Millefiore assembly is starting....

I had the rosettes for my millefiori quilt stuck to my design wall. The problem was that every time I entered the room it's sucked me in and I would become engrossed by that project.

  I realized that I had to get this monster off of my wall. So a couple of nights ago I started to assemble the separate elements into one piece. This means I had to commit to a layout

after a little bit more tweaking, this is what I have finally settled upon.

I knew that it would take a long time for me to assemble this by hand stitching, so I used the machine. I had come across a wonderful tutorial by Carole Carr, which you can find here, and had practiced it a little bit, and had quite like the results. It is particularly useful on those long edges. It uses a teeny tiny zigzag stitch and monofilament thread on top with regular piecing thread in the Bobbin.  I had used this similar technique years ago to appliqué stems in a flower border. Very similar technique.  I tried assembling the smaller elements in the individual hexagons using this technique as well, and that worked okay too, except that I was more limited in how the seam allowances were directed on the back of the work.  so, I have settled upon hand stitching the hexies, and machine piecing the larger units.  

this shows the back as I was starting to piece together and take out the extra papers where the edges of the rosettes now are joined

I was quite surprised at how many papers I removed!  this photo doesn't really give a good indication, because I think by the time I had assembled the top section of the quilt, I had a few hundred papers that I had removed.  The only ones remaining are those in the outside perimeter.

so, there it is, the top section, all together.  It is now neatly folded up and tucked out of sight.

the part remaining on my wall is the bottom section, about a third of the quilt,

sorry about some of the photos being a bit blurry- I've been using my ipad to take all my photos lately and the lighting isn't that great in my room either.

I drew a red line on my plan to tell me what is already done, and what I have yet to do.

So, that is that for a while.  I have lots of stitching yet to do, but after making a concerted effort on this quilt for the past few weeks, I think I will now have a bit of time to work on some other projects as well.....  
By the way, Has anyone else who is doing this quilt thought about how to do the quilting on it later? 

Better late than never

Block five is called Broken Dishes, it came out on November 2

block Six, Shaded pinwheel,  and it came out on November 16

It seems to me that that the fabrics in the sticks and stones colorway really lend themselves to nicely shaded effects in the blocks. I think that the quilts coming from this will be really beautiful.

Sticks and Stones, Block three, Irish chain

 

this is a pretty block, and it's got a nice mix of straight and diagonal sewing lines.  

If you haven't already done so, be sure to check out the previous post which shows some finished quilts from last years' blocks, the black white and bright ones--- there are some beautiful quilts!