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…

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.

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 Rock Candy quilt table toppers and Hex n more ruler

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Andrea R — 2 Comments

I have been on fire this week with piecing and quilting – all small projects and of course new ones.

I decided to try out the Rocky Candy pattern using a scrap I had forever that was a gradient solid. I just cut strips I needed, then the diamonds from that. The triangles and borders I purposely cut from the darker end of the fabric. This was a really wide strip too, about 60″ long. No idea where it came from.

So I kinda pieced the #rockcandyquilt table topper today. Fabric is some gradient blue strip I had from somewhere.

After the piecing, I got inspired by the quilting on the cover (done by Angela Walters, naturally) and since it had been a while, I went to town on it to get back into the groove, I used a gradient grey thread I had. I wanted the quilting to be noticed.

Quilted and ready to finish binding.

Some more of the leftover strip for the binding. I was actually pretty impressed with how it turned out.

For the second one, I had set aside some blue fat quarters that were wintery or Christmassy. I had a specific idea in mind for how I would lay out the fabrics and cut out different amounts of the diamonds accordingly.

Same #rockcandyquilt pattern different fabrics and arrangement.

Then it was just a matter of making sure I sewed them together according to the layout I wanted.

Another #rockcandyquilt topper for Still Winter.

While I was playing around with these, I realized that the pointy end of each triangle piece of the table topper was similar to the Hex N More ruler. I bet Julie did that on purpose. 😉

I quickly came up with an idea for a table topper using the largest gem size and picked out some rainbow solids.

Now with borders! Somehow I stretched the seams so it won't lay flat and it's cut the border first time and well...

Sorry for the very poor yellow – I’m really low on yellow in my stash since I use so much and I’m trying not to buy too much fabric. And for the background and border, I had mis-cut one of the strips too narrow so I had to cut them all down because I was out of this black fabric. (again, a scrap pice. I have a HUGE stash of scraps.)

When I looked at the image after I posted it online, I realized two gems made a heart shape, so I had another idea and pulled some pink fabrics, which I am also short on. I’ the mom of three girls and have 3 granddaughters – I’m always running out of pink fabrics.

The two gems looked like hearts so I had to try this.

I think I’ll write up a free tutorial for the gem topper if there is interest.

Northern Lights

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I bought new quilt patterns. I know! Like I don’t have enough on the go. But I’ve wanted this pattern Northern Lights quilt pattern for a long time – ever since it came out – and I finally found a Canadian distributor.

My local quilt shop had some of Jaybird Quilts patterns but not this one or I would have gotten it there.

I know I have too many quilts on the go already but I'm super happy to get these patterns finally
It’s so pretty!

I went through my big bucket o’ solids, pulling all the larger chunks of yardage I had. Most of my stash is thrift finds and handouts, so at this point I’m just trying to use it up before I go replacing it with better quality fabrics.

I had enough to pull a rainbow selection for a queen size, and as I was pulling larger fabrics of solids, I was also setting these aside. I wound up realizing I had quite a lovely selection of foresty shades in enough to do a baby or lap quilt in the same pattern.

Same pattern but forest color scheme?

Second try here. This is enough for a queen sized.

From some of the brighter scrap, I chose a bundle that number-wise would do a queen size, but instead of using the largest hex, I couldn’t wait to get started by cutting the smaller hex. Initially I cut strips too wide (doh!) but eventually figured that out.

I’ll have a wall hanging size of this one.

Don't ask how small these are #northernlightsquilt

I also got the Rocky Candy topper. When I first say it, I thought it would be good to use the blue Christmas fat quarters I’d been saving. I pulled those out and set them aside, and while rummaging through my solids, found a scrap of some gradient blues from a bundle of sheet mill ends my mom and I got one time. So I set that aside for a table topper too, because I think it will be very interesting. (and likely go to my mom’s anyway). Guess I didn’t get a picture. Maybe later, because I have the Lazy Angle ruler that was used in some of her earlier patterns before she did the Sidekick ruler – which is really very similar but just off enough you actually need to go get the other one or use the template.

