Overlapping Octagons is finished.

Following Sujata's challenge in January to replicate one of the quilts in the book "Unconventional and Unexpected, American quilts under the radar", by Roderick Kiracofe, I made the Overlapping Octagons.

Instead of continuing with hourglass blocks at the intersections of the octagons as I did for the first few blocks, I took the fabric of the "sashing" further to form the point. The hour glass blocks gave very bulky seams at the corners of the red pieces but now there is less bulk but more Y-seams!

The original quilt was pieced by hand and I think that if I had done that I may have been finished sooner. Slow going as it was I'm glad I persevered; I'm quite comfortable with Y-seams now!

I quilted the red squares with various FMQ designs, and varying degrees of success! In the "sashing" I followed the seam lines to avoid losing the shape of the octagons. In my view that has worked well and they stand out nicely.

fabrics: scraps from stash
measurements: 38" x 44"
pieced with Aurifil 50 wt light grey
quilted with Aurifil 40 wt dark blue, dark red and bright red.

Now I'm going to look into the book again and see which quilt I would like to make next! 

Happy sewing

Marly.

Overlapping Octagons

As I haven't posted here for some time I thought an update on my Overlapping Octagons was due.  This is the last photo of my Overlapping Octagons before the final Y-seams to bring it all together.

This has certainly been a challenge. The challenge is not yet over! Because a photo is flat it's difficult to show how the triangle sections between four red squares are refusing to lie flat.

bubbly triangles!

I have re-sewn some of the seams in the bubbly triangles; the rest I'll try to tame by hand when I finish joining all the columns. I think I probably have more control over the fabric when hand sewing.

Much as I like the effect of the vertical white fissures in the first photo, they are not a design feature; my next task is to join columns 1 and 2, and then to join that section to columns 3 and 4. Lastly I'll be joining the seams between columns 4 and 5. Somewhere along the line I see I need to add a couple of small triangles in the edges, and to add triangles to three of the four corners. I haven't yet decided whether or not this quilt is calling for a border. What do you think?

Happy sewing

Marly.

Overlapping Octagons and Y-seams

For the UandUQAL organised by Sujata Shah I am reproducing the Overlapping Octagons quilt from Roderick Kirakofe's book, "Unconventional and Unexpected". I haven't done much to it over the last few months; this is the present state of this lap quilt.

I have made octagons with red centres surrounded by predominantly dark blue strings.  With this choice I aimed to use up most of my blue and red Civil War reproduction fabrics, and with the red I succeeded and have added more modern reds, but the blue were all so dark I soon started introducing flashes of other colours.

At present they're not overlapping, but I have more red squares cut, and here I've positioned them where red squares will go in the final design.

I am pleased that the overlapping octagons have now emerged.

The octagon blocks have Y-seams at each corner, and inserting the second set of red centre blocks will involve more Y-seams. I wasn't happy about this at the beginning, and so tried making hourglass blocks in the corners, as shown here:

This is one of two hourglass blocks I retained, before I gave up on them. At each of  the corners of this hourglass block five fabrics come together making very bulky seams which I couldn't get to lie flat.

Doing Y-seams, however, means joining only three, which will lie much more easily, especially if the last string in the side panel continues into the corner triangle, as here below.

Sorry about the fuzziness!

In this corner above, one of the four string sets ends in a separate triangle; this is one of the string sets I originally joined to an hourglass block. I rejected that method because of the lack of continuity between the string set and its triangular ending as well as the bulkiness of the join.

There was only one thing for it: Y-seams. I dreaded the thought! Now I'm becoming an expert! Practice makes perfect, they say, and I've had a lot of practice! The secret lies in:

1. starting sewing the seam at the opposite end to the Y-join,
2. stopping two stitches before the point of the join and backtracking a couple of stitches. That unsewn space gives you some room to manoeuvre.
3. starting each seam four stitch lengths further than the join, stitching back two stitches to fix the seam and then stitching the seam further until two stitch lengths before the point and backtracking two to fix the seam.

The mistake I made when I first tried Y-seams was to start at the point where everything came together. It's very crowded there! Much easier to keep your distance from everyone else at the party. Approach slowly and stand still when you're close enough. After following a tutorial from Mary Huey on sewing tumbling blocks, it was plain sailing for me! Mary illustrates the process with lots of excellent, clear photos.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Progress on UandU Quilt

It has been a very busy few months. With all that is going on I am considering my UandU inspired quilt as a very slow cooking project.

I have managed to make enough of these foundation pieced blocks to make a large enough bed quilt but the question is when will I be able to cut the center squares and actually make the quilt top.

I will work on lot of hand projects this year. Who knows? I may even come back to this to hand stitch the blocks.

What are you working on today?

Overlapping Octagon - how to draft your own pattern

Last night I decided it was finally time to give this quilt a go. There are other things happening simultaneously in the dining room so I may not be as fast as some of you are working. More I saw the images on instagram and your posts on here, I wanted toss whatever is required off to the side and dip my feet in as well.

I really want that scrappy, unplanned look, where octagon corners are mysteriously do appearing and disappearing act. So original quilt was pieced was the way to go. Yes, with Y seams.

This is all I have made so far. One block - not even! I am not sure if the colors are my favorite but it was good to try a sample of the block.

Here is how to draft your own paper pattern. Sorry for the poor quality of this picture.

• Draw a rectangle 2" X 4" with 2" X 2" squares on either end. 
• Draw diagonal lines from corner to corner withing both squares.
• The shape with darker line is the pattern needed for the octagon. 

I also cut 4" X 11" paper from the phone book. Basically split the pages vertically in halves.

Use these as paper foundation piece for your scraps and string. You want to start laying first piece of scrap right side up. Then place the next piece right side down. sew the seam. Press open the second piece. Continue with third and fourth.

 Place the template to see if you have enough length to trim the shape..

I cleaned up the edges before trimming the shape.

Using this template, add 1/4" seam allowance when rimming the string pieced



Here is the example of adding 1/4" seam allowance. 

I chose to make my blocks larger as I really want to make many quilts from this book.

Here is the difference in size of the templates between 8" and 12" finished block.

I think I made the smart decision. Too many Y seams at short distance to consider before choosing the final size of the block.

I hope this helps.

Happy Quilting!