Nursery Rhymes & Collection 6

Collection 6	Just a few more blocks from the Nursery Rhyme quilt. These blocks were taken from collection 6. Funny how we take a liking to a design and use it time and again.  Crystal Dreams has featured in three quilts so far.
Firstly in the original Raconteur quilt, where the colour choice was so terrible that you couldn't see it unless looking for it. Next I used it in Snippets, which is a collection of seven blocks that I taught at various retreats where people wished to start on their own Raconteur. Finally it is here in Nursery Rhymes. I know I will use it again as I have seen it made using a variety of colours in the one block and it looked good enough to try ..yet again :)	C6 Crystal Dreams
C6 Disappearing Hope	Disappearing Hope what a strange name and no idea where it came from but I do like the effect here with the blue outer border making your eyes lose the white design and focus on the blue.

Nursery Rhymes and Collection 5

Collection 5	Still trying to decide if I will make up the central block from Collection 5 for the Nursery Rhymes collection. Only time will tell. I am enjoying the working with brighter colours.
C5 Taylor's World	C5 Gift Wrapped <

Nursery Rhymes & Collection 4

Collection 4	Blackberry Freedom is another block that has been used in almost every variation of Raconteur so far. I just love the frame of alternating up and down triangles. New Beginnings...don't you just love the fabric. Unfortunately I only have a small square left of it and so will save it for someone special.
C4 Blackberry Freedom	C4 New Beginnings

Nursery Rhymes & Collection 3

Collection 3	Just as these blocks featured in early collections in Raconteur so they have been early blocks in the Nursery Rhymes quilt.
For Nursery Rhymes I wanted blocks with strong features and a good contrast so that they would show up well in a child's quilt.... although it now appears as though it will be too big for a child's quilt  ... such is life. Perhaps next time I will more of the layout rather than one block :)	C3 After the Showers
C3 Burning Bright	C3 Ketchiken Jewels

Collection 2 revisited in Nursery Rhymes

Collection 2	Well here are a few more blocks from Nursery Rhymes. All of these come from Collection 2 and so I have included it here so you can compare. As you can see these fabrics still have a similar feeling to those from the original Raconteur. I again stayed with the pale or light background and the stronger colour for the feature.
This time around I am keeping the one fabric for the background throughout and I'm not too sure that I like it. Unfortunately I have cut and sewn too many blocks to go back and redo them. We will see what the finished quilt looks like.  I have added another border this time around  as I wanted to try a different kind of sashing.	C2 Cafe Creme block 2
C2 I Love Lucy	Although it looks like just another round of border that is only because of my poor photoshop skills. The outer colour border is in truth a set of whirling arms.  The idea was good but I am having difficulties with the layout and so am having to work another design.
The problem of the whirling arms was that the blocks end up sitting slightly off straight as I didn't guess the correct width to use for the sashing. I have been trying out different options on the computer but none have really excited me.	C2 Creme de Chantilly

Nursery Rhymes - unnamed

Unnamed 1	Nursery Rhymes is a quilt that I have been working on for the past twelve months I think. I had an idea to make a larger version of Raconteur using the Raconteur 141 blocks. Most of the blocks in this quilt have been simply the blocks taken from Raconteur and then enlarged.
I wanted another hand pieced project and so chose blocks which were best for hand piecing but which also would look good in the larger size. I'm not sure how many blocks I have finished so far but I don't have many more to go until I have enough for the baby quilt I plan to make...that's where the quilt title came from.	Unnamed 2
Unnamed 3	These three blocks are not from the original quilt. While working out which blocks I would use I occasionally felt like playing around with the design and viola these appeared. I liked them and thus they were made up. I haven't yet worked out a name for them but it will appear..someday soon I hope.

Nursery Rhymes - unnamed

Unnamed 1	Nursery Rhymes is a quilt that I have been working on for the past twelve months I think. I had an idea to make a larger version of Raconteur using the Raconteur 141 blocks. Most of the blocks in this quilt have been simply the blocks taken from Raconteur and then enlarged.
I wanted another hand pieced project and so chose blocks which were best for hand piecing but which also would look good in the larger size. I'm not sure how many blocks I have finished so far but I don't have many more to go until I have enough for the baby quilt I plan to make...that's where the quilt title came from.	Unnamed 2
Unnamed 3	These three blocks are not from the original quilt. While working out which blocks I would use I occasionally felt like playing around with the design and viola these appeared. I liked them and thus they were made up. I haven't yet worked out a name for them but it will appear..someday soon I hope.

