New Experimental Wall Hanging in Progress

This piece was started on the last afternoon of Ana Buzzalino’s workshop while our main projects were soaking in the dye.

The bright turquoise is pure polyester that will not be affected by procion dyes.

Everything else is 100% cotton except for the centre Chinese print and the purple, which are both poly-cotton blends, and some of the neutral pieces around the borders, which are upholstery samples.

Scouring:

I’m in the habit of prewashing all quilting fabrics other than pre-cut jelly rolls and charm packs and the like.  That said, I wash my stash with regular detergent.

Scouring means using Synthrapol to really remove all dressings and treatments and ready the fabric for surface design treatments.

In this piece I did wash the upholstery samples in Synthrapol, and the muslin I’m dyeing for the binding was also scoured when I bought it, since it was intended for dyeing.

Prediction:

That the printed cottons (pink with Chinese characters and the purple and pink dots around the border) will take up less of the dye than the other fabrics.

That the upholstery fabrics will retain more of the dye than the piece used in my other workshop project, which glowed when it came out of the dye and then mostly rinsed off.

Quilting:

Purple polyester serger thread, which will retain its current colour and contrast with the dyed finished wall hanging.

I’m new to free motion quilting, not that I need to say that to anyone who knows about FMQ!  But you have to start somewhere and since this is a very experimental piece I figured it was a good place to start.  I used the approach explained by Elizabeth Hagh of the Modern Quilt Guild and found it was much faster than quilting with a walking foot.  Maybe this will inspire me to persist and tackle larger pieces, of which I have several almost ready to be quilted.  I bought 5.4 metres of Warm & Natural the other day based on current projects, so that’s an added incentive.  The batting was 50% off so to me this was a rational decision …

Backing:

Blue with a large white hibiscus print.  Since this will be dyed purple I wanted a simple backing in a primary colour, and was limited to finding something large enough that I wouldn’t have to piece it before starting the quilting.

New Quilt Unveiled

Nothing was posted about this earlier because I wanted to surprise the recipient.  If she totally hates it, she can always pretend that the back is the top:

All my life I’ve struggled with completely finishing things, so bingo might be a better hobby than quilting, I sometimes feel.

Anyhoo, this has been bound, labeled, and provided with its coordinating tote bag.  And after going back and forth on it for a few times, I put handles on the tote bag.

This photo shows the bag.  Almost every piece of fabric has a story, either where it came from or how it was made.

See the blue and red swirly fabric towards the bottom of the bag?  That was a serendipitous piece created when I was using a hatband that had turned out too tight as a wiping rag when I was dyeing fabric.  For years this was a piece that was waaaay to beautiful to cut.  see here for a close up photo. The pink and green paisley to the right of it comes from either Susan Purney Mark or Daphne Greig.  Many small squares of it have been floating around Victoria, and I’ve collected pieces from both of them.

The fun thing about making this is that it grows itself and is a fast stash buster.  I’ve tried designs that purport to bust stash but require a lot of time and patience to work with smaller pieces that can’t be strip pieced.  After the twin bed topper was done I had no less scraps than before I started.  If my scraps continue to grow it’s because I keep an eye open for small pieces that other people have given up on!

When making this fabric I set a few parameters:

The same fabrics can be touching because I want to fool the eye and not be too obvious about where one piece starts and the other leaves off.  See how I did it with marbled fabric:

No, no set in seams here, thank you very much!

I’m working with strips and with pieces that are smaller than a fat quarter.  If you click on this photo Andrea Hamilton’s mid-arm quilting shows to much better advantage on the light fabric.  We chose Valdani Gem Symphony.

Nothing representational really, although I do have one butterfly on my cushion.

The fabrics are mostly solids, tone on tone, neutrals, batiks and surface design pieces. However in the spirit of nothing representational, I’m not using batiks with really in your face pictures on them, like flip-flops.

I’m not allowed to get too precious and agonize over whether adjacent fabrics look good together.  Some do, some don’t.

