Arise

I just did a crazy quiz on Facebook about what mythical creature you are most like.  It determined that I am a Phoenix.  How appropos!  The quiz was run by magicquiz.com and gives the definition of a phoenix as, "Associated with hope, immortality, and regeneration, a phoenix rises from the flames to become an even better version of themselves" (no attribution).  This is a perfect description of my quilt that has spent its days skirting disaster.

I have never had a quilt that posed so many difficulties or plans gone awry in spite of careful thought beforehand.  If I can get the rest of the quilting done without problems, it will definitely be a better version of my original plan.  My granddaughter's design is beautiful, but the problems arose in creating a workable version of her drawing in fabric.

The latest is the decision to quilt the "ground" or bottom third of the quilt with navy on three different dark fabrics.  Looks great with magnifying glasses and bright light.  Doesn't show up with normal vision.  Doesn't do a thing for the quilt.  Makes the fires look like they are floating in space.  The best laid plans have gone awry again.

I bravely fooled around with some quilting using red Isacord thread. The McTavishing makes me think of hot coals.  I like it.  Out came the ripper and I un-quilted some (not all) of the navy stitches.  The redo in red around the flames is very satisfying.  I love it.  Note the difference between the red quilting in the center and the navy quilting in the lower left.  The red truly provides visual clues that the bird is rising out of the fire, but doesn't take away from the brilliance of the Phoenix.  It warms the dark fabric so it blends nicely in color and temperature with the rest of the quilt.

Red McTavishing

 Maybe I will get this project done after all.

TIP:  What can I say?  Persist like the Phoenix.  Perfection is an almost unattainable goal, but there is nothing wrong with striving toward it.  Just don't wear out your fabric!

Sew a happy seam today.

Testing Always Works - NOT

I spent a lot of time testing materials and techniques for my Phoenix bird and was confident that I had the process carefully planned.  In March I wrote:

Quilting

Normally I don't worry much about my quilting ahead of time although it does bang around in my head as I work.  However, on this project I have thought a lot about how to quilt the painted background so I tried some of my ideas.  When I looked at the results I realized that there was way too much interest and texture.  The problem is that the bird will be very flat after all the thread painting and I don't want the background to cause visual interference.  My new decision is to do McTavishing with champagne-color, silk thread.  This will tame the beast and still look really nice, maybe a little like smoke from the fire below the bird.  It will allow the bird to fly. 

Now the bird is done, the fire is done and one side of the painted background is McTavished.  The result?  I don't like it at all, even though it looks great on the back:

Backside Quilting 

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the front, which may be stuck in Adobe Lightroom, which won't open.  Computer frustration is as bad as quilting frustration.  Anyhow, the background is very geometric (thread painting of the bird has not been done in the photo below):

Note background here

When I looked at the McTavishing I had done, I felt it fought with the background design with bumps and poofs that didn't align with the geometry.  The bird is so vivacious and colorful that the background couldn't possibly outshine it.  So I ripped out all the McTavishing, and did precise, tight, geometrical fillers in each section of the background.  BTW  the thread was silk and it is strong and slippery so is relatively easy to rip out...the operative word here is "relatively."

Here is an example of what I finally decided to do with the background:

New background quilting plan

It eats up the extra fabric that was created by the thread painting, but there are still problems, which I will describe next week.

TIP:  Testing is very important in the development of your quilt, but remain flexible because things don't always work out as planned.  (Stay tuned).

Sew a happy seam this week.

Just Had to Do It

There has been so much going on here.  More jam, peach this time, more varnishing, more gardening.  The latest blow to my time is that we have one more room to panel in the house and that is our bedroom.  My "office" is a tiny nook in one corner and I had to completely dismantle it as part of the renovation.  This meant that DH had to move his stuff out of his office so I could set up my computer there.  He uses a laptop and doesn't need the desk temporarily.  You can't even imagine the mess the house is in.  My sewing room was commandeered for some displaced items, the rest are all over the living room, and I gave up sewing for a week.  At least my piano is clear so I can play a little to relieve the tension.

Well friends, that can only last so long before my sewing gene refuses to settle.  I just had to do it.  I went into the black hole (usually called a sewing room), straightened things out by finding a better arrangement for uninvited items, and sat down to sew.  Oh the joy.  I started out with orange pebbles under my fires and then proceeded with black pebbles and McTavishing, continuing to fill the background, which still has a lot of fullness.  It is working well capturing and taming that excess fabric so my time went really fast.  I feel refreshed.

Pebbles under the fire.

I did orange pebbles under the fire, thinking of hot coals.  They show up more in this photo than on the actual quilt, but there is still an orange coloration that is different from the black quilting in the rest of the background.  It grounds the fire, or so I tell myself.  Anyhow I like it.  None of the black thread quilting has been done in this photo.

TIP:  When you are busy take time sew even if it is for a short time.  If you truly love it you will come away refreshed and ready to take on the world, knowing you have accomplished something.

Sew a happy seam this week.

 

It's OK to be Lazy - Occasionally

Yes, I was lazy last week.  I didn't write a post.  Summertime is unpredictable even though my children left the nest long ago.  There is yard work to do.  I have trays my mother painted with Early American Design that have become damaged with use.  I need to repair them in the summer when the weather is warm because I must varnish in the uninsulated garage instead of in my tiny home.  Fruit is ripe and jam must be made when the time is right.  It waits on no sewing project.  I generally sew every day for 2-3 hours, but have not been able to do that for the last couple of weeks, let alone blog.  I had a visitor from Scotland so we hiked and he chiseled a crack in two of my genealogical brick walls.  Had to work on those of course.

