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.

Walking Foot Quilting

I began quilting my star pillow cover with light colored thread and a fancy design.  Three hours of quilting and it looked awful.  Three more hours to pick it all out listening to a good audiobook.  OK.  Now what?  Clearly fancy, special quilting was not doing anything for the pillow cover.  Neither was the light colored thread.

TIP:  Sometimes fancy quilting is not the best way to quilt.

Fancy quilting is so beautiful on negative space.  It is stunning on a whole cloth quilt.  It doesn't work so well on fabrics with a busy design.

I threw my hands up and decided I didn't want to spend inordinate amounts of time on this project so I dug out my dual feed foot.  If you don't have one of those, a walking foot will do the same thing.  I have read that people do 1/4 inch lines with these feet, but on my foot the front tips curl up and I didn't think I would be able to gauge it right with my eyes since the tips are not flat on the fabric.  However, a red line runs down the foot 1/4 inch from the needle so I decided to give it a try.  Awesome!  It works.  My eyes adjusted to the spatial variation with no problem.  I didn't have to mark anything.

See how the tips curl up.  See the red guidelines.

I did yards and yards of straight-line, perfect quarter inch stitching, and do you know what?  It looks great.  It didn't even take very long. There is texture around the star, but it accentuates the star instead of fighting with it.   You don't want to fight with the stars!  (Scroll down to last week's post to see the whole block.)

Finished quilting
(pardon the fuzz - I was stuffing a puppy toy at photo time)

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you a trial with your special feet.  They can be fun.

My Studio

Have you ever spent time reading about and looking at photos of the beautiful quilting studios that some people have in their homes?  I look at them and drool, but living in a 700 sq ft cabin doesn't leave much room for an exotic studio.  I saw a cabinet on FB that looks like a fabulous solution, but I don't even have room for that!  You can see what they have at "Original ScrapBox."  My "studio" is a bedroom.  The closet is reserved for my husband's clothes.  I keep a twin bed in my studio because I need a guest bed now and then.  I have one domestic sewing machine - that's all I need.

Essentials of my "Studio."

The table under the window (right) is multi-purposed;
*It is a padded ironing table.
*It can be used to store items needed for quilting - as it is now.
*I can strip off the padding and use it for pinning a quilt in preparation for quilting.

Under the ironing table are six, large, plasic stacking drawers.  That is where my sewing supplies are kept right beside the sewing machine.

I can set up a card table if I need to design, trace or do some drawing.  It makes a place to fiddle and fuss while sitting down.  It is fills the room temporarily, but it works.

You can't see the design wall on the wall to the right of the sewing machine (in the photo) and parallel to it.  I have to reach over the machine to attach stuff to it.  Sometimes I need a little stool to reach the high parts, but I have a design wall and love it.  The fourth wall is my husband's closet.

So...where is my stash?  See below:

My stash shed behind the house.

   Yes, it is a little inconvenient, but I have just as much fun as the next person when I go out there and fondle fabric.

A portion of my stash.

It needs tidying up a bit, but that will  have to wait for warmer weather.  It was 5º out this morning.  I couldn't get far enough away to get a photo of all of it, but you can get the idea.

The point of this post is that you don't need much space to make quilts that are loved, warm and appreciated.  A spacious studio is nice, but not critical.  It does help to try to stay organized.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you space if you really need it.

Block Party Adventure

I am on a roll.  Every new block that requires a design ends up getting changed.  Should I have done some sort of overall design for this quilt?  I keep second guessing myself, but the mosaic-type design and bold colors don't lend themselves to an overall design in my mind.  Maybe I am losing my mind!

Case in point:
I have four turquoise blocks that anchor the corners of the design.  What to do with them?  I came up with a design I liked and I posted it last week, but here it is again.

