Galactic finish

These were actually done ages ago, this past summer. But alas, time flies, and too little of it is used for blogging :)

I have some semi-finished plans to give two of these away instead of hanging them as a triplet wall-hanging. We'll see if these plans pan out. Enjoy these photos of the quilting. It was so much fun making these and playing around with free-motion quilting.

They finish at 16.5 x 22".

Almost there

Yay, these 3 are almost done! Just the binding to sew down, and tada!

I'm really excited about the quilting. Each of the quilts has different free-motion quilting on it. This one for example has spider webs in the circles. I am considering embroidering a big fat purple spider on this one ;) Still to be decided...

I did a fantasy pattern of waves and loops in the background. It's a bit much, but I'm getting used to it.

Sometimes, the batiks didn't flow into each other since I was limited by the fabrics in the charm pack. I happened to find binding fabric that matched the hues pretty well. In some cases, I attached the binding strips with straight instead of diagonal seams to match the fabrics on the quilt, like here:

The hand-sewing part of the binding is one of my favourite steps, so I'm quite looking forward to these 3 light weights on my lap while I'm stitching away! I have not attached hanging tubes on the back yet, since I couldn't decide which direction to hang them up in. I might just attached some small loops in the corners to keep the options open.

Triple Constellation Part C

Well, the top is finished and the thread colours are chosen... as soon as I'm done with the current foot attachment on my machine, the free-motion foot will go on and I'll look for inspiration on how to quile this last part. Stay tuned!

Triple Constellation Part B - Lines

I love contrast in quilting, so to go with the all-over-the-place, different-size bubbles, I decided on a parallel grid pattern. I didn't want the pattern to be too ridgid, so left out every 3rd line, ending up with 2" - 1" - 2" - 1" etc. in between quilt lines. I simply used masking tape to mark the quilt lines and quilted along either side of the tape.

Using the tape was much easier than marking all the lines with a pen and then having to get rid of the markings later. The method uses up a lot of masking tape, but I simply reused small bits that I had left over from taping quilt backings to the floor for basting. After a while, these bits aren't strong enough anymore to hold the quilt backing to the floor (too much fuzz collects on them), but they're fine to string together for marking a quilt line...

Whenever possible, I simply lifted the needle and foot and moved across to the next seam without cutting the thread. This reduces the chance of thread-ends balling up or getting tangled when starting a new quilt line with loose thread ends.

View from the under side, all finished and squared up.

And the front...

Once all three parts are ready, I will decide on the binding colour... whether to match each quilt or use the same colour to link the 3 parts together...

Triple Constellation Part B - Bubbles

Next comes Part B. I decided to do bubbles in the circles this time. The plan is to use different quilting styles and combinations on each part of the wall-hanging.

The bubbles pattern is one of my favourite free-motion quilting patterns. Especially on a small section such as this, it's a lot of effect for relatively little work.

I want to bounce on these!

A little oopsie-daisy happened about 5 seconds into free-motion quilting. I missed a pin, it snuck up from behind the foot and caught me so unawares that I quilted right over it. Unfortunately in such a way (as you can see) that I couldn't simply fiddle the needle out. What a pain to have to cut the threat after 5 cm of quilting! But hey, I'm glad my needle didn't break when it hit the pin... 

Next up: the background quilting on Part B.

Triple Constellation Part A

Progress on a WIP to report! Woot woot! First though: a refresher -->

This part of the three-part wall hanging has been done for a while. I tried to use thread and quilting to make the 3/4 circles look like almost full circles, fading the clearly delineated missing quarter into the background. However, short of quilting that part of the quilt into a solid brick, I gave up trying. There was just too much light-dark contrast to bridge, and it may have needed fabric paint or something, and I'm not really interested in trying that...

Here is the back, you can see what I mean about trying to soften the transition from background fabric to circle fabric.

Hooray, it's working!

Thank your for your advice about google reader! It's much easier to follow my favourite blogs now, though as was pointed out to me, I still have to load the blogs to comment, so please forgive me if you don't get many comments from me anymore!

I've worked on a couple of pieces recently:

1) finally started the quilting on Free As A Bird (see sidebar). So far, I'm doing the brainless stitch-in-the-ditch (with brainless, I mean that I didn't have to think about what to do, it's pretty obvious, no marking or designing required :) I still think it's one of the most difficult quilting methods - it's so easy to slip out of the ditch and then it looks pretty sloppy!), but I ideas for the large grey triangles are brewing...


2) I used the rest of the drunkard's path blocks to make 3 wall hangings (they're just stuck together on my make-shift designwall right now. It's not so much a design wall as a 'get things off the floor' method, since my floorspace here is much more limited than before... I think I may have shown pictures of these wall hanging triplets before (pre-sewn together).


Well, my quilting output is still not up to pre-move-levels. There's just so much other fun stuff to do here! Come winter, it'll probably pick up again :)

Bear with me, and happy quilting!

2010 Quilt Retreat II

Okay, here's what I made at quilt retreat!

While sorting fabrics, I started picking out prints that I had bought or received individually and that didn't seem to go with anything else. I did some searching and found that I actually could mix and match quite a few prints together, and they all had something burgundy/wine red in common.

For some reason I keep thinking Warm and Fuzzy when I look at these blocks, so that'll be that name for now...

