slow and measured steps...

Well true to what they say, 2015 came in like a Lion! Life has been keeping me busy, with lots of travel for work and the ticking along of 52 Quilters... but I'm pleased to report that I have been maintaining my 'focus' and staying true to that as my word for the year!

My first exercise in focus was working on my project for the Rainbow Mini Swap - my second ever swap, and so I set out to do a few things on my list and really focus and force myself to do more with this mini project. I wanted to created something entirely new, and work from my own pattern so I designed a geometric foundation pieced design in Illustrator and then had a go and piecing it together.

Above: my first two test pieces for the project - and - Below: my many segments in the stages of piecing things together.

This has been a really great project for me because it has basically served as a big heavy-handed metaphor for 'focus': with all the lines and segments shooting out in a fractal-like pattern, but all anchoring in a single point of focus in the centre.  It's a lot like my life right now - lots of wonderful distractions in the big picture, but I'm learning to prioritise, focus (get ready for a year of overusing that word!) and not just deal with things one at a time, but really be in that moment of dealing with things instead of half-completing something while my mind is wondering about everything else.

And Tad-dah! The final project (front and back) - well final-ish, I still have to quilt and bind it (must remind myself that it is not finished!)

Still a little bit of work to do, but I'm really pleased with the project.

My next step in focusing my attention has been to try my hand at english paper piecing (having sworn several time that hand-sewing was "Just not for me") and so far its going so good. Stay tuned to the blog and my instagram for updates with how that challenge goes... Right now I'm still very much in the honeymoon phase, so we'll see how I feel a few rosettes in.

My optimistic start to Rosette #1:

Making good progress, despite proclaiming several times that I'd never hand-stitch patchwork. #ItsNotThatBad #lapassacaglia #menwhoquilt

A photo posted by Chris Webb (@chrismakesthings) on Mar 1, 2015 at 4:13am PST

Thanks for stopping in as always, if you have the time to comment I'd love to hear about what you are working on and what your biggest hurdles have been - whether it is specific projects you had trouble finished, or the more general hurdle of patience like me!

2015: Focus

Welcome to 2015! Regular readers might notice a few changes around here, but not necessarily obvious or cosmetic ones: This year I'm trying to do more blogging, make my blog a bit more personal and post on a wider, more dynamic range of topics. So as a kick start to this new journey, I'm sharing my first major project of the year (second quilt) along with my elected word of the year:'Focus'.

At the end of my week on 52 Quilters, I posted over on the '52 about lessons learned in 2014 and my plan to apply the word focus to my work and life throughout 2015. Focus on my work, focus on my practice and what inspires me and keeping focus in the moments I want to savour, enjoy and remember. 

So my first personal project: my Rainbow Mini Swap quilt is bringing my focus together in lots of ways.

1) I'm really thinking about my design and taking measured plans to create something and really enjoy the process of making, instead of just speeding towards the finished product. Here I am working on my sketches and planning my pattern.

2) I'm trying to hone my digital skills by creating my own digital paper-piecing blocks. Here is one step of my design in Illustrator, and the final version printed and ready to start piecing.

3) I've created a design that embodies the idea focus - a geometric pattern where all the lines and colours draw to one single point in the middle: a point of focus (I know, I know... maybe a bit too literal? but I like it!)

Part of this new reign of focus is accepting patience. Something I am going to need when it comes to piecing together this 12-sided quilt made up of 24 segments. Each segment has three paper pieced pieces, which I've cut out and written letters to help me know my colour layouts...

You can see my pieces grouped and ready to go. I've made two out of 24 segments about, and here are the other 22 segments waiting to become patchwork!

I'm not really into new year's resolutions or introducing sweeping changing into my life just because of the calendar, but I do think its nice to think and nominate some words or principles to guide me year-to-year. What are you New Year's rituals? Do you have any words of inspiration for 2015?