When I look at it I see some wimpy red feathers and a bunch of pebbles that compete with the feathers.  It looks OK, but I want more than OK.  Yesterday I did a second one and made some changes.  I added mini-spines in each leaf of the feathers and in the process built up the red thread in the main spine.  Wow!  What a difference.  Now the feathers are calling to the eye to look at them.  I quit for the day before doing the pebbles.  Oh my, I like it better without them.  The photo doesn't really show the puff, but now the center is enhanced by a puffy frame.  The design is delicate and bold at the same time.  This block is only 4 inches so the frame isn't huge.  I am going to rip out the pebbles of the first block and do the rest without them. I can always put something in there if I want to.  Maybe it needs another line to echo the outside curve.  Time will tell and I will decide when I can see all four corners finished.

And that, my friends, is how I quilt:  by the seat of my pants with the seam ripper nearby.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you adventurous quilting to keep you fresh.

Is it Cheating?

I am doing free motion quilting (FMQ), and work on a sit-down, domestic machine.  I don't have rulers because I have chosen not to spend the money on a special foot and all the rulers.  Straight lines are problematic when FMQ-ing.  They are probably one of the hardest part of any design.  I have done many of them and am not too bad at it, but I would prefer to avoid the imperfections that I invariably create.  So I cheat.  I put on a standard straight foot (actually my appliqué foot for visual clarity) and stitch with the help of the feed dogs.  In the designs I am currently doing there are a lot of almost straight lines and they look so much better with the cheat method.  I thumb my nose at the Quilt Police.

Is this really cheating?  Of course not!!  I believe that you need to do whatever will accomplish your vision.  I am not a purist, but you need be sure it will work on your quilt without puckering either the top or backing.  The only way to test this is to try it on your actual quilt.  You might have to do a little ripping if it fails...so don't do too much for starters.

TIP:  The best way to prevent puckering is to stitch all your piecing and appliqué in the ditch (SID) before you begin any fancy quilting.  This way you have small areas secured.  Every line of stitching takes up a little bit of fabric so there is just a little bit less to bubble up.

Stitching straight guided by my favorite marking tool (Sewline Pencil).
Even those curved leaves came out nicely and there were no puckers.

Another thing to think about is the size of your quilt.  If you need to outline even a little 2 inch square, you will have to turn your quilt four times to make it around.  This may not be practical on a bed-sized quilt.  I make smaller quilts and have a machine with a roomy harp so I am not having a problem except that it is a bit of a nuisance.  However, I think it is worth it to get the straight lines and even stitches.  I also have the whole quilt well secured with lots of SID (every single seam!).

TIP:  You can use your dual feed or walking foot, but the SID allows the use of a regular foot.  I find it hard to maneuver my thick quilt under the dual feed foot.  It depends on your machine and quilt.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you success in evading both the Quilt Police and puckers.

My Talking Quilt

Do you have conversations with your quilt?  I do.  Sometimes my side of the conversation needs some cleaning up, but we do converse.  When I stitch nicely my quilt dances.  When I try to go my own way my quilt chastises me.

I draw my designs out on tracing paper, but I forgot something.  I filled in all the spaces and it looked so nice on paper, but when I began to stitch I realized that if I fill all those spaces with stitches, there will be no puff.  Empty spaces don't look good on paper, but they look beautiful on a quilt.  My quilt agrees, "YES!"  See below.  I filled one side with the pebbles, but the remaining un-quilted sides showed me that the fill was no good.  Have you ever ripped out pebbles?

Pebbles = No Puff

My designs are drawn with pencil on paper that is basically white so there are still thread color choices to make.  I thought I had them all worked out, but the quilt disagreed.  I have tried all ideas and threads on the scrap sandwich, but it is different when translated to the actual quilt.

Here is our conversation regarding the latest motif:

Quilt:  "Get rid of the black thread.  It makes me feel dirty and depressed." (no photo)

Me:  "OK.  It is gone.  I will use red."

The upper motif is filled with red and a diagonal grid.

Quilt:  "Ick.  It doesn't show.  Now I feel completely invisible.  I know you didn't plan on using orange thread, but I think that is the answer to make me feel alive.  The diagonal grid is bad."

