I've Been A Lazy Blogger...

But I HAVE been sewing.

I love to take off the Friday before and the Tuesday after a Monday holiday.  It makes the weeks on both sides so much shorter-seeming!  Of course sometimes you still have to shove 40 hours worth of work into the abbreviated week, but still.

I started a circle project.  It's inspired by the bloggers who are doing the 365 circle project, but merged with a 'target' project I saw on someone's blog, maybe the Barrister's Block??  It was a while back.

Anyway, the church quilty ladies and I were working on learning various types of machine applique -- raw edge, backed with iron on interfacing, and the like.  When I taught sewing machine classes at JoAnn's I used to have the students sew a big fat paisley shape to get inside and outside curves, and an L shape to get inside and outside corners.

I made cardboard templates so I could trace around them with a marking pen.

So I started with three different sizes of circle on a square.  I made templates using a cup, a small plate and a jar lid.

 Then I cut them out of fabric.  Hint:  Starch the fabric first, it really helps.

The biggest circle is laid on a background square, centered as much as can be but don't get anal about it.  These are raw edge appliques.  I stitched around the outside edge at 1/4 inch.  Then I CAREFULLY cut away the backing from the big circle leaving about a 1/4 inch seam allowance on the inside. 

Here you can see how I sewed each successively smaller circle on, and cut away the back of THAT circle before stitching on the last smallest circle.

This is what results when you forget to trim away the last circle!  (you can leave them but it makes a thicker seam intersection to have four layers there instead of two.

Once they're all sewn together, you cut them into four quarters, right through the center of the smallest circle.  Cut even squares, don't worry if the center is not exactly in the middle.

I used a 9 inch background, so ended up with 4.5 inch quarters.

Sew two together, press seams open, then sew the two 'twosies' together. 

Make sure you mix up your quarters.  See where I have two of the same fabric coming together?  It's not a fatal error but I should have been more careful...

See how cool they are?  I can't wait to put a quilt together using these patchy circles. 

Sew on...