Your Inner Bulldog

Do you have an inner bulldog?  What is that you say?  It is the determination to hang on and complete whatever task is currently on your platter.  Mine is strong and I don't know if it is the result of nature or nurture.  Bulldogs (the animal) are known to hang on to whatever they are biting, and they don't let go.   It does help to have this determination to hang on when you are stitching a quilt.  I love sewing and quilting, but like every piece of life there are some aspects that either get boring or others that you just don't enjoy as much.  As you can tell, I am hard up for a post subject today as I troll along on the less interesting part of quilting the Phoenix.  Mind you, much as I love quilting, at times it seems like it takes forever to cover the ground.

It is like climbing a mountain.  It sometimes gets to be a chore to place one foot in front of the other.  Below is Hallett Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park, and yes, I have climbed it several times.  All those tiresome, uphill steps lead to the release of friendly endorphins, and you begin to see the lovely, small things along the trail such as wildlife and mountain flora.  When you reach the top you forget the hard work and bask in the glory of exhilaration and the beauty before you.  The achievement of that goal stays with you the rest of your life.

Hallett Peak and Dream Lake, RMNP

Later you look at your quilt and forget the hard work and difficulties and enjoy the accomplishment of a finished product.

Don't forget to smell the flowers along the way - the small steps of artistry that have been created by your hand and mind.

Columbine

Enjoy the wildlife.  Stop to pet your dog or cat or whatever runs around your house.  A child, friend or husband will enjoy a little of your attention too.

Pika (member of the rabbit family)

Sew a happy seam this week.

Extras for "Columbine"

I tried some new (to me) techniques on my Columbine quilt.  The first of these was machine trapunto.  Trapunto means "stuffed" and it used to be done by stuffing wee bits of fluff between the fibers of the fabric into a defined area.  I did mine the modern way by pinning pieces of wool batting behind the petals of the flowers (no backing) and temporarily quilting around the petals with water soluble thread.  You must use the water soluble thread in the top spool, but can use soluble or regular thread in the bobbin.  I prefer soluble in both top and bottom.  I left the leaves flat because I wanted them to stay in the background.

TIP:  Do not iron water soluble thread.  It melts, solidifies and breaks apart in teenie, stiff pieces that all have to be picked out because they are visible.  Ask me how I know!

When all the petals are quilted, turn the quilt over and very carefully cut away the excess batting close to the stitching around the petals.  I use sharp embroidery scissors.  You can use sharp, blunt-tip scissors, but I find I can't get into tight corners with them.  Relax and work slowly to avoid cutting the quilt top.

TIP:  You have been so careful, but you accidentally cut your quilt top.  Grrrr!  I have done it, but it can be repaired if it is not too bad.  You can place some fusible web or Bo Nash Bonding Powder over the back side of the slit, cover it with a small piece of fabric to match the cut place, and fuse it closed.  Steer clear of the soluble thread with the iron or unstitch a few of those soluble stitches if necessary.  Then mark the area with a safety pin so that when you do the background quilting you can find the spot in order to quilt over it enough to hide the goof and stitch it down securely.

My next venture into the unknown was to paint the blue areas at the center of the white petals.  I don't remember what kind of paint I used, but it didn't do a thing for my columbine.  It didn't hurt them either, thank goodness.  Then I decided to try thread painting based on a meager bit of knowledge I had picked up from a U-tube tutorial.  That worked and I was so pleased with the results that I did the yellow centers with thread as well, right over the trapunto batting.  The unexpected result was that it flattened the centers of the flowers and made the bulk of the petals really poof out.  Awesome dimension!  The photo doesn't show the depth very well so you will have to use a little imagination.

Detail of trapunto, thread painting, quilting and binding.

TIP:  Some quilters like to starch their fabric before quilting, but don't bother if you have used water soluble thread.  Guess what:  it dissolves in starch too!  Those soluble stitches are your guidelines for the final quilting.  Three guesses where I learned that!

When all the excess batting has been trimmed away it is time put the usual quilting sandwich together and quilt the quilt.  You will have two layers of batting where the trapunto is and that makes those flower petals really stand out.  Nice!  Stitch around all the appliqué first, then fill in the rest.  I used stacked pancakes as filler in the center around the bouquet.  In the outer border I used small feathers and some columbine-like flowers.  Lastly I soaked the quilt to clean it and get rid of the soluble thread before binding.

For the binding I used Ricky Tims' method of applying it with piping and entirely by machine.  The only place to learn how to do this is on his "Grand Finale" DVD, but it is well worth the $22 as he covers all aspects of finishing a quilt including the binding.  I was pleased with the results although I used the same color piping as in the outer border so it is not showy...by design.

TIP:  Explore, experiment, stretch your mind and build your arsenal of techniques.  You get better with every quilt.

Here is the finished quilt. It won a "Meritorious" award at the Quilt Colorado Show.

Finished "Columbine"

(Caveat:  the color looks dull on the website, but it is really quite vibrant and true blue.)

Columbine

Columbine

Hiking in the mountains, I found this lovely grouping of columbine, my favorite flower.  My first thought was that it would make a pretty, little quilt.  I had recently taken a class on using hot ribbon to finish the edges of fused appliqué and that was my first idea.  If you are interested in that technique there is also a U-tube video.   I didn't like the results for this particular project so I shelved it and didn't revisit the idea for a long time.  Then I began doing blanket stitch appliqué and decided to try again.

