Third Saturday of July 2020

For "Hang Your Quilt Day" this month, my husband Frank and I hung two quilts today meeting the theme "Christmas in July". After putting up the first Simple Gifts quilt in front of the garage door, Frank stepped down from the ladder too abruptly, taking several unintentional, unbalanced steps backwards. Fortunately he plopped his butt on the front hood of my car, which was conveniently parked in front of the garage door, instead of winding up slamming his a** on the hard cement of the driveway. This echoed of him falling off a ladder November of 2017 and breaking his hip, hanging curtains for me. I am declaring no more ladder work!

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I stood on a bench and he helped me hang the second Grinch quilt by the front door. For future use, I just placed an order with Amazon for a stand for hanging quilts or banners. No more pulley systems or ladder risks for us. With age comes wisdom.

Links in my DianeLoves2Quilt blog for these two quilts, which I have deployed before, and a link in my WanderOrPonder blog for Frank's broken hip are

• Grinch 7/2/2014 (DianeLoves2Quilt)
• Simple Gifts 6/10/2015 (DianeLoves2Quilt)
• Frank's broken hip 12/15/16 (WanderOrPonder)

Hang Your Quilt Day

Saturday, April 18th, my quilt guild, Amador Valley Quilters, encouraged its members to hang a sample of their quilts outdoors for the neighborhood to enjoy. I likened this practice to other diversions during times of "shelter in place" and "social distancing" due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people put teddy bears in the windows of their homes for parents and their children to seek out and find while "going on a bear hunt" during walks. The Italian population gather at their windows every evening to cheer and give thanks to the medical workers who are tirelessly risking their lives. I think of putting these out for both reasons – to have something to view and enjoy and as a show of thanks to our essential workers. These are the quilts I've made that I chose to display. After each photo are the names of the quilts and a link to a post that tells more about each.

From left to right

• Sanity Quilt 6/20/2012
• Grinch 7/2/2014
• Simple Gifts 6/10/2015
• Out of the Blue 8/16/17
• Sunny Spring Frost 7/24/2013

From left to right

• Orange and Grey 8/10/2016
• Train 7/24/2018
• Overlapping Squares 6/8/2016
• Flag on bench - no blog post reference since it predates me blogging (pre 2011)

From top to bottom

• Traveling Mandala (6/7/2015)
• Leftovers - no blog post reference since it predates me blogging (pre 2011)
• First Quilt - no blog post reference since it predates me blogging (pre 2011)
• Painted Barn "Quilt" 2/11/2020

I Scored a Ribbon ... and More!

I won a third place ribbon in the seasonal category at my guild's quilt show this weekend for my quilt Simple Gifts!

These are viewer's choice awards decided by quilt show attendees voting for their favorites. They are not juried or judged ribbons.

This is the placard attached to my entry. There are more details about its completion in my DianeLoves2Quilt post for June 10, 2015.

I was surprised and pleased. I had struggled with making the presents stand out, given the scrappiness of the pattern and my fabric choices. I had fretted over my FMQ lines on this quilt being crooked and of uneven stitch length. I guess the overall effect was OK because folks liked it enough to vote for it. So yay! I am excited and encouraged.

But there is more. There is a vendor, Twice Nice Shoppe, who is present at many of the quilt shows and sewing festivals in the area. This business specializes in Singer Featherweight sewing machines, refurbishing them, leaving some with their original finish, painting others snazzy colors, and then selling them. I have been drooling over the machines in this booth for several years, since each has been rejuvenated so flamboyantly. This show my husband and I agreed I should finally buy one of the machines. "Consider it a 40th wedding anniversary present," he added. Seeing the machines on Saturday, I thought about it over night, the color-loving quilter in me pouring over the many paint options in my dreams... Candy Apple Red, Lipstick Red, Harley Blue, Purple... but never really able to be decisive about which was my favorite.

