This photos was taken at my guild meeting the night I started selling - here you can finally see my unusual borders :)
You can read more about the story behind those borders here and more about the benefit raffle here!
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2 weeks ago
Showing posts with label Disaster Quilt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Disaster Quilt. Show all posts
Monday, 28 February 2011
Woot Woot!
Hey all - great news! I'm up to 503$ raised by selling raffle tickets for the Disaster Relieve Quilt for Doctors Without Borders! I started selling on February 16th, so I'm stunned that I reached my goal (500$) so quickly.
This photos was taken at my guild meeting the night I started selling - here you can finally see my unusual borders :)
You can read more about the story behind those borders here and more about the benefit raffle here!
This photos was taken at my guild meeting the night I started selling - here you can finally see my unusual borders :)
You can read more about the story behind those borders here and more about the benefit raffle here!
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Disaster Relief Quilt
So, as mentioned in my last post, my plans for the Disaster Quilt have changed, from crumpling it into the garbage bin during the piecing process to loving it so much after the quilting was finished that I've decided to raffle it off with all benefits going to Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiers/MSF.ca). So the Disaster Quilt is now a Disaster Relief Quilt!
I've always admired MSF's work, sending doctors and other medical staff to conflict zones around the world to bring medical aid to people in need. I love that this organization is independent and helps anyone in need. I donated to them last fall for the Pakistan Flood Appeal, so now I'm getting their newsletters, of course. One of the stories I read really pointed out how limited some places are regarding the available medical equipment.
In brief, a doctor from Ottawa, Canada, went to an African country with MSF, while her husband started a residency in pediatrics on Baffin Island, in Canada's north. She wrote about an emergency case of her husband's, a little kid that was helicoptered to Ottawa and put on a respirator to survive. Around the same time, the MSF doctor had a very chick child in her care, but couldn't even determine what the problem was since no x-ray or ultrasound machine was available, so they had to treat one of several possible afflictions, hoping that it was the right one. The child died not long after. So here we are, complaining about wait times at the doctor's office, while in some countries, there might not be a doctor, or you have to walk twice as long as we spend waiting here, just to get to the doctor's, plus some wait time on top of that.
Well, suffice it to say, while I can't work for MSF as a doctor (since I am not a Dr) and can't give all my money away to charity (not the type), I *can* and love to quilt and I'll gladly spend the time selling raffle tickets.
So two weeks ago, as this plan was taking shape, I started power quilting the quilt to get it done. Then last week, I contacted MSF with a proposal, set up a blog (msfquilt.blogspot.com) to promote the raffle and went all around town setting up sale dates. I'm also now the proud owner of a lottery license :) My goal is to raise 500$, which means I have to sell 250-300 tickets.
I know that none of this applies to any of my readers, since you're all far away and won't be here to buy tickets, plus you all have tons of your own beautiful quilts :)
I guess I just wanted to share, since that's what a blog is for, and also because this raffle is taking up most of my time these days! :)
Saturday, 12 February 2011
The Tables Have Turned!
I am SO glad I didn't stipple my Disaster Quilt! It's actually growing on me again and I now have a very special plan for it - I've been working on that plan for the past 2 weeks and will let you know soon what it is!
Here are some progress shots from the quilting progress. I started by quilting a straight line down the center of each diagonal purple chain in the triple Irish chain (sorry, I don't have any new whole quilt shots), just to hold everything together. That was hard work, because of my small machine and the long straight lines (done with a walking foot of course).
Then I started doodling to come up with a fantastic design for the white spaces, something a little less intense but along the lines of what Joan does (e.g here and here) and the awesome doodles by Jill (e.g. here and here). Well, I got pretty frustrated, because my own doodles didn't look awesome like Joan's and Jill's on the first try (go figure, haha!). I thought, there must be a better way, so I went to my little quilt stop around the corner and found a stencil, which likely was the right size - I found that out at home as I hadn't thought to measure my space *grins*. Sound familiar???
