Home Sewing Front | Scientific Quilter

Archive for the ‘Home Sewing Front’ Category

29.6 Retreat Progress

February 23, 2013

It’s been an interesting month. I didn’t realize it would be an entire month before posting, but here it is.

Anyway. Starting from NOW.

It’s also been an interesting week. What with going to my guild’s annual retreat and all.

And then the bereavement day. And the snow day. And now the days picking up the rest of the work resulting from snow delays, and in the future (monday), possibly more snow.

It seems things just have to be interesting right now.

Any case.

I should show you what I worked on Thursday as a compliment to what I have started with at the retreat.

I have reworked the corners of this quilt, removed the bright yellow inner border.

During retreat I created a total of 16 blocks of each direction of the weave border before I ran out of red fabric. I needed to have 19 blocks of each direction to complete the pattern all around plus the fabric for the corners.

I think this looks atheistically pleasing, and repeats the same numbers of blocks on each leg of the border as in the center of the quilt.

The design you see above requires 14 blocks of each direction and so I’ll be unpicking two of my completed blocks and reworking them to make the corners. If it’s possible to do, I kept similar dimensions and requirements of red for the corners compared to the original blocks.

I currently have not designed the ends for the borders. I was trying to make the design wrap around itself, but EQ crashed for the 3rd time, so I didn’t bother retrying right now. Instead, I chose other computer time.

At least I have a direction. And I have removed the papers from about 20 of these blocks too.

Oh yeah, I need to start working on the tutorial for these blocks. Pictures have been done for a few weeks. Getting there.

Okay, well after spending 2+ days on 9 blocks, I got out some projects that just needed borders.

So you remember the samurai Sudoku quilt I made, now it’s got its borders on, and just wowed the people at the retreat how well the borders work and are also very contrasty.

So now it floats in the middle of all the borders. I normally don’t like a lot of big borders, but this quilt it seemed to work quite nicely.

And the last quilt I also was working on borders for. The mystery quilt I did with my guild called Gemini Sky.

Obviously, this picture was taken at a time when the lighting was way different. The whole picture/quilt is too pink compared with real life. I didn’t get the borders sewn on after the bright pink border, but I did add the ‘filmstrip’ quality to the already fabulous and sewn strip border.

I designed a few cornerstone blocks for the corners, but this quilt we were really rushing to work on as it was on the last day and I wanted as much sewing time as possible, also knowing I had to pack up & leave soon, so no pictures beyond this point.

Gemini Sky looks way different than I expected, but I really like it.

And if I may share one other situation from the retreat that I was a ‘small’ part of….

There was a lady who was working on a double bargello rainbow quilt twist pattern.

Not my quilt, but hey she is a math teacher, and what can I say, I really liked this quilt idea. Great minds think alike. I would venture if I saw this pattern, I would try it out.

And so over the course of the few days, she worked on it and worked on it. The quilt requires you to sew strips and then cut the strips with a specific wedge template, sew them together in circles, and then cut portions of both of the circles, and then sew it together.

And just as what happened to me with my dancing ribbons, things weren’t lining up all that well in the wedge shape. So we talked about it what to do to fix it, she asked another math person, and they said to tighten up all the seams coming in and out of the circle. I agreed that would help, emphasizing the amount of sewing in the center of the circles to help tighten the thing up.

And so the lady did just that, and then had both circles laid out, and things still weren’t matching up, and she wants to get this quilt finished before April (for her other guild’s quilt show), and what she was doing to fix it wasn’t helping enough to work without some MAJOR reconstructive surgery.

So on the very last day, I saw the two circles together, thought of dresden plates or drunken path blocks, and came up with a solution that I think she liked. Just one of those things, “well what if you placed this piece here” type of things.

To save a quilt from “certain destruction”, here’s the resulting pattern which will be appliqued onto something. (or could stand alone I guess).

I am amazed that the rainbow pattern works too with this quilt. I am glad she didn’t have to trash the quilt that she had already put so much work into, and as I said, I think she likes this design too.

Best part is that with this design, you just have to be “close” to a quarter circle, so all that extra tightening, not quite necessary. no further seams to match up. Wheew!

Sew happy to have been able to help! Sew glad to have been able to see the possibilities with the design!

Alright until we meet again. It’s almost March-A-Long time.

I need to start working on that after work again, march starts the end of this coming week!!! AACK! Expect another post pronto.

Posted in 15 minute challenge, Home Sewing Front, Quilting Community | Tagged quilt, quilt retreat, Quilting | 5 Comments »

29.5 Weaving UFO

January 19, 2013

I have hidden this quilt in the back of other posts, but when I was thinking of a “quilt that was in the piecing stage” to take to my friends the other day, I grabbed this bag for my weave quilt.

I eventually will call this quilt something else I think.

I made the center of the quilt way back at a retreat 2 years ago. Bought the fabrics for the borders, but then realized I didn’t want to deal with the borders as plain.

I wanted pieced borders.

And so now I have been working on the pieced borders for this very simple quilt top.

The top, you may have seen before:

And I had the whole thing labeled ready to assemble later.

And this is the stage the center is still in, but I had a dream ….

… a dream where the weave pattern of the center would be friends with the weave pattern of the border.

A dream where the borders were not made, but especially created. By me.

I had several options, but I played with the idea of the bright yellow accent doing the weaving.

So I created this block (EQ first, then real life)

And this block requires paper piecing, so I worked on paper piecing the block in sections once I figured out how.

And although I tried and tried to line things up, I did not do a super fantatstic job at making sure all the yellow pieces were even the same width.

So I had my PLAN B for this quilt – Bias Bars

The one on the left.

And this works much better.

So now I’ve made 5 more-almost 6 more.

To complete the pattern I have created, I’ll need a total of 38 blocks. Of which I have 6. Maybe I can opt to weave the sides only, or the top & bottom only, and do a straight chevron for the other sides.

Depends on what I have available.

The block wouldn’t be so bad now that I am organized, except for all the trimming up at each sub cut stage.

Well off to work on it a tiny bit more before going to bed for the evening. If I get my act together I maybe can think about a tutorial for a weave border. Maybe.

Posted in Home Sewing Front | 7 Comments »

29.4 Working on it Wednesday January 16

January 16, 2013

This quilt is getting SO SO close.

I do have my issues with my vintage machine – carlotta my necchi.

I was sewing the binding on the back to do my very first machine binding, choosing to do the zig zag finish stitch with the pretty multicolored thread. I got 1/3 of the way around and, ugg, I have to rip & start over, may need to press my binding down flat, but the stitches were being skipped on the binding.

And you may or may not be able to see the skipped stitches in this picture.

I gave up for the day (and the next day) as soon as I saw that I’d be ripping out. NO STRESS for this quilt, and if I had ripped at this time, I would have stayed up late and stressed me out at work all day the next day. And today, was busy after work as well.

And tomorrow’s a sewing day, but a sewing at someone else’s house day, so I don’t have the luxury of sewing down binding due to limited space.

I DID think I didn’t know what to do tomorrow, but I think I inadvertently found a project. That was at the “piecing stage”.

I think I want to do the “Quilt It! Challenge” hosted by Jackie and Kitty, some wonderful ladies on twitter in the podcast universe community thing.

The premise is to take 1 quilt block and quilt it 3 different ways throughout a quarter.

Love this idea, very “experimental”.

Although I could see this being a quilt together and my symmetrical mind screams 4 blocks, 4 blocks, you must do 4 blocks each. So it’d be interesting to think about a 4th design. Let alone a 3rd or 2nd design on the blocks.

And the first 3 months are close to a design I was going to do anyway for the future, so tomorrow I’ll be piecing some blue & white blocks together.

And I will do my best to quilt it this year. I already have plans to quilt more this year to reduce the number of tops waiting to be quilts.

I wanted to show off something one of my quilting retreat friends/mentors/inspirators made for everyone at the last retreat I attended.

A beautiful stiletto.

It makes me want to purchase a custom seam ripper. Maybe one day.

And today I got a book, and a few days ago another pattern. Want to see?

The book in the middle talks about color, and my friend is introducing a color workshop for our guild next month, and I am sure this may help inspire her, although at this point, it may be too late.

The pattern on the right is just a twister color inspiration. I will probably be making the throw quilt pattern out of this pattern as it has more colors to it than the others.

With the twist ruler I bought, I can be somewhat flexible on the size of the project, but I do have to keep in mind I’ll be making a quilt twice with it.

And the book on the right is spiral quilts, which takes a shape, and shows you how to fractal the shape, and how to design quilts, color patterns, and math, and pretty, and triangles, and fractals, and pretty ….. swoon.

