Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
Tag: Projects
Use this tag for posts that covers a variety of types of projects in one post such as the 26 Projects posts. If the post is about a bag, use Project-Bag. If the post is about a quilt, use Project-Quilt
This an embroidery that my grandmother made for my wedding and just gave to me.
Frankly, I was stunned because
1. I didn’t know she did cross stitch. Crocheting yes. Cross stitch huh?
2. I have been married for 24 years. Where has this piece been all this time?
3. Where did she find it?
4. How did she find it?
5. How did she remember she had it? (I suspect she came across it when rummaging through something)
Don’t get me wrong, I like it and will probably get it framed. It just seems very strange to me.
I am tempted to tag these posts ‘Old Junk.’ I haven’t done it yet, but I am thinking about it.
Starry Starry Night
I must be on some kind of roll with my old quilts. This is Starry, Starry Night. Again, it is a 1990s project and I believe it was a round robin by mail project. Who can remember?
Aside from my Mariner’s Compass center, I really like the border that looks like it is half in the black and half in the grey.
I am almost sure this is one of the last, if not the last group project that I worked on.
I thought of it after I decided to play along with the BAMQG Round Robin.
What I wrote on my website “This border exchange quilt is owned and was completed by Jaye A. H. Lapachet. The quilt was started in 1994 through the Q-XCHG Listserv. It was completed in 1999. Participants in the exchange were: Debbie Atkins, Leslie Burnette, Rosalie Freudenberger, Jaye Lapachet, Dianne Morelock, and Amy Lobsiger. Machine quilted by Laura Lee Fritz.”
Pink Spider Looking at the Stars is the first quilt I ever finished.* Note the word “finished.” I started my Sampler quilt and got to the quilting point and then stopped. Hand quilting was the order of the day and hand quilting takes a long time. I was a UFO girl from day one.
Pink Spider Looking at the Stars was the result of a challenge in the small quilt group I belonged to at the time. We were given pieces of all (or most, maybe) of the fabrics and had to make something. These quilts were displayed at an EBHQ show in the early 1990s, or, perhaps 1989. Again, I don’t remember.
Pink Spider Looking at the Stars – detail
I don’t have any good photos of the quilt, but the quilt is around here somewhere, so I could take some if I were motivated to do so.
One thing you might notice is that the design is insane. I made this piece with templates. I didn’t have a rotary kit at the time, though I think I may have bought one shortly thereafter.
You might also notice all of those mitered corners on the binding. The binding was a pain, I have to admit. Most of the time now I keep my quilts square so as to avoid mitered corners. I subscribe to the notion that if you don’t know you can’t do something, then you can do it. Nota bene: hanging out in space without a space suit is the exception.
From an early quilt age, I could do Y-seams, which is why I know you can do them. Although these are 6 rather than 8-pointed stars, there are a lot of Y-seams. I had done an 8-pointed star in my sampler class and figured 6 would be similar or easier.
Seeing this quilt might give you a clue as to why my hackles raise a bit when I see Half Square Triangles classified as “intermediate”. HA!
*Vintage is a little bit of an exaggeration, but I am using it to denote old stuff in this series of posts
Sometime ago I wrote a generic post about organization in my workroom. My workroom is somewhat organized considering it isn’t large enough and I don’t have enough bookcases. 90% of the time I can find what I need and I am less and less surprised by things I come upon serendipitously.
One of the major things I do is, what I call, hunting and gathering. I prefer to make quilts, usually, that use a lot of fabrics. I think many different aquas will be more interesting than just one. This means that many projects, I need to cut a lot of patches from a wide variety of fabrics. It doesn’t work for me to decide to start such a project, open up a fabric bin and start cutting. I can’t stand that long, I get bored and the whole situation results in me hating the project or just stopping about halfway through. Also, if I use that strategy, I get tend to have too many of one color and not enough of others. None of this is good for my stress level and definitely not they way I want my quiltmaking to be.
Also, I don’t know of a way to really randomize this type of fabric selection. Cutting from fabrics I buy new or pull out to use seems like as good a way as any. Also, as an added bonus, I use fabrics that I like right now immediately.
