"Fly By Night" - all 5 tops FINISHED

Whew.

Fly by Night panel by Chong a Hwang.

I thought that this was so much work I might stretch it would into several blog posts. But then I decided that it might be a bit boring for you all.

But in the last week or so my husband was gone to Central Asia to teach, so I was here by myself and I spent some 10 or 12 hour sewing days. Allergies have been bothering me and I don’t actually feel a lot like talking - there is a bit of hoarseness, stuffiness, etc. Sitting and sewing is about what I feel like doing.

That helped me get ahead a bit on ‘blog fodder’. Interestingly enough, when you do a blog like this - you either have to actually “make things” or “do things” or at least “learn things” so that you have something to share.

Now these will be finished and given to the 5 girls whose moms work at the Quilted Twins fabric shop. They happen to be my daughter- in-law’s 2 girls (the twins - my granddaughters) and my niece’s 3 girls (Rachael’s daughter, Sarah’s, girls). They all hang out at the shop a lot.

This panel is called Fly By Night and my sis still has some of them. Now at first I thought that they were glow in the dark, but they aren’t. But they are SO pretty!

When making this, I decided to just pull out pretty much all the fabrics I had in these colors. I knew I couldn’t make them all the same for a couple of reasons - first, it would be boring to me, but also that would take a lot of one individual fabric - and I didn’t have enough of any one color (except for solids which I can get locally). So I used several different colors. In fact, I made all 5 of them different.

These are amazingly beautiful. If you want one, you really should get a panel while we still have them available. I think we are finally selling them out! (She had bought a lot.)

I made these tops in two groups - the first group of two I made - and found a problem with my design (the measurement of one of the borders). Then I corrected my issues and made the next three - at the same time. I wanted to get to the last border all at the same time. By the time I got to those pointy outer pieces, the size was 45”x65”. Since I made the outer flag looking border to be blocks that were 5” finished - that meant I needed 9 across and 13 down.

So each of the tops takes 44 of those 5” squares around the edge so I had to make 220 of them to finish out the tops. I did that over the course of two days. I did do the “flip and sew” method. That means I had a lot of “bonus triangles”. Yes, I saved them. They are all in a zipper top bag and I hope to make something from them. I also ended up with about 22 extra border blocks. I’d like to make up a new top from all of these pieces! I really do like these colors!

I went ahead and made up 5 binding pieces and put them aside for now - they are all scrappy. I didn’t want to fold up my pieces and put them away and then have to pull them out again in order to make bindings.


Here are the first two I made.

Here are the final three I made.

In the end, in spite of the little mistake I made on the first two - I don’t think, unless I pointed out the differences to you, that anyone is going to notice that the width of a couple of strips are different.

All five are different. Here you can see the colors a little closer up. I didn’t make any single top with any one girl in mind. If they are of the age and mindset that they don’t like it because they don’t like such and such a color, then I will not force it on them!

Here is a photo of the girls. This may have been a year or two ago by now!

These two photos are more current - but they are a bit far apart or the one photo only has the oldest four and not the youngest.

Rachael (my sis) has two other granddaughters who are not in Florida and one or two could be diverted to one or two of them in case one girl (or more) is in a mood and doesn’t like theirs. In case you hadn’t understood who these are for, they are for our granddaughters whose moms work in the shop.

I actually finished all the last borders together - all five at once. That’s a lot of the same process at once. I felt like I was making bridesmaid’s dresses! :)

Here I am working on those 220 - 5” outer border blocks.

 

Here are the some of the leftovers from all that. I put this little bag close by so I wouldn’t lose any of my precious “bonus triangles”.

Hopefully before too long, I’ll make something from them.

The most interesting bonus blocks top I’ve made is this one using these bonus triangle blocks. Oh yes. It’s also the only one I’ve made. I’ve got baggies FULL of these things!

 

I was so afraid that if I didn’t just buckle down and get these 5 tops done I would either 1. get only one or two of them done and lose interest or 2. lose one of the panels and not be able to do all 5 or 3. I would get swamped with other interesting projects and not get back to them. Naturally making 5 of the same or even similar tops at once can be a bit mind-numbing. I did split up the boring parts, though - like I told myself, “I will trim up the 80 HST for top #1 in the morning and the 80 for the top #2 in the afternoon” type of thing (for the HST needed to go around the panel).

Anyway - these are ready to move on to the next step! Quilting.

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Have a great day wherever you are reading this.

Becky Petersen14 Comments