A New Quilty Start

Some very exciting things have been happening in my quilty world. I got my first quilt commission! Then I got a second one! They are for the same people, but one is for their business and the other is a personal quilt.

I designed a dragonfly quilt for them to give as a baby gift. It has dragonfly blocks in it and shoofly blocks. And I love the colors. When I think about dragonflies I always think about the neat irridescent colors, so I really wanted great fabric. I wanted to use batiks, and I wanted the main fabric to have dragonflies on it. I thought that would be easy to find. NOT! I finally found the perfect one. Timeless Treasures has this cool one that has gloriously colored dragonflies on a black background. It looks wonderful with the batiks.

This picture shows the four dragonfly blocks in each corner. At the top are 3 shoofly blocks between the large and small dragonflies. All the space in between will eventually have shoofly blocks in them. I made one large dragonfly block, since my customer wanted to introduce some assymetry. It's helped me with the name of the quilt - Baby Dragonflies. I've started thinking of the big block as the Mommy!

The dragonfly block is my first foray into foundation piecing. Foundation piecing is when a pattern is drawn on paper (or other base material) and then used to make the block. Dragonfly blocks are put together in 4 parts this way: the head, 2 wings, and the tail. Below is the foundation for the head.

If you look closely you can see that each section has a number on it. These correspond to the order that the fabrics will be sewn. I also wrote in color names or abbreviations so I knew which fabric to use. (Note: For those of you that might do a lot of foundation piecing, you might have looked at this and realized something is out of whack. The numbers are not right on this example! And this configuration couldn't be done all at once. I had to redo it. I separated the top row of triangles so that the seams would work out. Then on the bottom half of the block, I realized I had to start with the small triangles on the side, then do the square. Like I said I was learning.) So each dragonfly block used 5 foundations!

The hard part of piecing this way is that the fabrics are under the paper and you sew on the drawn lines. That's right, you sew right through the paper to make your seams and, when all the fabrics for the block are sewn, you remove the paper. Below is the same block above, flipped over to show the fabrics.

The best part of foundation piecing is that it allows really sharp points and you don't have to worry about grain line. The foundation keeps everything from stretching out of place. It's really good for small blocks too, like the baby dragonflies!

After a few rough starts and some un-sewing (yuck!), I finished all the dragonflies and moved on to the shoofly block. It isn't hard. The shoofly is a nine patch block with the corners being half-square triangles (HST). There are lots of different ways to make HSTs. I particularly like this way.

HST: With 2 selected fabrics, cut squares 7/8" larger than the finished size you want. On one square, draw sewing lines on the diagonal. I use a special ruler made to make it quicker. You just place the center line of the ruler on the diagonal corners then draw a line on either side of the ruler.

 If you don't have a ruler like this, you can draw a diagonal line from corner to corner. Then draw 2 other diagonals lines 1/4" away from the center line, one on either side. Then stack your 2 fabric squares together with the one with the lines drawn on it on top. Sew directly on your sewing lines. You should have 2 lines of stitching when you're done that surround the center diagonal. Below is a picture of a chain of HSTs that have been stitched.

 If you look at these pictures you might notice extra lines. That's because I goofed when I first cut my squares and made them too big, so I had to cut them down to size and redraw my sewing lines. Sigh. After you've finished sewing, cut the square along the center diagonal from corner to corner between the two stitched lines.

 Then press the triangles open, pressing the seam to the dark side.

You should cut off the little dog ears (or rabbit ears!) on each HST. I save mine in a small jar. They're just too pretty to throw away. You can imagine how pretty a full jar would be.

 With my HSTs, I was ready to make the shoofly block. Four HSTs, one in each corner and five regular squares of dragonfly fabric (cut 1/2" larger than the finished size I needed). Below all the blocks are done! They are just up on my design wall here; waiting to be sewn together.

I love the secondary designs that form and the gorgeous splash of colors. Who knew that dragonflies could sa(y) quilts?!

The Joy of Quilt Guild

Well it took a good 6 to 9 months, but I think we've finally settled into the new house and getting comfortable in our new home town. The biggest thing I've done? I joined a quilt guild, something I've never done before. Don't get me wrong I was always interested in guilds, but their meeting times never seemed to work out well for me.

