Back in the Saddle Again

Too much time has gone by since I wrote last, but life does seem to have a very nasty habit of interfering with my plans, or maybe my lack thereof. It has been good to be back sewing again. I had a few weeks there that I made the close acquaintance of our local hospital having and recovering from back surgery. It's a very nice hospital as hospitals go, (I've unfortunately been in my fair share, but that's another story.) and I love my surgeon, but all in all much happier to be at home.

In my last blog, I showed what happens when you fail to measure twice, cut once, and cut it wrong anyway. I thought I had the darn thing licked, turning it into a nice little log cabin-like block. But alas, alack, and woe is me - picture me forlorn with my hand on forehead since I'm typing here - because one bad cut deserves another. I made as many of the blocks as I could with the fabric I had at my disposal. I really, really just wanted to use what was in my stash. That seems a very financially prudent thing to do plus I was still recuperating and not anxious to go gallivanting around to store after store, despite the fact that I generally love fondling fabric. It's a perfectly legal thing to do you know. Anyway I spent time staring at them trying to figure out how to use them, moving them around my make-shift design wall (a few pieces of old batting scraps do the trick), and came up with the idea below.

I decided that I really liked the on-point design. It takes 4 of the blocks to make the large square. With 4 log cabins left over, I just put them out to the side for the moment, but I'm sure that's not where they'll be in the final product. The design will become a table runner with solid side triangles surrounding the large on-point design. All to the good. Except. The problem is that the pretty little block that resulted is not a standard size, which means nothing is standard. To the reference books I went, found the formulas from geometry that I no longer keep in my head, and then tried very hard to measure accurately so that my side triangles would be cut correctly. I swear that there are sewing imps that live in my house whose only job is to make sure I cannot get a correctly sized triangle cut! Oh I double and triple checked my numbers, but the triangles that I cut for the side insertions were waaaay too big! I really don't know what I did wrong. But at this point I didn't care, I decided to just plow ahead. After all art quilters do this all the time. When they are given fabric shreds they somehow turn it into beautiful works of art. If they can do it, so can I. (Sounds a bit militant and defensive at the same time doesn't it?)

I've started to use those large triangles. At least since they were too large they could be cut to a smaller size and that's what I did. The hardest part is dealing with all the bias edges. Bias edges stretch so easily, so I've had to be very careful when sewing and pressing. Note: if you're working with bias edges you must press - lift the iron up and down - not iron. Otherwise your fabric will grow. This particular fabric I will never use again! (Probably not true, that's the militant still screaming at the imps.) It is a cotton batik, but I swear it seems to be a stretch cotton. Edges ripple while you look at it, never mind touching it. Sigh. Getting this quilt squared up is going to be a bear.

This was supposed to be an easy project, getting me back into the sewing room with little angst. It's evolved into something much bigger and more difficult, but I can say for sure that even when the imps of the sewing room try to stop me, I still sa(y) quilts! I'll take a picture of the finished product, that is, if the imps ever stop throwing up roadblocks!

Fussy Cutting

I've been collecting fabric for making a series of quilts with a wine theme. So I sat down the other day and started sketching out designs. Who knew that it could take all day to do this? I now fully understand why designers, amateur and professional alike have gone to computer-aided design (CAD). I love that; it gives great new meaning to the phrase "You're such a CAD!" Anyway, even though it's really fun to be surrounded by graph paper and piles of colored pencils, markers, and even crayons, it is so dag-gone slow! And, I'm pretty limited to solid colors. I don't know about you, but most of my fabrics are prints. One really important think to note: If you ever decide to play with design this way. Once you get the design down and are ready to play with color, take your original graph paper drawing and copy it. You can then try out different colors and not have to redraw the whole darn thing each time. I eventually came up with the idea of a table runner that would use a simple block, but the center would be a kaleidoscope. That's represented by the solid red square in the picture.

I had a cute fabric that was covered with gadgets for opening wine bottles that would be perfect. Making that center square was going to require a lot of fussy cutting. Fussy cutting - not when your fabric doesn't behave, that's a whole 'nother problem - is being very picky about what you cut out, choosing a particular motif on your fabric to highlight. In this case a square is divided into quarters and each quarter is cut from exactly the same motif on the fabric. It's not hard, but it does take planning.

I learned how to do it from Jinny Beyer, but I'm sure there are different ways of going about it. I take my template - a triangle in my case - find the motif on the fabric that I want to use and then copy some of the lines onto the template so I can always align it exactly the same way.

Then I trace around the template and cut out the resulting shape, here a triangle.



