Learning Curve

I bought a triangle ruler on sale, the type that doesn’t come with any instructions.  No problem – just draw up a quilt in EQ7 and start chopping.  For a one-patch triangle quilt in EQ, there are a couple of layout options, and you plug in the width and height of the triangles.  My goal was to make a preemie quilt and a lap quilt from one of my 2-yard cuts of flannel as backing.  Starting with the preemie seemed logical. Except—I didn’t measure the ruler.  It’s not an equilateral ruler, and the quilt I drew up in EQ was, so the size was off.  No worries – it was a bit long, but still wide enough for the suggested size.  At some point I made the choice to cut the triangles a bit shorter than the full height of the ruler, which meant the leftovers, intended for the lap sized quilt, made it necessary to cut the remaining triangles the same size.   (I am getting better about writing down what I do with each quilt on paper as I go.)

Isn’t it funny how stash fabric is always different in your memory than in reality?  I thought I would be overloaded with green fabrics, but once it came down to comparing my greens to the light green check, they didn’t all play nicely together. After a bit of digging in some of the fabric bins, a nice green print with a bit of orange brought the right “pop” to the other greens.  A couple of pale scraps filled out the “light” triangles and mix it up a bit. 

One thing I discovered with this triangle ruler that I didn’t like at first was that only one of the points had the tip cut off.  I like the way that templates from EQ automatically cut the extra tips off, so it’s easy to align angles when piecing.  With only one tip cut off, I found it really easy to keep the grain in the right orientation when sewing, as the pieces were all cut with the straight of grain perpendicular to that cut-off tip.  On the preemie quilt, some of the light triangles ended up being twisted.

The preemie quilt was initially sewn like an envelope – stitched around the eges and turned, but it was so lumpy that I took out the seam and serged the edge instead with woolly nylon (after quilting along all the seam lines). The preemie quilts don’t require a batting, but the lap quilt will have batting, and I’ll quilt it on my longarm.

Quilt Obsessions

Every week I fall in love with at lease one new quilt top design. I start playing with the block construction and layouts in Electric Quilt. Sometimes that’s as far as I go, other times a stack of fabric starts accumulating.

Recent obsessions:

Japanese X – I first saw it at StitchedinColor.com , and she had a link to a tutorial at Badskirt. There is a Flickr group so you can look at what others have done. My first block gave me a bit of trouble to start, then I ripped and fixed one bad seam and everything lined up nicely. This is slow quilting for sure. I have 12 blocks finished, and plan on making 20. I pulled some of my favorite Asian prints, indigos and shirtings in navy, grey, purple and white to make them. After putting them on a design wall, it was surprising to see how the design pops when sashing is added.

Sparkle Punch quilt along at the Oh, Fransson! blog. This looks like a great pattern for a collection of Jan Mullen fq’s in bright dots and stripes in my stash. There is a bit of waste in the star points, and I haven’t quite been able to cut up my favorite white swirls on white fabric, so I may break down and buy some solid white or bone Kona cotton for the background.

One-third hexagon paper piecing: the Interweave store has a sale on a puzzle with this quilt pattern. I haven’t seen the book yet, but love how the “flowers” look like they have petals when the outside 1/3 of each hexagon is the background fabric. Paper Pieces even sells 1/3 hexagon foundations, but I’ll most likely make my own from cardstock. There is a collection of butterscotch fabrics in my stash that wants to become this quilt.

Binding Trials

Lately I’ve been testing various ways to machine-finish bindings on my own quilts. Occasionally, on a special quilt or a small quilt, I’ll still do them by hand, but charity quilts, gift quilts and some customer quilts are finished by machine. My goal is to have a binding that is attractive on both sides.

Here are a few results:

Sew binding to the back, and then pin to the front side and machine stitch down. The quilt I tested this on had a pieced outer edge, and just the thickness of those additional seams gave too much variance to the finished width of the binding. This technique can be a bit messy on the back side.

Sew binding to the front, and then use a button-hole stitch from the front. This catches the binding readily on the back side, and looks tidy from the front. I had to do some testing with my studio machine, as it doesn’t mirror stitches, so not all options were easy to use on a binding. Some of the likely stitches had multiple stitches in the straight section (more decorative, also takes longer to stitch and uses more thread.)

Stitch the binding to the front, then wrap and pin, and use an edge-stitch foot instead of the walking foot on the top. End result is pretty, though there is some bunching because of not using a walking foot.

Zig-zag – this is a nice strong option for charity quilts and graduation quilts. I’ve thought about using a twin needle, which would give a zig-zag just on the back side, but I find the price of these special needles a consideration.

Fixing a sloppy wrap: though I usually test the wrap on each binding by stitching a few inches and adjusting the needle position to fit, a recently finished project had excess binding flapping on the back side. It had been stitched through the binding from the top, rather than in the ditch. I solved this by stitching a second time in the ditch.

I’ve tried various ways to use an edge guide for stitch-in-the-ditch, and haven’t been very happy with the consistency of the results. My best solution has been to use an additional, position able light on my machine and just visually align the needle with the edge of the binding. Along with the testing of the needle position at the start of the quilt, this gives me a clean look on both the top and back of the quilt, though I check for occasional gaps on the back where the binding wasn't caught.

