Category Archives: Blue

Five Flowers for Eleni

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Flowers for Eleni HPI decided to also do yellow and white flowers.  They’re wrinkly because the papers are still in.

Flowers for Eleni Back HP

I’m really happy with how they came out (I think I did a pretty good job of choosing hues in each color that worked well with one another), and I hope they fit well into the quilt(s) that Jodi from Tales of Cloth and her helpers make for Rachel and her family.  Here’s the latest from Rachel.  I wish the auction hadn’t been Instagram-only.

Even though I’ve been doing EPP for months now, this is the first project where I actually removed the basting and papers.

Flowers for Eleni Removing Papers HPIt was a little scary at first, and I didn’t realize just how much thread went into the basting stitches until I was cutting them at every corner, but just feeling the fabric drape like fabric again was wonderful.

Flower for Eleni Papers Out HPYou can see that I used a thin light grey thread on the colored parts (Aurifil 50 wt, which I am in LOVE with), and a thicker dark grey thread on the parts connecting with the black.  You can see both sets of stitches a little on the front, but it’s HANDwork, so I like to see it.

I was worried that the seam allowances weren’t behaving, but I put all five flat into a padded mailer, smooshed between pieces of paper, and I think they’ll get to Jodi in Australia better than they left here.

Some people were appliqueing their flowers onto background fabric, per Jodi’s assembly plan, but I just don’t have a deep enough stash to have made that viable.  Also, since I had two light flowers, I wanted her to have some leeway on how she backed them (inverse for those?  Light flowers and dark background?  Or not).

I also didn’t trust myself to do the machine applique and I had no time at all for hand applique.  I hope she can use them and that they play well with other people’s flowers.  This was my first attempt at contributing blocks to a quilt.

I can’t wait to see what she and her helpers do with them and I hope that Rachel’s family can take comfort from them.

Flowers for Eleni

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Rachel from Stitched in Color, who teaches the Handstitched class that I’m taking, delivered her baby over the weekend.  Things did not go as expected.  I wanted to offer my support, but I couldn’t comment on her blog post with just my name and I didn’t want to email her my sympathies.

A classmate let us know about Jodi from Tales of Cloth’s Flowers for Eleni 1″ hexagon flowers project.  It’s a very small way that I can come together with our community and let her know that she and her daughter and husband and other children are in our thoughts.

Flowers for Eleni 1 HPI dropped what was on my hand-sewing agenda (aka Midnight Garden) and basted up some 1″ hexagons.  (I made that sound easy, but I agonized, as usual, over the fabrics in each bunch–do they go together, are they balanced, etc.  I want to send her my best and not mess up what everyone else is doing.  I checked the Instagram hashtag and I think what I’m doing will fit in.)

Depending on how fast I can sew these together, I’ll get them mailed on Saturday to Australia(!).  If not, I’ll make a couple more and mail them next weekend.  A yellow would be nice.  Maybe a white-on-white.  For the centers, I used my silver-speckled black fabric, which I love and which I think makes very nice flower centers.

I hope doctors can soon find a diagnosis for Eleni, and I hope it’s one with a good prognosis.

The Hexagon Diamonds Blues

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The title is descriptive of the photo and of my mood.

Blue Hexagon Diamonds HP

The diamond on the right is pretty clearly light blue, though some hexagons are more greenish or greyish.  That just adds interest.  The one on the left is just barely darker than the “medium blue” one in the middle.

I’m not going to sew any of these up.  They’ll just go back into the “blue” container as loose, basted hexagons.

I do think that I learned I only need two shades of blue for I’m Not a Machine, though, and maybe greenish-blue, if I have enough fabrics in that shade, which I doubt.

All told, I learned a lot about color and value this month, even if I didn’t get much done besides basting.  I’m looking forward to next month’s color.  I hope it’s an easier one, like orange.

Linking to soscrappy’s RSC.

Blue Hexagons

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Thanks to all of the encouraging comments last week, I decided to pull two bits of every piece of blue fabric I have (even some that are clearly too greenish, too multicolored, or too greyish) and baste them up, then try to separate them into light, medium, and dark blue piles.

Blue Hexagons HPI’m actually basting with white thread.  The blue in the photo is in case I feel confident enough to sew a medium blue or dark blue diamond together.  I feel pretty confident that I can make a diamond from these hexagons that reads light blue to me, but I’m still worried about the lack of difference between dark blue and medium blue.

Well, that’s what experiments are for.  More basting!

Linking up to soscrappy’s RSC.

Medium Blue Hexagon Diamond?

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Medium Blue Hexagon Diamond HPI’m not even sure what I think of these blues anymore.  What is “medium blue” anyway?

Argh.  Well, I THINK this hexagon diamond would work for I’m Not a Machine, but I don’t even know.  I think I need to make a yellow hexagon diamond up because the uniformity I was able to achieve on the orange one was a fluke.  I think.  I dunno.

Spare Blue Hexagons HPThese are the blue hexagons I basted that didn’t seem even close to medium blue.  Yes, one of them is green.  I do love the swirly blue in the middle on the right.  I’m looking forward to the “light blue” RSC month.

Maybe I just need to baste all of the blues and later sort them into stacks of light blue, medium blue, dark blue, and green-blue.  Or maybe just wrap dark blue into medium blue for only three stacks?

This is making me a little crazy, so I’m mostly going to let the rest of this month’s RSC pass me by, I think.

(Lots of uncertainty and “I think” in this post, I know.)

Linking to soscrappy’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge post for the week.

 

More Blues

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I’m having no luck at all finding medium blues.  I went into my ongoing wonky squares bed quilt project and pulled out some blue scraps:

Medium Blue Scraps HPThese are teeny, tiny pieces and the more I look at them, the more I think they’re not medium blue.  I also bought a bunch of fat quarters, which I love, but they’re also not really medium blue.

Blue FQs HPEven though these pictures are terrible, you can see how all of these fabrics are different shades, only some of which will barely pass for medium blue.

I’ve decided that I’m going to base up some 1/2″ hexagons from all of these fabrics (and the ones from last time) and then lay them out and see what I can do with them.

It might be that 2015 is my year to learn about color along with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and not make too much of anything, which is fine with me.

 

 

Blue!

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January’s color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2015 at soscrappy is BLUE!  Not light blue, not dark blue, just blue.

I LOVE blue, and many of the scraps that I bought from eBay are blue, but I don’t think I have many of the right color.  I went through them and found some, but not many.  I don’t want to cut into the blues I have for my wonky blue/purple/green quilt since it’s not anywhere near done yet.

RSC15 Blues 1 HP

This picture isn’t exactly true to color, but you can see that most of the ones I pulled out are too greenish/turquoise (on the upper right).  The ones on the upper left are too grey, even the ones with gold and silver.  The bottom ones are mostly just wrong in various ways.

The only two I think are actually BLUE blue are the polka dot in the top row and the trains on the lower right.  Sadly, the trains are really a short little strip and I’d like to fussy cut some of the train cars out of it, leaving me with very little.

<sigh>

Hmm.  Maybe if I go into my project box only for little bits that I’ve already cut and use them for 1/2″ hexagons, it’ll be okay.  I’ll have to think about it (and look in that project box and see if I kept any tiny scraps from the work I did on it already).