Friday, April 8, 2011

Supernova Quilt Along

Lee at Freshly Pieced began her "Supernova" quilt along (see button at right) two weeks ago, and I've been scurrying to keep up. Being away from home causes that!

Before the quilt along started, I shopped. I bought 11 fat quarters, mostly "Central Park" by Kate Spain, and filled in with pieces from my stash. Each of the nine blocks in Supernova uses five to seven fabrics. As Lee suggested, I spent some time arranging 3"-wide strips for each block, and took photos of each block. Then, using Picasa, I created a collage rotating and arranging blocks until I liked what I saw. This now my printed reference for cutting my fabrics.
 

Here are the cut pieces for each block.
Using a solid in a quilt and the color gray?! That's out of the ordinary for me. Supernova could change my life!

I had to place an on-line order the solid background fabric online because our two local shops sell only a few solid colors. I purchased two shades of gray, and auditioned both of them before settling on Kaufman charcoal.

Here are a few of the blocks as they're on my design wall.


If you've noted the little markers, that's how I keep track of where the block is positioned in the layout. Just like an Excel spreadsheet, rows are horizontal and numbered; columns are vertical and alphabetized.

I figure each four-patch block took about an hour to sew, so this represents at least nine hours of piecing. I was fussy about getting the diagonal seams to join precisely. Of course, that involved some unsewing and resewing. 

On Thursday, Lee released the third step of the Supernova Quilt Along, so it's back to work for me. Thankfully, it's fun work. As I'm sewing I'm thinking about how I will quilt this. Gosh, I'm looking forward to doing some sit-down quilting again. It's been too long. Linda

7 comments:

  1. I'm in the SNQAL with Lee too, and am eagerly trying to do more and more free-motion quilting! I'd love to see a discussion about quilting too! Love the way your quilt is coming along!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, Linda! This is going to be such a beauty! I love how the colors are really popping against the dark grey solid. Wonderful!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've really had a hankering to try our charcoal as the background in a quilt for a while, and your Supernova confirms for me the striking effect that it can have when contrasted with bright colours. Beautiful work! Up to your usual superb standard :-))

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love the colors you've chosen for this.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Love it Linda. OMG Its another one I would like to do!!!
    Better not - I have too many half done now. I'll just take pleasure in watching your progress.
    Fab.
    Cheers
    Sue

    ReplyDelete
  6. You are so organized. It looks like all of that helped you make some awesome looking blocks.
    Gray is pretty popular this year.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I really like your fabric choices for this. It looks like the blocks are coming along well.

    ReplyDelete

I reply to comments! If you are a no-reply commenter, or your profile appears as anonymous, I will reply to you directly on this blog post. Please check back!

LinkWithin

Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin