I have really not turned on my sewing machine in two weeks. A little here and there, but nothing major since Thanksgiving. I am scraping the bottom of the barrel for blog posts as a result. I am planning to ignore the world (possibly in my pajamas) all day today and work on this project.
Stepping Stones
As I mentioned before, I got this pattern from a Pam and Nicki Lintott book. One thing that is very confusing is that they have written the pattern for one line of fabric. I am not using that line, so I had to translate and that proved difficult for me. I don’t like the directions very much. I don’t think they are bad, but they don’t really work for the way I work.
So, earlier this week, I sat down with EQ7 and made a rendition of the quilt. This helped me wrap my head around the project a little more. This exercise coupled with the math that TFQ did for me when she was here made me less frustrated and excited about this project again. I organized a bit last night while the boys were out, so I am ready to sew like crazy.
Some time ago, I checked a Pam and Nicki Lintott book out of the library. One of the patterns intrigued me.
Moda Circa 1934
The other day, I stopped at the Granary in Sunnyvale and saw the Circa 1934 fabrics from Moda. I bought a few of them and a layer cake. Once I got the fabric home, I decided to try the Stepping Stones pattern using the fabric during the Thanksgiving weekend. I can’t even remember the last time I bought fabric, washed it and immediately started using it. I want to get to the point where I do that more often. Sometimes the excitement of the fabric is fresh in my mind when I buy and I would like to capitalize on that excitement in my work.
Fabric selection for quilt
I didn’t buy large pieces of the whole line, so I knew I needed some additional fabrics. Also, I want to take Joanna Figueroa’s advice and work towards using only 80% of a line so that my quilts look different from other quilts that use a whole line.
4 Blocks
I looked at the layer cake to get a few ideas about colors to use. I picked some fabrics out of my fabric closet and set to work. There was a bit of pulling colors out of the pile, but I really wanted to sew and tried not to be too picky.
I am not very experienced at following patterns and I had trouble with this one. I am not used to making a whole bunch of one element at a time, then making a whole bunch of other elements and finally sewing them together. I have to admit that once your elements are made the sewing goes quickly, but it was a lot of time on my feet.
Also, I didn’t like the pattern, because it didn’t clearly tell me how many of each triangle square and four patch I needed, nor did it tell me what size they should be (finished or unfinished). I tried to guess and hope I got it right.
Finally, the pattern is not written in such a way where it is easy to switch out colors. I would have preferred if they used terms like “light,” “dark” or “medium.” Even if they used “large floral” or “fabric with small repeat”, it would have been a bit easier to NOT use the colors and fabric line the authors used.
1 block
The blocks appear large and are coming out fine. I am liking how it looks, though I see now where I could have used more contrast.
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.
As you may have inferred, I got two quilts back from the stand-in longarm quilter last week, so I had two quilts to trim and bind. I don’t enjoy these steps in the process, probably because I don’t have a good set up for dealing with them. Colleen usually machine applies the binding and trims the quilts for me, but I didn’t feel like asking the new person since I don’t know her that well.
Friday, before the weekend, when I was at work, I made a list of tasks I wanted to accomplish during the weekend and trimming and binding these two quilts were among them. All of the tasks I wanted to accomplish were what I call ‘finishing tasks’ – making backs and bindings, trimming, applying bindings. Unsatisfying tasks, IMO. Of course, I like the finished products and I don’t mind hand stitching the binding, but getting to that stage is an uphill battle for me.
Hexagons, early October 2011
I buckled down and did the tasks and in between I added hexagons to the Sugar Flour Hexagon quilt top. I am not sure I will make a thousand hexagon quilts, but I making this one is really fun. The pieces are large enough so that it is not misery to machine sew the hexagons together.
I also enjoy the fabrics and, thus, the color placement. I thought of adding the hexagons in rows, but adding rows wouldn’t allow me to control the placement of the color in the same way.
I had fun with the blob, but want to make it more square, in anticipation of it actually being used for a quilt like purpose. I don’t know how large I will make it – I have plenty of fabric so that isn’t an issue – but I think, perhaps making the width in the neighborhood of how large I want the quilt to be would be a good idea.
Adding the hexagons was a really nice treat in between making the back, and binding and trimming Pavers and Stars for San Bruno #2.
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.