So I'm in the process of making log-cabin style blocks with a large central focus fabric and 3 layers of logs around it - none of the blocks are at that stage yet. I have a similar stack of fabrics in green and will make the same blocks in green to see if they go together, alternating the blocks or something like that. If not, I'll think of something else. This is a No-Plan-Quilt :)

Next, I was busy busy busy sewing drunkard's path blocks. I asked for some tips re: getting both ends of the curves lined up, and Crispy sent me some tips too.


However, I must have done something wrong when cutting out the pattern, or else, something is off. I pin at the start, middle and end, and I always end up perfectly in the middle, no extra fabric on the convex or concave side, but at the end of the curve, I *always* have 1/8 to 1/4" left over. I find that because I can't hold on to anything there, I can't make the ends meet. Oh well. I've resigned and will trim the blocks to size later...
I've got almost all my pieces sewn together. Some of the colours and pairs aren't my favourites, but they'll probably go well with the completed quilt in the end. I don't actually know how many blocks I'll have or what kind of layout I'll choose, yet.

The third and last project I did at retreat was actually the first one of the day. I had purchased these fabrics online quite a while ago after seeing them on someone else's blog. It was time to cut into them. I decided to make a miniature filmstrip, figured out my measurements to make it turn out about 30x40", my usual baby quilt size, cut all the pieces and took them to the retreat.
I didn't bring the pattern though, so when I started this project as my "instant gratification project to start the retreat weekend", I promptly cut a strip that wasn't supposed to be cut - I was lucky and it still fit. I ended up having a whole bunch of headaches with this quilt though, so it didn't end up being quite as quick or satisfying as I'd hoped. Plus, I'm really not happy with the 1" inner sashing - it's too narrow for my taste. Maybe it'll grow on me.

I'm calling this one "Chicks and Elephants"

I had cut out pieces and sashing for a second quilt, identical except using off-white sashing. I decided against that and am turning it into a different layout now.

On the last morning of the retreat, at breakfast, the quilt guild members were discussing charity projects for this year. We will make a quilt or two for the animal shelter (to be raffled off by them, not used as bedding for the cat cages!!!), and we decided to make it scrappy and have at least one animal print in a 12.5" block. We were also asked to bring some example blocks for the other members to the next guild meeting (next week).

Because I was still on a motivation/adrenaline/quilting rush from the weekend, I promptly started on some elaborate blocks when I got home. What the quilt executive didn't realize, I think, is that some people (like me), use their scraps until only tiny pieces are left. So my blocks are quite seam-heavy. We'll see how that goes over :)

Here's what I made, anyway:

The bottom four blocks are done log cabin style, in the broadest sense of the word. I'd almost lean towards calling the style "add-pieces-to-the-edges-wherever-you-can". I sorted my scraps according to colour, though that wasn't a prerequisite.





The last block I wanted to make a bit faster and use some narrower pieces, so I found all kinds of strips that are almost to narrow to be used for my taste (a few 1" ones in there), and I guess it's pretty obvious how I made the block :)


Well, I haven't done much quilting since that Sunday - no I lie, but the quilting I did do I'd rather forget. What a headache I had Tuesday working on the Disaster Quilt, one of my QUIPs in the right side bar - more of that later. Suffice it to say, I should have expected that debacle with a quilt called disaster quilt. It's living up to its name!!

Either way, all the sorted fabrics are still on my floor, I just covered them up to protect from sun (ahahahaha, what sun????) and dust (yup, lots of THAT around!).


People have learned not to come by my place unannounced, as they would have to dig a path through my quilting projects to get to the couch ;)

Discovering Batiks

A few months ago, I bought 4", 5" and 6.5" pre-cut packs on etsy, and recently I added some 5" charm packs from Connecting Threads to the mix. I do like the look of batiks, though I'm still trying to figure out how to mix and match them.


The pre-cuts have quite a mix of plant prints and tie-died fabrics, which is nice - all patterned would be a bit much for me.


Can you tell I can't get enough of these? :)


I decided that these batiks would be handy to try a larger curved-piecing project, so I printed out Crispy's 6" block for a drunkard's path, and lo and behold, once I added the seam allowance to her template, the pieces fit perfectly onto charm packs and the 6.5" squares I have :)
I did one practice block to make sure the seams are working - I'll redo this one though, because I have a near-pucker in the center, must practice the curved-piecing a bit more!


I played around with colour matches for a while - I'm going to have to spend some more time on this, because some of the combinations don't have enough contrast...



This will be my main project for the quilt retreat which is coming up in a bit more than a week, hooray! I'm so very much looking forward to the retreat! (Same as last year).

Weekend Achievements - Batik 9 Patch

Well, I had great tips from some of my readers about how to sort my scraps. In the end, I decided to go with the 'sort by colour' theme - it just made the most sense, because just like Crispy, my previous arrangement by size didn't really make life easier.

Before I resorted the scraps, though, I figured the easiest way of dealing with them was by using them ;)


So I made a few quick 9 patch blocks with the batiks I had left over from the wedding bento box quilt and turned them into a baby-quilt:


The layout was mostly inspired by the scraps I had available, and I chose a muted background colour probably because I kept thinking of a stroller-quilt tutorial (see side bar) that I saw on Saturday and figured that for the outside, whitish backgrounds would not be very useful :)

The quilt top turned out to be approx. 34"x40".

Wedding Quilt in Full

It's finished and delivered! I clipped the last thread at noon on Saturday, 3 hours before the wedding!



After all the work, I never though of bringing something to wrap it in, so it ended up going to the gift table in the white plastic bag I carried it around in - at least it was logo-free :)


I hope the couple likes it, I sure like it a lot!