Pick a Pic

Found a cute picture of a teapot and decided it needed to be put on the front of a stacked hotpad. 

Foto to Fabric

     Our quilt group wanted to do a project together this year, so we were offered the opportunity to make patriotic lap quilts for a local veterans' hospital. I never could find any fabric that seemed to inspire. I have so many projects underway, I needed something fairly straightforward and quick, but nothing caught my imagination. Finally, though, I saw this beautiful photo online and decided to reduce it to the largest pixels possible to still produce a recognizable image from a reasonable distance. 
       Printout in hand, I began cutting 3.5 inch squares primarily from varied red, white, and blue fabrics. Next, I identified areas in the now pixelized photo that would need to have two-toned squares, and made half-square-triangles as needed. 
      To test the effectiveness of my fabric choices, I laid them out in columns and rows before committing them to stitching. Once satisfied with the layout, I picked up each column in order and clamped with a clothespin on which the appropriate column number had been written with a Sharpie pen.
      Next I will sew the squares together a column at a time, then join the columns. My plan is to somehow attach this to a piece of federal blue fleece for a really toasty warm lap quilt.
     Oh! And best of all, with this quilt, my local 14 month-old grand-boy joined me in playing with the fabric. (Fuzzily portrayed below...)

Fun! Fun! Fun!

Meanwhile, Happy Veteran's Day!

----------------to be continued. --------------------

Points Turned

Found a tutorial on the Quilting Board called "Ten Minute Block Variation (on point)", and it seemed just the thing for another block for my Roman Road quilt in progress. 

My plan was to come up with a block that would look like this:

However, for that to happen, I had to get the math right and manage to end up with a nine inch unfinished block. And... well, I have to say, my math just wasn't up to it this time around.

So, I could continue calculations, OR...I could kick these pretties off point and put them together a bit differently. I opted for the easier path. (Hanging my head in shame.)

Ideally, I would list here the steps in making the little ten-minute block variations, but honestly, it would be better for anyone interested to go to The Quilting Board tutorial section and find the post I followed there. The title of the tutorial was "Ten Minute Block Variation (on point)". Joining the board is free.

My plan is to put sashing between the four small blocks for a cross-like effect. Once completed, I'll post a picture here:

Borders Meeting ... Miter Known

   Before our summer break, quilting instructor Sandy presented a lesson on mitering borders. Her method was from Patti Carey. Subsequently I found this video link illustrating essentially the same method: Mitered border tutorial

Although it is not quite as easy as "1.2.3.", if one applies the steps shown, it actually does work well. I especially like the effect when joining striped borders.

So, the steps Sandy presented (with the first being her own addition) were:

• STARCH your border fabric! (Yes, this is step one...starch & press the borders to be mitered.)
• Sew the border strips together, if adding more than one border. (You will need to allow more than the  combined width of the quilt for each border length. See measurement instructions below.)
• Measure the quilt top through the center and at the ends to find the shortest measurement.
• After ascertaining the width and length of the top, subtract 1/4 inch from these measurements and save for reference. Example: Quilt measures 30 1/2 x 45 1/2, record as 30 1/4 x 45 1/4.)
• Lay the border out straight and trim one end at a 45 degree angle out away from you. Measure from the initial cut point to the recorded measure (for instance 30 1/4 inch in the example given) and trim at the opposite end 45 degrees...again away from you.
• Repeat for each border strip, marking the 1/4 inch from each corner to find the sewing point. It is also helpful to mark the quarter inch seam crosspoints on the quilt top. Then using a pin you can find the exact point to join by piercing center points of allowances of both the quilt top and the border being joined. Attach the borders starting and ending at the 1/4 inch marks you made; DO NOT PRESS anything, yet.
• Now sew the mitered seams from OUTER CORNER TO SEAM-LINE matching all the strips of the borders as you come to them. BACKSTITCH at the end. (Glue stick may come in handy for this step.)
• FINALLY press the mitered seams open and the quilt seams toward the border. [Sandy says she presses all the seams to the outside.]  Happy dance may begin now.

Below are a couple of the projects I've used this on since receiving the hands on tutorial from Sandy. Note the flip side of the teaching sample, showing the seams pressed:

You can see that the mitering does not make much difference on the brown dot fabric in the bottom right photo. However the stripes both of the bamboo-look and the red/pink fabrics  (bottom left and bottom right photos) run into each other and line up for a very nice effect, don't you think?