Another problem I had was that I would take fabrics out of bins and NOTHING would be cut from them. Not one square or anything. Shameful! This problem was alleviated by the Fabric of the Year project, which TFQ thought up and I ran with. You can read about the beginnings of that project for me in a post from 2008. Doing this kind of started the solution to my Hunting and Gathering.
As I got use to cutting one shape, the Fabric of the Year shape, out of new fabrics, it became easier to cut more than one shape. I thought it was a good idea and it became easier to use this new system to make progress on projects I was not yet ready to start sewing. Pretty soon I was up to the number of pieces I am cutting now. The other thing is that the fabrics became less precious. I started not to save them for a better project. I also knew, which I have talked about in terms of the FOTY projects, that I knew which fabrics were going to work for other projects so I could go and buy more before it was 3 years later and too late to go and buy more.
Cutting Chart
In addition to the above I also cut 2.5″x4.5″ pink rectangles, 2″ red squares and 2″ aqua or turquoise squares.
The idea is that after I identify a project I want to make that requires a ton of cutting, I figure out what kind of cutting I need to do (coordinated fabrics or scrappy fabrics as well as size). Either can work with my system. Then I put the shape and color on my list. I keep the list near my cutting table so when I have a new piece of fabric (after washing and ironing) I know exactly what to cut. By now I have a sense of how much fabric these shapes will need (now approximately 5″x18″) and I know by the size of the hole in the fabric whether I am finished.
The bonus result of this cutting is that fabrics became less precious to me. There are many fewer fabrics that are free from any kind of cutting. I make progress on projects that require a lot of cutting and I get to see new fabrics appear in projects I was making immediately.
One of the great things about cutting pieces from new fabrics is that it is a great warm-up. Sometimes when I need to get started, pressing fabric and cutting new pieces from new fabrics is a good way to get started. If I have 10 minutes, I can cut, feel like I made progress and got a little stress relief in.
The fabric in these quilts cemented my friendship with TFQ, though we were well on our way already. 😉
The idea of the series is to play with ratios of color in such a way that subtle shifts in color or fabric changes the feeling of a quilt, though the designs are essentially the same for all the quilts in the series. These quilts started my experimentation with color, which I continue working at today. These quilts are the precursors, in a way to the Fabric of the Year quilts.
These quilts made me into an art quilt maker.
I bought the first batch of fabrics at a shop in Seattle called In the Beginning, which has since closed. At the time, I was in Seattle for a conference. I had been there briefly the month before on vacation, but didn’t get to do much quilty stuff. The day I purchased the fabric was a gorgeous, bright, sunny day and the sun was spilling into the shop lighting up these fabrics, which were arranged in rainbow order. I wanted them all. I was slightly horrified, but also excited at this visceral reaction, the strong desire to possess all of these fabrics. I think I even saw the series in my mind almost fully formed as I looked at the fabrics.
Pointillist Palette #2: Ice
I bought some of each. I cut thousands of squares (WAY before Accuquilt cutting systems) and began sewing them into blocks. Though, I didn’t know it at the time, I did some chunking on these pieces.
I also paid attention to the use of color, which I had never done before. ‘Sun’ is much warmer feeling than ‘Ice’. I think ‘Ice’ is whiter and has a feeling of ice crystals or snow …. or something.
I had sense enough to concentrate the larger patches on the outside of the quilts to give a sense of borders. Definitely a happy accident, though I could have planned it. I just don’t remember.
The fabrics, by Debra Lunn and Michael Mrowka, have multiple colors on each piece of yardage – the colors gradate from dark to light or medium to dark or medium to light. There are many more tones and values that can be used than is obvious when you see some of the fabric. I didn’t realize this until I had the fabric out of the store.
Pointillist Palette #3: Flower
In Pointillist Palette #3: Flower, I started to introduce other fabrics. The idea was that the last quilt (#6) would have barely any PP fabric in it.
The fabric I added was a group of larger scale reproduction flower fabrics. I think they were reproduced from a museum collection. I cut them up, sometimes fussy cutting, and included them with my Pointillist Palette fabrics.
I also started collecting other fabrics I thought I would use as the series went on.