For my block I needed 4 triangles of exactly the same motif to make 1 block. The whole quilt called for 24 of these blocks. That's 96 triangles folks and a lot of fussy cutting. It leaves you with very holey fabric! You can imagine how hard it started to get near the end to find exactly the same motif in 4 different places.

I don't want to imply that for all 24 blocks that the resulting motif is the same. I would have to have a huge amount of fabric to do that. I was able to find the same motif about 12 times in the yardage that had - a little more than 1/2 yard. That would make 3 blocks. Then I switched to another one, until I had enough for my project. For this project that worked, but for others you would need more yardage to get the exact same motif for every block. For example it's not unusual for a pattern to call for 4 yards of fabric to be able to get enough repeats of the motif for a kaleidoscope block. My kaleidoscope block looks like this.

Very cute and just the look I wanted. My only problem: I had cut my triangle too small! When I made my template, I drew out my square with  the seam allowance on graph paper. Then I divided it into 4 equal triangles and that's what I copied onto template plastic. What I forgot is that I would be sewing those templates back together and I had not added THAT seam allowance back in to get the correct size. Aargh! Now I had 96 little triangles, and what in the world could I do with them? I tried to just make the block smaller, but the measurements were so far off that I would have gone crazy. Then I just made a simple 9-square block with the kaleidoscope square in the middle. It was still way too small. How could I make it bigger? Add strips of course! Strip therapy always comes in handy and here's the resulting block.

Not too bad for a mistake if I do say so myself. The lesson, keep on quilting. Even a mistake can sa(y) quilt!
 

Strip Therapy

I'm so behind the curve on this one. For forever I have walked into fabric shops and drooled over those gorgeous coils of fabric called Pops. They are usually made up of hand-dyed fabric and called Bali Pops. Doesn't matter, they're beautiful. I pick them up, love on them, and put them back. There are roughly 40 2 1/2" strips in a Pop and at $30 a pop (ha ha) I've never been able to bring myself to buy one. Who knows why, since I don't seem to have a problem with other fabric I love that now runs somewhere around $9 - 11 per yard! I just start thinking how should I use all those strips? Do I cut them into triangles? Squares? Shorter strips? How many strips do I need? What size quilt should I make? The questions keep piling up and I freeze.

A few months ago, I was strolling through Wal-Mart (That's what people do right? Pushing a cart, humming to oneself . . .  la, la, te, da) and I wandered down the defunct fabric aisle (That's another whole story.) and low and behold piled on a bottom shelf where Pops. These were not Bali Pops, matter of fact I'm not sure what they were/are. Ugly comes to mind. Who actually made these fabrics and thought someone would buy them? And that's exactly it, no one would buy them, so they cut them in strips so you couldn't see the whole ugly pattern, put them together and, viola! someone will buy them. This time that someone was me. The colors were not what I would normally buy, but the whole darn Pop was only $5! All those questions still hounded me, but at $5, I didn't care. I could become one of the cool sewists - yes, that's the current term. I'm not a sewer, I'm a sewist! Maybe I'm a quilting sewist; I get confused with the new stuff. Anyway, now I could afford to figure out how to play with the Pops. Note that this happened a few months ago. It has taken me a long time to be brave enough to open up the coils, hey, I had to buy more than one. They were only 5 bucks! Hubby bravely followed me into fabric shops and encouraged me to buy a book on using the darn things. Encouraging me to buy a book is as hard as it is to get me to buy fabric buy the yard; not very.

Over the past holidays, I decided that since I'm a sewist, I should, you know, sew! The Pops and the book were there so I've bravely attacked them. I had to find something that would look good with these colors though. I recently set up a tropical fish tank, so seeing a quilt that turned strips into fish was very appealing. Not sure where I'm going to go with this, but all those bright colors are becoming fabric fish!

Use your imagination at this point!

I need to get back to those fish, but I promise I'll keep you posted. Us quilting sewists find lots of things that SA(y) Quilts!

Follow the Quest!

So where did that name "Quilting Quest" come from? I don't know, something mundane probably, but it immediately makes me think of King Arthur! I participated in my first quest last week. Had to get to 10 different far flung shops in 5 days. I actually only had 4, due to other commitments. I do other things besides quilting - imagine that! Plus one of the days was Sunday and a few of the shops were closed. That kind of bothered me; if you're going to go through the trouble of participating as a shop you should be open for the whole event. It's hard enough to figure out how to get to the shops during the regular working hours, dealing with rush hour traffic - around here almost every hour of every day! - , and planning a route so you're not criss-crossing too badly. The Quest is free, IF you don't count the cost of gas. And I don't know about you, but it's really, really hard not to walk into a shop with all that yummy fabric and not buy something! Yes, I know that's the point. I found the backing fabric for THE WEDDING QUILT. It's like that in my head now - all caps. Not shouting, imagine a deep, important sounding voice. The piecing is done for the top and I've started basting the quilt sandwich together. I should be able to start the actual quilting before Thanksgiving! Whoo - hoo! It's only 2 years in; my daughter may get it before her 10th anniversary. You never know though, I am hand quilting.

