Orange Photos

The stars aligned and I finally did my big quilt photography project yesterday. The power was on, it wasn't too insanely hot to iron and use the hot photo bulbs, and I had enough energy reserves. I started with photographing Orange You Glad as it was already pinned up on the wall after being washed and dried.

The cast of the photo of this quilt is finally much closer to correct because of the photo bulbs I use for lighting.

I'm pleased with how the majority of the photos turned out. But boy am I ever pooped today, it really takes a lot of physical effort.

But hey, now I can update my website with the last couple of years of work.
 

A little behind the scenes peek of my set up. I use my ring light phone holder as a tripod holder. Yes, I'm using my iPhone to take the photos. It honestly works as well as the 35mm digital camera that I have. One of the big secrets is to use the timer delay so the camera is steady when the photo is taken.

Orange You Glad Finished

 

It was finally time to finish this Orange You Glad bullseye quilt which was begun in April 2022. I dug up the orange binding that I had made back in October and took this picture to commemorate the occasion complete with the kinda dumb note to self. As if I wouldn't know this orange binding would be for this quilt.

As I rounded the fourth corner...I realized I was not going to make it to where I started. Sigh, so close, about 18" away from finishing. One more WOF 2.5" strip cut, ironed and sewn on later and then I was done.

I think the darker orange Alison Glass print worked out well as a good binding frame to the craziness of this quilt.

It's a bit confusing when you try to look at the quilting to focus only on it to separate it from the top-stitched circles from the block construction phase. 

And here's how it looks: "Orange You Glad?" Done! I took this picture before washing the quilt, and if it greatly changes in size or looks I'll be sure to update this.

Thanks to friends Jaye & Adrienne, I literally couldn't have done this without you two.

Back Into Orange

Back into the orange bucket I went to make the back for the Orange Bullseye quilt. You can see the bullseyes through the lighter colored fabrics. I'll be using the new brand of fusible batting I just bought, hopefully it will hold as well as my old standard Hobbs.

And while the orange bin of fabric was out, I made the binding too.

The binding babies are stacking up, only one official one there in the middle corralling the blue/grey binding for the Japanese Houses quilt, the dark blue for the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt and the orange for the orange bullseye quilt on the left. I used empty thread cones to wrap them up.  Guess I better get the quilting done on these three quilts, right?

Oh no....I made the mistake of looking at the binding babies website when I went to grab the address to link and they have a Halloween Binding Babies collection and they are way too cute and luckily for my wallet they are sold out.
 

Illustrated October

 

Starting out on the first of October, here's what my design wall looks like. Kind of a crowded situation.

The eight pieces for the four green pillows are quilted and pinned up on top of the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt top. It's a lot of just about onto the next stage kind of transition happening. So...onto the illustrated to-do list for this new month.

October's Illustrated To-Do

1. First on the list just because they're on the top of my work surface and closest to done. Finish the four green living room pillows, add zippers, sew up sides.

2. Ruby+Bee challenge. Square up, add border to finish quilt top, Make backing, quilt, finish making binding and add. Photograph and enter.

3. Japanese Houses - Sandwich the quilt, quilt it, bind and label.

4. Orange Bullseye- Make a backing and binding, sandwich, quilt, bind and label.

5. Do some printing, Gelli plate or otherwise for the SAQA printers/quilters exhibit.

6. Catch up on making Pantone Project blocks.

7. Now that it's maybe hopefully getting a bit colder, back to working on the Y.E.S. coat.

8. Hand stitch the two blocks for the SJSA quilt that BAM is helping with.

One Orange Top

One whole top completed, which, as you can see, is all about the Orange. 

The orange bullseye experience is not quite over, as now I am working on a back and binding. 

But that's going to be a project for next month which is in two days, wow, August went by so quickly! 

 I took all these detail photos to show off all the great fabric combinations in the quilt top. 

The colors are still a little off in all these pictures. Other than getting daylight bulbs in my studio room, or setting up my quilt photography setup (not doing all that for just a top, sorry) this is the best I can do for now.

