I have been on a finishing jag since my post about projects on my mind. I want things out of the half finished stage. I want to feel ok about starting new projects, not that that is really a problem.
I am not finished with anything completely yet, but I am in the process. Three quilts are at the quilter and in the past few days I have finished two more, which will be dropped off at the quilter on the 25th.
Zig Zaggy Back - Finished
I took the FOTY 2011 off of my portable design wall after finishing the back and, instead of taking the portable design wall down as planned, I put the Zig Zaggy quilt up. I have to say that I really, really like having 2 design walls. I only had two sides of the back to finish to make the back big enough to quilt the quilt. Since I was in finishing mode, I just sewed some extra pieces on to the back. Now I will make the binding and be done with it.
I like the front, and the back started out as a good idea, but I stopped working on it because sewing all of those leftover strips was a big pain. I am not doing that again. I am sure I can find a use for strips. I had a much better time finishing the FOTY 2010 back. I used large pieces and it was a lot easier. That is my new mantra for backs: big pieces of fabric.
Zig Zaggy Back - Finished
Here is a the detail of the top. The top came out smaller than I thought. When I was working on it, it seemed huge. Now it seems tiny. Compared to the FOTY 2010, it is small. I guess it is all about perspective.
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
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 leftFOTY 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
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.
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.
Here are the blocks I made from the strips we exchanged at the Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild Meeting last time. I am not a big fan of the colors I picked. You know I don’t like working with lumpy colors. I think the blocks turned out well. I did my best sewing.
I hung up FOTY 2009 in my hallway yesterday. It can be seen when people walk in the front door. I received a ton of compliments on it, which was very kind of people. I was planning to take it to work, but needed to solve a quick decorating dilema and decided to keep it at home for awhile. I have to think of something new to hang in my office as I am getting tired of seeing Seeing Red when I walk in.
In the meantime, I am still working on FOTY 2010 steadily, though I wasn’t able to do much more than unpick a few yellows this past week.
FOTY 2010: Where I started
Pretty much, this is where I started this week. There were still lots of gaps in the blues, but I had started to piece the smaller pieces into larger. One can ‘chunk‘ this type of quilt in the piecing process, but not as easily, or for as long, as when piecing square or rectangular patches. At some point I had to piece long rows together.
Part of this has to do with the arrangement of this particular quilt. The colorwash type arrangement doesn’t lend itself well to piecing the patches into chunks of four patches, as I was able to do with the Eye Spy quilt.
FOTY 2010: Processing Blues
Aren’t the blues behaving nicely? The placement is not ideal and I would do it differently if I had unlimited tints, hues, values and shades, but my FOTY rule is that I have to use what I have, and so far I am happy.
FOTY 2010: Section Pieced
You can see, above, the whole blue section pieced.
FOTY 2010: Where I am Going
I am heading towards the pink on the bottom. Now that the blues are behaving nicely, the pinks are becoming little brats. It reminds me of the Mandrakes in the book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. That big gap has reappeared in the pink area. Grrrr!
I have been contemplating the yellow and pink sections and doing a bit of playing with their arrangement. I am not terribly fond of a big line of greens or yellows or pinks slashing through the quilt. I prefer more of a blob arrangement (like the pinks are in the above photo – more of an organic shape). I am not sure at this moment how I will have them blend into each other – the blue to pink – if I do the blob arrangement. I don’t have enough yellows, greens and oranges to wash very completely. I think the green to yellow to orange is much easier, but there is a space consideration up towards the top. I’ll have to play around and see what works.
As soon as I arrived home from the retreat, I put up the portable design wall and organized the diamonds. They were pinned on the design wall, so I didn’t have to do much for the part that was already sewn. All the unsewn diamonds were just in the bag of pieces.
Progress 1
My next task was to put all of the reds and pinks back on the design wall. Above, I have put all the diamonds I could fit back up on the design wall.
Progress 2
I was really trying to fix that bottom right hand corner, which meant working on the blues.
Progress 3
The blues are getting better. I am making progress.
Progress 4
But not all of the blues are cooperating.
Progress 5
I felt like I needed to take a lot of pictures, so when I have succeeded in a section I have a record. I am nervous that I will need to recreate it if the diamonds get rearranged. I live with creative people and sometimes they think they are helping by rearranging things.
Progress 6
More with the blues.
Progress 7
Minor changes, but the piece is looking better.
Progress 8
Trying to make the leap from blue to green to yellow is proving to be a challenge. I don’t think there is such a thing as a dark yellow and that one green (smack in the middle of the photo above) is really sticking out and doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.
