"You may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now,
because the world is yours and it is up to you.
Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world,
it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvelous joy."
~Susan Cooper in The Silver on the Treebecause the world is yours and it is up to you.
Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world,
it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvelous joy."
Quilting
It's been a while since starting the first wheel. The plan was to make a very scrappy wheel but the narrow wedge ruler I found seemed a better way to start/practice. So I quickly sewed one up... and what a mess. The middle was loose; the background was missing. I finally unsewed them into quarters with the idea of re-sewing the circle after the background was attached. I pulled a variety of pale yellowish greens {not chartreuse} and red-on-white prints that intrigued me. And that's when it sank into a UFO.
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| Possible backgrounds and sashing for the fan/wheel block |
Last year Sujata proposed the UandU QAL to recreate a quilt from Rod Kiracofe's fabulous book, Unconventional and Unexpected. There are so many to choose from and every time someone posts their own progress I want to make that one, too. Looking through it last week I was struck by three quilts with the same design - just like my old sample. Sort of. Well, enough to make me dig through the pile.
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Unconventional and Unexpected: Wheel of Fortune, p 66
and Fan, p 146
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The one with the Lone Star reminds me of last year's baby quilts. I want to make more but am running out of sufficient yardage to make the background. Here's a possible way to get away with less of a single fabric.
Wheel and fan quilts are traditional blocks that have been revived recently. Several people have created designs with unique names which are still the same basic block: a small center {quarter} circle, a wide arc sewn with wedges, and a curved background to square them up. The difference I see between wheel and fan is the center sashing. Also, wheels are frequently appliqued to a single background.
My original plan was to make very large wheels, 20-25" wide but the ruler was shorter. Clockwise from top left. After cutting ten-inch WOF I laid the wedge ruler on top with my regular ruler next to it. Removing the wedge ruler gave me a long side to cut. Next I replaced the wedge ruler, lined up the longer ruler to its left, removed the wedge ruler and cut the left side of the wedge fabric.
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| Extending a short ruler with my regular ruler for cutting |
Despite a very limited color palette, or perhaps because of it, there are special issues to address. Value becomes even more important. Fabrics work differently after they are cut than they did when they were originally grouped. The darks and the lights below paired up well until they were cut. Then there was too little contrast within a single fan and too much contrast from one fan to the next.
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| Changing out blades of the fan block |
My solution was to move the blades around until the values of all the fans were closer. These were switched between four sets to balance them better. Almost done cutting blades.
Taking the bull by the horns or the circle by the quarters. It's finally moving forward.
The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper is on my shelf but this is a re-read for me. It's another series catalogued as children's books. While on a Cornish holiday, three human siblings join their great-uncle Merry, Will Stanton {Old Ones}, and later, Bran Davies, searching for artifacts of power that enable the Light to defeat the Dark. Cooper blends English folklore and Arthurian legends with Celtic and Norse mythologies to create a new tale of mankind's passage to adulthood. That's what I read in the quote that begins this post and why this is a relevant set of books for adults to read also.
Of the five contemporary fantasy novels the first received a Newbery Honor while the fourth won the Newbery Medal as well as the first Welsh Tir na n-Og award and the final book also received a Tir na n-Og award.
Stay safe. Enjoy the day, Ann
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| Laying out parts of the stash fan blocks |
Taking the bull by the horns or the circle by the quarters. It's finally moving forward.
Masks
Still making masks. Sixty-two more this week brings the total to 127 and more to come. I made significant progress on DH's t-shirt quilt as the leftover material made mask lining. Most of the large logos are stabilized.Reading
The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper is on my shelf but this is a re-read for me. It's another series catalogued as children's books. While on a Cornish holiday, three human siblings join their great-uncle Merry, Will Stanton {Old Ones}, and later, Bran Davies, searching for artifacts of power that enable the Light to defeat the Dark. Cooper blends English folklore and Arthurian legends with Celtic and Norse mythologies to create a new tale of mankind's passage to adulthood. That's what I read in the quote that begins this post and why this is a relevant set of books for adults to read also.Of the five contemporary fantasy novels the first received a Newbery Honor while the fourth won the Newbery Medal as well as the first Welsh Tir na n-Og award and the final book also received a Tir na n-Og award.
Stay safe. Enjoy the day, Ann