For this quest Jinny Beyer designed a quilt pattern. The only way to get the pattern was to go to all the shops. Each one had one part of it. It is amazing to see how the same design can change due to fabric choices! The quilts went from looking modern with bright jewel colors (Jinny's) to beautiful country colors, very fall-like. Stupid me didn't bring her camera so I can't show you pictures. But you can go to the following link and see them there.  www.quiltersquest.com I did complete the quest, no grail, but now I have a new pattern and maybe I'll win some great prizes!

I even got my hubby to go with me to four shops on Saturday. Can you say Road Trip? He had ulterior motives - visiting gun and ammo shops. Nothing like a little quilting and shooting! Actually, I'm planning on doing that - the quilting not the shooting! My husband sometimes participates in Cowboy Action Shooting matches. It's just what it sounds like. People dress up as cowboys or cowgirls, and shoot in different scenarios. Like pretending they are in a saloon. There's always a story and they shoot at targets. Great fun to watch, the shooting and the people. Not to worry, they are all about safety too. They even have a mounted shooting  group. They shoot blanks at balloons (otherwise it wouldn't be safe for spectators) while on horseback. Accuracy and going through the course fast are important. Hmmm . . .  it's kind of like cross-country horseback on steroids! Some go all out on their costumes. Anyway, next year I'm planning on bringing my quilting. I can sit with a hoop, quilt, and watch the proceedings. If I put on a prairie dress, I'll even be part of the fun! Even a shootout can sa(y) quilts!

Time Flies

I was recently reminded by a dear friend that I have been absolutely remiss in posting to my blog. My response was completely defensive - because she was right! I don't feel like I'm much of a writer, but she pointed out to me that that wasn't necessarily the only reason people read blogs. I'm very grateful to her. So let me try to catch up on what I've been doing.

First of all, I hope everyone had a great Halloween. I kind of miss my kids being around. All the hectic fun of costumes and decorations. I didn't do much in the way of decorations. I thought about doing it a lot though. The entire thought of getting a ladder out to get into the attic to get to the decorations - well you get the idea. However, I did see a really cute pattern for fabric pumpkins. With the cost of pumpkins climbing - Is there anything out there that is getting cheaper?! - the idea of an everlasting decoration was appealing. It also is not plastic! I just cannot get into the plastic decorated jack-o-lanterns. Some are cute, yes, and they will last forever for sure. Can't you just imagine what some poor archeologist in the future will find? They won't have to be content with little shards of things that look like rock. With all the plastic they'll see the whole thing. Yikes! Anyway, I did make 2 of the little pumpkins.

They are super easy to make. Sew up a rectangular bag, my large one was 10" by 21". Sew a basting thread around the opening. Fill the bottom with beans or pellets (there's that plastic again!), about a 1 1/2 cups for the large. Add a tablespoon or so of cloves - you want it to smell nice don't you? Then fill it the rest of the way with fiber fill (Is that plastic again? I'm not sure.) Pull up the basting threads to close the top leaving a small hole. Tie securely. Insert a cinnamon stick in the hole and using a glue gun, glue it in place. Using embroidery floss wrap in quadrants to make it look like a pumpkin. Wrap these tightly, you want it to pull in. Add some artificial leaves and glue them down. With your hands shape it a bit, pushing in the bottom to round it out. Viola! You have a pumpkin. 

I've also been working a bit on some quilts. The latest on finished is for a friend - one day I will keep one of my quilts - for her 60th birthday. Of course, I didn't get it done on time for her party, but this way her birthday lasts much longer. I'm personally a strong believer in birthday weeks not just one measly day.

My friend adores Scottie dogs so this was perfect. I had actually purchased the pattern years ago when I first started quilting. It was supposed to be for a beginning quilter. Thank the Lord I didn't try it then. I never would have continued quilting! Having been at this for awhile now, I was able to put it together despite some rather complicated instructions. It came with templates that I completely ignored. I took the template sizes and translated it into strip piecing with my rotary cutter. Much faster and much easier. I was also able to make the half-square triangles by putting squares together and then cutting them in half diagonally, so I didn't have to worry about bias edges. I have a hard enough time getting sizes correct without having to worry about a stretchy bias.

