Tag: Works in Progress

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Although rain is forecast for later, the sky is blue and it is very warm outside. Despite all the weird weather we have been having, today things seem back to normal as we always have a week or so of warm weather in the middle of February. I can remember sitting out on our fire escapes as an undergraduate, sunbathing in mid-February with the other girls with whom I lived.

As a result of my renewed good spirits I have finished the back of Serendipity Puzzle. As seems to be my way lately, the thing has turned out to be a monster. Not as monstrous as Thoughts on Dots or the Nosegay, but larger than my design wall, which, in my book, moves it into the monstrous category. It makes it hard to take photos of these quilts!

Sometime in the last week or, perhaps, last weekend I put rickrack on the border of the quilt.


As I mentioned, I thought the quilt needed something and this is what I came up with. Deirdre actually suggested rickrack “or something.” I had some rickrack, but not enough to go around all the way. I used two different colors rather than buying more. I think it looks fine. The only irritation is that I pulled the rickrack a little too tightly as I sewed it on, so the quilt puckers a bit on the border. I thought about unstitching and then decided against it. If the quilter can’t make it ok, then I will unsew it and do it over. Live and learn.

Still I am pleased. I feel like I have made progress.

Making backs is such a bear! I know now why people buy 108″ backing fabrics. As you know, I have two more to go and was going to have a marathon, but I think I will make a few blocks, work on the Pineapples, perhaps work on the QA challenge and rest a bit. I am looking forward to making the back for the Nosegay despite the fact that it, too, is a giant, as I want to get all of those 1930s fabrics into a project, so I can use the bin for dots (or maybe stripes). I know I can easily buy more bins, but my shelves are full of bins, so buying more bins would do me no good since they would just be dumped on the floor with everything else that doesn’t have a home.

So, the fog came in, but it didn’t get cold, then it went out again. Now it is cooling off a bit. It doesn’t look like rain clouds, but I would rather have rain than fog. Have a great evening!

As the UFOs Turn

As you can see from my previous blog posts, I have been sewing and making progress. Still, these seem to be new projects, so I thought I would inventory my UFOs and see what I was facing. One year (1996, I think) I buckled down and worked only on UFOs and finished 9 quilts. That was a record. Most, if not all, were already started and I didn’t quilt them all, but causing them to be quilted counts for something in my book.

This list in no way implies that I will discontinue starting new projects or finish any of these.

  • Bullseye: finally found directions for doing the border the way I want it. Just need to do it
  • Garden from Pamela Allen class
  • He Tried to Make it Up to Her: needs back and to be quilted. St. JCN has to dig it out.
  • Her Eyes were Bigger than Her Stomach: needs a back and to be quilted. Very active quilt; probably not my best design, but a mile marker in the quiltmaking journey.
  • Kissy Fish: ongoing hand beading project
  • Leaf quilt: needs something that I don’t have; candidate for abandonment; sad, though, because it is a friendship quilt
  • Nosegay: top complete
  • Pointillist Palette 4: Night
  • QA Challenge Quilt: need to fuse the parts and rubber stamp the words.
  • See: started in a David Walker class. Needs fusing, stitching on of fused pieces and quilting
  • Self Portrait from Pamela Allen class
  • Serendipity Puzzle: on the design wall now. Five more blocks to piece.
  • Sharon’s quilt: blocks must be sewn together. After Serendipity Puzzle I will finish it. I don’t want a wedding quilt to be hanging around when a baby is due
  • Solid Star Friendship Quilt: need more friends so they can make stars for me in solids with black
  • Spiderweb: foundation pieced project, still piecing. Need to create the templates for the border blocks
  • The Tarts Come to Tea: need inspiration. Improvisational quilts are not the same experience when you do them alone
  • Thoughts on Dots: top complete
  • Women’s Work 2: needs focus.

Just for fun, here are the quilts on my mind. In some cases I have purchased fabric, but no sewing has been done, so they are not yet UFOs.

  • Denyse Schmidt Chocolate Boxes: see the post from August 11, 2006 to see the fabrics I will use.
Choloate Box detail
Choloate Box detail

This a pattern that can be purchased from Quiltworks Northwest.