Plus I’m trying to get in a little bit of walking in, or cycling on a stationary bike type thing (pedal only), or something, which also takes chunks out of my days.

Busy busy. Always. I know how to stay busy. But the last half hour or 45 minutes of my day I do tend to rest. Take care! Until next time.

Posted in Experiment, Home Sewing Front | 4 Comments »

28.8 A warm finish for a cold day

December 7, 2012

I actually finished a quilt.

THE QUILT.

The quilt of my obsessions for the past year and a half!

A double sided quilt. One with highly pieced and planned side, and one with a devil may care attitude and piecing.

I took the week off which gave me the courage to finish the last borders on the quilt back (one of which is completely hacked off on the finished product, but hey, I knew it would happen, and then finally rent the long arm again.

I have been starting to populate flickr with pictures of my Exothermic Wonders Quilt, a double sided warm color quilt that has a fall / halloweeny feeling, without actually getting cheesy about it.

Regular blog readers and listeners may have heard about this quilt before, and after this, I will move on to other things.

A quilt for me!!

The Back of this quilt (free form)

Some close ups of my pantograph called samurai.

And I also have quilting on the front of the quilt!

And this is early AM putting the binding on the quilt!

And I did it myself too. My 2nd quilt I’ve ever had on the long arm (ripped the zippers from the one I had 3/4 the way done.

I rented the long arm from Quilted Memories, and Lyn remembered who I was as soon as I walked in the door! What a great thing, and something I poorly needed!

And because of all the detail in the posts I had taken this spring (see part 1 & part 2), I had hardly any downtime trying to figure out how to work the machine the 2nd time. Even after 7 or so months away!

And because I was being silly, I thought this shot was pretty nifty!

Today is a grey cold day, first cold day we’ve had in over a week. This winter is turning out to be another hot / dry winter like it was last year.

Bonus is that I’ve already got my christmas shopping done as well! Off to play for the rest of the day!

Posted in Finished Quilts, Home Sewing Front, Quilting, Scientific Inspiration | 14 Comments »

28.7 Getting Star Struck

November 25, 2012

A month (or two?) ago my cousin asked if I would like to do a baby quilt (not for her, but for her daughter). I said sure, and then proceeded to forget / put off deciding to do it for at least another month. I had thought maybe I would, but how would I charge, would I charge, precedent is set, all these questions & many more froze me to my path.

So I avoided it.

Not a great strategy of dealing with things, I know, but one I am most familiar with.

So I was asked a week ago if I was still up for doing it, and so I rummaged around looking for jelly roll patterns, happened on Quiltville (OK I know about quiltville, I have KNOWN about quiltville for quite some time now) and I happened to see a quilt or two that struck my fancy.

Made some decisions. Finally.

So I proceeded to message rapidly & rabidly my indecision, my possible solutions. A day or so later, she told me that her daughter really liked black & brights a lot, which was one of my favorite quilt options that I really liked that I would be happy with a quilt like this, even if things didn’t work out for the baby quilt.

Cuz was cool, telling me she didn’t want to cause me stress, and if it happened, great, if not, then I’d be getting something I really liked out of this ordeal (and even so, will be making blocks for myself for this quilt anyway).

The quilt I saw was “Star Struck“. In the dark & brights version. Less scrappy than bonnies traditional scrappy quilts, but scrappy none-the-less.

And the blocks are easy. I’ve made the sub blocks for 11 of them and just started sewing them the last 2 days.

Now I know to get the 4 subblocks sewn (not together yet), it takes me just under 10 minutes and 30 seconds!

So you wanna see?

If you want to learn how to make the blocks, head over to Bonnie Hunter’s site to see her progress and get the steps on how to make them. Her tutorial is easy to follow.

Here’s my first 2 blocks. Oh so fun!

And I love the secondary pattern that shows up in the end. So satisfying. And cheery!

But due to the pinked edges, I don’t think the baby will see many sharp points on this quilt.

But sharp objects are bad for babies anyway.

I neglected a whole bunch of things today to work on this. So rapid progress made so far may come to a grinding halt this coming week with work, cooking, shopping for groceries, playing video games and / or billiards. So we’ll see how much of this gets done beyond today.

It feels better getting things done toward this quilt, even if things don’t work out with the commission. (price doesn’t seem right, baby hates the quilt, mommy hates the quilt, baby is 25 before getting the quilt made, ya know, baby is opposed to triangles, or is allergic to triangles, baby cannot stand the randomness, or detests rotational symmetry, – ya know the regular things that could cause this to go wrong).

