I kept my quilting quite simple. Spiral boxes in the “buildings” and straight lines on the white background.

Now it’s time to join the sections using the Quilt As You Go technique, as shown by Marianne at The Quilting Edge. I’m joining the sections with narrow strips. The top (white) strip is 2″ wide and the back (plaid) section is 1 1/4″ wide. The length of each section is 56″, so that’s how long I cut the strips. That should prevent any unwanted stretching on the sides.

By the way, I’m not going to reproduce Marianne’s tutorial here. I’m just going to show you my in-progress pictures. Her tutorial is the place to go if you really want to learn this technique.

Attach both the pieces to the first section.

Join the back piece to the second section.

Press front and back. And this shows that tiny little gap when the seam allowances should be meeting. I’ll take a tiny bit more generous 1/4″ seam allowance on the next one. I used quite a few pins at every step, just to be sure my edges lined up top and bottom.

Press the front section over and topstitch. This is what the front and back look like when they are joined this way.

I quilted a couple of additional lines right down that front section and you can barely tell where the sections are joined…back, too!

Repeat for as many sections as you have!

Ready to bind!!

What did I learn? It’s just as easy to join big sections as it is smaller blocks, but it’s harder to get accurate squaring up with long pieces. That fabric can stretch a lot but it’s also forgiving when you need it to be! That this made quilting so much easier, because I could do it in small sections. That if I wanted to add more to this, it would be easy to do. That I love this technique and I’ll be doing more of it! It’s integrated into the design and that’s what makes me like this technique over many of the others that are out there.
Please give it a try and I really want to thank Melody Johnson at Fibermania and Marianne at The Quilting Edge for introducing me to this technique!

I’m linking this to Nina-Marie’s blog, too.

I went to see Mr. Random Number Generator this morning to select a winner for this vintage fabric. He chose

Judy Ferguson

I hope you enjoy them!

Advantages: quilting smaller sections at a time. Easier with a domestic machine. You can also add sections to change the size of the piece or the look of the piece at any time, even after you think it might be done!

So–my sections are assembled and ready to be quilted. I made a rookie mistake in the beginning and started squaring things up as I put rows together. Duh! I need extra fabric all around for the quilting and then trim and square up AFTER the quilting is done.

I want to show you the origin of this project. You might think you need to have everything all figured out and planned and drawn to scale and a real pattern before you start. NOT SO! Here’s my plan—

And I don’t usually start with this much! I just had a bunch of scraps, some white fabric (and I never use white), and the idea to make wonky nine patch blocks in different sizes. The rest is all just arrange as desired and fill in the gaps! Fun, challenging, nothing is precise and you can’t make a mistake. My kind of quilting!

Not sure when I’ll actually get back to it. My next several days are tied up with the quilt guild workshop weekend. Maybe Monday. I’ll let you know how the quilt as you go assembly process works…probably with pictures and hopefully NOT with cursing and gnashing of teeth!!!

A little beading, a little piecing, a little gardening, maybe a little napping…just nice, peaceful boredom.

Watching the grass grow and the trees leaf out…

Of course, that means nothing to tell you about, so how about a little giveaway?

I always have fabric that needs to find a new home and today I am giving away a vintage set of the same fabric in different colorways. I’m not sure if I have ALL the colors in this set, but I have most of them.

Various sized pieces that I have not used up because I never found the “perfect” idea for them. I think there’s a yard of the green and 1/2 yard of the blue (which has stains along the fold), but only a little square of the brown. I think they would work well in a more traditional pattern and since I don’t use those anymore, this fabric should go to a new home.

Would you like it to be yours? I sure would! Leave a comment and I’ll pick a winner this week…when I’m done with nice, peaceful boredom!

Trees in bloom…

Love these little white beauties

A pile of freshly cut tree

Bleeding heart–so graceful

And my own baby redbud!!!

I have my big rectangular dark beads on. I have my dark curvy lines. And then I have the pinky/orange/floral parts that I originally fell in love with. They’ve been totally ignored and now it’s decision time.

The flowers are subtle, but there, if you know what I mean.

These are the most clearly seen, quite pink, with just a touch of the orange on the right side.

These are almost completely pink with no orange nearby.

More very pink, no orange.

And a big swath of orange with no flowers.

I want to emphasize the flowers, pull in the orange flavor, but not overwhelm the subtlety of the flowers.

I started with the very lightest flower and used a gray/white bead.

