Bindings, bindings, bindings

I have already finished a number of quilts this year. Shapes 10 is on display in my exhibition in Freiburg already, and  Ultraviolet, or the radiation off S. Impey is on its way to the organizers of the Radiation exhibition. But Shapes 11, 12 and 13 are still lacking their binding.

I think I want all three of  them to be the exact same size – that was the original plan at least. Just yesterday, however, I wondered whether I should make each of them their individual size, whatever the piece allows for? The red one is the narrowest, because that is all there was of the fabric. Both the blue and the yellow are wider right now – and they need not necessarily be the same width. Now I don’t know what I want to do. Those are the situations that I hate about living so far apart from other quilters whom I could easily ask for their opinion. I can always ask my supporting quilter husband, of course, but with some of these decisions he is anything but comfortable, and to be honest – with some of them I don’t trust his judgement. Although he is almost always right when he says “why don’t you turn it around by 90 degrees?”

So when I finished piecing and quilting Shapes 14 this week I forbade myself to roll it up and put it away “for future use” until it has a complete and finished binding. It’s not that I don’t like doing the bindings – except when I have several waiting in a row. It just happens that I already have the next idea looming in my head, wanting to get out and onto the wall, then the binding job gets put aside, and again I get myself into the situation that I have several waiting for me... Completely my own fault, yes.

However, while I am doing bindings, something else might sneak in, too. For example, I have lots of cut-out sort-of circles pinned to my wall from making Shapes 10 through 13. Couldn’t throw them out, waiting for an idea what to do with them.

Only a part of the cut-out circles on my wall

This one uses circles from Shapes 7, 8, and 9 and could have turned into my donation for the SAQA benefit auction. That was the original idea last night, just before falling asleep, second attempt at meeting the “Early Bird” Deadline (read about the first attempt here).

But as it turns out this one is taking on a life of its own again. While waiting for the iron to heat up at various stages of the binding for Shapes 14 (yes – my new iron is so evironmentally friendly that it shuts itself off so quickly when not being used that it makes absolutely no sense leaving it on when I know I won’t use it for even only slightly more than 2 minutes) I put the original idea up on the wall.

Then I wanted a background, and discarded the idea ‘black’ for ‘blue’.

Went for the blue, and decided to iron the background fabric. Then I thought it might look interesting with a square arrangement of the cut out circles in an off-center position, and tried various positions across the blue fabric.

The positions vary very slightly, but it does make quite a difference in the appearance. Then I counted the whole stack of the circles that I have, tried an arrangement of 7 by 7 circles, and finally arrived at 6 by 6, going back to the idea of a square overall.

6 by 6 - the colours in the upper left hand
corner are not quite as light as in the picture

Guess what? It hasn’t been sewn yet, but it will be bigger than 12 inches. Yet again it will fit in nicely with the five pieces 40 by 40 cm I have to make for Alfeld in October as number four of those. Nothing lost – but will I be amongst the Early Birds for the SAQA donation?

Meanwhile,the binding for Shapes 14 is finished except for stitching the tunnel to the back.