Design Wall Monday--Aug 18, 2014

On my design surface today is a new project, and off the design wall is a finished one. 

A friend has commissioned a quilt for an anniversary gift and I've tentatively suggested a Winding Ways quilt.  A key to that suggestion is the fact that I own a Winding Ways die for my Accuquilt GO! cutter.  We'll choose fabrics together but I pulled a couple from stash to try out the cutter and make some test blocks.

 

I did look at a couple of posts on Accuquilt for some tips on cutting the shapes.  They suggested cutting strips of fabric 10.5" wide, and making sure the selvage edge was placed toward the die label for the grain to turn out correctly.  My fabrics are thin cotton so I layered four thicknesses to get two complete blocks. Easy enough to roll through the GO cutter and peel off the shapes.  The 10.5" width was unnecessarily oversized, I think.  The die itself is only 10 inches, and the blades even short of that.  That left a fair bit of waste that really cannot be used for much. But it was sure quick to cut two blocks!

I'm going to look at a few more tutorials on the block construction.  My test block came out  nearly square and even, but a bit of a miss in the center.  By the time I sew a half dozen blocks, they should all look better than this one :)

Off the design wall are the placemats I started a couple of weeks ago. 

They are about 13x18--I like big placemats.  The quilting with the three-step zig zag took a while, but a pleasing texture emerged.  Four are finished, two more are needed to complete a set.  How do you think I did coordinating with the table runner?  See more design walls on Judy's Patchwork Times.

Speaking of tablerunners, my husband picked up my entries from the County Fair while I was at work last Monday.  He and the person who was helping him traipsed up and down looking for the patchwork tablerunner, finally finding it just the same way I did, by looking in every display case until I found it in the furthest end of the hall!  He brought me a check for my first prize as well--$4.00.  My sister, however, having gotten first prize for her block entry for the Fair Theme Quilt Contest, received a check for $25.00!  I guess I'm entering that contest next year too!

Our grandson came for a visit over the weekend while his mama used the computer here.  He sat in his Papa's desk chair, ready to work. Too cute!