My new quilty connnection is the Blue Ridge Quilter's Guild. I suppose there are about 40 people who come to the regular monthly meetings, but the membership is about 60. I have to say they are the most welcoming, friendly, and supportive group of people I've ever come across. The talent here is amazing and, normally, I'd be super shy about sharing what I do. But they encourage everyone, at all levels to share their work and glorify in it. It's enough to make a girl put aside her inhibitions and try things she never has before.


I even went on my first quilt retreat! Imagine sewing to your hearts content with delicious meals and all the snacks you can dream of! Quilter's heaven. I'm sure I gained more than a few pounds that weekend! It was all worth it! I got a lot done too - 568 half-square triangles for a PhD (project half done!) that I started on ages ago. It's a queen-size quilt for my own bed so, of course, it may never get done. I apologize I didn't take any pictures.

Since then lots of good things have been happening, but that's news for another blog entry. In the meantime, look around you and see how many things SA(y) Quilts!

The Chair Is DONE!!!!

OMG! I can't believe it. I finally finished the darn slipcover for the chair.  That's how I had started thinking about it, in bold letters. Dreading it, every time I went past the darn thing. Is it good? Not really. It is serviceable. It wound up being a project that tested my patience and my sewing sense, since the directions that I had were for a very straight sided chair. My chair is not that way. . . it is plump and rounded and comfy. The slipcover had to overcome all of that and therefore couldn't be slick and straight as I wanted it to be, so instead it has gathers. Not my first choice. Oh well. My cats, however, love it. It is definitely cat friendly fabric. Of course they wouldn't sit still for the picture. Can't have everything.

Now that this is done I can move on to quilty  things!

 

I've almost finished the Halloween quilt. I've got company coming in, so I don't think I'll get it quilted in time for the Oct. 30, but I might get the all the top done. I just need to get the bat border done and the top will be finished.

Sorry the image is a bit blurry, but I think you can see most of it. The bats will join the stars you can see just in the corners. After the quilting is done little buttons and trinkets will be added. Fun.

 

I so love seeing what will happen when all these fabrics come together.  

 



Hot Mess

Ah the slipcovered chair. According to the books this is an easy project that most anyone can do that can sew. The fates have shown me that I'm not anyone. While I do have the beginnings of a slipcover it is a terrible hot mess in my eyes. My husband, bless his wonderful heart, keeps telling me that it will be alright. And my cats absolutely love it. I must have chosen the most cat attracting fabric in the world (who knew)! But the horrible truth is the thing is not going to look wonderful. It might look okay when it's done. I've got the inner part finished and now have to do the outer shell and the skirt.

 In this picture the arms are not sewn yet, but they are now. They came out okay, but the picture did not. Sorry.

Nothing comes easy with this project though. So I've taken a little break and gone back to some quilting. With Oct. coming up, I remembered a UFO (unfinished object) and even managed to find it in all the moving stuff - ha, ha - major accomplishment. I think the last time you saw it, it was only a few blocks. Now the sashing is complete and I'm getting ready to do the outer borders. They'll be cute - bats and candy corn.

You can also see some corner stars in this photo. It's a cute quilt. It will have buttons and other stuff sewn on it when it's done that hang in the windows of the houses.

I should have time to work on it ( and the dreaded slipcover!) since hubby is away helping is family. Please keep them in your prayers, his dad has been ill. Thanks! Anyway, working on this has helped remind me how much I love quilting  and that many things say quilts (maybe even a slipcover).

Quilter vs Zipper Cushion

I knew in my heart of hearts this wasn't going to be easy. I don't make clothes very often for a reason. I have gravitated to the quilting arena because zippers don't show up very often. However in slipcovers, zippers are inherent. I suppose I could put in hook and loop tape, but then I would have to change the patterns to reflect that and my patterns are awful enough as they are. They leave out so much that I'm almost pulling out my hair trying to figure out what to do. The book I'm using is called Custom Slipcovers Made Easy. There's nothing easy about it the way this is written since the author has assumed so much.

Ahh, but there's nothing now to do but go on since I've purchased the fabric and started. So gentle reader I tried to put the darn zipper in. You read about the trials and tribulations about getting the darn zipper put together. That done, I managed to use my trusty Steam-a-Seam2 to stick the zipper to the basted seam. Worked well enough, but then I made a fatal error - I waited overnight to actually sew the zipper in. At least I think that was the error. When I tried to open up the seam the next day, the darn thing was almost glued shut and my seam ripper actually ripped right through the zipper tape! I could have cried - or screamed. Maybe I did both.

