Cuddly Construction Vehicles

I had two large graphic fabric panels of construction equipment that I wanted to sew into throws rather than wall hangings. My son works in the design/construction business and his son is just emerging from a toddler's crazy-about-building-vehicles phase. True, the Minecraft video game has somewhat superseded my now seven-year old grandson's big equipment infatuation. I am slightly late in sewing to meet his peak interest level. I may have missed my window, but I just could not let these big graphic panels go to waste. These were the two panels I had by Riley Blake Designs: A CAT® Dump Truck and a CAT® Excavator. Each is 36" tall and 43" wide and is digitally printed. Reluctant to abandon these stunning fabrics, I justified my belated sewing of these panels by couching them as a father/son throw duo. As throws they needed to have a soft backing and soft borders in order to be cuddly and tactilely desirable. Thinking snuggly fabrics for the backing would be appealing, I bought some minky in camel for the dump truck and some minky in ash for the excavator and wrapped it around to the front. 

Hoping to expand my skills by doing the wrap-around self-binding technique, I suspected the corner miters would be my challenge. As it turns out, they were a piece of cake when I found a YouTube tutorial from ShabbyFabrics for a baby receiving blanket. Using Cuddle® by Shannon fabric for the backing was my waterloo. Per the Missouri Star Quilt Company:

The term minky refers to any plush microfiber fabric made from 100% polyester fibers. Cuddle is the brand name of minky fabric by Shannon fabrics. While you may find minky fabric for sale that isn’t made by Shannon, the truth is, Shannon Cuddle fabric is the highest quality minky fabric around. 

I had purchased Cuddle® minky for the plush, and so skimping on fabric quality was not an issue. I knew to be cautious with this project because I remembered I had sewn with a minky fabric before with not-particularly-stellar results as described in my 11/16/17 post. One of the four mitered corners on that project had been a disaster. This project all four of my miters were great. It was sewing the Cuddle® to the cotton along the four straight edges that was a struggle. The difference in stretchiness between a flexible minky fabric and a woven cotton fabric was a challenge to be conquered when seaming the two together. I pinned the dickens out of the seam, and still had problems. Here is my analysis of the issue.

Cuddle® is 60" wide and is very stretchy perpendicular to the selvage (white words in previous diagram) but — to my surprise — very non-elastic parallel to the selvage, even after cutting off the selvage. The woven cotton panels were the opposite; stretchy perpendicular to the selvage (black words in previous diagram) and stiffer parallel to the selvage (black words in photo). The flexible Cuddle® direction against the straight of grain of the woven I could handle with sufficient care, which as it turns out, were the shorter, vertical sides. I eased in the Cuddle®. The crossgrain of the woven against the unforgiving Cuddle® direction was a disaster, which as it turns out were the longer, horizontal sides. I tried with the woven fabric against the feed dogs and the Cuddle® against the feed dogs, either configuration to no avail, even though I had been scrupulous with cutting the two fabrics equal lengths. Easing in the woven was not working. I finally clipped tiny snips along the length of the Cuddle to introduce a bit of give and tugged my heart out. It did not come out perfect but certainly very acceptable. The  following photo is before any pressing or quilting. Closeups of the lower left and upper right corners reveal that the mitered corners were not a problem.

The ash-backed excavator went more smoothly than the camel-backed dump truck. I knew where the trouble spots were and that they were not at the miters where I was concerned. I'd cut the Cuddle® bigger by 11" on all fours sides of the woven panel. The wrap around borders were a generous 5½" wide. The finished throws measured ~54" wide by ~47" tall.

The next step I feared was quilting the center region. My plan was to just outline the truck and the excavator to hold the backing and front fabrics together and call it good. Mainly, I just wanted to smooth out those wrinkles. Theoretically, since there are no feed dogs on my long arm, there should be fewer issues. I practiced first with some Cuddle® scrap and the test worked out smoothly enough that my concerns were not justified. I also added some freeform lines contouring the clouds, or more specifically, the billows of stirred up dust. As a finishing touch, I did add a label with my name and the year on the lower front corner of each throw, using dark brown grosgrain ribbon.

Father and son both liked the gifts. Dan and William snuggled up together to watch football. Then my grandson decided he liked both throws and appropriated his dad's excavator as well as his own dump truck. William wrapped the dump truck around himself as a cape when he climbed the stairs to bed.

