Tag: Fabric

More on Precuts

What are precuts? Supplies? Fabric? Both?

Whatever they are I have a love-hate relationship with them. I love to look through charm packs and dream about the finished projects that will magically appear in my house made – from that very charm pack fabric – and change my life.

In reality, I really like the little bits of one whole line!

I have to admit that I sincerely dislike actually working with pre-cuts, but I tend to forget. I get an idea (did you see the Jelly Roll Race post?) and live another day to learn the same lesson.

The really big thing I don’t like is pinked edge. I like the idea of it, but what a &^%%$#ing mess! I open a Jelly Roll and there are bits of fuzz everywhere. EVERYWHERE!!!

The other thing I don’t like about pre-cuts are that they are not cut properly. Recently, I posted a tutorial about making 8 half square triangles at a time. I decided that I would get a neutral charm pack and use my Hoopla charm pack and just make a boatload of HSTs. Why not? I am sure a cool pattern will come to mind once I am rolling in HSTs.

I got a Kona White Charm pack and dutifully sat in front of the TV and marked all the White charms with an X. The pinked edges did not make this easy. I had to kind of guess where the marks went. I don’t like to guess. I like to be as exact as possible.

I went to line them up with the Hoopla charms and what a pain! They did not really line up very well, despite both being 5″ charm packs.

Folded charm
Folded charm

Folding a charm looked ok, except for the bit on the left. I finger pressed and thought I could line up the finger pressed line with the X on the neutral charm.

As an aside, I don’t really want to mark charms inexactly and then have to finger press a bunch as well. If I end up with that as my only alternative, I will just press the charms with the iron. It will be a lot easier on my hands.

Finger pressed fold
Finger pressed fold

As you can see from the photo (sorry about the quality of this one, it is the victim of my camera problems) the finger pressed line does not go corner to corner.

I don’t think there is anything I can do to force Moda to make their accuracy better. That is not a fight I want to fight today. Or tomorrow. I just have to deal with it in my own work.

Perhaps using pre-cuts as decorations is better than using it as fabric? Kind of an expensive decorating idea, though.

FOTY Triangles Beg. September 2011

Early Sept. FOTY Triangles
Early Sept. FOTY Triangles

Despite my misgivings, I am plowing ahead with my plan to cut triangles until such time as I have a new plan.

Mom and Lil  Sissy were over when I took this picture. Lil Sissy almost had a heart attack when I started to take the pieces off the wall. She didn’t realize that it was part of the process!

The process for making the FOTY quilts really lasts all year long. I don’t get to the sewing until the following year, usually, but I cut and arrange all year long. My process for working on the FOTY quilts is:

  • Buy fabric
  • Wash fabric
  • Press fabric
  • Cut pieces, including triangles from fabric
  • Put triangles on the wall
  • Photograph triangles
  • Remove triangles
  • Repeat.

 

FOTY Triangles – Late August 2011

FOTY Triangles - Late 8/2011
FOTY Triangles - Late 8/2011

Bad news. I don’t think I like this triangle shape. What I really want to do is kind of row quilt like the Fons & Porter Kalamkari Strippy. I like the space between the rows, though you can’t see it very well in the size information they provide. Still, I want to be true to the idea of the Fabric of the Year quilts and continue with that series. The bottom line is that I have too many triangles to make that quilt unless I want to make one to cover half of San San Francisco – the City not the people in it!

I considered, briefly, cutting squares out of the all the fabric already cut into triangles. I like the idea of simple shapes and may have just gone too far this year in the shape department. That would cause a problem for the smaller triangles. I know myself and would not pull the fabrics out again to cut squares.

The other idea I had was to intersperse light colored or neutral triangles in between the colored ones so that I can give the fabrics some space.

I think I have decided to lay all the triangles out and see what I am really dealing with and go from there. I may lay them all out on the Pat Bravo Pure Elements white linen solid color fabric and see if I get the space effect I want.

