I can’t believe I haven’t posted triangles since mid September! But it’s true. I haven’t posted triangles since mid-September. I guess if I had actually pressed fabric in the past 2 months, then I wouldn’t be so behind.
It turns out that I have to press fabric, because the chair I lay the fabric over while it waits to be press keeps falling over. I spent a few hours on Sunday, after finishing a big project pressing and cutting the bits and snippets I need for various projects. I got quite a little pile going after not too long. I think the chair is a bit more stable now, but I just need to get the fabric pressed. AND stop buying new fabric.
Mid September already! The CQFA Retreat has been set, so now I have a working deadline. I am pretty good in the fabric washing department. The cutting of triangles for fabrics I have used this year (already in my fabric closet) has been spotty. I am not going back to make that up and will try and do better. No promises. It will be what will be.
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:
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!
I continue to cut triangles for the Fabric of the Year 2011 quilt. I have many fabrics that need to be pressed, so it is a continuing process. My sewing machine is back, temporarily, so my pressing has slowed down a bit.
I am making progress on the pressing and cutting and you can see the quilt that is next in line from the fabrics I have cut. The design wall is getting to be too small these days iwth so many large blocks taking up space.
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
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.
I was looking through my Flickr Feed when I came across this quilt of Lorajean’s. Remember my Flickr trick from ResearchBuzz? My eyes nearly popped out of my head for a couple of reasons.
this is one of the layouts I am thinking about for my FOTY 2011 quilt with the triangles. While she is making it look more scrappy than I would, she has the idea.
this is a fresh and fun piece
the red really moves your eye around the quilt
I was thinking this morning that, perhaps I would lay the quilt out in a similar way to Lorajean’s, but focus each row on a different part of the color wheel and then within the row, I would colorwash the colors. I want to use Kona white or Kona Snow in this piece to give the fabrics some space. I’ll have to look at that and see if it works. Seeing Lorajean’s piece above makes me think it might. I know I have many more pieces to include than she has included in her quilt.
I also thought of making a two sided row with a thin strip in between so that some of the triangles are pointing and some are pointing down like Lorajean has done.
You can see Lorajean’s blog and this particular post about this top. The site has a very nice tone and some great posts. Aside from the pennant quilt posts, I really liked a post in which Lorajean talks about making a Harry Potter themed doll for her daughter. She does a lot of different crafts and the photos on her blog are well presented. Take a look at her site, leave her a comment and let her know you saw her top featured here at Artquiltmaker!
I have been making a big effort to press the fabric that I have washed recently. First it is really uncomfortable to sit and sew with a big pile of fabric poking me in the back. Also, I felt so guilty last time TFQ was down as she spent hours on her feet pressing my fabric. Of course, I greatly appreciate it, but I’d like to avoid the guilt this time.
I have been trying to press fabrics, in general, in groups based on how I am thinking of using them. I may not end up using these all together, but that is in my mind now. Most of these fabrics are from a Piece O’Cake group called Daisies and Dots. I am not liking it as much as I thought I would. I do like the dots, of course, but some of the designs make me realize I have to be more discriminating when I pick fabric. I am looking for a project for this group at the moment.
Yes, Fabric of the Year 2010 is finished. I took it to the photographer today so that it can be professionally photographed before it goes to the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles Show. This is not a great picture, because the quilt is too large for my quilt holder (DH) to hold it out straight. I will replace it when the professional photos come back.
I liked the way this group of colors looked together. Even though I didn’t have enough to really make a large picture, I thought this was worth showing. It makes me think about how I want to arrange the triangles.
Here are so more triangles for FOTY 2011. I am not pressing and cutting them as fast since I am working on other projects, but I am working on them incrementally.
Here is the first group of triangles that will end up as Fabric of the Year 2011. I am doing something this year in that I am including many fabrics that I am using this year, but aren’t new. The large triangles are the new fabrics for this year and the small triangles are the fabrics that were already in my fabric closet, but were used in a quilt.
I have already realized that I am not going to be able to cut ALL fabrics that I use. I just am not organized enough. I haven’t developed the habit, but I am getting better.
I have the idea in my mind that I will make this more of a scrap quilt rather than arranging the fabrics carefully in a colorwash kind of order. I may not, though.
The other idea I have is to arrange it like Fons & Porter did in their Kalamkari Strippy.
We’ll see how I feel at the end of the year.
As I mentioned in the Zig Zaggy post, I am working on finishing tasks for a number of quilts. One of the tasks I finished was the back of the FOTY 2010.
The Zig Zaggy quilt back was miserable to make because I used too many small pieces. I put it aside 4 or 6 months ago and I hadn’t finished it when I started the FOTY 2010 back.
I decided that I would try and use similar colors instead of using all variety of colors. Is this a new way of making backs? I don’t know, but found it a lot easier to use big pieces instead of a bunch of fat quarters. The process went faster and wasn’t so frustrating. It also didn’t take up an entire weekend to make one back. I think that using a similar color will be better for the quilting. I think it will help the quilting stitches blend in.
Building the Back
I built the back on the design wall, which I found to be a lot easier than trying to lay it out on the floor. I really like having a second design wall, as I think I said.
I had the Metro Coffee fabric I had saved to use. The Metro Coffee fabric was printed in such a way that made it too much of a pain to use for another bag. I found another large of piece of fabric in a similar color.
In addition, I used number of the fabrics from this year, but I also used a fabric or two from one of my fabric bins.
Somehow, I found using similar colors was a lot easier to make than using many different colors. I think it took out one decision from the process of making the back.
FOTY 2010 Back Finished
I don’t know what has gotten into me with this finishing jag. I think some factors were: not having enough time to sew for a week or so which made just want to sew as quickly as possible. Bringing a quilt to the quilter and knowing she could do a just a little more for me made me get on with the bindings so I would be farther ahead when I got the quilts back. I also think that talking with Colleen about three quilts ma and then made me see the possibilities if I did just a bit more work to get more quilts to her. I am behind on FOTY 2010 and finishing the FOTY 2010 top made me want to try and catch up on it.
I knew I would have a good chunk of time on the weekend to sew, so I got a bug in my ear to move through some of the finishing tasks. I also knew that I didn’t want to spend all of my weekend sewing finishing tasks, which doesn’t seem like creative sewing to me. Since I had a bit of time during the week, and small amounts of time are great for making bindings, I decided to make the bindings for the 3 quilts (Frosted Stars, Frosted Stars Leftovers and the Purple Quilt) which are currently being quilted. I also made the binding for FOTY 2010 and will make one for the Zig Zaggy quilt.
It is great that my longarm quilter will machine sew the bindings to the front of the quilt for me. I normally do it myself, but, this week, I decided that having her do it would move the process along a bit quicker.
On my list for this year is finishing one of my UFOs. I need to move through some of these other projects before I can get to that UFO. I have been trying to move projects past the piecing process before I start something new. I am trying to move some of these projects past that point.
