Baby Quilt with a New Quilting Design

A new project interrupting the other running projects.  It was prompted by the firemen’s request for more baby quilts (36 x 36). They keep some quilts in the trucks for when they have to take a baby out of a dangerous situation, and they were running low. And guild meeting is tomorrow. So a time limit. Couldn’t get too fancy.

When I am on good behavior, I spend regular, short amounts of time cutting scraps into squares and rectangles. I start with the largest square I can make and work down to 1 1/2 inch squares then throw the smaller (but at least 3/4 inch) pieces into the crumb jar. So maybe, just maybe, there would be 36 6-1/2-inch squares that would work together. There were. Not ideal, but passable.

I probably spent more time selecting and rearranging than sewing. Luckily there were 6 of the rainbow striped squares; since they dominate it was nice to put them in the center. I’d always thought I’d eventually gather enough crayon-colored squares to go with them, but oh well . . .

Next was quilting design. It seemed a good time to try a new pattern. Very recently I’d read a blog about Dragon-Fruit Fill and it seemed it would go quickly enough. (Here is the link in case you want to try it.) Susan used it in a smaller space; I just enlarged it.

I did it from memory and forgot that her echoes were more sharply angled. Next time. After quilting at least half of it with no problem, suddenly I started skipping stitches. At first it was just on an occasional curve, but it got more frequent and even occurred on straight lines. It no longer seemed like it was a speed change problem, so I changed the needle. That fixed it.Not sure why, but I’ll not complain since it worked.

And here is the finished quilt.

Sorry about the poor light–I won’t have time before guild tomorrow for a better shot.

And I made two more sets of blocks to send to the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild retreat where blocks will be turned into tops. This time I had some cute novelty prints for the centers. A set is 8 because 3 strips of 4-inch and 3 strips of 2 1/2-inch make 8 blocks.

 

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I think the original idea for half light edge and half dark was that they would be alternated; however, I think a quilt using all the same background would work out well. An allover design like the ladybugs allows for turning the blocks any way that appeals; A directional fabric, like the jungle print requires some planning when adding the first piece.  Whatever color/value scheme is used, the result wilt be an alternative-grid look.

I have three more sets prepared. I think I’ll stop at 60 since they said they had a good supply. Then I’ll experiment with enlarging the edge pieces to make 12 1/2-inch blocks so that 9 will make a baby quilt. (I don’t want to enlarge the square because keeping it 5-inches allows for using charm packs.)

Linking with Let’s Make Baby Quilts, Moving it forward Monday, and remember to check here for the Scrap Happy list of bloggers who sometimes have scrap projects, but always have interesting ones.

ETA: At guild meeting it was announced that the guild had been giving 100 baby quilts per year to the firemen; they requested 200.

Advertisement

Finished Small Quilt

I need to come up with a better name than Inspired by Viewing Works by Hilma af Klint. (The one with blue background four down) And of course I wonder to what extent the information is necessary to a viewer. (Details of how the two link here.) At any rate, here it is, finished.

10 x 17 inches

Straight edges are quite an improvement over the previous version shared!

Quilting thread doesn’t show well in the photo: I used red, yellow, purple, and brown. Most lines follow the piecing lines and were done with a walking foot, but the yellow zigzag was meant to echo the yellow ruching and was done free motion.

.

I could get hooked on making small pieces. Though spread over three days, this one took about one day’s worth of work. Instant gratification is nice sometimes.  Of course one thing that speeded the process up was that the fabrics were all together in a bag for another  project that got repurposed into this one.

Any suggestions for title would be appreciated as would thoughts on whether to keep or drop reference to af Klint.

Linking with Finished or Not,  TGIFF and Off the Wall (button in sidebar)

 

Welcome ‘Blanket’ Finished

You may have noticed a delay in finishing.  When the Welcome Blanket project announced that the deadline was extended to November 4, I shifted my attention to other activities and books and planned on making two. Today the first one is bound, and as soon as I write the note to go with it, I’ll package it for mailing.

I did get a friend to hold it for a flat photo, but that was before it was bound.

Once again, I am amazed at the difference a binding makes in the look! You’d think I’d be used to the transformation by now.

Here are the corner blocks, quilted. You can click to enlarge any of them.

