Week in Review 2017 - 03/10

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

Check out the stripes in Lola's fur. They are
an excellent example of variable repetition.

I've been thinking about repetition this week. It is one of the principles of design. I have learned my preference is for variable repetition. In other words I like to repeat elements, but vary them in some way. Although, I still have quite a ways to go with Picking Up the Pieces #3, I can already see variable repetition occurring consciously  and sub-consciously. It began with the honeycomb background made from a single tessellated block, the hexagon. The variety is due to using nine differing fabrics placed in random order. Next up is the bee hive, built with stacked, curved rectangles of diminishing length. Now I am working on the bees. I have drawn out three different bees, representing different angles of flight. I have resized the drawings so that the bees vary in scale from 3" to 5". 

Progress to date on
Picking Up the Pieces #3.

One of the tools I depend on to do work of this sort is my printer. I love how I can create a pencil drawing, trace over it with a permanent black pen, scan it into my computer using my printer and store it as .pdf. Once I have the .pdf I can print the drawing out any size I want. My original bees are approximately 8" in length. In order to get a 3" bee, I simply divide 3 by 8 and get 0.375. I set the printer scale to 37% (could be 38%, or even 40% or 35%, it doesn't have to be exact.) and viola - a 3" bee.

This week I managed to print out the various scaled patterns and even create my first bee. That isn't all I did, as you can see:

1) Work on the design for Picking Up the Pieces #2 and/or #3 - Done!

Finally, I finished piecing the over 400 half hexagons which make up the background. I have moved on to creating the foreground.

Close up of the bee

2) Finish Picking Up the Pieces #1 - Not yet.

3) Pot(s) made this week - Done!

I am continuing to work on various appliqué techniques. Picking Up the Pieces #3 is particularly good for this. The hive is large enough where it made sense to turn under the edges for a smooth finish. The bees, especially one 3" in length made up of eleven different pieces is far to fussy to do anything but fuse. When I fuse appliqué pieces my preference is to finish the edge with satin stitch. I set my machine for a vary narrow satin stitch and used Superior's Bottom Line thread. I don't want the stitching to overwhelm those tiny pieces. 

Most weeks I try my hand at an EQ 7 tutorial.
I find it helps me gain a better comfort level
with the application. I'm finally getting to a point
where I can take a lesson, learn from it, but
do my own thing. 

4) Free motion quilting practice - Done!

I spent 30 minutes or so doing some more pebbling. 

Next week will be a repetition with some variety of this week. I have approximately 14 more bees to cut out, fuse and stitch down. They may be small, but they do take several hours each. Hopefully, the more I make the faster I will get. If I need a break, I have several other things to work on such as:

1) Work on the design for Picking Up the Pieces #2 and/or #3

2) Finish Picking Up the Pieces #1

3) Pot(s) made this week

4) Free motion quilting practice

I am now linking up to two blogs on Fridays. The first is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays and the second is Free Motion Mavericks.