January Therapy

We arrived home from the midwest the first week in January and went into some serious funk.  December handled us badly on several fronts:  holiday frenzy, traveling, sewer crisis, four new tires, viruses and extreme temperatures below zero.  I couldn't sew when the house wouldn't get above 66º, but on warmer days I experienced what is meant by "quilting is therapy."  I closed myself up in my sewing room with an audiobook and the sewing machine, and just sewed.  The quilt is going well, but it was to a point where the end of the centerpiece motif was almost done.  The stitching was monotonous.  The bugs had been worked out.  The end was in sight and the sewing machine sang its lovely chorus.  This was what I needed to get my mind off the bigger worries and discomforts for a couple of hours each day.  It is amazing what a little sewing can do to rest your brain and restore your spirit.

It also helps to finally make progress on the quilt.  I have now pulled out most of the paper and am ready for the first border.  It is exciting to start a new phase of any quilt, but especially this one.  I reached this point once before and that is when I decided to start all over again from the beginning.  Soooooo glad that I did!  Putting the blocks all together was challenging as there were many points to match up.  However, with the precision of paper piecing most of them went together easily.

Below is a sneak peak of the main part of the quilt.  Borders, appliqué and quilting still ahead of me.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you some productive therapy sessions.

Point Problem

I can plan and plan and plan.  I make patterns three or four times to get the kinks out.   It looks like I am ready to roll so I start making blocks.  After 5 blocks I discovered some things that needed attention.

Problem #1.  I have some critical points that should meet at the seamline.  They meet OK, but can't be sewn.  One in particular has four points coming together (that is 16 layers of fabric at the point) and the piece to which it is seamed is the same so now there are 32 layers of fabric.  Oh Boy!  My machine took one look at that and decided to fudge the seam allowance.  So now the points don't match and the fabric buckles slightly, but too much for my taste.  A rosette on the back won't work because the seams on both big triangles all go the same way because of the order of stitching.

Too many points together at the seam

I consider this a design flaw so back to the drawing board.  There is still a point now (below), but it doesn't come all the way to the seam.  It sews nicely and the design is not affected by the minor change.

See how the point is moved over a little bit? Problem vaporized.

Problem #2.  My pattern involves sewing two pieced triangles together to make a square block.  There is a piece of fabric at one point of the triangle.  When sewn together these two end pieces look like a half square triangle.  No problem with that, except my pattern does not have that line on a 45º angle.  Thank goodness I noticed it this early in the game, because in my adaptation that is a critical design flaw.  I can fix the few completed blocks pretty easily and redraw the pattern, but what a nuisance.

PS.  I just looked at the pattern in the book.  I drew it wrong.  Book is right.  Oops!  Now I pay for that seemingly minor mistake.

Red line is the way I drew it.  
Blue line is 45º angle.  Have to redo the pattern slightly.

Two blocks not sewn together yet.  See the light and dark triangles in the middle at the bottom?
Together they should be a half square triangle with STRAIGHT lines.

Those are my personal negatives, but are related to the pattern not the process.  I would never have seen it without my design wall to stare at.

I must say, that so far the paperless paper piecing is going beautifully.  I now have a system.  I love the fact that I can see the block all together before sewing it.  I am finding that the paperless method is more precise than paper piecing.  I haven't had to redo any points except as related above.  Sewing it is easy, but does take some mental gymnastics to get it right at first so there have been a few stitches to pick out here and there.  It is a new way of thinking.  Another thing I really like is cutting the pieces to the exact size, plus seam allowance of course.  Almost no waste and each piece fits right in place with no guessing.  With paper piecing I almost always had a few pieces that ended up too skimpy and had to be done over in spite of lots of experience with that process.

Does it take longer?  I don't really know and I am getting speedier the more I do.  A major plus is that once the block is together it is done.  No picking out paper.

This process is a keeper!

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you straight seams always, except when they are supposed to curve.

When Points are Really Points.

Last week I dealt with fabric "spaghetti" caused by a design flaw (my bad), where I had too many points coming together in the same place.  It was a mess, but was solved relatively easily.  Spiral quilts have many points and it takes some experience to be able to think ahead about the difficulty, or lack thereof, in sewing them together perfectly.   This week I will show you some lesser pitfalls of quilty points that come together in seams.  When paper piecing it is relatively easy to get sharp points, but it is not so easy to maintain control when they come to a point in a seam.

Don't bother with lots of tiny points coming close into the center (see here) unless you want fabric spaghetti.  Likewise it doesn't work well to have tight points coming together at a corner where you plan to attach a mitered border corner.  In the situation below I could see trouble coming as soon as I sewed the seam.

Tiny point at the corner.

I could tell that this was going to be a nightmare if I wanted to achieve perfection.  I am sure it can be done, but I chose not to hassle it.  So here's what I did:

Corner redo.

I took some border fabric and created an arrow effect in each corner.  I will quilt along the original seam lines to give the effect of a ghost point and to carry through the idea.  No problem getting that perfect.  It also looks nice on the quilt as a whole.

Wide angle points should also be sharp, and they are easier to manage.  There are two of these in the above photo.  The light blue corner (top of photo) and the dark blue of the added piece where it meets at the seam.  You glue the raw edges of the seam allowance together, but add extra glue on the seam allowance of the point fabric all the way to the seam line.  Make sure the folds of the two pieces come together perfectly AT THE SEAM LINE.  Press.  Carefully check the right side.  Sew and it should be perfect.  If it isn't you can easily un-stitch, pull the glued edges apart and try again.  If that doesn't do it, try sewing the seam in the other direction.  You could also baste across the meeting of the points.

