Have a wonderful holiday.

Short and Sweet

The holidays are grinding down on me and I have a lot to get done so this is a short offering today.

I spent two or three days getting my appliquéd flower and dog off the bed and fused down.  First I scattered scraps of fusible here and there on the wrong side of the backing fabric and then fused the batting to it.  The final step was to fuse the flower and dog to their appropriate batting and backing.  Now they won't be lounging on the bed and in danger of getting messed up.  I hung them both on my design wall and they are ready to quilt when the holiday busy-ness settles down.

So...what to do with my time?  I don't want to get deeply involved at this point so I made some really cute ornaments that I saw on a blog last week.

Origami hexagon ornaments
Pardon the threads - I left them attached to sew on the buttons.

Here is the U-tube video that shows how to make them.  I spent about 1-1/2 hours making five of them.  Easy-peasy!  They all need a button to cover the raw edges in the center.  I went to Joann's and bought buttons specifically for them.  When I got home the buttons were not in the bag or in the car.  They must have fallen out of the bag into the cart when I left the cart in its parking area as I left the store.  Bummer!! Big Time.  I live over 1 hr away from Joann's and the snow began to fall so no buttons with which to finish the ornaments in time for the photo.  I'll hit Hobby Lobby when I venture down the canyon for a haircut in a couple of days.  Hopefully I can find something there that I can use.  I intend to have them ready to hang on a Christmas tree before the big day.

That's all folks.  I've been doing other things with my time lately...you know, like cooking, cleaning, laundry, shoveling snow.......

Sew some happy seams this week if you have time.  Enjoy the holidays, family and friends.

Cut and Paste

My sewing machine had been gone for almost 4 weeks.  I finally called on a Friday and they apparently scrambled because they had it ready to pick up on Monday.  Now tell me, why couldn't they have done that 3 weeks ago?  The intermittently functioning Start button performed to perfection for them so nothing was done to solve that problem.  The foot pedal works great...even though it is sluggish and jumpy so nothing was done on that.  I am linked to this outfit for the one-year warranty, but after that I will find someone else to work on my machine!  I think I will just buy a new foot pedal.  They aren't very expensive and maybe I'll get one that works better.

Clearly, I have not been sewing, but that doesn't mean I am not working on quilts.  I cut freezer paper, cut fabric, glued, pressed fusible, trimmed, placed and repeated.  My gaillardia is almost ready to quilt except that I found some fabrics in my stash that I missed when I was choosing.  Hmmmm!  I may have to do a few replacements.  We'll see.  The flower turned out great.

Detail from my "Dancing Gaillardia.

Ever since I took the photo of the gaillardia I have puzzled over how I could put it into a quilt.  I was stumped because I was trying to figure out how to accomplish the lovely gradation from yellow to red in the petals.  Now I was forced to face the problem head-on if I wanted to keep busy.  That flower had become my primary fixation.

How to:  First I cut a yellow rectangle for each petal then wet it down with water.  Using Textil fabric paint I painted red on one end of the rectangle and brushed the red with paint and water until it blended with the yellow.  After all was dry I cut out the petal, painted glue on the edges and ironed fusible on the back.  The last touch was to draw the red lines with a fine Sharpie.  That was probably not necessary as I will be quilting over those lines with red thread.

I have also done the background and it was a lot of fun.  I told the fabric to talk to me and it kept on chattering for days until it finally told me I was done.  You'll see it when the quilt is finished.

Lady with her bow.

I got the collie's bow back from Spoonflower and it is gorgeous!  I cut it out in its entirety and fused it to the dog's head.  After spending many hours trying every method in the book, having it printed professionally from my photo was the simplest and the best.  Occam's Razor has invaded my sewing room!  Some edges of the ribbon are a little hard to make out because of value similarity, but a few quilting stitches with a darker or lighter thread will solve that.  The color is stunning and true.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you simplicity and chattering fabric to fuel your creativity.

Withdrawal

My sewing machine is in the shop for annual service and hopefully a fix for the cranky start button.

I finished the Mayan mask although I will wait until I attach it to the fabric before adding the feather headdress.  Can't proceed until I have my machine back.

Mayan mask without feather headdress.

I started working again on the Christmas bow for my collie Lady.

Photo that I am copying into a quilt (dog herself is done).

