Life Happens

Lots of unexpected things in my life lately, but not much sewing.

1.  I fell and broke my toe.  All healed now.

2.  I came down with shingles, but due to a vaccination several years ago it was mild.  The worst of it was the dragging lethargy and general malaise after the rash healed.  Too wussy to sew.

3.  My first great-grandchild was born four weeks early during the big Seattle snowstorm.  He was 6 lb 8 oz so all is good.  Can't wait to snuggle him.

His dad is responsible for the embedded caption!

4.  Though not unexpected, I went to CA for a week to shop with my daughter and grand-daughter for her (gr-dau's) wedding...and a little beach time.

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The above was scheduled to be automatically posted two weeks ago and never went out.  I probably forgot to click the "publish" button.  I am now home from California where I had a wonderful five days.  I got a beautiful dress, walked the beach, visited the venue where the wedding will take place, and had a great time with family.

5.  My computer went to the shop for more memory.  Withdrawal!  Wish my brain could get some more memory.

Having no computer to suck up my time I spent a lot of time sewing.  I made a stuffed dog for the baby (still have to purchase some stuffing).  I was also reminded of the reason that I usually don't make stuffed animals!  Some of the seams are incredibly challenging.

I made a block for my daughter's mother-in-law's birthday quilt.

I am also stitching a special pillow for granddaughter's wedding shower.  I know...same pattern.  I saw it on Pinterest with no attribution and created different sized versions.  It is a simple pattern, but the Flying Geese mean three points from each goose had to be watched to prevent them from being "chopped," so it required some careful planning.

TIP:  On the unpieced fabric that borders the geese I folded under a 1/4 inch seam allowance and starched it with a paint brush. Press.  This left a very sharp crease.  I put Elmer's Clear glue on the seam allowance of the Flying Geese and laid the folded edge of the unpieced fabric onto the seam allowance of the geese being careful to come to the exact point of each triangle.  Press.  Some of the glue catches the non-seam-allowance fabric of the unpieced fabric and you have to separate that so you can fold it back to see the crease line where you will stitch.

The second block is the pillow cover, which is much larger (18"x18") than the first block (fall motif), and I am quilting it.  The stitching really brings it alive.  The flowers puff and the birds look ready to fly.  The black background is completely flattened.  I haven't done the geese yet.

Of course my quilt is back in "hold" mode, folded up on the bed waiting for me to quilt the borders.  Sometimes life happens and takes control.  I hope 2019 will settle down now and let me drive for awhile.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you only good things this week, unexpected or otherwise.

Puzzling Pleats

I got a pleat in my backing.  I haven't done that in years.  The stitching in the ditch must take the blame, and it is just dumb luck that I discovered it before it was too late.

How does it happen?  It begins with the laying out of the backing when preparing the sandwich.  The backing is laid down first and must be secured snuggly.  Not too loose.  Not too tight.  Just right.  If you work on a carpet you can pin the edges down.  I work on my uncovered ironing board, on plywood.  I tape the edges with blue painter's tape.  It works like a charm...mostly.

I don't know how I blew it this time, but fortunately it was a very tiny pleat about 1 mm deep.  It was the result of a little too much backing fabric in that area.  When I stitched in the ditch it got doubled over and pulled some other bias-wise wrinkles in as well although they didn't pleat.  I was lucky it happened along the straight line of a border strip.  I hadn't done any fancy quilting there yet.

My fix required un-stitching about 3-4 inches along two seams, tying off the threads and straightening the fabric.  Then I carefully pinned the fabric in place, attached the duel feed foot, changed the thread and replaced the ditch stitching.

Specifically, I held the sandwich together, easing out the backing fabric with my fingers.  Then I pinned the sandwich together from the back with 1/2 inch of pin showing on the front across the seam. They were about 3/4 inch apart.

Pins in the back smoothed the backing

Pins as seen on the front of the quilt

I managed sewing this by doing something you must NEVER do. I sewed across the pins.   I stitched in the ditch very, very SLOWLY, and when I came to a pin I moved the needle by turning the hand control across the pin making sure that needle and pin did not tangle with each other.