I started marking the circle with my water soluble purple Singer pen. I was scared to used it at first, and couldn't find the exact fabric I used for piecing to test it, so at first, I used a chalk pencil, but I don't like using those, they are slow for marking as the colour grey I have is so light, I have to draw a line several times before it's visible.
To add a little bit of an improv and personal touch, I added some plumes to each corner of the white space, free-hand:
Then it was off to my little Singer and the free-motion foot. I have to admit, that I found the quilting of the feather circles very easy. The shapes just flowed, good size for free-motion quilting shapes! This video tutorial by Green Fairy Quilt really helped, I think it made the big difference between success and frustration, because the order in which I quilted the feathers before wasn't working for me).
I started getting pretty confident with my stitch length too, yay!
As before, when I sprayed the finished design with my water bottle, the purple pen just jumped right out, scary moments, and they were still scary 12 blocks later! :)
The result is well worth the scare though!
I varied the center fill in every block - almost ran out of ideas in the end. I only quilted this design in every second block as I wanted to have the quilt a bit less uniform.
For the second block, I did design my own stencil, just using cardboard. I quilted a 3/4" grid behind it, and now wish I hadn't, but because it was easier to quilt the grid in one motion with the design, and I did a few blocks before I decided it may have been a bad move, there's no way I'm going back to opening all the grids up again... But who knows, this might grow on me too, and the grid runs in the same direction as the Irish chain, so that might work. I did the quilting in about 4 intense days, "power-quilted" you might say! In fact, my marking pen is nearly empty, yikes!
The back, especially the purple, shows the quilting really well:
I'll leave you with wintery pictures from earlier this week in PEI:
Is snow removal done like this where you live too? Here on PEI, the snow is pushed to the center of the road, then a snowblower comes along (you can see the snow shoot out in the photo above) and a truck slowly drives along next to it, getting filled up (the one above is full, so the snow-chute is turned back to the center). Then the full trucks (about one ever 2 min) car the snow out of town (to a field??? Not the harbour anymore, I think, because of pollution concerns) and comes back empty.
Here are some progress shots from the quilting progress. I started by quilting a straight line down the center of each diagonal purple chain in the triple Irish chain (sorry, I don't have any new whole quilt shots), just to hold everything together. That was hard work, because of my small machine and the long straight lines (done with a walking foot of course).
Then I started doodling to come up with a fantastic design for the white spaces, something a little less intense but along the lines of what Joan does (e.g here and here) and the awesome doodles by Jill (e.g. here and here). Well, I got pretty frustrated, because my own doodles didn't look awesome like Joan's and Jill's on the first try (go figure, haha!). I thought, there must be a better way, so I went to my little quilt stop around the corner and found a stencil, which likely was the right size - I found that out at home as I hadn't thought to measure my space *grins*. Sound familiar???
I started marking the circle with my water soluble purple Singer pen. I was scared to used it at first, and couldn't find the exact fabric I used for piecing to test it, so at first, I used a chalk pencil, but I don't like using those, they are slow for marking as the colour grey I have is so light, I have to draw a line several times before it's visible.
To add a little bit of an improv and personal touch, I added some plumes to each corner of the white space, free-hand:
Then it was off to my little Singer and the free-motion foot. I have to admit, that I found the quilting of the feather circles very easy. The shapes just flowed, good size for free-motion quilting shapes! This video tutorial by Green Fairy Quilt really helped, I think it made the big difference between success and frustration, because the order in which I quilted the feathers before wasn't working for me).
I started getting pretty confident with my stitch length too, yay!
As before, when I sprayed the finished design with my water bottle, the purple pen just jumped right out, scary moments, and they were still scary 12 blocks later! :)
The result is well worth the scare though!
I varied the center fill in every block - almost ran out of ideas in the end. I only quilted this design in every second block as I wanted to have the quilt a bit less uniform.
For the second block, I did design my own stencil, just using cardboard. I quilted a 3/4" grid behind it, and now wish I hadn't, but because it was easier to quilt the grid in one motion with the design, and I did a few blocks before I decided it may have been a bad move, there's no way I'm going back to opening all the grids up again... But who knows, this might grow on me too, and the grid runs in the same direction as the Irish chain, so that might work. I did the quilting in about 4 intense days, "power-quilted" you might say! In fact, my marking pen is nearly empty, yikes!