I have tried piecing.  I have tried painting with acrylic and Paintstiks.  I have tried different fabrics.  I just can't get it right.  The fabrics don't give me enough contrast and/or shine and painting the highlights comes out looking stupid.  My last hope is that Spoonflower might help.  I uploaded the photo of the bow and it fits on a "Test Sample" for only $5.  If that works I will cut that whole bow and fuse it onto the dog's head.  Stay tuned.  It will be a couple of weeks before I get it back.

I have a photo of a gaillardia that I have wanted to do for a long time now.  It looked so bedraggled, but I took the photo anyway.  It is interesting and unique.  Maybe now is the time to start a small project.  More fusible and cutting.  I have plenty of fabric for it.

Gaillardia

Sew some happy seams this week or join me with a fusible project.  I wish you creativity.

Feathers of the Headdress Kind

I experimented with how to make the feather headdress for my Mayan mask.  My eyes crossed when I thought of cutting out all those little holes and I pondered, took the dog for a walk, looked through my art supplies and finally had a "Bingo" moment.  I cut the holes out after all, but in freezer paper rather than fabric.  Thank goodness for an interesting audiobook to reduce the tedium.  This gave me a stencil for each feather.

Rough-cut fabric and stencil

Then I ironed the freezer paper pattern/stencil onto the fabric.

Pattern/stencil ironed on to fabric

I painted the holes with a black Shiva Paintstik.  Since the feathers will be on a black background, and ultimately quilted down it will look like the black is showing through.  At least that is the idea.

Painting

I painted with a small, stiff stencil brush.  The only downside of Paintsticks is that they are oil paint.  They take 24 hours to dry and then you can heat set them.  Of course the brush needs to be cleaned up with mineral spirits or turpentine.  However, I love them and they did a great job for this project as the paint was easy to control and is not messy to paint with.

After the suggested 24 hour drying period elapsed, I went around the outer edges of the paper pattern with diluted Liquid Stitch (scroll down to last week's post), applied fusible to the back, and trimmed the edges down to about 1/16 inch.  The last step was to pull the stencil and fusible backing paper off and the feather was ready to apply to the background fabric.

Black "holes" on the feather.

Voila!  Just what I wanted... I think.  It does look a bit like a branch of leaves.  Oh well, it will give the effect that I want.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you awesome results!

Preparing Appliqué

I have been having great fun creating a Mayan mask.  I really do enjoy machine appliqué and I have established my own technique by using bits and pieces from other peoples' methods.  I like my way because I can work from the right side...none of this mirror image nonsense.  I like it so well that I will share with you how I do it.

1.  Line Drawing. Find a design that you like and trace it.  Then secure it to a light table and cover it with freezer paper on which you trace a copy.  Next, create another freezer paper copy on which you will lay out the prepared fabric pieces.

TIP:  I enlarged a small picture, printed it on six pages and taped them together.  You can also take a picture to a printing company and they will enlarge and print it for you.

TIP:  Before tracing, iron your freezer paper flat.  Pull it up and iron it again.  Freezer paper shrinks!  Did you know that?  Not much, but enough.

Tracing paper in back.  Freezer paper in front.  Some pieces already cut away.
Best little clippers in the world.  Home Depot in the gardening dept.

2.  Setting up your surface.  On a light table secure one of the freezer paper patterns or the tracing paper design.  Cover it with a teflon pressing sheet.  I use office clips to fasten it all down, but painter's tape would work too.  With the light underneath you can see the pattern lines through the pressing sheet.

TIP:  I use a clear, plastic sewing machine extension table as my light box.  My Ott light flattens out and fits underneath.

3.  Cutting.  From the other freezer paper copy carefully cut out one piece along the lines without damaging any other parts of the design.

4.  Fabric.  Find a piece of fabric and iron the cut freezer paper to the fabric and cut loosely around it leaving about 1/4 inch seam allowance.

TIP:  If you have to set your piece of freezer paper down, be sure to secure it so it doesn't blow away. I end up with piles of fabric all around me so I stick a pin through the paper into my ironing surface while I fling fabric around finding just the right one.

5.  Glue.  This is a new wrinkle and I am pleased with it so far.  I hate the fraying edges that occur with machine appliqué on some fabrics.  This idea comes from Grace Errea.  She gives workshops, but doesn't share her method on the Internet.  I picked up snippets from here and there and I will share with you what I am doing.  I use Liquid Stitch (Liquid Thread probably works too, but I haven't tried it).  It is a permanent adhesive and will not wash out.  I dilute it with about 4-5 parts water to 1 part glue and put it into a little squirt bottle (not a spray bottle) and pour out small amounts at a time into a little plastic container.  I work on top of a teflon pressing sheet.  With a 1/4 inch sable brush I brush this liquid onto the seam allowance that I left around the paper pattern.  You can let it air dry or iron it dry, which is what I do.