I’m glad I got my quilting mo-jo back again but I really wish it was more on the actual quilting side because that pile is the biggest. I don’t need a huge pile of tops in the process of being made as well. 😀

Panels are good practise for free motion quilting

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

My mom hits up yard sales and thrift stores for.. all kinds of things actually, but she goes often enough to get some great finds. One of them is quilt panels. Then she sends them to me to quilt.

This works out great, as I love the quilting part and I get to practise. She’s not picky and loves to hang up different panels for different seasons. And we use up the stash on backing and those weird small bits of batting.

Recently I worked on this one for her.
More panel quilted

More panel quilted

I also did this runner.

Christmas runner

Still need to bind them, but that’s another post. 😉

So don’t discount panels or “cheater” quilts! They are great practise, usually don’t cost much – especially when you pick them up at thrift stores or in clearance bins – and you can always give them away.

Colorblock quilt progress

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I forgot to post this sooner, sorry. With the Colorblock quilt, I had a hard time deciding what to quilt. I defaulted to what the pattern samples show and what most people did, at least according to all the pics I found.

Straight lines.

Straight line quilting

It’s boring but it works. Up and down on the tall strip and back and forth on the horizontal blocks.

Funnily enough, when I did mark these, the width of my chalk was just enough to make the lines slightly over 1″ apart and a little off by the time I get to the other side of the block. But the recipient won’t care. 😉

And yes I did mark these and not use a guide or eyeball it.

A new way to baste quilts

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Andrea R — 2 Comments

Over the weekend – actually, on Friday, my usual day off – I set about basting as many quilts as I had ready to go that also had batting available. In one of the Craftsy classes I signed up for the awesome Leah Day showed us how to baste quilts on a table and use elastics at the corner to secure the fabric and pull it taut.

Well I tried this and it worked so well I am in love with it! Of course I modified it slighty for my table and the quilts I was basting, but LOOK at the stack of quilts I got basted!

I even ran out of safety pins. And when I started I realized my mom had my Quick Klip tool, but I managed.

Even though my table is a nice sturdy wood table, I didn’t worry about scratching it with pins as it is already dinged and painted and stained and watermarked and just generally lived on.

I can also report that my back did not feel like I was eighty years old when I was done either. I did two baby quilts, two Christmas panels and a Christmas runner for my mom AND I did the markings on another larger quilt. I also watched three episodes of season three of Dr Who. So I accomplished quite a bit.

This quilt I am quilting a large Mariner’s Compass / Compass Rose on it. Can’t wait to see how it turns out, as long as I keep my eye on the right lines.

p.s – am I the only one who never has enough batting? Or the piece I have leftover is never quite big enough for the tops I have that need batting?

Cowboy quilt update

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Andrea R — 2 Comments

I did finish the whole top, and calculated it took 6 hours to get this far.

Now to layer with the backing and batting, baste and quilt.

It’s the “quilt as desired” that gets me.

Edit: this quilt is for sale in my etsy shop

Cowboy quilt

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Andrea R — 1 Comment

Or maybe “The Sheriff is in town”. I bought the fabric for this quilt a few years ago in a thrift store. 3 yards of each grey print, just sitting there. I maybe paid a buck a yard, not a thing wrong with it.

Ever since I got the fabric, I had an idea that I would have to do a quilt with bright solid stars, so I drew it up and roughed in some measurements and finally started it this month. Well, February but you knew what I meant. 😉 I did want a bit of a modern spin on it, so that will probably happen with the quilting itself.

I wanted to see how long a typical quilt will take me, so I’m going to try and track my time. I spent 50 mins getting these sashing pieces sewn and pressed today.

Before that, I figure I spent 2 hours planning and drawing, and cutting the pieces. That’s probably a conservative guesstimate there.

Once the sashing strips were done, it only took twenty minutes to do the first row.

uh-oh. I looked at the sashing pieces I had, said “That can’t be right” and realized I mis counted somewhere.

I have a grey stack of strips without the triangles on the corners, but couldn’t remember if I’d cut too many pieces or not. I opent get rotary-happy when cutting and cut out waaayyy too many pieces!

Do you think this would be a good free tutorial to write up? It’s just large enough that the backing can be done with one piece of fabric, and will be a nice baby quilt size.

Edit: I did manage to get half the top pieced today. Hoping to do the rest tonight.