Circular Designs in Quilts

I've always admired circular designs in quilts. 

I admire them even when they aren't very circular!! I believe this quilt I saw at the High Desert Museum years ago. 

This is a block from a quilt my friend Claire purchased in Sisters. 

This is a close up of a quilt owned by Mary Koval displayed at the Houston show.  That black flower center looks very similar to my hand applique. 

This is a block from a quilt owned by Linda, Quilts in The Barn, from Australia. I got a sneak peak in a Houston hotel room before her book was published. 

So what I'm getting at is we are our worst critics. 

Back to my circular compass block. 

After removing the pinned frame that didn't fit I measured it and it still looked to me like it would fit the 23" square size that I needed for my center medallion. 

(I'm sure I didn't explain myself well on my last post. It needed to be a very specific size for me to use in my current project) 

I've done 2 circular blocks and although I know appliqueing it to a back was an option, I think all the seams are hard to turn and feel like appliqueing the frame on top is a much better option for accuracy.  LOLOL (yea, the blog owner of Humble Quilts!!) 

So I cut a big chunk of muslin and after consulting 3 quilter friends who are superior quilters made my pattern and  pin, pin, pinned to my compass. 

It is a wee bit wobbly but overall looks pretty good. 

And looking closely you can see where i had to add bits and pieces where after sewing it didn't cover the entire space it was supposed to. 

 

I had about 6-7" to sew and found THIS!  AARGH! 

So, unappliqued, unsewed and added a piece! then resewed and continued appliqueing the frame.

And had that last several inches I had to ease. UGH! 

Not pretty. I text one of my machine quilters and asked the question no professional quilter wants to hear, "Will this quilt out?"!

When she responded with a suggestion to help it lay flat I knew the deep down answer was, "No! Fix it!" She was polite enough not to say it that way. (thanks Sharon!) 

I ended up un appliqueing, cutting the frame and resewing it bringing it in about 1/2" that I had eased. 

Much better!

Tada! It's far from perfect but I'm going to embrace the imperfections! Hopefully I can trim it carefully to the correct size of 23.5".

I hope you all had a terrific weekend.

You Don't Know Until you Try!

My thought was to have something similar in the center of my bird sampler quilt. 

Odd shapes are always difficult for me to paper piece. 

I persevered and actually thought it looked pretty good. 

I cut the pattern out for the center

It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough. 

Then I printed the frame pattern, made templates,  and sewed them together  and the plan was to applique it to the top of the block.  I knew it was the moment of truth.....

It started out pretty good....

Uh, but went south pretty fast! lol

I thought I pressed carefully but obviously I stretched it at some point. 

This block will be the center of something else that doesn't need to have a precise measurement. 

Back to the drawing board. My second choice is a feathered star block. 

Have a great week!