I can’t leave you all fretting and worrying. There is good news. I am almost at the end of the giant pile of fabric needing to be pressed. My machine is back, though, so that effort will be slowed a bit. I do have a pile of fabric to be washed that will also need to be pressed, but for the zillion loads of fabric I did at the beginning of the month, I am almost through it. More good news is that the fabrics on the bottom of the pile had sort of pressed themselves!

FOTY 2011 Triangles – End of July 2011

FOTY 2011 Triangles
FOTY 2011 Triangles

The triangle collection is growing, but not fast enough. The halfway mark for the year is long past and I have piles of fabric to wash and cut. Sigh.

I pressed a bunch while I was on the phone over the weekend. Being on the phone is an excellent time to press fabric. Get yourself a headset and try it out.

Still I have to cut the bits I need for various projects, too and I am behind on that. I realized that part of what was holding me up was the difficult to read list of patches I need to cut, so I have to redo that. Hopefully, that little project will speed up my process.

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FOTY Triangles, also late July 2011
FOTY Triangles, also late July 2011

After writing the above, I got busy pressing and cutting. I have a much larger collection of triangles now and a slightly smaller pile of fabric to press and cut. I got into a routine and ended up getting a lot of prep work done for the Food Quilt.

All the fabric I bought is now washed and just waiting to be pressed.

Various & Sundry 2011 #8

Patterns and Projects

Julie, over at the Intrepid Thread, has created a tutorial for an iPad bag in conjunction with Cutting Corners. Aside from the bag being cheerful, I like the directions. There are a ton of photos and the words are pretty clear. This is a long tutorial, so put a new ink cartridge in if you plan on printing it.

I bought a gift of fabric from Julie and she was kind enough to offer to include a card. She sent the fabric out in a timely manner as well. Great service.

Quilts & Shows

The 2011 AQS Show winners are posted.

I love this quilt. It was part of the Red and White show in NYC. Don’t you love the different borders? I might make one.

Media

I was listening to Creative Talk Radio with Pat Sloan recently. She had an interview with Joanna Figueroa, which was about a half an hour long. I really enjoyed hearing about her and about her new project with Quilts & More magazine. It starts with the April issue. I will have to seek out that magazine and see what it is about. Pat also had an interview with Eleanor Burns on that same episode as well as the news that she is moving her podcast to the AllPeopleQuilt.com website.

As a result of the podcast, I decided to try out the Fig Tree Quilts Fresh Vintage subscription for awhile. They called me to get some payment information and Joanna Figueroa picked up the phone. What a thrill! Who cares about Brangelina!

I have purchased this publication before. TFQ and I were together when I bought issue 10 that has the fabulous Tea Basket quilt in it. I haven’t made that quilt, but still admire it. I am looking for something a little different and hope that this magazine will provide it.

Sandy of Quilting for the Rest of Us podcast has started to write some book reviews. I flatter myself that I inspired her, but I know that she wrote book reviews on some other subjects for previous jobs. Go check out one of her first books reviews.

Penguin has come out with some new editions of classics such as Black Beauty, The Secret Garden and Emma. The creative part of this everyday publishing phenomenon is that they are being released under a new imprint called Penguin Threads and the covers are hand sewn. I saw a brief article in the Atlantic that featured wonderful pictures. In the images the stitching can be seen. The colors are cheerful without being glary. There is a lot the article doesn’t say, such as how many are being made? Are they all hand stitched or only the first one? Cool, in any case.

The Quilt Index had a great Double Wedding Ring quilt up last week. The background was Nile Green – kind of a combination aqua and green – which provided a real WOW factor to this quilt. The maker really had some guts.

Linda Kemshall has a new blog. She is a UK artist who works on DMTV and Thr3fold Journal. I wrote about her, and her daughter Laura, in a blog post some time ago.

Stars for San Bruno

As you know, I finished the first quilt top and am gearing up for the second. Someone offered me some fabric and replied to my query about her being sure she wouldn’t mind sending it along to be used with a very entertaining quip: “It’s been on my shelves for a couple of years now. I figure if I haven’t even pulled it off to audition it in that time it’s better off going to a home which will make it feel much more needed and useful. I’m all about helping my fabric self-actualize.”