TIP:  Again:  Use only Elmer's School Glue.  It is completely washable and will not harm the fabric.

The tiny, points at a seam line are a lot harder.  From a distance they may be fine, but look closely to make sure.  They much prefer to nest than line up.

TIP:  If you are designing a quilt try to avoid having to match teeny, tiny points in a seam.  Think ahead about how you will stitch every single seam and whether you are willing to accept the consequences (ripping and re-doing) if it doesn't go together the way it did in your dreams.

Unacceptable mis-match.

I restitched this twice by the above method, but was still unable to achieve perfection.  So, on to another solution.  I unstitched about 3/4 inch across the point.  From the back I took a tiny stitch or two at the point of the light-colored fabric to make sure the folded edges came together perfectly where I wanted them.  Then from the right side I used tiny ladder stitches to close the opening.  By doing it from the front I could manipulate needle and fabric to make sure all was in line.  It is well secured, and quilting will later reinforce the hand stitching.

Perfect point.  (Sorry, color variation and poor focus spoils the effect, but it is perfect!)

TIP:  Try, try again, but be careful not to destroy your fabric.  Sometimes hand stitching works best.

Sew a happy seam this week.  I wish you perfect points always.

When Spaghetti is the Main Course

Quilts and spaghetti don't really go well together.

• Spaghetti stains.  Need I say, "Don't eat it in the sewing room?"
• Spaghetti inherently requires noodles, which are full of carbs and cause fat retention.  Try the sauce on veggies or quinoa instead.
• When you are eager to get to sewing you may forget to put it in the crock pot at noon to cook, resulting in no dinner to fill your tummy after burning lots of sewing calories.

The other kind of spaghetti has no calories, does not stain and "cooks" as you sew, although it may cause temporary, frustrated hair pulling.  This is the center of my quilt with 8 seams coming together with a seam down the center of each piece = 16 seams!  Is that a mess, or what?  I couldn't even attempt stitching because, with the paper from paper piecing in there too, I couldn't get the presser foot to go over it.  I love my baby spiral better every minute and can't wait to cut this mess out and attach the spinning center.  I have to pull out the paper backing first and that is tedious, but is a great bit of television handwork.

Spaghetti at center point.

Additionally there is the problem of skinny points in my spiral quilt.  It begins with the design.

Pattern with fabric sewn to other side (seam allowance untrimmed).
These big triangles will be sewn together down the center.

See the arrows (click to enlarge)?  They show the troublesome, long, elegant strips of fabric.  Now imagine all these skinny pieces of fabric with 1/4 inch seam allowance between all of them.  Then sew the two main shapes together and you have another seam with another 1/4 inch seam allowance.   The result is major spaghetti.  The points at the very bottom are the center of my quilt and this is only one quarter of the center.  It is a major mess that I did not visualize in the design process.  A real learning experience.  Burned spaghetti!!!  Not only that, but the mess of tiny points is so thick it is impossible to work with.  What to do?  As usual I let it percolate and worked on some less problematic point challenges, which I will address next week.  

TIP:  Got a problem?  Don't despair.  My favorite, and oft-stated recommendation is to sit on it, sleep on it, think about it, and you will eventually come up with a solution.  I do this often!

I was not giving up on this quilt!  I went to my computer to play with ideas, and decided to try covering the center with a four-point star offset from the one already there, then appliqué my spiral into the center of it before appliquéing the whole thing to the quilt.   Ultimately, I will cut away as much of the over-seamed area underneath as possible.

This was not exactly simple, but do-able.  Without the center sewed together the quilt was a bit unstable so that had to be tackled first.  I cut away about 1/2 inch of the spaghetti so I could see what I was doing.  I unglued the center seam allowances (see above) and ironed them open.  That helped the center to lay a little flatter.  Then I pinned six straight strips of fabric across the center to temporarily stabilize it so I could measure the center of the quilt east to west and north to south.  It came out the same!!!  Now it was time to make the star.

TIP:  It is imperative to stay on top of the quilt measurements or you will have difficulty when it comes time to apply the border(s).  It was especially important here because there was real risk of the center going wonky.

Four pieces for a star.

I used one of the above points to cut two pieces of freezer paper ironed shiny sides together as a guide for pressing back seam allowances.  Then I cut the fabric, starched and ironed the seam allowance around the sharp pointed sides of the pattern.  I stitched the four pieces together to hold the center solid.  Next I hand appliquéd the spiral to the center of the star.  I laid the quilt back on the table, measured again, removed the pinned, stabilizing strips, and glued the star in place.

Appliquéing was the easy part.  I did the hand sewing with Kimono silk thread.  I had never used silk for appliqué and I LOVE it.  It is strong, thin and melts into the fabric invisibly.  Hurray!  Very happy.

Here is a graphic of what the center was supposed to look like:

Illustrator version.  Four point star

Here is a photo of the  new center with the appliqué completed:

Red marker is appliqué.  Green marker is the star that is part of the pieced quilt top.
Eight point star.
(click to enlarge)

See how the appliqué points line up over the teensy points?  The worst of the spaghetti is underneath and will be cut away.  Not only did this solution fix the problem, but I really like the way it looks!

Sew a happy seam this week.  I wish you successful solutions to your problems.