New Quilt Top + Personal Achievement

At the end of the day I am occasionally bewildered where it went. There are always a million things to do and never enough tie or energy to even want to do a good many of them. We talked about log cabin blocks at Cursed Quilt this month and I figured that now was as good a time as any to "spend" some of my stash on something. So here it is:

Some of my friends may recognize this as fabric I acquired mostly on our warehouse trip to Happy Quilt. As you can see, it is not a traditional log cabin block. I like the squares quite a lot. The centers were cut 4 1/2 inches and the strips are 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 inches respectively. I cut this before the latest round of Accuquilt arrived so I only used it on the big strips.

The wide strips are all my prints from the palette. I decided to give it a bit of...what...contrast? with the black and cream. I didn't have a solid olive that would work so this lovely subtle print filled in for the last narrow color band. You can see that each block has ONE narrow band except for the very last block I put together which has all three, largely because I didn't want to cut more strips and I had lots of the narrow ones left. Each layout is different with the narrow strip falling in a different position. I am not sure that I am going to be able to give this one away. It suits me, although what I will do with a lap quilt I don't know. (Since the last lap sized quilt top is still unquilted form two summers ago! hehehe)

The last thing to report is my great achievement. I ate a thing from my balcony garden. Check them out....They are pictured next to an actually appropriately sized squash for comparison. These were grown from seeds that came out of an actual squash.  I am not sure if their size is based on engineering for big yield...which conditions my garden did not meet...or because of the constrained growing conditions of my pot/winter balcony...or if perhaps the mold I kept getting on the leaves was just too much for them.  It could also be that they simply didn't ever get pollinated properly and so couldn't manage.  There weren't actually any seeds in them I don't think.  At any rate, they were very cute.

The final verdict was that their texture was a bit smoother than normal, a bit starchier rather than stringy as I usually expect squash to be.  But in any case, we will hum that Primary song that no one actually seems to know "The Prophet Says to Plant a Garden" and feel satisfied.  Be productive somehow today, even if the only thing you produce is mess. k.

"Not a Wallflower"

When I started with Cursed Quilt we did a little block.  The fancy version of this block is the pocket on the bag featured here.  I decided to use the same block simplified as an example of how different a block can look based on fabric placement.  Of course what do you do with 2 mostly coordinating blocks?  Why make a quilt of course.

I decided (almost as soon as the blocks were finished) that I needed to make a quilt for S and that this palette would be a good transitional one for my girl....you know, not too little girly but still fun and lively for my eventual teen.  The black sashing goes a long way towards that effect I think.

The floral fabric was purchased on a Dongdaemun trip with Darsha.  We saw it and absolutely had to buy some.  I believe the baby blanket Darsha made (with the purple) belongs to Carolyn, sometime poster on the Cursed Quilt Blog. :)  I made Darsha give me all of what she had left over...and you will see why at the end of this post.

So this was the plan:  I would make pairs of blocks, one purple, one green.  Each block I chose has a little square in the center on point.  You can interpret this all sorts of ways....each one has a diamond in it's heart...I like the idea of imprinting my someday teenage girl with the idea (at least subconsciously) of keeping a little "square" in your center. heheh  You also don't have to be just exactly like your friends to go together. etc.  You get the idea.  You can see some of the pairs in the picture.  Most of these blocks come from the fabulous site "Quilter's Cache" which features the work of Marcia Hohn and is one of the best block collections I have ever seen!  I modified most of them to fit my needs, but she deserves the credit for all the inspiration.

The main central panel is my first ever applique' piece.  I was very pleased with myself, even if all those curves and inward points was perhaps not the BEST idea I have ever had for a first project.  I even gave the flowers on the panel a bit of a trapunto effect (a thin layer of batting between the applique' and the panel to puff it up a bit.....a tiny bit.  I wasn't THAT ambitious!)  That turned out to be quite hard to quilt through, although the effect is kind of interesting.  If you look closely at the pic of grandma you can kind of see the puff on the green one...)

Once I had it constructed (in March or April) it sat around.  I am too chicken to try to machine a piece this large but have absolutely no place to put a quilt on (frames) in this house (that wouldn't involve crawling under it to get in and out of the house!)  Luckily I planned to spend a good part of the summer at "Grandma's House."  Grandma being my dear mother Jean Johansen Hunt.  She is an experienced quilter and works very quickly so I knew we could get it done during the trip.  Perhaps it wasn't what SHE was hoping to do during our visit but..... hehehe.  My own "Grandma Hunt" (Phyllis P. Delange Hunt) was an insanely fast quilter.  I used to be amazed at how much she could do in a day when she lived in our "back yard" one year.


