Quilting has begun

I've renamed my quilt from the not-so-creative-yet-descriptive "Black Bear Paw" to "Laissez les Bon Temps Roulez." Why? Because the first thing my son said when he saw the quilt with it's golden threadwork on top was "Why did you make a New Orleans Saints quilt?" Good question considering that I am a die hard Minnesota Vikings fan.

Nonetheless, between the bright colors and gold threadwork that is reminiscent of the intricate ironwork you see in New Orleans, it really does look like a homage to the city.

Next, I will work on the fill-in quilting. Then it's on to blocking, binding and celebrating a job well done.

Life's too short to work on crappy quilts

I took a self-portrait quilting class recently and I've been struggling to finish the top I began. Problem is: I don't enjoy the process. So, anyway, here's the drawing and the work done so far. I think I'll put it in a drawer somewhere and see if it gets any more interesting later on...

Nov. 7 - Irish Chain traditional quilting

I have been working on a red and white Irish Chain quilt for a while now. The quilt is made up of extra blocks and partial blocks for a raffle quilt I organized several years ago. This year I decided to use the extra fabric and blocks and create a nice napping quilt for my mom. It's a traditional design, so I wanted to use traditional quilting designs. Each of the alternate (white) blocks is quilted with a feathered wreath with the background filled in with a small grid. The borders are filled with feathers.

After doing the work of marking and quilting this baby within an inch (literally) of it's life, I soaked it to remove the marking pen and to prepare it for blocking. As I pulled the quilt from the washer, my heart sank. The red fabrics ran. I KNEW that I had prewashed my fabric but somehow it still ran. My only hope was to try and see if I could somehow, please Lord, find a way to remove the dye. I ran the quilt through another hand wash sequence with Synthrapol and a Color Catcher. This removed all of the running areas throughout the body of the quilt, but the outside border was still decidedly pink. I ran it through several more times (I lost count. I was in a daze. I was shell shocked.) but still was only able to remove a small bit.

So, as you can see from the picture of the quilt, the border does have a darker tone. It did, however, run consistently.

Maybe my mom won't notice....

Day 31: What I've Learned

I've made it! A whole month of quilting challenges done. Today I chose to revisit the exercise I did on the first day of the challenge - the art quilt in a box. Below is a photo of the two compositions I created side by side. The one on the left was done on Day 1 and the one on the right was done today, day 31.



The theme for the composition this morning was 'joy' and I feel like I've done a fair job of capturing it. Below is a close up. If you are looking at this online, you might want to double-click on it to see a larger, more detailed photo. That way you will be able to see all of the work I did that doesn't really show up with a smaller pixel image.



To create it, I used leftover pieces of fabrics that had fusible on the back, included some Angelica fibers with Misty Fuse, used Paintsticks to create the spirals and color in the background. I used various decorative threads and some of the built-in stitches on my machine to decorate the composition.

So, what have I learned from this challenge?

• To relax.
• To be less of a perfectionist.
• That sometimes really neat stuff can happen when you least expect it.
• That adding organza circles can be genius.
• That Paintsticks aren't so bad after all.
• That I absolutely love silkscreening, dyeing and discharge.

So where do I go from here?

Next month I am going to work on my machine quilting. I do not plan on blogging every day, though. And I am most definitely taking tomorrow OFF.

Happy stitiching!

Day 30: Finishing up

Today was BLS day - bind, label and sleeve, the finishing touches necessary for all quilts. Some people may argue that a hanging sleeve and label are optional, but if you plan to exhibit your quilt or to give it to someone, both are necessary. You need the sleeve so that your quilt isn't hung on the wall with thumbtacks and you need the label for documentary purposes. You won't remember when you made the quilt when you've finished two more afterwards and should this quilt be passed down in your family, your kinfolk will want to know when granny created this piece of folkart.

Some people enjoy this part of the process. I find it boring. I don't enjoy binding quilts. Yes, it does keep my fingers out of the chip bag in front of the television, but that's about all that I find interesting about it. It's alot like basting for me - required but grunt work.

