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Monday, April 30, 2012

Slowing Down the Piecing

This last week has been very busy for me in the sewing room, and I finally decided to stop and take pictures of what I've been working on, even though nothing is even near being finished. The first set of pictures show a couple of blocks from the Orange Peel Class I took recently at the Cloth and Bobbin. I chose Teal and Grey as my colors and sewed enough to audition color schemes before I piece them together. The "teeth" are scrappy and the two choices I have are to go with a toned down center, or to make the quilt completely scrappy and random looking. 

First the more unified approach,
 


 Then the scrappy look,



 At the moment I am leaning toward limiting the color of the block centers to the light grey tones to give this quilt a very quiet, peaceful mood. I'll have to keep piecing a few more and do a mock up.  Foundation piecing is slow going for me, but I love the intricacy in the designs when I am done.

After I spent a few days on the Orange Peel blocks, I thought about using similar foundation piecing on Laura's quilt for the borders.  So I drafted a block and sewed up a few pieces to audition before I went much further. I think I like it.  It kind of looks like a fence going around the garden.


5 comments:

  1. Ann, I love your orange peel blocks. At first, I really loved the soft center block, but they are all so beautiful. Then I thought a mixture of the soft and scrappy....why not? Whatever you choose, it will be beautiful. And, I absolutely love Laura's quilt. The border is perfect :)

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  2. Hmm, out of the all the samples you showed for the orange peel blocks, I like the soft greys the best, but think it needs a thin, dark defining line around the edges to lift if from the background teeth. The two darks don't have enough contrast, and the scrappy versions don't seem to gel. How about replacing the darker grey of the first example with the swirly dark? And the dotted dark looks great as a border.

    As for the other quilt, Laura agrees the border looks great!

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  3. j'aime cette explosion de couleurs c'est superbe !!
    félicitations
    bises de France

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  4. Very cool blocks and border. I have yet to try paper piecing but hopefully this summer some free time will come. I want to try some blocks like those.

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  5. I love your blocks from the Orange Peel Class! so interesting design! and very beautiful color combination!
    hugs, Masha

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