borders | Scientific Quilter

Posts Tagged ‘borders’

23.1 Post Retreat Report

February 26, 2012

This week has been crazy fun and then back to normal.

The thing I worked on first at retreat was my exothermic wonders quilt borders.

This is as far away from the quilt top as I could get with it on the floor. So the borders are on the quilt, nice and simple.

Like the drawing that I did in EQ a while ago.

And I was attempting to piece the back the next day and instead I created a wallhanging with the leftover pieces from the defunct borders on this quilt.

See my design wall, by the way, 3M strips and binder clips or office badge clips. Non permanent and useful.

On the next day of retreat, I cut out, measured and sewed all the sashing strips to my DNA Steps quilt, and with double strips of sashing along the middle pieces and the border, this kept me pretty busy this day.

The pieces are still in pieces, as I want to quilt this in pieces on my machine then sew it together.

And finally, I was working on the borders of my disappearing four patch quilt, but for the life of me do not know why I only photographed it with my iPod camera rather than my real camera.

So the colors seem more washed out in this last photograph than the first. I may donate this quilt once quilted to a local charity, I like it, but this one is probably meant for someone else. small lap quilt size.

See the darker squares in the end, that’s green donated by my new quilting bud who is a math teacher at the local school system. She and I talked quite a bit because she was an early bird like me. (although way not as early as me).

Silly me, I was going to put red in those squares instead of green. Good thing I had suggestions from others to help me think through that decision.

I was incredibly glad I brought that quilt, because it was a place I was stuck and didn’t know what to do with it and how to measure it and fix it as I ran out of the black and white fabric on the borders.

And when no one else was around to watch, I worked on this and promptly put it away before anyone got up.

As you can see (or not well) I totally need practice. I don’t think I would recommend free motion quilting through tissue paper.

One strike against me, I forgot my Machiniger’s quilting gloves – So I was gripping and pulling the thing under the machine, which completely ripped up the tissue paper on the sides.

A good idea in theory, but the paper would rip way too easily and then occasionally would get caught under the presser foot.

So now I have to move to pens and tracing quilt patterns rather than quilting over them because I think I may have exhausted my available options (no golden threads quilting paper around here that I know of).

Anyway, it seems I got a lot done, but in truth, I had most of the centers and blocks done prior to going to the retreat.

I think it felt a little bit like cheating.

Posted in Home Sewing Front, Quilting, Quilting Community | Tagged borders, quilt, quilt borders, quilt finishes, quilt tops, quilting retreat | 7 Comments »

21.5 Little Time Left

December 18, 2011

Man, I hope all of you are realizing what little time we have left. 1 week until the big holiday.

Still have 2 presents to buy, but I have most of the rest done, except for wrapping.

And I have not promised anything (*edited* crafty) for christmas to anyone in my family.

Granted I have a giveaway quilt that I started 2 months ago that eventually will go out, but that’s not christmas related. I don’t like the pieced back I made at all right now anyway.

And now there’s little time before a family party this afternoon an hour away.

And since I’m so sick of orange & orange fabric, I thought I’d share & harken back to a UFO I started in February.

I made a weave quilt top center (okay not pieced together, but I have it all laid out ready to piece – blocks are done).

And for a while I put it aside to think about the borders.

And in October I came up with the borders for this quilt.

Well don’t have the corners done, but I want this weaved design for the borders. “Chevron-esqe”

And here is a graphical picture of the block I created.

And I was wondering exactly how to do this.

So half square triangles of blue & red, with yellow 1/2 inch strip in between.

I have part of it figured out, but I need to do some calculating for the other part.

I have no problem with making bias tape for the part that travels over the red. And I have some made.

But the problem is going to be with the bias & the blue portions.

Here’s part of my blocks right now.

I will probably calculate the angle this is hitting & create a blue block that has a yellow stripe naturally in the middle, which is what I should have done first anyway,

but I think things backwards most of the time. Still have to create & recreate scenarios in my head & make the mistakes before settling in.

Anyway this is where I am at. Well I have been starting more on the Journey Steps quilt too. Needed to remove myself from the orange.

I was reading an article about being ineffective & for sure that’s me. Don’t focus, don’t put things away, don’t stick w/ one project before moving to the next.

But that’s me. And that was sewing today. & yesterday was shopping and later this week is wrapping & wrapping up shopping.

Good holidays if I don’t make it back in time.

Can’t wait to share progress on my hexagon periodic table quilt – coming soon!