WARNING:  Never sew over pins.  You can throw your machine out of timing and cause a great deal of expensive damage as well.  I could have basted with needle and thread, but I didn't.  Instead I used extreme care and was using the dual feed foot.  I did not attempt this with FMQ.  That would have spelled disaster and would have looked a mess (at least for me).

Success!  The pleat is gone although there was a fair amount of puffiness in the area that looked more like easing than anything else.  The affected border was quilted with piano keys and the stitching took up a lot of fabric.  It looks perfect after all is done, and I don't anticipate any more problems, but I will be watching.

The piano keys ate up all excess fabric with no pleating

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you a life without wrinkles.

What is a Well-planned Quilt?

A well-planned quilt is not mine.  It started off with definite direction and even the quilting designs made it to paper.  They didn't all make it onto the quilt.  Instead, improvisation and a bit of ripping rearranged the designs and even more were created.  Every quilt throws up a few challenges and they say that is good for your brain to keep it from dissolving into old age.  Today is my birthday and I am thankful that I can still write, sew, and research with gladness and joy.  Cleaning house is another story!

Have you ever had the creative side of  your brain get stuck in a rut?  Mine did this week.  My brain was stuck on creating a single quilting motif that would encompass a split triangle.  None of my ideas felt right.  They were too heavy.  They competed with the main motif in a larger, center triangle.  It made me restless.  Bad sign.  I have mostly learned to listen, ponder and wait for the light bulb to blink on.  I did and it did...finally.

The part of the quilt I am working on.

The problem child here is outlined with a white stroke.   I was trying to create one motif for the split triangle.  It finally dawned on me that I designed them to be separate (see the color difference?).  So now I will be doing one motif in the dark half and some background, texture quilting on the red half.  Don't worry about the big red triangle in the center (outside of the white stroke).  It has its own design that mirrors one on the other side of the red border.  I just needed to change my perspective.

What does this do for my quilt?  There is now a line of quilted triangles that are in the same orientation along the border and will have similar (not exact) quilting designs with the same color threads.  Visualize the main quilt below this border.  They line up and look nice.  The red half triangle will slip into the background with nothing but texture to define it. It will not compete with the colored piecing.  It will also make that colored piecing stand out.  Happy days.  Now to see how it works.

Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you good planning with space for creativity.

Overload

Have you ever felt completely overloaded with the things that you MUST get done?  Sometime outside commitments impinge on life and other times you place the pressure on yourself.  I got home from our holiday travels and had so much to accomplish that I felt like I had bricks on my head.  We also had an unusual number of household breakdowns to deal with and really frigid weather.  And, of course, I broke my big toe.  That limited my exercise to the detriment of my general well being.  I had one photography related project that I figured I wouldn't finish for months, but found a better, faster way to accomplish the tedious task in a couple of hours.  I was so excited and wired over this success that I ran to my sewing room, sat down and worked on my quilt.  What joy!  I had been unable to go in there with my self-inflicted pressure weighing me down.  Stagnation has been banished!

Not only did I sew, I think I solved a problem on one quilt that has been nagging at me for weeks.  I am doing a quilt of my sweet Lady dog (deceased).  The bow on top of her head has been a thorn in my side.  I have tried several ways of doing it and finally got fabric pieces to look like ribbon, but it has no life.  I have tried painting and Inktense pencils to put in highlights, but neither look right.  I toyed with the idea of using real ribbon, but it wouldn't look right if/when it got crushed.  Back at the sewing machine my first task was to try thread painting and I see potential in this method.  More experimentation is needed, and some shiny or metallic thread may be the way, but it is gratifying to finally be on a positive track.

The photo below shows all the pieces pinned to a board.  The upper part shows the values of the ribbon (black and white).  There is also an isolated piece on which I tried the thread painting.  It is not quite right, but I didn't have quite the right thread and was kind of sloppy in my technique.  I didn't have any stabilizer under it either.

