Second Guessing

Many of my projects are from scratch – based on an idea, but without step by step instructions. This can be both freeing and daunting. What if I make the wrong choices? The article in the June/July 2014 issue of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine about Fidget Quilts for Alzheimer’s patients, stuck a chord, as my MIL is suffering from the disease. The follow up issue of QNM had some feedback from quilters who had followed the guidelines of the original article, and their mats had been rejected by caregivers. Small items such as keys or buttons could be chewed or pulled off . Before starting my mat, I contacted the head of the facility where my MIL is and asked about these concerns, and whether they would be interested in a fidget mat. The feedback was “yes please, red and pink are favorite colors of several of the residents, and a size of 1 ft. by 3 ft. would work well on their dining table.”

Having a color scheme and size helped me choose fabrics and designs. I began to over think the design, and finally took a step back and chose to keep it simple. After looking for squeaker inserts (now only available as dog chew replacements – not baby craft items), I decided to focus on textures. Red velour made nice hearts; white plush fur became kitty faces. A piece of wide satin pink ribbon made triangles to give windmill blocks some dimension. Continuous zippers made circles that open to a small cat print hidden inside. Floppy petals on flowers give movement. A simple pocket can be explored. Each side of the mat has six blocks and they repeat, both horizontally and vertically, so each end or each side have six unique blocks. Feedback has been positive.

Slow Going in Summer

Just a few finishes - the Gretchen Quilt binding is finally done, a rare hand-finish project. This one grew on me, and for now is keeping me company in the studio. The Redware Charity quilt (photo below) is quilted and bound, finished just a week after six quilts were donated to Hickman House. And the Medallion Baby Charity (kind homely, but cuddly) was bound today.

The red/grey Summer in the Park gave me issues with the sewing machine while assembling, especially starting each block. The block edges are all bias, and it took care not to stretch them, so I couldn't pull on the thread from the previous block when string-piecing. Had to press all of the seams open to minimize bulk. The effect of the diagonal lines is nice, but this pattern probably won't be repeated.  Straight-grain borders have been added to give some stability to the outer edge, ready to quilt once backing arrives.

Chisel Braid was a test of the die-cut chisels, using fabric given to me that worked together color-wise. The pattern will be more effective with horizontal bands of color, giving a chevron effect. The top is ready for quilting, and backing fabric is on order. This test top was fun to put together. I drew up a sample block in EQ so I would be able to estimate size and how many pieces to cut for future quilts.

The Orange Hexie blocks have been sewn together, striped borders on hold until the backing arrives. Learned the hard way that when using the 1/4" foot with the edge on my Bernina, the needle has to be moved one click to the right to get a true 1/4" seam. The triangle sets went together OK. It's getting a flannel back that will be pieced diagonally, using John Flynn's method. Will probably be a gift quilt rather than to charity

 

Arkansas traveler – drafted my own pattern to use jelly roll strips; this would be better as a foundation pieced block. My goal was not to have bias on outside edges. What I did right: using Kona for the background, did not have to worry about right side of fabric as both sides the same. Still had problems when putting the second side triangle around the 4-patch diamond, fortunately did just one block’s worth to test  before chain piecing all of them.

July Stash-Challenge Finishes

9-Patch X - 55.5" x 43.5". I saw a quilt with this block online and at first thought it was a disappearing 9-patch sliced diagonally, until realizing that the intersections wouldn't line up. Thought it would be a fun stash challenge with the plaid leftovers from the blue Mystery recently completed. Pulled the lavender flowers, found some purples, a mottled light blue backing and a crazy blue and purple check for the binding. Took some care in layout to get the intersecting pinwheels where 4 blocks meet. The dragonfly quilting pattern was the right scale and using purple thread on the back makes them more visible.

Gretchen - 42.5" square. Found this quilt online with a tutorial. Rounded the squares cut size up to 5" and pulled the colors to match the backing fabric. It sounded easy - took some fussing when sewing. Some shirtings with a bit of red to tie them in, a couple of greens and gold, solid red for the pinwheels and a red with a small black and cream print for the larger triangles and border. Backing  was only 45" square, so sized the top to fit. Had to pin baste this before loading on the longarm since the backing was so tight, quilted with a variation of the Baptist Fan pattern. Had matching check fabric for the binding (probably gifted from the same person), off-white like the check on the backing. Binding is not yet finished.

Training Day

It’s a rare occasion to have time to squeeze in quilting for myself during the week. Treating it as a training day--learning a new technique, testing out a spiral template for my Gammill Workstation was interesting. The quilt that I chose for the spirals is Diamond Box, a free pattern from TimelessTreasures. The finished size is 64" x 52.5"(not including the shoes at the bottom.) The background fabric is a grey and black batik with just a bit of light blue, given to me by a quilting customer. Most of the block fabrics came from stash.
 

