Quiltathon

Judy L is hosting a quiltathon next weekend.  And she picked the perfect weekend for it (for me, anyway).  My kids will be away the whole weekend, so I will be able to participate guilt-free!!  I can't wait. And I have 1 week to get ready.

There are so many things I want to work on during the quiltathon.  Should I quilt the 2 that are waiting to be loaded on my frame?  Finish my half-completed tops?   What I really want to do is start on one of the new quilts.  So that means that I need to get some other stuff done before then, because I really don't want to have even more 1/2 completed projects.

My goal for this weekend is to make some decent progress on quilting the star mystery, and morning splash quilts.  I have the backing (washed tonight).  Thread on hand (that was a nice surprise).  And Morning Splash is now loaded and ready to go, first thing tomorrow.

And I know that I'm going to work on this, because I now can't get at anything else in my quilting room until it's done and the table is put away.

All Caught Up

I had the day off work today, and I spent  it enjoying time for myself.  That meant quilting, shopping, and later I'll go out dancing.  Weekday holidays are the best!

First, I spent this morning catching up on Judy's quilt for an hour.   All caught up now to the end of Day #7, and the quilt is starting to come together.  I put up some of the partial blocks on my wall in addition to the completed blocks and corners, so that I could see the overall effect.  I see now I got two pieces backwards.  Good thing they are in the unfinished sections.

I'm really liking this design from Judy.  I thought I'd try a smaller size, even though the instructions weren't provided for that.   Seemed easy enough - just drop some of the blocks and shrink the borders to fit.  So I guesstimated the new fabric requirements.  Incorrectly it turns out.  Despite almost running out of my colours (just barely squeezed out the final 2 pieces), and now getting pretty low on background fabric (about 3" left) I will persevere.   Apparently we are done cutting from the colours, and the background looks like we're almost done too.  So, I shall keep my fingers crossed and continue on.

After catching up on quilting, I headed out shopping.  I actually had a non-quilting goal in mind - my computer crashed on Monday, so it is off to the repair shop for some TLC.  After I dropped it off, I realized I was half-way to the quilt shop.  So, onward ho!   I pondered several options, and finally left with fabric for a new quilt, and a couple more colours to go with some fabric I bought earlier.  The more I thought about that one as a 2-colour quilt, the less I liked it.  And lucky me, the store had the fabric I already bought, so finding 2 colours to add to the set was easy (or as easy as picking colours ever is for me).

On my way out of the parking lot, I performed a random act of kindness.  I noticed a car with the spare tire lying on the ground, and the driver looked like she was pondering instructions.  So I stopped to give her a hand.  Changed a tire for a fellow quilter, and we were both on our way in about 10 minutes.  That brings my lifetime total tires changed up to 3 - all in the last 3.5 years of my 25 year driving career.  And now I'm home, and planning some more quilting time before I head out dancing tonight.   I guess at some point I should consider making dinner for 2 hungry teenagers, too.

Experiments

I was so excited!   I found (bought) plans on-line to build a machine quilting frame.  I've never really enjoyed trying to quilt on my little machine.  Especially bigger quilts - struggling to maneuver the whole thing around on the sewing table.  Bits always fall off, the quilt gets caught on corners, and it's darn heavy!  So when I saw this, I thought it was perfect.  Use my current machine, setup a quilting frame, and I'd be set to go!  And for much less than a store bought frame was going to set me back.

I measured everything, and rearranged my (small) sewing room to make sapce for this.  It could work, although space would be tight.  I bought the necessary parts, and set to work a couple weeks ago.  I was going to do a 10 foot frame, but decided against it after seeing the table in the room.

I cut a foot off and made it 9 feet long - still plenty long enough for my quilts, as 80-85 inches is about the max I do for a queen-size.  The first thing I noticed is how wonder it was to have a table behind my sewing table.  Putting borders on a quilt was suddenly easier, as the quilt sat happily on the extra table instead of falling to the floor.  On Saturday, I completed the rest of the frame, including the roller bars, and set it all up!