Pieces of fabric simulating the bow on Lady's head.

So much for that quilt for the moment.  I am back to quilting the quilt that has been my companion for over a year.  I WILL finish it!!  The big center part is done!  Now I am doing a 1 inch border with diamonds and filler.  To mark...or not to mark?  I decided to mark the diamonds because it is important that they look straight.  Wonky diamonds would spoil the effect.  I am doing closely stitched lines with slightly darker thread as filler in between the diamonds.  This should make them pop without overpowering the main quilt design.  I'm not too good with the filler.  Need a bit of practice, which I will get as I move around the quilt.

Diamond border

Sew some happy seams this week.  Depressurize and have fun stitching.

On My Way to the Sewing Room..........

On the way to the sewing room.....I tangled with a space heater, landed hard and now I think my big toe may be broken.  I'll see the doc tomorrow, but right now it is colorful, swollen and exquisitely painful.  I was planning to get the mess cleaned up.  Oh, you say, "What mess?"  When we went off for 6 weeks of holiday visiting I packed my machine into a big Tutto bag and stuffed fleece all around it.  Then I added a tool kit so I could spend my spare time making the teddy bear quilt featured in last week's post.  The rest of the room was left in hurricane status as I stepped out to pack suitcases.

But why was a space heater in the way?  When we got home we had very cold weather down to minus 10 degrees.  Our radiant floor heating was out due to an electrical short so we had five space heaters and the electric oven going to keep us warm.  The space heater that attacked me was in shadow at the doorway and I forgot it was there as I went scurrying into the room to get to work.

All I can offer today is a photo of the disaster called "My Sewing Room."  Does yours ever get this way?  I am generally an orderly person, but there are times when things simply get out of hand. The sewing machine is on the floor until I clear off the table.  However, with this mess in the way it was a good time to send my Gingher scissors off to the company for sharpening.  That takes two or three weeks, but I will have my shears and embroidery scissors in pristine condition.  They have cut a lot of fleece lately and that is deadly to the sharp edges.

Yipes!!

 Sew some happy seams this week.  I wish you peace and order.

PS.  Monday pm.
I have a fractured big toe, but it is just taped to the next toe.  It only hurts if I bump it or bend it.  I should be able to sew.  Today I am off to get a haircut instead of sewing.

Teddy Bear Trials

The Teddy Bear quilt turned out great, but it had a hard time getting there.  I started with research on the Internet because the pattern directions were so lame, so I planned two layers of fleece with one layer of flannel in between.  I had fun fussy cutting the fleece to include some animals.  I got all three layers cut.  Then each piece was quilted as needed before stitching together.  The animals were outline stitched.

Then....time to stitch it all together.  Four layers of fleece and two layers of flannel wouldn't even go under the presser foot!!   Sad lesson learned.  Back to the Internet for more research.  Back to the fabric store for more flannel.  Finally rip out the quilting to get rid of the back layer of fleece.  I trimmed around the quilted animals, leaving the back layer of fleece under them for a trapunto effect.

Pre-wash all flannel, which I had forgotten to do before.  That would have been a disaster because flannel is a dependable shrinker.

Then...cut all the pieces out of both lengths of flannel.  Now I had a sandwich of two layers of flannel and one layer of fleece.  Quilt the pieces as needed.  Success.  It went together well and quickly.  Even cutting the rag edges went quickly.  After washing and throwing it in the dryer it looked so cute.  I was happy.

Next time it will take me half the time to make the same pattern.  It is soft, textured and colorful on the front (fleece), but soft and quiet on the back (flannel).

Teddy Bear quilt, my grandson and his lovely wife.

I wish you a Safe and  Happy New Year.  I'll chat with you in 2019!

Merry, Merry

Just a note to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.  Below is my Christmas card this year.  It is a collage of several of my photos put together in Photoshop.

Enjoy your family and friends.  Stitch a few seams if you have time.  It is a joyous time of year.  I'll be back in January.