It’s a very angular design, and the curves soften it. There is a spiral centered in each block, and overlapping smaller spirals in-between and on the borders. The surprise when I took it off the rollers was that two of the smaller spirals had a definite shape problem—very odd as the template uses a stylus in a groove, and there were no issues with the stylus jumping the track. The squashed shapes were not visible on the top, but on the solid light grey back they stood out. It was worth my time to rip out the stitches, re-load the quilt and re-quilt the two spirals.

Overall I’m pleased with the design. It took a couple of hours to tie off and bury the stop/start threads on each spiral. Spirals are a bit trickier to place than concentric circles. Moving the Workstation  was a bit of a pain, and once I used binder clips to keep the sliders locked in place so it didn’t shift, almost fun. If I ever make the move to a computer-driven quilting machine I would make spirals very often.  

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The Gifts That Keep on Coming

I’ve been gifted quite a bit of fabric and several projects recently from quilt customers:

• A bag of red, cream and tan fabrics, some large pieces
• 900 paper piecing hexagons, 1 1/4" per side
• A bag of assorted fabrics, including a bag of jelly roll strips that were partially cut and sewn and a set of partially pieced feedsack Dresden Plates
• A partially quilted Winding Ways quilt, needing a few repairs, lots of thread cleanup, batting fixed and borders quilted.

I have a gathering of red/beige/cream fabrics in the works for a bed-sized Disappearing 9-Patch, so the red, cream and tan fabrics will be mixed in.

The hexagons will allow me to try out some flowers with 1/3 hexagons as petals. I am too thrifty to spend $24 for a set of 1/3 hexagon paper pieces, so will make a template and cut my own from these.

The jelly roll strips are the Roman Holiday collection from Moda circa 2004. I really like the fabrics and am looking for a project that will showcase them, and also let me work with some partial strips.

 

I've had the Dresden Plates on my studio design wall for a couple of weeks, getting advice on using them to their best advantage. My initial thought is to applique them to a solid background (without any trimming behind) using a buttonhole stitch, and quilting them densely. The dark red pieces look likely to bleed, and there are several pieces where a blue fabric bled on some of the other pieces, so there needs to be some re-piecing. Also the arcs each have 11 pieces, and only 20 are needed for a full circle (the one completed circle with 22 pieces needs to be altered.)

The Winding Ways quilt has been getting a bit of thread cleanup, and I've been adding safety pins to areas where the quilting has gaps. The backing is large enough to allow me to quilt the borders on the longarm, once the batting is fixed (one side has too much and the other not enough.)

Oh - and then I won a set of fat quarters from Quilter's Newsletter!

Last of the Mystery Series Finished

The pull of the garden is very strong right now. My flowers peak in May, which means they want to be staked, weeded, watered. My tomato plants are in, spinach has already bolted, lettuces harvested and re-seeded, squash and beans just seeded and need to be kept moist.

Quilting and sewing is getting the 10-20-30 minutes approach that Nancy Zieman talks about – do a little at a time, even if it is just setting up for the next project. My attic sewing room is adjusting to my foster cat, and although she is an older kitty, she is exploring every shelf, basket and counter, and I’ve already misplaced a few projects that I stuffed somewhere so it wouldn’t become a nest or pile on the floor. Quick projects have included adding the last two borders to the Diamond Box quilt, sewing the binding strips and prepping the backing for same. And finally binding Mystery #3, size is 73.5" x 53.5", the largest of the three Mystery quilts.

Busman's Holiday

What do quilters do when they have a few days off? Quilt of course! Last week I quilted three charity quilts for Oso. One of them was my twin Orca quilt, made from the leftovers of a fussy-cut orca print. It's a simple design from 5" squares and 5 x 10" strips, staggered to give it some motion.

Quilting is a simple wavy design:

Diamond box blocks are coming along, and I've found a shortcut for the bias seams - creasing the strip where it crosses, rather than marking each line with chalk. It took almost 2 hours of pinning the pieces together while watching TV, and that allowed a bit more production line sewing. Six blocks are completely finished, and the centers on the remaining 14 sewn and ready for the final round.

 

The background fabric is a grey/taupe/light blue fabric that a friend gave me. It had been made into a dress, but as it is a batik it didn't have very nice drape, and was never finished.

Pinwheel 9-patch center is finished, and a nice rich purple border finally appeared from my stash, not yet cut and attached.

A large bag of plaid fabrics was gifted to me by my sister, including two large pieces of a bright Madras plaid patchwork destined for a shirt, and at least two lap backings from other pieces.

The Tennessee Lightening quilt new to my queue is a simple 9-patch block consisting of half-square triangles with good contrast. My goal is to make a twin-sized charity quilt from some of my reproduction fabrics, with a brown background and blues, reds and purples as the dark colors.