Category: the process

How long does it take?

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Sometimes people ask me how long it takes to quilt and I honestly don’t know. Do you track time, even loosely? I know it’s hours here, even on the super fast projects, but still.

Last night I was able to figure out how long I spent at it, and this afternoon I took a short break to wind more bobbins. Then I did more quilting. Then I realized I was almost done so I finished.

Whups.

So all told, on the crazy bright improv quilt I did, the special custom quilting took about 2 hours. That seems about right.

I know on some baby quilts I did previously in fast meandering, they took about a half hour, because I also like to go fast.

I’ll try and remember to track time on a larger piece.

Back in the swing of it

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Now that the room is up, I’ve been making time to spend down there. I also got some Craftsy classes, including Quilting Negative Space. I’m a HUGE fan of Angela already and this class is just great. I’m really enjoying it, even though I listen along as I’m making supper.

Tonight I had the itch to quilt so I decided to practise some patterns from Angela’s book along with encouragement from her course. I already had a baby quilt laying in a sad pile waiting for me to figure out how to do it. I took Angela’s advice to break it up into smaller sections. It’s improv pieced so there’s no real background, but since it’s so wild, I figured it was a great chance to practise different techniques all over it.

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Here I did two long pieces near the middle to start off and warm up.

 

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You can see the loops, back and forth (love this) and some swirls.

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Close up of doing the all over leaf pattern in the next “block”.

 

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In this block I marked a single line diagonally across then followed it to make the sunburst effect. I love how it feels.

 

 

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Two more long strips gave me the opportunity to try the swirl scroll and woodgrain. The scroll needs some work, but it’s good enough!

 

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And there’s all the work I did this evening. Halfway done!

It was quite fun doing a different design in each section or strip.

 

Update: I actually went through a whole bobbin last night, did a quick bit this morning and ran out of the *second* bobbin,

I was away so let’s talk binding

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Ooops! I went away on a business trip and all the pre-trip preparations and post-trip recovery meant no real sewing for a while.

I did baste a pile of baby quilts I had waiting, plus for two I decided to not bind them and sew together using what I call the pillow case method. The one where you place the back and front right sides together with the batting, sew around, leave a hole for turning and then turn right side out.

For the pinwheel quilt, I had a yard or so of red gingham I wanted to use for binding, which meant I had to make it myself. But I was short on time, so I hunted down an even faster method for making binding. Following this tutorial, I did not even have to mark the strips or even use my binding maker.

I also machine sewed the binding on by sewing it to the back first, then flipping the binding over to the right side and stitching it down. Repositioning my needle to the far left also helped with this step.

I’d have a picture to show you, but alas – my trip wore out my camera batteries and I forgot all about it, os right now my batteries are charging.

I think my brain batteries need charging too. 😉

And yes – I still need to post exactly how I quilted the pinwheels! I’m happy with how it turned out. I guess I did squeeze in time to actually quilt it, but not enough time to blog it.

So – how do you bind your quilts? All the same way? Different ways depending on your mood or the quilt?

Gearing up to quilt Becky’s pinwheel quilt. Also: Babies.

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My family is funny. In my last post, I showed the finished quilt for my aunt and her new baby. My aunt is my age, because my mom is her oldest sister and this aunt (Tammy) is the youngest. So it works out. 😀

Well. Tammy also has older children. Old like mine! So her oldest is newly married with a new baby too! Thus a quilt for both mom and daughter with their new babies.

And my son and his wife had a baby this year too – so my grandmother got a new grandchild, great-grand-child and great-GREAT-grandchild all in the same year. And within 6 months of each other. 😀

So. Becky’s quilt.

No idea how to quilt it other than FAST and maybe something to show motion around the pinwheels. It’s bright and cheery, just like Becky.

Ideas anyone?

THe pinwheel sare all 30’s repro prints, sashed by yellow gingham. The backing is blue gingham and I’ll bind it in red gingham. (Between my mom and I we have a ton of gingham.)

Fibonacci and Angela Walters

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I swear I’m not stalking Angela, honest! Just a huge fan. In her Free Motion Quilting book, she has a quilt on page 92-92 that she designed and quilted. The book does not contain the pattern for the quilt, but it was pretty simple. Just strips spliced with squares, randomly arranged on a solid background.

Inspired, and with a jelly roll of Tula Pink’s Parisville, I set to work. Got the jelly roll on sale at Craftsy. Great place! I was even going to go with white, but at the fabric store I saw they had a really nice grey solid and grabbed that instead. I haven’t done anything on grey yet. I think it goes quite will with the Parisville colors.

I wanted a random placement of strips and did not want to copy Angela’s quilt exactly, since I also wanted to make it bigger.

