Back to the Pinwheels on Off the Wall Friday

 

So does everyone have that one big project that just seems to go on and on with no real end in sight?  My English paper pieced pinwheels is that project.  It's been going on for ...oh I don't know... 13 years now??  I know I started it in a weak moment.  I had finished the 4,200-piece tumbling blocks quilt and thought "Gee I haven't EPP in a while".  What happened if I did an improv EPP using just one shape but played with value.  At that point I never saw an art quilt improvisationally English paper pieced.  13 years later, I now know why.  It doesn't help that it's been an on-again... off-again kind of project. In fact, looking back over the years in this blog, it's a bit embarrassing how long this project has gone on!  With all this hand work I've been doing though, I've decided it is once again...on again.  

To catch you up, I've been making these little 6-piece pinwheels out of trapezoids in basically values of light-light, light, medium, dark, and dark-dark.  I chose a palette of cool colors plus magenta.  After many false starts on an exact layout, I decided to let it grow organically.  I started piecing the pinwheels together by value in big "clumps".  Then this week, I started arranging some of the bigger clumps together to make the beginning of an actual top.  Let me repeat that...a beginning of an actual top.  (I know I didn't believe it either).   

So this is as far as I've gotten. For the most part, that big island there is all sewn together,   I do have several ziplock bags of pinwheels to sew into clumps, but at least now I can somewhere plan it out...a bit.  Just gettin' the dang thing started was hard!

Making life easier is changing the thread I was using to piece it with.    I've been using Wonderfil's decobob now instead of Aurifil 50 wt cotton.  Wowsy, do the seams go together much smoother and the little stitches disappear.  I did try the Invisifil but I found that the 100 wt was not strong enough and sometimes break with a good tug through the seams.  It's crazy the love affair I've started with these two threads though.  I even got them their own little thread boxes so I can stop hunting around looking for them.

So I got another night or two to work on these before the fourth installment of the Block of the Month comes out.  Wouldn't it be cool to get both quilts done this year?

Under things I Like...

I want to remind everyone that when shopping for your supplies, take a little time and surf the web.  It came up again this week when I was looking for the little thread packs of DecoBob.  Thread has gotten outrageous anymore like everything else.  On the official Wonderfil website, the pack I wanted was $23.10 .  But I found it on Amazon for $19.20.  While on Amazon, I picked out my Dritz thread boxes for $5-$7 each (depending on when you look - pricing on there is so weird right?) AND  a magnetic thread wand for 2 bucks.  Am I the last person to own one of these?  Why in the world did I not buy it sooner.  Wave it and magically it picks up all my pins from the floor...from my table....from my blanket...you get the drift!

Ohhh and even though we did manage to get 3" of snow on Tuesday, my crocuses did come out in full bloom.  With the snow coming and going this year, we've been able to enjoy them a lot longer than normal!

So What Have You Been Up to Creatively?

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