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Friday, February 3, 2012 in crafty things

A goof up and a quick break

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I had a migraine yesterday. It woke me up, that;s how it hurt. I think it was from sleeping hard in the same position for hours.

So I muddled through as best I could,and after the second round of strong tea and Advil, plus protein, it lessened enough I could move my head. I set aside my laptop (one can still do minimal support when one’s head is settled amongst pillows) and shuffled down the hall to go play with fabric.

Face it – I needed the break anyway. :D

I tried to quilt a bit and screwed up two feather blocks. Well, screwed up one and tried a different method on another. I’m not doing each block exactly the same, trying out a few different things every so often.

But the orange thread on the plain pink square? Upside down? Post-migraine?

Yeah. Not a good idea.

I did, however, take pictures for you to point and laugh at. Today I attacked it with a seam ripper.

Also shown: I did a small disappearing 9 patch baby quilt and laid out another, all from the same line of “Giddy” fabric. Nice and springy and Valentine’s in one.

Sunday, January 29, 2012 in crafty things

Feather quilting

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Since I’ve finished up Meaghan’s quilt I moved on to Kaytlyn’s, getting it all layered and basted this weekend. I also had a chance to quilt three of the large blocks.

I had always planned to do big feather plumes in these blocks, as it just screamed at me to do so. Problem was when I started the quilt, I’d never done them. So I drew and I practised and I did some samples.

Today I actually dug out all the thread and took the plunge. I’m using yellow thread on the back and in some places on the front will be changing thread colors. This not only blends in better (to hide potential goofs :P ) it also helps me use up much of my half-empty spools of thread. OF which there are plenty.

I’ll do all the large blocks on this quilt first and yes – I am stopping and starting on each block, snipping the thread entirely and not stitching over to the next one. I also did not draw on most of the quilt top for a template. Some I just drew the spine, some blocks nothing at all. They will be almost entirely freehand.

I’ve also been picking up some tips from Diane Gaudynski and her upcoming free motion quilt along. The topic for February? Feather plumes! :D Mine don’t look near as nice as hers, but like she says – just keep on practising!

By the time I get to the last block, I should be pretty good. They are fun to do, if maddening in parts. I definitely like the look of going back and outlining the whole thing until the block fills. It definitely hides my turn backs.

I also chose poly batting because of the loft, and to see how my Bernina handles it. So far, I still don’t like working with it.

Sunday, January 29, 2012 in crafty things

Meaghan’s gray and purple quilt

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YAY! I finally finished Meaghan’s quilt this week. Her birthday was Nov 1st. Remember, I also made a quilt for her brother and his birthday was the day before. He got his quilt on time tho.

I used the same pattern for both quilts, except for Meaghan I sized the blocks smaller to 5″ and made the sashing smaller as well. This brought it down to a twin size. She picked purple and grey as her colors.

It sewed up fast enough but both Meg & I hummed and hawed over how to quilt it. Finally we decided to go for diamonds in the sashing areas. When I finished that part, she picked a curved leafy design for the borders. That was not something I want to quilt again any time soon. They are small and detailed.
After another long period of indecision, I went and quilted loop squares in the squares .Those were pretty fun! It worked up fast too, as I just went in a straight line down the side of each square to get to the next one, and went around the quilt in a big circle towards the side. This made nice lines on the back as well.

I bound it in a grey on grey floral she picked out from the Thimbleberries line. Just straight cut, 3″ wide, folder over and sewn down on the front.

She’s happy, so any mistakes are noticed only by me. It crinkled up real nice after washing as well.

There’s a shot in here of the border before and after washing.The denser quilting on the border definitely crinkled up really nice.

Thursday, January 12, 2012 in crafty things

it was bugging me since yesterday

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So I was poking around, taking a break ad quilting, when we finally settled on a border pattern for Meaghan’s quilt. It’s a curved fern design from Follow the Line Quilting Designs volume 3 (heads up: I LOVE this kind of thing). The only problem was, in the one corner sample given, the leaves changed direction. It was not a simple matter to simply mirror image the pattern itself to be able to turn the next corner. The leaves themselves would have had to turn direction midway.