There are several different options for binding a quilt. Some small art quilts don't even have a binding - instead, the edges are finished via a short seam length and a few trips around the edges of the quilt with decorative thread. The standard binding, as shown above, is a 1/4 inch double binding created from 2 inch strips, sewed together on the bias and folded in half. The raw edge is sewn to the front of the quilt and the folded edge is folded over to the back and affixed via a blind stitch. Another binding option that is popular in the Seattle area is to have no binding showing on the front of the quilt. The binding fabric matches the backing fabric, is sewing to the border fabric on the front, turned like a pillowcase and the opening on the back is whipstitched.

The easiest way to create a sleeve is to use some of the leftover fabric from the backing, cut it about an inch shorter than the width of the quilt and 9 inches in height. Fold over the edges on the two short sides and sew, then sew a seam along the long side. Turn inside out and press. When you sew your binding to the front of your quilt, include the top of your sleeve at the top of the quilt on the back. You need to whipstitch the bottom of your sleeve or the sleeve will show when the quilt is hung. If you tack down the sleeve flat, when your quilt is hung, a bump from the hanging pole will show. An easy way to avoid this is to fold up the bottom of the sleeve by about an inch, press to get a seam guide and stitch. When you flatten the sleeve back down, you won't see the seam and when the quilt is hung, the extra inch or so will make room for the hanging pole.

The label. The hardest part about labeling the quilt for me is coming up with a name for the quilt. Remember, it's not art unless it has a name and a price, so I always name my quilts in hopes that some day someone might buy it. You would think that it would be easy for someone who used to write for a living to come up with a pithy name, but all creativity drains from my body whenever I have to come up with titles. The quilt at the top of the page is named "Black, White and Red All Over." Yeah, kind of hokey and done to death, but I warned you.

On your label, be sure to include the name of the quilt, the year it was created and your full name. Some quilt shows require full contact information on labels. I create a secondary label that contains all of the information and put it over my label whenever I send a quilt to a show because I don't want my full contact information on all of my quilts.

I create my labels on my computer - it makes for a clearer and cleaner label. Many times I do a big batch of labels for as-yet-unlabeled-completed quilts and soon-to-be-finished quilts. I also have a sheet of 'blanks' with the year and my name. For those labels, I write in the name of the quilt with a black Pigma pen (I iron freezer paper to the back of the label so that the fabric doesn't shift as I write.). I then heat set the ink with a dry iron so that I don't smudge the label while I'm stitching it to the back of the quilt.

That's it. The quilt is done.

Or is it?

I'm still thinking that some red hot-fix crystals would be a neat addition.

Day 29: Longarm quilting

My friend Barb Magill is a longarm quilter and invited me over to her quilting studio to give me a lesson on how to use a longarm quilting machine. I've tried using one of these behemoths several years ago and, frankly, it frightened me. The machine is huge and stitches very quickly.

Since that first try, I've spent several hours on my home machine quilting and feel confident in my abilities moving the fabric under the needle. When using the longarm, the fabric is rolled taut and it's the machine that you move. For something so large, it's amazing how easily it moves. I had to remind myself not to hold the handles in a death grip. With the stitch regulator, I was able, after practicing for an hour, to get comfortable enough to know that, if I needed to, I could do a fairly decent job doing larger scale stippling, looops, daisies and other curvy motifs.

I liked using the machine more than I thought I would. Still, I don't really have the space for it and for now, I'm going to stick to my Bernina (with it's stitch regulator) and work on quilts that are not king sized.

Day 28: Curves to soften edges

Geometric quilts can be very beautiful, but adding curves can soften the look and add interest. Today I added curves to previous compositions created this month. The quilt created in the Circle Play class does have circles in the center, but the combination of the black and white color scheme and the strong angles create a hard edged look. I decided to use a quilting scheme I've seen done on other quilts - I quilted using large curves.

Coming up with a template put me in a quandary. I tried the largest dinner plate I had, but it was too small. I tried the largest platter but it had a fluted edge. I finally found a glass topper for an occasional table (those three-legged press board tables that many use until they can afford the 'good stuff'). I used a variegated red and black thread for the quilting. It didn't pop the way I expected it to. I guess that just means I'll have to play with paint or hot fix crystals.

Quilted circle play quilt Closeup

The other piece I altered was one I created in the first week of this month - a study of color and shading. I call this one "Square Pegs in Round Holes." I used a gold organza, roughly cut into circles, and machine stitiched them over the green squares. I really like the effect.