I've been saving my quilts to do on this new table, so I immediately dug one out and loaded it up on the machine.   Sweet!  No pinning, no basting, no trying to find enough floor space to lay out a quilt and then crawling around on my knees with pins.

I knew that using my standard sewing machine was going to result in a relatively small quilting path, but I measured and calculated and decided it would be about 4-5 inches, which wasn't too bad (and is about what I have with my shove & push method anyway).  I even reduced the size of the roller bars, to ensure I had as much leaway as possible.

So, I started in on a baby quilt - about 30 inches square.   Things started great - but by the time I got to the end of that 30 inches, I was down to about a 2 inch quilting area :(  I had not expected to lose space so quickly as the quilt progressed.  There is no way I can use this for any reasonably sized quilt. 

I did realize later that the quilt I chose was made with a much heavier fabric than usual - so that accounts for some of the excess.   I will probably give this another chance, with a more traditional set of quilt fabrics, to see how much difference that makes.  But I'm pretty sure at this point that nothing over about 40" is going to be possible with this setup.   Very disappointing, unfortunately.

The Quilting Blues

Do you ever go through periods of working almost exclusively in a single colour?  4 of my most recent finishing projects are in Blue!  OK, all but one of them was started 4 years ago, and the colour of the 4th was picked for me.  But I'm starting to think that I was in a really "blue" period when I started quilting. And now that I'm finishing projects, I've hit a number of the blues in a row

This quilt is the one which was not started several years ago. And in fact the colour was not chosen by me, so I'm sure I haven't slipped back into a blue period.  The quilt pattern was a mystery quilt from a shop hop held by the local quilt shops.  At each stop on the hop, a clue, including fabric, was available.  At the end of the hop, the final layout was provided.  The fabric in this quilt is all from Northcott's "Quest for a Cure" fabric line (Cambridge blue).

This quilt is now all boxed up and ready to send off to theQuilt.com for next year's auction.   I think this is the first time I've had the quilt done early, and haven't been scrambling to finish it in time for the January deadline.  Whatever is happening to me?  LOL

2 steps forward, 1 step back

I can't say I finished anything at all this week.  But I made lots of progress - quilted the shop-hop quilt, attached binding to 2 quilts (just have to turn the binding and hand-stitch), actually did some stitching on the Hawaiian quilt.  That would be the 2 steps forward.

And then, I started a new quilt.  One step back.
Well, not really.  Some of the blocks already existed, so I could claim that I didn't start it, I just moved it forward towards finishing.  I took some of the orphan blocks on my design wall, decided on a layout and started the additional blocks I need to complete this new quilt.

Next up - the queen size quilt.  Want to get that done and sent off to my sister.

So my summary for this week is:

* - the shop hop quilt (half-way done binding)
*- A challenge quilt from my local quilt shop - 3 years ago (needs binding)
- a picture quilt from my 2005 trip to Mexico (needs quilting)
- a queen size quilt (need to quilt it)
- a set of 3 wall quilts (to be hung)
- a stained glass dragon (still piecing)
* - a Hawaiian wall-quilt that's been on my frame for 4 years now (finish quilting)
- mystery quilt (ready for quilting)
* - tumbling blocks (ready for quilting)
- reversible quilt
- kaleidoscope quilt
* - orphan block quilt

Quilting Challenges

I just finished quilting a lap quilt. Every time I do this, I remember how much I don't enjoy trying to stuff a quilt through my machine. As soon as I try, the fabric takes on a life of it's own. It refuses to stay rolled up. It won't stay on the table and insists on leaping to the floor and unrolling on the way down. When I do succeed in keeping the quilt rolled and on top of the table, one end leaps off, reaching for the floor. And it grabs the edge of the table with great intensity, refusing to allow the quilt to gently glide back and forth for a smooth flowing stitch.

