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.

Simple Gifts - Coming Together

I trimmed about one third of my blocks to 9" x 14½" before coming upon a block that I had mis-measured and was smaller than the rest. I continued trimming the rest to  8¾" x 14¼" and went back and skimmed the excess off the first eight. Fortunately, I discovered no smaller blocks. For a while there I'd feared finding yet smaller and smaller blocks. I'd entertained visions of trimming and trimming and trimming those blocks until there was no crazy quilt type background left. My fears were unfounded. Sufficient background noise surrounded the gifts to cause me to still fret a bit.

Then I assembled five rows of six blocks each and joined them. I did not revisit my decision from the several days I spent positioning and re-positioning the blocks on my design wall. That process was carried out and documented in excruciating detail  in my previous post titled Gifts - Some Assembly Required. It is amazing how much eliminating those little strips of white  peeking through from the design wall and nipping in that seam allowance made the blocks more cohesive. Here are two rows from the assembled top. The gifts do show up a bit more more – not fantastic, but much better. I feel I have been lucky to have snatched a small victory from the jaws of defeat.

One mildly annoying issue with this quilt was pressing the seam allowances. I would press a block and then at some point, when I checked the wrong side, some portions of the seams had flipped, even if both ends had been captured in another seam. More than likely it is the bias nature  of many of the seams in this pattern but it could have been my iron. I was using my backup Sunbeam iron. My trusty favorite Rowenta iron, with its shiny stainless steel sole plate with just the right point at the tip and just the right side edges, died after many years of faithful service. The Sunbeam has a black ceramic soleplate that does not glide as nicely as I like plus it has a ridge around about ¼" up the sides of the soleplate that could be catching. I missed the Rowenta sale in December because I was traveling at Christmas and can not bring my self to pay full price for a replacement. I may bite the bullet and buy it at full price. It may very well be worth it. I am a stickler for my seam direction and to have them shift in the middle is unacceptable to me.

I bought the backing fabric at the time I bought the kit so no major delays there. It is one of the fabrics from Moda's BasicGrey Jovial line.  I chose the deer with the aqua toned background fabric 30262-14. The words printed across it are from Christmas carols such as Deck the Halls and Oh, Christmas Tree. It will be fun to curl up under the words "Fa-la-la-la-la." I must have really liked this source fabric line because, purely co-incidentally, it is the one I used for the Patchwork Math Workshop I took last month.

I've decided my binding. Because of the playful mood of the quilt I felt the binding needed to be scrappy. But learning my lesson from the cacophonous gift blocks, I did not want the binding to vie too much for attention. I cut strips of the leftover fabrics, red only, omitting the strong graphics, and shooting for a mostly solid-colored, controlled, scrappy binding. Aqua scrappy was too disjointed and did not play well with the backing and a green scrappy had no punch. I generally wrap my binding around a 12" ruler so that just by counting folds I can be sure I have enough length to go around the quilt.

Now I am at the point where I stall on all my quilts – sandwiching and quilting. But since I am pretty sure I want to echo quilt this around the gifts using a ruler technique on Heidi, my HQ-16, I do not think I will wallow in indecision too long. Unlike this little beaver below, my shopping is finished, and my quilting pattern is selected. I think. I hope it goes as planned. "Quilt as desired" can be such a scary phrase, fraught with many perils.

Linking up now to this week's Freshly Pieced's WIP. I also thought this shopping image would represent a lot of the quilters at QuiltCon 2015 happening in Austin, Texas this week. I am not one of them so maybe I will forge ahead on quilting Simple Gifts.

Simple Gifts Trim & Tweak Time

As of my Wednesday,  February 4, 2015 post I had eight red background blocks remaining to piece on my Simple Gifts quilt. I actually finished them up by the next day. Then, like clean folded laundry that sits for days in the basket waiting to be put away, those gift blocks sat on my design wall for most of the week, waiting to be trimmed.

There is nothing like a WIP post to spur progress. Yesterday I corrected the pressing direction on the seam at the base of the gifts for the green and aqua blocks. I also trimmed the blocks square – rectangular, to be more precise – but not necessarily the same size just yet. Trimming to uniform size is for this week, as is the arrangement for assembly. And look! This is a pile of scraps I am not going to save and will not try to repurpose.