Process

I'm finding it difficult to post often enough to keep up with the steps of my design process. There are many things "in progress" right now too, some creative, and some just going step-by-step to finish them.

I was able to find time to quilt and bind this quilt for American Hero Quilts. Melissa D., from my Washington State Internet Quilters group, completed the top for the New Year's weekend Cyber Sew-in. The plan was to make blocks, and they would be sent on to other quilters to assemble, quilt & bind. Melissa had these blocks from an exchange, so she put them together, and we connnected online. She mailed the top to me, and I provided batting, backing, quilting & binding. It went off in the mail yesterday.

Yesterday I quilted the small tumblers quilt, and it's ready for binding.

The other sewing project finished is a basic apron for my quilting studio. The fronts of my aprons wear out because they get snagged by pins on the front side of my quilting machine

This is the hat finished last week, blocking. The pattern is Caller Herrin by Kate Davies. It's stretched over a 10" plexiglass circle used as a quilting guide. I was surprised at how much it changed the shape of the finished hat--it actually fit me better before blocking, but the yarn did bloom nicely and the tension looks much nicer. I'm looking at other small patterns to use up the leftover wool.

Also completed were a set of felted hexagon coasters. Well, more like flowers, as the edges remained pointy. I'll keep them in a drawer except when company is coming, so they don't become dog chews.

On With the Old, Add Something New

I finished this Ocean Waves top over the weekend at a quilting retreat. It started as part of a swap group several years ago, and 16 of the blocks were made by other quilters. Most sent an extra square of fabric so the border fabrics coordinate. Blocks have been worked on at several retreats, and after the last one I had gotten on a roll, cutting out all the remaining strips (needed for Thangles for the small half-square triangles), and even sewn the sub-sets. There were only 6 blocks left to assemble, and the border blocks only needed to be trimmed down. Whew! The backing and binding fabrics are ready to go, it may be a while before it gets quilted. Approximately 71" square.

After I finished this top, I started playing with a layout of some tumbler blocks that had been cut with my Accuquilt Go cutter. Many of the fabrics in the box that had been collecting were leftovers from the Ocean Waves, with some of the rejects that were too bright for the quilt above, including vintage lime green with turquoise and white flowers. Unfortunately my math was off when I counted pieces, so the tumblers were packed up in the partial layout, and had to wait until Sunday for more pieces to be cut. We worked at home Sunday as the Senior Center was rented out to two churches, so our machines and projects were locked in a secure room until Monday morning.

Sunday at home was very productive, as I cut out the remaining tumblers, cut backing and binding for two quilts, binding for a third, organized batting scraps for some upcoming small projects, and organized pieces for charity cosmetic bags. I'm set for a while with quick, fill-in projects to work on while waiting for quilt customers or just needing a quick sewing fix.

Monday had me laying out all 320 tumbler pieces, stacking them in rows, and stitching. I was able to sew 18 of the 20 rows together, and most of them are pressed. I cut half-width blocks for the edges (to give a straight edge, and a good way to use the leftover bits), and I'll do another layout to select and add those before sewing the rows together. I chose the size to fit the backing...a wonderful piece with large flowers in the same colors on white (another gifted piece).

Lost and Found (twice)

My finished list for 2010 needs updating. Last night the second pincushion cut out back in May (!) finally came together. It was in a small zip-loc bag in the bottom of a quilt/knitting bag and had gone awol for a bit. The top and bottom stars had been finished back in June, and sometime mid-December when the bag was emptied out it resurfaced. My shoulder needed a break from knitting so I went back to handstitching.

The original idea was to alternate the prints on the bottom and top so each diamond was more distinct, but I liked keeping the aqua and purple flower print pieces together, since this was such a small scrap anyway (probably from my sister?). I stuffed it last night with loosely spun wool (some of my early spinning) and some leftover plastic pellets to give it some weight. I like the wool stuffing better than the polyester used on the first pincushion finished back in May. The pincushion was missing this morning, and I thought our chocolate lab Max had purloined it, but there was no trail of pellets to be found. Apparently Murphy the cat needed a quick game of hockey, as it turned up under a bookcase.

Two aqua fabric covered buttons (commercial, with a plastic shaft) came to the top of the button box today to finish it off. Now off to find the other fabrics set aside for the next pincushion.

Finished object and report

The last pictures of the repurposed fabric weren't very attractive, but the bags finished up very nicely. I like the weight of the double layer, as it feels more substantial than even a lined bag. We ended up stuffing 42 bags with cosmetics and other sundries at the American Sewing Guild meeting earlier this month for the local domestic violence housing program. There is enough of the sturdy plaid lining for quite a few more bags, and they'll be ready for next year's donations.

When you make multiples of a project, there is always a learning curve, as something you may be willing to do once (i.e. zig-zag the edges and fold them over and re-stitch), is quickly replaced with serging the edges in one pass (and also containing fraying edges.) The notes are updated for the next time this project is worked on. I'll cut the outside and lining pieces the same size, pin together, serge the edges together then do the quilting.