I borrowed Angela Walters’ Shape by Shape again from the library for help in designing quilting on another quilt. While I had it in my hands I looked for the fancy name for the tilted square design I’d learned from the book. Prepare yourself: it is “Square 1.”  I used that and ribbon candy (with a few pebbles) on the corner blocks. In the future, I don’t think I’ll use Square 1 on a pieced square. To my eye the quilt lines clash more with the pieced lines than I’d expected.

That border print really hides the quilting. Here is a diagram of Wonky Triangle border pattern from Night Quilter. It is fun to quilt and goes quickly. I thought Wonky Triangle a good link to the Square 1 motif, and both made a nice contrast to the paisleys, pebbles, and other curves in the star blocks.

It would be such fun to be in Chicago and able to go to see the installation, to join a group knitting there or an unpacking party. Here is a link to their blog on the day of their receiving 1001 packages. Browse the blog for photos of blankets on the walls.

My several planned projects for today became this one finish. While stitching the second seam of the binding, the thread broke once, the bobbin ran out, and I broke three needles. That did something to my enthusiasm!

Suddenly, it seems the needle position is too close to the edge. All is well when I sew slowly, but the slightest increase in speed produces that horrible thump. So it will be off the the repair shop and hope the problem is fixable and in time for me to finish a second quilt. I have a top and back already prepared. Who knows why it got set away. I can sandwich it while I am without machine. I also have a lot of blocks to trim. Plenty to do for the duration.

City Squares Finished

A guild quilt show coming up does help UFOs become finished pieces! This one has been in ‘to be quilted’ limbo for quite a while. One reason was that I couldn’t decide how to quilt it. Usually I have a focus to emphasize or some lines that get me started, but there was nothing like that on this one. As the deadline drew near I went with my default, meandering.

I did consider an angled meander instead of curves. I always ponder whether to echo or contrast. I thought curves contrasting to the straight lines of the piecing and print would work. And it is the easier of the two, for me. Sorry, no quilt holder available; maybe a better photo at the show.

~50 x 70

I haven’t actually measured the finished piece yet; 50 X 70 is the target size.

This quilt was also inspired by Sherri Lynn Wood’s Improv Handbook for Modern quilters; it is Score #1, Floating Squares. Sherri makes two suggestions for edges: cut them straight (as I did for Mint Swirl in the previous post) and follow the curves that form naturally. I tried the latter on this quilt. To deal with the curves I made bias binding. It worked pretty well.  I had most problem with the down curves.

This is the worst curve, and I’m hoping it doesn’t show much after being washed. Possibly a single layer binding would have helped (I always make double layer). But  a gentler curve would have helped more. Next time I won’t be so stingy about losing fabric as I create the edge.  I did feel that I had to do the binding the traditional way, machine stitching on to the front and hand sewing the back. I’d not factored that into my time allowance, so cancelled another outing in order to work on it.

The finished quilt doesn’t look much like the picture in my head.  I knew this when I had it laid out and was assembling it, but didn’t know what to do about it. It came to me while quilting. The background needed to have been closer to the background color of the print fabric; then the line between the print and the piecing wouldn’t have been so sharp and the two would have blended better. Also instead of the three areas of color I had planned with most of the red in the middle, maybe I should have used pieces to actually extend the partial city groupings in the print wherever they occurred. The quilt is okay this way, just not the look  I had aimed for.

So my three pieces for the show are finished, but I still have hanging sleeves and labels to go.  I’ll have no trouble meeting a new challenge. Annie’s Ruby Slipperz has a challenge to sew 30 minutes every day, 6 out of 7 for the month of May. (It is early May, you can join in. Information here and here.) At the end she will do a drawing from those comments on the appropriate posts of hers–once a week, I think. Commenting is more important than actually sewing every day for the drawing. This challenge might keep me sewing after these three are labeled and delivered.  Often after a push to deadlines, I take a break. This time I’ll try not to.

ETA photo of the quilt hanging (to improve upon the sofa shot above)

Quilt history in reverse order:

Finished top (way back in July)

Assembling the top

Early assembly and arranging and rearranging

Starting the arrangement

An abandoned plan

Skyline, the quilt that made the scraps

I still have a long, narrow piece of the Utopia fabric. And a couple ideas.

