Circles and dots

This happy assortment of polka dotted tins arrived in my mail the other day, a lovely surprise from Deborah who knows how much I adore all things polka dotted. Thanks, Deborah! They make me smile each time I see them, sitting here on my desk while I decide what they will store.

Oh, look what I did yesterday. Remember this quilt top?



It has been sitting, already sandwiched and pinned, waiting patiently while I figured out what to do quilting-wise. I just wasn't sure what to do. So, I let it sit and went off to other things. I think it was while quilting an all-over leaf pattern on my fruits and veggies quilts that I decided that I liked the idea of overlapping concentric circles.

I remembered that last October, I stood in the Quilters Rule booth at PIQF for a while gazing at a set of templates consisting of nested circles. And, although I couldn't think of anything right then to use them for (which was why I hesitated), I figured I'd use them eventually. They're very cool.... they come in 1/8 or 1/4 inch plastic, and are essentially a large plastic disc cut into 1/2 inch rings so they nest together.

Well, amazingly enough, I FOUND them, and experimented laying them out on the Spring Fields top. And as if finding them in my messy closet weren't miracle enough, the 12" circle was EXACTLY right.

I rarely mark quilting on my quilts... I generally don't have the patience to mark and then follow lines...I'd much rather do free-motion quilting. But I gave this a try, and it was fine. Totally fine.

So, look at this---the 12-inch outer ring (this is two half-inch rings taped together so I would stitch at 1 inch intervals) fits perfectly.



I found that a blue chalk pencil worked well on these fabrics, so I kept nesting the rings and marking...









I sewed them with my walking foot, working carefully around the marked rings. The tight inner circles were harder (in fact, I decided to free-motion that small innermost circle) but really, it wasn't bad rotating the quilt around under the needle.



The marking showed well and I buzzed along, accompanied by James Taylor on my Ipod.

Now I have all the rings sewn, and have to figure out what to do outside the green blocks and into the borders.

But I'm sure glad I bought these templates!