Me:  "OK.  Red is gone.  I give up.  Orange it is and I'll change the grid."

Quilt:  "I LOVE it.  Now I can dance. I can fly. I will be noticed.  I love being surrounded by gold.  I feel like a queen."

Success!  You can't see the puff on the lower motif, but it makes a nice frame.
(photo slightly distorted)

I was ripping out the curved, diagonal grid (see the other photo) on the upper motif and noticed that the vertical seam in the middle really disrupted puff.  I changed the grid to vertical instead of diagonal with the center grid line on the seam, and worked out to the sides.  Now the seam doesn't even show.  The gold metallic pebbles don't shine in the photo, but they are a real WOW factor.

TIP:  Keep your seam ripper, scissors and tweezers close at hand.  Don't be lazy and leave it if the quilt begins to scream at you.  The more you ignore the quilt's conversation the more ripping, or the less you will love your quilt.

I hate to rip as much as the next person, but I will continue to do so if it doesn't look right.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you perseverance to achieve your goals.

Ripping Orange

I told you about my tension troubles and the resulting need to rip.  The thread that needed to come out is all orange.  It was a tedious task and needed to be carefully done.  I am so glad that I had stitched the seams in the ditch.  I didn't have to worry about distortion.  I spent three evenings watching free Amazon Prime movies with an Ott-light glowing over the quilt on my lap.  The first two movies were very enjoyable.  The third I was glad to shut off when the last stitch came out, I don't intend to watch the rest of it.  I am now off and stitching again and this time the tension is right and it looks like it is supposed to look.

Before sitting down to sew, I got down on the floor and pulled up all the loose thread flying around so it won't wrap around the vacuum cleaner brush.

The ironing board is a trap for all things extraneous.  Note to self:  Do something about it!

Dinner is left-overs.  Can't let them go to waste.

A little bit of housecleaning.  Not much.  I don't want to get addicted.

Keep the brain creating.  Photoshop has a new Technical Preview so I slowed down briefly to learn how to use it.  This could be a real time usurper, but I may be able to translate it to quilts or quilting in some form or another.

Butterfly Mandala

Physical Therapy is helping a bum arm.  Hiking helps to restore my whole body. I am accomplishing all kinds of dumb stuff that has been sitting around for weeks.

Mailed a quilt off to hang in the Utah Quilt and Sewing Marketplace Show.  It is a non-juried show, but the quilts are judged and ribbons and prizes awarded.  We'll see how it goes first weekend in May in Sandy, UT.  If you go to the show, say "Hi" to my quilt.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you time to get lots done and have fun.

PS.  Photo from last week's hike.

Mills Lake, Rocky Mountain NP

PSUtah Quilting & Sewing Marketplace

Dead Space

Some weeks it seems that nothing gets done.  We pulled out some boxes, unpacked them, photographed everything, put the photos into a pdf and sent it off to our daughters to find out who wanted what.  The house is a stack of boxes and packing paper. The floors need attention, but I made my high fiber, sourdough bread and the bathroom is clean. What more can a girl ask?

Sewing machine went to the shop, down the canyon almost an hour away.  Next day DH picked it up and nothing had been wrong with it...so my repairman says.  The "broken" button is working OK now, so I just feel foolish, but that button didn't work when I took it in!!!!

Finished quilting the dog, but not completely happy.  Learning.

Measured my quilt top.  All measurements varied, but the average for both directions was exactly the same.  That's what happens when there are so many pieces.  I'll have to be careful to keep my quilting even.  It is ready to sandwich.  Yay!

I topped the week off with a hike.  Add that to the 1/2 mile dog walk and I clocked 4 miles that day.  Really stiff the next day, but it is getting better.  We had a bluebird day, some snow and ice on the trail, but a magnificent time outdoors with my sister.

Gem Lake iced over.  Lenticular clouds that I wanted to pet.

Partial view from the trail.  This is where I live!