I made myself this table extension last year, which improves the situation a bit. It's really nice to have lots of space to each side of the machine to handle the quilt, and work left to right instead of front to back.

I think if I make the table a bit deeper - so there's more of a ledge at the front of the setup, I might have more luck keeping the quilt roll on the table. But it will still fall off the ends and unroll there.


When the quilt is longer than the table, it droops off the end, and gets caught on the corners/edges. And then suddenly I'm quilting in place, rather than in smooth flowing left-right arcs.

I don't have room for a table much longer than this, unfortunately. Unless I can convince one of my sons to give up his room. Somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

I can't possibly be the only one who struggles with this. Please tell me I'm not. Or let me in on your secrets - how do you corral a quilt and get it to submit to the quilting process?

Design Wall Monday - Aug 31

I have my design wall back this week. Didn't waste any time filling it up, either. My tumbling block is on the wall - and I'm debating whether it is already big enough, and I don't really have to make 160 blocks for it.

I picked up a dark background fabric, which I like the look of much better than the white background. If I keep the really dark squares from being adjacent to the black, I think it will work out.

Still playing with the exact placement of the falling blocks. And debating whether I can piece the lower right side, or if I have to resort to applique.

This will stew for a few more days - I have to finish the quilt sandwich I'm currently working on, so that I can put my room back into the right orientation for piecing. That should give me time to settle on the layout.

See what's on everyone else's design wall over at Judy's.

Stash Report - Aug 30

I managed to get a lot of quilting done this week, despite no access to my sewing room and usual machine. Being on vacation was great! I didn't finish any quilts, since I won't do quilting on my old machine, but a lot of progress was made on my tumbling blocks, and I did finish the top of the mystery quilt.

Used:
.25 yard - tumbling blocks
2.25 yard - cut out fabric for kaleidoscope blocks
1.5 yard - border for mystery quilt

Bought:
I broke down. My fabric store had a 40% off sale, and they had a gorgeous colour that I fell in love with. It was calling to me. And of course it had to bring some friends home too ;) I'm hoping to turn this bundle into a bargello quilt - once I finish a few current projects.
5 yards in

Used YTD: 21 yards
Added YTD: 15 yards
Net: 6 yards out this year

Check out Judy's blog to see what other quilters have been up to.

Finishing Friday - Aug 28

Even with my sewing room out of commission, I was able to make some progress on my projects this week. I setup my machine in my bedroom, and did a lot of piecing (with 3 boys in the house, retreating to my bedroom on occasion was a dream.) One quilt done, one completely pieced, and great progress on another. And my favourite finish of the week - my Lone Star is done, and on my bed. Finished turning the binding this week.

Maybe I should have visitors and give up my sewing room more often. Or not. I can't wait to have my room back, so I can start quilting the 4 tops that are sitting on my self.

I have: (the * indicates I made progress this week, but it's not done yet)
DONE - A quilty for the children's hospital
- the shop hop quilt (ready for quilting now)
DONE - queen-size lone star
- A challenge quilt from my local quilt shop - 3 years ago (needs quilting)
- a picture quilt from my 2005 trip to Mexico (needs quilting)
- a queen size quilt (need to quilt it)
- a set of 3 wall quilts (to be hung)
- a stained glass dragon (still piecing)
- a Hawaiian wall-quilt that's been on my frame for 4 years now (finish quilting)
* - mystery quilt (ready for quilting)
* - tumbling blocks
- reversible quilt

Want to share your finishes for this week? Add your link below, or post a comment.

160 ?!?

I just calculated the size of the tumbling block quilt I started this month. It began as an experiment and a way to use up some of my scraps. I picked the block size pretty much randomly, and figured I'd let the blocks define the size of the quilt. Well, now that I have a few more blocks done, I laid a few out and did a quick calculation. Approximately 160 blocks to make a 30" x 40" quilt. Less a few, since one corner will be 'fractured'. But still. Sure am glad I didn't pick 1 or 1.5 inches for the diamonds.


