This is not a potholder

I made two mini-quilts - not potholders, oh my, no no - from this tutorial at Moda Bakeshop. 

When I make small things, I usually do more than one - out of a sense of practicality, mostly - if I'm going to spend a lot of time on something, in most cases it won't take twice as long to make two.  The actual sewing and quilting, especially hand quilting, will take twice as long, but cutting and all the setup and takedown that sewing projects take will not.  

The green and purple fabric are from JoAnn's.  This shade of green is my absolute favorite, and it's hard to find because yellowish greens seem to be more popular.  This particular fabric is the sort of fabric people mean to exclude when they say for swaps and bees, "quilt-shop quality only."  It's thin and sheer and not particularly well-printed.  But it's the green that I like!  

The tutorial was really good, but I did put some of my own tweaks in.  For instance, the center of the first one I did turned out pretty badly. 

As you can probably see, the points don't meet.  (I'm noticing that the two top purples aren't the same size, which wasn't as noticeable in person - will go back and see about tweaking that somehow.) 

So, I threaded a needle, came up through the back, and cinched all the points together.  Much better, and better than a bead, which I had also considered, but which (to me) would have just screamed "whoops, that didn't turn out well, better cover it up with a bead."  

I also folded the whole shebang (i.e. made the 2-3 folds on each section), then sewed it all, before going on to the next shebang.  Doesn't seem to be an advantage to doing it one section at a time, and there's a lot of back-and-forth with the sewing machine.  

And here's a lesson that I apparently haven't learned well enough: contrast.  The purple and green are both light.  They look nice together up close, but far away it's hard to make out.  Solution: hanging it in a tiny room, in this case the laundry room, where you can never be too far away from it.   

The second one used quilt-shop quality fabrics.  The greens are from a big fabric order I did of greens-I-like, but these turned out to be more yellowish than I was expecting.  They look really great and Christmassy with the red and white, though. A plain white and/or red would have been better, because those fabrics blend a bit more in the final product than I would've liked. 

If I ever make these again, I'll probably make the folds bigger than 1/4," especially if I'm using prints.  And I'll use a more substantial fabric for the base, like a Kona cotton.  

Having made a truly silly amount of navy bias binding for the orange tumbler quilt, I was able to finish the green one as an octagon rather than a square. Didn't get a picture of that by itself, so here's a group shot with some other finishes I'll be writing about soon. 

Linking up with crazy mom quilts for Finish it Up Friday.  Happy crafting! 

Orange Finish

The Orange Quilt is finished, and after one chance to snuggle up under it, I am officially jealous of the one who gets to keep it - it's so warm, and I think once it's broken in, it will be a delight. 

This is my favorite picture of it - it looks happiest in natural light. 

I'd been aiming to finish before all the leaves were off the trees, because it would've fit right in with the really stunning foliage this year.  Oh well. 

It finished at 62" x 83 1/2", down from 63" x 85".   The wool batting specified that it should be line dried, but yeah, that's not going to happen. 

The back turned out pretty much exactly like its planning sketch, which is nice.  I did need the mini tumblers to make up the full necessary length, though this is a wide fabric, so it only had to be pieced horizontally.  After using the first bed quilt I finished, I find that I like having the back indicate which direction the quilt goes onto the bed.  Less of an issue with this quilt, where the direction is more obvious from the front pattern. 

Using this tutorial, I made up a whole whack of bias binding out of Kona Cotton in Navy.  The tutorial worked nicely and sewing the binding on was very easy despite the curves of the tumbler edges. 

I feel a bit weird about this one, like it needs defending on the grounds that it's for a little kid who likes orange.  Which it is.  But I also ended up just liking it for itself - it's rather unyielding and stubbornly imperfect, and kind of weird, and also warm and cheerful and interesting.  Didn't ever expect to make a completely orange tumbler quilt, but I'm glad I did. 

Now I'm thinking that I'd really like a bed-sized wool batting quilt for my own bed - one with no crossing quilt lines, if we are to have learned anything at all. 

Linking to crazy mom quilts Finish it up Friday.

Happy crafting!  

You win some, you lose some

If this quilt isn't an exactly perfect metaphor for my life over the past month, then there isn't one.  

Surprisingly puffy batting meant a one-way ticket to Puckerville, USA when I started quilting he horizontal lines across the quilt.  If I ever get the crazy notion to do any kind of grid quilting with wool batting again, I'll (you know, just decide not to, or) know to start from the middle and do all of it from the middle out.  This time around, I did all the stitch-in-the-ditch, then all the second lines, then all the third lines.  I was still kind of deciding how many to do and how far apart, but turns out I didn't really have that luxury.  