I received these 9 blocks from my SIL on Thursday. I was so excited. We are now at 41 blocks! I didn’t think we would make 30, but people have been so generous. It warms my heart. Now my goal is 60 blocks: 20 for each of the 3 quilts.
As reminder, one family we know from school and my husband’s cousin were affected by the September 2010 San Bruno fire. We are making 3 quilts: one for our cousin and his wife, one for my son’s friend and one for the parents of my son’s friend.
Want to help? I am thrilled at how many people are making a block or two. Do you want to contribute some blocks?
All star blocks are welcome!
Block background: dark blue
Block design: Yellow star (any pattern, technique, eg. embroidery, painting, silkscreen, etc)
Block size: 8″ finished or smaller (we will work with any size)
Remember to sign your block!
Deadline: TBA, probably around the end of March. We can’t do it without you!
Contact us through our blogs for mailing instructions. Thanks very much for your generosity!
My retreat project, as you know from all of my preparations, was the Fabric of the Year quilt for 2010. I had high hopes that I would get the whole thing pieced. I enjoy doing the colorwork at the retreat, because I can get a lot of different opinions and I like knowing what other people see. Also, I feel like I have more space to spread out.
FOTY Start
Above is the way I started the FOTY on Friday afternoon.
FOTY 2010 Right Corner detail
Above is the dark corner. Again, I was trying for the a colorwash kind of look across the quilt from right to left.
FOTY 2010 – more of the dark corner
As I laid out the piece, it was interesting to see, visually, the amount of darks and colors.
FOTY 2010 – Dark Corner washing towards Red
This was the first layout. You can see a bit of the red next to the purple. Eventually, I took all the red off of the design board and put blue next to the purple. I did a backwards ROY G BIV working from right to left, though if you look at it when it is finished, the ROY G BIV will read correctly (see below).
FOTY 2010 – Whole Piece in Progress
Above, you can see that I have changed out the red for the blue in the center and put the red on the left edge. Most of the diamonds I have to work with for this project are blue. The design wall was not large enough for me to put up all of the patches, so the reds and pinks only got a representative sampling to begin with. As I worked through Friday afternoon and evening, then Saturday, I came to the realization that this piece was going to take longer than I thought. Putting it together was a lot more of an intellectual exercise than I expected. Part of the reason, I think, was that I wanted to put it together in chunks, which made the spaces created by the sewn seam allowances end up in strange places.
FOTY 2010 – Center detail
Those seam allowance spaces became unexpectedly large as I sewed, which turned out to make keeping track of where pieces went really difficult.
FOTY 2010 – Blue detail
One challenge was the different amounts of colors I had. Another challenge was that the fabrics mostly did not consist of only one color. I tried to block out all but the background or dominant color in my mind in order to place the patches, it wasn’t always possible.
FOTY 2010 – Blues washing to Yellow
Above, which is the upper left hand section, is the least formed part of the quilt, and still, in the photo above, in quite a bit in flux.
FOTY 2010 – Putting the Piece Together
In some ways putting the piece together got easier as I sewed larger chunks together. In other ways, it got to be more of a problem, because the spaces, as I mentioned, between the chunks got larger.
FOTY 2010 – Moving Across from Right to Left
The bottom left corner was really my big problem. I don’t know what happened, but something happened early on and I still haven’t completely resolved the problem in that corner. I am working through it, but as I don’t seem to have a photo of the whole piece after I moved the red, it is proving to be a challenge. I am having to lay out that corner again as I go along. Lots of unsewing is required.
FOTY 2010 – Top Right, Middle
Are you bored yet?
The top right and middle were ok and I was able to sew some large chunks together.
FOTY 2010 – Bottom Right
No matter what I did with that bottom right corner, there still seemed to be large missing chunks of patchwork. Sigh. At this point, in addition to taking big deep breaths, I realized I wasn’t going to get the piece finished. Not what I wanted to face, but I wanted to do a good job and that was the reality.
It was a bit liberating to admit that, because I felt like I could look at the piece and didn’t have to rush straight to sewing.
FOTY 2010 – Moving to Pink
I was able to put a few pinks up as the seam allowances shrank the whole piece, leaving more space. I had faint hope that some miracle would occur and I would finish the piecing.
FOTY 2010 – Adding the Reds
I was also able to add some of the reds that didn’t fit when I started.
FOTY 2010 – details of placement
The large seam allowances seemed to keep moving as well.
FOTY 2010 – Good Behavior
This was the well behaved part of the quilt right before I took the whole thing down so I could go home.
FOTY 2010 – Orange and Yellow
IYellows and oranges were ignored, for the most part.
FOTY 2010 – Virginia’s Picture
Virginia took this picture while she was visiting. It is really helpful to see what other people see in my pieces.