Some of the fabric is too beautiful to cut and some was what I couldn’t sell at the Guild garage sale!  And some came from fellow surface design folks who were cleaning out their studios and desperate to see the back of their own stash.

Since the fabric is used to make larger items there is not a set block size.  I sew pieces to each other and build long strips about 7 to 10 inches wide and as long as the width of a twin bed quilt.  Then when I’m going to make something I play around with these strips and figure out the final design.

And although some oriental carpet makers and Amish quilters put deliberate errors into their pieces because perfection belongs to God alone, I doubt I’ll ever come close to needing to do that!  There’s a non deliberate error in the tote (one handle is twisted, aaaarrrgggghhhh!

and another (really galling) one in the quilt itself. 

Disappearing 9-Patch, work in progress!

This is a process shot of a disappearing nine patch quilt while it was on my design wall.  Other bits and pieces are peeking out from the sides, this was just right on top of everything.

It’s now assembled and in the process of being quilted.

The Missouri Quilter YouTube video I watched was great as it clearly explained what to expect and how to decide what fabric goes where.  That was how I picked the light blue feathery print for the four pieces in the middle of each outside, so they would become sashing.  I put my focus fabrics in the four corners and the centre fabric was consistently either dark blue or the rust fossil fern print.

There’s many ways to put disappearing nine patch together but for this first attempt I decided to follow the advice given and ensure that I wasn’t trying to match a whole lot of inside seams.  Just matching the seams on the blocks was quite enough of a challenge, thank you.  The design wall was a blessing as the blocks stayed up for over a week while I rearranged them to not have any matched focus fabrics touching each other.  Doing that probably took longer than it took to do the actual sewing of the top.  You can tell this was still in design because there a several places where focus fabs were touching.

Point of Pride:  Everything came from my stash, no shopping was involved!

Be sure your sins will find you out …

there, THAT got your attention, right?

Quilter’s and crafter’s sins I now realize I’m guilty of:

Not cutting across the width of the fabric (WOF).  Silly me, I thought it made sense that if you have half a yard of fabric and you need a strip that’s 8″ by 2″ you would cut parallel to the selvedge, leaving 40″ of fabric wide by 18″ long.

2010 was the year in which I had the light bulb moment and realized it just doesn’t work like that.   I needed WOF for trading at our Guild’s retreat, and I needed WOF in significant quantities to make pillowcases for the million pillowcase challenge.

Several times I pored through my entire stash only to realize what I had been doing all those years, it finally caught up to me!  This led to a change in my evil ways, a gargantuan stash busting project, and (surprise!) fabric shopping for half-metre and bigger cuts.  Although for 2011 one of my watchwords is use what you have.

Have also resolved to be more attentive to thread.  Valdani is my favourite, and I do use what I have!  Actually had to buy a second spool of Gem Symphony when Andrea Hamilton was quilting my Shattered Angles quilt.  I look on Valdani as chocolate minus the calories.

Cindy Scraba is another amazing Island lady.  Her knowledge of threads is astounding.  Trivia:  Egyptian cotton is in the process of being protected legally, just like champagne in France.   It is so superior and they need to protect it.

Cindy sells Superior thread and I’ve started tracking in the catalogue what I have in the different lines.  The catalogue is great because it tells you which thread to use in every situation.

At the Guild retreat, I won a sample set of Wonderfil threads.

And I still have threads from my grandmother’s store that go back to the forties — on wooden spools with names for the colours.  They live in a case designed and built by my grandfather.  I use them for basting and minor embellishments.  After all this time I don’t trust them for anything that has to stay together.  But back then thread colours had names, not numbers, like Apple Green, Mauve, Primrose.

 

Just Magic!

Just Magic! is the name of this wall hanging, which I pieced yesterday and today.  The centre medallion is Spoonflower fabric I had made up from this sketch.

Readers will know I’m not one to avoid a challenge and that I oftentimes bite off more than I can chew.

I’ve decided to go for the WordPress Post A Week 2011 challenge, both here and at my new homeschooling blog, One Size Fits None.  This is very new and still very much a work in progress.