160 - that's way more little blocks than I was expecting to make. This may require a bit more patience than I expected. I have 43 blocks complete. Another 15-20 cut out and ready to piece. That doesn't even get me half-way, and I've pretty much exhausted all the obvious colour triples in my stash. I guess I'll have to dig a little deeper next week.

To get a break from diamonds and Y-seams, I started planning my next quilt :) In my own defense, it will be (mostly) a stash quilt. In fact, it will be one that I started planning about 4 years ago - I'll finally cut into the fabric I bought for a kaleidoscope quilt.

Too white, or not too white?

I spent most of yesterday far away from my sewing room. Took my kids and my nephew to an amusement park. It was a fun day, and I managed to get my annual roller coaster fix while we were there. I love roller coasters. I wish someone would build one closer to home, however. Overall a fun day, but six hours of driving makes for a very long one.

Slept in this morning, and got up refreshed and ready to go. I put the final borders on the mystery quilt I was working on. All done now, and ready for quilting.

The white border is giving me some trouble though. I wish I'd had enough of the green fabric to do a wide border with it, but all I had was enough for the narrow border. It might grow on me - looking at the quilt in negative I realy like it, so I think (hope) picking the star colour for the border was a reasonable choice.

What do you think? Keep the white, or try to find a complimentary dark green and re-do the border?

Design Wall Monday - Aug 24

My design wall is completely empty today, because I had to clear it out of the sewing room before my nephew arrived. However, I did take a picture of my current quilt, before I took it down. So this is what part of my design wall held last Friday. The tumbling blocks and reversible quilt are still there, too.

I'm almost done the star quilt - this is half of the quilt on the design wall. The basic quilt block is a 24" section with 5 stars. I decided I didn't want a square quilt, and wanted something slightly larger (but not as large as a twin necessarily - besides, I don't have enough fabric for that). So I designed a sashing strip one star wide to go between the blocks. I'll have to re-work that a bit I think, to make 3 stars across rather than 2. Otherwise I'm going to have an odd empty space in the center of the quilt.

Check out what other quilter's have on their design wall this week. over at Judy's blog.

Ready for visitors

I did it! My sewing room is all cleaned up, in plenty of time for my nephew's arrival today. Works in progress all bagged, folded, and put away. I'd say neatly, but that's a bit of a lie. My nephew will be under instructions to keep the closet door *closed*. Wouldn't want something to fall on him :)

All the leftover bits & scraps of fabric are stored (stuffed) into the appropriate bin. Found the binding strips for a couple of quilts. That's good news - I would have hunted all over for those when I got to those particular projects if I hadn't cleaned first.

I even packed up my sewing machine and took it into the shop for a little TLC. I don't think the poor thing has been serviced since before I moved 3.5 years ago. Since I can't get at it's table for the next week, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to treat it to a tune-up.

And the best news - I dug out my old sewing machine, and set it up on a table in my bedroom. Now I can still sew for the next week (assuming I can steal a few minutes from the kids) and I don't have to go into withdrawl. It runs like a dream - I wonder why I every replaced it?

First thing I did was finish the sewing machine cover I started on for it, 4 years ago. That was another surprise find, bundled up beside the machine. It's bit wrinkled and dusty, so I'll throw it in the wash today. But now I've finished another UFO - and one that I'd complete forgotten about :)

Surprises

It's amazing what surprises you find when cleaning up unfinished projects. The start of my "finishing kick" was finding 5 quilts in a drawer in the living room, where I had put them. I brought them downstairs some time ago so that I could do the handwork (binding, etc.) while watching TV.

