chevrons our way!

Ok, so that may not excite many of you but it did me because they are "easy-peasy" units to put together. That means a quick clue week and back to working on other Christmas projects...even though I love doing the mystery there are some other projects that just NEED to be finished up.

Since I am doing the smaller quilt, and using a limited fabric selection, the cutting went fairly quickly.  Here are all the pieces needed to construct 100 Chevron blocks.


After getting all the pieces cut, next step was to mark diagonal centers for the corner pieces. That meant marking all the white and all the yellow squares. Time consuming, but necessary to get nice straight seams for a good fit later.
 Here is a one of the units going through the machine. Notice how the needle is just to the side of the line (on the side that gets cut off). This gives that extra little needed for the fold over to be just the right size.
In the photo above, the polka dots on the white show through to the back side very clearly. This is a fun fabric. But it is a white on white, and very difficult in certain lighting situations to distinguish right and wrong side. Glad to have the stitching line mark in place on the wrong side of the fabric. Don't want to admit  how many times in past projects I have had to rip out and re-stitch because of not "seeing" the difference.

The key to a good join of the two sides is ironing the seams in opposite directions. For example, side 1 iron in one direction - up, side 2 iron in the opposite direction - down. I didn't take pictures of this step, but check out Bonnie's tutorial for good photo examples. Then join by "nesting" the seams. My preferred  method for these units was to nest the seam where the white/neutral and green met, then align the two fabric pieces upward to the top and start to sew. I sewed about half way down the white/neutral section, peeked to check on the "nested" seam and made adjustments if necessary. Sewed on through the "nest" and half way through the green section. Then again checked the "nested" seam and sewed on the end. I started out pinning these, but found it worked better for me to just nest them and check them as they were sewn.

And are all the completed Chevrons stacked up and waiting for their place in the quilt.
I am hoping that the different swirl patterns in the fabric adds an element of movement to the quilt. It will be a wait and see situation.
 
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In past blogs I have included a segment of what I called "Garden Variety Inspiration". This included photos of various things in the vegetable garden, or flowers in the yard that inspired ideas for color and or texture use with textiles. This time of year, it is difficult to come up with beautiful blooms, or colorful vegies to photograph. But Mother Nature has come through for us with some lovely snow and ice covered ornamental grass tassels. I thought this appropriate for this blog because of the use of neutrals/whites in the mystery quilt. These almost look like black and white pictures, but they are in full color. Just taken on a very grey day. And I refused to venture off the back porch to take the pictures. Yes, I am a wimp.  There is even a little contrasts in the neutrals of the white on cream and especially with the grey background.
 See the grey in the cream of the tassels?And the grey background? I love the use of grey in quilts.

Here is the big picture.


Hopefully these photos stirred up some inspiration or at least piqued you interest.
Well, that's all until next week when we get to see what clue/step 3 has to offer. Until then quilt on!
Kathy

1 comment:

  1. Your Chevrons look perfect. Some of mine are a bit wonky - don't know why. I think some of my scrap fabrics are not real good material and they stretched some. Those photos of the snow covered grasses is beautiful. You should blow them up and frame them. PS Where in MO are you located.

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