Finishes

The Kaleidoscope is finally all finished, with the binding sewn down. This morning I washed and dried it. I put it on our queen sized bed to see what kind of fit it would be. It's a bit small but would be fine for a topper. If you click to enlarge you can see that I quilted the label right into the design. I also see a thread that I have to sew in. Too bad I didn't spot it before I took the picture. The picture is not very clear but it's so overcast and rainy today that the light isn't co-operating.



Here is the first circle quilt, with the larger circles that don't have any batting under them. I quilted it with loops and stars. I put a big star in the middle of each circle. On this one I sewed the circles on with invisible thread. I feel that it looks much better with the hand sewn circles, although It would be interesting to try to couch them down with some sort of whispy yarn. I took this one outside and pinned it to the clothes line but it started raining as soon as I got the camera out so I didn't dare take the Kaleidoscope out to photograph it.


This is a close up of a couple of the stars in circles.

Next Up

Here are the new Recs Tools. They do make the job a LOT easier. I can see where I am cutting. I have an idea for a similar pattern to the one I am doing with these tools but with more controlled colors, maybe only a table topper size.



Here is the next quilt loaded on the frame. I just have to decide how I want to quilt it. I think it will be a meander or something like that.

A Totally Different Finish

I took Wanda's advice and got rid of the black narrow border and then I was able to use a darker wide border. I would have liked the bright yellow as the inner border but there was almost none of it left. The wide border used up nearly all of that fabric which has been sitting in my stash for some time.

When All Else Fails...

When things don't go well in the studio, my policy is to start something new. This one was inspired by one in Karla Alexander's book but I didn't use her method. I just cut out a lot of black and white six inch squares and made them into large four patches. There is a colored sashing with B&W cornerstones. It couldn't be simpler to put together but there was some planning for the sashing. I tried to get the colours to blend a little bit. Now I have to decide on a wide border. The one in the book had a strong turquoise but I don't have enough fabric of that color unless I dye some. So far these are the ones I have auditioned. It has to be quite bold to compete with the black and white blocks. So far I have rejected the far right in the top picture and maybe the middle in the bottom one. The black with multi-coloured dots may be too dark. So far I lean toward the pink with black polka dots. Any opinions? Or should I try something completely different? Like wider sashing? Or sashing all the same color to match with the border and multi-coloured cornerstones? The only thing sewn down so far are the B&W four patches.