 Crap, I now had to start all over again with a new length of zipper tape and I had to cut a new piece for the zipper to go into. I hate putting zippers in. Have I said that? Second time around it only took me 15 minutes to get the zipper put together - I'm getting faster. I did use the fusible tape again, but I didn't wait overnight to sew it. No problems. Whew!

Now onto sewing the welting onto main cushion pieces so it will go into the seam. I've never used welting before, so I follow my directions in my beloved book. It has pictures and all, but a big drawback. The fabric they decided to use looks the same on the front and back, so you can't tell the wrong side from the right side in the pictures. What mistake do you think I made when sewing on my welting? Right, I sewed it to the wrong side of the fabric. Bad part is that I didn't discover this until it was sewn onto the box band. By that time I was completely fried!

If the welting had been huge, I would have probably swallowed, waited till morning and pulled the whole thing apart yet again. But, my welting is very small, so it is now on the inside, quite invisible. This quilter gave up, I hate to say.

The cushion cover is complete and on. Not great, but okay. Lesson: not all things say quilts! Now, onward to the rest of the slipcover . . . ho ho!

Quilter vs Slipcover, Part 2

I should have known this wasn't going to go well because every time I measured something the number 13 kept coming up. I should have just put all my stuff up and just went back downstairs and climbed back into bed. It didn't matter that it was a bright shiny sunny day. The darn "13" was a big warning and I ignored it.

Today I decided to start on the cushion for the chair, at least to cut all the fabric out and to get the zipper done. Remember I'm a quilter. Ever the word "zipper" makes me kind of feel sick, but I've actually made clothes way back when so I gulped and thought "Go ahead girl, you can do this."  It would really be a big help if the books I'm using would have had a good editor. I'd volunteer! Used to do that in a previous life. Not sure how they got published to be honest. (Not true, I know how that happens. But, good golly, they've left out so much information. Sigh.) Anyway, onward. Managed to measure (Here are those 13s that shouldn't be there. I mean I would measure a length of fabric and find it to be say 10 inches. Then check it and find it to be 13 inches! This kind of thing happened 3 !!! separate times. Freaky.) and then cut out the side panels for the cushion. Involves some crawling around on the floor, which Tigger the cat loves. Nothing like a cat who loves to rub on your scissors while you're cutting. He likes to live dangerously - only 9 lives right? Me, I'm worried about his paws and maybe his nose!

Now to the zipper. For this I have zipper chain, which I need to cut to length and then attach the pull and stop. My instructions consist of saying: cut to length needed, slide pull on and attach stop at bottom. Should be easy. Sure.

This is what zipper chain separated looks like and the pull. Now imagine trying to put that pull on the end of the chain. Just slide it on - easy as pie right? An hour later I felt like poking my eyes out! I even resorted to looking at Youtube videos to no avail. They all use plastic zippers. Not the same product folks.

 

I understood the problem - the darn teeth would not mesh in the pull and the more frustrated I became the harder it got to do it. A little zen was needed. Deep breathing and looking straight down into the top of the zipper and praying a lot . . . . and it finally caught.

I quickly put pins in both ends so the pull would not come off  and then gently ran it up and down the zipper to make sure the teeth would mesh well. Then I installed the metal stop at the bottom. Next time (if I ever take on this kind of project again) I will probably buy plastic chain despite the fact that I dislike plastic zippers intently. They appear much easier to work with.

 

I think I'll stop for today while I'm ahead. Too many 13s for my blood. The quilter in me is spooked! I need to fumigate my quilting space to get rid of them and then I think I'll go read some good quilting magazine before I tackle the full cushion, which is next.



Quilting vs Slipcovers

Do you know what happens when you put your house on the market? It means that there is no way that you can possibly sew because you must keep you're house as neat as pin. Secondly, when you finally sell, you're scrambling to pack everything or get it ready for the movers. And then I watch as they wrap up my very dear to me sewing cabinet and TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN! I almost screamed. No, the sewing machine was not inside, but still, there were some notions stored in there. Aargh.

