Spiralling Star

10May
by Janine @ Rainbow Hare

As you’ll know if you are a regular visitor to my blog, I am very committed to trying new things so I love TNT with Melissa Cory at Happy Quilting.

And this week, for the first time, I attempted foundation piecing and making a spiral quilt.
I have always been enthralled by both spiral designs and mandalas so I was super excited when, about a week ago, I received these two amazing books by RaNae Merrill:

Magnificent Spiral Mandala Quilts (Book with CD plus bonus materials)

Magnificent Spiral
Mandala Quilts 
Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts (Book with CD plus bonus materials)

Simply Amazing
Spiral Quilts

If you visit her gallery or The Spiromandalas Blog and The Spiromaniacs Blog you can get an idea of the amazing potential of this technique.

The books come with CDS containing templates (although I have yet to work out how to ’tile’ them to print a larger size than A4) and they give really clear step by step instructions to either make the projects presented or design your own spiral quilt from scratch.

Whilst the theory is very accessible and straight forward, though, I was rather daunted by the idea of working with so many and such tiny pieces of fabric.

I wanted to do something a bit more unusual than snail trail so I decided to start with the next most simple option (in terms of using the largest pieces of fabric) and I went for a pentagon and a Baravelle spiral. You can learn more about Baravelle spirals and see how to draw them here.

The foundation piecing worked out more easily than I expected, although I was very surprised at how much fabric and thread this used for a smallish block.

I found it next to impossible to appliqué a small enough star to go in the centre though and I’m not sure the hand stitching really adds anything.

I certainly would like it better it in another colour scheme. But onwards and upwards!

I think I’ll try a hexagon next…

Have you tried something new this week?

 

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