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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Red Ridinghood Reading Quilt!

I'm a mom, and at bedtime we read books under one of the many baby blankets I've made, but now that my child is larger, I decided a larger reading quilt was required.


I was interested in the design because I'd seen one of Rebekah's quilts at the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild meeting. She used a pattern, but I was all, I'll just figure something out. I drew a hexagon with a protractor, and a matching triangle (which was not a great match, actually, I ended up trimming them tons!)


I lay the hexagon on the fabric, and traced around it, then cut out the pieces. This way there was really not much waste. But the hexagons did not line up! I suspect it wasn't entirely symmetric...

I cut out the coordinating triangles long long before the rest, then after the hexagons were cut out, I did the math, and realized I need way more hexagons and triangles. Luckily I scored more of that Jay Carroll print on Etsy, and decided to add in the green unicorns rather than try to find more Ridinghoods or that Sarah Jane tree print.






I did fussy cut the unicorns.


I sewed triangles to the top and bottom of most of the hexagons, then trimmed them to be diamonds, then attached them in rows, then attached the rows, not caring much how they came out. Which is why there is that stripe of unicorns across the top. Not planned.


I made it kind of oversized and hacked it down, rather than try to, I don't know, do the math properly?

I used Quilter's Dream batting for the first time, and I'm super impressed with it. It's really soft, and the scraps don't pill, and it's really soft.



I quilted it using an allover paisley design, from Angela Walter's first book. My early ones were quite stubbly, and the later ones quite dramatic. Either way it holds the quilt together! I could not decided between the blue or the green, so I went with a teal! It's perfect. The back is a Heather Ross print as well.

The binding is a Minny Muu print of Kitten Red Ridinghood. So adorable.

The true aftermath of this quilt is that I finally purchased my own Hex-n-more ruler. Because next time I have to do one of these, I'm being more careful cutting! Even if it means wasting more fabric.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Quilt Making Progress Tracking Board

When I came back from Quiltcon, I wrote out a list. A list I'm sure you're all familiar with, the list of current projects, and what needs to be done with them.

I have written this list many times, in many forms, though I usually default to:

Quilt Name:
- next step
- next step after that

And cross out steps as I do them, but currently I am working on a million projects, and want to, say, do all the quilting in one day (ha!) or work just on binding, because I'm too lazy to switch feet on the machine all time. (Seriously, so lazy).

So I wrote the list out by task, as follows:

Binding:
Red Ridinghood
Flower Mini
Garden Party Tango

And then two weeks later when I'd crossed out several tasks, I was all, well, now the list looks terrible, and I have to write a new list... (thinking... that sounds like work, and I'm so lazy)... OR DO I?

Then I spent twenty minutes searching Amazon for something that is so obviously useful but doesn't apparently exist, and then I went to bed, scheming, because clearly I need this thing that it would take three days to create rather than spending five minutes to write out my list again neatly.

And this is the result of that scheming. (Though, honestly, I was picturing something with magnets, and I ended up with velcro because, sewing...).


I used fabric markers on scraps of solid fabric for the column headers. My daughter decide my text needed decoration so she added the circles, without much regard to seam allowances, I'm afraid. The quilt names are on bristol board decorated with fabric (glued on).


You will also notice that I used both sides of the velcro, because I was using what was on hand, and I only had enough of the 1" wide velcro to do all 30 places if I used both sides. I used dot velcro on the back of the cards:


Half of the cards have loops and half have hooks, but it may make more sense to put both on the card, especially since I have 75 pairs of dots and only about 35 cards.

Brisk Tutorial follows:

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Dunkard's Flower mini quilt

I'm sure there's a better name for this block somewhere.

Anyway, I got Angela Pingel's book on curved piecing for Christmas (she blogs and instagrams as cuttopieces) and was really inspired. You know, drunkard's path is one of my favorite blocks (or maybe you don't know? It's true.)

Looking through it, I wanted to make a number of the quilts (I've cut pieces for one, anyway), but I also wanted to branch out and make a new curved pieced miniquilt of my own.



And here it is! I used a 2.5" template whipped up in Illustrator, and traced and cut pieces to size, used scraps, mostly (except when something was perfect!) and added borders to keep the leaves from being stuck under the binding. It's got a low volume background, which I tried to grade, I don't know how successful it was. The leaves and petals have a background of white on cream, the next blocks are usually white or cream with a bit of color, then further off, the more complicated the fabric is? Though, there are clearly exceptions.

I've used this picture before, but the color is better, right?
I quilted it with the flower power fill from Free Motion Quilting with Angela Walters, one of my favorite fills. The binding is a minny muu print I had left over from a dress I'd made. It seems to me I bought a different minny muu green floral, but when I was in a binding mood, I couldn't find it, and yet could not waste my binding mood not binding.


And here's the back, because I guess people like to see those.

I'd really like to make another version with different colors, but we'll see. I've got a long list of projects to do!

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Quiltcon 2015

First, obligatory photo on Stitch Lab's giant sewing machine:

In the penguin mini skirt!





Secondly, my Kona score is 210 (out of 303).

And no, I did not get a tattoo. But I did have some barbeque, and went with some of my guild friends to Gourdough's where I ate (most of) this hideous thing:





And I took two classes, screen printing with Celina Mancurti (which was not as detailed as I'd hoped) and quick black printing with Lizzy House, which was just perfect.

screen printing with stencil

My block print.
I'm really glad I did not take a lot of classes, frankly, the whole expirience was really overwhelming, and to lock myself in classrooms for days did not appeal, (also, I didn't want to take a class on an unfamiliar sewing machine!) when all I wanted to do was be on the floor looking at quilts. Even so, I know I missed some. You can see some quilts I liked on my Instagram feed.

And these are mine, 1/3 Street Neighborhood:


and Orbits:


And this is one of our Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild charity quilts, but I had nothing to do with it:





Wow, I did not edit any of these photos, huh?  Anyway. Here's my bag on its return:


Alright, now that the photos are over, let's talk details. My favorite lecture hands down was Elizabeth Dackson's on Modern Traditionalism. The lecture I was looking the most forward to was absolutely terrible. Angela Walters's lecture was really inspiring, though the basic message was, practice and don't be too hard on yourself. Sherri Lynn Wood gave a great talk about her new book, which I bought, and hope to read soon. I really enjoyed Casey York's talk, and Heather Ross's lecture was really good as well, and I've really been thinking about what she said. And though I only went to the hobbyist to professional talk because my friend signed up for it, I thought it was full of quite valuable information.

But mostly it was a blast just hanging around and meeting amazing people. Though, as it's a generally solitary hobby, it's nice to be home. That was a pretty intense (and expensive!) experience. Also I did come home with a lot of fabric from visiting the vendors!