Some of the blogs do a feature every week called WIP Wednesday where they show a work in progress. I don’t want to do that every week, but somehow this week it seems appropriate.
Original Bullseye
This is the project that started the whole Bullseye project. This has been on my mind lately, for some reason that I don’t know. I always planned to do a border with curves in it, so it would look like a curve was going all the way around the quilt. I found directions. I have a test piece and I just decided that was not the way to go.
This quilt doesn’t lend itself to the self bordering technique. I have a lot of leftover circles that I could use in some way, but I don’t know what way. Aside from slapping on some borders and calling it good, I don’t have any ideas. Do YOU have any ideas? Even a little spark would be helpful. Let me know.
Pavers is ready to quilt. I am not sure the name suits, but that is what it is. It will be a gift.
Pavers - top
This pattern is based on a photo I saw on Flickr from Green Couch Designs and related to the Purple quilt I finished a few weeks ago. Both on the Purple Quilt and this quilt I wanted to work with asymmetrical borders. I wasn’t happy with the border on the purple quilt, so I tried again on this one. I think I want to work with the border a little bit more and will make one more quilt in this pattern.
This is an easy quilt to make and I basically finished all of the blocks by using them as leaders and enders.
The photo above has that lovely pink post-it on the top as a direction to the quilter. It just says what I have designated as the top. I do that for the back, too.
Pavers - no borders
Above is a picture of it laying on my ‘design floor’ before I put the borders on. I was amazed at how much better the piece looked sewn together. The duplicate fabrics near each other didn’t seem to matter and the whole thing just came together.
This is reposted from Pam (Hip to Be A Square)’s Flickrstream with only slight revisions/additions:
Srsly guys. They are EVERYWHERE.
Sandy at Quilting for the Rest of Us, Jaye from Art Quilt Maker, and I are loosely doing a hexagon-along quilting type thing this this summer. Sandy and I will be sharing our process and pitfalls on our podcasts, while Jaye will share on her blog.
You can find Sandy all over the web. Click on the link and it will take you to her podcast, Flickrstream- just about everywhere.
You can find Jaye at https://artquiltmaker.com/blog/ (where you are now!) (for her blog) or on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/artquiltmaker
You can find me at www.hiptobeasquarepodcast.com for my blog & podcast.
Feel free to grab this button if you want to show some solidarity. The current size is 277×277 pixels, but it can go down to 180×180 without distortion.
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.
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.
This is what I was working with last weekend. Remember when the blues were a problem? Well, at the point I took this photo, the yellows and greens were giving me fits and I could tell the pinks were next.
FOTY 2010 - 2/13/2011 det.
It is very difficult to figure out where the pieces are going to end up when the piece is done. At some point last week, I dug out my Ruby Beholder (which required quite a bit of searching and some tidying) and tried it to see if it works. My values are all the same – or similar, so it didn’t help much. I am glad I know where it is, though.
FOTY 2010 - 2/13/2011 det. 2
At this point, I realized that I had too many diamonds and might need to add another row. This was weird, because of all the math we did to get the layout correct. I think EQ should add a function where you tell it how many patches you have and it tells you options for different layouts.
FOTY 2010 - 2/20/2011
After a really busy week last week and a day of quilting on the Tarts (Friday), I got back to FOTY 2010. I’d like to get this to the quilter and move on.
The reds and oranges are getting in order in the photo above, but the pinks and reds on the bottom are starting to really be a problem.
FOTY 2010 - 2/20/2011 - det. pinks
The above is me working on the pinks and whites. Lots of rearranging was happening as I was trying to figure out what patch went where. I think, after this project, I will have diamonds out of my system. Perhaps not, but I am thinking yes.
FOTY 2010 - 2/20/2011 - det. pinks, reds
See that big space towards the top middle? I didn’t know, at the point I took this picture, whether that was a space from seam allowances shrinking or was a space because I had arranged fabrics wrong.
FOTY 2010 - 2/21/2011 - Where I am now
When I left the piece yesterday to go do laundry, make dinner and all that other stuff, the above photo shows the state of the piece. That space I described above shifted to the middle of the left side. Sigh. That one means I really don’t know if I am missing pieces. If I need to cut more, I am resolved to do so. The other space resolved itself, so I have hope.
Almost all the pieces are sewn to some other piece, which is good. I did add an additional row, so there could very well be some extra space I need to fill in.
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 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.
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.