When I found them earlier this month, I thought they had been there for a few months - maybe 6 at the outside. However, I pulled the last one out last night to start the binding. As it unfolded, out fell the label I had made when I finished quilting it. March 2008. Yes, 2008. These quilts have been sitting in my drawer for 18 months, not 6. I guess I need to make a new label - because I no longer belong to the quilt guild that it was going to be donated through, either.

On the bright side - I am now finished another quilt, and all 5 of the UFOs hiding in my drawer are now complete. I'll hang 3 of them this week, give the latest to the children's hospital, and the other is already in use by the kitties.

It doesn't show up well in this picture, but this is more of the cat fabric from my last quilt. I'm not very good at matching colours, and used the grey in a attempt to match some of the kittens. I wish I'd been more adventurous, and picked a colour that complemented the fabric, rather than tried to match it. For example, the background fabric (navy blue with gold stars) would, I think, have been a much more interesting choice for front of the quilt. Live and learn, and maybe gain some colour-sense as I go along.

There is one problem with working on unfinished quilts all week. Not a single stitch of stash fabric was used. Nothing was bought either, so at least it's a break-even week on that front. Check out Judy's blog for more stash reports from other quilters this week.

Design Wall Monday - Aug 17

Here's what's on my design wall today. On the left is a tumbling block quilt. I initially thought I'd do it on a dark background, but having auditioned some of the blocks against it, that obviously doesn't work. It will probably end up on white instead.

The lower right is going to be a reversible "quilt as you go" baby quilt. I'm using the squares to test out some quilting patterns before tackling them in large scale. Seems to be working - I definitely figured out what NOT to do on my Lone Star quilt.

Upper right is a mystery quilt I just started on Saturday. Didn't last too long with "not starting any new projects" did I? I stumbled across the mystery accidentally on Saturday, and when I discovered it was happening that day - and that I had enough fabric in my stash to do it - I couldn't resist. Not sure what's going to done with those 2 blocks - I'm a bit behind, only on clue #3, but I'm resisiting peeking at the end. And I'm not sure where this quilt is going in the end. I originally thought my son might like it (we just painted his room green), but now that I've cut some blocks, I see that the fabric has too much pink in it for him.

Check out what's on everyone else's design wall over at Judy's blog.

UFO Update

One UFO is now officially off the list. I finished the binding on my cat quilt. This was a challenge quilt from my local quilt shop in 2007. Given very general instructions each month, the variety in the end products was amazing. Instructions like "applique something", or "make some flying geese". The individual steps were generally simple to do. The challenge came in taking all the bits, and figuring out how to use them all in the finished product.

I had purchased the cat fabric earlier, simply because I loved the piles of kittens. That of course meant that my applique was going to be cat related.

The quilting is a variety of different styles. I was trying my hand at a few different patterns from "Quilt as Desired". Most came out ok, but there are a couple in there that I shall never do again.

As you can see, it did not take long for the quilt to be claimed by its rightful owner.

Finishing Friday

When I started quilting, I told myself that no new project would be started until I finished the previous one. Well, that was a silly idea. I soon found out that a quilter can't do 1 project at a time. There are the block of the month blocks, waiting for the next installment. A challenge quilt going on. A quilt being pieced. And of course one being quilted. And the last one you quilted waiting for binding. Right now, I have quilts in every stage of the process, from design through to complete & waiting to be hung.

I've been watching the fun over on Patchwork Times as quilters try to reduce their accumulated stash by finishing projects, creating stash quilts, and in some cases giving away fabric. It has inspired me to clean out my closet. Not so much a stash reduction (although I will have to tackle that soon, too). But a finishing festival. I will take all those UFOs (Unfinished Objects), and complete them.

