Wheel of Fortune is doing my head in!

I was very pleased with my first Jen Kingwell cushion (which I haven't blogged about yet) and I decided that I would make another cushion for my friend as a house-warming gift.  This time I chose Wheel of Fortune and it is my first foundation paper piecing project. 

I found a gorgeous black fabric with embossed shells to use as the background for the cushion. My friend (who is also an artist) has just bought a house that overlooks the beach and I think that she will enjoy the contrast between the black seashell pattern and lots of coloured fabrics in the wedges.

I don't normally cut all fabrics before I start to sew. But this time I gathered as many decent size scraps as possible from florals, stripes, dots, very modern brights, country, Christmas, novelty, Australiana, Aboriginal and even a couple of solid fabrics. I then cut between 2 and 4 strips from each fabric to ensure that I have a lot of variety.



Then I got on to the nitty gritty of foundation piecing having first traced and then photocopied the templates onto foundation piecing paper that my friendly local patchwork shop gave to me!  This is my first attempt at paper piecing and my first block was not a great success.  



I don't think I traced the wedges accurately and after photocopying (which slightly enlarges them) the block just didn't work.  So I retraced all the wedges 16 times on the back of the foundation paper because I only had 5 sheets and couldn't risk throwing them away!

The next block is much better.



Piecing the smallest background template onto the wedge is very frustrating.  I've been doing lots of unpicking and its doing my head in.

I may take a leaf out of Wendy's book and hand piece the small background to the wedges.  My biggest irk at the moment is that I can only work on this during the day because of the black background.  My eyes just can't handle this at night.

So, one quarter block down ... 15 to go!  Finish date is fast approaching (yikes).

Hubblebird

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What a rigmarole ...

Image
... and a Bramble Blooms Pt 3 Update I'm calling on the Gods to thank the IT guy that I engaged to help me solve my Google and Blogspot problems.  He came to see me this morning, and it was a few dollars well spent to relieve my anxiety, and get me back into my blog.   Google help/support/community etc, including the bot - called Bard of all things, which makes me wonder if this is a nod to The Great Bard (Shakespeare) himself - couldn't resolve my issues.  Google Bard is still learning and wasn't helpful. It turns out that I had created the problem, but it took us a long time to sort it out.  Hopefully all is now resolved, as I have a lot to talk about! Adding the second border Rambling in the brambles in more ways than one Audrey's update for Bramble Blooms was to create the next border with repeat applique motifs and to add quarter-triangle style cornerstone blocks.  I read her really informative post several times, but I still managed to make a mistake...
Read more

Pretty little pots unearthed

Image
Four blocks completed Back in 2019, I attended a Wendy Williams workshop in a small town nearby.  I really enjoyed it, and came away with some gorgeous fabrics, and the intention to sign up for the Block of the Month called Pretty Little Pots. I decided to use different linen backgrounds for the blocks I made four blocks and set the project aside in favour of concentrating on  Red Centre . I can't believe that 5 years have gone by and that I haven't touched this project since. The linens are a variety of textures, prints, and checks in muted colours. I had to contact Wendy at Flying Fish Kits to get back into the Block of the Month website as the pattern is all Online.  Luckily the folks at Flying Fish Kits got back to me very quickly so that I could re-enter the website and gain access again to the pattern. I'm now looking forward to stitching these pots on my way across Australia, and also during the first few weeks after my move.  I need hand stitching as I won'...
Read more

[Butterflies wiggling]

Image
I watch a lot of foreign films.  And, because many English language films and documentaries have such loud music (meaning I have to reach for the remote to turn down the sound, and then turn it back up again so that I can actually hear the dialogue) I always have the subtitles turned on for foreign and English language films and moderate level sound.  I do this for anything that I am streaming actually. Much better. An added bonus to the comfort of watching films this way is that sometimes the descriptions for background noise, usually in square brackets, eg [melancholy music] [footsteps clattering] are hilarious, and occasionally, completely wrong.   For example, in a recent episode of a TV series set in the English countryside, a fox screaming in the dead of night is described as [woman screams].  Anyone that has ever heard a fox in the middle of the night will never mistake it for a woman screaming.  Kate, from The Last Homely House, certainly wouldn't....
Read more