Lastly, the sewing of my Phoenix bird hit a snag.  Do you ever make a quilt that goes perfectly from start to finish?  Grrrr!  I don't.

TIP:  Start your quilting in the middle even if the sandwich is well secured.

The bird itself turned out great.  I started on its belly in the center and worked the wings out from there.  When I got down to the tail feathers, I got so excited to work on them that I just simply didn't think it through and began with the outside feathers and worked in.  Thread painting is so dense that it redistrubutes fabric as it fills.  Here is what I got:

Extra fabric arising like the Himalayas 

All kinds of mountainous rumples arose within the confines of the feathers.  What to do?  The fire helped a little, but the photo shows it unfinished because I thought I had better bulldoze the hills first in case I had to rip out the flames.  I tried McTavishing, but it wasn't enough so I took it out and settled for small pebbles with a curlique in the center hoping that lots of stitches would eat up the extra fabric.  They did as you can see below:

Heavy quilting black on black - click to enlarge.

Mostly that did the trick, but the area does not lay perfectly flat.  I think and pray that I can flatten it during the blocking process.  If not, it will still be a nice quilt, but not show fodder.  If not, I will consider it part of a heavy duty lesson in thread painting.

TIP:  All is not lost, ever.  It is all in how you look at it and whether or not you learn from your mistakes.  After all, it is just a quilt.  Your life cannot be ruined by a quilting error.  Your psyche may get temporarily dampened, so take a break, take a hike, make some jam, clean up the sewing room.......

As I write, I know I have more extra fabric to contain, but it is getting better as I work it out.  The fires are complete so I continue with black on black pebbles that take a magnifying glass to see what I am doing.

Sew a happy seam this week.

Learning Curve Continues

Learning thread painting is throwing me some curves.  It is not the stitching that is the challenge, but rather the planning and not knowing precisely what awaits beyond the next corner.  Last week you read about the things I was learning from my tester piece.  See "Looking Ahead, Stuck Behind"  Now I will write about some other things that have popped up.

Here is the very messed up tester.  Be aware that some experimentation remains as I do not have any thread yet.  With two quilts to block and bind, my pretty bird sits grounded for a short time.   You can refer to this photo as you read the rest of my ramblings.

Phoenix Tester

Layering

Layering the fabric properly on this project is counterintuitive.  It is best to lay down the light colored fabrics first and place dark fabrics over them to avoid a shadow under the light fabric, but the dark feathers on my bird look like they should be behind the lighter fabrics.   This scrambles my brain!  In order to counteract reality I need to paint some shadows onto my fabric to make the darker fabric, which is on top, recede into the back.  Thread painting with darker thread in the shadows will add to the effect, but I didn't have any appropriate thread to play with.  I tried black, but it is way too harsh.  No surprise there.  Outline stitching appropriately laid down may help too.

Fabric Paint

*Tsukineko Ink.  I didn't try this because it comes on pretty strong and I have a limited number of colors.
*Copic Pen.  This bled onto the lighter fabric and didn't show up enough on the darker one.  I also have a limited number of colors.
*Inktense Pencil. I put a little fabric medium on a brush, picked up color from the end of the pencil, and scrubbed it into the fabric with a small brush.  I have 36 colors to choose from to coordinate with my fabrics.  Voila!  This is it.

Thread choice  

Should I use cotton or polyester?  I tried both from my thread stash.  Isacord polyester is the clear winner.  I love the sheen it gives the feathers of the bird.  I will use silk for the background quilting because it buries itself in the thickness of the quilt.   I will also try some variegated threads because my research indicates that they provide additional interest.  I ruled out rayon because it is not as sturdy as the polyester.

Quilting (doesn't appear to show up very well on the tester photo) 

Normally I don't worry much about my quilting ahead of time although it does bang around in my head as I work.  However, on this project I have thought a lot about how to quilt the painted background so I tried some of my ideas.  When I looked at the results I realized that there was way too much interest and texture.  The problem is that the bird will be very flat after all the thread painting and I don't want the background to cause visual interference.  My new decision is to do McTavishing with champagne-color, silk thread.  This will tame the beast and still look really nice, maybe a little like smoke from the fire below the bird.  It will allow the bird to fly.

Markers

I am painting the background first and wanted to see how the purple air marker and the blue water soluble markers work with the Intense pencils.  I colored with the pencils and fabric medium, heat set the color and marked with both kinds of markers.  No problem.  They disappeared as advertised.

Next, I laid down the blue marker and then colored over it with Inktense pencil and medium.  Wow, the blue marker disappeared.  The fabric medium is water soluble so that makes sense.  The next morning all had dried and the blue marker line was still gone.  I decided to see what happened when I heat set.  Oops!  The blue marker returned as a ghost line.

I used a Lumocolor permanent marker by Staedtler for the red triangular lines.  When I sprayed water on the blue marker lines (see above) they disappeared, but the red lines ran all over the place where they got wet.  How fortunate that I found this out now!  I then tried out a red Micron pen and it worked fine.  I soaked it with water and no bleeding.

I want the painted background to stop just barely under the bird and that is why the concern about markers.  I ended up marking the fabric 1/8 inch inside the borders of the bird lightly with regular pencil.  Those lines will ultimately be covered up by the bird.  Problem solved.  I hope I can see the pencil lines when the time comes, but if not, I will use a light box and the full-size pattern as a guide.

Enjoy your sewing this week.