The hand quilting plan was simple for the blocks: stitch in the ditch.  My mom quilted ALL the blocks themselves.....while she did that I did about 7 inches of the sashing!  sigh! 

While the quilt was on I realized that the "name" of this quilt was "Not a Wallflower."  And as such, the sashing was going to have to be quilted in flowers.  I decided to try to make them individuals so I drew them all by "hand."  That said, there are a few repeats.  My tools for the drafting of these flowers included every size of plate and bowl my mom's cupboards had to offer, an advil bottle, the bottom of the thread spool and my own thimble.  The first few that I drew aren't much to look at....I even contemplated picking the quilting out on one that I really don't like anymore.  After a while I got the hang of them though and they are very interesting.  Of course, as you may expect, the more "interesting" a hand quilting is, the trickier it is.  The effect was more than I could have hoped for though, so it was all worth it....wasn't it Mom?!?! hehehe

Many of the flower designs are supposed to echo the styles of the floral fabric.  There are also a few hearts sprinkled throughout to echo the other black and white print used, and the applique'd hearts on the corner blocks (which are sadly not visible in any pics.)  Most of the flowers are too large for the space so their edges are all tucked underneath as you can see in the picture.  I teally like that effect.  After we started quilting, I realized I should have planned the center so that the sashing and central panel could be continuous in the hand quilting....but the planning of THAT would probably been the demise of the design and it would never have been quilted. :)

I still haven't figured out how to tag this one.  I wanted to do a long embroidery on the binding but my machine is in desperate need of servicing so I had to give it up or risk more swearing than perhaps is good for my soul.  This is what I WANT on the tag:

"Not a Wallflower"
Spring and Summer 2010
for Senneth Anne Hartvigsen
Designed by Kimberly Hunt Hartvigsen (her mother)
Quilted by Jean Johansen Hunt (her grandmother)

You can see that is a mouthful....pageful? most of the binding?  I think I will probably make some more printer fabric and just print a tag so it will be small and attach it on the back.

You can see in the top pic that I made S some matching pillowcases.  This last pic was taken after that project was completed.  This represents ALL the floral fabric there is left.  ALL.  I had to piece together some of the triangles to get the pillowcase border I wanted!  The other pillowcase  has the backing fabric and black on the edge.  (That is the green and turquoise floral you can see bits of.  This was purchased at the quilt shop in Lyons, CO where mom likes to shop sometimes.  Not the cheapest place around, but when you NEED something wonderful they always seem to have it.  We had several options picked out and this is the one S liked best.)

SO there, I actually finished a thing.  Hah!  As you can see, it has even made it on the bed, although it is still too hot to sleep with it I think.  The binding was ALL attached during the days off from school for the typhoon "Kompasu."  How is THAT for a story?  Now go sew something. k.

Building With What We Have

As you know I am actually rather enamored of the idea of the Quilts of Valor Foundation.  This is partially because I have been feeling the need to do more "good works" and quilting is a way to do that and still be doing what I want!  (Perfection is still a long way off, I know...)  I also feel more of a connection to the soldiers in question and have thought a great deal about the healing that all of the deployed soldiers need, not just the physically wounded ones.  N. has many patients who need all the support they can get as they struggle to put their lives back together.

So this is my first design and it is almost ready for presentation! 

The design is a Split Log Cabin, that is, a Long Cabin Block that is cut in half and joined to a different block.  In order to do this and have them be square the center is actually a rectangle....the square plus seam allowances through the center.  I saw a quilt done like this online and really liked the look of it.....especially since I had a jelly roll to do it with.

The quilt is actually a bit more than one jelly roll in size....the lighter colors come from a different roll.  It was so easy to put the blocks together with the pre-cut strips. 

The hardest part to put together was the border on the side of course, but I really wanted to give it a sense of being a work table....and that the process of rebuilding is ongoing.  It has all sorts of crazy bias and making things look "random" is actually very tricky.

N. recommended alternating the direction of the blocks, and I really like the way that turned out.  I even tried to set each split square with one going each way.  Of course, many of the squares aren't actually split....they were made as a half as I got down to smaller and smaller pieces that would go together.  The outer row is actually just slightly longer than the 42 inch strip on a full split block.  If you look close, some of them have slightly different colors on the outside of one corner.  Others have matching centers but not matching outsides.  It all worked out though.

The back is also black and has little stars on it.