  • San Mateo County Fair Dot quilt
  • Paper pieced Nativity scene: I downloaded this pattern when it was free a few 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 at Paper Panache.com
  • Interlocking triangles #4: love the techniques and have at least one, if not two, idea[s] for more
  • Dot quilt with inset circles a la Ruth McDowell: more uses for dots and a good exercise in piecing
  • Feathered Star dot quilt from Summer issue of Quilts & More: more use for dots
  • Cross quilt: totally scrappy except for middle and background. I would also like this to be a handwork project that I can carry along with me.
  • Some kind of pink quilt with all the pink fabric I have been buying
  • Colorblocks 3: I want to use silk fabric with a lucious sheen instead of the regular cottons. Background will be cotton sateen.
  • I Spy quilt for DS: hexagons and many of the triangles are cut. I just have to start piecing them. St. JCN comes to the rescue as she cut a zillion of the pieces.
  • 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.
  • Jack’s Chain: I saw a quilt of this pattern years and years ago and have always wanted to make one.

Serendipity Puzzle Moves Forward

While I haven’t done a lot on Serendipity Puzzle, I have made a little progress. I cut a bunch of patches and then started creating the Flying Geese elements. I wanted to have enough to be able to move the elements around and have some choices for color.

The other day, I rearranged some of the elements to start some of the other blocks that I need.

 

I happened to slap the above patches up on the design wall and found that I really liked the color combination. Something about the progression from red to the green stripe appeals to me. I want to figure out a way to keep them near each other in a block.

The good news is that I found out why the yellow pieces were causing me some problems. In the above photo, you can see (on the left) that the yellow point is really sticking out. It was quite a puzzle (no pun intended), but St. JCN helped me figure out that I had cut the squares too large. I switched rulers mid stream and was stuck on the cutting that I did for Thoughts on Dots and cut the same size (6.50″) for the yellow patch rather than the 6.25″ it should have been.

The offensive patch is still in the piece, but not for long. I will unsew it soon. I tossed the other too large triangles into the scrap basket, I can’t accidentally grab them. They will become something else someday.

Serendipity Puzzle

Serendipity Puzzle is my new project. It uses the latest group of Piece O’ Cake fabrics, called Serendipity, plus some of the woven plaids from their 4th plaids collection. The plaids I am using are POCP 437G, POCP 437O, POCP 437R, POCP 437T, and POCP 437Z. I bought these fabrics in June at Quilting Adventures during my trip to Maryland and Virginia.

This project is a follow-up to Thoughts on Dots as I am still using color and giving myself some limits (using, basically, one line of fabric). This time however, I am doing more piecing. Initially I am finding that piecing blocks allows me to sew a few seams, even if I have only a few minutes, thus making progress. Thoughts on Dots required larger blocks of time for the staring and arranging part as well as once I started sewing. Neither is bad, just different. It is satisfying to be mindful of the process.

P&B offered a free pattern for this line of fabric, which I liked and provided inspiration. Ultimately, however, I decided not to use it. I am doing a variation on the triangles theme from the free pattern but using the Dutchman’s Puzzle design. I think the Dutchman’s Puzzle pattern is more organized than the pattern they offer. The free pattern has a nice look, just not for me at this time. I guess I need order in my life!

I plan to use the turquoise for the sashing and borders like P&B/Piece O’ Cake does, but am thinking of slight variation. Stay tuned for more info as that part of the project develops.

In the above photo you can see that I have cut and selected some of the fabrics in preparation for piecing.

Above is a detail of the center block.

Several days pass….

On and off since the second week of November, I sewed a few seams as time permitted, steadily making progress. I don’t plan on setting the blocks this way, but wanted to see how they would look together. This also allows me to review the use of fabric and identify any problems that may be developing. As you can see, I have several blocks and have still not used all of the fabrics from the line. I flipped over the stack of fat quarters so I would cut some new ones the next time I cut the larger triangles.

Some issues I want to work through with this piece:

1. Distribution of the red: I think that the red is necessary, at least at this point in the piece, but it seems to be a bit dominant, so I need to take care where I place it. I also want to use different reds. There are 3 or 4 in this group.

2. Mixing up the various prints: I need to think about whether to place duplicates of fabrics in one block or to ensure that all the blocks have different fabrics. This depends on the number of different fabrics that I cut as well as similar colorways in different patterns.

3. Brown: I am afraid that the brown will be a dark hole, but like the chocolately feel of it. I may, in the end, take it out (yes, that means unsewing), but I want to wait to see how it looks when I have more blocks.

