Thursday, April 24, 2014

"Ode" top is Done!

Finished the top.  Had high hopes of getting it onto my Avanté today, but I whiled away some of the afternoon, catching up on email, thank yous, updates, etc.

So, here it is!

And I just love it!  I thought the pale grey might be a little flat, but I think it's just fine.  Sorry for the crinkly flannel design wall, but for now my gridded flannel is pinned into the studs of the basement, not very well...you can see it's slipping a bit, so I stuck some stickpins in to try to level out the grid lines.  I got this hmm, about 10 years ago from Hancock's Fabrics.  Worth every penny.  And the stupid duty they dinged me.

Here's where I left it about this time last night:


I had exactly 30" of the pale floral grey.  I guess they'd call it low volume grey now.  So I made my sashings 2", and my top and bottom borders 3 1/4".  It JUST fit.  I went with 51.5" wide bars so the quilt will finish at exactly 51"  I only had to add a bit onto the very bottom row; the others I had to trim off just a little.

I cut and sewed all ten sashing strips into one long strip last night, pressed it, and then after walking Rocco this morning, started cutting them to 51.5".   I also trimmed each bar to 51.5".  I sewed a sashing to the bottom of each row except the last, and then piece two rows together, so I could chain sew the entire top without cutting my thread, love that.


You can see how small the pieces were that I had to trim off just above the green row.  Ahem, you can also see a hot water bottle.  Yeah, it's rather chilly in our basement after we come back from Florida when we've left our main floor thermostat at 55F for 4.5 months.  Now, if the sun is out, the furnace doesn't run too much, so the basement remains cold!  So, I wear two layers of yoga pants, 3 layers on my torso, and I even was sitting on a hot water bottle alternating having the iron on, with my little space heater.  If I have both on, I blow a fuse!  It's all good; think I'm picking up a better heater for my corner of the basement (it's all unfinished right now) tomorrow after my yoga class in Windsor.

Last night I basically swept all the fabric off my cutting table onto the carpet so I could start cutting sashing.  Bella was excited.  This cat just LOVES fresh fabric.

Just look at her big eyes, ready to attack something....

And she did, bulldozing her face into the piles.  Sigh.

Not all of my purples and green were scraps; I had to go into some of my kaleidoscope fabric stash, but that's okay as I have not been kaleidoscoping for some time.  À la Paula Nadelstern.  I NEED to get back at that too.  You can see parts of two kaleidoscopes on my design wall.

So!  It goes onto the Avanté tomorrow!  And I'm pretty sure I have the perfect backing!  I am so happy to use up some of this fabric and make something so pretty!  Thank you so much to Cynthia of Quilting is More Fun Than Housework (oh it SO is) for coming up with such a cool scrap quilt.  I really felt like I was painting with my fabric, a feeling I get when doing scrappy quilts.  I just love getting that feeling, playing with colour, and I just love scrappy quilts!  I plan to hop on board with the others she's done, and doing, and is going to do this year!

2 comments:

I wholeheartedly appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment, as they make my day! I answer every one by personal email. :-) Unless... you are a "no-reply" blogger, which can occur for a few reasons. You can get around that by writing out your email within your comment so that I can answer you.