After a day of trying to figure out why the picture of the quilting (by the lovely Debbie Younkin of Fort Collins near mom's house) I have given up.  Some day I may have the presence of mind to figure out why everything else works but that pic won't.....sigh!  You are just going to have to trust me that it looks GREAT!  It is a whirlpool style all-over design and it works really well.

And so we don't get too bogged down in things I OUGHT to be doing, here is the last pic of the "Presentation Case" which is simply a coordinating Pillowcase.

All in all, this has been a great experience that I plan to continue.

Now I need to go bind "Not a Wallflower" and if I am really ambitious I will post pics of the pillowcases I made for the 1,000,000 Pillowcase challenge (and you can find info about that HERE!)

In the meantime, make something that makes you smile even if it is a mess (or some order, if that is more your style.....mine is mess in case you were wondering. heh) k.

Building a Temple

As part of Darsha's Summer Challenge for Cursed Quilt I decided to make a block of the Seoul Korea Temple.  It is a fairly odd shaped building, so I was a little worried that it wouldn't convey the sense of the building but I really think it does.  Not bad for my first representational block design.

If you don't know what this is supposed to look like click here There are lots of little details that could be added in, but as maybe you can tell, my favorite part is the cool wavy bushes in front.  (After my time teaching here in Korea, if you had asked me to describe the temple, that is perhaps the only detail of the exterior that I could have given....well that and the super steep street you have to walk up to get there.
The structure of the Temple is done with "foundation piecing" and that was an adventure to figure out.  The great breakthrough for me (although why it took me so long to imagine it that way I haven't any idea) was to divide it into columns around each pillar.  The tiny pieces that make up the doorway were pretty tricky too, but despite my lack of experience, applique' with the machine is really pretty straight forward.  I was emboldened to use the tiny tiny pieces after watching my mom make some dainty little bugs for Miss Emily's flower garden quilt....The wavy bushes are also applique' and are a little hard to see in the pic.  Sorry.

I worked on an almost literal "million things" this summer and have tried to take pics as I went, but that means I have a terrible backlog of  reporting.  I intend to put them all up, but we know all about good intentions and where they lead!  The projects include tie-dyeing 39 shirts, hand quilting a whole lot (Grandma Hunt did MOST) on "Not a Wallflower" for Senn, a whole cloth butterfly hanging for Mom's Birthday etc.  I also made pillow cases to go with Wallflower, went windsurfing with no wind, prepared my first "Quilt of Valor" submission, and contemplated but still didn't bind the tree.  Poor neglected tree.

Happy sewing, reading, cooking or whatever else it is you are doing.  Be happy. k.

Mastery

It is an interesting thing to watch children pursue mastery...but I should say that it is also fun to watch (or be) an adult in the pursuit of it as well.

For my birthday I bought myself some quilt books...all filled with spiky things. Quilt Mavens and Mariner's Compass.

So this is what I have been playing at the last day or so. The fabrics are from my friend's "Quilts of Valor" challenge for Cursed Quilt (which really is cursed by the way....I was supposed to go fabric shopping with a member and my son announced that he was going to be sick. Hasn't yet, but I am not going ANYWHERE in the car. ;)

 In order to use this book you have to either know how to do foundation piecing (paper piecing) or be a bold adventurer.  Either way she has some great designs in here and...even better...some good instructions on how to make your own!  You can see my sketch here with the book.  Not super complex or even as spiky as I am inclined to be, but it is my first effort.

As this was for the challenge I actually drafted this twice.... the foundation in the picture is only 8 1/2 inches.  Since the blocks are supposed to be 12 1/2 I realized that I had better just draw it again and not be lazy. hehehe

The trickiest part of this whole process is figuring out how to divide the design and decide which section has to be done first.  I could see there were several ways to do it, but everyone was going to require one of my shapes to be split.  Here you can see it as it is so far...

I like the look of the circle in the center of compass designs but I am not so sure I really want to do any applique' hehehe.  (I also am not sure I know what color it should be when I do it...) The fabrics for the Challenge are the two dark prints.

As for my Mavens Book...this block makes me feel cool.  Yes I know I am a terrible quilt geek...and that it may not go with all the rest of my blocks that I designed for the challenge quilt.  But I LIKE it.  (Note: this is a pattern from the CD that comes with the book....and it was 9 inches, thus the borders...but I even like those.  The inner fading border is from a  fabric I got for my "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" which is still just a top in my work box.
Yeah, I know.  Quilt Geek.  You can't have any idea how I agonized over getting the lines of little dots in the middle of that spike.  Surprisingly hard.  But worth it I think. heh.

