Soy Amado No.69

A beautiful sunny day so had to get out and about and get an 'on location' shot for you.

Believe it or not, I paid good money to the local camera shop to get that annoying piece of fluff removed...

...which clearly hasn't happened.

I need to check where this and the other quilts still needing to be made up, will he headed off to as I'm not sure if the children's home in Mexico City have sufficient.

And the back - almost as wild and wacky as the front.

As always, thanks for sending me blocks to make into these quilts.
I appreciate it.

Necessity is the mother of invention

I needed to make this quilt.

I needed a random colour explosion after the previous project.

I had absolutely no idea what kind of quilt I was going to make, other than it needed to be colourful and I pulled a lot of fabrics.

Once I pulled them I started cutting them up into 5" squares while I pondered what to do.

Then I started chain piecing them into pairs.

Then I sewed two pairs together to make a four patch.

After which, I placed two four patch sets together - right sides facing - and pinned on all the matching seams.
NOTE: You must be accurate pinning these matching seams together because this will form the centre point of the new blocks this method will create - four points will meet here.

Using a 1/4" seam allowance, I sewed round all four edges.

Next, I rotary cut across the diagonal, making sure I went exactly through the centre.
Or as exactly as you can get - it's more important you are exactly slicing through the beginning and the end points, as the centre point actually becomes the end of each block...you'll see later.

It helps if you have a rotating cutting mat so you can turn it round to do the opposite diagonal.

Either way, you are left with four of these.

Which when pressed open, become four of these.

Then it was really just a question of playing around with the blocks till I found something I liked.

Most of the different fabrics I left random but I did make sure I made the leopard print and some of the other blocks whole squares, just for more visual impact.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday

Definitely feel I am back in my happy zone now.

I am weak

Each time I sign up for an online swap I say it is going to be my last.

I grumble to myself over partners so silent they don't leave one crumb of a comment.
I tell myself I really shouldn't be spending all this time over a quilt for someone who is not the partner I had hoped they would be.

I imagine they will be chatty, leave encouraging comments, participate from time to time.
In reality the majority have not been.

And then the swap comes to an end and I get a lovely package from the person who was making for me (who I always forget about during the whole process) and then my niggled nerves are soothed somewhat.

My very own Guernsey cow made for me in the last swap I did - I love people who think outside the box

I forget my own gripes and moans and then before I know it, I've signed up for another swap.

This time it was the Schnitzelandboominiquiltswap on Instagram which I believe has over a thousand participants in it. With that large a number, I realise the chances of my partner commenting, leaving an encouraging comment, are fairly minimal and I'm fine with that now.

I think what drives me on, is looking at a person's comments about what they like and feeling challenged because they are so far removed from mine.

In this case my partner likes solids and a fairly specific set of colours. Without giving too much away, I was up for the challenge and off I went.

Hopefully the following photos will give you a good idea of the process.

First I decided on a pattern. I found this one on Etsy and asked the maker to reduce it from it's original 27" size to 24" as this is the maximum size allowed for this (and most) mini quilt swaps.

A colour palette (to my partner's likes) was picked.

To be that restrained was hard. Very hard.

Each block was made up of four separate paper pieced sections.

And some of the pieces needed their colour placement reversed.

Sometimes I got it wrong.

Sometimes I swore.

Sometimes I swore a lot.

Slowly it started to come together and that's when you get a bit of a second wind to carry on because you can see the emergence of something really quite spectacular.

Until you reach that 'oh wow' moment.

Until that is until you realise you've sewn the two wrong halves together...look at the middle bottom half square...it should have been facing the centre half square as I deliberately used a slightly different fabric.

Then the swearing recommences.

Lots of.

A couple of days break, the mistake is rectified and I am back at it with the quilting.
I decided to go detailed.

Like really, really detailed.

Like I'm never making this again so I might as well throw everything at it detailed.

And then finally, it was finished.

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday

And that's me done with swaps for a while.

I think.