I have:
- A challenge quilt from my local quilt shop - 2 years ago (needs binding)
- A quilty for the children's hospital (needs binding)
- the shop hop quilt mentioned a couple days ago (still piecing)
- queen-size lone star (needs quilting)
- A challenge quilt from my local quilt shop - 3 years ago (needs quilting)
- a picture quilt from my 2005 trip to Mexico (needs quilting)
- a queen size quilt (need to buy backing and quilt it)
- a set of 3 wall quilts (to be hung - finally labeled this week)
- a stained glass dragon (still piecing)
- a Hawaiian wall-quilt that's been on my frame for 4 years now (finish quilting)

I wonder how many I can finish, without adding more to the list? Probably not very many :)

Check back for updates on how my UFOs are coming along. Or better yet, post a link to your unfinished project list and we can work on them together, on "Finishing Fridays". If you don't have a website or blog to link, you can post your UFOs in the comments.

Irish Chain

This was my first bed-size (twin) quilt. I wanted to do an Irish Chain - it seemed like a fun, not too difficult, pattern to do. But I didn't want the chain to extend out to the border, as in a typical quilt. I wanted to "finish" the chain and make it a floating design. The idea was that the full chain would lay on top of the bed, and the border would drop down the sides. Seemed logical enough, so I drafted a pattern to do that. I carefully counted rows and inches, measured the bed twice, recalculated the number of rows, and set out to make the quilt.

It went together really quickly. Strip piecing is great, and I was able to put together the blocks in just a few days. A bit of care was needed to make sure all the edge blocks were constructed correctly, but even that was not too difficult. In retrospect, the pattern should have started & ended with the wider chain sections - that would have filled out towards the corners more and I think would have been a more pleasing balance overall.

Once the center was done, the border stumped me for a while. I wanted something that would blend nicely with the chain. I considered a 9-patch pattern for some time, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. Coincidentally, around the same time, my quilt guild had a seminar on seminole piecing. As soon as I saw it, I knew that this would be the border for this quilt. By turning the chain 45 degrees, the border obtained the same jagged-edge look as the rest of the chain.

Once again I measured and cut and re-measured to get the border just right, with perfect transitions in the corners. There was a lot of faith and I think a bit of luck in getting the size to work out so that every square is a full piece, and no cheating was necessary to fit.

The final step of course was quilting. Still being new at this, I stuck to straight line quilting for the main part, outlining the chain. Then, I quilted 5-pointed stars joined by some meandering around the outside of the chain, and a single star in each square.

Creativity

By nature a quilter is likely to be creative. After all, even if you are using patterns for your quilts, you still have to come up with the right colour and fabric set to make the quilt. Some are more adventurous, and draft their own patterns. Or put blocks together in unique ways. These are planned, expected avenues of creativity. But I seem to be destined to use untapped creative skills in my quilting. No matter how carefully I plan a quilt, I often seem to be caught with the need to come up with some creative plan to fix a problem.

For example, my latest quilt. I wanted to do 4" borders. I knew I was tight on fabric, but I measured and I had 20" of fabric. Perfect - I could cut 5 strips, piece 4 border strips and be done (OK, 3.5" borders rather than 4. I can live with that). I measured that little piece of fabric 3 times - 20" every time. So, I cut it. 4", 4", 4", 4"... and 3" Huh? Now what? Looks like I'm making corner-stones for the border.

A twin quilt that I designed. Again, measured and calculated several times. Figured out exactly how many rows I needed, and carefully pieced the border to match. Then I put the finished top on the bed - and it was 10" too long. OK, I know what I did wrong here (I missed the fact that the border would sit on top of the bed at the top, and not drap down the side). Again, I had to re-think the quilt, and find a way to lose 10 inches. Luckily, the repeat on the rows (both border and top) was about 10". So removed 1 section, and the quilt was fine.

A queen size quilt. The quilt was planned, fabric bought. I would determine the border once I had the quilt complete. Bad idea! I knew exactly what fabric I wanted for the inner border - but I didn't have enough. And I couldn't find it anywhere. Oh well. Re-evaluate. Re-design. New border, in different colours.

Some might say those are just cases of poor planning. I prefer to think of it as opportunities for creativity, and a chance to prove that my engineering background has not stifled my creative juices :)