Not much sewing, but there are some weeks like that, and my brain has been busy.  My ancestry takes me back into the nobility of England, Europe, Scandinavia and Russia.  My great grandfather from England had a coat of arms (COA) of which he was most proud.  I became interested in the art of heraldry from seeing a bookplate of his COA, and found that I could create one that incorporated many appropriate families from my ancestry.  There are strict rules as to which families you can display.  Anyhow, you can see my digital rendition on my other, lazy, blog with a brief explanation.  I think it would be fun to make a quilt of this.  Each block would be 6-7 inches square.  I will appliqué, paint, stencil and piece.  I don't know whether this is do-able or not, but I'll have fun dreaming, planning and trying it out.  It will probably be a lifetime piece.

Sew some happy seams this week.  Give yourself permission to get outdoors, play, dream and create.

Designing Quilting Motifs

I finished the top!!!  When I got it all together I just slumped.  We have been without sewage disposal for three weeks now.  The septic field has failed.  The pipes have dislocated. As I write we are scheduled to hook into the city system, but the plumbers were supposed to hook us up last Wednesday - no show.  Then Friday - still couldn't do it.  Now it should happen Monday.  We finally let them set us up for three nights in a local hotel.  In some ways it is hard to be creative, but I find that it takes my mind off the presently unsettling vagaries of life.

Update:  As I am getting ready to post this they have just delivered the big digging machine so they must be planning the job today.  YEA!

I have been having fun designing the quilting for the finished top.  It does not lend itself to gorgeous, united quilting motifs like Margaret Solomon Gunn creates.  I am a great admirer of hers, if you haven't figured that out yet.  My quilt is an interlocking mosaic of color with lots of different inner designs to look at.  The more you look, the more you find.....almost an "I Spy" quilt.  I pondered the process of designing while I stitched, and have previewed lots of ideas.  No space for fluffy feathers nor would they complement the design.  I have looked at Pinterest, Google Images, books, and magazines.  These ideas get jumbled and have to be sorted out to maintain some sort of continuity throughout the quilt, and I am doing that with pencil and eraser.  I will quilt this to death.  

The quilt will be about 60 x 60 inches and I couldn't think of any way to manage designing on a full sized piece of paper so I finally printed one quarter of the quilt (all quarters are the same).  I had to break that quarter down into four pieces to print, and then taped them together.  This gave me a 15 inch square mock-up to mess around with.  I covered it with tracing paper and went to work with pencil and eraser.

Tracing paper makes the photo fuzzy.  General ideas in pencil.
(Since I took this photo I have made a lot of changes but you can get the idea of the process.)

TIP:   I love tracing paper.  You can see through it easily.  It is nice to draw on.  Pencil is easily erased when necessary.  You can turn it over to get the reverse pattern.  You can fold it to trace the mirror image of a motif.  You can retrace your lines with pen to show through fabric on a light box for marking said fabric.

Clearly the mock-up above does not deal with the actual sizes I will be quilting.  I am using some of my paper-piecing patterns to work out correct sizes of individual elements.

Actual size designs.  These don't all go together in the same block, but I
was able to determine the size of of the grids and other details.

TIP:  You can use paper clips to hold tracing paper to the pattern paper, but staples are more secure and don't catch on other things or fall off.

The first quilting will be in the ditch.  I will stitch every seam in the ditch before adding decorative elements.  That will take a long time, and I will get very good at it and very tired of it by the time I am done, but it makes the quilt look so nice.  I will then be able to work anywhere I want to without worrying about quilt distortion.  Time to get out to buy batting and backing.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you hours of fun designing and creating.

Multiple Projects

I am one of those apparently unusual people who does not accumulate UFOs.  I generally like to finish one project before starting another, but am not fanatical about it.  This week I began to tear out the paper from paper piecing.  Thirty-six intricate blocks takes a fair amount of time.  I chose to do it in the evening while watching Amazon Prime movies.  Some of those movies are pretty bad, but they prevent the paper tearing from getting so boring.  It is not fun, like sewing.  I also had to run out to get more black fabric.