Posted in Home Sewing Front, Quilting | Tagged batik, black, bonnie hunter, bright, quilt, Quilts, scrappy, star struck | 6 Comments »

28.6 SQ Ep 049 – What to take on Retreat

November 21, 2012

podcast feed

As I was posing the question about what to take on retreat, I was hit by a question out of the blue about retreats on my Facebook wall.

I was happy to see that many different answers to the question, what do you advise a retreat newbie provided three answers to my questions.

First, bring things for personal comfort, such as food, fuzzy socks etc.

Second, bring things for supplies for projects – don’t forget your sewing machine if you’re a machine sewist. (most of us are!)

Third, reflect on the types of projects you’re taking – always precut, take more than you think, decide what’s useful for you to finish

In the longest section I discuss what it was like to be at my current retreat.

The biggest quilt was the samurai sudoku quilt top center finish.

Next was helping the near 10 year old with designing and sewing this block.

After the samurai was taken care of, I worked on these two blocks and made parts for more blocks.

And you can see the difference in the blocks and their construction.

And here’s the chilly pre-thanksgiving view from my porch this morning, testing out a camera option. Luckily it will get nice and toasty today.

That’s all for now. Look for BFSI quick post.

Additional music

Walking with your bare feet on by Erin Dickens

Posted in Home Sewing Front, Podcast Episode, Quilting, Quilting Community | Tagged podcast episode, quilting retreat, retreat | 7 Comments »

28.5 More complete pics of samurai sudoku

November 18, 2012

I apologize for my somewhat cryptic message I put up as the last blog post. I had tried to post from ipod on retreat from the wordpress site & things weren’t the way I was used to. And typing on such a tiny device isn’t my strong suit.

Any event, I calculated and finished the center of the top of the samurai sudoku quilt that I mentioned this spring.

Here is the better picture of the center than what was originally on flickr.

The 5 different game boards overlap, and the sashing has a lighter value than anything else on the quilt to highlight that fact. The center sashing is aqua instead of a variation of periwinkle like the corners are.

I took a lot of organizational sticky notes as I was going as well.

Each square had a number, each block had a position that was denoted, and each sashing had a name (below) for the corner of the quilt it was in.

And I was able to calculate everything with a sort of ‘master list’ I kept referring to (similar to the picture below, but the original picture was a blurry mess on sticky note, so this is a recreation of my master list).

I decided to chunk all the sashing with the right side and the bottom side connected to each quilt block after it was finished.

And I had to check the sashing as well to make sure it would work.

And here’s one corner of the quilt!

Which I had to rip out a few times the sashing in the corner when it was the ‘wrong color’. Which is a small price to pay for getting it right.

As long as I didn’t get too far ahead of myself …

But then I didn’t take any pictures and all these blocks got sized, sewn together the entire morning of the fall retreat I attended. At least no more pictures until the very, very end.

I had to put the pink postit notes all in the same corner of the quilt to keep me from getting confused. And then they were falling off, so I pinned down the post its anyway.

… Anyway… this blog post was started 3 days ago and now I am trying to compose another podcast episode. Part of it needs editing, and should be up shortly. Will create a new post when it’s ready.

Hope you enjoy the samurai soduko quilt pictures above!!!

Posted in Home Sewing Front | Tagged quilt, samurai sudoku, sudoku | 3 Comments »

28.3 Finishing it Up Just to Start Again!

November 4, 2012

So I put one quilt on my “hit list” and that inspires me to get a “move on” for several others.

I was writing up 5-6 different types of lists (by hand, not by spreadsheet) of different quilting projects at different stages, putting the quilt ideas into groups.

Voila I still have many many that are ready to quilt for FMQ (which is mostly the stage I am at with my Exothermic Quilt anyway, but I’d like a tiny bit more practice.

The biggest finish / progress that is hard to see

Yesterday, I got back out the FMQ foot and the arufil mono filament thread, and quilted down Dancing Ribbons.

Only on the top of each ribbon, and only on the outline of the star.

The first thing I did was to stabilize the outside circle with the monofilament thread but then I didn’t like I how I did that, and later went back and did another circle around the quilt with another pass of monofilament which was more stable.

But then I quilted the outside with a colored thread.