The back, especially the purple, shows the quilting really well:
I'll leave you with wintery pictures from earlier this week in PEI:
Is snow removal done like this where you live too? Here on PEI, the snow is pushed to the center of the road, then a snowblower comes along (you can see the snow shoot out in the photo above) and a truck slowly drives along next to it, getting filled up (the one above is full, so the snow-chute is turned back to the center). Then the full trucks (about one ever 2 min) car the snow out of town (to a field??? Not the harbour anymore, I think, because of pollution concerns) and comes back empty.
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Last Disaster???
Okay, big breath! It's ready for basting! That thing. That disastrous quilt top I've only been working on for 2 years. Geesh.
After my post the other day, highlighting this - hopefully - last disaster of non-matching corner patterns,
... I pulled this quilt back out and fixed my mistake. Two unnecessary seams later, the top is complete. And it looks good. It's growing on me again.
[A little voice in my hand is whispering frantically that certainly many more things could go wrong with this quilt... I'm ignoring it!]
I do like the effect of the purple corners, it gives the quilt more dimension, no? Like someone took a purple triangle and shoved it between the light and green layers...
Haha, here are the middle wedges, when I had made the side borders too short... see, I can laugh about it now!
And the more I look at these wide open spaces, the more I'm drifting away from my vengeful stippling quilt-plan and am moving instead to diagonal lines through the "chain" and old-fashioned feather circles in the white, in white thread. I love the look of those, white on white, and I feel confident enough to try feathers like that on a proper quilt, yet still small-scale!
First things first though! Basting :)
I'll leave you with a fridge-magnet quote - this purchase was a direct result of some fun email-conversations about books I've had recently with my name sake from Bella Linguini. We both like Kurt Vonnegut books a lot, so this magnet caught my eye - though I'd never known before what the guy looks like :)
After my post the other day, highlighting this - hopefully - last disaster of non-matching corner patterns,
... I pulled this quilt back out and fixed my mistake. Two unnecessary seams later, the top is complete. And it looks good. It's growing on me again.
[A little voice in my hand is whispering frantically that certainly many more things could go wrong with this quilt... I'm ignoring it!]
I do like the effect of the purple corners, it gives the quilt more dimension, no? Like someone took a purple triangle and shoved it between the light and green layers...
Haha, here are the middle wedges, when I had made the side borders too short... see, I can laugh about it now!
And the more I look at these wide open spaces, the more I'm drifting away from my vengeful stippling quilt-plan and am moving instead to diagonal lines through the "chain" and old-fashioned feather circles in the white, in white thread. I love the look of those, white on white, and I feel confident enough to try feathers like that on a proper quilt, yet still small-scale!
First things first though! Basting :)
I'll leave you with a fridge-magnet quote - this purchase was a direct result of some fun email-conversations about books I've had recently with my name sake from Bella Linguini. We both like Kurt Vonnegut books a lot, so this magnet caught my eye - though I'd never known before what the guy looks like :)
I think he sums it up very well...
Friday, 14 January 2011
Another day
... another snow storm!
Supposedly all 10 Canadian provinces had snowfall on the same day, even the city of Vancouver, BC (they of course have snow in the Rocky Mountains of BC, but normally it just rains in Vancouver in the winter - their record is something like 43 days of rain in a row - I couldn't do it... even if parts of the province are called Sunshine Coast). Some of the territories (farther north) had blue skies at the same time, but -35 degrees; maybe it was too cold to snow there?
In miscellaneous news: As I replied to some of your comments, I found something other than my laptop to fit into the "too-small" sleeve I made. Having this pretty cover around my statistics book somehow makes me feel better about statistics. And that's a good thing, because my head is already buzzing with the analysis of some data sets for work!
Remember my blue and aqua quilt?