But I don't really want to talk about the move. It really went mostly smoothly. It just takes forever to find stuff again - I don't care how carefully I think I marked it. And I thought I my first project would be, of course, a quilting one, but no it's something completely different.

Our living room furniture is looking a bit haggard, lots actually. Yet we like it. It's comfy. New stuff is expensive and we're retired now. So I found a great website while searching out how to make slipcovers, www.newtoto,com, which I recommend greatly for upholstery-type fabric. Great prices and they offer free swatches.


I had a book on how to do this, but it is not really clear. I'm going to try to do the chair first, and I'll document my progress here. You may see me crying - I'm a quilter remember. Here goes: First order of business ordered 10 yards of fabric and then went to local fabric shop for rest of supplies - 10 yds. of cording for welting, 2 yds. of zipper chain and stop sets, and thread. I already had pins. Shocking what it takes just for the chair. And, yes, the fabric cost was low enough, under $10/yd! I said it was good.

1. First order of business, make the welting. Gulp, gotta cut into this fabric and make 10 yards of bias. Book wants me to cut individual strips, but I would rather do it the quilting way with continuous bias strips. I'm a renegade already.

 

Tigger thinks he's a big help in holding down the fabric.

 

Cutting those strips took forever. But I'd rather have 10 yards continuous bias than have to sew together lots of little strips. The quilter way was the way to do it.

This is my pile of cord (tiny isn't it?), and fabric. All I have to do is sew them together. It's a matter of getting my brain and fingers to work together and praying that my machine and the thread will work for that amount of time too. I have a good machine (fingers crossed that nothing awful has happened to it in the move - this is the shake down cruise so to speak), and the thread is brand new. Let's go.

This is what it looks like without my fingers getting in the way. Use a zipper foot to get close to the cording. Not too difficult, just need to get into a rhythm.

 Machine held out and so did I! Only had to wind one bobbin too, major miracle. Nice pile of welting to use on the chair. Close- up is below.

I even have extra bias strip if I need to make more welting, but I will need to buy more cording. First major hurdle completed.  Now on to the cushion. Wonder if I'll use my quilting powers there too?

 

Halloween

I've had this wonderful pattern for a Halloween quilt for a couple of years and I decided that this year I would make it, just for me! It's different from my normal quilts: lots of applique and embroidery, but it's way cute. So off I go, I even started early enough - or so I thought August. It only had 5 major blocks, not so big so surely I could get those done. So I started on the first block. It turned out great, but it took a lot

longer than I thought to get it done. The cat on the roof is really cute though and was worth all the time and effort so off I went on to the next blocks sure that I would still make deadline. And maybe I would have if life hadn't intervened. Why does stuff like that have to happen? I forget that I don't have 4-5 hours a day to devout to quilting every single day. The other blocks have gotten done. See them below.

So you can see these blocks came out cuter than cute and I love all of them, but they took me gosh darn forever. You do not want to know how long it took to blanket stitch around each one of those fence posts.  However it's worth it. Now that the main blocks are done it's time to finish off the quilt. I thought that would be quick. That's what I get for thinking. It is now well past Halloween. I will finish this quilt. I happen to really like it. But it is driving me crazy. I discovered that there were 2 more blocks, plus corner blocks, not to mention the border. Oh yes the border -  I mean for crying out loud today alone I cut out 14 bats for the border. The person who designed this is just crackin' up. Easy quilt! Sure it's easy, but it will take them 2 years at least! Ha ha ha! 

 I guess Halloween and trick or treat can sa(y) quilts right?

 

My Helper

Every once in a while, or maybe quite a lot depending on the day, I require some help. In quilting that usually means that I'm scrambling to look something up in one of my many quilting books. Or, egads, trying to find that one article that I pulled out of the magazine that had an amazing tip that I knew I would use one day - TODAY IS THAT DAY - but of course I can't find the darn article in the array of articles that I have saved. Truly I thought I had a system that would help me find them again, but it obviously isn't working. Arghh!

Oh well, soldiering on I continue and mutter to myself as I sit at my sewing machine. Much to my surprise, I do wind up with a helper. He doesn't really solve the problem, but by getting right in my face and forcing me to slow down I'm able to figure out what I was doing wrong. Who's my hero? My cat, of course - Tigger.

