Spinning Stripes

Two weeks ago I attended a class with a very talented local quilter, Shirley Mooney.  We started with a single length of a stripey fabric, and a 60 degree triangle ruler. Through out the day we turned the fabric into something completely different.  

Siren Song by Michael Miller Fabrics

Shirley encouraged us to take photos on our phones and study how our arrangements looked on a smaller screen.  This was my first attempt:

Then it grew to look like this:

 Then I swapped out 3 of the centres and made all the centres dark, and that looked better:

Someone else in the class had the same fabric, but in pink and purple. She went for a different approach:
 

Another student had something completely different:

We spent the whole day cutting triangles and playing with the layout. Once we were happy with our layouts we pinned them to sheets and took them home to sew up.  The knack is in matching the stripes perfectly, as shown below.

Due to the care and attention needed to get the stripes matching correctly, I only got 2 columns sewn together the next day, and even they aren't 100% perfect, but I'll settle for 97.5% perfect in this case.

The rest is still pinned to the sheet, waiting to be joined up. Because I'd purchased plenty of fabric, I had enough to do 2 different designs, so I've got 2 designs pinned onto my sheet.  It's carefully strewn across my sewing table - I need to be careful that it doesn't accidentally get bundled into the washing machine. Imagine all those pins and triangles floating around in the washing machine.

I'll be certain to post more photos as this progress, but it's the start of our winter school holidays now, and my kids are off for 3 weeks. We've got a couple of trips planned so I don't expect to get a lot of sewing done in July.

Shirley has a blog called Don't Wait to Create, and is on Instagram with the same name. I recommend you take a look.