This left me with a hole in my days when I usually sew, so I started the portrait of our long deceased collie.  Scroll down a couple of weeks to see my tutorials on the process.  I have been going back and forth between projects, applying borders on the big quilt and finding fault with the dog.  I did the dog with stash fabrics and could have benefitted from a couple of fat quarters from the quilt shop.  Some areas needed a slight value change so I pulled out my acrylic paints.  Most of the bottles are now defunct.

Note to self:  Clean out that box and get rid of dead paint.

I had enough viable bottles to mix a nice, soft blue-gray to darken up some areas as needed.  I love the result.  It softens the harsh line where black and white fabric meet.  It adds some shadow where needed.  I like it so much that I am going to do some more to soften edges (more obvious when you can stand back to look at it).  Thread painting would do the job, but I don't want to quilt this so heavily.  It doesn't need it.  I have read that others have used acrylic paint so why not.  I applied it in a very thin coat, and I don't plan to wash this little quilt.

See the gray on the white next to black?  Not much
but enough.

I am eager to get to quilting it, but will do the background first.  I took a picture of Lady lying in front of a big fan on a hot day.  She looks like she is flying and her fur is being blown around.  I will quilt the flying fur on top of the finished background so it will show up nicely.

TIP:  Be flexible with both time and process.  Take your time testing something new.  I have Tsukineko Inks.  I have Inktense pencils.  I have PaintStix.  Using scrap fabrics I tried them all, but like the result with the acrylic paints the best.  It is subtle.

I will also put a tiny, white dot in her eye, a catchlight.  It will brighten the eye and make it look alive.  In this case only on her right eye.  The left eye is almost hidden and the catchlight would be in the wrong place and look funny.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you many successful projects separately or all together whatever is your style.

Back to Fabric

I'm Home!!  We were in WI for a week and Christmas, and in MN for a week and New Year's Eve.  The family in MN were all virused up, daughter with pneumonia.  My husband brought his own personal virus from home and guess who avoided all of them.  How?  No clue, but I am not complaining about not getting sick!

I did not take my sewing machine because my quilt was in disarray with a nasty surprise.  I made a slight change in the pattern and somehow my block pattern on the computer grew bigger.  It took me a few tries to figure out why the new blocks didn't fit to the old blocks.  Probably pilot error, but the pilot has no idea how the error occurred.  That has now been remedied, but 12 blocks must be redone.   Now that I am home all is stitching up smoothly.  Then I ran out of paper to piece with, and am still waiting for it to arrive.

I did take a new project on our trip because I knew I would be spending a day with one daughter at her weekly Sew-In.  I am doing another dog and have to fuse all the fabric pieces before I need the sewing machine.  Those of you who have followed me for awhile read about creating a fabric rendition of a dog in the summer of 2016.  I had a lot of problems due to the materials used in the class I took.  Well, I am doing another dog, a different dog, and I have developed my own method.  Based on two classes I have taken I am combining techniques which I believe make it much easier and less confusing.  I will share and you can be the judge.

Lea McComas does beautiful, photorealistic paintings in fabric.  Her technique requires a lot of time drawing a pattern according to value and detailed labeling on each piece.  She avoids dark fabric under light fabric.  Her method is very precise and her fabric choices are the "real" colors of the photo from which she starts.  She does mostly people.  See her work here.  She fuses her pieces onto a background and thread paints heavily on her long-arm machine.

Barbara Yates Beasley specializes in animals.  Her animals look like the photo with which she starts, but her fabrics are abstract and fun.  A black dog may be done in blue or multiple colors.  Her method also requires a drawing based on value, but her labeling is less intense.  She teaches you to use double paper fusible, trace the pattern piece in reverse on the back paper.  This had me standing on my head and making many mistakes. She quilts moderately, not thread painting, on her domestic machine.  You can see her work here.

Now for my method. Here is how to prepare a photo to turn it into fabric art.

