Galaxies

Did you figure out how Galaxies was made?  It is all paper pieced, but you already figured that out.  It is made from several major shapes, which are broken down into a log cabin type design using triangles instead of rectangles.  When the shapes are put together they create a 60º wedge.  Put the wedges together and you have a hexagon.

I think I would call this an advanced design for quilters.  There are a lot of difficult seams to match and points to stitch correctly.  It takes time.  The top black pieces are all part of a triangle shape so it is made of little paper pieced triangles like the colored part.  The side black pieces are large pieces of fabric - no seams.

Coloring in the little triangles is what makes the design move.  All of the triangle shapes have mirror images of each other, either horizontal or vertical, and with the same or different coloration.  The hexagon and pentagon are just what they are.  However, on each side of the pentagon notice the rhomboid shapes (skewed rectangles or parallelograms with unequal sides and angles).  They have been colored differently from each other to give movement to the hexagon.  They also create an unusual black shape at the bottom because some of the little triangle pieces are cut from black fabric.  Below is the the complete drawing of the design.  Add black fabric for the corners and you have a square quilt.

Illustrator drawing of Galaxies.

See last week's post to see the actual, finished quilt.

You can take a design like this, color it differently and have a totally different looking quilt.  Tons of fun!  I always color one wedge and then let Illustrator rotate it around the center to see the complete design.  Then I live with it for awhile, present it to my husband, incorporate his thoughts and try again.  This generally goes on for days, but it is fun to have him involved in the design process.  He has good ideas.

TIP:  What can I say?  Have fun.  The design process takes time.  It needs to percolate through your days and your nights.  It is easy to make changes at this stage.

Puzzle Quilt

Here is a quilt that was just plain fun.  It is called a Puzzle Quilt from the book "Puzzle Quilts:  Simple Blocks, Complex Fabrics by Paula Nadelstern.  She is another very talented fabric and pattern designer and quilt maker.  The idea is to cut triangles from different, interesting fabrics, and she gives direction as to what is likely to work best.  In doing this I learned a lot about which fabric motifs create movement and make a block more interesting.  I also fussy cut some of the triangles.  My finished blocks were to be 12 inches square so I cut a piece of cheap, plastic tablecloth about 16 inches square, set it on my ironing board, and arranged triangles on the flannel back until I got a pleasing design.  Ms. Nadelstern suggests several main arrangements with variations for each, but your fabric choices are what will make your quilt.  She also shows photos of several finished quilts.  I loved playing with the fabrics and even dragged my husband in for his opinion now and then.  Since his head works very differently than mine, I got some interesting opinions, many of which were very useful.

TIP:  Avoid open windows and fans or you might get a colorful snowstorm of triangles.

Puzzler

I read the book fairly completely before I did the quilt, but I missed a critical element.  I wondered why she called it a "puzzle quilt."  Later I read that you are supposed to make your blocks so that there are two of each pattern, for which you use different fabric choices.  If you number my blocks like you read a book then #2 and #6 are the same pattern.  The idea is for an admirer to try to find the blocks with the same pattern.  I didn't do that, but instead just played, had fun, and love this quilt that now resides on the back of my sofa.  It is the perfect size to use for decoration or as a lap quilt.

For quilting I used the Baptist Fan design.  This link takes you to a website that shows a very clever way to draw the design.  I happened to use Adobe Illustrator on my computer.  Once I had the design printed I copied it onto one piece of  Golden Threads tracing paper.  Then I cut 12 pieces of the tracing paper, each large enough for a block, stapled them securely together and machine stitched through the pile without  thread.  This left holes as guide lines.  You can also stitch through only one if you want to use pouncing chalk.  I suppose you could use your walking foot to do the quilting, but I decided to try my hand at free motion so I could avoid turning the quilt so much.  I did OK, got a lot of practice, broke a few needles and broke the thread sometimes, but those frustrations can provide motivation if you can figure out what caused them to happen.  I quilted a simple design in the sashing, but still used the tracing paper to keep it regular. (Sorry the photography is not up to snuff here, but the quilting is pretty much background noise and doesn't show much even on the quilt itself.  Great way to learn!

TIP:  Read the books you buy!  It is amazing how much you can learn when you think you already know how to do something.

TIP:  Triangles have a bias edge and you must treat it with gentle hands and move it through the machine without stretching if you plan to have a quilt with straight edges.  Please be sure that the straight edges are on the straight and crosswise grains of the fabric or you might have an unpredictable mess when you put the quilt together.

TIP:  Cut the triangles a smidge large, then carefully measure and trim each square after sewing two together, making sure the diagonal line of the ruler lines up with the diagonal seam.  That way the 12 inch block will come out to be the proper 12 1/2 inches (that includes 1/4 inch seam allowance).

