I started on the Circle of Love pattern by Quiet Play Designs last night. I had finished the foundation paper piecing on my present table runner but kind of lost interest when it was time to put it together, so I moved on to another project for the moment. I will go back to the present table runner. I plan to lay it out tomorrow and sew it all together. And I hope to quilt it Tuesday. Fingers crossed that’s what actually happens.

Back to the Circle of Love pattern… When I was cleaning and sorting my fabrics last week I came upon my box of hand dyed fabrics. I posted about hand dyeing previously and I have a rainbow of 24 fat quarters I dyed last summer. I also have some other experimental pieces where I laid leaves and ferns on the fabric after it was dyed left it in the sun and some pieces where I had tried shibori techniques and dyed with fiber reactive dyes. So I went looking for a pattern that would use the 24 fat quarter rainbow and came upon the Circle of Love pattern. My LQS was having a big sale so I picked up the denim blue yarn dyed fabric for the background yesterday and I was ready to go.

Last night I pieced the first quarter and today I pieced the second quarter. Due to low light this afternoon I took the picture on the kitchen table. You can see the variations in the colors when I dyed this set of fabrics, especially as the blues start to go into the purples. This happens when you don’t massage your bags of dye every 15 minutes for about 2 hours after you put the fabric in. If you massage the bags and redistribute the dye around you get less mottling. This project will end up being a pillow. As I look at it, I have no idea how I’m going to quilt it.

I have come to love foundation paper piecing and how precise everything is. Yes, it’s a pain to tear the paper away at the end and half the time I forget to shorten my stitch length on my machine until I’ve sewn the first seam. The paper stabilizes everything and makes it easier to sew it all together and that gets us closer to perfection.

I will have to remove some of the paper before I sew the two halves together at the end. The pattern recommends basting it first and checking to see how it comes out before taking the plunge and sewing the final seam which is a good idea. I also saw a video of Edyta Sitar sewing together an 8 point star where she didn’t sew the whole seam across at once, she instead started in the middle and sewed to one side and flipped it over and did the other side. This prevents an arc or missing the center point of block. I linked to the video above and it’s 17 minutes long but very informative.

Happy Quilting!

Camille