The Mariner’s Compass quilt

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Andrea R — 4 Comments

I got super inspired for this quilt basically when I saw the starry fabric. I dug out navy and yellow scraps and made some borders for the large piece of starry fabric, then used mostly yellows with a strips of blues for the back. So the front could be night and the back day. When I started this back in 2009 (!) I actually called it Night and Day.

I knew I wanted a large focal point that was quilted much like a wholecloth quilt is. I then decided it would be a mariner’s compass design. I looked up a bunch of tutorials on how to draw this mariner’s compass, including making a compass from a pencil and a piece of string. I used chalk to draw the lines on my quilt.

For the straight lines, I used a walking foot and navy thread. This also helped stabilize the quilt. To form the dark and light effect, I quilted with yellow thread on one side of each point and navy on the opposite side. The quilting technique I used is called McTavishing. Love it! I got pretty good at it by the end.

For the background of the compass in the sky, I did a regular stipple, in navy thread. I wanted the central focal point to stand out and the background to fade away.

In the narrow yellow border, I did a rope design – much like a ship would have. The wider blue border I had no ideas for so I’ve left them empty. I can always go back and fill them in. The binding is more scraps of blue and yellow.

You see, I did this quilt for two reasons: my grandfather and my granddaughter. My grandfather was a ship builder. Our home town is by the sea and the ocean is in our blood. On a clear night, I will look up to the sky and find Orion to orient myself.

My granddaughter love space. She insists I help her look up space videos on youTube and find out what the Mars Rover is doing. She talks about spaceships and maybe when she’s bigger she can go to space and visit other planets. In her lifetime this may be possible.

So – from ships on the sea to space ships in the sky, the stars will guide them home.

This quilt is just for me – not for sale, not for any reason but to pay homage to the travellers in our family and the stars in the sky.

I’m on a roll!

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Andrea R — 2 Comments

Not only am I on a roll with posting but with finishing up all the pending quilt projects. I’m been a great starter – tons of idea, loads of fabric to play with – and a terrible finisher.

One reason is I’ll stall on a project because I ran out of materials. This really hit home when I looked at the pile of quilt tops waiting. Last year I even went through and chose backing fabrics. Then recently I realized I had so many tops, it would use an enormous amount of batting to finish them off.

So I waited for a batting sale to come up.

While I waiting, it dawned on me that batting comes on a roll as well. Our local fabric chain carries it (not my LQS) and the price? $25-30 a METER. That’s… not good. Especially since I’m increasingly unhappy with batting in bags. It just gets so wrinkled and pulled out of shape and I wind up with a lot of scraps.

I cleaned out my batting scraps as well and tossed a bag full of nothing but stringy bits only good for tote bag handles. I’d have to make 50 totes to use those up so out they went. I will piece some batting, but I don’t like to have more than a couple seams of batting in a quilt.

Eventually I researched buying a whole roll of batting. The husband had enough of my fretting about it and he said “order some already!”.

Just before ordering I went through my entire stash of pending quilts and realized I would use up an ENTIRE ROLL right away.

So hubby said order two rolls.

And I did.

Guys! I ordered some batting. 60 yards of it. O.o

They were here within a week and I was SUPER HAPPY. That’s 60 total yards.

A few days ago, we cracked open the roll and basted two quilts in an hour, together.

I’m much happier with the roll – not only with the minimal folds and wrinkling in it, but it is also a 50/50 blend in a poplar brand that I hadn’t used before. It;s true – it really is the best of both worlds (cotton and poly).

Can’t wait to actually quilt on it now! I have two more basted quilts to go before I start on the ones we basted with this batting.

Then it’s maybe a dozen more quilt tops waiting. Why yes, I AM asking myself what the heck I was thinking…

Grey Tula Pink Parisville quilt

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Andrea R — 1 Comment

When I went to hunt down previous posts about this quilt, I shocked myself in realizing it’s been over two years since I started this one.

Oops?

At any rate, the top was done, or so I thought. Then I decided to use up all the jelly roll and make it bigger. All but 4 pieces, which I used as an ipad cozy. (Then I took it apart because I never actually USED it with my ipad. Those bits went in the scrap bin).

So. Then the top was done and waiting for batting and I FINALLY got around to quilting it.

Again inspired heavily by Angela Walters, not to copy it completely but to really learn from her techniques and example, I did a different design in each strip. I also did pebbling in all the grey negative spaces around the strips.

While I emphasized the print strips, for the grey parts I just went all out as if it were one piece. Because it is – the background.

FYI pebbling takes a LOT of thread. I think I used up 5 bobbins, easy. I’m starting to write this stuff down and take notes too.