For 2011 the virtue I will aim to practice is Wisdom. Click here for more about the Virtues Project, which emphasizes shared human values and how much we have in common across cultures.

And I picked two slogans:

Just Magic!

and Use What You Have!

Just Magic! is more inspiring and less cliched than Just do it!  It reminds me that there are miracles everywhere and that there is magic in getting things done.

Use what you have is self-explanatory.  I’m using it to refer to knowledge and techniques — to use all the techniques at my disposal as well as the fabrics in my stash.

Now this is not going to be taken to ridiculous lengths.  In the Flickr group when it started (you commit for a month at a time), there were people saying their red pen had run out and they would make do without, a lady who agonized about needles for her sewing machine, and one person who was running a craft business and was still trying not to buy anything.  Not me!

I plan to use stuff up and curb full price impulse buys.  That still leaves garage sales, thrift stores, baraka, trading with friends, and sales at quilt stores, which deserve our support because we need them to be there once the stash is used up, right?

Related to all this, I plan to jot down a list of creative things I did each day.  This would actually make for a very boring blog because it would be all cryptic squiggles and stopping to illustrate each day would not happen.  I started this habit in mid-December and I can see that over time it will constitute a very useful record.

Activities I’m looking forward to:

Elizabeth Barton’s class at Quilt University. Every time it’s been offered, it filled up super fast and I kept missing out.  This class starts on Friday and I do in fact need to do a little shopping ~non fusible gridded interfacing.  Hopefully I’ll have the time to devote to getting the most out of this class and the work at home on my own machine format will be less stressful than the last design class I took, which was not a great fit for me.

Cindy Scraba is coming to our guild in March for a one-day workshop, midweek, which I signed up for.

and at Satin Moon next Saturday Arly Haner is doing a trunk show of scrap quilts, which I’ll be able to attend.

Tote bag finished

Well, here is the little tote bag I was experimenting with.  It is variegated through and through to the point that I used Valdani thread in Graffiti for the topstitching around the top of the bag.  Valdani is one of my indulgences, every time I go to Satin Moon I gravitate to the display and drool, then figure that if I didn’t spend the money on thread I would blow it on chocolate!

This is the perfect size for wooden blocks, which came packaged in an environmentally friendly box that they exactly fit into if put in in the right order.  At bedtime when there’s a tidal pool of toy bits all over the floor and no one has the energy or patience, a bag is something that anyone, ANYONE! can put blocks into.

Having made one I can certainly see making more and experimenting.  And I’m further cannibalizing the assembled scrap fabric to replace a tired old cushion cover, just have to put a piece together that’s 20 by 45, and find something large and boring for the lining, and I’ll be off to the races!

You’d never know this has anything to do with Lutradur!

but it does.

 

Lutradur is a non woven synthetic material that can be warped or distressed with heat, painted, almost anything goes.

At this point I’m most interested in exploring the translucency of Lutradur.  Laine Canivet whom I know through FAD, is teaching a Lutradur class for the Quilt Guild at the retreat next summer and asked volunteers to make inspirational projects.  My first was a bowl, which Laine now has.  Then my thoughts went in another direction and my current project is to make a tote bag from Lutradur.

 

Although I’ve had the Total Tote Bag Book (Joyce Aiken and Jean Ray Laury, published in 1977) for ages, I have to confess this is the first time I’ve actually set out to make a tote bag from it.  I measured the Lutradur I have on hand.  Use what you have is becoming my new mantra, as you can see.  Based on the supply of Lutradur I did the math and decided it would be a good idea to make a “muslin” out of fabric to be sure the directions made sense and the measurements added up.  I found a practical piece of fabric from my stash of suitable size, then decided to use some of the assembled fabric I’ve been making in odd moments using up scraps and smaller pieces from my stash.  The intent is to make a bed quilt but if I keep on cannibalizing it it may be like Penelope’s weaving in the Odyssey!

