Recovery

OxyClean, I think I love you. 

Yesterday I washed a quilt - and this is what came out of the dryer. I was so upset.  I spent hours on this quilt, working out the sizes for all the star points.  Cutting and piecing and making sure it lay flat.  Plus, it's the most intricate quilting design I've ever attempted.  And it was ruined on the first washing.

I didn't know what to do, but I headed out to the grocery store to scour the laundry aisle.  I was hoping to find colour catchers, as I've heard people have good luck with those.  But apparently none of the grocers around here carry them.  And Amazon won't ship them to my (Canadian) address.   So in desperation I picked up some Oxy Clean, and decided to try that.  I figured it couldn't hurt, given the state of the poor quilt.  I put the quilt through twice.  First in cold water with Oxy Clean and my detergent. It seemed to have helped a lot, although I could still see some bleeding.  So I took a deep breath, and washed it again - this time in warm water, which is recommended on the Oxy Clean packaging.

It was really hard to tell, while the quilt was wet (because all the seam allowances looked like they bled through the white, when it was soaking wet).  But I figured it was the best I was going to get, and I tossed the quilt back into the dryer.  And low and behold, this is what came out!

It's not perfect.  I can still see that the whites are a bit bluer than they should be.  But there are no more big blue stains across the quilt.  I am so happy!

Here is the finished quilt, pre-washing.  This was a design of my own, and something I'd always wanted to try out.  I gave up early on figuring exact sizes for all the star points, and ended up with a "cut, sew, trim" method which worked out well.

And a close up of some of the quilting, post washing.  I picked a quilting design I found online, and adjusted it slightly to handle the graduated sizes of the white squares.  The original shape when here.  One size down, I pulled the center bit only.  And one size up, I put 4 of these together to make a larger square.

I echo quilted in the blue areas, to highlight the star points.  And did a diagonal cross-hatch in the diamond border.  This is one of my more intricate quilting patterns - both in the design and in the quilting.  I'm very glad I was able to recover it, after the washing disaster last night.

I'm linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday today.  Drop by see all the fabulous projects.

Design Wall Monday - March 26

Once again, it's time for Judy's design wall Monday.  After a weekend of sewing, here is what's on my design wall today.  Not a lot of activity here, but Block 7 of the Blogger's Block of the Month is complete.  Plus, the last block for March in Dancing with the Stars is hanging out.

However, the weekend did produce some excellent results.  First, my March UFO is now complete.  Fully quilted, and bound and backed in orange.  I also included 2 spare blocks in the backing.

And, my Indigo quilt, from last June's monochromatic challenge is also complete.  I'm going to call this February's UFO, since it's on my list to complete and I never did get to Feb's quilt.  I'll swap the numbers, and when this number comes up, I'll pull out the Feb quilt.

When the light is better, I'll take some pictures of the quilting on both of these.  I'm really happy with the end results.  And I still have 3 Star Trek movies left to watch - I'll have to pick another UFO to work on while I watch those :)

Another Finish

One more finish for this month. My monochromatic challenge is done for November.  This month, Judy challenged us to create something with black and white, and one other colour.  I picked red, and created a quilt that's been stewing in my mind for a few months.  Not named yet, and it still needs a hanging sleeve, but the quilt is done in time for this month's challenge.

It's loosely inspired by M. C. Escher's Metamorphosis (below). 

I enjoyed the process of creating this quilt, but I have pretty much had my fill of hexagons and Y-seams for quite some time.

Almost Done!

I finished quilting the black and white quilt Thursday night.  I chose an overall meander for the quilting, because I thought all the angles in the quilt blocks needed curves to soften it a bit.  You can't really see the quilting in this picture - hopefully I can get some better pics once the binding is on. 

In the red patches, I did some detailed quilting with red thread, to add interest and highlight those blocks.

Binding will have to wait until Monday, when I'm back from my trip. I was planning black binding, but looking at the quilt I'm having second thoughts.  So, what do you think - black, or one (or several) of the black & white prints, for a scrappy binding?

Black and white and red all over

Happy Thanksgiving, to all those celebrating today!  On days like today, the advantages of working for a Canadian office of an American company become clear.  It's not a holiday for us here, but with the entire US on holiday for 2 days (or more) this week, it's like a vacation ;)  This year, I'm taking advantage of the low activity and taking 2 vacation days myself this week.

I have put the first day of vacation to good use.  The top of my black and white and red quilt is now complete! (It really is a rectangle - just a bad photo below)

I think I can now honestly say that I am done with hexagons.  Way too many little tiny Y-seams in this quilt, so I am quite happy to see the end of them.  Next step - find the backing fabric I bought on my earlier trip to the quilt store, and start the quilting.  I hope I can get that started today, but time will tell.  Tomorrow morning, I leave for a 3 day trip and I'm not quite finished packing yet.  I need to finish that first, then head out for a couple of hours this afternoon   Time permitting, I'll start the quilting tonight.

A Hallowe'en Finish

My Hallowe'en quilt is complete, and hanging in my front window.  A full 2 weeks early, even!

