My creative space...taking shape.

It feels like I've been doing a refresher in primary school geometry in my creative space recently. 

This week I've completed the piecing of these half-square-triangles for a small lap quilt on its way to a sick friend. 

So far, my short patchwork career has consisted of the scrappy, the imprecise and the mismatched. I like it like that. Nonetheless I'm really digging this classical approach to piecing, using a charm pack of French General Rural Jardin fabric and some hankie linen. Matching fabrics - gasp! I even toyed with a symmetrical design, but that was all a bit staid so I've come up with this asymmetrical suggestion-of-concentric-square thing.

Alongside the triangles-in-squares, my circles-in-hexagons are coming along:

I'm half-way through the hand quilting of my ugly hexagons and enjoying the process a whole lot more since I switched my thread from sashiko thread to Perle 8 cotton, which is gliding through the layers far more easily. Thanks go especially to Mary for the helpful suggestions on how to mark the design and reduce thread friction.

Tune in next week for rhomboids, isosceles triangles and dodecahedrons.

What's shaping up in your creative space?

My creative space... circling.

It has begun. The quilting of the ugly hexes.

I've opted for hand quilting, and decided on a simple design of intersecting circles. 

Simple in theory, anyway. I'm finding it slow going, but not really in that pleasant, lulling, meditative way I had hoped. It's taking a while to get a hang of lots of things: marking out my design; burying knots; holding an unwieldy quilt on my lap; working the needle through those layers.

And then there is the stitching itself. I started out quilting with thin cotton quilting thread and trying to do small, even stitches. After realising that I wasn't catching the backing with stitches smaller than, oh, about a metre, I decided to embrace the large stitch and go for more of a sashiko look. This looks much better to my eye, and doing a better job of actually quilting the layers together. 

But boy, am I finding it hard work. Physically hard. There is a large amount of friction going on. There must be something weird going on with my particular concoction of fabrics, batting (can't remember what sort) and sashiko thread. The three circles I've completed in sashiko-style took around half an hour each! 

Thoughts? Suggestions? Is this just part-and-parcel of doing something new?

Anyway, with all the effort being expended, I've decided I need to keep the energy levels up. This morning I made a rather large batch of cinnamon scrolls, using brioche dough from my no-knead artisan bread book.

Heavenly. What do you think - do I get one for every sashiko circle-of-pain I complete?

More creative spaces to be seen at Kirsty's place.

Japanese kaleidoscope quilting... the slow burn.

The class was wonderful.

This is what I completed on the day...

One square of Japanese kaleidoscope patchwork quilt. It is a finished unit in itself, but may be incorporated into a quilt/runner/hanging of any size you choose. When pieced together, the units form wonderful sashiko circles:

My sashiko stitches, supposed to resemble floating grains of rice, are quite askance - not nearly so beautifully-even as Lara's effort early last year - but the eveness in spacing and line will come with practise.

This square is a product of a number of processes, all achieved by hand: the creation of a hemmed circle of fabric; the sashiko stitching which both bastes and decorates the circumference; the enfolding of a square of fabric and batting evenly within the circle.

Our talented teacher, textile artist and quilter Jan Preston, led us quite slowly and gently through each process. I suspect she was trying to instill in us a sense of the mindfulness and calm that such a method requires (and, hopefully, nurtures).

And this is precisely why I chose to take this particular quilting class.

So I'm putting it out there. I am going to embrace this quilting method and make a wall hanging. I can already think of lots of possibilities for using this method in different ways and for different projects, but first I'm going to be disciplined, and go slow, and learn to breath and concentrate and be patient.

 Don't expect to see a finished product until late in the year. (I'm writing that for ME more than you!) Other instant-gratification projects will come and go... but kaleidoscope-quilt is here for the long term.