Liquid Stitch diluted and ready to paint on fabric.

Freezer paper pattern on fabric ready to brush glue on edge.

TIP:  I keep a small container of water to set my brush in between uses.  I ruined one brush because I let the solution dry on it.  You don't need an expensive brush for this process.  I also have a small, flat, plastic container (maybe it was the end of a small mailing tube) for the glue solution so I can't knock it over.  It is really runny.  Dried glue peels off the plastic.

6.  Fusible.  I don't think Grace Errea uses fusible, but I do.  I like Soft Fuse.  It has paper on only one side and isn't heavy or stiff.  I lay the wrong side of my piece of prepared fabric down on the fusible side of the Soft Fuse. I then cut roughly around the fabric edge and press it paper side up on the pressing sheet.

Rough cutting Soft Fuse to adhere to the wrong side.

TIP:  Protect your iron with another piece of pressing sheet or an appropriate iron cover to avoid getting errant bits of fusible all over your ironing surface.  Fusible does not stick to a teflon pressing sheet, but it can make a real mess of your ironing board cover.

TIP:  You can use other fusibles.  If yours has paper on two sides, just pull the paper off of one side to expose the fusible material.  I can't use Steam-a-Seam II on my machine.  It gummed up my needles and left a crystalline residue in the bobbin case.  That meant a trip to the sewing machine hospital.

7.  Final cut.  Now that the glue is dry and fusible is fused, you carefully cut all layers around the freezer paper pattern, leaving about 1/16 inch of seam allowance.  This will lay over or under the pieces that surround it and is just enough to secure it.  You are also cutting where the glue was applied so you shouldn't have any fraying edges.

Cut seam allowance back to 1/16 inch.

8.  Placement.  Peel off the back paper of fusible and the freezer paper pattern.  Set the fully prepared piece on top of the light box pattern guide (one of the freezer paper drawings) overlapping other pieces with the tiny seam allowance and lightly touch with the tip of a hot iron to secure it slightly so it won't gallop away.  Sometimes I do a little trimming if necessary.

Partial assembly.  You can see the drawing through the pressing sheet.

TIP:  Keep an envelope or container handy to store the used freezer paper patterns.  You would be surprised at how many times I have had to retrieve one or more pieces for a do-over.

9.  Finish.  When the design is complete lift the pressing sheet with all the pieces and set it on your ironing surface.  Make sure all is in place.  Cover with another pressing sheet and press well.  Then you can lift the whole design in one piece.  The fusible is still there because it does not adhere to the teflon pressing sheet, and you can iron it onto a fabric background. Further secure with the stitching of your choice.  I will be using clear thread and a tiny zig zag for my mask.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you lots of sewing fun this week.

New Math

No, this is not really a blog about math, but I created a new equation:

D + C = PS

Discouragement/disaster + Creative thinking = Problem solving.  Think about it!

My forever quilt is almost done.  I was measuring and squaring up the edges to make sure that the stitching of my outer piano keys would not be cut off when trimming the quilt.  On one side only the quilting is too near the edge, noticeably.  The photo below is a little wonky, but you can see how the chalk line touches the blue points.  It should be about 5/8 beyond the points.  The red point is supposed to touch the eventual binding exactly at the point.  This will never work and the other three sides came out right.

No caption needed!

Here is the "D" (disaster/discouragement) in my equation.  Redoing the quilting will not solve the problem. No matter what I do it will show up as wrong and there is nothing I can do about it.  Don't know how it happened.  Clearly pilot error somewhere along the line.   I folded it up and told DH that for the first time ever, I was not going to finish this quilt.  I am ready to move on to something else.

Then comes the "C" (creative thinking) in the equation.  What can you do with a brain that just won't let it go?  That's what I live with, and as I worked on other things around the house I had a stunning explosion between my ears, and BINGO, I had the solution.  I don't know if this will be show-worthy, but it will be kind of cool.  It will also be time consuming.  Mostly, it will be fun.

Finally,  the "PS" (problem solving).  I have always been interested in the designs of the Mayan people of Central America.  I have wanted to do something with their ideas, but when it came right down to it they seemed far too intricate, and I didn't want to tackle the complications.  So...now is the time.  I will add a black triangle to the top of the quilt and appliqué a Mayan (or Aztec?) mask to it.  This should detract from my error hopefully.  Then I will bind the quilt (in orange) and add some prairie points to the bottom edge of the quilt.  I have already sized the design and am in the process of drawing it out.  It is nice to be doing something different.