4. Number of blocks: I am not sure. I think I will make at least 9 and possibly 16. I am thinking that this will be a baby quilt for a friend. We will see.

5. Variation in blocks? : I am thinking about mixing 1-3 regular pinwheels in with the Dutchman’s Puzzle blocks to add interest. I may make a couple just to see how they look. As Lorraine Torrence says in her design classes “Make visual decisions visually.”

Thoughts on Dots Nearly Complete


The two photos above are how I left Thoughts on Dots before Halloween and my trip to Arizona. One fabric (Top photo: 4th from the bottom and 3rd from the right) looked like a plaid and had to be removed. Fabrics that were too beige had to go as well. I did leave a couple that were beige-ish, but still very “dotty.”
The problem with the above layout is that the white background fabrics I added are too active. In this entire piece the white, IMO, is acting like a resting point for the viewer’s eyes. In this section the whites are not doing their job. I separated some of them before I took this photo, but it still wasn’t working quite right.

I think the other problem was the differences in sizes of the dots. I didn’t have them mixed up enough.


This photo is a bit wonky. I am really having some problems taking photos of this large piece, because of the construction and all the stuff being where it is not supposed to be. In any case, I think that this is nearly the end of the design phase. The piece is really coming together, which is great, because I was really unhappy with the layout when I got back to it last night.

Good Day with Fabric

I spent the day at home doing laundry and minor household chores. Since nobody else was here (what bliss!), I was also able to get the left side, yes the ENTIRE left side!, of Thoughts on Dots finished. I am thrilled and love the way it looks thus far.

The above photo shows the bottom right corner. Trying to strike when the iron was hot (metaphorically and in reality), the design wall had not cooled before I already had moved the right hand two rows over to the left and was putting more squares up. I tried to use many of the squares I had cut previously, but had not yet made it into the quilt. Many of them, however, I had to remove in short order as the colors were too depressing for this happy, sherbety quilt.

I had dreams of actually picking out all of the colors for this section today and sewing it together. I realized that was only a pipe dream. I ended up cutting more squares, which meant pulling fabrics out of the fabric closet, always an exercise in time and patience. Though not my favorite part, it was worth it because I found some very nice dots that have not been used yet in this piece. I also really want to have the right fabrics after all the work I have done on this piece so far.

Final Layout for the Bottom of Thoughts on Dots?

As you can see, I have worked a lot on Thoughts on Dots. Mostly, as is my current mode of working, moving the fabrics around. However, this time, I also replaced a number of fabrics that weren’t working for me. This arrangement has been up on the wall for a week with none of the fabrics really bothering me. It may be the final layout.

Progression on Thoughts on Dots


Above is pretty much how the piece was before I started working on it again last night and this morning.


Here you can see I got the piece into what I thought was a final stage. I particularly like the upper lefthand corner section.

Two concerns I had were adding the new fabrics from Seattle and the sewing.

After contemplating the construction of the piece (AKA how to sew it together), I realized that adding an additional row would allow me to sew the thing in 4 patches AND leave the two bottom rows unsewn so that I could work on uniting the two halves. (In case I forgot to mention it, dear readers, I plan to make this piece twice the size it is now and add a couple of rows on the right hand side as well.) St. JCN sugested that I keep the bottom two rows on the design wall to aid in uniting the two halves. I decided that it would be easier to work with the bottom two rows if they were not sewn together. All of this meant that I needed an extra row otherwise I would have an orphan row which would ruin my 4 patch sewing model.

You might ask why not sew the thing in rows. I find that sewing large pieces in chunks (e.g. 4 patches) rather than rows facilitates squareness of the entire piece.

Adding an additional row also meant I could start to incorporate the Seattle fabrics into the piece, so the two halves would not look like completely different quilts.

The Return of Thoughts on Dots…Again

7/29/2006: I have had Thoughts on Dots on the wall for a few weeks again, but haven’t moved any of the squares around nor have I sewed anything.

I moved some squares around this morning when it was very quiet in the house and, as a result, today was the first day in a long while that I have felt like being creative. I really need a table to which I can walk up and glue and paint and cut, because I had a massive desire to experiment with the Tsukineko inks.

8/19/2006:

I did move a number of squares around after I took the above photo, but think I may have the final layout now. It is an interesting exercise to get the colors/fabrics in the right place in order to give the right feel.

