Taking on Nana M.

You know those times when you see a quilt somewhere that catches your eye, and despite all the totally rational reasons you know why you shouldn't take it on, you just can't resist? I had one of those moments when I saw the Nana McIntyre design shared by Jodi Godfrey on Tales of Cloth.

It sort of devolved into a devil-on-one-shoulder, angel-on-the-other situation. "It looks so fun!" "What about all your other unfinished tops?" "...really, what's one more?" Then suddenly, I found myself cutting up fat quarters and in came the rationalizations: It'll be a good stash buster! (It actually really is. I've pulled out so many fabrics I purchased ages ago that weren't the right palette for projects I was working on or that I bought just because they're pretty without any real plan for them.) Such good practice for inset seams! (Also true! I find the sense of accomplishment involved in finishing an inset seam kind of unbeatable.)

The center here is from Sunnyside by Kate Spain, and the diamonds are from Terrain, also a Kate Spain line. The petals of the central "flower" are Kona Torch, a sunny bright orange that I love. (I used to be very anti-orange, and I think quilting has really prompted me to embrace the color.) The rest includes prints from Heather Ross, Denyse Schmidt, Lizzy House, V &. Co, and Darlene Zimmerman, among others.

I didn't have any diamond or jewel papers handy, so while Jodi's project uses EPP, I got out my Jaybird Quilts Sidekick and Hex-N-More rulers to cut the pieces, using the 2 1/2" hexagon for the "flower" centers, 3 1/2" jewels, 2 1/2" diamonds, and the bigger hexagons are the 4 1/2" size. It's a bit bigger than the size of Jodi's EPP. For comparison, the pink hexie is 2"-edge EPP, and the aqua was cut with the 4 1/2" measure on the Hex-N-More.

As previously mentioned, this method uses a lot of inset seams. The more I work on it, the more I feel like that's part of what drew me to this design. The repeat of the sew-press-trim of blocks with lots of HSTs and flying geese was maybe getting to me a little, and I think my brain has really sparked to the jigsaw puzzle aspect of making all these pieces fit together.

There's so much potential in this design for interesting fabric choices. It could lend itself well to the kind of fabric selection and fussy cutting that's come to characterize the La Passacaglia, but without so many pieces. I think it would be interesting with designers who utilize a similar palette across multiple lines, like Fig Tree, or designers who take a lot of inspiration from 20th-century vintage prints, like Denyse Schmidt or American Jane. The initial prompt of Jodi's original in working with solids make me think it would work well incorporating some of Robert Kaufman's new 12-color Kona bundles in specific color families.

My plan is to build out to the next ring of "flowers" with surrounding hexagons, then assess based on size and see if I want to keep going, as well as whether I want to try to build it out to a rectangle or keep the shape hexagonal. I already know I want to make at least two more of these, so it may end up being a ubiquitous pattern here.

Hi

I keep waffling about actually taking the plunge and writing here, so I'm just making myself do it. July's not too late to follow through on a New Year's resolution, right?

My name is Liz. I'm 29 years old. Up until last year, I was a graduate student, and now I'm figuring out what comes next. Around February 2013, I started to dive deep into the online world of quilting. Before I knew it, I was amassing a fabric stash and starting to tackle a few patterns, largely through hand piecing. I may or may not elect to share my wonky early churn dash blocks in a post of their own. Right now, I've got an active list of about two dozen works in progress, in varying degrees of proximity to completion, plus countless other ideas germinating. I hope to use this space to talk through some of my ideas, and share what I'm working on as I'm working on it.

Some goals:

 - I want to write about hand piecing, even though it's relatively slow going. I can't quite seem to stop adding works in progress, and I've got lots of ideas, even if finishing comes less frequently than it might with machine work. However, I love the quiet, meditative practice of it. And I think it should be asserted, and repeated: You don't need a machine to start quilting.

 - I want to be a more active participant in the community of people who write about what they're doing creatively - sharing what I'm working on and commenting on what others share. I've dipped my toes in on Instagram - and maybe it's crazy to step it up to a more text-y medium when so many people seem to be going the other way and scaling down from blogging - and want to expand further. I'm daring myself to join link-ups and share my opinion, and hope to get some good feedback from the wide world of crafters in turn.

 - I'm going to reacquaint myself with the sewing machine. I first learned to use a machine back in middle school Home Ec - and sewed a pretty cute stuffed animal if I do say so myself - but now that's over fifteen years ago! While I enjoy the calm and quiet of working by hand, I also feel like I have too many ideas and not enough time to tackle them. I'd also love to make garment sewing part of what I do, and obviously that one requires the machine. My tentative goals for the rest of this calendar year are to a) attempt a garment and to b) install a zipper in something, maybe a bag. We'll see how that dovetails with my massive list of WIPs.

- Maybe figure out some more graphic design stuff? I have no idea whether this blog template will frame my images well or not, but hope to be able to tweak with some confidence if I decide it's not working.

- I want to submit a quilt to the Bloggers Quilt Festival. I can't say right now whether I'll have anything in decent enough shape for this fall, but I'm keeping that one as a soft deadline for some finished work.

So, here it goes.