Posted in Home Sewing Front, Quilting Design | Tagged blue, borders, quilt, red, weave, yellow | Leave a Comment »

20.3 Borders Abound

October 4, 2011

Today was Saturday, but it really is Tuesday in real life, but my ‘Saturday’ from work. While I love it this time of the week, guess which day of the week I’m not so happy about the whole thing?

Anyway, over the past several days my computer, iTunes, browser just was behaving badly. Which in turn, leads either to TV / movies, or sewing, sewing, sewing, (or house cleaning, but none of that today, thank you very much), ore shopping, shopping.

In my sewing, I have been pretty much addicted, don’t really wanna stop. I worked on borders, after thinking about the borders/loss of borders on my exothermic quilt, I had borders on my mind.

Card Trick Borders

First I sewed together my card trick and got the inner border on.

Looks very spiffy as it is. Now I am going to put borders on the outside that are the same plain background with blocks either only in the corners or in the corners and sides both.

Corners

Corners & Sides

This quilt sat for several hours on the floor like this. I think just for difference sake (several other quilts have corner blocks), I need to bring in the blocks onto the sides.

I almost wish I had not cut my borders already for this quilt and could put them on point. But what can you do now after this I have hardly any of the background left?

Disappearing Four Patch Borders

And then, I decided to go ahead with a black & white border plan for my disappearing 4 patch quilt. I don’t think I shared, but it involved a high print fabric as a wider inner border and black & white checkerboard.

I purchased the high print border today, I don’t generally buy a lot of high print fabric.

This is meant to be 4 inch border around the middle but as the fabric is not washed yet, then I can’t spread out the fabric any more for the audition.

So the inner border is NOT yet done on this quilt. And the border corners are just going to be simple blocks of the same high print fabric.

There is quite a bit of blue-green in the border, which is not really present in the quilt, but I (so far) think that’s okay due to the scrappy nature of this quilt, hopefully that will tie everything together.

Also, serendipitously, I made the black and white border the same size as the patches in my D4P (Disappearing Four Patch) block, they are 4 inch finished.

Which makes the math really easy to work out for the inner borders, they have to be 4 inches in size each to fit as well.

Not all quilt math has to be hard.

Ten Minute Teal Borders

I have my ten minute blocks all packed away into rows (with post-it notes & pins) after laying them out on the floor on Sunday morning.

I hadn’t really thought about borders for this quilt until shopping this afternoon, and I saw a teally/purple batik that I really liked (not exactly quilt shop quality, but hey, I liked it).

The picture above also shows some of the other work done over the weekend on preparing the cathedral window quilt.

I have only pressed 1 row (5 blocks) with the iron, and only “cathedraled” that one row with pins, so not too much preparing. And I decided that only some of the blocks will get the fancy grey center.

All my pieces are cut for this quilt, and no I am not going to ‘cathedral / ten-minute block’ in between each of the blocks, even though I can. This quilt already has a lot of work ahead of it, especially for being a ‘last minute bonus type of quilt’.

Piano Key Giveaway Borders

A few posts ago was my 200′th post. And in honor of that, I had a surprise idea (even to myself) of giving away a mini quilt.

I said I was going to put borders on it & quilt it, so the weekend of borders, behold, it has borders now.

So now it’s roughly 17 X 34 unquilted in size. I plan to quilt this with FMQ (not sure what yet to do, but something other than Stitch in the Ditch).

It’s a mini quilt that’s not quite so mini.

I plan to use a mulitcolor, multi-strip binding bringing in some of the purples & burgundies & greens that are found in the center of the quilt, staying away from the teal I already have in the rest of the borders.

I only had 4 people comment on that post, so if now this quilt appeals more to you, let me know by sending a comment on Strip Sorting Surprise.

I would love to be able to give it away to someone once complete.

Currently I am not planning on putting a sleeve on the quilt, mostly due to time, but one can always pin a sleeve on the back for a wall hanging.

Unless …. someone has a fast & easy sleeve method they would like to share. I don’t really like the hand sewing down the sleeve to the back of the quilt.

… Or I could sew little holders into the binding that could become visible holders, that I may do, but that may determine horizontal or vertical which I don’t necessarily want to do (this quilt works both ways I think).

Those are my thoughts today on quilt borders. Maybe I should put this and a few more ideas into quilt border podcast episode since I’m currently stuck on my other episode (don’t ask, my bad on that one).

Posted in Home Sewing Front, Quilting | Tagged borders, quilt, quilt borders | 2 Comments »