Great Minds Think Alike?

C31 16 Sixth Street	C31 16 Sixth Street
C36 Reunion	C36 Reunion

Aren't coincidences amazing? Carol sent in the above two photos a few weeks ago and it was just when I had been making the same blocks for my Nursery Rhymes quilt.  This has happened a few times but I have never managed to organise myself enough to photograph my blocks.
It is interesting to see what the blocks look like in different colours. Nursery Rhymes is the first quilt I have made for many, many years which uses one fabric for the background. I'm not sure that I like it as it appears rather bland in my mind even though it does have the advantage that all of the separate designs really stand out. Have to wait and see what the finished quilt will be like.
Nursery Rhymes was to be a cot quilt but due to a few design errors in the sashing it has now grown.. at the present rate it will probably be queen size:) oops! Have to think of a new name.

Raconteur and Raconteur 141

Last weekend I caught up with a couple of my friends who are working on their own Raconteur quilts and both had brought along their latest collections. It was interesting to see the difference between the finished size of the collections and so I included it here as I thought others might like to see the difference also.

We were all surprised at how much larger the 141 size was when the collection was completed because there really didn't appear to be much difference between the individual blocks.

Rhonda Lehwess made the 141 collection, while Margaret McCaughey made the original size collection. I will upload some photos next week of the individual blocks as you can better see the blocks but right now it is late and I am going to hit the sack.

Layouts- How Many Blocks? Post 2

What is a layout? 

Ok firstly a quick summary here is terminology that I regularly use when talking about 
Raconteur - The Storyteller's Collection (aka RSC)  This is the original quilt with 363 blocks joined together into 59 collections
A block is a single miniature hexagon
A collection is a set of seven miniature hexagons joined together and framed to make a larger hexagon.
A half collection is a pair of two elongated miniature hexagons joined together and then two fillers are added. This is then all framed to make a larger half hexagon that is used along the edge.
A corner collection is a single elongated miniature hexagons joined together and then two fillers are added. This is then all framed to complete the corner blocks.
A layout is a bed size quilt. Layouts are available for lap quilts, single, double, queen and king size quilt.
Raconteur 141 is the enlarged version of RSC. No one has yet finished this quilt so I can't honestly tell you how many blocks or collections there are in this quilt, but I will tell you what my computer tells me.

Now to the follow-up post...how many collections do you need?

First let's revise calculations for the original Raconteur quilt. If you look here you can see my photoshop efforts to show you the wallhanging, lap quilt, single bed quilt and double bed quilt
The individual blocks have a side length of 2 1/4in, while the large collection is 7 1/8in.
By my calculations, and Photoshop/Illustrator's help the number of collections and blocks that you would need are

• wallhanging - seven collections which is 49 blocks
• lap quilt - 17 collections which is 99 blocks
• single bed quilt - 27 collections equalling 157 blocks
• double bed quilt - 33 collections which is 199 blocks
• queen size quilt - 45 collections which is 271 blocks. There are two different layouts offered for this size
• king size quilt - 59 collections which is 363 blocks.
  Personally I would change the king size layout and make it with 61 collections, one row longer but one row narrower. To do this you could make extra blocks of those you enjoy or simply hang around long enough for me to make a few more blocks and then I will send these out to you.
  Carol has made three of her own original blocks and I have made another collection so she is only four blocks short on the better number for king size.

By the way all of the layouts include instructions for putting your quilt together along with the quilting designs which I used on the original quilt. There are line drawings showing you different layout options and allowing you to work out your own colour layout so you don't end up with the wrong size and colour arrangement (like I did). Colouring pencils are a simple to use tool which when used with a line drawing of the layouts allows you to decide the colour frames if you intend to do a design such as say Grandmother's Flower Garden.
Once I am organised the different layout options will contain all of the options up to and including the one that you are making, so it is easy to make a smaller one :)

Next we talk specifically about the Raconteur 141 Collections.
When joined the seven collections should have a theoretical height of 20in and width of 17.5in, note these figures came out of a computer drawing and through real life sewing I have found they could be out by up to 1/2in which I figure isn't enough to worry about. For some reason, when I sew things the size is never exactly what the computer tells me it should be but it has always been such a minuscule amount I haven't worried about it.

141 Single Bed Layout	141 Double/Queen Layouts
141 King Layout - option 1	141 King Layout - option 2

I haven't actually made up these quilts and you may find that when you lay out the blocks it is better to make more blocks and go either one block wider or one block longer. Nothing beats actually looking at the blocks laid out together to decide what is the best way to go.

