Three things to be happy about:
(1) curiosity
(2) favorable reviews
(3) switching to iced coffee
Yesterday I wanted a break from the crumb piecing, I felt like cutting something! When I was looking for a book I ran across
Spectacular Scraps, by Judy Hooworth and Margaret Rolfe. I bought this book back in 2000 because even then I was attracted to scrap quilts. It has a lot of pretty quilts made with half-square triangles, so it was just what I needed! Years and years ago before I was as into quilting as I am today, I bought
Barbara Johannah's Crystal Piecing. This book has an interesting concept about half-square triangles; Barbara created 256 combinations that can be joined with each other to create unique block settings! Sometimes I play around with two numbers - say 25 and 201 - and see what the combinations look like in a quilt. I got some pretty interesting settings, I recreated all 256 combinations in EQ some time ago to make them easy to play with. I said all that to say: some of the HST combinations in the
Spectacular Scraps book remind me of the
Crystal Piecing method.
Many of the projects in the book are two-color quilts and they're all so pretty I couldn't decide what colors to go with! When I was talking with my sister I said to her "hey Shell, give me two colors!" She chose yellow and pink, so I went digging through the scraps I ironed a couple weeks ago and found a few red and yellow pieces. Now they're all a-tumble ... oh well.
I'm choosing all shades in the color families from burgundy to gold to reddish-purple, pale yellow - anything and everything goes! Right now I'm just in the cutting stage, I'll make a decision about the setting later on.
Using my 3-1/2" die I cut a few sets, looking good!
Here's a heads-up when layering... although they say you can layer up to six pieces, if you use a lot of small pieces be aware of the "bump" where they overlap. You may end up trying to cut 8-10 layers at that point - ask me how I know!
That's it for now, have a great Saturday, sew forth and sew on...
These will be striking - like a stunning sun-set!
ReplyDeleteWhat fun. I went to check on both books. I was sad to see that neither is available on Kindle. I am trying to not have so much "stuff" lying around. Maybe I will check and see if the local library has either of these.
ReplyDeleteI have Barabara Johanna's original book that had the 256 combinations in it and played with it my own combinations back in 1989 with my charm quilts. I just love the concept. I made a couple quilts from the "Spectacular Scraps" book too and I'm sure the inspiration might have come from Barbara's book. I know you will have a lot of fun with this. There will be a lot of interest in your quilt with all of the different shades of your color families. It does take a long time to cut the variety so I'll wait patiently to see your quilt in progress, lol!
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