Trying to Do Good

I like to do charity projects that fit with my life and my interests and help people locally. You have seen me make pillowcases. I have made about a dozen so far. I finally got my act together and called the hospital to arrange a time to donate them. I left a message. A few days later, a chipper, cheerful and young woman called me back and left a message telling me they have a ready supply of pillowcases and don’t need any. She told me to take them to a town about 20 miles away. She was very nice, but I am still annoyed. I guess some hospitals are getting too much of a good thing.

Fabric

Quilted Fish Fabrics
Quilted Fish Fabrics

I have to admit that I didn’t remember buying this fabric. Also, I didn’t have a receipt for it, except what came with the fabric when it was shipped. I don’t usually purchase fabric from Fabric.com, so I was really confused.

It is very strange and has really put me off buying fabric lately. If you bought this for me, will you, please, confess so I can write you a thank you note? I also want to get over this feeling of losing my mind. Thank you!

UPDATE: I have a secret fabric fairy. Thanks, Mrs. K.!

 

Selecting Fabric

Selecting fabric is a very personal choice. I have a group of fabrics for my sampler class with Frances and I needed to choose some background-esque fabric to go with the Four Patches for my Double Four patch block. These are large blocks and I don’t normally work in this size, so I found it challenging.

I fell back on Lorraine Torrence‘s old adage: Make Visual Decisions Visually. That is the best advice I have EVER gotten in quiltmaking. Go take a class from Lorraine and buy her books. She is awesome.

Plain Jane
Plain Jane

I liked the bold graphic-ness of this print, but thought it might be too large.

Cherries
Cherries

I thought for sure this would work, but the cherries felt too scattered. They need to be hemmed in a little.

 

Bliss
Bliss

Something in the color was off with this print. The aqua in the Bliss print is more green while the small flowered print is more on the turquoise side.

Plain Jane (smaller flowers)
Plain Jane (smaller flowers)

This is the same print as the first one, but the flowers are smaller. I like the way you can see more of the flowers. Success!

 

Final
Final

I chose the last print and above is how the finished block looks.

 

Various & Sundry 2011 #5

Doodle
Doodle

Media
I listened to an episode of Pat Sloan’s Creative Talk Radio with Amanda Herring of the Quilted Fish. She described her new fabric line from Riley Blake. It is called Sugar & Spice. THEN the Fabricworm sent out a teaser a week or so ago and I can’t get the fabric in the teaser out of my head. ERGH!!! Those fabrics would go perfectly with my red & aqua quilt even though I am not buying them.

I heard about Matt and Shari on Mark Lipinski’s Creative Mojo and was so impressed with all the information on their website. They have all sorts of different projects, info about color, lighting, etc. They have a section on framing a quilt block, which includes the book I learned to quilt with, Diana Leone’s The Sampler Quilt. I have the original edition, which I still use for the binding lesson and the newer edition, which has great blocks.

Creative Mojo is growing on me. Mark is interviewing a lot of interesting people and telling me about a lot of interesting books. I hope I can meet him someday and have some of his fortune rub off. 😉

I was looking at my Google Reader for once since it was pouring rain and I didn’t want to go out for my usual lunch time walk. I saw a post from Fresh Lemons showing the Sugar Pop line of fabric. It looks so much better in her photo than it does in my workroom and I am starting to think that if this rain lasts much longer, I am going to have to breakdown and paint over the life sucking beige that still exists in my space.

Bari J, who is getting lots of press right now for her relatively new book, was the guest hostess on Wednesday Night Live with Lisa Fulmer of C&T publishing. She was demonstrating embroidery stitches and tools. There is more information on Creating the Hive.

