We’re into September! The river birches are already losing their leaves (some turning yellow before dropping, too), mushrooms have been popping up again, and it’s feeling more like autumn is truly around the corner. The weather is still warm, but recent cloudy days have made it easy to believe that cooler temperatures can’t be far away, now.
"September Stars"
I’ve continued work on the crumby star quilt top, which I think I’ve decided to call “September Stars”, because the colors have a late-summer mood (or so I think). And… it’s September. Good enough for me.
I’ve finished all the sawtooth stars! Here they are arranged on the design wall—all 30 of them:
At first glance, the next photo is identical to the last one, but if you look closely, you’ll see small squares pinned on top of the star blocks. Why? I decided to bump up the quilt’s size ever so slightly by adding sashing and cornerstones. After cutting the cornerstones from a scrappy mix of green fabrics, I pinned them where I wanted them to go. (There are some duplicates, and I wanted to be sure they were spaced out a bit.)
For the sashing, I settled on a medium grey from my stash. A nice change from white—pleasant contrast for all the colors, from the brights to the teensy floral prints on white—and a little autumnal feeling.
I had two pieces of very similar grey. One had been partially used in an earlier quilt, but according to my calculations, it would be plenty, with some to spare. So, I thought, let’s use that and leave the bigger piece untouched, in case a future project requires more. Makes sense, right? Ha. Just wait…
But first.
I chose to try a different method for adding the sashing, this time around. Normally, I would add sashing between blocks in either columns or rows, then build long sashing-and-cornerstone strips to go between. That works, but this method I happened across online seemed interesting. You just add the sashing and cornerstones to each individual block, then join the blocks.
Here’s one block ready to go:
Some of the sashed blocks waiting on the quilt frame:
Now we come to the part where my “smart” plan to use the smaller piece of grey fabric backfired…
If you guessed that I’d miscalculated how many pieces of sashing I’d need, how dare you doubt my math skills?! Also, you’re right. Yeah, I managed to get it wrong, and while the second piece of grey fabric was there, it was very slightly a different shade, which wouldn’t really have mattered, but would also have annoyed me greatly.
Fortunately, I was able to piece together a few pieces of trimmings to just squeak out the required number of sashings. And it truly was a squeak; if I’d needed one more, it wouldn’t have worked. Phew!
Of course, because I’d been diligently piecing the sashing and cornerstones row by row, I didn’t have the option to spread the pieced sashing through the whole quilt top—well, not unless I wanted to shuffle the blocks, which I decidedly did not wish to do—so they’re kind of clumped into a couple of rows… But that’s okay. I’ve done this kind of thing before, and you really don’t see it in the finished quilt unless you’re very closely scrutinizing. Even if someone notices, so what? It doesn’t matter. If anything, I’m proud I got the most out of that fabric. (Less proud of the fact that I keep making stupid math mistakes, but oh well!)
I did make sure to put the sashing pieces on the wall before continuing, to be completely sure I had enough, this time!
I’m now down to the last row. (It’s actually the last column of the quilt, but because the quilt fit better on the wall on its side, it currently looks like a row… (No-one else cares, do they? Moving on!)
Anyway, just the last six blocks remain, but they’ll take a bit longer to do, since I need to attach an extra piece of sashing to each. After that, it shouldn’t take too long to get the whole thing put together!
Watercolory Things
I don’t have a lot to share for this section, but there are a few things…
First, I thought it would be fun to try doodling in watercolor and ink pen on a printed page from an old book. As long as you don’t use too much water, it seems to work fine (and this paper was a bit on the thick side, which was helpful).
More of the same type of thing…
After watching a video of someone painting bright floral/organic blobs , then going back in with a water brush filled with ink to outline, I wanted to try that, too. However, after reading more about filling brushes with ink, I decided that was too messy for me at the moment, so I just painted around them with a regular brush and Boku-Undo E-Sumi paint, which is a mix of sumi ink and dye.
This one makes me think of batik fabric:
And this one’s a little closer to the style demonstrated in the inspiration video, though I used watercolor instead of inks and went back over portions of the picture with color pencil:
Both were fun to do, and would be worth trying again. I like this playful, bright style!