Step 1: Create a black and white photocopy of the animal photo.  This is to show the values from lightest to darkest.  You can do anything with color, but must have the values right or the creature won't look right.  In a photo editing program you can posterize it to separate 4-5 values.  I don't think I did that with this photo because the dog is pretty much black and white already and the values are clear.

Step 2:  Blow up the black and white photo to the finished size.  I taped together a magnified version, but you can take it to a professional printer to do the job too.  Print an 8 x 10 color version to remind you of color variations.  This dog has a little tan on her so I find the color version a big help.

Lady the Collie (we lost her in 2013)

Step 3:  Fasten the full-size black and white picture to a foam core board with masking tape or office clamps.  Overlay that with a piece of clear mylar.  Using a fine, black Sharpie pen draw around the different values and label each one with a number to define the value.  #1 = lightest to #5 = darkest.  If you make a mistake you can erase with rubbing alcohol on a paper towel or Q-tip.  Redo when dry (quick).  When the drawing is complete remove the photo.

Pattern for fabric pieces (12" x 16").

Step 4:  Secure the mylar drawing to the white side of the foam core board.  Cut two pieces of freezer paper a little larger than the drawing.  Dry iron it shiny side down, pull it up and iron again. This shrinks the paper.  Secure one piece of this freezer paper over the mylar drawing and trace it with the Sharpie.  You can easily see the lines and numbers through the paper.

Step 5:  Repeat with the other piece of freezer paper.  You can trace this one with either pen or pencil.  You will be cutting it apart.  I know this is a lot of tracing, but it goes pretty fast.

(Stay tuned for the next steps next week)

Now you are ready to gather some fabric.  By all means check your stash.  All your pieces are going to be smallish so you can use up odds and ends.  It works nicely to add some extra color with prints.  For my black dog I threw in a few blue pieces and some black and brown prints.  They add sparkle.  A couple of inches of shiny, dark gold was more than enough to add a glow to brown eyes.  White-on-whites are great for white fur.  For a white dog, light blue can be used for shadow.

You also need fusible material.  My choice is Soft Fuse (I buy it by the roll), which has paper on only one side.  Beasley uses Steam-a-Seam II, paper on both sides, but that gummed up my machine and made a mess when I went to do the quilting.  That may be a function of my own machine, but I will not use it again.  Maybe your machine will handle it.  No clue.

Work on the prep this week and I will lead you through the rest of the process next week.

Sew or fuse some happy seams this week.  I wish you fun time preparing to quilt an animal.

Reading or Sewing?

I love my sewing magazines.  They are a source of information, ideas and colorful pictures of other peoples' art.  I get three that lean mostly toward art quilting where I get to see what the supremely talented sewers are creating.  They are my creative stimulation.  I also get some other magazines that provide intellectual stimulation. "Archeology" has many designs from ancient cultures as will as great articles about them.  Mosaics are just quilts in stone.   Love them all.

Unfortunately I don't have room to store them and I have found that when I keep the whole magazine I never know where to find the article for which I am looking.  Sometimes I read a magazine and keep it for two or three months, then go through it again.  Ultimately they are all destined for the recycling bin, but not before I cannibalize them, pulling out articles that I believe I will at least look at again.  I staple an article together in one corner and slip it into a plastic sleeve that goes into a three ring binder.  They are readily available when I am in need of instruction or inspiration.

I also keep a library of books, but rarely buy a new one.  I try to read through a potentially helpful or interesting-sounding book from the library before I buy it.  I have been very glad I did on several occasions when the title was tempting, but the contents did not live up its promise.  Actually, I have donated quite a few of mine to the local library for their book sale.  Some techniques no longer interest me or have gone out of date with the arrival of new methods and tools.

TIP:  There is no point cluttering up your space with things you never use anymore, especially when you work in limited space.

What did we do without the Internet?  There is so much out there to admire and learn.  I have paid for a few Craftsy classes and am not averse to viewing some of the many YouTube productions.  I have learned a lot, incorporated some and discarded others.

