Wednesday, May 4, 2011

turn me right round baby right round

So today is a very circular day.

First of all, I have to share with you an elegant solution to the problem of laziness. A little while ago I joined Lynne of Lily's Quilts dresden quilt along. I whipped up the circle in no time flat, intending it to be a one-block wall quilt. Then it came time to piece the circle into the border and my brain went, "Nyugghhhhh." I couldn't make myself do it. So it sat there. Dying for attention. Irritating me with it's not-doneness. Until I remembered: I have a ginormous embroidery hoop. Ha!

Lily's QAL solution

Done and done. Also, awesomely, all the colors match my youngest son's bedroom perfectly. Yay. Sorry about the crappy pic but I was being lazy about that, too.

Then today, since I was on a roll, I made a bunch of striped circles for this months do.Good Stitches quilt. We were supposed to make two, but I figured I'd make six. Why? I don't know. Because I could? Because I already had all the strips cut up and I hate wasting strips? Sure. Okay. Mostly I think it's because they were small, and I figured if someone flakes or sends ugly circles, our quilter can use my awesome ones instead. *snort*

May Striped Circles

Now, we were supposed to use Angela's tutorial on making these ready for appliqueing. Is that a word? It looks stupid. Anyway. So I did the circles using the prescribed method. And...I did not like it. Not that there's anything wrong with the concept, and I can see how it's supposed to be quick but the edges just bug me. No matter what I did I could not get the edges perfect, and nothing annoys me more than an imperfect circle. It's probably just that I'm not good at doing it right, but I think I much prefer Anna Maria's "Super Circles" method. Although if I do circles again I might combine the two in the sense of making the circle's AMH's way, and then ironing on a circle of interfacing afterward to keep the turned-under edges tacked down and ready to sew.

That being said these did come out nice and sunny and I look forward to seeing the finished quilt.

6 comments:

Leslie said...

i joined this Lily's quilt a long...and am so far behind it is not even funny. i start things like this with big aspirations and then i find myself never finishing....anyway this is a awesome solution!!!! what size hoop is that?

Jenn Grigoryev (jenn of all trades) said...

I'm not sure, Leslie--I got it a flea market a long time ago. Big enough to just barely fit the circle into. :)

blithe & arden said...

Can I be the one who flakes? Haha. Still not inspired to sew aaanythiinggg!

Angela Nash said...

I love the Jiffy Pop circle method as well! But with the pieced strips, I found my turn-process a little more reliable. Thought that would be the best for a group effort. Glad you gave them a try!

Jenn Grigoryev (jenn of all trades) said...

Angela! I wasn't criticizing your method, I only meant that my attempt at it was less than perfect. And you're right, it IS a good approach for our group. I'm just uptight about circles, what can I say.

Rachel at Stitched in Color said...

Thanks for the link to AMH tutorial. That predates me, LOL. Bookmarked!