Valuable Lesson

So I've heard about value and it's importance in quilt design, and I've seen the cool HST quilts that play with value.  Katie even has a tutorial on it.  I've never really thought about it much though - until now.

I was happily making oversized pinwheels in a favorite new color combo.  Isolated, they read very clearly, but something happened when I put the quilt together.  The pinwheels kind of got lost.

It's interesting to find that, even though the colors are very distinct, the yellow and gray pinwheels blend right together where their values are too similar, particularly the lighter fabrics.

I can't decide if I want to rip it apart to weed out the offenders, or try to save the design with some emphatic quilting.  It may get shelved for a while.  Anyway, lesson learned!

County Fair Folklore

I finally made my first handbag. This is made from Denyse Schmidt's County Fair home dec weight fabric, lined with Kona in Curry, using the Folklore pattern from One Yard Wonders. I wish I'd googled the title of the pattern before making it. The wisdom of the internet would have warned me that there are multiple errors in the patterns in this book. Oh well, I was able to fix them, but if you like the style of this bag you should know a few things.

First, the pattern piece for the lining is too small. I adjusted for this by using narrower seam allowances when making the lining. The markings for the pleats are not wide enough on the outside of the bag. That's easy to fix. Even though it doesn't tell you to, be sure to interface the straps. Fusible fleece will give the bag a better shape than interfacing. And finally, the construction of the bag is a little odd. Instead of sewing right sides together, in a few places it has you iron under the seam allowance and then top stitch it to another piece. I guess whatever works.
In the end, I'm glad to have finally tackled making a handbag (with a magnetic closure - which, by the way, is easy peasy to put in). It was kind of fun.

Feel the Tension

Or rather, check the tension. I'm spending naptime with my seam ripper instead of binding this quilt today. Boo. I happily squiggled my way, free motion, around the final border of the quilt without checking the tension on the underside. I had no problems on the rest of the quilt, just with the free motion. Anyone know how to fix this? Play around with the tension adjuster? Figure out how to adjust the tension on the bobbin? I need to dig out my manual I guess.

It's nice to know I'm not alone in the occasional dumb mistake. Thanks for sharing this funny story Jacquie. Even the president of the best Modern Quilt Guild in the country (just a bit biased here) can make mistakes. Thank goodness for that.