Time for me to go back to sewing. Sometimes it's not what I see, but what someone says that makes me sa(y) quilts!

Shirley

Quilt of my own

I've made quite a few quilts now, not that I'd call myself prolific. There are those wonderful people out there that seem to be able to churn out quilts. I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all. I am amazed at how fast they can put together the most beautiful quilts. Me, I'm a snail. Sometimes it seems to take me nigh on forever to complete a quilt. Ask my kids. I don't think I've ever completed a quilt on time as a gift for them. Bless them, but I knew they would understand - mostly- when their quilt was a little late. A really good example, my daughter's wedding quilt. She is being most tolerant of me. She's been married 3 years now and has given me a gorgeous granddaughter. Does she have her quilt? No. Though I give her regular updates and have even sent her pictures of the quilt in progress. I've spoken about it here before too. It's moving along, but at that snail's pace. I kid that it will be done by her 10th anniversary. I may not be far off the mark I'm afraid.

Almost all my quilts are gifts for friends or family and were an adaptation of a quilt pattern I've found in a book or magazine. I usually have more than one project going at a time because I like to have machine and hand projects to do. I love to hand quilt. The above mentioned wedding quilt is hand pieced and will be hand quilted. (For the record, I'm now sewing the rows together! It's not picture worthy or else I'd put a picture of it for you right now. Mostly just a mass of pins!) But I've been trying to get comfortable with machine quilting. There are times that a quilt just needs machine quilting, either because of the design or maybe how it was constructed.

I've just completed my first quilt that was completely my idea from start to finish. My church has the most beautiful stained glass behind the altar. There is a special name for it, but for the life of me I've never been able to pronounce it much less spell it. I won't even try here.

Pictures don't do it much justice, but I find it quite inspiring on many different levels. It is meditative and I really wanted to capture it in a quilt. I made a small wall hanging, combining applique and traditional piecing. I hope you like what you see.

Inspiration and beauty are all around us. For me, they all can SA(y) quilts.

I'm Back!

I don't know what it is about this summer, but it's just sliding away from me. Maybe melting is the better term with all the hot weather. I am not a hot weather girl, I much prefer it to be in the 60s or 70s. Eighty and above is too hot already.

All this hot weather has made stuff grow too. No, not in my garden. My poor garden is suffering in this heat too. I mean, the old lady hairs that grow on my chin! How is it that my hair has gone gray, but the old lady hairs are BLACK? What's worse is that I can't see them in my dotage unless I have a magnifying mirror. My husband has to get better at warning me that I have a beard or the beginnings of a goatee. A little notice that " there's a little something on your chin dear" would go a long way. Sometimes I so love getting old.

I had a few long distance birthdays and of course all the graduations to get gifts for this summer. Mostly I go to gift cards for graduations, but I feel guilty about not getting something more personal. I decided that I would make the gift card holders. It's not hard and that way there can be something more personal about it. Here's how you go about it. Anybody can do it. Honest!

1. Cut two pieces of fabric in the shape of a house. The sides of the house are 6" long and the base is 5" wide.  I made myself a cardboard template so I don't have to keep measuring each time I want to do this. Lazy!

I used two coordinating fabrics, but they can be the same or even very different.

2. With right sides together sew around all edges using 1/4" seam allowance leaving a small opening at the bottom so you will be able to turn it right side out. To get a nice point at the top, sew 2 stitches across at the point. Clip the corners to minimize the bulk.

3. Turn right side out, making sure all the seams are pushed out. You can use the blunt end of a chopstick to help make sure that the point is all the way out and to smooth the seams from inside. Fold the opening in as for a knife edge (it will want to do this). Press well.

4.  Top stitch 1/4" in across the bottom to close the opening. At this point you could play with all over stitching of some kind if you want. Since there is no batting it isn't necessary, but it could be fun!

5. Decide which fabric you want to be the inside and place that face up. Fold up the bottom to meet the bottom of the triangle (top of the house).

6. Top stitch all the way around 1/4" in. You will now have a nice pocket.

7. Fold the pointed top down, press, and viola! You have a nice holder for a gift card. You can add a closure to the outside if you like, but I find it isn't necessary.

Hope that helps with all the upcoming birthdays and holidays. Now you have a good excuse to go get cute fabric. Even little items can SA(y) Quilt!

Until next time,
Shirley