Check back for more updates on my #rainbowminiswap project and more! Lots ahead for 2015 including new projects and my first quilting bee!

Thank you for reading!

Written in the stars - Part 1

In follow up to my always secret crafting post the "big reveal" on my most recent project has now come and gone, but because I haven't had a chance to blog-as-I-quilt, I thought I'd just post a little teaser with the online reveal to follow shortly.  So this will be part one of a two-part-post - I promise not to drag it on too long! Remember: good things come to those who wait.

The gift quilt I've been working on came about as a way to celebrate a 10-year "friendiversary"with one of my best pals.  We met at uni when fate rolled the dice and we ended up working in offices next to one another and we became friends in July 2004 when, barely knowing each other, we ended up travelling to and sharing a tent at Hillside Music Festival in Guelph, Canada.

This first friendezvous came about somewhat unplanned, and we awkwardly shared a tent and shivered through the weekend's unexpectedly cold nights, while enjoying food, good music, and a few workshops each day. The rest was written in the stars.

Nine months later we moved to different cities and have never since lived in the same place (or for that matter the same country). Despite this distance we've sustained the friendship, via emails, skype, visits and meeting up in a host of amazing places. So as our 10 year friendiversary approached, I knew I had to find a way to mark the occasion!

Thinking about the theme of "written in the stars" I knew I wanted to create a constellation themed quilt using paper pieced stars and an adapted new york beauty block. I wanted to weave in lots of hidden stories and themes related to our friendship, but I struggled with finding a way to tell the story through the quilt so despite starting work on it with this initial star block in March 2012, the project sat on the back burner until I had my lightbulb moment earlier this year.

My first attempt at a star block.

The slow and sluggish thought process that went on over two years on the back-burner of my mind went something like this:

I love the star and definitely want to work with stars...
... but what can I do with stars, how can I arrange them?
Hmmm.. constellations, I could make it a constellation quilt...
... I wonder if there is a constellation of a unicorn? (we share a joke/affirmation about unicorns) *rushes to google*... Oh yes! There is a monoceros constellation...

"Sidney Hall - Urania's Mirror - Monoceros, Canis Minor, and Atelier Typographique" by Sidney Hall

... but what do I do with this now... and how do I work in the rest of the stories... Am I taking on too much? Can I really tell a story in a quilt?... *excited but totally overwhelmed*

Then one day it hit me: I had reached a point where I knew I wanted to lay out the constellation across the main body of the quilt and had chosen Dan Bennett's Premier Lord collection as my fabrics for the stars... but I was struggling to find fabric in the right deep and dark blue tones to form the contrasting background which I wanted to be the sky. I even searched for constellation fabrics, but struggled to find the right balance of dark, muted blues that I wanted.

So I decided to take the plunge and make my own fabrics via Spoonflower! This allowed me to challenge myself to do some design work and get exactly what I wanted, in the right colours, and gave me a way to literally sew the story of our friendship into the fabric of the quilt.

I designed a pattern of constellations inspired by our friendship, the things we love and the places we have been together and had them printed in three different shades of blue. I also used the placement of the stars in this constellation design, to create a secondary connected constellation fabric (now for sale on Spoonflower!) where the stars were all joined together differently to create a geo-metric fabric.

Here are the three main fabrics:

Here I'm piecing my fabrics alongside Dan Bennett's fabrics

Here you can see the supplementary connected constellation fabric bringing in a geo-metric design that breaks up the more graphic designs of the other fabrics.

And here is your sneak-peek taste of the quilt - my first completed star block ready to go into the quilt. 

I was really happy with the contrast of the colours I'd chosen to print my fabrics in and felt that the designs I made and the scale I printed them at worked really well to achieve the look I was going for.  I wanted the stars to stand out against a very blue background, but didn't want that background to be flat or dull... I think these fabrics work just right to give a defined but not lacklustre backdrop for the stars which are the real focus of the quilt.

 Part two is coming soon!