When I returned to the booth Sunday and looked at the machines again I just knew. I opted for a shiny brightly repainted model, spiffed up but not deviating from the original Singer. I chose classic black. It was a gut feeling that seemed atypical for me and my love of color, but the sewing machine is a personal item in a way. The classic black reminded me of my mother and her machine and what a Singer should be. It was made in New Jersey near where I was born and it is only one year older than I am. As my husband put it in his own inimitable way, "It was manufactured in the year you were conceived." It weighs only 11 pounds. I test drove it at the show and it is whisper smooth and quiet. My husband even commented on the gentle hum it produced. I intend to use it as a light weight, convenient option when I take classes, and for travel, when visiting my son's or my daughter's home. I can sew with my daughter in Oklahoma and sew for my daughter-in-law in Southern California. Here is my most recent addition to my sewing machine family. See how bright and shiny new she looks, reflecting her surroundings?

The gold scrollwork around the edges and in the center of the throat is just gorgeous.

Even her foot pedal glows. I don't look that good and I am a year younger!

She needed a name. Singer Featherweights are a stable, reliable workhorse machine, representative of an era. They are pretty special, but they are not rare. I realized that anyone, for a fee, can own a Singer Featherweight machine. I like alliteration so I decided to name my featherweight Fiona. Here is my trio of machines, my Handiquilter Heidi, my Featherweight Fiona, and my trusty Pfaff.

Hmmm, I never named my Pfaff. I never assigned a gender either. For some reason, being made in Germany, I think had I picked a name, it would have been a boy's name. Well, now the two lovely ladies, Heidi and Fiona, can keep him company in my sewing room.

This has been a busy week, prepping for, attending, and helping with take down of the Diablo Valley Quilters Show. One of my volunteer jobs was security at one of the exit doors. I had to sit for two hours, a very difficult task indeed, during which time I started to crochet a sweater for my granddaughter. That is my only active work in progress for this week and I have no photos of it yet. For now, I will see what others are up to at this week's Cooking Up Quilts Main Crush Monday and Freshly Pieced's Works in Progress.

Baby and Quilt Show Prep Modes

BABY MODE
Once again I am in baby mode, making burp cloths. They may be mundane but they do serve the purpose of getting me out of any quilting slump I may be in. These eight are for a couple who just had their second boy baby. I mailed them off a few days ago. Burp cloths are my go-to baby gift. Each burp cloth can be made from two fat quarters or from a fat quarter and 1/4 yard WOF. I general use a half yard each of two fabrics and make them in complementary pairs. Four pairs are shown in the following photos - whales, gears, owls, and argyle – each paired with either stripes or dots. Here is the June 18, 2014 tutorial I posted on how to make these burp cloths.

But now I have crib sheets to add to my repertoire. I have two cut out for use with a standard size crib mattress and have begun stitching them up. The four corners get joined with French seams and then elastic is run around in a casing along the outer edges. The original online tutorial for the sheets in the Stitched in Colors blog post for November 4, 2014. It is not under her tutorial tab for some reason.

This first crib sheet will coordinate with the quilt my daughter is finishing up. You can see its initial design in her July 29th post to her RobinLovesQuilting blog titled Quiltus Interruptus. Her son was born on July 16th. You can not keep a good quilter inactive for long! She has follow on posts to her blog on September 14th and 15th describing her design process in her posts Dinosaur Panel Play 1 and Dinosaur Panel Play 2. I was bemused to see that like mother, like daughter, she too convinces herself of her design choices by adding words to explain why she made those decisions.

The coordinating crib sheet fabric comes from the largest scale print from the Have You Seen My Dinosaur line.

Here is the completed crib sheet stretched over a furniture cushion since I did not have a standard crib mattress available.

This second crib sheet will coordinate with the Bugs R Us quilt I made and showed completed in my post for July 15, 2015.

I picked the largest scale bug fabric from the Backyard Safari line. I am not sure I would want to sleep on something like this but he is a boy after all.