Seeing the reception the throws got, I was glad I had persevered in making them, even though I was at the outer reaches of a child's window of interest. Grudgingly, I even admit that the fluff and furry bits scattered throughout my sewing room, left behind from the Cuddle® plush, were worth the mess.

Bin_There_Done_That is DONE!

I named this 55" x 55" quilt  BIN THERE DONE THAT. I wonder if anyone will recognize this quilt as derived from JoAnn Fabrics' 2006 Block of the Month Spice Meadows or even realize how far back the blocks date — nearly two decades. The fun Noah's Ark fabric on the back makes it feel a bit more contemporary... maybe. Actually I chose the striped backing fabric because I already had a generous amount of it  in my stash and the colors go really well with the front.

Noah's Ark has the same muted reds, soft golds, greens, and tan beiges as the front blocks. An exception is royal blue instead of regal purple. Here is a close-up of the backing fabric with my customary grosgrain ribbon labels on the lower corners of the quilt back. Here are previous posts about this quilt.

2/07/24 laying out collection of blocks from circa 2006
2/19/24 rediscovery of blocks in a bin and incentive to resurrect
2/27/24 sandwiching and quilt pattern decisions
9/07/24 FMQ completion
9/14/24 (this post) finished in time for Thanksgiving

These colors, except for some royal blue on the back instead of purple accents on the front, remind me of Thanksgiving hues. Bin There Done That kind of goes with the turkeys, don't ya think? I plan to deploy this quilt for Thanksgiving 2024.

Tipus and Treetops - Backing

This post is continued from my previous post 6/30/2023 where I created the top for this quilt. Although grateful for people's input and interest, after due consideration I chose to make the quilt five blocks by five blocks. It called out to me to be square. Here it is wrapped around the corner of my design wall. I made three more blocks the same as others I'd made. Two extra blocks incorporated those stripes I like and I set them in the upper right diagonal to balance the two in the lower left diagonal. I had to unsew and resew the upper right corner block with the tipu (little bird) border to offset the height of the center correctly, but that was no great effort to do. Now those five landscape orientated centers undulate up and down in that top row, as in the middle and bottom rows. Rows two and four have portrait oriented centers that also subtly undulate down and up. The symmetry of this five by five array pleases me.

Although I had yards and yards of gray fabrics, the teal ones are more appealing and exciting. I had partial yards of the teal feature fabrics left over — not so much the "tulip" one but the tipus and trees and mesh. I decided to use them uncut and full width. I experimented with the placement and what looked best was the teal mesh on the bottom; positioned there it weighted the composition and acted like grass. Next the trees were in the middle; they are the most interesting and centrally placed are more of a focus. Tipus are on top like birds in the air. For the extra width I needed, I used the large graphic charcoal and white sunflower print, fussy cutting for symmetric sunflower placement.

I laid the top on the backing to be certain I have enough extra around the edges and I do. Enough of the backing peeks out above, below, and both sides of the top. I made up my binding from the striped fabric. 

Next I will make up the labels, but they will need to wait until I finalize the quilt name. Tipus and Treetops as a working title is certainly better than a boring Teal and Gray, but it does not recognize the sunflowers and woodland critters. Perhaps I can do better. Maybe not. I will have time to think it over since I am off for a weekend with grandkids and the Long Beach Quilt Festival. Labeling, layering, and quilting will be on hold for a while.

Seaming a Backing for Taupe Black White Gray

Seaming the backing for my taupe, black, white, and gray top took me all day. Yes, one seam took me all day. Sigh... piecing goes so much faster for me. My top is 83" long. I had 5 ⅜ yard of backing fabric. Half of that in inches is 96 ¾" so I certainly had some breathing space, even with making my backing 4" longer than the top. But I wanted to match the seam so I fiddled around with where the 12¼" repeats would fall, and cut the backing fabric into two unequal lengths. The familiar saying is, "Measure twice and cut once."  The first length was 87".  I did not cut the remaining yardage until after completing my seam. Manipulating 5 ⅜ yards of fabric was a struggle and I spent a lot of time checking and rechecking my calculations. There must be an easier way because my cautiousness sucked up a lot of my time.

Then there was the question of seaming along the length, matching the motifs. It is not like I could simply put the two selvages together and zoom down, voila! Maybe the fabric was a drop match vertically but I need to shift the fabric horizontally to match the motifs. The stitching line was a different distance from each selvage. I drew lines through matching parts of repeats on the right side of the fabric on each of the two lengths. Sewing along those lines should hide them.