Mask.  This is a drawing without the main quilt or the
quilting that is already on the quilt.

This will be time consuming and I need to get more black fabric, but it is snowing and I am not driving down the mountain canyon to buy fabric!  It will take awhile to do the mask anyhow and I am going to try a new technique, which I will share, whether fabulous or fail.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you a week without discouragement or disaster.

New-To-Me Updates

I loved my Sewline ceramic marking pencil... until it broke and I was dead in the water on my quilting.  The nose through which the "lead" comes out unscrewed and lost itself. I was at a place where I had to mark some curved lines to guide my quilting, and I can't do anything else until those lines are done.  I made a special trip to town (1 hour) to get a new one.  BTW it was not a wasted trip as I got a lot of other things done while I was down there.  Anyhow, it got me thinking about marking so I revisited a blog I did back in 2014 about all the marking methods with which I have had experience.  The title is, "Marking The Quilt," and it is still apropos after five years.  Has it really been that long?

However, I have a new addition to tell you about.  Crayola Ultra-Clean Markers.  They are being used successfully and come in 10 colors.   The only thing I discovered in reading was to be careful with the yellow.  It may not come out as advertised.  I did a brief test on white fabric that had been pre-washed and all marks washed completely out except yellow and orange, which faded instead of completely disappearing.  Here is a website that has results from more serious, more scientific experimentation.  I think this is a great addition to our supply list. 

The caveat, as always, is: 

TEST IT ON YOUR FABRIC FIRST.  

Some say it heat sets, others say not, so be careful with that iron and 

TEST IT FIRST.

I am almost to the place where I will stitch piano keys on the last part of my border.  I am so excited.  I have always done them by marking straight lines about 1 inch apart as guides.  I have gotten pretty good at straight lines by doing this, but they are still far from perfect.  I purchased a Westalee ruler foot, which works on my machine.  It came with a little ruler that will be great to learn with and will also be just right for my 2 inch long piano keys.  I am psyched to try it out and will keep you posted on the depth and success of my learning curve.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you success trying out a new product.

I'm Back!!

Too busy to sew, too busy to write.  I have had a wild several months, but have finally returned to my needle and threads.  It has been strange not to sew, but I have not been idle.

Our summer panned out as follows:
10 days in June traveling to and from Southern CA for the wedding of our granddaughter.

Photo by Summer Rae

....and hiking a slot canyon along the way.  So cool!

Little Wild Horse Canyon, UT

10 days to get things done at home, mostly fertilize the iris and clean house.

2 weeks in MN to help a daughter pack up her home for a big move.

1 week (left the dog in MN) for a family reunion in TN and lovely drives through the Great Smokey NP.  Then back to MN for a day to pick up the dog.

Dixie (photo by S. Mattson)

Home.  Two days after our arrival the first wave of guests arrived for 2 weeks.  The day after they left the next round of guests arrived for 1 week.  Same day they left the third round of guests arrived for 2 weeks.  All family and wonderful to have them here, but busy for everyone.  Our son-in-law built new steps outside our kitchen door and what a joy they are.

Steps by SIL.  Stonework by yours truly.

That took care of the summer.  I did not take my machine to MN knowing it would be in the way of packing boxes.  However, I did take a chair to replace the cane seat just to have something to do during downtime.  Over the summer I managed to cane four dining room chairs and one big desk chair.

Desk chair with new cane seat and back.

Now that we have already had our first snow,  I am sewing again.  Back at work on the endless quilting of the same quilt I have been working on for almost 3 years now.  Talk about quilting a quilt to death!  When I sat down to quilt again I started on a scrap just to make sure that I hadn't forgotten everything I had previously perfected.  It is like riding a bike.  After you have done a lot of FMG the technique comes back quickly.  I will be glad to get this quilt done though.  I am ready to move on to new things, but still have quite a bit of work ahead of me before it is dead.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I hope you all had a wonderful summer.

Summertime Saga

It is summer.  It has been snowing on the high peaks and lower in some places.  High mountain roads are closed.  Colorado dream!  It is cold - I wore my winter jacket to walk the dog this morning.  My blogging will be erratic all summer so I will explain.

We just returned from a fabulous trip to CA for our granddaughter's wedding.  It was a wonderful time with family and friends.  We travelled with my sister and her husband and explored Black Dragon wash in Utah along the way.  It is a short hike from the freeway and has pictographs 2,000 years old.