As with any new technique, the more frequently you use it, the more intuitive it becomes. One of the biggest challenges the class members experienced was getting the ruler edges lined up to make the 45 degree angle cut in the proper direction. It was a little gratifying to see that this was a challenge for the illustrators in the video tutorial, as well. Just keep twirling that ruler like a baton till you find the sweet spot for that first cut...then prepare to wrestle with it once more at the other end of the strip. By the 8th cut you'll be a pro...till the next quilt comes along. ;o) 

Hmmm. Maybe it would be best to do all four of your "first 45 degree" cuts at one time before going on to make the other-end, other-direction cuts on the final four.  

"Miter" known, there'll always be more than one way to border a quilt.

No More Monkeys Quilt (back)

The 5 minute blocks were made up with no plan in mind, so I had extras after having pieced most of them into a quilt top: No More Monkeys, [see previous post]. I took four of them and began trying various orientations until I came up with a nice pinwheel of sorts. That's when I decided to use them for the start point of a quilt back for the completed No More Monkeys Quilt top. 

Note use of camouflage pink for
one of the five minute squares 
sections. Ran out of fabric!

I had some dark brown scraps from my Elephant Walk quilt...just enough to make a mitered border for the central pinwheel. Also, there was a narrow strip of red & pink striped fabric just long enough to do a miter border out from that. 

For a few days I was not sure what I might use for a border beyond that border. Then I remembered some old wine & beige ticking fabric I had bought on sale around 1995. Really drab stuff for which I had never found use. On a hunch I held it against the pinks and browns, and it worked! Finally, a use for it! 

   Bordered, though, the pinwheel seemed to be missing something. That's when I decided a fabric yo-yo with a button center might be the element needed. Brown won out as the color and my button jar and fabric scraps complied and supplied. Sometimes you just need a dot of something else.

Next came the two-fabric binding. "Somehow" (!) it was cut wrong at first and had to be cut and pieced a second time. In the ultimate version, it had three strips of fabric instead of two, and one of the strips was completely hidden in the final fold. Pretty sure I need to revisit the how-to basics of two-fabric binding.

My quilt top top-stitching of the shapes (square, rectangle, circle, triangle) did not show up on the quilt back as well as I had hoped, so I wound up hand-stitching (Gasp!) some rick rack to better

define the shapes for quilt back viewing pleasure. Who would have guessed there would be something else to do after the binding was completed? 

For me...for a while, at least...there'll be: "No More Monkeys"!!!!

No More Monkeys Quilt (front)

Click here to see August 4, 2013 post, Monkeying A Round, for the source info on the central block.

Last year about this time I had finished the Mariner's Compass paper pieced center block, but had not a clue what would come next. As I considered various things to try, I decided I wanted to paper piece the design below based on a hexagon, so I cut monkeys to fit in the center and tried my luck. As it turned out, however, I never quite found how to order my piecing and had to finish the final seam of each round as best I could. I think there is a method that would work, but I have not quite mastered it. To hide my less than perfect final seams, I used a decorative stitch over each seam and ended up with the four corner blocks seen in the completed quilt above.

So, I had a center block, and four corner blocks, but nothing more. This seemed like a good time to try out a five minute block I had seen on YouTube. First, though, I wanted to know if I could fussy cut some monkeys to fit into the triangle of the 5 minute block. First run on some scraps proved it was possible, and so it was onward! 

Practice Five Minute Block with monkey on the flap

These were not actually quilt as you go,
picture of block was isolated from finished quilt and photo-edited
to look like a stack of blocks. It's hard to remember to snap pictures in the heat of
stitching!

Stacks, now, of five minute monkey blocks awaited a plan for where and how they would be oriented into the still evolving project.

My last quilting class before summer break had instructor Sandy teaching us how to do mitered corners for border pieces. Some of the samples she had brought to class used striped fabric, which really looked pretty nifty with the mitered approach. I had some remnant bin fabric in my stash already being considered for this quilt, and because it looked like bamboo, it also had a stripe effect. The plan was coming together!

As I finished the mitered inner border and added the outlying blocks, I heard an interview of a woman who was working with very young children and emphasizing how they love to learn shapes. She said she therefore used simple shapes in her baby quilts for the baby to continue to enjoy the quilt into the toddler stage.
Bingo! There was the plan both for jazzing up the plain bamboo plane, and for the free motion quilting that would be used thereon.