And once again, here is the completed crib sheet stretched over a furniture cushion. The lush foliage looks inviting and I suppose those bright colors do make the beetles kinda friendly - sort of... I say better these bug images on his bed sheets than real ones in his pockets!

QUILT SHOW PREP MODE
I also spent time this week making and attaching hanging sleeves on two quilts I am entering in my local guild's show this coming weekend. This is a dull task that I managed to complicate by deciding to piece one of the sleeves out of five fabrics to coordinate with the quilt. I did not have enough remaining backing fabric, I did not like anything from my stash as a sleeve fabric, and none of the five leftovers from the quilt front were wide enough nor long enough to use alone. This photo only reveals three of the five fabrics. There are two more hidden pieced sections on the side of the sleeve next to the quilt top. Two, not just one, but two seams run the length of the sleeve. Anal, right? I know. This quilt is my Simple Gifts seen in my post for June 10, 2015.

For the other quilt I am displaying I added a sleeve out of all one fabric and it was much simpler and quicker. But then my husband said, "Aren't you going to put those labels on like you do?". Well, no. I wasn't going to invest the time. But he was right, and I should. So I did. Here is the quilt name label. On an opposite corner is a similar label with my name and year of completion. Sunny Spring Frost is pictured in my post for July 24, 2013. Stitching on the sleeves by hand, making and adding the grosgrain ribbon labels, and basting on the paper identification tabs to each quilt took me the better part of a day. Aargh! But I am ready now.

The Diablo Valley Quilters' guild show is this weekend in Walnut Creek, CA.  Check out the show if you are near the area. Here is the link.

I am linking up now with this week's Freshly Pieced Works in Progress. I am fairly confident that other folk are piecing quilts and not dribbling their time away piecing quilt sleeves! In my defense, I did make eight burp cloths and two crib sheets, too – just not a lot of quilts. Hmmm. What is the name of this blog again? DianeLoves2Quilt?

Simple Gifts Completed

Ta-dah! I completed my Simple Gifts quilt a few days ago and here is it displayed artistically (my attempt at artistically, anyway) over the wing chair next to the fireplace. I can just imagine myself next Christmas curled up under its brightly-colored and cheerfully-wonky blocks. I used a bamboo batting because it drapes so gently. Simple Gifts has not yet been washed in this photo. It will get softer. My quilting is not very dense either so the quilt will be very flexible. I am looking forward to a cuddly Christmas, even in California.

 

Any attempts to take pictures outdoors failed miserably in the wind. Also, quite frankly, since we are in a California drought area, the dead brown lawn was not a very attractive backdrop. For a better overall view of the quilt, I tried hanging it from our upstairs railing. The shot is fairly straight on but the bows of the top presents got nipped off.

Here is Simple Gifts displayed on the upstairs hardwood floor so at least all of it is visible at once. It measures 49" x 68". Correction: almost all of it is visible. I just noticed the bottom right corner.  A photographer I am not.

Upon completion of Simple Gifts I am feeling a mixture of... sadness... pride... sentimentality... relief... reflection...

There is a line at the end of the 1998 movie Hope Floats where Sandra Bullock quotes her momma as saying

... beginnings are scary,

endings are usually sad, 
but it's the middle that counts the most.

The middle counted a lot for me on this quilt. It was "nice" to "slice and splice" and stretch myself beyond my precision piecing norm and to play with the patchwork background in an unusual way. Working with that bright trio of red, lime green, and aqua successfully and repeatedly chased any blues away. That part being over is a bit of the cause for my sadness. It is hard to see something fun come to an end.

And, as much as I fretted over the fabric selections being too busy, I think, in the end result, the presents popped just enough. I put the gifts that "popped" the most in the middle of the quilt. I think even though its print variations are extreme, the block in the lower right corner of the photo turned out to be my favorite. I love the little village houses and the very graphic red/white, that I worked so hard to segregate at the edges, does bring the eye to that part of the quilt... the better to explore those itty-bitty buildings.
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Even the blocks with the green and aqua backgrounds turned out better than I was expecting. I think quilting the patchwork background, but not the gifts, helped. I started with the green background blocks since I was quilting with lime thread throughout and wanted to have my earliest work be in the least noticeable areas.