This quilt wound up around a lap / twin size. I debated back and forth, and eventually listed it in my Etsy shop.

The Bee Quilt

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Andrea R — 1 Comment

I took on my first real commissioned quilt. It may have even started this time last year. A friend in far away California wanted a special and very specific quilt made.

It needed to be linen.
It needed a shield design with bees.
It was for someone in the SCA, which has very specific rules. (basically historical re-enactors)

Now, up until then, I hadn’t worked with linen in a quilt and I have said in the past I didn’t really like applique. The image I was given for the shield was roughly 4″ high. The finished quilt needed to be queen/king/as large as possible.

Plus, this was for a friend, so I wanted it to be as perfect as possible, right?

Work on this really started in earnest back in October / November. the recipient finally got it last week. That is how long it took me. It might have taken less time without the creative angst.

I had to do a lot of manual figuring out of things. The natural linen I managed to find at an incredible price online and bought all of what they had left – it was either 8.5 or 10 yards. Just barely enough. The purple and yellow were bought locally at a chain store, 1 meter of yellow, 2 of purple.

The shield part I figured out by laying out on my own queen sized bed and draping the fabric. The width of the shield is the full 45″ width of the fabric. I drew the rest of the shield according to historical direction. I had to do the curves with a pencil and string compass.

For the bees, again I had to go by my best guesstimate. I took the image I was given, enlarged it significantly and cleaned it up in Photoshop the best I could, then I printed it out, traced it out while cleaning up and smoothing out the lines and checked the fit.

The yellow part of the shield was tricky and I did have to ask the client if the bee in this section needed to be bigger or not. Technically it should have been for greater accuracy but we decided this was good enough. I appliqued the contrast areas to each bee first, then applied them to the shield itself.

I then pinned the shield super carefully on the pieced top and sewed that on with a zig zag applique stitch like the rest.

When it came time to baste, some of the top and back was actually larger than the queen sized piece of batting. I did use 100% cotton batting. Lots of careful pinning and trimming here. This living / dining room of ours is a huge room, but we still had to push back one loveseat and the dining room table in order to baste the whole thing.

My design for quilting the shield area was all stippling and outlining the bees. This was for movement to mimic how bees seem to meander everywhere. in the main quilt background, I decided a simple crosshatch grid would not only look great but be reminiscent of medieval quilted armour padding. Especially good since it was this era the client re-enacted, so it would be close to historical. While I did machine quilt it, I also used 100% cotton thread here too. I have a super huge cone of beige thread that I’m still not sure when i might ever see the end of. I think it’s 10,000 yards.

I used my 18″ by 3″ wide ruler to help create the gird and marked it with tailor’s chalk in a rust color. It was slow going and I did get off course a bit but managed to correct it when I met in the middle. I started at one side, then moved to the other to join up at the bottom front where I could work out any misalignments in a low visibility area.

Next time i Need to use a yardstick or something longer.

Back of the quilt showing some piecing.

Back of the shield area showing the bees.

The quilt after washing. YES I tossed it in my washer and dryer to see how it held up and to repair anything that needed to be resewn. Nothing came undone. I wanted this quilt to be able to handle the rigours of use. If you think a cotton quilt looks amazing after washing a linen one is fantastic. This is so warm feeling and heavy – not to mention soft. I had just barely enough linen left with some trimming to do the single fold binding. I think I cut 2″ strips, so it was quite narrow. I machine stitched it on.

The client is absolutely over the moon and I am super happy.

I did a few small projects after this one though. 😉 While working on this I think I went through two whole seasons of the X Files on Netflix.

From my notes, I used:
3 bobbins purple thread
7 bobbins beige thread

And spent 9 hours, 40 mins quilting, marking and making / applying binding. Does not include piecing or design time. That was at least another 3 hours.

Christmas table topper and candy quilting

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

Hiya!

I made a small project to help get me back in the swing of things. I was at my local quilt shop and spotted this super cute table topper pattern called “Sticks and Stones” from This & That patterns.

From my stash, I pulled out a charm pack of Jingle All the Way fabric that I had saved up. It’s hard to find now.

Table topper pieced. Okay so it's Christmas fabrics.

For the quilting, I used some free motion tutorials from The Inbox Jaunt.

Ribbon Candy Quilting
Candy Stripes Quilting

Table topper quilted with ribbon candy tutorial from @theinboxjaunt I added my own circle candies in the squares.

I did my own peppermint candies in the larger squares and them some marble-like gum balls in some of the small squares.

And then bound it in the darker green.

And bound. Glad I went with green binding.

Quilting back. Yummy texture!