On My Mind-Revisted
A few weeks ago I made a list of projects. I did that because those projects were cluttering up my mind. They are, with their status:

  • Sugar Pop Chubby Charmer – squares sewn; need to make straps, lining and line with batting
  • 2 Martha Negley totes – already cut out; ready to sew
  • Grand Revival Flea Market bag in light violet with green dots – need to pick and cut out lining
  • Grab Bag- push out corners, press and top stitch
  • Finish testing hexagons
  • Corner Store – thinking about making the blocks 4″ instead of 5″, which means unsewing a lot of blocks, trimming and resewing.
  • Grand Revival Flea Market bag in violet Innocent Crush – unsew, fix straps and resew
  • Back for FOTY 2010
  • Bubble pillowcase
  • Zig Zaggy back – make it a bit longer
  • Stars for San Bruno – still need blocks, will put together starting in April
  • Block for Modern Quilt Guild

Other things I finished recently:

  • binding for FOTY 2010
  • binding for Frosted Stars
  • binding for Frosted Stars leftovers
  • Grab Bag for Grama – finished, mailed and sent

I am not bragging, really. I seem to need to feel like I am accomplishing something!

Shows
I am so sad that I am not rich enough to run off to NYC for the weekend, because I will be missing the Red & White quilt show at the Armory. The Lizzie B Girls have a great post with lots of fab photos on their blog about it. If you go, tell me how you like it.

Doing Good
Last call for Stars for San Bruno! I know the Sendai and Christchurch earthquakes have overshadowed the fire in San Bruno, but any contributions you make will be greatly welcome. See more information on my 3/24 post.

You can also help the modern quilt community with relief for Japan. Check their new site. Tamiko is also doing her part. You only have until the end of the week, so click this link now!

Making
Here is a tutorial for making wonky cross blocks. You never know when you might want to make wonky cross blocks!

Need some kimono?

Project Selvedge
I saw an ad for a Michael Miller contest for fabric design. I have the perfect design, but I uploaded it too late. The directions said it could be done through 3/24, but on the West Coast, we often get shortchanged on the timezones. Oh well. Perhaps next time. I did put it up on Spoonflower, but can’t sell it, because I haven’t ordered a swatch.

BAMQG Exchange Blocks

BAMQG Courthouse Square Blocks
BAMQG Courthouse Square Blocks

A few weeks ago I talked about the blocks I was planning on making for the BAMQG challenge. Here are the first two. I had an idea for these blocks, but I also had a couple of obstacles to the finished pieces.

First, I had to find the rotary cutting directions. I tried to draw the blocks on EQ7 and wasn’t, initially successful. Through a series of weird coincidences, I found a block in the big Jinny Beyer block book and had a pad of graph paper near handy, which allowed me to visualize the grid. Once I had that, I was able to draw the block in EQ7 (I was surprised not to find it there already there) and EQ7 generated the rotary cutting directions for this Courthouse Square block. Update 10/9/2011: I found that this block is Brackman Number: 2815A. You can see an antique example of this block in a quilt at the Quilt Index.

Acorn chain in lake
Acorn chain in lake
Dandelion by Michael Miller
Dandelion by Michael Miller

I used the fabrics I showed in the last post and am pleased with how they came out. I was a little nervous about using the Michael Miller fabric, because I have it slated for another project. I slapped myself and used the fabric since I hadn’t used it in that other project yet and it isn’t as though I have a shortage of fabric. I think the block looks great.

Multiple Square Quilt
Multiple Square Quilt

Two blocks wasn’t enough and I still had some fabric, so I looked at the gallery (I apologize if you can’t open the link) that Adrianne made.I found this one in Jinny Beyer’s book also. It is called Multiple Square Quilt and is from a 1953 issue of the Kansas City Star. That book is a useful resource if you love blocks at all.

I am thinking I will make one or two more, but I made a list of all I have to sew this weekend, so we will see how much I get done.

It is kind of fun thinking about blocks in a different way and trying to make them modern. I still have more fabric, so I may make a few more blocks.