Feeling that with all the seams it would be a good idea to line this, I used the fabric I’d chosen from my stash to make that.  Then I thought since I’m doing this, it would be good practice to make handles (although the plan for the Lutradur tote will have different handles).  Back to the stash, and more math because I figured 18 inch handles were too long for a boxy, undersized tote.

 

So now I’m at the point of assembly, some hand sewing is required.  One reason not to make a tote bag is the proliferation of totes we’ve acquired from various conferences, events, grocery stores, etc.  But this one now has a purpose in life, it’s destined to hold wooden blocks.

 

And here’s an inspiring photo of pomegranates!  The colour is so beautiful but when I tried using the arils with salt and vinegar to dye cotton I got a feeble mushroomy pink-brown colour.

Blues Singing

Rules were made to be broken and I’m hereby breaking the rule I made for myself about not posting fabric before it’s been made into something.

The fabric on the left is a Sherrill Kahn design which a retired quilter who was downsizing gave to a family member who was helping her move.  I received two meters and I don’t even know this lady!  The diamonds on the right are from a fellow editor who has also been an avid crafter and seamstress, who just gave me a bag full of fabric goodies.  As soon as I saw this I knew these two fabrics will be together in something really cool!  Also in the bag was a light purple that exactly matches one of the stripes in some fabric I got at the Guild garage sale, and two different animal skin prints.  Woo-hoo!

Things that come with a story and not just from a store are so much more meaningful and fun, although of course smart store owners do their best to create stories of one kind or another.  I can go through my stash and recall all kinds of stories, where I was, or which garment I cut up, or that something was being clearanced because other customers just didn’t appreciate it.   Perhaps I’ll start an occasional series of quilts with stories, what do you think, and what’s your best stash story?

 

Dragonfly

How much stash do we quilters have that is just too precious to slice into?  It sits there for year after year, maybe when you bought it you had a project in mind but then it was just too beautiful to cut and if you use it all up there won’t be any left, and of course the older the fabric is the more true that is, because designs get retired faster and faster these days.

By the way, off on a tangent, I really appreciate the manufacturers who have the guts to put the year the fabric was issued into the selvedge!   Why doesn’t everyone do that?  To me it just makes so much sense.  I always look at the publication date of any book I’m reading (yes, even cookery books, I know, I’m a nerd!)

Back on topic again, Cathy Miller aka the Singing Quilter teaches a reverse applique mola class that’s intended to use up the fabric that’s too beautiful to cut, and she doesn’t make you cut it!   This little dragonfly is my first attempt at this technique, complete with my own little wrinkle that sidesteps binding and showcases the fabulous fabric on the back of the piece as well as in the image.

Cathy just released another CD and I went to the launch party at Satin Moon recently where she not only performed the songs but told us the stories behind them, which was fascinating.

Sidestepping binding is a hot topic with me right now because I’ve had a busy week with one thing and another, but I need to get the binding hand sewn onto the Shattered Angles quilt.  I get sidetracked so easily between taking stretch breaks, tending to family needs, work deadlines.  But I did make good progress today so I’m confident that tomorrow I’ll get it finished so it can go to the Post Office on Sunday (ours is open, since it’s in the back of the drugstore, what a blessing!)  I have a scrap of bright orange and turquoise batik pinned where I stopped yesterday, so that encourages me to keep going.

Also because I have another longer term project on the go at the moment, workwise, I have started scheduling in a set amount of time per day to work on each of these projects.  I just have to remind myself that you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Does anyone else struggle with this, elusive balance in life (well, probably everyone does!)  And what do you do to keep yourself on track?

Simple gifts

These have now safely arrived and been approved of, so I can post about them.  I made a dispenser for reusing plastic bags

… and a bag for baking potatoes in the microwave …

shown together

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Usually I go with a more colourful palette or with something humourous, but the recipient’s taste goes decidedly to black and white high contrast effects, so that’s what I went with.  Another family birthday is fast approaching so I have to pull out more fabs and get busy.  Luckily neither of these folks ever reads this, LOL!