This is a better picture of the piece. No idea where the thin blue on the left came from.

The stitch quality is not good enough. Did it on the Juki and it is still snatching. I used the walking foot so the quilting isn’t as tight as I like. I don’t seem to be able to get the spacing as tight as I can with the patchwork foot on the Juki.

The lowest white piece doesn’t look so out of place. It might have been better if I had stitched the lower vertical lines in a curve defined by the left black piece.

I am reasonably happy with the design of the top. The size is much better too, 33 by 22 inches. The next piece I will stitch as I have in the past, following each piece, rather than using stitch lines over a number of pieces.

On to the next piece.

Pieces of Crow 1 is a better size.

Here is a picture of work in progress, it looks very waffled and messy:

The design has ended up somewhat different to my usual shard piecing as I have deliberately made the pieces bigger. Is it the direction I want to go in – I am not sure yet. I need to do a heavy critic on the design elements of this piece – is the balance right, does your eye move round the piece and so on. I am not happy about the heavy white piece across the bottom. It probably should have been narrower. However, it does add variety.

Here it is complete, in a very yellow light:

I will be glad to start adding a third colour as it is quite difficult working with only two colours. So the next decision is – one more black and white or start adding colour. I had planned four black and white pieces!

Food for thought.

I have started the next piece. Here is the pieced top, waiting to be sandwiched and quilted. I went back to the Juki and used a piecing needle and pure cotton thread – a much happier machine. Will see how it works when I quilt on it.

Yesterday, I gave myself permission to start this year’s main project. For a while I have been trying to work out what I wanted to do next with my improvisonal piecing. Looked into possible courses and came to the conclusion that I really need to go to the States and do a Nancy Crow course as I like the work her students produce. It could be very easy to clone her work – but her students don’t. They come up with good designs that are their own “brand”. So I looked at her courses. First issue, I would need to start at the beginning with her. If I am going that far, I am not sure I want to start at the beginning. If I have to start at the beginning, I would want to do two weeks back to back – an expensive option. The next issue, I would need between 50 and 100 metres of fabric, even more for two weeks. That is a lot of commercial fabric. I only use hand dyed fabrics and that is a lot of dyeing!

I read what the courses cover and have decided that I could do my own version of a Nancy Crow – it will never be as good but I could still teach myself a lot of things. So…

I am going to do this UK style – domestic size rather than industrial!! This means instead of making 100 quilts, I will try to make 40. Instead of being enormous, 3 meters square, I will make my quilts smaller. I have lots of notes of where I plan to take the process.

I decided that the quilts should be 24 by 16 inches, portrait. The first few would be black and white, then add another colour and work my way through a number of colour combinations. At the end of each quilt, I would assess the design and the manufacture of the quilt. I now have the first one and the rules need to change!!

Here it is partially quilted:

It was at about this point, I decided that the design looks better landscape. So I continued working with it assuming it would end up landscape. The next issue is that 24 by 16 inches is not going to be big enough for the pieces I am cutting. So I need to change size. I also had issues quilting the piece – don’t look too carefully. I used my Bernina and it doesn’t have the right foot to quilt as tightly as I like and can on the Juki. So I think this piece may be Pieces of Crow 0, rather than Pieces of Crow 1 – ie the sampler! Never mind, I have learnt lots so onwards and upwards with the next piece. I have almost completed 0. It needs the borders hemmed and a sleeve if I decide it deserves one. Here it is, pins and all:

Keep stitching and I will document more of the issues with this piece as lessons for the next piece.