FOTY 2010 back at home
Julie helped me roll up the piece in the flannel of the portable design wall so I could bring it home and set it up again. My plan is to chip away at the rest of the layout and piecing. Not finishing puts me behind in my mind’s quiltmaking schedule, but I am sure there is a reason that I didn’t finish. I certainly didn’t expect the intellectual piecing challenge of this project. I am sure it is good for me.
I spent some time yesterday working on the test piece. I wanted to get into the groove of sewing diamonds again. The Eye Spy feels like a long time ago. Now I think I have a better idea of the sewing, though matching the points and sides of the diamonds proved challenging. I found a book that had some tips and will take a look at that before I start the piecing.
Diamond Test Piece in Process
The left hand corner section of the above photo is pieced. You can see the piece getting smaller as I piece it. There are two diamonds in the machine, which is why there is a big white space in the photo.
Aside from matching the points, I also had some trouble with the border diamonds and corners. As a result, I think I will start in the center and piece outwards. I’d like to piece the diamonds in chunks and it might work better to start piecing them in groups of four. I’ll try it and see.
Finished Test Piece with Comparison Diamond
I didn’t measure the finished diamonds, but you can see the significant change in size. It will be interesting to see the big piece develop.
Finished Test Piece with Comparison Diamond Overlay
To give you another view, I have overlaid the patch/unfinished diamond on top of the finished piece so you can see the difference.
I have been working on this quilt on and off for a few weeks. I was mostly cutting and piecing the stacks of rectangles, but last weekend I sat myself down and pieced all of the blocks and finished the quilt.
I did something different on this quilt, which was making an assymmetrical border. I made a large stack of rectangles for the bottom and the side of the quilt.
Top part of quilt - in process
The piecing wasn’t difficult, but the cutting and the figuring out of how many fabrics to use was a challenge. I started off with a Birch Bundle from Birch Fabrics/FabricWorm. I ended up adding a few fabrics from my own stash. I had to add still more fabrics from my stash for the back.
This will be a gift, but I don’t want to say for who until the gift is given.
I have to say that I felt the same way I felt when I made Passionate Purple. The purple on the design wall was depressing. I needed to get this quilt done, because it was too dark and was making my workroom depressing. It could be that I seem to do purple quilts in the winter. It could be I just don’t like purple enough to make more purple quilts.
I saw this project on Fons & Porter the other day and had to go and watch it again, so I could get more details. It is show #1607 of the 1600 Series.
They don’t provide measurements on their show, because they want you to buy the magazine. Like the Corner Store project, I thought this would be a good scrap project. Frances, of The Off Kilter Quilt podcast, talked about having too many scraps and composting them in a recent podcast.I think Frances should do mosaic quilting, but I’ll bring that up another day. I already inundate her with all of my advice.
Twirling Triangles Half Block
I don’t want to compost my scraps, but I do want to use them. I though this block would work very well. I have the Pyramind ruler and I thought I could use the Kona Snow as the background and then just cut appropriate sized scraps to the right size and make blocks until I have enough….for something.
This project doesn’t look like it would work well for chunking, but it does look like an interesting project. We’ll see.
Twirling Triangles by Kehoeta
This is one I found on the web by Kehoeta. I like the use of the black triangles. I was thinking of that idea as well. I only saw this one example. It looks like she used a lot of scraps, so I am heartened that my idea isn’t stupid.
The photos are bad, because I paused the TV and snapped photos of what was on the screen.
Recently, I was thinking about scraps. Part of my thought process stemmed from a discussion I had with a New Zealand quilt friend, another part had to do with the completion of the Cheerful Baskets quilt and, finally, looking and thinking about some of TFQ’s quilts and process.
For me, a scrap quilt is a quilt made from many, many different fabrics. The fabrics do not have to all come from my scrap basket. Cheerful Baskets is a scrap quilt, because many fabrics were used. Most of the triangles are different. The triangles, for the most part, did come out of my scrap basket. The baskets did not, but are mostly different. We purchased a small piece of many of the yellows based on the exact shade of the yellow. There are many different prints used as the background.
Cheerful Baskets is a thoughtfully made quilt, not just in the piecing, but also in the color selection and placement. I do not think that any old scrap should be placed next to any other scrap. Scrap quilts, for me, are not a jumbled mess.
I don’t have a large scrap pile, because I either toss the scraps or use them up. I don’t like to waste, though, so periodically my scrap basket overflows.