Haven’t gotten too far, but I pulled these beads. I think I can achieve what I want with these…just don’t know how heavily I will cover the flowers with beads. I think a light touch is called for.

May not get this done for a while since it’s the “work-on-when-I-have-tiny-bits-of-time-piece” but I’ll post a picture of the completed beading. Then I have plans to add some hand stitching before the whole thing is done. Yep, little bits of time, but eventually it will get done!

I’m going to link this to Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday. I love to check out what everyone else is doing–you might, too!

Don’t know if this is supposed to be super secret, but you can have a good sneak peek at another project full of fun!

Here are a couple details and here’s MY secret–it doesn’t matter what you do to these tiles, they all come out absolutely gorgeous!!!

Have you added wonkiness into your quilt life? I made a lot of crazy nine patch blocks and now I’m going to add some inserts into some of them. Just in case you haven’t tried inserts, here’s how I do it.

I’m using fairly wide strips for my inserts, because I don’t want to drive myself totally bonkers!

This block already had one insert and I’m going to add the striped one, also. The strip is one inch wide, so the finished insert is 1/2″ wide.

Simply slice your block where you want your insert to be.

I try to avoid seam intersections, but if you hit one, it’s not a very big deal. Sewing the left side first is what I usually do, lining up the edges, just as if it were a regular block. When you add the second side, you have choices.

Line up the edges again, as shown by the fat arrow, and sew. Don’t fret about lining up the other insert that’s already there or the block pieces. This is wonky and doesn’t need to match. Your second choice, shown by the skinny arrow, is to put the left edge of your presser foot closer to that first sewn seam. That makes your insert skinnier and by following the first seam line, your insert is straight, too. Or you can start with a skinnier insert piece…I don’t do that very often, but if you want to see great, skinny insert work, check out Kathy Loomis’ work at artwithaneedle.com She is awesome!

So, back to my fat inserts…I press the seams towards the insert.

That fills up the insert with fabric and you don’t end up with a big sinkhole in your block. See–nice and full and fluffy and the orange strip even accidentally matched!

Notice that I have not squared up the edges of the block. I save that part until I am actually joining my blocks. That way I can put off the final size decision a bit longer. Procrastination works well for me when I’m doing wonky stuff!

So this is what I’ll be doing for the forseeable future. I’ll try not to bore you with updates about doing the same thing over and over–I’ll save the next post about this piece until it’s done. I just want to encourage you to find something you can cut into without a heart attack and do something wonky, too. Quilting is supposed to be fun and this is lots of fun for me!

I’m happy to have something to share on Nina-Marie’s blog this week. Check out all the cool blog link-ups.

Now come the design questions that I think about right from the beginning, though many of them don’t need an answer until much further into the project.

What size do I want this piece to be? Do I want a real bed quilt or am I thinking more in terms of a wall quilt or a couch throw? On the design board right now it’s about 63″ square. I’m pretty sure that I don’t want it to end up square, but with this design, it will look fine to add more length at the top and easy to do with my planned white background.

Okay-next question…before I make any cuts or sew any seams, I have to decide if I want to square up my blocks, to a common size for each level.

Do I want to add more inserts to the largest blocks? Do I want to join blocks with uniform strips or more wonkiness?

Straight and square seems too easy and somehow like cheating! But wonky stuff is going to be much harder to do. How much work do I want to put into this easy scrap project? Hmmm…..sounds like these are my first decisions.

Time to step away from the design wall and THINK before I do something I’ll regret.

Part of the problem is that I’m beading on an already quilted piece, scrunched up as I work, so the surface is not nice and smooth. The ideal technique is to thread on your beads, snug them up to the previously set beads and insert your needle straight down.

When you are holding that scrunched up, quilted piece, often at a weird angle to reach the center of the quilt, you sometimes lift the beads a little and your needle gets off target.

For me, it’s usually too close to the previous beads and that results in beads sticking up and not laying nicely in a smooth row. A smidge too much thread is better!

Sometimes it looks worse while you are working on it. When you smooth out your piece, the lines smooth out, too! If they don’t, there are a couple of solutions. You can get out your pliers and crush a bead or two to give the others more room to lay flat. You can take out your beading and re-do it more carefully. Or you can leave it alone and live with it. That’s my choice on this piece, because in the overall picture, it’s not really that noticeable!

But when you get those nice smooth lines…

sweet!