I machine stitched over the edges of the applique, then echo-stitched out from the edges with brown top thread and white bobbin, for the shapes to carry over to the back of the quilt in what I hoped would be an appropriate color. Quilted free motion triangles, squares, circles and rectangles in the four different shape sections of the border

So (sew?), after a year of monkeying around, a quilt finally did emerge. See below the top of my "No More Monkeys" quilt.

My next post will show the back of this quilt.

Flipping for the Holidays

Even though I have a definite fondness for small projects, I never much wanted to make table runners. To my mind they seemed like quilted doilies. Then I saw this Jenny Doan runner with squares added to the friendship braid. I had some bright colors in my stash and tried to fashion one after the one in her tutorial. 

    Once the top was pieced, I also decided to try out some machine embroidery in the center. Since I did not stabilize the piece, it puckered terribly. So, the whole thing sat by un-hemmed, un-bound, and thoroughly un-appreciated for months on end.

    This week, though, I was in the friendship braid mode, and decided to try doing a backing of the same piecing pattern with Christmas prints. Using heat-resistant batting, I thought the runner could serve my utilitarian purposes by being both decorative and protective. No doily does that! Kind of a running hot pad, as it were, for holiday meals. 
     Once the Christmas-themed backing was pieced, I sandwiched by laying the top and bottom piecing together, right sides facing, carefully aligning the various points of the squares by poking a pin through both. Next I pinned a same-sized piece of batting to the backing, and joined the edges of all, leaving a six inch opening for turning. Corners trimmed, pieces turned, I ironed the edges and stitched a quarter inch inside all around, catching and closing the six inch opening. I think this is called the "pillowcase" method of a binding-less finish.  

    Last of all I quilted in various places on the top piece with a metallic gold thread as my bobbin thread because some say metallic thread spins off the bobbin with fewer glitches.  Sure enough, the only glitchy stitches I encountered came from my top thread. 
     This project really does not have to take long, nor does it have to have puckered embroidery. Those of you who don't skip the stabilizer step in machine embroidery could likely come up with some nifty centered designs, or opt to fussy cut as I did for the Christmas side. 
     Now if I can just keep up with where I store this once the holidays really are upon us, I may not have to flip out, after all!
    Meanwhile, just for fun:

Can't you just see this as a "mosaic" block?

And this would be the quilt.

     

Two Much Fun! / I've Got a Secret!

The"Peek-a-Boo" pattern for this quilt appeared in Quiltmaker Classics Volume 1 - Summer 2013 on page 71. The quilt featured in the magazine used primary colors and had twelve blocks. My down-sized version ended up measuring 42 x 32 inches.
   Three machines worked their magic to put this together in six days' time. Piecing and quilting were done on my Brother Innov'Is NX800 sewing machine. The edges for the prairie points were done using my Brother serger (circa 1998), and the label was done using my Brother PE500 embroidery machine. Yes. My "Brothers" played well together and came up with this in record time!
   Every time I do a quilt I learn new things. With this one I learned to cut all my pieces (except border and backing) before piecing. Some things were not so much new knowledge as newly applied knowledge; I chain-pieced wherever practical.
     To make the monogram and stylized "2" applique, I printed out a sheet with a large font, then copied the resulting lettering onto the paper side of a right-sized heat bonding sheet (Wonder Under), and bonded to the fabric before doing a tight zigzag stitch around the edges.
      Last minute flubs resulted in some fortuitous saves. In my first design version the stylized "2" was to be the only corner design. The quilt was being made as a present for my first grandson's 2nd birthday. I decided to free motion a heart in another corner, but it was so pitifully wobbly, I opted to applique a heart shape over it. That would have resulted in a rather unbalanced overall look, so I added a star and a musical note to the remaining corners. (Yea!) Even bigger "YEA!",  he liked it!

Chain-piecing, finished quilt with magazine inspiration, completed back with embroidered label.

Oh! And in case you wondered why it is called a "Peek-a-Boo" quilt...:

Each prairie-pointed block opens up to reveal an otherwise secret underlying patch!

Elephant Walk

This was done start to finish (except binding) at a quilting retreat where three of us were making our version of this quilt. Another friend was the instructor for the others of us. I was so busy with mine I never got pictures!!! Also, this was my most mistake-ridden quilting day EVER! 

Among the things I cautioned the others not to do:

• Do NOT iron your Omni grid ruler. 
• Do NOT turn your fabric the wrong way when cutting strips...such that you end up with eight inch instead of 41 inch strips.
• Do NOT even attempt to center any motif on a mistake-ridden streak.
• Do NOT neglect to check orientation of ears, etc. when heat-fixing to applique.