The aqua background was the busiest and concerned me the most. I am withdrawing my previous misgivings and regrets about not going with a one fabric background. That choice would have given the quilt a bit more formality than the wonky blocks warranted. The echo quilting shows up just fine amid the patchwork aqua. The lime green quilt thread color that I used throughout contrasted more with the aqua background. I did these rightmost two columns of blocks last, so my skill level could be a bit higher when I worked on them. I also love the red binding bordering those red gifts.

I am also proud that I ventured to do ruler work on my HQ-16. The stitching lines are not perfect but it is passable considering my inexperience. There are a few bobbles on the back and the stitch size is not uniform throughout, although it did become more consistent in parts of the quilt I did later. I suppose this shows some skill growth and bulk management improvement on my part. The ruler work was not simple for me and so the quilt's name is a bit ironic. It is also ironic because after my concentrated efforts, I am keeping this quilt, so it is not a gift either. I still like my reason for the name though. The wonky simplicity of the gifts are still there.

Sometimes it is a battle to coax binding around the corners and join it ripple free at the end. I wanted the binding to be a mixture of reds to carry out the playfulness of the quilt. I knew I'd be taking a chance though because multiple seams in bindings increase the odds that a binding seam is go into fall right at a corner and create bulk issues. This one came close but it cooperated nicely. The binding went on like a dream. Along with the binding this photo offers a closer look at that cute little house fabric I so like and my straight line echo quilting around the gifts.

I came to the realization that if I name a quilt, but the only record of its name is in my blog, then the name gets forgotten. Now I put two labels on my quilts, one with my initials and the date of completion  and one with the quilt's name.

 I picked a deep red for the type on the labels to go with the deer on the backing

I am feeling a bit sentimental over this quilt, too. I bought the kit November 2011. The year 2011 was a busy one. My daughter got married in May and my son got married in September. After the second wedding, my husband and I enjoyed a weekend away at Cambria Pines Lodge, a gift from my son and daughter-in-law to thank us for our support and efforts on their wedding.  It was during that weekend away that I visited the quilt shop where I bought the kit for Simple Gifts.

I did not sew up the quilt for Christmas 2011, 2012, 2013, nor 2014. So I think I am feeling relief that it will finally be complete and ready to be enjoyed Christmas 2015.

As for the reflective part of my feelings... ? One of the very first questions someone asks the creator when they look at a quilt is "How long did it take you to make that?" The short answer is, "just under five months." I certainly do not want to count the nearly four years it sat dormant in my closet, but, once I began, I pretty much was excited enough with the project to keep at it. I started Simple Gifts in January of 2015 to be sure to have it by Christmas this year. January was spent in planning and piecing. Most of February was spent trimming, arranging, assembly and prep for quilting. March was spent being afraid to start quilting. April was spent FMQing. I finished the last bits of binding and label at the end of May and very first part of June. For my own reminiscence, rather than as an overload of information for the reader, here is the timeline for the Simple Gifts blog posts. This is my fifteenth post that mentions Simple Gifts.

If I am pressed further and asked how many hours I have invested in making this quilt, that answer is not so clear. Counting time spent pleasurably is a paradox because part of the joy of creating is being drawn into "the zone" and losing a sense of time. Besides how should I add up the hours? It amounts to much more than cutting apart and sewing back together. Should I count the time spent...

• dreaming and planning? 
• picking the perfect fabrics?
• learning a new tool or technique?
• building up courage to start a new stage? 
• thinking up a name? (I can take a while on this one.)
• photographing the different stages?
• writing blog posts about the quilt?

I can not give a simple answer for the hours invested in creating Simple Gifts. But I do know I really enjoyed making this quilt and sharing my experiences with it! Enough said!