Four patches
One thing that I do is plan a bit ahead for my projects. I have list of pieces I need to cut for scrap quilts. One shape I am cutting now is 2×2″ squares in turquoise and purple. I am making some four patches from these pieces. I put these through the machine in between other chain piecing, so they act as leaders and enders a la Bonnie Hunt (she mentions this technique in a recent post, but I think she goes into more detail in an older post). This type of in between piecing/leaders and enders also is great to warm up your sewing muscles when you start a sewing session.
Along these lines, I also cut squares of various sizes and keep them in a bag for when I need some squares. This is not a well thought out plan and I should probably cut squares all the same size and put them in bags according to their size. I haven’t gotten that far yet.
The idea is to cut regular sized pieces so that you have a selection to choose from when you need some shapes for a project. You can also cut different shapes such as triangles with an eye towards half square triangles, rectangles, etc. This is also a good task when you don’t know what else to do.
The Fabric of the Year (FOTY) quilts are, technically, scrap quilts. They are also charm quilts, but scrap quilts do not have to be charm quilts if you are working TJW. As you know, for the FOTY quilts, I cut a piece from each fabric I purchase or use throughout the year and then make a quilt top from those pieces in January. This concept can be used in general as I am with an upcoming pink quilt and an upcoming blue quilt. I am cutting 2.5×4.5″ rectangles of all of the pinks I come across, either newly purchased or from my stash. When I have enough I will arrange them on the wall and sew them together. I am doing the same for blues.
I don’t do this, but I think it would be useful to sort my scraps by color. I don’t think I have enough scraps to sort by color. I don’t want to devote fabric space to scraps, so I try and keep the scrap pile manageable.
Corner Store block and patches
I found a new source for scraps when I started the FOTY 2010 project. I use a ruler when I cut the diamonds and end up with two triangles. After seeing the Corner Store project in Pretty Little Mini Quilts, I decided I could do that with the triangles. The block is shown in the middle. The triangles are added to a square of Kona Snow and then trimmed to size. The triangles are all slightly different sizes and I am trying to take advantage of the wonkiness. The nice thing about this project is that the triangles never even go into my scrap basket. They go into a separate pile and are sewn on to the squares.
The Red Journal is also a scrap project. As longtime readers know, I have been sewing together little slivers of red fabric for awhile to make a new piece of fabric. The technique is called Mosaic quilting, a concept developed by Shannon Williams. It has all the qualities that work for me for scrap quilting. The maker sews random pieces of like colors together to make new fabric. I do this with red and want to do it with all of the colors, but haven’t gotten to it yet.
I think there are a lot of ways to think about scraps. Above are a few of the ways I think about and use scraps. Hope it is useful.
I actually finished this last weekend. My mind kept saying ” Get this over with! You have been working on it for sooooooooooo long!” When I stopped to think about it, I realized I had really only worked on it for about two days. The top itself took almost no time. The back took, what seemed like, forever. After adding the borders I had to add more to the back. I think the back has more piecing than the front! The problem was that I didn’t want to wasted the fabric leftovers. If you don’t want to waste the leftovers, then you have to sew. I am pleased with this. I don’t know what I’ll do with it as I don’t really want it. We’ll see who likes it. I had some small hopes that I could get it done for Christmas, but my quilter won’t be back until January 5, so this will be one of the first quilts I finish in 2011, I think. It has good borders for complicated quilting.
I made this top from the leftovers of the Frosted Stars. Looking at it in the picture I like it as is. However, I do think that the border is a bit too thin and will get distorted in the quilting process. As a result, I have been looking at borders.
Frosted Stars Leftovers w/Blue
I have enough of the blue fabric to go around the whole piece (but not to show the whole to you).What do you think?
Frosted Stars Leftovers w/Blue & White
Alternatively, I can go with blue and white. I kind of like the blue and white, but one of the boys pointed out that the white disappears next to the blue. I think the values are similar.
My other idea was to put a bit of a piping border in orange in and then add another red border. I didn’t have time to set that up so you could see what it looked like. Perhaps I will.
This weekend was kind of a sewing bonanza. I think I spent about 10 hours at the machine on Saturday, and another 6 or so on Sunday sewing like a crazed woman. The result is two backs and a top, a journal cover, a repaired bag and parts of the Frosted Stars Leftovers quilt. The Frosted Stars top is above. I changed some of Charlie Scott’s pattern, as I have mentioned.
Frosted Stars Top without Final Border
The quilt top, without the final turquoise border is all on the bias and I just don’t believe in giving a quilt to a quilter with a bias edge border. Yes, I am going to send this out to be quilted. I just want this quilt to stay relatively square and adding another border was required. I don’t know why a pattern designer would finish off a quilt with a bias border. Perhaps it is some complicated part of a learning experience of which I am unaware.
