ELECTRIC QUILT-A-LONG – 38 x 52 inches
SFMQG ELECTRIC QAL 2023 Month #3
SFMQG ELECTRIC QAL 2023 May #3
Happy May QALers! Things are just moving along to the summer months and beyond. Hope everyone is set with cool drinks and cooler AC! It’s time for Month #3 of the Electric Quilt-A-Long.
NOW FOR YOUR QUICK BUT INTERESTING MUSICAL MOMENT:
What do Duke Ellington, Tori Amos, Hans Zimmer, Mary J. Blige, Itzhak Perlman, Kanye West, Beyonce, Richard Wagner, Billie Eilish (and her brother Finneas), and Billy Joel have in common? They all experience Synesthesia (seeing colors when hearing or performing vocal or instrumental music). It should be noted that it can work backwards – people who work in artistic media, such as painting or even fabric arts such as quilting can experience the influence of hearing music which then inspires their creations!
Last month, we started putting together our Planetary Block – which is the large block featured. At this point, you should have something that looks like THIS: (please excuse the foldover in the upper right)
Now we are going to put together the rest of our Planetary Block. There are going to be several different ways to approach it, so let’s get started.
First of all, you need to make sure your four square pieces will be big enough to make the circle without cutting off the points. On my four square sections, I added three inches to the two outsides of the quarter circle pieces (NOT on the sides that will attach together to form your star). This will make your pieces big enough to cut.
NOW IT’S TIME TO “CIRCLE BACK AROUND!!!!”
As mentioned above, there are going to be three ways to approach putting your star into a circle and I will go through each below:
1). USE A CIRCULAR RULER. Here is the link for the ruler that we have used in the past (I believe several years ago, we did a project with this ruler, so many of you might already have one. There are other circular quilting rulers available on the market.
Here’s a great tutorial on cutting the circle pieces. Each quarter circle is cut individually and when all are finished, they are joined together.
2) USE THE CASSANDRA BEAVER WHOLE CIRCLE METHOD
This also uses the Classic Curves Ruler above. If you choose this method, you will need to sew your four quarter pieces together to make a large square before continuing on to the whole circle method. We had a workshop with Cassandra a while back. Here’s a video explaining how she does it in case you need a refresher.
3) FREEHAND!
If you’re the kind of quilter that shows no fear with improv and likes to swing from the chandeliers, you can free hand cut your curves. You can stack each piece with the background on the bottom, and the pieced section on top. You can use a saucer as a template, or even cut free hand. Repeat with each pieced section. Then sew each pieced section to the background, then join all four pieces together.
Once you have created your Planetary block, you are free to move about the cabin until next month, where we continue our musical Electric quilting adventure.
Make sure to post your progress on our SFMQG Facebook Members Page and send to Charlotte for our meeting roundup. Also, if you have any questions or inspirations that you have discovered, you can email me or post on our SFMQG Facebook page (or message me there). I’m excited to see your synesthesia-inspired creations!
Use hashtag #sfmqgqal2023
Patti