One wrench in the mechanism are the new dot fabrics that I cut last weekend while in Seattle. I had planned to add them to this piece, but am wondering if I don’t like the light, fresh, airy feeling of Thoughts on Dots as it is now? Or am I being a chicken and need to, as Lorraine Torrence says, make visual decisions visually? This quilt is destined to be a cuddle quilt, as I may have mentioned, with the express purpose of making me feel better when the life or the monkey chatter gets overwelming. I think, as a result, that the layout has to give the right feeling more than be designed as a great work of art.

I have more sets of squares waiting for my attention in this same exercise and am looking forward to working with them.

Return of Thoughts on Dots

I removed the Pamela Allen quilts and the April Cornell squares from the design wall. I wasn’t working on them and they were starting to depress me*. I put the dot blocks back up instead and it makes me really happy to look at the dots. I also enjoy rearranging the squares into a pleasing layout. This is an extension of working on the various block arranging that I have been doing lately. Below is the photo of the arrangement as I put them up on the wall.

Thoughts on Dots in progress
Thoughts on Dots in progress

 

I have rearranged a few, but nothing major. I am sure there will be some major rearranging as time progresses. I see a diagonal line of white-lights that I would like to break up. I see that I need to pay attention to the placement of the scale of the dot fabrics as well.

Another challenge is the size. Mostly I work on quilts that are about the size of my design wall, which is approximately 64″x42″. I want this quilt to be a true cuddle up quilt. I want to use it to warm me up, but also to comfort my spirit. It may be a quilt that gets used up. It will be a quilt that gets coffee or wine spilled on it, a quilt that gets washed. Thus, I want it to be bigger.

I have, already, more squares than will fit on my design wall and more to cut. I am determined to use as many dot fabrics as I can dredge out of my palette (AKA stash). I am also resolved not to worry about the size.

The challenge is to make it work together while sewing it in sections. I won’t be able to get the whole thing on the design wall all at once. St. JCN suggested a method that I am considering. She suggested that I create a top section and sew it together. Next, I am charged with creating a row or two that works with the top as a transition row, and sew it together. I should not sew it to the larger piece. Then, in order to create unification between the already sewn together top section and the yet to be created bottom section, I should put the transition row or two up the design wall and begin building the bottom section. My primary concern is that the top and bottom be balanced. I am going to try St. JCN’s technique and see how it works when I am ready to sew.

In terms of scale, I need to cut more of the dots with the large circles (4th from the top on the left and 3rd from the right and 2 down). I don’t know how many colorways are languishing in the fabric closet, but I am sure I can dredge some up from somewhere if there are no more in my palette.

I also notice that there are too many of the hoop dots (2 over from the left on the top row, 2 up from the bottom on the left) for the top section. I will remove some of these and save them for the bottom section.

So, come back and see how this project develops.

*I really need to drag out, at least the Jaye’s Garden piece, and some nice Perl Cotton or Oliver Twist specialty hand sewing threads and just start sewing on it. DH’s family doesn’t have a tradition of working on projects while they are chatting and visiting, so it is harder. Like the Nike ad says “Just Do It!”

Quilting Quilts Not So Painful

The quilts are in the good hands of the quilter. I picked out a varigated green-blue color for the quilting on Feelin’ Blue, Too. It is difficult to pick the color of the thread. I always like the thread to disappear unless you get up close. I really like the piecing to be the predominant design feature. With all of the different colors and fabrics I use in a quilt, the thread tends to shriek at me on either the light or the dark, depending on whether the thread is light or dark and the fabric is light or dark. Light thread on dark fabric=bad; Dark thread on light fabric=really bad.

I picked out a berry color for The Eye of God. The purple border was a problem with the yellows in the center, thus choosing something completely different seemed like a good idea. It won’t scream on either the yellows (lights) or dark purple.

So much for handwringing. I should have more faith in the universe, because CG said that she would probably have the quilts done by the end of the week. That would rock! It would, however, mean that I really need to get going on the binding and the sleeves.

In other news, the hand quilt is back on the design wall. I need to get that quilt done by Christmas. It is already a year overdue. Appliqueing the hands is such a drag, even with fusing. I have to follow the classic Nike ad and JUST DO IT.

After the hand quilt, I need to do something of my own design. We’ll see. It may be time for more bullseyes by then.