2000 year old pictographs (paintings)

We walked the Pacific beach on a beautiful day.

Fiber art on the beach.

On the way home we hiked into Little Wild Horse Canyon in Utah.  It is a slot canyon and was a marvelous adventure.

Slot Canyon

More slot canyon

It is good to be home for a minute, but we will be off again in a few days for more family visits and a reunion.

Before I left I mentioned a problem with my sewing machine.  It is the intermittent failure of the needle-up/needle-down button.  This was not resolved as it will be easier and cheaper to tackle it at its annual servicing.  The machine still sits under the table in its Tutto bag.  No time to sew anyway and I need the bedroom to be available for guests this summer.

Rather than get all the sewing stuff out I decided to start caning the first of 8 antique chairs on which the cane seats got brittle and broke down.  DH helped by removing the damaged cane and cleaning the surface so I am ready to start weaving.  Unfortunately, I started the job with cane that was at least 25 years old and found that it too was old and brittle.  Now I am starting over with brand new cane.  By the time I do 8 chairs I ought to get pretty good at it!

Round 4 of caning the chair.

The end of July and all of August will be busy with houseguests (daughters and families) so once again the quilting will have to be put aside until fall.  I will miss it, but doing the chairs will be a different sort of interlude...and one that is very necessary.  We don't have any chairs to pull up to the table, except a motley bunch of unrelated, odd ones.

Sew some happy seams this week, or do something else.  It is summertime!

Sewing and Sowing

After sewing a lot of curved, gridded triangles and then ripping most of them out I was getting pretty tired of re-doing that motif.  Scroll down to my last post to see the notorious motif.  I spent a couple of hours yesterday in the yard preparing the soil and sowing wildflowers.  There is no point in creating a fancy garden because the deer and the elk just eat their way through it so I feed them with wildflowers and enjoy watching them up close and personal.

Big bull elk chewing his cud and growing his antlers.

The only downside was my body the next day.  It protested mightily and let me know that it was time for a "soft" day.  Thinking about the quilting I want to get done, I decided to do a marathon sew-in.  I started after breakfast carefully stitching the blue motif with tiny-stitch filler.  Once I made up my mind to do this I was able to divert my brain from the tedium.  I was also listening to an intense, suspenseful audiobook.  I stopped for lunch and went right back to it.  Before I knew it I was done.  Relief.  Joy. A little dance.  It feels so good to be able to move on.  There is still more quilting to do, but it is easier and will go much faster.  I WILL finish this quilt!!

I will do what I can in the next few days before I fly off to Seattle.  Then my daughter and I will drive to Oregon for a day before heading north to British Columbia for my granddaughter's bridal shower.  Then we drive back to Seattle.  My 3-month old great-grandson is waiting for me to come cuddle him before I fly home.  I will be gone for about 10 days during which time my sewing machine will go to the hospital.  The "On-Off" button is not working reliably....again.  It makes sense to get it taken care of while I am gone, and it is under warranty.

My pretty mother's day bouquet.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you the time and persistence to finish something special.

Back at you in a couple of weeks.

Path to Perfection

This quilt will be the death of me.  I continued quilting in spite of the fact that I didn't like the way the triangle motif was turning out.  See below and note how the half-diamonds at the bottom are all different sizes.  Not perfect at all.

Uneven geometry.

I kept on going as I couldn't figure out how to get them to look more uniform, but I wasn't sleeping well as my brain worried the problem.  I started with a rounded triangle, the outline of the said motif.  To mark the grid lines I made myself a little "ruler" from clear template plastic and marked curved lines 1/4 inch apart that follow the shape of the triangle sides.

Homemade "ruler."

Then I marked and sewed along the marked lines.  It bothered me and I don't know why I kept going.  Well, yes I do:  I want to finish this quilt!  I puzzled and puzzled over the problem though.  It is seriously ugly.

As I worked I accidentally figured it, out and will share with you how to do it right so you won't join me at the ripping table.  The trick, my friends, is to make the gridlines meet on a dot at the bottom of the outlined motif.  Now all the bottom triangles are of uniform shape and size.  So simple.

Red circles show how lines need to come together.

So much ripping to do!  I will line up a bunch of movies on Amazon Prime to watch as I rip, but in the end the motifs will be uniform and look so much better, although still not perfect.

TIP:  Remember we are all human and it is impossible to achieve perfect perfection.  Don't be too hard on yourself.

Too much perfectionism?  Maybe, but my inner bulldog will carry me through.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you all the perfection you want.