Here are some "Do"s:

• DO quilt with friends who can help you laugh at your mistakes.
• DO quilt with friends who can help you find end-arounds to make even the mistakes work in your favor. 
• DO remember that finishing imperfectly beats not finishing at all!

No Longer in a Bind?

Here's one way to dispense with some of the leftover strips from 2.5  inch bindings.

Mine is a smidge under 3 inches, but that is likely due to my 1/4 inch not being scant enough.

Of course, this can be done with squares larger than 2.5". This is just a fun little something to do with leftover binding strips.

You Stitch Fifteen Blocks and What Do You Get?

Sorry. That "Sixteen Tons" tune was just rambling around my brain seeking an outlet. 

Well, I've completed the fifteenth block and gotten them all sashed. Next step will be to add a border. The pictured "flying carpet" version above is not actually bordered, except in a rehearsal of laying the pieced blocks atop the proposed border fabric.  

Our class is about to take a break for the summer, so I won't likely get this sandwiched and quilted until some time this fall.

Lamp and Trust

One is "Lamp" and one is "Trust" Can you tell which is which? I think the "Lamp" looks more like a lantern, and I'm not sure why "Trust" is this design...but red on the corners is by design, and blue is true, they say.

Blocks 11 and 12.

There are three more blocks in the sampler to do, then on to the sashing, which I dread. All the precision of the squared up nine inch blocks will likely be a distant memory at the end of that exercise. This one will need to be completed, though, because it's been forever since I actually QUILTED any of my piecing projects. 

Leah suggested the "Lamp" would be pretty as a full quilt using those fabrics. I agree.

Draw, Drop, Hoop, & Stitch

Having just done the Two Circles Squared [see previous post], I noticed that you end up with something akin to a framed canvas on the contrasting back piece. This made me wonder if I could use the center of the contrasting piece for a bit of embroidery. Rather than experimenting with hand embroidery, I chose to also attempt the regular sewing machine, free motion embroidery demonstrated by various YouTubers. 

First I chose a picture to trace/transfer onto the predetermined  four inch mid-section of  my eight inch contrasting circle. Having penciled it in, I dropped the feed dogs on my machine, and removed the presser foot, all the while reminding myself that the lever that lowers the foot must be lowered when stitching actually begins, due to tension issues. Next I hooped the fabric in an ordinary embroidery hoop, as tightly as I could manage. Then I set to "drawing" with the machine stitches, following the lines drawn. 

The resulting picture was fine for my purposes. It might have been better to stabilize the fabric prior to hooping, but for an experiment and first run, I was pleased.

Oh! And just for fun, here's a postcard my mail carrier left for us a year or so ago:

 Something inherently precious about a little girl mailing a missive, I suppose.

Two Circles Squared

The tutorial for this intriguing little bit of fabric magic didn't catch my eye until after the holidays, but decided to give it a try because 

1. It (end product) looked difficult. 
2. Sounded easy (per instructions)
3. Took next to nothing by way of fabric committed
4. Gave me a chance to TRY to justify having purchased a circle cutting ruler, not to mention all the Christmas-themed yardage I never brought myself to cut into. (Sigh. I have to get over that!)

Mine turned out a little wonky, but I think it was due to my lack of care in doing those final folds. 

This one was made using two 8 inch circles, which resulted in a 4 inch square.

1. joined face to face using 1/4 inch seam, leaving an inch and a half open for turning right side out
2. once circle is turned right side out, flattened and pressed, the 1.5 inch opening is closed off as a 1/8 inch top stitch is sewn around the perimeter.
3. the circle is then folded in half. The ends of the resulting "taco" are pinched to make a middle line just at those ends, which are then joined with two or three stitches (hand sewn)
4. rotate a halfway and bring the two other opposing side together to join as well. result should be something that looks kind of like a crab rangoon wrapper
5. flatten the "wrapper" centering the stitched end joins forming a square.
6. flip the petal-like extensions inside out and over the outer corners and even out for the finish.
7. the back side will be a square with contrasting corner tabs.

The video walk-through which served as my instruction may be found here: 

folded fabric ornament

I hope to give this a whirl with a smaller circle than my first run-through. Yes, I tend toward miniaturization. 

Related ideas for/with this:

• Use serger for the initial seam.
• Use finished square as a pocket for an apron or doll's dress
• Join several for a tree skirt.