This was a lot of fun. I took inspiration from the block lotto curved rails, and 10 fat quarters I picked up this past weekend when I was out looking for inspiration.  The curved blocks went together really quickly, and used pretty much every scrap of the 10 fat quarters - I cut the quarters into 9" squares, and then cut the curves in those blocks.  Final blocks were trimmed down to 8" unfinished.  The FQs made 40 blocks in total - 10 down the sides of the panel on one side, and the other 30 blocks made up the reverse of the quilt.

I quilted it with freehand loops, and hung it with clips (to keep the 2-sided option) in my front window for the season.  I can't wait for daylight tomorrow, so I can see what it looks like from outside.  The panels in the window will probably interfere a bit, but hopefully people will be able to tell what it is.

This is my first seasonal quilt. And now I'm inspired to do something for Christmas next.

Hallowe'en Progress

I love holiday Mondays!  After our Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday, I spent most of yesterday relaxing in my sewing room.  I managed to put together the front and back of my Hallowe'en quilt.

And as I type, it is now sitting on the sewing machine with the quilting almost 1/2 done. This might set a record, if I manage to get some time in there tomorrow to finish up the quilting and prep the binding.

I'm using a variegated orange/brown thread in random loops for the quilting.  The current plan is to bind it in orange, assuming I have enough left in the yardage I found in the stash.  Alternatively, I'll make a scrappy binding.

Design Wall Monday - Oct 10

Happy Thanksgiving, to all my fellow Canadians!  We celebrated yesterday, because I like to have a day of rest before heading back to work, after making the big dinner.  I've put my long weekend to good use.  First, the star is done!  It still needs a border, but the center is complete.  And it's going to take a rest off my wall for a bit, while I ponder how I want to handle borders.

I put the pack of 10 fat quarters that came home on Saturday to good use.  Here they are, all cut, sewn, and arranged on my wall.  I've decided on a 2-sided quilt for Hallowe'en.  One side will have the panel I showed yesterday, with a row of blocks down each side.  And the reverse will be 30 orange/black/white blocks.

And the best news?  I re-read the October Monochromatic Challenge post, and I found that it is 2 colours plus a background.  So, here is my orange & black with white background, quilt for October!  Yay!  I didn't think I was going to have a chance to play with the monochromatic group this month.

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have on their design walls.

Blue Quilt

This month's colour is blue, in Judy's Monochromatic challenge.  At first I was disappointed - Indigo was last month, so blue this month seemed like a repeat.  Besides, my pink quilt is almost done, so if that was the colour for July I'd have an easy month ahead :)  Given what was picked for the UFO challenge, an easy month would have been nice.

But then I remembered that I have all the fabric bought and ready to go for my son's quilt.  So, blue it is this month, and maybe I can get this top put together.  I don't expect to quilt this one this month, since it is a bed-sized quilt.  But it would be nice to get it to the top stage, like his brother's quilt.

Stash Report - June 12

It's been a "quilty" week.  I made good progress on my indigo quilt top, and it is almost done now.  EQ6 says it used 5 yards of fabric, so that's in my count for this week.  It's hard to tell from this picture, but there are 4 different indigos used here (mostly because I didn't have enough of any single one).  I think I could stop here with the borders, but I don't have any appropriate indigo left for binding, so my plan is one more 2.5" border in white and then I can bind it in white.  The quilt is about 55" square at this point, so it came out to a nice size I think.

Also used (or at least pulled from my stash) 1 yard for the backing of the tic tac toe quilt, my UFO for June.

Totals for this year:
Overall, 11.75 yards in, 33.75 yards out.
Net for the year:  22 yards out.

Check out Judy's blog for more stash reports.

Bordering on insanity

I don't usually do pieced borders, for one reason.  My 1/4" seam is never exactly 1/4".  I've tried, but I just can't seem to find and keep that 1/4" line - it's always plus or minus a thread or two.  I've learned to cope - I square up every block before I move on to the next step, and for the most part that resolves the problem.  But pieced borders really need that type of accuracy.

However, my indigo quilt was crying out for pieced borders.  It needs them. So I decided to give it a whirl.  I figured I'd make the pieced section, and then calculate the fill strips to fit.  That should work.

Here are the 4 border pieces.  Just the corner stones left to make.  Only one problem with this - the strip second from the bottom is a full 1/2" longer than the other 3 (which are amazingly within 1/8" of each other).  I guess I have some re-stitching to do on one of these.

Design Wall Monday - June 6

 It's design wall Monday already.  Where does the time go? This seems like it's been a really short week for some reason.  However despite that, my design wall has something new this week.  I've started working on my indigo quilt, for Judy's monochromatic challenge for June.  Indigo is not a colour I have a lot of, but I went into my stash and I found one perfect piece - a nice deep purplish blue.  Sadly, I only have 1/4 yard of it.  So I dug out a few complementary blues that are within the range of indigo, and set out to design something that would showcase my favourite.

Here is part #1.  A 3" lemoyne star.  Once I had that done, I was really happy that it was the only one I needed to do for this quilt.  Sewing all those "Y-seams" is hard enough on a regular sized block - it was a real challenge in 3 inches.

Part 2 is done, too.  Now at least I have something sizeable to work with.

Now that the mystery quilt is almost done, this is all that is sitting on my design wall - one lonely block.  I'm sure its friends will be coming out to play soon :)

What's on your design wall?  Check out some others over at Patchwork Times.