I’m not sure how many of you are at part 5 of your MSW quilts yet, but when I got there I thought, ‘That’s a lot of little squares that are going to get hidden under those rainbows!’ Then I looked at the amount of green fabrics I had and thought, ‘And I haven’t got enough to hide that many.’
What to do? Well the most sensible option seemed to be to use some rectangles of scrap fabric behind the rainbows, but I wasn’t sure how best to work that bit in so I decided I’d get part 6 done and try and work out where my hills/rainbows would go from there.
Here’s my full section 4 next to my section 6 with my rainbows pinned in place to match where they seemed to be on the photos/diagrams of section 5:
Then, had I had any, I would have got the graph paper out, but Illustrator seemed to work just as well ;o) If you don’t have Illustrator, but want to go the electronic route, anything that allows you to draw squares, rectangles and semicircles would work just fine.
I measured out the gaps, and then placed ‘rainbows’ on my replica part 5 hill sections. After that I worked out where I could save on squares – anything that I thought might show had to be a square, but the rest could be rectangles in whatever way would fit best.
Here’s what my diagram came out like:
I used some natural cotton for the rectangles, then pieced my hills and related sky sections. I then popped them on the wall in place of my section 4 so that I could see if it looked right (note that they’re not all joined at this point since the top rainbow actually gets pieced in)
Finally I joined them all together, having pinned the bottom 3 rainbows together on the design wall to keep them in the same position when I appliqued them on:
If that all seemed like a wee bit too much work then you can totally go the squares route, or you can use my diagram above (although I’m going double size, everything is proportional, it’s just not 100% identical to Jen’s with the placement of the right hand 2), whatever works for you, I just hope this may have saved a wee bit of someone’s sanity/precious fabrics!
Very clever Katy! I adore that green background the rainbows are on, they look beautiful!
Great thinking Katy although I am a ways off from Part 5 & 6 but will come back to your helpful post when I get there. Thanks.
Great idea Katy. I will absolutely be referring to this if/when I ever start on my MSW.
clever lass!
Genius!
A lot of work and great to share to save others time and fabric- thank you!
It looks beautiful!
This is exactly how I did it when I made my Bowie quilt last year!
Sheesh. Maybe some day I'll do the whole design wall and all…I just feel like I've got all I can do to "copy" a quilt, let alone design my own. Looks like all kinds of fun.
Good adjustment! Looking gorgeous, really fresh!
That's exactly what I would have done…no wasting of precious prints for us!:)
thanks for the fab tips Katy !
I've said it before and I'll say it again you are brilliant! I hope this got linked up to the quilt along because it's a fabulous idea
I came back as predicted and am really grateful for your diagram, thanks.