The complicated part of the runner is finished! Once I got all the measurements right it all fit together with little problems along the way. Had a few times where the pinwheels were larger than the blanks but with a bit of careful pining, I minimised the pleat effects and got them together.
Here's what I did:
All the squares were sewn in strips according to the grand plan, if any overlapped with a large square pinwheel, I left them as much as strips as possible, sewing any single rows together and then onto the large squares (if that makes any sense!)
All strips had a little label to help me not lose my way if I need to stop. White labels were to be ironed with seams up, brown ironed down, ensuring they interlock nicely when I put them together (& it really helped) This was a bit tricky when working with the pinwheel's anticlockwise seams and some seams ended up either both going in the same direction or folded over towards the corners when it was sewn up for one side and down the other but eitherway you really can't see it from the front.
So putting them together lining up the squares seams and pining through the seam allowance on the back. You can't see how the seam underneath behaves under the pressed foot when you're sewing along, so pining it was the way to persuade it which way to go and to do what I wanted.
I say all this quite hesitantly though. I had two interesting events fairly early in this process. A pin was directly hit by the needle and bent into the hole where the needle goes to meet the bobbin thread and got nicely stuck in there shaped like a fish hook... Didn't do too much damage to the strip I was working on or my machine or needle, but I'm now looking for cheap thin needles to minimise this happening again.
The second was another pin v. needle battle but the needle just shattered instead, which could've been dangerous but it only hit my cleavage so there was plenty of padding there to absorb the impact :)
Once you've finished fighting with needles, pins and seams, you get nicely 2 lined up strips like this:
The pin in the bottom right is actually to mark the top left of the whole thing so I don't sew the wrong strips to the wrong side. (yes that happened with my hexie quilt & it's quite annoying to put it nicely)
If you keep going like that you'll get this:
I forgot to take a pic of it finished, but you've seen the layout already, so it's not that much different!
Now its all nicely ironed and pressed it sits much nicer, the opposite seams really helps keep it flat, which hopefully will mean less bulk to quilt through later on.
So next is the grey non-piped piping border and white edging. Both I bought yesterday, so I'm ready to get going tonight!
September is quite an expensive month for me, more so this year with two big milestone birthdays (on the same day...) so once I've sewn the borders on the top I'll have to wait till next payday to get the wadding and outside binding to finish it.
In the meantime, I'm still planning my Christmas present lap quilt for my mum. Think it's going to be large square patchwork on the front in burgundies and reds, a plain back with possibly some white hexie flowers scattered on the bottom edge appliquéd on after quilting.
Crazy cat photo of the day:
Sitting in an old & very small fruit bowl on a shelf underneath our fishtank...
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