Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
This group definitely looks Fallish, but BRIGHT Fallish, don’t you think? There are a lot of the fabrics from the Birch Fabric Bundles. I am putting them back into groups as I have one idea for two quilts that will come out of two of the bundles.
And I am still cutting!
My Fabric of the Year 2009 project is finally done. DONE!!!
I was pretty sick of it when I quilted it back in April, so it took me awhile to get the facing on it and then the sleeve. Fortunately, the label is part of the back.
This is not the most spectacular photo, but it is better than nothing and, I hope, you can get the idea. I am thinking of hanging it in my office . I can get a better picture if I do that.
I find it really interesting how the colors fall as I press and cut. I do rearrange the diamonds on my design wall, but I generally just grab the next fabric, press and cut. Sometimes, I decide I don’t want to press one color or pattern just yet. They all have to be pressed, so I don’t do very much selective pressing.
I was amazed at this group, because of all the brown and orange that fell together AND it is the month of Hallowe’en.
I am pressing and cutting patching like a mad thing. I am progressing, but not fast enough. I have to keep at it. The edges are on my mind at the moment. I think I will buy Fast2Cut ruler from C&T and the diamond edge ruler from Creative Grids. I haven’t received any answers to my inquiries about whether they will work with the diamond ruler I already have, but have to get prepared to sew this quilt together in one weekend.
If you thought I was kidding when I said that I had cut a lot of fabric on Monday, you were mistaken. I think that is the way I shed those Crankypants I had been wearing for a week or more.
This group looks a little more light and airy than the last batch. The next group of fabrics I have to press are for the Frosted Stars, so I won’t be cutting diamonds from those until I have used all the fabric I need. I don’t think it will be long. I am almost done cutting fabric for those stars and then I can cut diamonds.
I am getting scared about how big this quilt will be.
Here is another batch of FOTY Diamonds. I diligently pressed and cut for a good portion of the weekend. This isn’t a very lively batch. I am working my way through the stack that TFQ pressed and for some reason this is not a cheerful batch.
I have to admit that cutting the patches makes me think about sewing the project together and that prospect makes me a little bit anxiety ridden. I am thinking about using the P&B Fizz as the anchor colors. I still want to do a colorwash with the diamonds, but thought that if I lined them up in color order across the quilt, I could use them to start laying out the piece.
My other idea was to arrange them like a Lone Star and radiate the other fabric diamonds off of them from the center.
For the moment, however, I need to cut diamonds out of my fabric.
Here are a few more diamonds that I have cut from new fabrics. There are many more coming!
I have been cutting and pressing fabrics like a demon lately and here is another group. I have found that this number of diamonds is the right number to photograph, so I have a few more on the wall that will be in the next photo.
One of the things about this group is that there are a lot of the Fizz by P&B fabrics and I am really loving those fabrics. I would love it if they would come out with another dozen colors in between the colors they already have. There are a lot of colors in the group already so that would mean that their colorists would really have to work over time. I would love it if these became a staple background fabric. Fabrics go so quickly out of fashion that I doubt that will happen. I plan to use these fabrics in another Interlocking Triangle quilt.
An idea that occurred to me with these Fizz fabrics is that I could arrange them in a color wheel and then radiate the other diamonds out from them. I think that would make the piecing a challenge, but all ideas are worth considering. It might be a problem with the colors which I don’t buy very often.
I haven’t decided if I am cutting diamonds from the food fabrics for my mom. I am intermittently, so some show up as diamonds and some don’t.
The other thing I am doing is cutting pieces from a few fabrics I have pulled out of the stash. An example is the red at the tip of the diamond. These fabrics have never had a piece cut from them. My project, my rules.
While TFQ was visiting, we had to attend a family event. She was invited, but declined to attend, so she stayed home and rested. One of the things she did while resting was iron the fabrics that I had washed, but had not yet pressed. TFQ is one of the fastest pressers I have ever seen! She made a neat pile for me and I needed to cut various pieces from them. The pile got moved a couple of times during the week because the ironing board needed to be used for the actual pressing of clothes!
I was feeling a bit better on Sunday, and I didn’t want to have repress any of those fabrics so I went to work and cut various patches I needed from these pieces. The main shape I need is diamonds, as you know, for the FOTY 2010 quilt. I also cut some Tumblers and Eye Spy pieces and a few food fabric pieces for my mom.
This is the biggest group of diamonds I have added to the pile thus far. I have to say that there are distinct advantages to cutting into the fabric shortly after I buy it. I have mentioned that it is helpful to know that I like a fabric so I can go and buy more before the fabric manufacturers stop producing it.
The other advantage I found this time was that I know immediately if I don’t like a fabric. There are several in this group that I really don’t like. I have decided that I don’t like little tiny splotchy dots. It could be that the colors of the fabrics with those types of motifs in this group are not my colors. I might feel differently if they were turquoise and hot pink.
I have also been testing the ‘white water’ by buying more fabrics with white backgrounds. I have also decided that there are some fabrics where the ratio of white is too much. I love coffee fabrics, but the coffee cup fabrics above with the white background are really not my thing. Something about the orange and icky green combined with the white do not make me happy.
I also have to admit that I am a little scared of this year’s FOTY quilt. How am I going to do the edge? I don’t want to cut off diamonds, so I’ll have to cut half diamonds of some border fabric and do a self bordering type border. Will I need to organize that well before the CQFA retreat? I think so! Can I do it? I hope so. Yikes! What was I thinking?
