Hat on Top, Coat Below
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MQA Progress Report 2
August 24, 2005
I’ve now got six sets of blocks done:
And I’ve cut the rectangles for the rest of the sets:
When I’ve got those sewn up, I’ll have more blocks than I need for the large wallhanging size I’m aiming for, but I want to have extras so I can play with the layout.
Things I’ve learned since my last progress report:
1) When you pick up the rectangle segments to take them over the machine and sew the branch strips on, you need to make sure you’ve got the rectangle oriented as shown in the directions in the book. Otherwise, you might find yourself sewing a strip to the straight of grain edge of a rectangle and that’s just not right. Yes, this is just a variation on “do what the books says” which I supposedly learned last week, but evidently I needed some reinforcement of that idea.
2) I was right when I thought I’d seen an article about how the colors were chosen for the original Treehouse quilt. I found it in the June, 2005 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. I found it interesting to compare the photo of the quilt in the magazine with the photo in the book–in one the greens look more yellow and a fabric which stands out in one blends much better in the other. I wonder which is true to life.
3) I do have a piece of platinum Fairy Frost. When I was on my serious Fairy Frost collecting spree, I searched until I had some of every current color, except the platinum, which I passed on when I saw how glittery it was (none of the other colors were that way at the time) and how the glitter came off on my hands and the adjacent bolts. When I was pulling fabrics, I found a fat quarter of it in my stash–I’d missed it before because I’d folded it wrong side out so the glitter wouldn’t get all over. (It’s the sparkly one in the bottom row in the sets picture above.)
The completely unofficial Nieblung ring I created for MQA participants is here.