top done and basted

Thanks everyone for the feedback on the layout... I went with the last option (mostly because I really want a mini quilt to keep for myself!), and here it is just before I basted it. I love it!

I had a heck of a time choosing fabric for the back. The recipient is a 6 year old old boy, who loves the color red. I wanted something colorful and fun, but not too juvenile. I was really tempted by David Walker's collections, especially robots or boys will be boys, or the rocket-related prints in Sara Jane's children at play collection. But then I took one last look through my stash, and found this old (2003) Alexander Henry print of hot air balloons. I think it's almost perfect - colorful and fun, and playful but not too childish. The red borders are from a (new) IKEA sheet I had on hand. So it turns out that everything except the gray background fabric was from my stash!

And here's a lesson I learned from this quilt... I rarely press my seams open (because I'm lazy, mostly), but I did for this quilt - I didn't know what my final layout would be, so I didn't want to end up having to join a bunch of seams going in the same direction. But then I ended up having to match a crapload of open seams, which wasn't much better. I ended up with several places like this, where tiny gaps opened up at the intersections:

Ug! I went behind and sewed them up by hand before I basted the quilt, and hopefully everything will be okay once it's quilted. But next time, I'll be sure to use a thinner needle and a shorter stitch length - I think both of those would help. And no more pressing seams open for me, if I can help it!

Next up - the quilting. What would you do? I wish I had the nerve to try something fancy, but I'm pretty sure I'll just stipple it. It's quick and easy, and I know I can do an okay job with it. I picked up some variegated thread (another first for me), and I'm going to try it on the mini quilt to see how that looks...

the next quilt

This quilt was inspired by a book mentioned in this post of Deb's over at Works in Progress. To begin, I went through my stash and picked out a bunch of fabrics that were bright and saturated, and mostly monochromatic, with not too much white. I spent WAY too much time narrowing down the prints, with helpful input from Robin, Quynh, Chara and Ahava. After much back and forth, I ended up with 18 prints, and a medium gray background.

The design was inspired by the Random Reflections quilt, though I did things a little different (trying to be more efficient, as always!). I already want to make another one, and Chara has asked for a writeup, so I'll try to do that next month.

But for now, I need to settle on the layout, and get this puppy done. I've got all the strips sewn into groups of 6, and here's the most basic layout - all the rainbows going in the same direction (let's call that A).

And here's B - pretty much the same thing, but with the middle column reversed in direction.

And here's C, with the rainbows in the same direction, but each column is staggered by one group.

Those layouts are all a little large - 66" x 95". I could change up the layout by removing one rainbow (and make myself a mini quilt with it!). This would give me 4 horizontal stripes instead of 3 vertical ones, with overall dimensions of 63" x 88". Here's D, where two rainbows go to the right, and two go to the left.

Or layout E, where they go the same direction, but each row is staggered by one group.

Any votes? Or any other layout ideas? I did consider chipping each block in half (through the "center" of the colored portions), and randomly recombining them so that the colored bits are all varied widths. But I'm afraid that might not look great, and I don't want to risk it - I'll try it on the next version instead. So, I think I'm leaning towards the last layout... It's a little smaller, but still a decent size. And I really like the idea of having a small version to keep for myself!

I asked Trudy, but she didn't have an opinion. But at least she stayed off the "design floor" while I was working on the layouts! :-)

retreat - project #1

The quilt retreat was awesome! I was fighting a stupid cold the whole time, but I was determined to not let it get the best of me. There were no super late nights this year, but when we weren't eating or sleeping, we were sewing! Here are my buddies Quynh and blogless Suzette (not great pictures, sorry! I hate my new camera.... grr....)

My biggest project by far was a half-square-triangle quilt. It's been on my wish-list since I saw this quilt last summer. Loved, loved, loved it! I started with 5" squares, with white for the background, and 32 prints from my stash (mostly "colonial" type reproductions), in all sorts of pink, peach and salmon-y colors. I came to the retreat with all the squares cut, and the white ones marked for sewing. It took me about 8 hours just to sew, cut and press all the HSTs! I made them in the standard fashion (sewing 1/4" on both sides of the diagonal), except that I trimmed the corners before I cut along the diagonal. I don't know where I read this tip, but if you fold the square along the diagonal and snip across the corner (perpendicular to the raw edges, not perpendicular to the fold), it makes a notch in the corner such that you don't have to do any trimming after you cut and press the HSTs. It works great - but only if you're very precise! My HSTs were pretty good, but not exactly perfect. I was torn - should I spend the time to square up all 256 of those blocks (ug!), or just throw caution to the wind and sew them all together (and maybe end up disappointed)? I had some (40) extra blocks, so I decided to make a test mini quilt to see just how far off my squares were. Turns out that they were fine! Or at least fine enough for me. :-)

And after 8 more hours of sewing, and I had 16 blocks of 16 HSTs! Yay!