Pointillist Palette #4: Night (WIP)
Pointillist Palette #4: Night is still in progress and has been for a long time. I took that back of #1 apart to get the black aboriginal looking fabric out of it, so I could use it for the top of #4. People, who shall remain nameless, thought I had lost my mind. I needed a certain fabric and when I made the back of #1, I didn’t know I would need the fabric for #4. I had to make the right decision for the design of the quilt.
I pieced a few squares together recently and feel much more interested in working on this piece. I wonder if I can continue what I started so long ago?
I don’t really remember my ideas for #5 or #6. I may have notes and drawings somewhere. If not, perhaps this 6 piece series will turn into a 4 piece series?
All of the pieces are machine pieced, machine quilted (I did it myself!) and made using commercial fabrics.
For some reason I felt the need to count up the projects I have in process. In process, to me, means that some sewing has taken place
26.
Yes, I have 26 projects in process. Too many. I was kind of appalled, actually, but when I thought about it, I realized that many of them are more than 3 years old. Some are half class projects. I used to stop, put a project away and go on to something new. I thought that was what quiltmakers did.
At some point I decided that I did not want to do that anymore. I have changed my process so that I gear up, gather, test and then focus like crazy on one project and finish it. I might be working on more than one project at a time, because they are in different stages, but at some point in the process each of them gets my full attention and gets finished. Once I focus on a project, I can finish pretty quickly.
I don’t enjoy making the back or the binding, but I get it done and THEN, only then, move on to the next project. Projects frustrating me now stay on the design wall so I don’t forget about them.
This post is not about finishing for finishings sake. I need brain space. I need closure on some of these projects. I need to work on them, learn what I need to learn, finish, or abandon them. They are cluttering up my brain and my fabric closet. They don’t allow room for me to start new things. And I have plenty of new things I want to start, fabric to buy, blocks to test.
Now I am on a mission to work through some of these projects. Stay tuned.
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 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.
I decided to rename this post. I just don’t like the term UFO. It is too negative. My pieces may be unfinished, but they are all in progress.
Below is the 2010 inventory of my current works in progress. Let’s see if I made any progress since the previous roundup post of December 31, 2009 and where I am in the process as well as what I need to do. First, I want to tout my accomplishments. 😉
2010 started off very well in the quiltmaking and reading departments.
I read 49 books this year. Of the 49, 11 of them were quilt, bag or creativity related.
Completed Pieces in 2010
One of the great things about completing quilts and projects is that they go off the ‘not done’ list and on to the completed list. Two birds with one stone and all of that. 😉
Completed means to me that they are now usable and can in no way be considered to have anything left to stitch. I donated House & Garden , which was completed on 5/17/2009 to XXX organization. A former work colleague asked me to do so and I thought what the heck?
Mostly Done, Need Finishing
I added this new category to break up the UFO list and to make myself feel like I had accomplished something, which was quite overwhelming. Also, these are all mostly done, IMO.
Frosted Stars: at the quilter; needs quilting, binding and sleeve
Kissy Fish: top finished, though I may want to add some more machine quilting to it, needs binding and sleeve or binding and framing.
The Tarts Come to Tea: quilting in process. Needs embroidery and embellishment, binding and sleeve.
True UFOs
Here is my list of UFOs. As mentioned last year, this list in no way implies that I will discontinue starting new projects or finish any of these.
Original Bullseye: Still have those directions for doing the border the way I want it (the directions I found late last year). Took a Dale Fleming class and learned a technique which may help me with the border. No progress in 2009.
Flowering Snowballs/Cross Block quilt: I did not work on this quilt at all year and have finished the center blocks. The side and corner blocks are drawn out on EQ6. I worried on and off about how to keep the blocks from fraying after I square them up. Got some good ideas from fabulous readers after my December 20, 2008 post! No progress in 2010.
Garden from Pamela Allen class: needs hand embroidery and embellishment. Worked on it in the 2009 Pamela Allen class and it is much improved. Needs quilting, embellishment and binding.
Laura Wasilowski Flower Garden: started in the Laura Wasilowski class CQFA held in July 2007: needs machine quilting, hand embroidery and embellishment. No progress in 2008.
He Tried to Make it Up to Her: needs back and to be quilted. This is probably a quilt I will want to quilt myself. TFQ has dug out a number of quilts, but I don’t know if this was one of them. No progress in 2008.