And then I got brave and decided to requilt the circle a third time with a ‘FMQ zig zag” which would eliminate my need to be good or perfect along the circle. So I quilted over my monofilament completely and as you can see I haven’t picked out the monofilament underneath yet.

A couple of weeks ago I tightened up this entire quilt. It was hard to show any progress, so I couldn’t exactly show pictures. But what I did was this:

The quilt was originally sewn with white thread. All the wedges had white thread. When I basted this to a backing, the white thread kept showing through. Kept showing and I didn’t like it.

I ripped off the quilt from the basting, and I took dark thread and sewed just a scant behind it. Never ripping out the white thread, but just by sewing 2 threads over inside the original seam every time the seam was stressed by pulling now what would be seen would be dark thread – which actually was a big improvement.

And this helped tighten up the quilt that was sorta bulging in the center anyway.

But it’s really hard to see the double seam and now the thing is quilted, and I forgot pictures.

And here’s what I’m thinking for the binding (need to sew together & put on, but I think decided).

Actually I may get a tiny bit of gold piping for the outside just a small amount of piping on this would be just the right touch. Will have access to piping foot and piping knowledge at a retreat starting wednesday.

Other Finishes

I am also finishing up some of the other mini quilts that I have quilted, by doing the finishing touches on – the binding of the minimalist fibonacci, the star on the space miniquilt & the binding on it.

Here’s the appliqued stars in the center.

As you can see there are now two stars and the circle is less noticeable in the center. Perhaps if I get crazy I could bead it up?? Perhaps.

And the one fibonacci quilt?

The other – the feather fibonacci, is probably getting ripped out this coming week.

I keep looking and looking at the red back thread poking through – knowing I can do better with the tension. Or at least match the thread on the back with the front thread.

And I was going to play up the red and go with a red piping, but unless the thread on top is quilted with red, I won’t use a red piping, but I do want to learn piping, so I’ll have a border piped around the edge of this border of some alternate color!

The Start of a new Shiny

And since I’m finishing, or near finishing – the darn LQS!

I had to go in there during a sale, and I HAD to see this quilt that was all quilted up with the sample quilt. And this quilt looks like it was just MADE FOR ME, so I had to purchase the pattern and decide to work on it this week at retreat!

Take a look at the new shiny. VERY Darla-esque!

And since it calls for 4 yards of fabric for each color of the quilt, I will actually divide & conquer the sections with my neutrals (again – just like the gemini sky quilt) and possibly even my darks (I never have more than 2 yards of any kind of fabric).

Meet the Kings Puzzle, which will be my fibonacci inspired quilt (OP Art quilt style)

And some possible fabrics

But on second & third thought what about red and black for this quilt?

May have to also try that as well! Or black and hot pink?

I may just switch up the fabrics or make several variations of this quilt, we’ll see how it goes with my original colors and fabrics.

TOO MANY CHOICES!!!! But Fun!!

Posted in Finished Quilts, Home Sewing Front, Quilting, Quilting Design | Tagged Dancing Ribbons, dancing ribbons quilt, fibonacci quilt, puzzle quilt, quilt finishes, quilt ufos | 9 Comments »

28.2 Bloggers Quilt Festival Fall 2012 – Black Baltimore Beauty

October 27, 2012

It’s that time again to sign up for the bloggers fall quilt festival.

The quilt I am entering is a recent finish, but not a recent start.

This was my first ever applique quilt learned from an applique class. The pattern is in Mimi Didrich’s Favorite Applique book, and I didn’t have much of a stash at the time. I added the birds on the sides from the pattern she has later in her book.

It was never my intention to “make a balitmore album quilt”, but this was the pattern I needed for the class I took, so here it is.

So so glad I put the background as black instead of white. I think my colors pop, but I do sort of wish I had a little variation in the flowers or even the swag. But I still love this little quilt.

Here’s a photoshopped version of this quilt (not true colors).

Our class was to applique every week a different block or two or 3. I don’t remember exactly the class pacing, but I do remember doing all the borders at once, and there was only 4 class meeting times and the end was the quilt construction & mitered borders (which are appliqued over).

The teacher was really wonderful putting tons of tips & tricks about applique or other items (notions junkie – but that’s GOOD in a teacher, I got to see the stuff in use!).

This was supposed to be hand quilted, but when it took 2 years to just have desire to get the center of one wreath done, I decided that I finally needed to quilt this by machine this summer. So I worked with the classic clamshell pattern freehand.