I have bought a set of pure wool fabric strips for the sum of £5 Lovely quality. Each strip is about 6 inches plus wide. They are in a range of colours from maroon to place green. Has anyone used wool for patchwork. I am thinking of making a hat and a waist coat. What shape is best to piece together wool.
Didge, I have. I think any quilting pattern would work..are you talking about paper piecing it or seam sewing?
I have a library of quilting books and patterns and can probably help you with something.
Whatever you do, make sure you get the grain all going the same way.
I might be inclined to foundation piece it then you are sewing it on to a background and flipping as you go, you could make it into a large pice of fabric that way then use it for cutting a waitcoat shape out, or still foundation piecing work on the shapes them selves. You could do it in formal sizes or more random as in crazy patchwork.
Any light weight fabric will do as a backing even gardening fleece.. it would be lined after anyway.
I can send you some ideas or links if you are unsure what I mean.. I can't remember of you are a quilter or not so pease forgive me if I am teaching the teacher.
Sound like a super project. Log cabin would look good.
Let me know how I can help.
XX Jeannine
I have never done any quilting. I just fell in love with the feel of the fabric and realised I had about 1.5 metres of fabric which is normally '£28 a metre. I am not a great random person so they will have to be in some kind of pattern. I am thinking of machining them together perhaps in a diamond pattern. Thankyou for reminding me to get the pile the right way, though I am not sure that the diamonds will go with the pile.
It sounds too good to rush, if you want to quilt is I would not do diamonds, they have a nasty habit of going off kilter and especially with wool
Nay chance of a picture..my head is buzzing with thinking.
XX Jeannine
Yes you are totally right about the diamonds it would have to be done on the cross and the strips are obviously cut straight across the fabric.
I will see what I can do about a picture but I have lost the cable that goes between my camera and the computer. Sony are a pain every camera seems to have a differnet cable end. There ought to be a standard.
It is a pack of ten strips each 6 inches/ 15 icm wide and a massive 142 inches /360 cm long. Except in fabiric terms they are 360 wide and 15 cm long. I have only just taken them out of the pack and they are much much longer than I was expecting. I was expecting them to only be 60 inches (160cm) so they are more than twice as big. Sorry I learned my dress making skills before conversion. No idea how I decide which way they go, I may have to pray that the sample labels are all on the same side. Making sure that each square stays the same way round may be a bit of a nightmare pressume I will have to mark each and every piece.
They are samples so they are all exactly the same quality of fabric, and are in shades of maroon, lovet and pale green. Think posh suiting. No! think very very posh suiting.
I had been thinking of just a waist coat but it is suddenly sprouting sleeves. And it is getting longer by the minute. I found a nice picture of a reversible patchwork jacket. Can't find it again now. Looks like the lining will cost more!!!
I suppose that making 6 inch squares would be best. Though a 10 colour pattern will not be an easy prospect to work out, if the two front sides and the sleeves are going to co ordinate in a satisfactory manor.
I am wrong on closer investigation the warp goes down the length. So this gives me the option of downward stripes as well as squares.
Take a look at the clip on the link, she is using only two colours, but it is the quick strip method I wanted to show you rather than the finished pattern.
If you try it with coloured papers. I would only want the stripes one inch wide on a waitcoat so would cut 1 1/2 to all allow for 1/4 ich seams. If trying with paper just cut to 1 inch, then place the coloured papers any way to get an effect that you like.. if you find one, try with a few sraps of other fabric and the strip piecing method in the video to learn how to piece and slice.
I think you could come up with an easy pattern by using this method, making small three cours blocks then rotating every other one as you fasten them together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quzu2H5xeGQ&feature=fvsp
XX Jeannine
Thanks very much for the link. I shall see what more resources I can find on the subject of patchwork and quilting. The more I learn and the more I think the more ideas I am getting. My next plan is to see if I can find a cheap jacket in a charity shop which I can use as the lining and the reverse.
I had been thinking of rather plain large squares but certainly augmenting it with decorated squares is very interesting proposition. I also have rather small amounts of pale green and it might be a great way of splitting it up and spreading it around a bit.
There is one swatch which does not fit very well colour wise with the others so I am going to use it to have a practice with.
wool is notoriously hard to wash and if you do all that work and then find it has shrunk to a mess when washing.........
Dry cleaning is expensive.
Up to you but if you want to work the fabric.
Either wash it before you start or realise it has to be dry cleaned.
If you have other colours that would blend in I can give you some better ideas..look up log cabin on the net and think smaller pieces. I have all these patterns if you need them. If you had one that was paler and plain or darker and plain that could be used what we would call the background here are infinite possibilities. I still loike the idea of a foundation pieced crazy patch design especially if you have more colours and it is so easy to do.
XX Jeannine
Many thanks for reminding me. I shall try washing a sample and see what happens. I made a trouser suit out of wool many year ago and hand washed it and spun dried it. Certainly I will wash it before I made the article. It will be a bit of a pity because at the moment it has a glorious smell.
I have an equal amount of all the colours so I cannot use one as a background. I am beginning to get some ideas in my mind especially now that I realise that it is lengthways, so I am starting to get an idea of rectangular strips rather than squares so it does not have any vertical lines across. I think by staggering the join lines and varying the length of the rectangles I can create some interesting effects.
Each piece has numbers on it and I find that one of these is the pantone number. I cannot quite understand how you get a pantone colour for a mixed tweed effect when the warp and weft are different colours. So I think I might have a play on a drawing programme and design it that way.