Here are the clickable links to the listed posts about making Simple Gifts.

http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-few-of-my-favorite-things.html

http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/01/thrice-as-nice-to-slice-and-splice.html

http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/01/simple-gifts.html

http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/02/green-gifts-with-red-background.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/02/simple-gifts-trim-tweak-time.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/02/gifts-some-assembly-required.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/02/simple-gifts-coming-together.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/02/sandwich-making-some-nibbles.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/04/pillowcase-methods-and-burp-cloths.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-straight-and-narrow.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/04/productivity-follows-inspiration.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-learning-experience.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-checkered-past-and-present.html
http://dianeloves2quilt.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-bit-of-applique.html

Technically Simple Gifts is no longer a work in progress but it has been for five months, so I am linking up to this Wednesday's Freshly Pieced's WIP to share its completion.

A Bit of Appliqué

Monday I managed to mail off the burp cloths I made over the weekend. This week I finished the straight-line free motion quilting on my Simple Gifts quilt that I started back in January. The piecing had gone fairly quickly, the assembly and arranging took place in February, but I have been working on the echo quilting of the gifts since early April. In retrospect, it is dubious how "free" straight-line ruler work is. I think perhaps it is an oxymoron. All I have left to do on Simple Gifts is trim the edges, make and attach the labels, and sew on the binding. Hopefully I will have a reveal within a week.

This week I started the bit of appliqué that is part of the quilt with checkerboards. I decided against a fusible method because I wanted to avoid stiff sections in the quilt and I did not want the look of zigzag over raw edges. After googling appliqué techniques and watching some YouTube videos I decided to go with a freezer paper technique so the raw edges would be turned under. I am fortunate that my husband has a light table for his model train hobby so I used it to trace my appliqué templates.

The freezer paper is translucent enough and the light is strong enough that I could use a simple mechanical pencil and trace the shape, no problem.

For a mirror image template I folded the freezer paper over on itself waxy sides together and traced the mirror image from the traced original. I realized afterward, as I was cutting out these templates, that I could have skipped drawing a mirror image. Instead I could have just cut on the drawn line for the first template through two thickness of freezer paper folded over on itself.

Here are my drawn templates before cutting them out. There are five pair in total. I numbered them just to keep them paired in case the mirror images were not alike and not interchangeable. I first numbered the outer corner and them realized that part was getting trimmed away. It is possible that the freezer paper can be reused several times. But I decided the tracing was not too time-consuming and so I made enough templates to use each only once.

I cut out each paper spiral template on the drawn line. Then, using my standard Rowenta full-size iron, I pressed the freezer paper waxy side down on the right side of my appliqué fabric.

Then I cut each shape out of the fabric leaving a 1/4" or so seam allowance to turn under outside the drawn lines.

  I then peeled off the freezer paper from the right side and put it on the back side, waxy side up.

Then I use this handy dandy little appliqué mini-iron by Clover to press that seam allowance over the edge of the template, adhering it to the freezer paper. This is the most time consuming part of the process so far. I have only complete one spiral out of ten. That little iron takes longer than I expected to heat up way out at the tip, but it does get hot enough eventually. I just needed to patient.

In the lower right is one of those spirals with the edges turned under surrounded by three other spirals waiting to be cut out. As I practice, I think those curved edges will become smoother even in the tighter central section of the spiral. I may need to re-do my first couple attempts perhaps.

The YouTube video I found by googling "YouTube freezer paper appliqué" was a 4 minute long demonstration by Connecting Threads. In it the teacher says to leave the template paper inside and stitch down the appliqué. Then you are to cut a slit in the background fabric behind the appliqué and remove the paper. I am reluctant to slit the background so I am going to try steaming those folded under edges really well so they are hard creased and removing the paper before I attach the appliqué to my background.

In the interest of time and ability to withstand multiple launderings, I am choosing to skip needle turned hand appliqué in favor of attachment by machine. The instructor in the video used a stitch that goes just outside the appliqué and takes a nip inward every few stitches. With only a few stitches in the paper, it can probably be removed without too much trouble. I plan instead to stitch along very close to the edges with a straight stitch so if I left the paper in it might not come out easily. The top-stitching will show but I think it will secure the appliqué better and I am OK with that look. It will not be as broad as a raw edge satin stitch would be and I hope it still gives nice definition. I will post how that works out in practice when I do it.