Trying to avoid puckers at the quilting crosses meant that I needed to pin the crap out of the quilt before starting.  And this yielded only middling results.  Bonus: it took forever. 

I decided to look at it like a baseball season, with tons of games and no expectation of perfection.  Some you win, some you lose, nobody wins every game in every series, even when they're playing well.  As I quilted across it, I thought about how working so hard to avoid puckers (and still not being able to many times, aaargh) meant that my ability to quilt straight lines automatically went out the window - and this is much like what happened at work, when I decided to put all of my limited energy toward service provision and then when I had a chance to take a breath, realized I was a month behind on my notes.  (Aaargh.) 

I will also know that five lines of stitching at each seam is a LOT.  

Deciding not to quilt any horizontal lines was a possibility - one that I didn't consider until I'd made a few of them, but I definitely could've turned back.  I didn't, partially because I didn't know if only vertical lines would look good, and partially because it didn't feel virtuous.  It would've been taking the easy way out.  The other factor was wear - I believe that more quilting = more stable batting - but I've never tested this theory over 20 years, so maybe it's true and maybe it's not. 

After a big press this morning, the binding is on and being sewn down.  The sewing down will take a while, but the end is in sight, which makes me really happy.  The young recipient of the quilt greeted every finished row with: Is it done?  Can I use it now?  I'll be really happy to finally say yes.  

So, what do you think?  Will horizontal lines make this quilt wear better?  Is it better design?  Would you have bailed on the horizontal lines when it appeared that the original plan didn't fit the actual quilt?  I'd love to hear from other quilters about what they would have done.  

Happy crafting! 

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Huhu Wela Loa a Ula

Gak!  I've been eagerly anticipating November and the Blogger's Quilt Festival, not realizing that voting starts Nov. 1, but linking starts earlier! 

I'm entering Huhu Wela Loa a Ula, a Hawaiian quilt I started in 2004 in a weeklong class.  We learned the technique, completed the applique, and started the hand quilting.  

I picked it up again and plowed through many hours of hand quilting. Hawaiian quilts feature echo quilting around the applique. Choosing to put the applique on point meant that a lot of hand quilting would be necessary to fill in the corners, but I think it was the right choice for this design. 

This is easily the FO I'm proudest of.  The design is mine and I'm very happy with the execution of both the applique and the quilting, though some of the lines of stitches look very unpracticed (because they were!). 

I'm entering this in the Hand Quilted Category. I'm being sure to enjoy it, because there's no telling when another hand quilted one will get done. 

Stats:

Fabric: white-on-white and batik from JoAnns, circa 2004
Batting: Mountain Mist poly, low loft
Thread: Ollllld white "hand quilting" thread
Size: 28.5" square

Happy blogger's quilt festivities! 

How I Un-do Quilting

The orangest quilt in the history of human experience is coming along.  Turns out five rows of quilting at every seam is kind of a lot, so progress is steady but the road is long. 

I sprung for fancy wool batting (Quilter's Dream) and boy, is it puffy.  You can see in the picture above what nice definition this gives the quilting.  Given the puffiness, I probably should have basted a bit closer together, instead of in the middle of every tumbler (so, about every 6"), but basting took every bit of time I had, so meh, lesson learned. 

At first I thought I'd get progress in on this after the kids were asleep, but it turns out the baby is no longer interested in falling asleep and staying asleep on her own for a couple of hours a night.  Also turns out that I can knit a hat much more easily than I can knit a sock (???) while nursing her, so I've made smashing progress on a hat.  Not the Halloween hat I should be working on (not to mention the Halloween beard I should be working on), but TO BE FAIR... I haven't felt like working on those.  So. 

So, I mostly get the quilting done early in the morning before the house wakes up, or in those rare moments where both kids are happily occupied.  Not the clearest-headed time in my day.  So I was halfway down the next line when I realized that I'd put a third line in on one side of the tumbler, when I was only planning on doing two lines. 

My choices were: frog the line, leave it as a charming little mistake (spoiler: no such thing), or add a third line to all the seams.  That last one was briefly tempting, but no.  Not practical. 

As I'm mostly self-taught, where "taught" loosely means "kind of figured out an okay way to do things," I realized that the way I've been frogging quilting is not the fastest possible way.  I used to un-do by pulling out each individual stitch.  That is a silly way to do it!  This time it occurred to me that I could seam-rip the line of stitches about 3" from the tail, undo 4-5 stitches, and then pull. 