Then I folded the upper length of fabric on the line and pressed the crease in. The crease would be my guide for the stitching line when I sewed from the wrong side and could not see the pencil mark. The pins set the alignment for the cross grain of the fabric along the stitching line.

  

I double checked that the two lines aligned and then sewed on the crease line. The crease line is shadow dependent and not always as crisply clear as I would like it to be. A possible future improvement to my method could be to repeat drawing that line on the wrong side as well using a light table or to insert carbon tracing paper underneath when I draw the original pencil line. I still think I would double check that the lines align with each other periodically as I sew a few inches at a time.

Things were going along swimmingly and then my machine started making an odd sound. I traveled along, hoping it was a brief anomaly that would self-correct; but I stubbornly and stupidly traveled about 8" before I turned it over to check it out. Something had been mis-threaded or come unthreaded. Note the ragged loops.

All the extra loops were from the top thread not the bobbin thread. The upper thread might have slipped out of the tension discs, or when I had to change spools, I neglected to be sure the tension discs were filled properly. I re-threaded the top thread, and I took out and re-inserted the bobbin as well. A few inches of stitching on a scrap confirmed that all was well again and the problem disappeared. Luckily such loose loops spread apart easily and could be easily clipped with thread snips.

And I had just been to a Sew Day for my guild where I was given this handy dandy scrap bucket so I had a place for all those thread snippets I had to painstakingly remove. The tape measure and scissor buttons are adorable on two of the three folded over sides.

The button on the third side is a sewing machine.

The base is triangular and the print is an adorable Minnie Mouse floral. I must admit if you have to rip out, a cute trash collector makes the task so much more pleasant.

Back to my backing seaming. I distract so easily. The uneven sides of the seam allowance show up clearly in the next photo. I scratched my head on whether if I had shifted the fabric lengthwise half a fabric repeat would it have matched. If that possibility were to indeed be a successful alternate approach, the "how" eluded me. I had no problem with cutting off the excess. My top is 63" wide and even with my margin of 4" added to that, I was still less that a double WOF, about 84". 

Once I steam-set the seam, I trimmed the allowance to ¾" and pressed to one side.

The matching came out pretty good – not perfect in all places  –  but pretty good overall.  Once quilted I believe it will be further camouflaged.

I am truly grateful that when I cut the batting it does not need to be seamed nor matched. I buy bamboo batting by the 10 yard, 96" wide roll from Winline Textiles and they ship for free. I will cut it 2" longer in length than the top and 2" wider in width. Doing so allows me 1" wiggle room on each edge. Tomorrow or the next day, I will moan and groan as I crawl on the floor, spray basting the three-layer sandwich together. But I am determined not to lose momentum on this project!

December Purchases

My last purchases post before this was at the end of September (post for 10/2/19) so I have refrained from buying for two whole months. But since then I have succumbed to the lure of fabric and associated notions. I do like to post my purchases for a reason other than showing my daughter and quilting colleagues what I have added to my stash. I like to look back when I make something and recall the circumstances of who I was with and where I was when I bought something I press into service. It also helps me appreciate how long something has ripened in my stash.

Oklahoma City OK, December 6th, 2019, Savage Quilter

I visited my daughter Robin and shared some sewing time with her the week right after Thanksgiving. We visited her local quilt shop and I made a few purchases on Friday, the day before I was to leave to go back home to California. I have been trying hard to restrain my fabric purchases, yet I firmly believe that as quilters we need to support our brick and mortar stores. I spotted this set of #2 HB graphite pencils. They would be my supportive, non-fabric purchase from the Savage Quilter.

The ten sayings on them by Bonnie K. Hunter are fun. I think my favorites are: "When I learned how to quilt, I forgot how to cook." and "One fat quarter, like one cookie, is NEVER enough!" It seemed like these pencils would be a pleasure to use and would be unique enough they would stay in my sewing room and not stray. Hmmm. Since I typically use mechanical pencils, now I need a pencil sharpener. Oh well, I could ask Santa or Amazon.

With Thanksgiving just behind me and Christmas imminent, I was drawn to this set of four tea towels by Moda, one of which featured Frosty the Snowman. I have made pillows from Robot themed tea towels (post for 6/9/19)) that came out out great. I could do the same with these tea towels. I was waffling when the clerk said those magic five words. "It is our last set." I have seen several projects using that Frosty image. Plus there is one other novel idea – I could actually use them as dish towels! With all these possibilities how could I possibly pass them up?