So given the strips are 2.5″ wide and there were a few squares, I used 2.5″ as my “unit”. The Fibonacci sequence is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.. so I have to do a little multiplication to figure out how long to cut some strips. I stopped when I got to numbers longer than the jelly roll.

For reference, I cut some pieces like this, not counting the squares (1 unit):
2 – 5″
3 – 7.5″
5- 12.5″
8 – 20″
13 – 32.5″
21 – 52.5″ so that was too long to cut from a 42″ strip of fabric.

More playing around:

I also started to cut some of the grey background fabric in the same lengths but will probably use longer pieces, or add more grey. I want a lap or maybe bed sized quilt. Something just for me to curl up under.

Ayla’s quilt

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Ayla is my newest grandbaby (number two!) and it’s taken me a while to decide on exactly what kind of quilt to make her. Being born at the end of July really helped ease the pressure to produce a quilt right away too. 😉

I finally decided on Brioche and Baguette but the pattern is mail order and I did not want to wait.

So I winged it.

With the general idea of the pattern in mind (I will buy it later), I used a bunch of charm squares, a fat quarter and a bunch of 2.5″ strips – jelly roll sized. I was also of out white fabric with most of it buried in a storage container miles from here, so I also hassled my mom to see what was in her stash. The fabric is from Riley Blake – Apple of my Eye and mostly Pretty Little Things by Dena Designs for Free Spirit

Progress so far:

The white fabric is actually the support panel from a bedskirt. I got a little cutter-happy and wound up cutting waaaaay too many 2.5″ strips, but given how much I love to use white, I’ll use them elsewhere.

By the time I got the the laying out stage, I realized I really did want wider border on the side. I was going to just use the 2.5″ strips all around but for me, I visually did not want a skinny quilt. Unfortunately, there was barely enough white left. I would have liked to have cut the wider side sashing a full 5″ like the charm squares and the strips of fat quarter in the middle, but it was just a wee bit short. I wound up with 4.5″ strips but overall I don’t think it will too noticeable.

Except to maybe other quilters. 😉

For the center area, I really loved the trees fabric and made sure the pattern was matched up where I cut it. I could have cut the fabric shorter to not make the overall quilt so skinny, but I love the fabric so much! I wanted to show as much as I could.

This is going to bite me when I work on the back, but I’ll cover that next post. I only got the white fabric last weekend, and had made my mind up a couple days before that. Sometimes I don’t sew them up this fast, sometimes I just can’t help it.

The only reason I stopped today was because I had to cook supper and eat it. I hate when that happens.

I’m a real cut up

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It’s Saturday and I cleared out my weekend schedule to get to some quilting time. But instead of quilting, I’m hitting my next favorite activity: cutting fabric!

There’s piles of fabric all around my sewing table. I’ve pulled fabric for numerous projects and there they sit. So today, I’ll dig out the cutting board, clear off the dining room table and get to cutting. Oh and Drop Dead Diva marathon on Netflix for company. 😉

I really probably shouldn’t be cutting more quilt tops, given the size of the pile of tops I already have, and the pile of “to quilt” – the ones that have backings (mostly) and are maybe basted… oh yes, I have basting days too.

I’m making two Margo bags – one for my mom and one for my BFF Rebecca. My mom does quilt, but Rebecca is a knitter. Good thing, because if I need knitting done I will trade with her. The only thing I cut wrong so far? I mis calculated for the remaining bit of fusible batting I had. I forgot to leave room for the straps for both purses and cut a chunk off the long end. *sigh* Now it will be back to the fabric store. Or can you piece fusible batting? I really don’t want a seam or broken folded part in the middle of the handle. Maybe a good overlap for extra shoulder padding? We’ll see.

I also cut one queen-sized batting into 4 pieces, 3 of which fit particular baby / lap quilt tops I have waiting to be quilted. The 4th piece has a chunk out of the corner so it won’t fit a couple of lap sized tops I have by just a wee bit. I hate when that happens! 😀 It should fit the baby quilt I have cut out for my second (and newest) granddaughter Ayla.

One of the quilt tops I cut out is inspired by the quilt Neptune in Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters. No pattern is given for the quilt itself, so I improvised! I’m using a Tula Pink Parisville jelly roll with a really nice grey solid. I think this is the first time I’ve used a grey instead of the white. This is definitely going to be a practise quilt. So in love with Angela’s quilting!

The other quilt top I cut was for the Fast Forward pattern from Jaybird Quilts. (love her stuff too!) I have a Boys Will Be Boys jelly roll for this, and some solid brown. I was thinking of using a blue from my stash, but I really wanted the brown. I’ll use the blue for the back.

When I get to sewing time, I’ll group the projects together by thread color used. This way I can work on multiple projects and not have to keep changing thread. I probably do that because of all the time I spent at the serger when my kids were little.

What about you? Do you go on cutting sprees, cutting out multiple projects at once?