The short length of thread comes right out.  Much faster!  And it only took me six years to figure out! 

Happy crafting!

Basting Party

To the sounds of classical for baby and then dance party not so much for baby plus some screaming baby, we have progress:

Backing, thread-pulled and pressed

Batting, Quilter's Dream Wool

Top, pressed, thread-pulled, and still ORANGE.

Worries about backing and batting size were once again unfounded.  There is about a three-hour window to get this basted in before the magical quilt studio turns back into a dining room - hoping I don't have to ask Papa to take the long way home this evening.  

Happy Crafting!

Ninety One

When I started this quilt, it was so that I would have a nice background for photographing socks.

But when I started quilting again, I remembered that quilting is my first love.

Then things got crazy stressful, and I remembered that it's easier to knit on a pair of plain socks during a staff meeting than cutting, piecing, quilting, or even hand-binding.  So: pair 91 is done.

Wham Bam Thank You Frog

After focusing my crafting time exclusively on this guy for about a week and a half, he's done:

The co-teacher who this is not for said: sage green, frog theme.  So if this didn't hit the mark, well, then, it wasn't gonna happen. 

It's back to quilting, then - mini quilts now, as I anticipate Columbus Day, one of those rare days that childcare is open but my workplace is not.  I've got a date with the dining room floor and the orangest quilt in the history of human civilization for a basting party. 

Pictured here is Spotted Guy with his mini quilt from leftover mini tumblers.  Spotted Guy has champagne tastes and an I'm-a-stuffed-animal budget, and he doesn't actually understand much about quilting, either, so I've explained to him about four times that thread count isn't really A Thing with handmade quilts.  I'm not telling him he's getting leftover Hobbs batting, rather than the fancy wool stuff in the big quilt, because I seriously don't even want to hear about it. 

Happy crafting! 

Purple and green

My next big project will be purple, green, black, and white.

The Weathervane quilt at Patch the Giraffe (scroll down) has been on my mind, but then I came across the Jewel Box/Buckeye Beauty pattern, and I thought that might work better with purple and green being the two main colors. 

Someday I'll sketch out some possibilities for this one, but right now I'm in the middle of banging out a baby blanket for one of my kiddo's wonderful childcare providers, who's due in a few weeks.  When I get a spare few minutes, I pick up my spinning:

because I like it and because finishing that hand quilted thing inspired me to pick up more utterly endless projects. 

Happy crafting!

More boulders! More mountains!

It is done!  Done, done, done!

I cannot believe it!  I think that this just became my prized possession.  For a crazy moment, I considered taking out an insurance policy on it, but then realized that an insurance policy would only give me money if I lost it, not the hours (and hours) of my life that I spent on it back.

I started this in a weeklong class on Hawaiian quilting.  Hawaiian quilts are made from one piece of fabric appliqued onto a wholecloth background.  The applique is cut paper-snowflake-style from folded fabric.  The amount of time it took to applique this sucker down was substantial, and I remember working on it for hours and looking up and realizing that my eyes were not able to focus on the far wall of the room.  Haha, whoops!  Hopefully that wasn't a permanent effect. 

When picking this back up, I had a moment of "gah, why on-point setting," but it quickly became "gah, why choose a design calling for on-point setting."  This had to be on-point, and I didn't ruin what little farsightedness I had left to leave it unfinished.  

It's been pretty rainy, so the pictures are a bit dark.  The pic below shows the screaming pink/orange more accurately than the ones above. 

So, to pick up hand quilting again, I watched part of a three-minute YouTube video and then just did it for hours and hours and hours and hours.  The two tips I have for aspiring hand-quilters are as follows: 1) use the thimbled finger and your thumb to grip the needle as you pull it through the pile of stitches you've made, and 2) focus on the evenness of the length of the stitches on top, rather than how far apart they are, because the visible thread is more noticeable than the spaces (where the thread is in the back).  Your spacing will get better as you go along, too. 

The selvage of the pink/orange fabric was dated 2004, so I'm guessing that's the year that I started this bad boy.  Ten years!  The big whompin bed quilt I finished a few months ago was only started four years ago.  There's one more quilting UFO left, this one started in 1998, and then that's it for long-buried projects.  Luckily, my nascent spinning skills and tendency to spin ridiculously thin offer a couple projects that shouldn't be finished until around 2030 or so.  Honestly, it's weirdly scary to contemplate being out of old projects - like they're only part of my identity if they're unfinished?  I don't know.  Didn't anticipate existential terror as a result of finishing this quilt up. 