The sort of chaotic design I came up with has ended up emphasizing the squares of the background, which is one of the things I was going for. There may be another bullseye project in the works if we can agree on a color and timing, etc. What a fun and rewarding project to do with friends!

Half A Top

 

Half of the orange bullseye rows are now sewn together. 

Again, I find that I'm having a bit of trouble photographing this well, it's so much browner looking in the picture than to my eye. Probably due to just the lighting. But there are several of the background squares that were definitely on the browner end of the oranges used. I am still considering whether or not this will have a border and if so, what kind.

Orange Around Here

The Orange Bullseye quilt top is coming together, row by row.

 Five more rows to go, so the end of this stage is definitely in sight, and then it's one last chance to change things and possibly switch up the row order. That would be a new version of playing around with this quilt top design that I haven't tried yet.

Orange Decision

I think I've settled on one arrangement for the Orange Bullseye, after a lot of playing around. And wow, did I ever color correct these pictures strangely/badly. For reference my design wall is quite bright white.

 The sewing together has begun! And even though I know how math works, I am always surprised at just how much sewn together quilt block rows shrink up.

Energizing Orange

Here's the first go at putting all the finished orange bullseye blocks up on the design wall. This first picture is a random pull and placement, except for not having matching backgrounds next to one another. It's a pretty good random distribution of tints, tones and shades of all that glorious orange. Walking into my workroom is Very Energizing now, orange really is a powerful color.

You might have noticed the empty spot in the lower left corner. That's because one of our swap group made a few extra blocks. So, instead of 48,  and a 6 blocks by 8 arrangement, instead we nearly have a square of 7x7 aka 49. I will likely make another 1/4 bock to fill in the space.

But then I started in on playing around with the blocks, putting all the blocks with lots of white in the background in the right hand column, and mostly darks along the bottom and left hand side. There was one block that just really stood out as not an orange background to my eye. It was majority pink and the first circle was magenta which blended in too much, so it looked like a blob of Pink in a sea of orange. 

So now it's decision time, I either have to make two replacement 1/4 blocks to fill in, which is no big deal really as I'm sitting in a room filled with fabric options, or to take away two more 1/4 blocks and have a 6 block by 8 arrangement. 

But I think I'm liking the non-circular arrangement of the 1/4 blocks. Most of the bullseye quilts I've made have ended up going that direction. It's pretty hard to look at the design with those white squares jumping out though, isn't it? That's a thought, to put in something super contrasty instead of more 1/4 bullseye blocks. 
 

Cutting Up Orange

It took a while to trim and cut up all 48 of my completed Orange Bullseye blocks so I did it in chunks instead of all at once. This is how it looked when I started with one block trimmed to 10" and cut into 4 quarters.

My accuracy in trimming and cutting had to pass a very rigorous inspection, phew.

And then voila, all cut up and ready to send out.

The two stacks on the left are the two quarters I kept from my blocks, and the stack on the lower right is the  block of quarters I received from friend Jaye. Once I get the other quarter from friend Adrienne, I'll start playing around with them on my design wall. I can't wait. We started this project back in April, and I can't believe that we're already at this stage, woohoo!
 

Picking Favorites

I'm almost at the finish line with. making the Orange Bullseye blocks. The final third circles have all been sewn on now, and the back has been trimmed. All that's left is pressing, and cutting into quarters. 

As I was going through them, I snapped some pictures of my favorites, color and fabric pattern-wise.

Here's how they look all stacked up with the trimmed circles in the front. I'm planning to make a pillow of some kind with all the trimmed circles.

It's a pretty big stack of blocks, and quite heavy!

A planet? A sun?

Such an odd background, an almost peachy pink, but the other fabrics really work.

All such different styles of prints, but they all together tell a story.

Sherbet colors, right?

This reads as Miami to me.

This one, oh, I just sigh every time when I see it, not sure exactly why.

 The blocks are really going to be great when all cut up and re-sewn together.