I show this photo just to prove I really trashed them, and because it is a kind of funky view into my smooth, tapered trash can.

I have struggled with the fabric selections from this kit since I started it back in my January 14, 2015 post. I love the colors and I love the pattern and I have loved the uniqueness of the stack-and-whack approach to cutting it out and piecing the blocks. But, I cannot seem to make the busy-ness go away so the wrapped packages will pop. So I have come up with my list of hopes or, at least, if those hopes are dashed, some proposed methods of highlighting those gifts. (This quilt is becoming less and less simple as I go on.)

Fix it list:

1. As I trim the blocks and set them closer, without the white space of the design wall showing out between them, there will be less distraction to the eye from those gaps.
2. As I set different color backgrounds adjacent to each other, a block unit, and hence a gift, will be better defined.
3. As I join the blocks some background will be taking up in the seam allowance making more gift and less background per block.
4. As I arrange the blocks for assembly, I am putting the larger background pieces of the more distracting, graphic fabrics – like those red and white stripes and those white rings on red – to the outer edges and away from the center, so the eye is not pulled to them first.
5. I plan to stitch in the ditch around each gift and echo that quilting several times. I am not sure if matching the thread to the background or keeping a consistent neutral color throughout will be better. My goal is to add texture without more visual distraction and I am not sure which is the better alternative.
6. I am enjoying making this quilt and I always say it is process and not product. I could just luxuriate in the colors I love and chill out about the whole "gifts do not pop" issue. After all, shouldn't gifts remain hidden until Christmas?

Here are all the blocks, with the excess cut off so they are rectangles. After I find the smallest block I will trim them all to the same size. For a wonky technique they are surprisingly close in size when I compare one to another. I will play with the arrangement. This photo is just a start.

I realize I cannot just logically do a sequence of red, aqua, green and repeat it because sometimes a gift is dominant and sometimes the background is dominant. It is some sort of balance I am shooting for. For example, this red background block has two large pieces of adjacent highly graphic prints so I will try to soften it by placing it in the upper right corner.

And this one will go along the right side edge.

This one has the gift pretty well-defined so I will put it somewhere in the center. True, the two left corners are a multi-color print, but I think they are a bit more subtle and quieter than those brassy red and white shouters in the previous two blocks. Those graphics are fun but in small doses, please. These loosey-goosey, ill-defined decisions are hard for me but I will rise to the challenge.

Here is my thinking now for a quilting pattern. I am playing around a bit in PowerPoint to decide. I suppose I could just stipple around between the gifts but I do not want something too dense. I want this quilt to drape over me nicely when I use it so I would space out those echo lines by at least  ½".

My backing is already selected. I bought it at the time I bought the kit. I have not decided the binding though. Perhaps a scrappy binding would be a good use for the leftovers from the gift blocks. Each gift started out from an 12" x 18" rectangle cut from a fat quarter so I have thirty pieces of side edge fabric left over, roughly 7" x 22" each. Here are my three stack of ten fabrics each.

I can cut a strip off each and join as a binding. There are twenty-two block edges around the outside of the five-block by six-block quilt. Having extra leftover fabric gives me the freedom to omit very graphic prints and directional ones in the binding. It also means more scraps. Grrr...

That's it for my progress this week. Linking up to this week's Freshly Pieced's WIP.

Green Gifts with Red Background

I am about to finish the final ten blocks of my Simple Gifts quilt, those with a red background and green gifts. In my January 21st post, where I'd first begun assembling this quilt, I'd questioned my wisdom in mixing up the background pieces per the pattern instructions. I was having second thoughts that the crazy quilt look might be too distracting and cacophonous for my taste. The following photo examples show how the patchwork green and patchwork aqua backgrounds from previous weeks fight the gifts and bows for attention.

After being away a week to help my son move, I was able to come back and look at this quilt with fresh eyes. I had not yet mixed up the background reds for the green gifts and actually considered not doing so. But then I thought it might look weird with the green backgrounds and the aqua backgrounds patchwork style, and the red backgrounds not so. I looked at the pieces before shuffling them, and an overall impression struck me. When they were all the same, it was rather boring. Also, a one-fabric background did not cause the presents to pop out any better.