Aaaand on that note, happy crafting!

Linking up to crazymomquilts for Finish It Up Friday!  Look for me there again in 3 decades!

Plodding ever forward

Gone are the hours of tiny-baby naps and maternity leave.  Summers around here are lean times, so I've committed to finishing a project that will require no more expenditures to complete, which I expect to happen sometime around 2017.  Baby sometimes gives me time in the evenings, when this comes out. 

Two corners are done and there are about 1.5 to go.   When I can work on it for an hour or so, it seems to be going fast.  And it probably is going fast, but it's so huge that even fast equals hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of work.  As I stitch, I sit there and think about whether I will get my 10,000 hours of expertise all crammed into this one object. My hand stitching is getting a lot better, and it's kind of cool to have all my experience thus far all together. 

For a while there, I was worried about whether the thread was going to last, because it occurred to me about 1/3rd of the way into this that it will be hard to replace. 

Because, as you can see, it's made by a company that may not exist anymore and cost $0.90 originally.  I probably swiped it from my mom's sewing basket about 17 years ago, and it was chewed by a dog since then.  One complete corner seems to take about one height of the spool's worth of thread, so right now I'm guessing I won't run out.

There's a plain pair of socks in progress for working on while I'm on the phone at work.  The first one is reaching the toe, so I need to take some time to decide exactly when to start it and it would be awkward if someone at work came into my office when I've got my sock and shoe off and am trying on a sock on the needles.  Probably should bring that home for just a bit.

Happy crafting!  If you don't hear from me for a while, assume I'm on hour 6,000 of hand quilting. 

Quilters Gonna Hate

It seems that in every quilting project, I reach a nadir and simply hate how it looks.

This is different from the moment of doubt, or when you're trying out various options and go, ooh, no, or when you're finished and wonder what it would've looked like with another border.   This is when you decide you're going to tell the blog that your quilt in progress/design wall was destroyed in a freak attack by your cat - wait, no, your neighbor's cat, yes, the neighbor's crazy cat who hates orange and who knew he was such a good climber? and you are so devastated, because it was going so well, you see, you are so devastated that you're just going to start over on something else. 

My moment with this quilt - hopefully the only moment with this quilt - came when I'd finished laying out the third row here.  Haaaate.  Knowing the desire to clean off the design wall with fire might pass (yes, more orange is just what this needs!), I pressed on.  It's once more acceptable to keep working on, although this picture's not doing it any favors. 

Another, different kind of moment came when I realized I'd calculated the number of tumblers for the desired width of the quilt as if the tumblers were square, but alas, they are not.  Tumblers, how do they work?  So now I get to decide if there should be 14 more to cut, leaving the quilt asymmetrical, or if there are 28 more to cut, leaving me seriously grumpy. 

Happy crafting! 

Orange tumbler, WIP

I'm making my daughter an orange quilt for when she moves out of her crib and into a twin bed.  It will probably fulfill the role of something to look at on the design wall for ages, because progress on quilting goals is going to stall with my return to work this week. 

In the bottom left, you can see the tumbler template cut from a Cheerios box!

This is an order from Hawthorne Threads, plus some quarter yards from some LQS shopping done on our trip.  

Since she could pick out markers and point to colors, orange has been her favorite.  I'm not sure how stable these preferences are, because last week she said her favorite color was pink black purple green blue yellow.  When we went to get her some shoes, there wasn't a pair that she didn't like, from infant boys' sneakers to adult women's slippers. 

This was the initial fabric pull - it quickly became obvious that bed-sized quilts take a lot more fabric than I'm used to needing. It also would appear that the market right now is tending toward brownish oranges, rather than pinkish or yellowish. 

In one fabric store, I showed her two orange fabrics and asked her which she liked better.  She pointed to a lime green on the shelf.  "No, of just these two."  Points at lime green. 

So I picked one of the orange ones.  There will be no lime green in this quilt.  It feels weird, because I'm making this for her, but am choosing the fabrics and pattern I like, or at least think contribute to a good design overall.  I'm incredibly specific - or picky, depending on how frustrated with me you are at the moment - and don't like what I don't like. 

One thing I don't like is a mushy muddled mishmash of colors and pattern.   I like contrast.  At first I considered doing white around each tumbler to separate them enough, but now I'm thinking there may be enough variation in the values that white won't be necessary. 

One more fabric is on its way (crabs!) and then it'll be time to start working on the layout.  Big as my lovely design wall is, it's not twin-sized, so I'll probably put together two horizontal rows at a time, then decide what order to put those in.  The back will be Spot Check (seen above on the handlebar of the stroller), perhaps with some mini tumblers. 