Zen Quiltmaking

I had an appointment with Colleen yesterday to talk about the quilting for the Frosted Stars, the Frosted Stars Leftovers and the Purple Quilt. I wanted to bring the Fabric of the Year 2010 top over as well, but I wasn’t able to even start the back. My life felt like it was spiraling into complete craziness this past week as things just continued to get heaped on to me. To add to the general life craziness, my work computer is acting up. It has been for awhile, but it reached new heights of not working on Wednesday afternoon and I lost patience. Nothing would load (web pages, local programs, nothing) and I could hear the hard drive churning away, which I knew was a very bad sign. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, completely and totally fed up, I went to my boss, told him him the problem and asked him if I could just read my email from home on Thursday if my computer was working the same way. He said if my iPad was faster, I should just go home and use that on Thurs. WOOHOO!

Sadly, his IT staff came in early and did a stopgap fix on my computer. It was much better on Thursday, so I had to stay at work instead of hang out at home with my iPad next to my sewing machine. 😉 Oh well.

The computer problems just added to my stress and in light of the craziness, I decided I had to be okay with not getting the back of the FOTY 2010 finished. I talked to Colleen and will bring it in two weeks when she is back in town and ready to quilt again. That means I have two weeks to finish the back.

FOTY 2010 Top - Finished
FOTY 2010 Top - Finished

This past week wasn’t a complete quiltmaking desert. I did get a break on Monday when I didn’t have to take the Young Man to his regular Monday appointment and I took the opportunity to finish the FOTY 2010 top! Yay! I feel so good about that.

All the diamonds were sewn together and the border strips were cut, so I just had to sew them on to the top. It took me a long time – about 3.5 hours. I never think that borders and backs are going to take long, but they always seem to take longer than I expect. Oh well.

I learned a couple of things making this top. First, my deadline was to piece the whole top at the CQFA Retreat. It turned out that I wasn’t ready to piece this whole top. Diamonds require finding my sweet spot of piecing. I had to develop a rhythm and a method and I hadn’t done it by the time I reached the retreat. Second, this was a top that needed me to take my time. I ripped out much of the piecing I sewed at the retreat. A lot of people don’t care about points being cut off and I am not going to beat myself up about every single point, but I absolutely don’t want my bad technique to distract viewers from the overall look of the quilt. Finally, this quilt needed to be pieced slowly and carefully.

FOTY 2010: bottom left
FOTY 2010: bottom left
FOTY 2010: top middle
FOTY 2010: top middle

I have been lamenting my pictures (my whole blog, really) lately and these two show great detail, but they are not great photography. I am pretty pleased with the color layout on the pink and white section.

The diamonds are not in perfect positions colorwise, but I have improved since FOTY 2009.

In the photo of the pinks and whites, I am really pleased that I clustered the whites in the corner. In FOTY 2009 I put them along the left side one on top of the other and I decided that wasn’t as effective in terms of the colorwash idea. It is very difficult to get a really smooth colorwash effect when using prints. As I said, I think I improved over last year.

My mom kept telling me to move diamonds AFTER I had already sewn them and finally I had to tell her to make her own colorwash quilt!

FOTY 2010: alternative universe
FOTY 2010: alternative universe

As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I will be making a block or two from Joel Dewberry fabric. I have the fat quarter laid out on my ironing board (see previous comments about horizontal space in my workroom!), because my design wall is full, and there is no horizontal space.

As I was finishing the FOTY, I kept pressing bits and pieces. When I was pressing the corner of the inner border on top of the JD fabric, I noticed how interesting this particularly corner looked with the JD fabric as the border. I didn’t want that active a print on the outside of this quilt, but I thought it was interesting.

Stealing Mom’s Thunder

Mom's Food Quilt Blocks
Mom's Food Quilt Blocks

I bought a lot of food fabric fat quarters (say that 3x really fast) for my mom last spring while she was taking care of Super G and trying not to lose her mind. This is one of the blocks she made with those food fabrics. She made a lot of blocks like the Corner Store pattern I talked about in the review of Pretty Little Mini Quilts, then she didn’t like them for the food quilt, so she redid them and this is block one of the result. Check her blog for progress.