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Friday, March 1, 2019

New Directions for the Going In Circle Quilt

Sharing some changes I've made to my kids version of the Going in Circles quilt from the Modern Art Quilts book (affiliate link) by Sue Bleiweiss.


Modern Art Quilts by Sue Bleiweiss

The first is stitching the strips that make up the circles versus just fusing them. This change helps the quilt hold together after numerous washings by the new mom.


10in circles

Big, 10" circles were then cut from that strip set, and some little 5" ones too.


5in circles

Then all circles were cut down the middle, either with the strips or perpendicular to them, and sewn back together.


strip pieced circles

Just a little note, the perpendicular cut circles need extra width for a seam allowance to give a finished round circle versus one lopsided or smaller than 10".

So, now to get them onto the background. For that to happen, I used a lightweight fusible interfacing, stitching fusible side to the right side of the fabric. 


fusible interfacing for circles

After a trim of the seam allowance, and a slit in the middle of the interfacing, the circles are turned inside out, and are ready for fusing to the background.

Ah, the background. My first choice was a nice, soft blue, which unfortunately, just looked dull.


blue background


Hmm, what other color to choose? Let's take a look at my favorite handy-dandy Ultimate 3-in-1 Color Tool (affiliate link).


blue violet color chart


It says golden yellow is the complement, so let's see how these circles look on golden yellow.


yellow background


Hmm. Okay, but still not doing it for me. Next idea is chartreuse, which is in the 5 color complimentary color range. 


3 in 1 Color Tool for blue violet

Let's see what chartreuse does:


chartreuse background


Better! And this chartreuse just happens to have stars on it, which all the blue prints have - win win! And it picks up the bit of green in the prints better than the yellow background. 

Now onto the accent color, which is the little strip that goes in the middle of each circle. Sticking with the 5 color compliment range on the 3-in-1 Color Tool (affiliate link), that would be yellow-orange, which is more orange than yellow. A test piece of it is on the top left of the quilt. I'd say that's a winning combination!

Now that background and accent color are decided, it's time to fuse down those circles, stitch around them, add the accent strips, and move onto quilting. I'll have more to share on Monday.

Have a great weekend quilting!



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6 comments:

  1. Great explanation of your colour choice process. And I fully approve of the pieced circles over fused. Did you have an easy method of adding that extra width into the perpendicular cut circles?

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    1. Just common sense! After I marked them out on the strip piece, I cut them out leaving a bigger seam allowance on those sides. Then, after cut and sewn, I remarked for the final circle.

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  2. Love this idea!

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  3. Yes, definitely need to be sewn down for kiddo/washing use! Love your explanation of the color choice process you went through. It really is interesting seeing the circles on the different backgrounds!

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  4. I love this concept! I see that you had grips on your template. You should look into getting Grippy instead! It's pretty awesome product to add grip to rulers :)

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Thank you so much for commenting...you just made my day!