A favorite, which I have watched often without cluttering up my sewing room.

So, which do you prefer:  sewing or reading?  For me it is no contest.  I love to read for pleasure and education.  I love to sew just about anything.  I learned to do both in first grade.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you the opportunity to read about something new to you.

Cross-learning

Is there really a word or concept such as "cross-learning?"  I don't know, but sometimes I get creative with words as well as fabric.  What I mean is that you may learn a new technique and then decide that it is not for you.  When you move on to a new project you suddenly realize that something you learned in the discarded technique will be helpful now.

The quilt I am re-working has lots of seams and points that require matching and/or aligning.  This is tedious and often requires post-stitching adjustments, which are a nuisance, so I made a proactive, minor adjustment.  Below is the original pattern:

Six points to bring together perfectly.  Urggggggh!

Notice that six points come together in the center.  This can be a challenge, and with the high contrast any displacement will be noticeable to the eagle eye of a judge.  I changed the the pattern so that the larger triangles on top are combined and cut as one big one.  The two bottom parts are stitched together and the single, big triangle is added last.

One single triangle.  Now to put it onto the bottom pieces.

This is where my experience with paperless paper piecing comes in.  I folded the seam allowance over heat resistant plastic, painted starch on the fold and then ironed.  This provides a straight, crisp fold.  In the photo below it doesn't look very straight because the heat-resistant plastic warps a bit up and down, but the edge actually remains straight.  I had to stick pins through the plastic to hold it steady as I couldn't manage to hold it, turn the seam allowance and paint all at the same time with acceptable results.  I only have two hands!

TIP:  Try cork board under your ironing board cover.  This is where it is extremely useful.

Folding the seam allowance.

Next I laid the triangle right side up on the lower part of the block (also right side up), aligned the crisp fold carefully so no points had cut-off tips.  Then I squeezed a little clear Elmer's glue in the seam allowance and pressed.

Pinned in place ready to glue and press.

After pressing I opened up the big triangle and stitched along the seaming crease.  Perfect every time!  This saved time, curse words, hair pulling and un-stitching.  The crease you see in the triangle from tip to bottom assisted in matching the center of the triangle to the center seam of bottom piece.

Creases help in the attempt of achieving perfection.

TIP:  I had to stitch in the crease over several layers of fabric in some places.  I found that a stylus helped me to stay in the ditch of the crease as well as kept the seam allowance from rumpling up under the needle.

TIP:  I know I sound a bit OC (obsessive-compulsive).  I'm not, but I make every quilt as though it is going to be shown.  If you are interested in showing a quilt and maybe winning a prize you must start at the very beginning by being as fussy as possible, and that means perfect points.

Stitching all done:

All it needs now is to have the edges trimmed.

This is a perfect example of a part of a discarded technique being used to good advantage elsewhere.  It is amazing how the little things you learn along the way can help solve future problems.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you the opportunity to combine techniques for a satisfying outcome.

Revisiting Paper Piecing...Again

I am back on familiar ground as I begin making the blocks for a new start on the quilt I designed months ago.  The paperless paper piecing did not give me the precision that I was expecting and I was not happy with the result (scroll down to read my last two posts).  I have now stitched up several half-blocks with Sulky Paper Solvy and I love how they look.  I have not sewn any of the half-squares together yet to yield full squares, but I don't anticipate any problems since I made triangular blocks for each corner with the paper method and they look great.

When I have paper pieced before I have cut the fabric in long strips and just worked along them, slicing, dicing and stitching as I went.  Sometimes this involved a little guesswork as to where to cut.  Other times I would fail to cover the outline of the paper, which meant I had to rip and replace.  There was a fair amount of waste.  This time I spent two hours cutting out the fabric pieces and arranging them in labelled piles.  Just cutting economically limited waste significantly.  There was also very little fabric lost in trimming during the stitching process.

