Tag: Works in Progress

On a Tear (Sharon’s Quilt)

I thought I would feel some kind of high and float around for a few days afer finishing the back of the Nosegay, but it is not to be. All I can think about is Sharon’s quilt, so I got the blocks out and put them up on the design wall. I had made a design while I was out and about yesterday, which I used to lay the blocks out.

P=plain block (printed fabric cut out) D=block with a drawing on it.

Sigh! There are just too many blocks to make it work. I, then, put them all up so I could see what I was dealing with.

There are three blocks that aren’t up on the wall and with those I have my entire design wall filled.

I am tempted to be artistic, but the practical side of me is telling me just to sew the piece together and be done with it.

A Monkey Finally Off My Back


When I got to my workroom this morning the back of the Nosegay was glaring at me and I could only sigh. I didn’t want to work on it. I had, somewhere in the back of my mind, wished that it would just be done. I thought about taking out Sharon’s quilt blocks and just ignoring the back of the Nosegay. It seemed too big, too much, too old, too depressing. I felt like I just couldn’t do it. Still, I knew that if I didn’t just do it, it would glare at me forever. Since the thing has been hanging around since 1998 and I wanted it done in my lifetime, I decided to just do a couple of rows. After all, if I did a couple of rows every week, it would eventually get done.


I arranged some 1930s scraps that were laying on my cutting table into a largish block and sewed them together. That kind of warmed me up and I sewed on a row of the blue and a row of the 1930s fabric and laid it out. I found that I had sewed more than half! Halfway done! I couldn’t believe it. How did that happen? That spurred me on.
I sewed entire FQ pieces into long rows and sewed them to the back. Each strip took about 2.75 yards of fabric. It took me about 3-4 hours, but I finished the entire back. The back is done. Whew!

I had been wondering if I shouldn’t just take Thoughts on Dots and Serendipity Puzzle to the quilter and bring the Nosegay later. Now I don’t have to. I will call the quilter and see if I can bring the quilts over, then I will be free of them for a time.

I am so thrilled!


I didn’t get through as much of the 1930s fabric as I had hoped, but I only have about 1/2 a bin left. I think I may put the fabrics with each color family rather than segregating them.

I have to say that the colors depress me a little bit with their muted tones and sweet little designs and I am tempted to just send them off to someone.

Nearly Done! HOORAY!!!!

In between many other tasks related to house, children and work, I am thrilled to say that I have finished the back of Thoughts on Dots. I really buckled down and took every spare moment to work on it. HOORAY!!!!!!

The back is even larger than the top, which made it harder to photograph, but here is an image anyway.

The squares are the reject dot squares which I did not use in the top. The lavendar and beige square in your upper right hand corner is the label. I decided to use the beige for three reasons:
1) I did not want to piece together 100 FQs of dots;
2) I had large-ish pieces of beige (bought them at a time when I thought I might use them as backgrounds); and
3) I decided I did not want to take away from the front. I wanted it to be clear that the front was the main showcase.

I did piece the back, because I have a enough fabric to do so and because I wanted it to be unique. I do see the attraction of buying 107″ wide fabric and just sewing one seam to make the back, however.


Above is a detail of the top of the back.

Above are a couple of details of the other side of the top including the label. Take the term “detail” with a grain of salt!

I made the label by creating a Word document and then print the ‘document’ on fabric.


Above shows the only problem. I think that I may have to take off the beige piece on which I have drawn a line, because it is too wide. I think it would work better if I put it on the outside. That way, I can trim the back after it gets quilted. I don’t want to hack of part of the block that has the label in it or any of the squares. I know it is just the back, but I still want it to look good. I don’t remember right at the moment whether I pieced that beige as all one piece or if I will have to unsew multiple pieces.

And finally, below, here is a better (not great, but better) image of Thoughts on Dots:
Part of the day’s chores involved moving furniture form one room to another. While my workroom does not look fantastic and I lost some shelf space, I do have floor space, once again. YAY! I was able spread the quilt top out on the floor. It nearly fits. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually fit in the room so the image is still a bit wonky. Hopefully, however, faithful readers, you get a beter idea of how cheerful it is.

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.