This style of block is sometimes called a "New York City Beauty" and other variations on the theme.  That appears to mean that it is a spiky 1/4 circular pattern.  That is actually how I found the books I bought....searching for that type of Art Deco block with the arcs in it.  The books I ended up with are better than any of the ones purporting to be about actual "New York City Beauty" blocks.

Do something that makes you happy today.  It doesn't even have to be spiky! k.

Always a Quandry...

Ooops, in the throes of my Anti-picture post I forgot to do my office pic.  Maybe I had better just give that up as an affectation.  What do you think?

This is what I have to present for today....and my quandry.  (Sometime I will get back up to speed with all the other adventures I am having, but it is good to start small. :)

This is a little piece I put together with one of my Brand-Spanking New Accuquilt GO!  (I think the exclamation mark is part of the trademark. heheh)  It is a pretty snappy little thing and works well for what it is.  What is that you may ask?  Well it is a die cut system designed for fabric.  Accuquilt Website  You buy a cutter (called a die) for each specific shape you need.  I have the small version (GO!  Be sure to note the exclamation mark.) which will precision cut up to 6 layers at a time.  (The Studio version is a little heavier duty at 10 layers.)

Now those of you who know me well may be perplexed.  This is a great product for people who like to do the same thing over and over again....which as you know I do not. 

I still think that it will be a useful product in my office, but I am going to have to work at it a bit.

Cutting the Apple Cores was actually fun....fun for Senneth.  As the dies are foam with the blades buried inside they are safe to handle; so I prepared the fabric pieces and had S. crank the handle that forces the die between the rollers.  She reported that it was great fun and was disappointed when I announced that we were done for now.  What you see above are some of the pieces we cut.  The curved edges have the notches in the die so the centers of those curves are already marked.  I still had to snip the concave edges when putting them together but the results were fairly easy to achieve.  I didn't take a close up but the corners set in beautifully.

My difficulty is this:  Now that I have this cute little piece, do I wrap it up quick as a wall hanging and put it in the box going to Humanitarian Services (I even have left over red bias tape to bind it with!) or do I find some blue and do the whole primary color thing in an actual quilt.  I have more yellow but not more red....well except for the bias tape.  (Wow that yellow is hard to read.  I see why good web designers don't do colors very often. hehehe)

What do you think?  In the meantime I think I will go back to working on the Circles piece.....

Go Check out the Cursed Quilt Blog.  I posted the pics of the Wall Hangings we have ready to go.  Be sure to comment on the ones you like best.  There are a few more that didn't quite get finished, so there may be more pics later. :)  Have a happy day. k.

Yea, Nourish the Tree as it Beginneth to Grow

Alma 32:41 But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.

Although the prophet Alma is talking about the "Word" and our testimonies, I have always thought this was an excellent metaphor for marriages and families. This project has seen all that and more!

Here it is in all its unbound glory. I will give details after the pics.

 

As I mentioned earlier, it is still unbound and the explanation for that is in its history.....

When I completed the machine quilting I went in search (on my computer) for the pattern thinking I might post the pattern as well in case there were any masochists out there. It was the date on the files that surprised me though. I knew I had started this mosaic before s was born. She is 7 so that puts the date at 7+ right. The earliest file date is November 21, 1999....so yeah, I dare you to dig out a project that has been hidden away that long!


The pattern was completed, the mosaic laid out (the grid it is built on is a PELLON product, fusible), and the seams more or less sewn straight. (You lay out and fuse all the little squares and then sew along the grid lines to actually piece it together.) There were a few problems, little edges that weren't fully incorporated etc so I got a little frustrated....and it got laid aside.

The pattern itself is 39X39 inches (before the seams are sewn) which means there are 1521 1X1 squares in 15 colors.  Somewhere is an exact count of how many squres I had to cut in each color but I can't seem to find it.

In addition to the troubles of a few loose edges, I realized that this was going to have to be machine quilted. With such a density of seam, it would be a nightmare to try to do by hand. At some point, several years after the initial creation, I attempted to quilt it in squares using the clear monofilament thread. After about 1/4 of it, I decided I hated it. Eventually that all got picked out. (I didn't have a mcahine I could put the feed dogs down on, so it was bunchy on the back and....well, boring.)
Fast forward several years, the family goods are being divided in to storage and ship. More than half of my fabric went in to storage because, while I can NOT control my purchasing of fabric I do have a good sense of what I am not going to use in the next little while. hehehe. As I was sorting through things, I came across the tree (wrapped with its back and batting still after all these years) and decided I wasn't willing to lose it if the storage was destroyed, so tossed it in one of the Ship bins. ALL my quilting supplies otherwise went in to the Storage stuff because honestly I hadn't quilted in years, being much too busy with Boxpleat.


