30 Days of Improv - Week 4 Check-in

I participated in the #30daysofimprovqal hosted by @shannonfraserdesigns and @broadclothstudio.  Our final week was all about curves.  I confess to not spending as much time with these as I did the other blocks and I'm - no surprise - not thrilled with the results!

But that's ok!  I've got plenty of fabric left so I can make more blocks or expand the ones I have!  Pictured below are each week's blocks.

After clearing off my design wall, I've started arranging them - you can see what I have so far in the photo below.  Improv is an interesting process.  While I really enjoy the creating of the piece parts and seeing what unexpected surprises show up,  I find the process of assembling into something that looks interesting to be very difficult.  

I plan to leave these blocks up and visible but walk away from the project for a bit.  I'll share again once the quilting in underway.  Wish me luck!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

One Monthly Goal August Finishes

Ready to link up your August finishes?

Don't panic - this link-up is open until August 31 at 11:55 pm ET.

Want to see everyone's goals for the month - check out the August goal page!

I'm happy to report I enjoyed a month of back porch stitching and finished my Kawandi quilt.

Read more about my Kawandi quilt.

Now it's your turn to link up!  Please add a link to this OMG post so others can follow where you are linking.   Let's make that easy -  just paste this into your post:  

Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - August Finish Link-up

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Ottoman Rings Update

Back in early June, I took an Ottoman Rings workshop with Tighe Flanagan.  During the workshop, I sewed the lower quadrant of the quilt using a dark Essex linen.

While I loved the fabric combination, this pattern requires a lot of marking and the linen was just too dark for any of my marks to be visible.

So I switched to a lighter fabric.  But my progress was slow for two reasons.  First, there are tons of partial seams and it was a bit fussy (for me) to sew together.  Second, I attempted to sew by quadrant and found myself spending too much time figuring out my color layout before the sewing could begin.  (Other guild members made all their rings from a single color - such a good idea!)

So I've dumped the machine and moved to hand piecing and am loving it!  Hand piecing is eliminating the need for many of the partial seams - there are still some but a lot easier to deal with.  Plus, sewing gentle curves by hand is much easier than by machine.

I'm keeping the quilt spread across my cutting table and sitting there to sew it together.  Assembly is no longer by quadrants - just putting together the quilt from the center out.  Lots of pieces are marked with their piece number to help me from getting confused on where I am in the pattern - this also means that nothing has been ironed yet!

This will be a wall hanging when I'm done although I might go slightly smaller than the pattern calls for.

Have a wonderful day! Patty