Normally Tigger sits on the other side of the room. But that day he just came right up onto the machine. After he had my attention, he backed off and let me sew, but stayed where he could keep an eye on things.

 

Thanks Tigger. This piecing will be done very soon and I will be ready to quilt this quilt very soon. Seems even cats have a lot to sa(y) about quilts!

 





Time Flies

I really can't believe that so much time has gone by since I've last sat down to write. I'm so ashamed. Writing is not my forte, obviously, I've said that before, but gee whiz, for the very few of you who actually read this blog . . . well.  I can only say I'm like your old high school friend who pops up now and again. I think of you a lot, and I mean to get to you, but life gets in my way.

This time, old friends, life did get in the way. For part of the time I was I just wanted to be sewing, not writing, BUT I was doing neither. I will not go into details, just suffice it to say I was too sick to even think - well I was thinking about it - to sick to pick up a needle, so I was reduced to looking at magazines and such. Dreaming about doing things. Do you dream about what you want to do? I highly recommend it. The hard part is remembering to put it down on paper somewhere so you won't forget what you dreamed! Old School: if you see something in a magazine that you like, cut it out and put it in folder or tape/paste it your doodle book. New School: Use Pinterest! It's a great online bulletin board.

One of the things I came across was snowball blocks. Not new, definitely old school, but they can be very fun and they are easy, peasy to do! I used them to showcase a fabric. Large trains, in this case, otherwise they would have been cut up. I didn't want to use them in the border of the quilt either.  So fussy cut the print you want to showcase and then cut out 4 smaller squares.

Draw a diagonal line on the wrong side of each of the small squares. Sew them on the corner of the big square. This shows just the first square.

Then you trim off everything with a 1/4" seam. It will look strange and feel stranger! Yes, you're cutting both squares at the outer edge. So this is what it looks like before you press it.

Now press the small squares out. It's a miracle! You get your square back.

I  had so much fun with this. I hope you will try it. Doesn't have to be something big. Mine wasn't.

Okay . . . it looks bigger. I love it when life sa(y)s quilts!

Lousy Blogger

It's official, in case you hadn't noticed it, I'm a lousy blogger. Lousy in that I never get to my blog! I'm supposed to be carrying on about quilty stuff and that's great, but I find that I like to "do" quilty stuff and sitting at the computer doesn't always satisfy that need. Maybe it's the fact that I like to give you guys pictures to go along with my terrible ramblings and if I don't have them I feel bad about writing? That's why I wasn't a journalism major in college.

Yet, I wasn't a quilting major either. I was an economics major. My son, though, bless his wonderful heart, all through high school thought that meant I was a "home economics major." Not in a bad way, but just because I did the quilty thing and lots of other crafty things. He was kind of embarrassed to discover later that - no - Mom was really a math kind of girl!

Well I've really turned that mostly toward my quilting. I do hope that the few of you that actually read this poor excuse of a blog enjoy it. Maybe it makes you smile and maybe it makes you think that one day you can try it, if you're not already dabbling in the fine fun of quilting. It is an art, but it is also fun and that's why I do it.

The last blog had the finale of making the Pathways quilt. Did you make yours?

Then like you, probably the holidays and regular life interrupted my ability, time, (and desire - my head is hanging in shame) to get to this venue. But here are a few of the quilts I've done.

My friends children are now having their own children so I have baby quilts to make. But I'm a superstitious old fool and won't start a baby quilt until after the child is born. Then I quilt like mad to get it done. Here is one that is finished.

I have another almost done and one more that isn't even started! Luckily babies understand. I also made a table runner and place mats as gifts for people we were visiting over the holidays. Did I think of this way in advance? Of course not!

And now we're in a brand new year! I've got quilting projects galore. I'd really like to share them with you. I'll try to be better about writing, but remember with me the problem is that so many things sa(y) quilts!

Quilt-a-Long Finale!

Well after letting a whole month go whizzing by I was feeling supremely guilty or is that "quilty"! I have lit into the quilt-a-long quilt like a crazy woman and it is done!

When I left you last time you had put your blocks together and were having the time of your lives quilting them to your hearts desires, which your are no doubts still doing. That's okay. These instructions will still be here when you're ready for them. Enjoy the quilting, Lord knows I do.