Now we come to the part that should give you hope for all your set aside projects....as I hae mentioned earlier in the blog, I got burnt out. Feeling unmotivated to sew for my work (dolls) I decided I ought to sew something else, and what's more, I ought to use my sewing skills to encourage my social life. heheh The Cursed Quilt Group comes on the scene....


Suddenly my energy returns as quilting picks up all the slack imagination that has been sitting around bored and we are off and running. I's quilt (see "Trains" below) is going to have to be machine quilted so I get over my reticence and TRY IT. Come to find out I really like it. Of course having a flash sewing machine that obeys my will is part of that success. (Although I have had this machine for years, so that isn't really any excuse....I got it just before s was born.)

After my little square practice, I needed an interim sized project to help me get the hang of managing the fabric bulk.....ah, the TREE. And here we are. k.


Details of the Machine Quilting: Bark, Air, Leaf, Bush, Grass and Stones (in case you couldn't guess what you were seeing.  Sorry the grass is growing sideways!)

" Trains"

Once I got the Cursed Quilt Group going, I actually made a quilt top for s. first. It will make an appearance here in the next few entries probably, but not yet.

After the top was completed i. started lobbying for his own quilt, not understanding exactly what that means I suspect. So with the boy in mind, I headed off to the fabric market to fined "IT." I was greatly entertained to find a great train fabric for my central theme. The fabric spread also includes a checkerboard pattern, some double-decker buses, bright red and some lively yellow. After the fact I added a textured gray and some blue. I wanted to add some green but I didn't have any and was too anxious to get started.....of course.

So here it is.  I had originally planned for there to be a strip of the yellow right down the center....then I thought of the red diamonds....and then in the shower one morning I realized that I could make and I for i.....and if you turn it on its side it is an H for good measure. :)  How could I not do it after that.....well, it was almost ill-fated.  You can not see it from the pictures but one end of the I is made up of MANY pieces.  This is because I used every last inch of that yellow piece I bought; literally, I trimmed off the selvedge edge and everything else is as you see it.  (I even unpicked some yellow from the ends where I squared things up!)  That also explains why there isn't any yellow in the back, eh?

When the quilt is put together I  plan to have bias tape "rails" that run over the railroad ties border.  They are apparently not required for i. though as he chugged around the edge every time he found it laying out on the floor for contemplation.  The math involved in this design from my head was staggering.  Calculating proportions so that the border would fit evenly on the center panel....and then having to recalculate it again when I decided to put the strip down the center....and then a third time when it became an I.  Calculating the size of the triangles was actually made easier by a formula I found on http://www.quiltbug.com in their "learn" section.  They have excellent resources on the site for resolving a good many quilting complications.

The fan shaped corners are curved thanks to my Mom who cuts right to the heart of things.  I was complaining that I wasn't sure how you go about attaching the corner piece to a Pieced Grandmother's Fan (I think they are usually applique'd in place.)  She just laughed and asked why I didn't just leave them rounded.  Brilliant...and a LOT less work.  It was still not  easy though....I even have some secrets about those corners that I am not going to confess to.

 

The idea for the back, since I decided I needed to commit to machine quilting something more than just little sample squares, was to crazy quilt with the train pieces that were left.  (It is hard enough to hand quilt through one layer of "pieced" much less two! - in case you didn't follow my logic there. hah.)  I added the panels of "things that go" which turned out to be a somewhat mixed decision.  I like the way they look but the fabric is not the same quality as the others and stretched almost as much cross-grain as the others did on the bias....which I now have a LOT of experience with.  Argh!  When I smooth the back out on the floor it lumps and bumps its way along.  I tried to get a pic of this effect but it didn't show.  I think it took me longer to piece the back than it did to piece the front, although the sheer amount of math I had to do on the front may balance that a bit.

All in all, I really like it so far.  I am not sure how the quilting will go, or how it will look when I am finished with it (since there isn't any "stitch in the ditch" when both sides are pieced) but it ill be exciting.  This is also my first labeled quilt.  The some of the embroidery is hard to see in the pics, but it says "Trains" "2010" and both our names.  (My great grand kids won't have to look on the internet when they have school projects, darn it!  Sorry Great Grandma Isabel....) k.