For now I am linking up to WIP Wednesday at this week's Freshly Pieced.

A Checkered Past and Present

I'd just returned Wednesday from traveling to Southern California for my granddaughter's 1st and my son's 32nd birthday celebration. I blogged about craftwork I'd seen during my time away touring the battle ship USS Iowa. Please check it out in my previous post.

Earlier this month I'd joined a second quilt guild, the Diablo Valley Quilters, and attended their April meeting. Friday, I joined in to help at one of their monthly outreach workshops. They are a very friendly and welcoming, not to mention an extremely productive and talented, group of women. I was surprised to find we were able to get 42 sandwiches layered, pinned, folded, and ready to be distributed among the members for quilting, all the while chatting away cheerfully. These quilts will go locally to children with health issues and/or struggling mothers. 

It takes me a while after I return from traveling to get back in the sewing groove so my personal sewing this week was quite scattered and unfocused. I made a few more checkerboards for the quilt I am revealing just bit by bit. Here are the checkerboard blocks in four colorways. Hmm, is this how they will be assembled? Nope. The assembly plan is yet to be revealed. They tickle my fancy though, nondescript mini-prints that they are.

There are four of each checkerboard color so that gives a bit of clue. But they are rectangles... not squares!

Here are leftovers from the cut strips prior to slicing into squares. I may checkerboard them for adding interest on the back or save them something coordinating. They also qualify to be just scraps - but useful ones.

I cut and joined the binding for the two strip quilts I'd assembled a couple weeks ago (April 15th post). I cut it my normal 2¼" wide. I am going to attach the binding to the quilt edge French binding style, doubled over as I usually do, but this time I will not press or crease along the soft fold before attaching.

I read somewhere that if the binding is not pre-creased along its length, the hand sewing portion goes more easily and smoothly. The binding fabric is supposedly more accommodating if there is a soft curve rather than a crease. That way the outer binding fabric can be a bit wider than the inner binding fabric since it needs to wrap a further distance around the edge. There is freedom for this adjustment if the crease point has not been pre-determined. I am a tiny bit nervous that the two edges will shift along the stitching line relative to each other while being attached but I guess they won't if I'm using my Pfaff with the built-in dual feed feature. Besides, even when I have applied my bindings hard pre-creased, the two edges could have shifted relatively to each other anyway; but in my experience, that has not been the case. Skipping ironing in a center crease may also save me a few steamed fingertips. These strip quilts are not yet sandwiched and quilted so the binding step is still a bit in the future. Once I try this new technique I will report back if I find this approach to be better in practice.

I dutifully picked out my mess-up on the Simple Gifts FMQ (April 22 post) and continue to echo quilt just one or two gifts each day that I sew. Twenty gifts from the green and red columns are complete and one column of five aqua blocks is complete. I only have five gifts to echo around twice more to finish. Let's see... 25/30... I am at 83%! That is a grade of B for completeness. My quality is getting better but needs work. My outer two echoes are straighter than the inner stitch in the ditch and the first echo. As an example, that first echo below the left bow loop in the aqua fabric is really wobbly and drifted wide. I think that area may be a do-over, but not until all are finished at least once! Then I may re-evaluate that decision depending on how difficult it is to find those stray lines. The green thread does kind of blend into the aqua fabric...

This past Sunday I went with my husband and younger son to an Antique Fair in Petaluma CA. Look at the great desk I bought, made from an awesome Vintage Singer treadle base. It has been extracted from the back seat of the car where I rode 90 minutes with it plastered to my left hip. So far it has made it only as far as the inside of the garage. But I have plans for it! More in a future post.

For now, I am hooking up to today's Freshly Pieced post for WIP Wednesday.