Huge Craftsy sale

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I love Craftsy! I even bought a whole pile of their quilting course already and have been eyeing some pattenrnmaking and sewing ones. Right now they have a up to 50% off sale.

Prices are crazy good.

Do you use Craftsy for anything? I had always dreamed of a site being built like this and I have to say – they did it right.

Free Motion Floral Sampler Quilt

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Andrea R — 3 Comments

A finish! Yay! This might be my first finished quilt of 2014, ugh.

For this quilt, I used the leftover blocks from my Summer Quilt. You can do this with any collection of 10″ squares. I had 25 blocks and some were duplicates.

This would look really awesome in solids or low volume prints or even alternate value prints.

Take your 25 blocks and lay them out on the floor or design wall until you get a pleasing arrangement. Sew two together for each row until you’ve sewn a whole row. Sew all the rows together.

(or grab two at random until you get most of the way through the stack and start sewing those pairs together. Make sure you leave enough single blocks behind to finish each row.)

For the backing, I had fabric that was 54″ wide and used that. Baste well with batting of your choice. Mine needed work.

For the quilting – this is the fun part.

I used my walking foot first and stitched in the ditch for each seam, leaving a nice square sewn for each block.

In each square, I quilted a different free motion design using the Bernina Stitch regulator on some and my free motion foot. I worked my way through Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters
and some of Leah Day’s free motion quilting designs as well. Have fun here! I used a white thread in the top and bottom on all fabrics.

For the binding, I trimmed the back so it was 2″ all around and folded it over to the front, then sewed it down. I screwed up trying to trim the corners so I won’t show that bit – just know there’s a gap. Sigh. I really need to work on mitring my binding, especially the “bringing the backing to the front” kind, which I don’t do often.

This quilt I am leaving in my own stash for an example of the kind of quilting I can do. I hope eventually to maybe quilt for customers, so this should give them something to look at to pick quilting styles if wanted. At the very least, it showcases my skills now and I can compare it to another quilt a few years from now.

Scrapper’s Delight

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I’d like to say I started this quilt after I sorted my scraps, but no – I did this while sorting because the thrill of discovering long lost bits of favourite fabrics was a big draw.

I got Sunday Morning Quilts a few months ago and love every other one in the book, so given I found so many strips and squares, it was only natural I start a Scrapper’s Delight.

While sewing, I also watched the entirely of Rosemary and Thyme on Netflix, so there’s double duty tasks for you.

And this is the part where I have to admit even more to being super obsessive about my scrap sorting. I set aside the smaller blocks (under 2.5″) that I would use for the middles, and and odd sized widths of strips (basically not 2.5″ and not less than 1″).

While sewing, I also resorted some of the smaller piles of strips and blocks by *length* as well. This way, when I sewed my smaller blocks together and need a strip to sew alongside, I could lay the block next to a variety of strips and find one closest to the size I needed. Sure, I could trim any piece, but the aim here was to not make even more scraps.

It also really helped me to choose truly random bits of fabrics for an even more scrappy look and not being drawn to ones that would match or co-ordinate too much. The only ones I would full out discount was ones that were the same prints in different colorways, or ones too similar in color.

I chain piece a lot, so I would do at least 4 blocks at a time, sewing a new strip to each one, pressing those, then choosing a new piece for the next side. All those blocks and I only had to use my seam ripper once.

The only other issue I have is I tend to get wobbly when flipping and pressing, so some blocks wound up a bit wonky without straight lines. This works in a quilt like this – not so much when you’re going for accuracy. Then again, I know I also threw caution to the wind and tossed in some strip I know were not cut straight, especially when I saw my pressing issues.

In a quilt like this it’s also fun to lay the blocks out and try different patterns. I’ll probably stick to the layout in the book though.

The other things that struck me was the segment of quilts (usually older ones, more traditional) that don’t save scraps, don’t make scrap quilts and even turn their nose up at scraps, disposing of them entirely.

I mean – there’s a LOT of fabric in this quilt. This stack of blocks is heavy.

I was planning on making maybe even two of this quilt if I had enough scraps (not quite) and selling one. In all my posting progress on Instagram, a friend called dibs on it and will buy it when completed, so it’s now spoken for. I just have to have it finished by Christmas with time to mail to Alabama. 😉

Likely it will be stippling all over, nothing fancy. It’s a big quilt, definitely bed sized. Those blocks finish at 12″.

More scrap sorting

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

Wow, I completely spaced on all the rest of the scrap organizing I did and the quilt block piecing. I think I was so head-down concentrating all I had brain space for was posting to Instagram.