Near the checkout counter I spied this animal/floral fabric in a seductive dark deep blue. Yes, this is fabric – not pencils, not towels, not a book, not a tool. Nevertheless, I fell in love with this fabric and I had two very viable alternatives to consider in lieu of impulse buying. My daughter's favorite quilt store has now gone online with over 9,000 bolts of fabric so I could phone or email them to get some if I still desired it once I was removed from close proximity to the temptation. Robin offered me the option of thinking about it – after all Savage Quilter is only about 15 miles north of Robin – and she could pick some up for me if I decided I truly wanted it after some rational thought. But fabric purchase is not rational; it is emotional, and I caved to buy some there and then. Not wanting to cut such a large print apart, I decided it would make a gorgeous backing so I bought three yards. Actually the benefit of buying in person is that I could see the length of the repeat length and add another one-third yard so I need not unwittingly chop off the head of any creature. So much for my two month hiatus from fabric purchase.

Since Savage Quilter has now also gone online in addition to their brick and mortar store, I will not need to wait until I visit my daughter again to indulge. But I probably will wait. Unless I need more of something I bought there, it is so much more satisfying to have someone beside your side, ooh-ing and aah-ing over your choices.

Actually the fabric was the not last item I bought. I guess the longer I stayed in the store the weaker my restraint became. I saw a Cadillac of seam rippers with two size options on either end. I did not have one of those (and survived very nicely without it, thank you). But what if it did make that onerous task of removing stitches easier, relieve cramping in the hand, be faster, be more visible, etc.? I bought it. I have used it already and it is nice having two size options – not necessary, but nice.

Lafayette CA, December 12th, Cotton Patch

On the Thursday less than a week after returning from my daughter's, I attended a Christmas party/ meeting of a longarm group that meets every other month in the classroom of a local quilt shop (local meaning 30 miles from where I live), Cotton Patch. After the gathering I went across the street to browse the associated store. Friends of ours just learned that they will become grandparents so I needed to replenish my supply of feminine flannel to make burp cloths. Here are the options I chose to add to my drawer full of other half yard cuts. I absolve myself of guilt for this fabric purchase since its residence time in my stash is so small. It is amazing how many people I know are having babies and these make great gifts. They do not generate UFOs either.

While I was there I was attracted to the central green print  in the next photo. The green is a very soft shade and the entire print was muted. I bought two other fat quarters from the same line because the green is subtly hard to match. Besides, to quote Bonnie K. Hunter again, "One fat quarter, like one cookie, is NEVER enough!"

I also splurged on the book Sew Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Mary Hertel because the patterns are so quirky cute. Paper piecing is not my first love, but I am quite willing to be patient and creative with it when the results are so whimsical.  The back cover shows some of the completed projects.

But the store purchases were not the worst of the fabric financial impact on me from that day. One of the ladies at the meeting had brought in and shared a holiday quilt she'd made. It's design mixed star blocks with sections from panels. I admired it greatly and took some closeup photographs of the panel inserted areas as inspiration. I have many panels and I thought it clever how sections were added to, squared off and sized to be the same as the pieced Sawtooth Star blocks, and then artfully scattered throughout the quilt top.

She told me the quilt was from a kit and gave me an info card which revealed it to be from Moda KIT36040, titled from the fabric collection To Be Jolly from manufacturer One Canoe Two.  I went home and did some computer research.

Online December 13th and December 21st

I found the Moda kit To Be Jolly available from the Fat Quarter Shop but also by a small independent quilt shop Yellow Rose Jenny who had it on sale at two thirds the price.  I was amazed since when I buy a kit I rarely sew it up until enough time had passed that it is no longer available anywhere. The very next day on December 13th, I bought the kit from the small independent shop and she mailed it out so swiftly I was impressed.

I looked at that kit and my photographs of it and decided that since the quilt had a white background I wanted a lighter colored backing than anything I had in my stash. I did like the candy cane backing set that the Fat Quarter Shop proposed for it, so one week later on December 21st, I ordered it online from the Fat Quarter Shop.

Both these items arrived before Christmas. I wrapped them and put them under the tree and thanked my husband for the gifts. Opening them Christmas morning gave me pleasure all over again.