By my calculations, and Illustrator's help... no help available this time from Photoshop:( the number of collections and blocks that you would need are

• wallhanging - seven collections which is 49 blocks
• lap quilt - I couldn't get this to look right, or to something I was happy with so it will need to be a trial and experiment affair if you are making this size.
• single bed quilt - 12 full collections and four half collections equalling 92 blocks. This gives a design area or approximately 52in x 80in and then you would need to add borders.
• double and queen size bed quilts - 18 full collections and 4 half collections which is 134 blocks. This gives a design area or approximately 70in x 80in and then you would need to add borders.
• king size quilt (option 1) -  although this one should be the best by calculations it doesn't 'look right' and so I worked out option 2
• King size quilt (option 2) - 27 full collections, four half collections and two corner collections, which is 199 blocks. This gives a design area or approximately 86in x 95in and then you would need to add borders. To balance the appearance for this size an extra row had to be added longer than the bare mattress length.

Sorry about this being such a long post but there was a lot t0 say....and I like to talk.

Layouts - How Many Blocks? Post 1

As this is becoming such a long post I have decided to split it into two. This first post discusses things that need to be decided upon when making any quilt, not just Raconteur 141, or even Raconteur - the Storyteller's Collection.

C6 Crystal Dreams

Some things that effect the number of blocks can be

1. colour arrangement - my original Raconteur quilt should have had one extra row but because of how the frame colours were laid out it meant I had to change too many of those for the colour pattern to lie as I wished. I had had enough of the quilt and so I left it. I could have planned the colour arrangement well before the five year mark..talk about leaving things for the last minute. Planning could have been done with just pen and paper.
2. the amount of overhang you like - mattress heights vary not only in different countries but also throughout one country. Now in Australia there are three different mattress heights. I have one quilt which now fits perfectly on our bed since our new mattress has a greater height than the previous one. Previously the quilt touched the floor. There are also available different height castors to raise or lower a bed height.
3. still to do with the amount of overhand is whether you want some of your design to go over the sides or if you only want it on the top of the bed. I like my design to go over the sides so I don't have to spend forever getting the quilt to lie just right so that the design is centred.
4. the number of blocks you want to make - there are seven blocks in each collection and sometimes you just reach  the limit of how many blocks you want to make. I had about thirty blocks leftover when I called it a day on my layout so I only needed to make another 12 blocks and I could have had the row I needed...such is life
5. the size of the borders -  I don't have a preference for border size. My method is to finish the quilt and then try different size borders until I find what suits the quilt. This does have a major downside in that some of my quilts turn out decidedly bigger than I originally wanted but such is life at least it looks balanced, in my opinion that is.

I will write up the next post later today if I get the chance, or else tomorrow and then post it with the calculations etc.

Nursery Rhymes begins

Well after a long delay I have decided to restart this blog. I had thought that it would be too busy for me to upload all of the photos from blocks that people are making, or hope to make. However it appears as though most people don't like to upload their photos and so I have decided to resume this blog to hopefully show some blocks made by others. 
I have photographed a few myself and am hoping to take some more photos in the next few weeks.

The above photo is of a new design layout that I am trialling with the Raconteur 141 blocks. I love the appearance but if you look carefully you will see that the top of the blocks slopes slightly. When I put the layout into my CAD it is very obvious that because of how the coloured borders meet each block is slightly lower than its neighbour.
The second photo shows the spacing needed for the blocks to line up straight but it doesn't seem as WOW as the first. Oh well I still have another 19 blocks to make and will worry about it when I finish.

Nursery Rhymes begins

Well after a long delay I have decided to restart this blog. I had thought that it would be too busy for me to upload all of the photos from blocks that people are making, or hope to make. However it appears as though most people don't like to upload their photos and so I have decided to resume this blog to hopefully show some blocks made by others. 
I have photographed a few myself and am hoping to take some more photos in the next few weeks.

The above photo is of a new design layout that I am trialling with the Raconteur 141 blocks. I love the appearance but if you look carefully you will see that the top of the blocks slopes slightly. When I put the layout into my CAD it is very obvious that because of how the coloured borders meet each block is slightly lower than its neighbour.
The second photo shows the spacing needed for the blocks to line up straight but it doesn't seem as WOW as the first. Oh well I still have another 19 blocks to make and will worry about it when I finish.