I would have sewn them all together and called it done, except certain friends kept pestering me with suggestions... How about a different arrangement for the blocks? Like maybe this...

Or maybe all pointing out...

Or maybe all pointing in...

And how about sashing around each block? Or maybe just around the groups of 4 blocks? Would the sashing be the same white? Or maybe an orange or gray would look cool! Arg!!!! After 16 hours of working on it, I was in no frame of mind to make a decision! I gathered up the blocks, and moved on to a different project. I'm going to let it percolate for a while. If you have any opinions or brilliant ideas, let me know! :-)

where have I been?

I've been slacking on my blog, I know. Do you ever feel that you just have a limited number of things you can juggle at once, and in order to concentrate on something new, you just have to drop something else for a while until you get everything under control again? Well, I do! My new distraction isn't even anything of consequence, it's just... distracting. But, I will slowly catch back up!

First of all, a big THANK YOU to my bee partners for the blocks I've received in the last month or so. They are beautiful!

Clockwise from upper left - Bethany, Angela, Colima and Megan.

And while I have been slacking on the blog, I have not been slacking on the crafting! I'm happy to report that I have finished my second "Cancer sucks" quilt, which will soon be heading to my friend Kelli in Texas. Sending a quilt to someone in Texas, in August, sounds like the stupidest idea ever, huh?

Like the first one, this is all vintage sheets - two each of 35 pink prints, and the "solid" is a pink and white Pottery Barn gingham. The back is also a thrifted sheet, but it's a newer Ralph Lauren 100% cotton (and buttery soft too). The quilting is just a simple cross-hatch through the squares. The binding is not scrappy on this one, only because I'd recently picked up a nice pink print, and it was sitting too close to the cutting table when it came time to do the binding...

I tried a new place to hang a quilt to take some quick photos... Next time I'll haul out a stool to stand on. Vada will not be happy with me if I break her trampoline by greatly exceeding the weight limit!

I still have to add a label, and I'm on the hunt for a good inscription. My friend Kelli is deeply religious, but I'm not so much. Can anyone suggest a nice bible verse for me?

bee blocks and the table quilt

To my bee partners: I'm so sorry I haven't thanked you all individually for your blocks, and that it's taken me so long to post pics! Here are the ones I have received so far - aren't they awesome?? I absolutely love them!

Top row: Two from Leslie, (thank you for sending two blocks!), plus my sample block
Middle row: Jodie, Amanda, and Jane (and thank you Jane for the beautiful notecards!)
Bottom row: Two from Janice (thanks for sending two blocks!)

I've made a little more progress on my table quilt. I'm happy to report that the top is all quilted. Yay!

From the beginning, my plan was to have the final size of the quilt exactly match the size of the table. I made the top at least a few inches bigger in both dimensions, thinking I would trim it down to size just before I put the binding on. Of course the fabric is pre-washed (a zillion times over - ha!), but I didn't bother to pre-wash the batting. And I've never stopped to calculate how much shrinkage there is from the quilting itself. So... after serging the edges and giving it a wash and dry, I am dismayed to find that it's already slightly smaller than the table!! And I still need to straighten up the sides! Oh well, it's all good. It will still work okay, and I'll know better next time!

Check out the backing - isn't this an awesome print? It's another old sheet - it was in pretty bad shape, but there was just enough good fabric left for this quilt. I might even like this side better than the top!

quilting in progress

I was hoping that my next post would be about finishing this project, but I guess I'll make do with some in-progress pictures!

I don't think I ever showed a picture of this quilt top. When I'm done, it will be a table quilt, like this one (we even have the exact same IKEA table!). It's a very simple design - I just took a bunch of 3" strips of vintage linens, and sewed them all into one very long strip using a mitered edge like I would for binding. Then I cut the strip into pieces that were a couple inches wider than the table, and sewed them up. I didn't pay much attention to the design, except to ensure that the same prints never touched.



When it came time to quilt, I decided to try my hand at straight-line quilting. After about 3 lines, I was regretting it. First of all, it just takes FOREVER. But then, the puckering started. After the first one or two, I lost the will to fight, and it quickly went from bad to worse. Just look at these!



I'm using a walking foot, and the back of the quilt looks great and doesn't have any puckers at all. So I think it must be that I did a poor basting job on the front. I used basting spray, which has always worked great for me before. But this was the third quilt I basted that day, and I was really exhausted at that point. Let this be a lesson for me - even though it's a pain to set things up to baste, don't try to do more than one or two quilts at a time!

Normally, I'm a very (ok, extremely) perfectionist person. But since this is just an experiment of sorts, and not a gift, it was easy for me to just say to heck with it and forge ahead. It's not going to be beautiful, but it will get finished, and it will cover the darn table. I might even try the straight-line quilting again some day, but it will be on a smaller quilt for sure!