Border of piece created with no centre

Hey Everyone, welcome back to UFO Spotlight Saturday.

Today I was actually torn about working on this piece or another piece that I started during the week with the thread play I did on Technique Tuesday with the wash-away stabilizer. I made another 4 of those little bird’s nests of thread.

Alas, the Bull’s Eye quilt won out as it needs to get done for the show in February and time is running out. Time always seems to run out for me with this show and often I am up to the wee hours of the morning finishing up my piece to get it to the gallery on time. I am hoping not to be in that predicament this year.

To start I questioned my background fabric. Why? I don’t know but I did. That’s what we do as quilters and artists. I took a picture of the centre on the two different blue batiks. I stuck with my original choice – the dark blue batik.

Two blue fabrics with a multicoloured square on top

Which blue for the background?

Next step was to do some math. I drew out the square on a piece of graph paper and marked in the areas that I wanted to spread out beyond the centre bull’s eye piece. After writing down all the measurements and then again with the seam allowance included I coloured in the lines of which colour went where. Good visual aid when I was cutting the pieces of fabric.

Square, lines and numbers on graph paper

My math and map of the piece

With the centre bull’s  eye section on the portable design wall I started placing pieces around it to create the border.

Fabric strips around a  centre square

Creating the border

Then a few more. Most of them I left longer than needed just in case I changed my mind on the sizing of anything. Easier to take away than add.

Several more pieces of fabric around the centre square

More border pieces around centre

At one point the extra length on the pieces was distorting the piece for me so I covered them up with pieces of batting to look like the design wall.

Covering up the extra long pieces with batting to create a more realistic view of the piece

A more realistic view

My final pieces cut it is time to sew the background together in sections.

Background pieces sewn together

Background sewn together in sections

With a hole left for the centre piece I’ll fill it in with an ugly piece of fabric since it will never be seen. No point wasting good batik behind something else.

Well, that’s as far as I advanced on this UFO this week in the time I had to work on it. I am pleased with my progress and have great ideas for embellishing the blue batik but first I need to finish the background.

Happy Quilting!

Jen Transparent Signature

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