The first step was to enlarge the photo on my computer and trace it in Illustrator with enough artist's license to make it sewable.  It took 13 drawings of various parts to assemble the final, full-sized composite with a 16x20 inch quilt in mind.  It turned out a little larger because of the borders, but the flowers remained the same.  I am an intuitive quilter and frequently adjust my patterns to the moment.

I first sewed the background together so it would be ready when the appliqué was cut and prepared to fuse.

Final Design

TIP:  Having the flowers spill out over the inner frame adds dimension to the design and creates a unique composition.

Columbine graphic (reversed)

You can see here that I have reversed the design and labelled each part with a system of numbers and letters so I could keep the many pieces straight.  Finally I traced all the pieces onto the paper side of Soft Fuse.  Since I had simply reversed the entire design, I didn't have to worry about reversing each part when tracing.  I had already assembled several blue, green and white-on-white fabrics.

TIP:  A design like this is more interesting and has more depth when different fabrics are used for separate petals and parts.  

I then laid the full sized pattern on my ironing board, covered it with a translucent, heat-resistant, silicon sheet, and laid out the pieces on that sheet, carefully following the pattern.  When I had everything arranged to my liking I laid another heat-resistant sheet on top and ironed it all together.  The idea was that all the pieces would stick together and I could peel it all off the silicone sheet as a unit and lay it on the background.  Oh dear!  The minute I lifted it up it all fell apart, pieces everywhere, no numbers or letters.  A few of the smaller pieces went AWOL and had to be traced, fused and cut again.  At that point I was done quilting for the day.

The next day, fresh for a new start I sorted the mess, and matched pieces to the graphic, which was now positioned under the background fabric on my light table.  The fabric had peeled right off the silicon sheet with the fusible still in place so all the pieces were still usable.  I iron-tacked the pieces to the background lightly, just to hold them in place.  When all was complete again I carefully moved fabric and bouquet off the light table and onto the ironing board.  I covered the fusible pieces, now directly on the background, with the silicon sheet and ironed them down with a vengeance.  Success!

TIP:  Fusing the pieces all together and lifting them onto the background is a great idea but there must be enough overlap among the pieces or it won't work.  Look at your design carefully and assess whether this technique will work for you.  Even so, I misjudged mine!

TIP:  Don't use the light table (mine is my acrylic extender table) as an ironing board.  It is OK to lightly tack a piece in place, but a plastic table will be ruined by the sustained, high heat that is needed for the final fusing.

The fun thing about this small quilt with lots of pieces was that I was able to make it entirely from my stash.  In my next post I will talk about some special touches, the quilting, and the finished product.

Blocks in a Border

The next steps in this Lifetime quilt were so much fun.  The idea behind the quilt was to catalog the things that have been important in the lives of my husband and myself.  I have a book which has blocks that are associated with every state in the union, "Create Your Family Quilt Using State Blocks and Symbols" by Barbara Brackman.  From this book I used blocks from the states in which we have lived and other blocks that represent things we remember and love.  There are no patterns in the book so I drafted them on the computer.  I also picked some blocks from other books and designed the columbine block.

The first set of blocks each have a 1/2 inch dark blue border and they are set on point and finish to 5 inches.  For newbees, this means that they are placed on the quilt with the points along the quilt's vertical and horizontal lines.  You can see what I mean in the following photos.  This means that the space around them must be filled in with something.  The filler I chose was pineapple log cabin triangle, which I paper pieced.  You sew a strip to each side of the triangle and put a cap on them, then do the next layer, etc.  They echo the inner log cabin border and provide and interesting background for the blocks.

Pineapple Log Cabin in Illustrator

In the Illustrator design some of the blocks are rotated the wrong direction.  This really doesn't matter because the drawing is always an approximation, no matter how precise, of the final result in fabric.  Once the blocks were made I laid them out on my bed and spent time running around arranging and rearranging until I had the blocks so that they pleased my aesthetic.

Side blocks in Illustrator

To assemble this border you sew one edge of the triangle block to one edge of the square block.  Then you do the same with the opposite edge of the square block.  This gives you a strip on a 45º angle.  Once you have all the triangles sewn onto all the blocks you sew the angled strips together.  No Y-seams to mess with.  This may be on a 45º angle (like bias), but all your edges to be seamed are on the straight grain of the fabric.

Assembing the squares and triangles.

In the fabric version you will see that I added a 1/2 dark blue border on the inside edge.  Eventually I will put the same on the outside edge, but that will wait until I get the top and bottom borders done.  The original design had a rectangular pink strip on the top and bottom of each side border, but the collection of 5 inch blocks came out slightly taller than Illustrator determined so I added the pink border all the way across to finish the top and bottom edges.    No, the finished quilt will not have a horizontal ratio!

Fabric side borders added.

TIP:  If you get into self-design, be flexible.  Sometimes things don't work out as you had envisioned. You have to be the kind of person who can adjust and come up with solutions to problems as they pop up.  Borders and/or blocks of fabric can equalize a design that goes sideways.  Take your time deciding what to do.