What about time?  With the pieces already cut for both the paperless and the paper methods the time spent came out in favor of the paper method.  With paperless, I still had to stitch the seams.  With paper I still have to remove the paper.  All in all about even, I think.  I use Sulky Paper Solvy, which is water soluble so tearing out the paper is optional.  I like to get it out, but I don't worry about getting each and every tiny piece.

BTW the "bad" quilt top, which was stiff and icky after a 2-hour soak came out soft and nice after 30 minutes in the washing machine with the normal amount of soap.  I will use it later, cut it up (no seam ripping) and stitch it into a new quilt.

TIP:  When cutting pattern pieces you can cut rough.  The cut pieces should mimic the pattern piece with a tiny bit extra, but do not have to be precisely in line with the edges.  Any extra will be trimmed as you go.

TIP:  It is nice to work with batik because you can use either side of the fabric.  If the pattern calls for an odd shape you can use it on one block or turn it over for the mirror image block.  That's called 'mistake reduction.'

TIP:  The secret to precise paper piecing is the pressing of each and every seam.  Don't use an iron because the paper gets scorched and brittle; same with the fingers.  Instead use a small roller or a point-to-point turner, both made by Clover (or how about a spoon?), to press each seam completely back over the stitching each and every time before you add the next piece.

There is nothing photogenic going on this week in my workroom so I will share some of the photos that I have put on Facebook for a black and white challenge.  A black and white photo must have significant value variation to be interesting.  Black, grey and white express the values that are so important in making quilts, even your most colorful ones.   In this day of digital expression you can take a photo of your chosen fabrics, then turn it into a black and white photo in an editing program to make sure your quilt has some dark/black, medium and very light/white fabrics.

In the Olympic Mountains, WA state.

Bighorn Ram.

Somewhere in the Southwest USA.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you a week of great value.

Know Thyself

I discovered something about myself.  After I finished my last quilt and decided that thread painted portraiture was not my strong suit, I was in limbo as to what my next project would be.  I sat down, pulled up Illustrator and tried some ideas using some paper pieced stars I had made awhile back.  The idea was to turn them into a small quilt, but no go.  It just didn't work for me until I messed around with a graphic version of those stars and arrived at an appealing design that doesn't look anything like stars.

I thought I wanted elegant quilts, Victorian looking, with lots of stunning quilting like Margaret Solomon Gunn.  I thought I would like to draw pictures with the quilting needle like Bethanne Nemish.  I do love their quilts, but their way of quilting doesn't manage to magically appear on my screen from my own brain.  However, as I fiddled around with my stars,  playing with ideas, moving and manipulating shapes and colors,  I made a remarkable discovery.  I LOVE intricate designs!  I think I have always loved them.

When I go to my Idea file I find all kinds of geometric designs.

Mosaics are all over the Mediterranean.
Don't remember which country this is from.

Mathematical designs.

Fountain at Hassan II mosque in Casablanca

Pretty designs.

Sconce.  University of TX in Austin.

Doorway/gate in Paris

Colorful designs

Hassan II mosque in Casablanca

All of these designs are non-representational.  Just interesting stuff.  Fascinating eye candy.  When I got to amusing myself with those silly stars I had so much fun creating, coloring, and crafting my next quilt.  Intense.  Who is going to cook dinner?  Oh, I forgot to get meat out of the freezer.  Oops!

Once I recognized that I love designs, I realized that I am also drawn to them everywhere I go.  I take photos of them, I scratch them onto my grocery list.  I love to create kaleidoscopes and spiral quilts.  Designs are in my DNA I guess, and actually DNA is a pretty cool design itself.

DNA

TIP:  It helps to know yourself.  Be honest about what you like, but step out and try new things.  That will help you grow, and you will learn new techniques to apply to your work.  Trying something new is refreshing and keeps your quilts from becoming tedious, but be true to yourself.  You will make happy quilts this way.

My four paper-pieced stars remain pending, currently unloved, waiting for inspiration.  I am working on my new quilt, which is a complicated, interesting design.  It is exciting watching it evolve as I think about how to quilt it.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you insight into your inner design wall.