What's Under the Needle?

March Week Three

Posted by on 26 March 2019 | 0 Comments
This content belongs to Arbee Designs.

Tags: challenge, quilting, art quilt

This week is all about getting the piece to come together - plans and ideas plus materials and a whole lot of fun! Here is Emma to describe what she did. I'll fill you in on my progress on the next page.... Over to Emma!

"I started my piece by making two Arrowhead Variation blocks which meant making half square triangles. I pieced them together, row by row.

piecing the first block together

First block finished

Once the first block was done, I worked on the second then joined the two together. 

2 blocks joined together

My original plan was to just have the two blocks, but once I had them pieced together I realized that my piece was not very wide.  To remedy this, I decided to add a panel on each side. I played around with some half square triangles in the opposite direction as the block on the ends.  

playing with triangle to see the effect

In doing this I realized it helped to emphasize a couple of my elements - bringing more negative space to the upper left side of the piece, and making the tree more pronounced on the right side of the piece.  It's great when happy accidents work out for the better!

side panels added

With my piecing done, the last thing to do was organize the applique.  I wanted three balloons and hand-drew my templates, making each balloon a different shape.  Next were my leaves.  I decided four was a good number for this piece, two big and two small.  I decided to hand-draw these too as the leaves I used in the last challenge were quite fiddly so didn't want to use those.  My only issue was these leaves ended up just as fiddly - I am sure I will appreciate that next week when it comes time to do the stitching! 

With my applique pieces drawn and cut out, the last step was to arrange them and press them in place.  The balloons were easy to place, having them floating their way up the tree.  I played around with the leaves a little longer, finally settling on having three of the four leaves already off the tree and on the ground, with the fourth leaf just holding on to the tip of a branch."

applique leaves and balloon added

Emma is well underway with her piece. It looks great and very different from mine. If you'd like to compare, you can see what I did on the next page >>

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