Orion Star

I loved the design of this quilt called Orion Star and found a bunch of batik fat quarters in my favorite colors.  This is one of those quilts that I did for the fun of it.  It is not hard and was great to take to a quilt retreat when you have noise and confusion around you.  I prefer not to have to think very hard in that venue.  I saw it in a magazine advertised as a quilt made with "Thangles."  Thangles are a method of making half-square triangles using pre-printed paper as a cutting guide.  You can learn about Thangles here and get the pattern and Thangles here.  Since I tend to jump in and get all wet before buying more stuff, I just designed it myself by looking at the quilt in the advertisement.  Mine is much smaller (about 36" x 48") than what they sell in the kit, but it served its purpose for me.  The biggest challenge was working on my design wall to arrange the colors in a way that pleased my eye.

TIP:  You can have a fancy design wall or use your bed.  I hang a flannel-backed tablecloth on my wall, flannel side out and use it.  It is easy to put up, take down and store, and it does the job just fine for very little money.

TIP:  Arrange the blocks the way you think you like them, then leave it for awhile.  Wander into the room now and then and look at it again, rearrange and go away again.  You can get a lot of house cleaning done or dishes washed during this process.  Do this for several days.  Fresh eyes see things that were missed.  When you are sure you are happy, crank up the sewing machine and sew it together.

I had gotten comfortable free motion quilting flowers with big, simple petals and that design served well on this quilt too.  More practice.  I still wasn't loving it, but I didn't want to pay someone else to do my quilt.  It takes motivation, determination, and lots PRACTICE, to get the hang of free motion quilting whether you are working on a longarm or sit-down machine.  Don't get discouraged.  It will come.

Paper Piecing

It was right about here in my journey that I learned how to do Paper Piecing, also called Foundation Piecing.  It is not hard, and once you catch on, it allows you to piece a block or shape with amazing precision.  You can piece tiny, little pieces that would otherwise be impossible.  You can look at a good video tutorial on Foundation Piecing if you don't know what I am talking about.  You can start with some simple practice blocks such as the triangle sashing blocks in this quilt.  The sashing is 2 inches wide so they really don't have to be paper pieced, but I found that the bias edges of the triangles were much easier to control with paper piecing.  I loved the way everything lined up straight and measured correctly when I put the quilt together.

Here you see again that I have a penchant for fussy cutting and kaleidoscope design.  The feature fabric is a symmetrical, border fabric that screamed for action.  The large blocks also have bias edges to work with, and they must be sewn carefully without stretching.  It may help to pin if the edges are long.  If you find that you must sew a bias edge to a straight edge it works best to keep the bias edge on the bottom as you sew and again, you probably would do well to pin first, but please do not sew over the pins.

If you look carefully you can see that I branched out to some easy free motion quilting on this quilt.  My first attempt was so awful that I ripped it all out and did it over again.  Yes, ALL the quilting!  This is frustrating, time consuming and discouraging, but I urge you to rip if you don't like the results.  You will never learn to like that quilt if you aren't happy with the job you did.  You can save yourself a lot of grief by making some 12 inch quilt sandwiches out of your chosen fabric and batting on which to practice your design.  Either way you will have practiced and learned to machine quilt a little better.

Learning to Quilt

I love to create and construct my own quilt designs.  This takes time and does not always go smoothly. I have shown a few of my quilts and won some awards, but I am not prolific as my quilts are complex and take a lot of time to design and put together.

I started sewing when I was a very young child by doing embroidery and then branching out to making doll clothes.  I would sit on my bed for hours stitching together my own designs.  Some worked and others didn't.  What a great introduction to sewing!  Eventually, I made my own clothes and then those of my children.  By the time the empty nest was looming one of my daughters began to quilt and teach others to do the same in China.  Longing for something to sew, I followed her example with a small, simple, Dresden Plate quilt using the English Paper Piecing technique.  It was done all by hand while I watched my grandson at his swimming lessons.  That was a little more than 20 years ago.  Below are a couple of quilts I made as I progressed.  It is important to start with the basics before tackling the more advanced designs and techniques.

"Crossings" is a simple quilt, but I had fun arranging the shading and cutting up a border print.  It incorporates basic, square blocks, made from triangles and thus required manipulating bias.  There are borders to line up, some paper piecing in the sashing, and fussy cutting.  The idea of redesigning fabric by fussy cutting has always appealed to me.

This Christmasy quilt is called "Shining Stars" because it was made during the Christmas season and incorporates some brocade and shiny satin.  My daughter and I were holed up in a hotel room for 2 1/2 months while she was attended by Mayo doctors to repair a badly injured leg.  With one sewing machine we were each able to make a quilt.  It elicits wonderful memories of our special activities together during a hard time.  This was my first attempt at stars, but by then I was able to manage the sewing.  I had more trouble with machine quilting because I didn't know what I was doing, and my thread kept breaking.  I crocheted four little round designs to cover up places where I didn't like the way the seams looked.  Sometimes you just do what it takes to make it look good!

That is enough for today.  I will share some more of my quilts in the next post.