So I forged ahead as originally planned and shuffled the reds. I would rather be too adventurous than too safe. If I make this quilt again, I will be much more aware of how the print and color variations of the background patchwork can accentuate or camouflage the gifts and bows. This quilt would have an entirely different vibe if it were made in all solids or if the backgrounds were not shuffled. It could be very regal; but then again, it could be downright dull.

So far I have completed all the upper bow sub-sections and all the lower gift sub-sections for the ten red background blocks. At this point I no longer chain piece the components assembly-line fashion, but rather work to complete one block at a time. I trim each bow sub-section individually after I've uniquely matched up the points on each bow.

Then I level off the top of the gift sub-section.

I join the two sub-sections such that the bow is centered.

Here are two of the ten blocks ready to have their top and right side squared up for final sizing.

As I finish piecing these, I linger, because piecing really is my favorite part. I am thinking ahead, though, about what quilting pattern I will do on my longarm Heidi. Since the gifts are competing with the background in terms of color intensity and pattern, I want to compensate in some way with the quilting pattern. An allover pattern will not meet this goal. I saw in one of my online Craftsy classes how quilting one area can make the non-quilted area pop. To start with I will stitch in the ditch around each present. I want that outline to be in the lower, background fabric. To this end, I made an adjustment in my pressing direction in this set of ten blocks. That meant reversing the pressing direction of the seam at the base of the gift, pressing up toward the gift rather than down toward the background. Pressing this direction contradicted the "away from the bulk" rule of thumb but that is okay. I had to remove about a ½" length of seam at the lower present left corner, re-press, and re-stitch to do this.

I will need to go back and do that twenty times – ten times for the red gifts and ten times for the aqua gifts but I think it will be worth it in the end. I have already reversed it with the green gifts. The present is now elevated on all edges so stitching in the ditch will consistently be outside the gift. Then perhaps I will echo quilt in the background patchwork around each gift.

In the next couple of days I should have the last eight blocks done. Then comes trimming them to a uniform size and deciding how to arrange them into five rows of six gifts each. Once the excess background is whittled away with trimming and absorption into the seam allowances, the gifts should become more dominant. Here's hoping that a quilting pattern can further coax them out of blending in. Fingers crossed...

So that is it for my work in progress. I am off now to check out the works in progress of others at this week's Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday.

Thrice as Nice to Slice & Splice

This week I made progress on my quilt made up of thirty blocks of wonky wrapped presents. I cut out the fabric and sewed up ten of the blocks. In my previous post, I was finalizing my fabric selections within the three colorways. I kept the solid aqua that looked like a grey and paired it with the green village print since I noticed there were some gray houses and accents in the print. I substituted out the lizard-y green and the cobweb-y aqua. My nicknames reveal how fond I was of each of them.

I traced my cutting template on to three sheets of freezer paper, one for each colorway, and place each on a stack of ten fabrics. I sliced in the prescribed sequence of just fourteen cuts per stack. I then swapped and traded the pattern pieces per the directions. Here are my three stacks of pattern pieces, each tidily gathered on my cutting mat or in a serving tray; ten red presents with green bows on an aqua background, ten aqua presents with red bows on a green background, and ten green presents with aqua bows on a red background. I decided to chain piece each stack together one at a time, starting with the stack of red presents.

The bottom two thirds of the block is the present section. Pieces A, B, C make up the wrapping paper and ribbon part and the surrounding pieces D, E, F, G, H, when spliced together, form the wonky background. I am one of those quilters who gets great satisfaction from points meeting accurately, so loosey-goosey is a challenge for me. I really needed to relax with this as much as I could since the edges of the pieces do not align at all. For example, that bottom piece F overhangs off to the right about 1.5". There is a reason for that. The present section, with the side borders, totals four quasi-vertical seams. With a ¼" seam allowance, this removes approximately 2" of the width. The bottom border has only one vertical seam totaling about ½", hence the overhang that is biased to the right. I will trim that excess off piece-F later. The center red wrapping paper and green ribbon section was also taller than the side borders, since the aqua borders lost some height in their seam allowances. The instruction told me to even off the upper edge of the bottom present section before proceeding to attach it to the top bow section.

I kept track of my pattern pieces as I went along, taping them back together as I finished a section to keep their orientation relative to each other fresh in my mind. Note that my Scotch tape dispenser is labeled for my sewing room as a deterrent to it being borrowed and left someplace else. It does help.