It's being packed up this afternoon to start a long journey all the way to Australia, where one of my friends finally smartened up and had a baby so that I can start giving my many baby quilts away :) She lives far enough south of Queensland that floods aren't a problem, luckily. Not sure what the point of a quilt in the summer is, but hey, it must get cold there sometime ;)
And lastly, I thought I'd share my Disaster Quilt misery with you. This latest disaster happened back in December, but I've been oppressing all thought about it since then...
Well, the disaster itself happened even earlier. Here's the full story:
I had my triple Irish chain quilt top center finished since early 2009 or something horrendously long ago like that. I finally gathered my will to add borders, but didn't want just blah-solid borders and also didn't want to add more than two strips per body. Strange determination, but there you have it.
So I came up with this fancy 45 degree angle corner pieces on the outside border (the purple in the above photo; the green is the main border). I had a few problems with my calculations - or is that "lack of calculations"... here's a hint - do not eyeball the length of strips when you're attaching them with diagonal seams! After piecing and adding and adding some more, and then adding another strange contrasting fabric in the middle of the border because everything was too short, I finally got it right, or so I thought!
I put the quilt away for a while to recover from all my measuring head aches, then took it back out before Christmas to see if I couldn't baste this quilt to at least meet some of my 2010 goals (remember my sidebar?). Well, I had it all spread out on the batting, ready to sandwich, when I took a step back to admire my handiwork and saw this:
Good thing there are no small children Miss Manners around my place :) Corner on the right is how it's supposed to look. Corner on the left side, not so much. I could have cried! I guess I must have been working late at night once again, to make such a mistake. Argh! This quilt has been disastrous from the start (apart from picking the fabrics, that was super easy...) - all my fault and laziness of course, but frustrating nonetheless!
On some "good" day in the future, I will sit down and fix this corner, then baste the quilt and do some extra large meandering all over the quilt to be done with it with minimum effort! No more fanciness on this quilt!!!
So, do I get snickering and "silly you"s or does anyone out there have a load of sympathy they'd like to send my way????
Supposedly all 10 Canadian provinces had snowfall on the same day, even the city of Vancouver, BC (they of course have snow in the Rocky Mountains of BC, but normally it just rains in Vancouver in the winter - their record is something like 43 days of rain in a row - I couldn't do it... even if parts of the province are called Sunshine Coast). Some of the territories (farther north) had blue skies at the same time, but -35 degrees; maybe it was too cold to snow there?
In miscellaneous news: As I replied to some of your comments, I found something other than my laptop to fit into the "too-small" sleeve I made. Having this pretty cover around my statistics book somehow makes me feel better about statistics. And that's a good thing, because my head is already buzzing with the analysis of some data sets for work!
Remember my blue and aqua quilt?
It's being packed up this afternoon to start a long journey all the way to Australia, where one of my friends finally smartened up and had a baby so that I can start giving my many baby quilts away :) She lives far enough south of Queensland that floods aren't a problem, luckily. Not sure what the point of a quilt in the summer is, but hey, it must get cold there sometime ;)
And lastly, I thought I'd share my Disaster Quilt misery with you. This latest disaster happened back in December, but I've been oppressing all thought about it since then...
Well, the disaster itself happened even earlier. Here's the full story:
I had my triple Irish chain quilt top center finished since early 2009 or something horrendously long ago like that. I finally gathered my will to add borders, but didn't want just blah-solid borders and also didn't want to add more than two strips per body. Strange determination, but there you have it.
So I came up with this fancy 45 degree angle corner pieces on the outside border (the purple in the above photo; the green is the main border). I had a few problems with my calculations - or is that "lack of calculations"... here's a hint - do not eyeball the length of strips when you're attaching them with diagonal seams! After piecing and adding and adding some more, and then adding another strange contrasting fabric in the middle of the border because everything was too short, I finally got it right, or so I thought!
I put the quilt away for a while to recover from all my measuring head aches, then took it back out before Christmas to see if I couldn't baste this quilt to at least meet some of my 2010 goals (remember my sidebar?). Well, I had it all spread out on the batting, ready to sandwich, when I took a step back to admire my handiwork and saw this:
Good thing there are no small children Miss Manners around my place :) Corner on the right is how it's supposed to look. Corner on the left side, not so much. I could have cried! I guess I must have been working late at night once again, to make such a mistake. Argh! This quilt has been disastrous from the start (apart from picking the fabrics, that was super easy...) - all my fault and laziness of course, but frustrating nonetheless!