Happy crafting! 

Blogger's Quilt Festival: I Like THAT One!

Even though I haven't delved into more complicated piecing or quilting again (yet), I'm entering the Blogger's Quilt Festival in the Mini Quilt category because I think it's awesome that Amy organizes this twice a year and I love seeing what everyone else is working on.    

This little quilt is important to me because it's a great example of how lots of little bits - of both time and fabric - can add up to something really nice. 

It was the first quilt I hung up upstairs in our new house, and it inspired me to dig out a couple of finished ones to hang, and keep making new ones as well. 

It's named after my two-year-old daughter's reaction to seeing it all finished - though, to be fair, I haven't seen her meet a scrap of fabric she didn't like. 

So, check out the Festival, vote and enjoy the eye candy, and happy crafting!

Birdie Bag & Socks

Before our Long Car Trip (of Doom) (not really), I made a little drawstring bag for the Toddler (of Doom) (really), hoping that it would keep her entertained for 3 minutes. 

I got the birdie fabric recently, as well as the white-with-purple-flowers liner fabric.  The birdies weren't destined for a project, and the purple liner fabric is for a wallhanging I'm planning but haven't gotten around to, other than the designing.  

Daughter picked out the purple squares fabric (by which I mean she picked it up at JoAnn Fabrics and didn't want to put it down), and the drawstring fabric was from my Mom's old stash - it didn't want to hold a crease, so I'm wondering if it's not 100% cotton. 

Daughter loves pulling the drawstrings closed but isn't strong enough to open the bag back up, so there was a lot of, "Will you open this, please?"  That counts as keeping us busy. 

Tutorial here: In Color Order.  I shaved half an inch off of the finished measurements because my fat quarter of the purple stuff was pretty skinny, in fact, and I didn't realize that I didn't need to sew a bottom seam and could have just used one big piece, because my Main Exterior fabric wasn't directional.  (Doh.) 

During the Long Car Trip, I also managed to finish two pairs of socks that had been over halfway done for a while.  Above: Escalator Socks in Fleece Artist Trail Socks, colorway November Sky (I think.  Their colorways are a bit... hit or miss?  Not sure which phrase I'm looking for.  There's more play than you might expect.). 

Below are basic ribbed socks in Schachenmayr nomotta Regia Bamboo Color, a yarn I'm pretty sure is discontinued.  It's a good yarn for summer socks.  I started these before last summer so that they'd be ready for last summer, but instead they're ready for this summer.  Good enough!

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts. 

Happy crafting! 

Finished: Mail-Order Gorilla

Here's another post for Finish it Up Friday over at crazy mom quilts with the actual details of the Mail-Order Gorilla quilt. (More about the process here.)

Size: 88" x 94" before washing
Design: basic patchwork, planned but random-looking color placement
Batting: Hobbs 100% cotton
Binding Kona Teal
Thread: C&C white poly for piecing, 100% cotton for quilting
Quilting: diagonal grid through all squares

It's all washed and on my bed, with the dog's blanket over the bottom half because she likes to scratch up her bedding. 

Next up is an orange tumbler quilt for my daughter's bed - cutting started this morning, although I haven't decided details of the final design yet. 

Thanks for visiting, and happy crafting!

Dudes.

It's finished. 

Designed in 2010, pieced in 2011, finished in 2014.  The top is a simple square patchwork with mostly stashed JoAnn prints, plus some quilt shop stuff, some fabric I dyed in a class, and white muslin.  Plus some home dec weight.  (Whoops!) 

Backing!

The backing is mostly Kona Natural, which had originally been intended for the plain squares on the front but didn't look good with a lot of the white-based fabrics.   I might have been able to squeak by just piecing two lengths of that together, but it would've been close.  So I pieced a bunch of prints from the top for the middle strip.  (Then realized I'd snuck in some of my favorite green fabric, which was actually nowhere to be found in the top.)

Binding!

Hand sewing the binding took FOREVER.  It's a part that I enjoy, but holy cow.  Bound in Kona Teal (I think, it's been awhile).  The teal also matches nothing in the top. 

Dramatic tree shadows!

I designed this top in Excel, deciding individually on the placement of each color.  I was working a nice but boring temp job as a receptionist and put colors in squares between phone calls. 

I'll wash it this afternoon and hope to sleep under it tonight.  I'm a bit worried about the hand-dyed fabrics bleeding, so there will probably be a box of color catchers in the wash as well.

And now, on to the next (much, much smaller) project!