Her Eyes were Bigger than Her Stomach: needs a back and to be quilted. Very active quilt; probably not the best design, but a mile marker in the quiltmaking journey and an excellent learning experience. No progress in 2008
Pineapple: All blocks are done. Need to put them together. Still facing the reality that some blocks are much too large and trying to figure out how to move forward. I measured all the blocks and found they were all different sizes. I think that I will cut them down to all the same size and let them be wonky.
Pointillist Palette 4: Night: This is the fourth (of six) in a series of Pointillist Palette fabric by Debra Lunn and Michael Mrowka that was popular a number of years ago. No progress in 2008
QA Challenge Quilt: need to fuse the parts and rubber stamp the words. No progress in 2008
Quilt Sorbet: on hold.
See: started in a David Walker class. Needs fusing, satin stitching around fused pieces and quilting. No progress in 2009, but I did think about it alot.
Self Portrait from Pamela Allen class: needs more piecing, hand embroidery and embellishment. No progress in 2009
Solid Star Friendship Quilt: need more friends so they can make stars for me in solids with black. Do you want to exchange a star block with me? No progress in 2009
Spiderweb: foundation pieced project, still piecing. Need to create the templates for the border blocks. Aside from collecting more strips, no progress in 2008
The Tarts Come to Tea: Top and back finished in 2010. Needs quilting. embroidery and embellishment, binding and sleeve.
Under the Sea: brown piece from April 2009 Pamela Allen class with CQFA. Needs machine quilting, hand embellishment and finishing.
Women’s Work 2: last year I said that this quilt “needs focus.” Was inspired and have the design. No progress in 2009, except for finding my drawing and making a file.
Zig Zaggy quilt: started in 2010. Finished piecing top. Working on piecing the back.
On My Mind
Here are the quilts and projects I am thinking about. Some are on the list from last year. In some cases I have purchased fabric, but no sewing has been done, so they are not yet considered UFOs.
Paper pieced Nativity scene: I downloaded this pattern when it was free years ago and have never gotten up the energy to be as organized as I need to be to make this, but I still want to make it. You can find the pattern, for purchase, at Paper Panache.com
Interlocking triangles #4: love the technique and have at least one, if not two, idea[s] for more quilts using this technique.
Dot quilt with inset circles a la Ruth McDowell: more uses for dots and a good exercise in piecing. The Twinkle quilt shown in the January 2009 issue of Quilting Arts magazine is similar and renewed my interest in this design. Took a Dale Fleming class in April of 2010 and learned another way to make circles.
Feathered Star dot quilt from Summer 2007 issue of Quilts & More: more use for dots. Thought I would get to this after making the Pineapple, but the Pineapple is still not complete, so this this dot quilt has not been started.
Some kind of pink quilt with all the pink fabric I have still been buying. I have begun cutting 2.5″x4.5″ rectangles of pink fabrics that cross my cutting table.
Colorblocks 3 with silks: I want to use silk fabric with a luscious sheen instead of the regular cottons. Background will be black cotton sateen again. What’s been holding me up? Backing all the silk. I have the backing and just can’t bring myself to do it. Barsha told me to skip the backing and just make the quilt without it. Can’t decide if the project has new life or not. Definitely not on the top of the list.
Garden Quilt: I have been collecting photos and patterns of interesting flowers for years and have always wanted to make some kind of garden or flower quilt. It will probably be something like The Tarts Come to Tea. Need to finish the Tarts first before starting the same kind of project. Now I can use the Soft Fuse for this quilt.
Jack’s Chain: I saw a quilt of this pattern years and years ago and have always wanted to make one. Probably at least a partial hand piecing project after the Flowering Snowball (Cross Blocks quilt). I am more confident seeing how Liz Porter and Marianne Fons handled equilateral triangles. I also have that new ruler to use. I could, additionally, decide on a size and start piecing nine patches.
P&B Pop Parade quilt a la Serendipity Puzzle
Bathroom ‘quilt’ out of heavy clear plastic. I want to make pockets that I can put interesting things in that won’t get waterlogged. I also think the stitching would be an interesting addition to the piece. I also saw a tallish tote bag with many pockets that is similar to what I have been thinking for this quilt, so perhaps I will do another tote instead.