BINDING After all the quilting is done, trim your quilt so that the quilt sandwich layers are all lined up and the quilt is square. Since you squared it before you started to quilt this is not hard, it is just a matter of cleaning up edges. Then you need to cut binding strips. Most of the time I cut binding from straight of grain and that's what we'll do here. Another time maybe we'll tackle bias binding. Bias binding is very strong and can handle a lot of wear and tear and can go around a lot of corners. An example is the wedding ring quilt I made - all those corners needed a bias binding so I wouldn't be fighting with the binding all the time.  I'm also going to do a continuous binding with mitered corners. Yep, mitered corners. Please, don't go screaming from the room. They really aren't that hard. They only LOOK hard. I mean for crying out loud if guys can figure out how to miter corners in construction we can do it in quilting - no real offense intended guys!

1.  Measure through the middle of your quilt both ways and double it to get the length of binding you will need.
2.  Cut 2 1/2" strips of fabric in the color of your choice. Cut enough strips so that you have the length you measured in step 1. I used 2 different fabrics.

3.  Sew your strips together. It's best to use a diagonal sewing line and I wish to heaven I had taken pictures of how I did this, but I only took a picture of the finished product. I can't draw here either so I will try to write it out. You have 2 strips. 1 strip the end right side up (the rest of the strip should go off to your left) and take the 2nd strip right side down perpendicular to it (the rest of the strip should hang directly down). It will look like you have a little box of the 2 fabrics in front of you, wrong side up. Carefully pin to hold at the edge. With a pencil or marker, draw a diagonal line from the top left corner of the box to the bottom right corner. This is your sewing line. As long as the strips are perpendicular to each other, they don't have to be exactly lined up - it's ok if #2 strip is up a bit. You can check before you sew if you take out your pins and fold the fabric back on the sewing line. It should look like you have one long strip of fabric. Grit your teeth sew on that line! Viola! Trim and there you go.
 Do that again and again until you have the length you need. Press all the seams to one side. Then press the entire puppy in half.

Now you have this long fabric string that your cat is going bonkers over. What to do. Go rummage in the recycling bin. You do have a recycling bin? Tut - tut. Grab an empty paper towel holder or toilet tissue holder and start winding. The larger the quilt, the larger the holder you'd want.

You're now ready to sew the binding to the quilt!

Bring your quilt to your machine quilt top up. That's right. We start with right side up. Unroll some of your gorgeous binding and match the raw edge to the raw edge of the quilt. Try to start about 3/4 of the way down one of the sides. Not right at a corner! Not right at the top or the bottom. Leave yourself about 6 - 10 inches of unsewn binding. Sew with your normal 1/4" seam.

Now I do not sew with my binding sitting next to me like the picture. I tried to keep it in my lap, but it jumps around and drives me crazy. Instead I just let it go to the floor. It's fine down there; I just kicked it to the side. The cat looked at it once or twice and decided that it wasn't worth the trouble.

Continue sewing until you come to your first corner. 1/4" away stop, back stitch, and pull the quilt out. Carefully turn the entire quilt so that you can continue sewing down the next side. Turn the binding up so that it is above the edge of the quilt. You'll see that nice diagonal line in the corner.

Now flip the binding down, over your finger so the top fold is even with top edge of the quilt.

Hold that down, and slide the whole thing under your needle and start sewing again. Make sure your secure your stitches. Ta-da! You've mitered your first corner! Easy peasy! Continue sewing until the next corner. Stop 1/4" from the edge, secure the stitching and miter another one. Do this until you come back to where you have the binding tail that you left behind.

Fold back 1/4" and finger press on the binding tail. If you have lots of binding left over, measure so that you can nestle 3 or 4 inches of binding into the tail and cut off the rest. Fold over 1/4" of the end here too. Carefully nestle the binding into the tail, making sure there are no lumps. Then continue sewing until you meet up with your starting point. Secure the end.

Your almost done! Press the binding to the back. Wiggle the corners into a pleasing shape. You may need to cut out bulk from the corners so they will turn well.

 Pin the binding into place, making sure that it covers your machine stitching (of the binding). Hand stitch the binding to the backing. Add a label - if you desire - and you are done!

The Front

and the back!

Hope you had fun. Enjoy the process and remember to look for those things that SA(y) Quilt!