When last I wrote, I was eyeball deep in organizing my scraps. I’m happy to say I survived, but I have at least 3 more quilts added to the “to make” pile. Although I did clear out 2 grocery bags of unwanted fabrics.

I also finished organizing, ironing and refolding 3 large bins of fabric. That wasn’t all the fabric, but that did most of it. Now if I need 2.5″ scrappy strips of any length, I have almost a full jelly roll, plus a great stack of 3-4″ wide strips from short to long. I also have bags of various squares sorted by size and a nice bag full of strings for my mom, plus another bag full of triangle bits.

I even have a bag of teeny snippets for ticker tape types of quilts.

This is just the scraps – not counting flat folds or fat quarter sizes or larger. I did discover I had no or very little fabrics in quantities of 2 or 3 yards or more. If you make any quilts larger than baby size you see how that is an issue, and that was maybe only 6 prints, tops.

As luck would have it, I went to our local fabric chain with my daughter-in-law to pick out fabric for an outfit for her brother’s wedding. While there, I received an invite to a member’s only FIFTY PERCENT OFF SALE the following Monday evening.

I’m telling you, I could not get there fast enough and the place was packed.

50% off pretty much all the fabric they had. I bought 28 meters of quilting cotton. They even gave me some empty cardboard bolts to take home to store it on.

5 of cream solid
5 of pink
5 of yellow
10 of white
3 of an extra wide grey broadcloth with a linen look either woven in or printed on.

I chose these solids since I use these the most and have very little in my stash. I cannot wait to get going on more.

For now, it makes me super happy my stash is organized and I can get my hands on specific cuts and sizes with little effort.

Scrap organization

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Andrea R — 1 Comment

This week I did two things: work on organizing one of my scrap bins and worked on quilting a block or two of a really simple baby quilt.

The baby quilt is just 16 10″ blocks all sewed together. They were leftover from my summer quilt here. I found a large floral for the backing which frankly, hadn’t inspired me for anything but a quilt back.

For each block, I’m quilting a different design, working my way through Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters. When I need a break from the computer and desk work, I just move myself downstairs to the sewing room and quilt a block or two. That’s usually long enough for a readjustment. (mentally, physically) Although, one day this week I had a scheduled call and almost forgot to go back upstairs. I was just about to quilt another block but decided to check on work instead. Good thing I did!

I did quilt about half the blocks this week.

For the scraps, I lugged a big bin upstairs near my desk. For short break, I just wander over and fondle fabric for a bit. I mean.. carefully go through the pile and sort.

It’s a bit overwhelming but eventually I made decisions based on the kind of scraps I had – not trying to fit in someone else’s system.

Then I had to clean some up because the husband wanted to sweep the floor. Crazy guy. So I took some piles to the sewing room to sort further.

Turns out I have a lot of strips and some blocks. I tried not to trim too much, just to even things out. Anything bigger than a fat quarter of course was not a scrap. Anything slightly less than that I called a chunk and also set aside. I figured there was no point cutting up larger chunks into preset sizes if I wanted to do something else with them.

So, that left me with the rest.

I sorted strips into under 2.5″ to 1″ and short medium long piles. Medium anything over 12″, long was selvedge to selvedge or near enough. If I had to fold it to pile it on my cutting board, it was long.

I also had a pile for 2.5″ strips and a pile 3″ or wider.

For squares, I sorted two piles – 2.5″ or 3″ squares, then 4″ or larger.

Anything smaller than any of those was a snippet. If it was really long I placed it in a strings bag. The bag of string is going to my mom, because she loves making string quilts, and I don’t.

I have other fabrics sorted by color and felt for my scraps, sorting by size made more sense *for me* because that was how I chose fabrics for quilts – by what I had, not by what colors.

I did spend a large chunk of Friday and Saturday ironing and trimming scraps. It sounds a little obsessive but I feel so organized! And so ready to make a pile of new quilts, just based on what is there.

I even – oopsie – started piecing Scrapper’s Delight out of Sunday Morning Quilts.

My overriding goal here is to actually build a new stash by using up what I can with the stash I have. The stash is more a reflection of what was cheap / found in thrift stores & yard sales and stuff my mom didn’t want, to build up my stash. I just took some fabrics because they were cheap / free. A lot of it doesn’t actually reflect my taste, so. There we are.

(I will say I do have a drawer full of fabrics that are more reflective of my tastes, but I haven’t used much of them yet. That’s why most of the scraps are not really me – I used the fabrics I only sort of liked first, to use them up. And in this sorting, I’m ditching fabrics I really do not like.)

So… how about you? How do you sort and organize your fabrics? What do you do with your scraps?