I need to stop with the large quilts. However, I like making large-ish quilts, though. The problem is that I am too short to photograph them. Perhaps I just need to win the lottery and have my own personal photographer at my beck and call?
OK, enough with the fantasy world.
I went to Always Quilting on Friday and quilted FOTY 2009. It has been awhile since I went there to quilt a quilt on their Gammil longarm; July 2009 to be specific. I was pleased that they had tidied up the quilting room. I had enough space to spread out.
General Thoughts
First, I trained for my longarming day. It can be quite hard on my body, because, essentially, stand up for 6-8 hours. I took the day off work on Thursday, so I wouldn’t be exhausted Thursday night and then have to get up and go stand in front of the longarm on Friday.
I also brought a second pair of shoes and switched halfway through. I would love to see them get one of those industrial rubber mats to put in front of the machine. If I see one on Freecycle, perhaps I will get it for them.
So, the biggest problem with my longarming is that I don’t have enough time practice. Time is relative, too, because it involves making a top and a back I want to quilt myself, taking time to spend a whole day quilting the quilt and getting a slot. That being said, I am much more pleased with the stitch length and quality this time around. I felt a lot more comfortable with the stitching than I thought I would. I wasn’t as anxious about ruining my quilt.
I forgot to put a quilting border on the quilt, which sent me into a bit of a panic when I was pinning the quilt on to the machine’s leader, but I couldn’t do anything about it, so I let it go.
I could just quilt a bunch of pieces of fabric and give them away as comfort quilts, but it still costs money to do the quilting. Perhaps I can find a way to get the details stuck in my head without paying to learn. I did sign up for another longarming day at the end of July. I have to confirm it does not conflict with a trip I am planning.
I did the same pattern as I stitched on FOTY 2008 and the Eye Spy. I also practiced during the week before my session. I didn’t do as much practicing as I would have liked, but I think it was enough.
I try to be well mannered, which involves not ignoring people when they talk to me. It was a little bit of a problem on Friday when I was either trying to deal with the machine or concentrating on driving the giant machine. Other customers kept walking in and talking to me about the quilt. It was really nice to be complimented, but I just couldn’t concentrate on them and the work I was doing. The fabulous Roberta, one of my helpers at the shop, was annoyed when I mentioned it, because people are not supposed tojust walk into the longarm quilting room.
Lil Sissy stopped by on her way to the airport. She forgot my coffee, but beggers can’t be choosers. It was great to show off a bit for a non quilter. She, of course, wanted to drive the machine. I couldn’t let her, because she hasn’t taken the class. She did take some in process photos, which was great except for the person in them!
Roberta and Diane were my helpers. It is so great to have them there to assist. After my needle broke and I had three bobbin changes, Roberta knew I was a bit done for and just took over changing the bobbins for me. She talked me through, but was a godo teacher in that she knew when not to push and when to let the reins out a bit.
Yes, I ran out of bobbin with a 2×2 grid of blocks left to do. I quilt really small motifs – at least I did on this one.
I am really pleased with the way it turned out and may quilt It’s a Merry & Bright Wrap myself, too.
Here are some more diamonds for the FOTY 2010.
I have made an effort to cut pieces for the FOTY 2010 project. I really want to avoid the massive cutting and sewing I did in January. I just want to be more balanced about the project this year. We will see if my plans work.
As of this moment, I have pressed a lot of fabric, but there are still a number of pieces to cut.
I haven’t done any sewing. That should come as no surprise since I don’t sew until everything is cut.
Here is your first glimpse of the FOTY 2010 patches. I have pressed a lot of fabric, but haven’t cut it yet. Many of the patches in this photo have been on my design wall for awhile. I have been moving them around so I can see how they look in different arrangements. It is definitely different.
Not different as in “I wish I had chosen something different,” but different in the way I have to think about cutting the patches.
This patch takes a lot of fabric to cut. I like the diamond ruler I bought to help. Once I got the hang of using it, I found it to be quite useful. I am ending up with a lot of triangles and may pick a background and sew them on to squares to make the Corner Store design I discussed in the Pretty Little Mini Quilts review. It would make an interesting sort of scrap quilt. We’ll see.
Starting this cutting process is also making me think about how I will arrange them and set these diamonds. I am thinking of picking something for the border and cutting half diamonds to make a straight edge out of a uniform color. I need to decide if I want to use something I already have or if the “rules” say I have to buy something. Stay tuned.
|
I talked about the selection and the resizing of this block in a post on February 16, 2009.
I mentioned a week or so ago that I had spent some time doing rote sewing. Part of that day of roteness (is that a word?) was making backs.
Above is the back for the Tarts. As I said previously, it went together really quickly. I am showing it again so you can see the contrast. Making the Tarts back made me think that I could get the back for FOTY 2009 done really quickly.
HAHAHAHA!
I gave myself the rule of using only fabrics I bought or received in 2009 for the back. That meant a lot of rummaging through fabric. That meant a lot of FQs and piecing fabrics together to make them fit. When I finally finished at 9pm on Sunday, I felt like I had accomplished something.
It is a strange looking back and I hope all the seams won’t be a problem on the longarm.
One thing I found when I came back from the CQFA Retreat was a bunch of other FOTY 2009 blocks! Nooooo! I can’t believe they weren’t with all the others. I could have added another row of blocks if I had found them BEFORE the retreat. I decided to get over it and put them on the back.