I’ve been mentally trying to figre this out since yesterday afternoon. Then I made extra copies of the designs, scanned it in and flipped it, printed off those and even then could not get it to line up.

So we turn to the old fashioned way of pencil and paper. I got another sheet, made sure each side of the border I traced was heading to the corner in the right direction, then figured out how to fill in a leaf myself.

Final result with the original corner and the drawn version of the next corner.

Each corner will be used twice in one quilt, at opposite corners. Note how in the original the leaf is tucked in and you hardly notice the direction change. In the opposite corner, the leaf has to point out, or at least look like it did.

Now I can stop thinking about how to do it and maybe go quilt some more.

Friday, January 6, 2012 in crafty things

Oops, made another baby quilt

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Well I was piecing the leftover scraps for Kaytlyn’s quilt and since there were so many little bits and a couple leftover blocks from the first quilt I made… it wound up a new baby quilt.

There’s enough going on it would get lost as a quilt back. So. Baby quilt it is.

Bonus shots of a couple close-ups of the fabrics used. (different lighting so the colors are washed out in some.)

Friday, January 6, 2012 in crafty things

Kaytlyn’s quilt progress

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I think I started this quilt back in September maybe. I had made a baby quilt in pink /orange / yellow and of course Kaytlyn being Kaytlyn, she loved it. :D

stippling

But it was baby quilt sized and it sold out of my Etsy shop rather quickly. The up side was I looked at the leftover fabrics from that quilt and realized I could make a whole ‘nother quilt! Some more brain waves, a couple of scrap bag finds later and I introduced purple into the mix.

The only think extra I bought was a fat quarter of a really bright orange batik print. It was mostly orange and yellow but with a faint pink /purple in some spots. Perfect!

I picked the perfect pattern to highlight the fabrics and more importantly use them all up. There are large 6.5″ by 15″ blocks and since I was stretching out the color scheme with some solids too, I knew I had lots of space for creative quilting. The only thing that came to my mind was feathers.

Big, lush, feather quilting.

Which I had never done.

Those following on flickr saw my multiple tests and tractising to get it right. Not only does it lok good, it’s pretty fun to do too. :) And by the time I get all the blocks done on this quilt, I should be pretty good at it.

more feather quilting

Here is the quilt on my design wall. Right before Christmas I was still attempting to at least get the top all pieced, but alas. It was not to be.

So last night I really needed a sewing break, so I made sure I worked on this quilt alone. I got pretty far, but I think I mis-pieced the middle row. Good thing I have pictures from earlier to check… except by them I was tired enough I could not find the pic on my camera.

Le sigh.

There was one row I pieced with the long pieced sashing and the horizontal bars were not lining up. So I did take my handy seam ripper and rip out that very long seam and pinned it to line it up in a couple spots and sewed it all over again. Much better.

Not long to go now. Then I will piece all of the leftover fabrics for a pieced back because I really really want to have no leftovers. :D I’ve angsted on the back for a while too. The quilt shop has some really cozy fluffy soft fabric, but the colors are dull and muddy. They also had a bright yellow mottled backing fabric (no piecing needed) expect for some reason I think that is too plain.

I also picked out a poly batting to try again with this machine and because it will make it poofy. Kaytlyn also likes heavy quilts so I may find a flannel sheet to put in the middle as well, but I don’t know how difficult that will make it to quilt, with my quilting plans. I may have to skip that bit and make a simpler but heavy quilt for the both of them later.

(which I’m sure would be terrible. Oh the problem of lots of quilts.)

*janitorial notice – I’m going to try and use the built in image galleries a little more, see if I can figure them out and see if I can eventually replace flickr.

** whups – sorry about the not rotated photos