Abandoned Projects
This is also a new category. I decided to be upfront about the projects I got rid of.
Nothing abandoned in 2010!
Other
I am still trying to enjoy the process of quiltmaking more than the finished product. I think there is more work to do, but I also feel like I have succeeded so far.
I have added other projects to the On My Mind section because tote bags have been a big part of my life since 2008 and I expect that to continue in 2011, as it did in 2010.
These diamonds could also be called Late Early December Diamonds. You pick and I’ll go along with it. I am nearing the end of my pressing and cutting. I don’t think I have anymore fabric enroute and I plan on keeping it that way. Famous last words, right?
That stripe at the top is my committment to making another Interlocking Triangles quilt. I have the Mixmasters Fizz and the P&B Fizz which are destined for that type of quilt as well. I worked on a design, but am thinking I may just use the same design I used for Spiky Stars. It is a good design and will look different with different fabrics. We’ll see.
Shall I make a New Year’s Resolution to that effect? I never make New Year’s Resolutions, so that would be new. We’ll see.
I am working on a, as yet unnamed, purple project using the fabrics on the bottom of the photo to the left. Those fabrics are from a Birch Bundle I bought at the end of the summer. The project is based on a picture I saw on Flickr and posted here in September.
I was cutting the rectangular patches for the piece in a random manner as I pressed fabrics, but wasn’t really ready to get busy until this week. I ordered some possible fabrics and got busy sewing yesterday.
I thought the Crocus (on the right, above) would be perfect. I picked it out using a color card that TFQ brought with her when we went to PIQF. I finally got around to ordering it. When it arrived, I looked at it in various lights around my house. Then I laid it out with the other two solids: Violet (left) and Deep Violet (middle). the two additional purples are from Free Spirit.
The Crocus is too grey/dusky for my project. That was clear from looking at it. That left me to decide from the two other choices. I think this experience is a good reminder for me to remember that a piece of fabric that looks good in a small piece may not be as perfect when I see it in a larger piece.
Violet as Piecing Possibility
In order to make the choice, I laid out some of the pieced rectangles on the Violet. The photo above looks a lot more red than the real thing. Still, I should consider that the red may show up more in certain lights. The quilt will be going to live in a much different lighting situation.
Deep Violet as Piecing Possibility
I am liking the Deep Violet. There is a lot more pink in the above piecing that I intend in the overall quilt. I need to stop the random cutting and be more organized about my cutting now that I am serious about piecing this.
I finally decided that I would commit to posting block designs and instructions so we could do a Block-a-Long. What is a Block-a-Long? It is a project to make blocks. Hopefully, they will turn into a quilt, but that is a project for another day.
The blocks pictured are some of the blocks that we will be doing. Each block is 6″ finished. I have designed 40 blocks so far. All of them, so far, are straight line sewing – squares and rectangles. There won’t be any curves in the project, but there may be some triangles.
I don’t plan to give you step by step instructions on how to put a block together, though in the blog post, I may give you some tips and tricks to help you along.
The directions will be from EQ7 and will include a picture of the block, what pieces to cut to make the block and that’s it. Of course, if you have questions, you can leave them in the comment field.
First task: go and choose your fabric. Choose some colors that you enjoy. Select a fat quarter pack you have been saving. Choose a theme such as dots or stripes. Go buy yourself some new fabric (FabricWorm has some great fat quarter and half yard packs that they have put together). Use some color combinations that you have always wanted to try.
I’ll wait about a week for you to gather your fabrics.
I selected my fabric a couple of months ago when TFQ was visiting. I am hoping to use each fabric 3 times in the quilt.
Sorbet Fabric Palette
Yes, there are a lot of fabrics in my group. I want my quilt to be really scrappy. You don’t need to have this many. You can always add more later. This is a great project for scraps, so you could just pull fabrics out of your scrap bin. A two color quilt will work well, too, I think, though you may want to use different fabrics of the same colors
I know you have seen the blocks below before. These are some of the first blocks you will be doing. The point is not to make you miserable by posting difficult blocks to struggle through, but to have a little fun and, perhaps, work with color. Have fun!