Next up was the left bow section, pieces I, J, K, L. When I pieced I, J, K together I tried to keep their edge opposite their sharp point pretty even with each other. When I added the large corner L section, I had to decide which way to bias it since it was longer by about a ½" due to the accumulated seam allowances on either side of the green bow piece-J.

I thought long and hard about this since I would be trimming either off the top of piece-L if I biased it downward or off the side of piece-L if I biased it upward, asking myself if there were an advantage of one direction over the other. Just like the Grinch, "I puzzled and puzzled 'till my puzzler was sore". I concluded it made no difference or, if so, the difference was too slight to worry about. I decided to slide it downward and line up the side of piece-L with the straight side of piece-I since that would be easier than with the pointed tip of piece-K.

After aligning piece-I with piece-K, I flipped it over and fed the more blunt end under the pressure foot first, chain-piecing ten left top bow sections. I knew the component parts were going to be different lengths, but it sure was hard to resist the temptation to stretch that bias. I could easily have done so and "made" those pieces fit! I did delay trimming off the extra fabric just yet. I still was not sure if it made a difference which way I slid piece-L when I attached it, so I hedged my bet.

Here is a completed left bow loop section. I pressed the seam allowance away from the bow loop so that I did not have to fight the bulk of two seams that would have been folded over on themselves. I would have preferred that the green bow loop be the raised portion for when I stitch in the ditch around it later, but bulk management made more sense in this case.

I then moved on to the right bow section, pieces M, N, O, lining up piece-M and piece-N on their less slanted side.

I used the pencil marks on the masking tape I have on my sewing machine table top to judge the ¼" seam allowance. The stitching line would fall at the notch when I start the seam but, at the finish, the piece-N will overhang so the ¼" point is hidden beneath.

I pressed the seam allowance toward the bow color and away from the background each time. When I stitch around the ribbon and bows in the quilting stage, I wanted them to be slightly raised from the background and present. I did trim off those overhanging sections on the right before adding on the background, the upper right corner of the entire block.

I added the background piece...

... and trimmed ever so little off the extended corner.

When joining left and right bow sections it does matter which end is aligned if the base of the right bow loop is to touch the top of the package. Here is an example of bow loops whose tips are not aligned with each other. Aligning the top and bottom of the left and bow sections may be intuitive, but it was not my preferred way to go.

And here is a sample of aligned bow loops. There really is quite a bit to trim off both the top and bottom of the joined bow loop sections. Yes, the block becomes shorter because I need to trim both top and bottom, but it is worth it to me.

If I had not added piece-L (the upper left corner) shifted upward as I had, I would not have had to remove fabric from its top. But piece-L would have needed to be trimmed from the left then, so it is six-of-one and half-a-dozen of the other. I aligned nine bow sections like the sample on the right, with the tips of the two bow loops kissing each other. I will take out and re-do the sample on the left the same way.

I checked on the Sandy Gervais pattern photo, and the right bow loop does not touch the top of the package, but I prefer to slide it down so it does. I am guessing the pattern tester aligned the block edges rather than bow loop tips. A free floating bow may be a bit more whimsical, but I opted otherwise.

Here are my ten completed red gift blocks. My first impression is that the aqua background is a bit too mottled for my taste. That may just be my leaning because I am stretching my comfort zone. I tweaked and twiddled and managed the gift paper and ribbon color combos, but made a conscious decision to let the chips fall where they may for the background. Should I have kept the background all one color? I easily could have, by not reordering the pieces in the stacks. It would be a shame, however,  if I wimped out and chose fabrics so similar that the wonkiness did not shine through. Sigh. This is the point in every quilt where my self-doubt creeps in.

I am withholding final judgment until I've completed the blocks from the other colorways. I noted that when I'd performed the "squint your eyes test", the ten aquas had displayed the greatest variation of tone amongst themselves. The fabrics for the red background and the green background were more subtle. Also, when the blocks have been trimmed and joined, there will be more definition of each block, and my perception may change. Piecing is my favorite part of quilting. For now, I am thoroughly enjoying the novelty and challenges of this wonky method. I am joining the WIP linky party at this week's Freshly Pieced and will take a look at what others are enjoying.