On some "good" day in the future, I will sit down and fix this corner, then baste the quilt and do some extra large meandering all over the quilt to be done with it with minimum effort! No more fanciness on this quilt!!!
So, do I get snickering and "silly you"s or does anyone out there have a load of sympathy they'd like to send my way????
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Disaster Quilt (Triple Irish Chain) Part 1
I planned this quilt right after I finished a double irish chain in my first quilting class and chose the colours in September 2008.
My favourite colour is the bottom one with the retro-looking rounded squares. I bought the other colours to match.
What I love most about quilting, is figuring out the pattern. I have a hard time following patterns from books etc, so what I usually do is look at a picture of a quilt, then decide on the size squares I want to use and figure out all my measurements and numbers. You can see some of my notes next to the fabrics in the photo above. It takes a while, but I really enjoy this. For this quilt for example, I decided to have smaller squares than I used for the double irish chain quilt (2.5" strips) and cut 2" strips, so that I'll end up with 1.5" squares making the pattern on the final quilt.
I started cutting and strip-sewing, but hadn't picked the colour for the large patch (see bottom blocks, off white material) yet, as I was trying to find a perfect match for the background of the multi-coloured material.
As you can see, I eventually gave up and went with unbleached cotton - I think I actually like this better as it pops the pattern out more. So this February, I had all the fabrics together and got serious about triple chaining. Except, not serious enough. Finished all the chain-blocks (pile on top of picture), but didn't measure them all, only the top one. So I based the measurement for ALL the type 2 blocks (pottom pile) on that one type 1 block. Big mistake. The amount of tugging and pulling and non-perfect corners I had to go through to make up 1/4 inch discrepency turned quilting from a relaxation-activity into utter frustration. Hence the name Disaster Quilt - but I still love the pattern and the colours :).
Here are the blocks for half the quilt lined up and laid out - I needed some kind of encouragment in the form of seeing it come together, so that I could keep going with this ardent task of really really stretching tiny cotton squares.
And here is the whole top without borders, sewn together, ironed to my best ability (though quite bumpy due to all the tugging).
I guess despite the tugging, the squares look reasonably lined up from a distance...
My favourite colour is the bottom one with the retro-looking rounded squares. I bought the other colours to match.
What I love most about quilting, is figuring out the pattern. I have a hard time following patterns from books etc, so what I usually do is look at a picture of a quilt, then decide on the size squares I want to use and figure out all my measurements and numbers. You can see some of my notes next to the fabrics in the photo above. It takes a while, but I really enjoy this. For this quilt for example, I decided to have smaller squares than I used for the double irish chain quilt (2.5" strips) and cut 2" strips, so that I'll end up with 1.5" squares making the pattern on the final quilt.
I started cutting and strip-sewing, but hadn't picked the colour for the large patch (see bottom blocks, off white material) yet, as I was trying to find a perfect match for the background of the multi-coloured material.
As you can see, I eventually gave up and went with unbleached cotton - I think I actually like this better as it pops the pattern out more. So this February, I had all the fabrics together and got serious about triple chaining. Except, not serious enough. Finished all the chain-blocks (pile on top of picture), but didn't measure them all, only the top one. So I based the measurement for ALL the type 2 blocks (pottom pile) on that one type 1 block. Big mistake. The amount of tugging and pulling and non-perfect corners I had to go through to make up 1/4 inch discrepency turned quilting from a relaxation-activity into utter frustration. Hence the name Disaster Quilt - but I still love the pattern and the colours :).
Here are the blocks for half the quilt lined up and laid out - I needed some kind of encouragment in the form of seeing it come together, so that I could keep going with this ardent task of really really stretching tiny cotton squares.
And here is the whole top without borders, sewn together, ironed to my best ability (though quite bumpy due to all the tugging).
I guess despite the tugging, the squares look reasonably lined up from a distance...
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