 

Riley Blake Piece Almost Finished

About ten days ago I was arranging pieces (here); now it is quilted.

I was about to quickly sew one seam to make the back. Luckily I had the smarts to lay it out before stitching (I had cut the yardage in half, though).  Oops. I’d needed 3 yards, but purchased only 2, operating from memory, not measurements and math. Must have been memory of a smaller quilt. Since the quilt needed to be made of Riley Blake fabrics for the challenge, I got out the print pieces left over and found enough to add. (There went all hope of eking out enough of the background for binding.) So I ended up with this.

Someday I’ll hire a full time quilt holder and take straight photos, meanwhile the sofa will have to do.  The mood of the back is quite different from the front. The main fabric was purchased with more red planned for the front and sharper divisions between pieces.

All along I had oriented the top this way.

When I finally got it quilted, I reversed it.

And I like it better this way. Not sure why. Maybe the two aqua rows were too top heavy the first way.

The quilting is fairly simple: lines following the long curve made with the walking foot; the red curves free motion quilted–some zigzags to flatten the lightest red wedges, an X in the triangle print, and nothing on the red with white dots. All the rest a moderate size meander.

I gave brief thought to doing fancier quilting, different in each wedge.  However, because I’d preferred the blended look to a graphic look, it seemed unifying the pieces was a better choice this time.

I still have plenty of time to bind it by April 30. (And the Threads of Resistance piece is quilted too, but that is another post.)

ETA: Linked with Freemotion by the River and AHIQ

“Dreaming of Cool, Clear, Abundant Water” is Finished

It isn’t often that two posts in a row document the start and finish of one piece! But deadlines (real ones) can promote that.

So here is the piece quilted, trimmed to 18 x 36, and faced.  The balance is back to something closer to that in the sketches. If I do something approximately this size again, I’ll add only one inch all around. It lost very little in quilting.

I had to wait a couple days to photograph the quilting–there was no sun and  my artificial light keeps the quilting from showing. The sun finally appeared yesterday–along with temperatures in the 50s.

I like the background quilting; if I had it to do over, I’d put another layer of batting under the “drops” to fill it out better. It’s okay as is, but I think puffier would be better. Puffier would be nicer for the big “pebbles” too, but that would be impossible to place extra batting since I decided on placement as I went. Maybe the whole thing needed thicker batting.

The ice finally melted so I got it to the post office in plenty of time.

I’ll be joining Friday links (buttons in sidebar). 2/3/17 ETA: Actually linking late because I spaced it the week I finished.

36 Fragmenting–Better Quilting Photos

I had time to take photos while the light was right, finally. Instead of editing the old post, I’ll just put them here. First the whole quilt. By putting it sideways, I got better light on all of it.

Now you can see the swooping lines made with the walking foot that continue into the border. What you see on the right is the top, though I am not sure it matters.

And the three filler designs:

Angles and Circles

Circuit Board

Playground Blocks

And the quilt has yet another name.  After show and tell at guild meeting (Portland Modern Quilt Guild), Chris suggested using a quote from van Gogh, “Without Orange There Would Be No Blue.” I like it, so the name is changed.

City Quilt Renamed “Skyline”

The top is finished. I’m working on use of space and balance. Not sure I’ve captured it in this one.  On the sketch the 3/4 size partial petal looked okay; here is looks like it could have been larger. And I never did comment on the reason for the partial petals. To get the amount of the fabric print that I wanted into one petal would have been too big to add anything else other than dinky little things that didn’t seem to fit the whole. So one night before sleep hit, I got the idea of half petal shapes.

50 x 68

Here’s hoping those bumps quilt out.

I love open spaces, but I never seem to buy enough fabric. This background had to be pieced more than I had intended. While looking at it and pondering how to piece either of the background ideas I had sketched, I came up with another idea and went with it. The idea was to echo the shadowy/misty silhouette in the print. You can see the lower one in the above photo. And here is the upper one.

Now my question is how to quilt it.  Do I ignore the piecing to make it even more subtle or do I draw attention to it with different quilting from what is in the green? Let me know your opinion in the comments.

Linking with Nina Marie’s Off the Wall and Em’s Moving it Forward–buttons in sidebar.