Friday, December 5, 2014

Curve Quilt Progress

I'm learning so much while working on this quilt.  More of these sections need to be sewn together but it's almost impossible to take one off the design wall and get it back in the exact same place. I machined the coral/orange white circle and interior but may switch to hand sewing or Vikki Pignatelli's method for sewing curves.

Vikki machine appliques the curves with Invisifil thread: 100-wt. 2-ply polyester. My takeaway from her Crazy About Curves class was to turn narrow seams on the top layer and blind stitch from the top (although I recall using nylon monofilament at the time.)

Curve Quilt detail

Tight and gentle curves  and some straight sections are all needed. Most of mine are mid-range radius. More curve variation would help.

I thought Sherri Lynn meant to assign a specific mood to each single color based on how one felt that day. I chose these colors but felt the mood assignment was artificial. Anyway, here's my explanation:
  1. red - energy
  2. coral - happy
  3. orange - annoyed
  4. green - health
  5. white - tired/sleepy
  6. blue - peaceful
  7. yellow - questioning
Upon re-reading her post I realized her moods are more general, covering a section of values and shades rather than an individual color. This makes more sense to me; a group of values conveys my mood more than an individual color. 

There is very little yellow in my stash. Rather than buy fabric I removed that color. Then I used a bit of each of the remaining colors and sewed some curves. The curves are too ambiguous. If all the colors are in each curve, it's hard to distinguish one curve from another. So I switched to smaller groups of two to four colors. Each color can have one or more fabrics. This is working better.

It's obvious in the photo below which curves were sewn first and which were sewn later. I also decided I needed a new, discrete section rather than having everything unfold from a single center. That's how the Q appeared in the bottom right. It may be too disconnected from the rest; we'll see.

Curve Quilt in Progress

Every time I add a curve, the quilt gets bigger. It's a bit like children - we keep them once they arrive. :-) I don't want to trim any of them away but I don't want a large quilt. Continually adding curves is not helping me square it up. Perhaps I should piece strips in straight-ish sections to finish it out. Another point to ponder.

The technical points are starting to pile up. I'm deliberately not looking at anyone else's postings again until mine is sewn in order to see how I work this out. It will be fun to compare later. And having completed one, I'll have a better understanding of how and why others made their decisions.

Enjoy the day!
Ann