FMQing Triangles on the Masquerade Quilt

Each hexagon is surrounded by six equilateral triangles which form the points of a star. I planned to stitch three arcs in each point with matching thread in the colors pink, purple, blue, green, and orange. I would leave the hexagon  mostly non-stitched, so as not to distract from its symmetry. To tack down the center though, there would be six short lines only, stitched in the ditch at 60° to each –  like an asterisk –  *. This asterisk stitching would not be continuous; I would have to start and stop at each center ... all 173 of them.

I had FMQ'd the pink triangles and a few of the pink center asterisks when I found a tuck in the backing. Horrified, I asked myself how this had happened. Was putting asterisks in the center of the hexagons a possible cause? Between hexagons, I was moving the quilt several inches without stitching, dragging thread, and perhaps bunching the backing. Or did the glitch originate in the layering? Usually, before I build my quilt sandwich, I put my batting in the dryer for a few minutes with a damp cloth to fluff out any wrinkles. I had forgotten to do that step before I centered the batting and spread it out on my backing, which was already taped to the floor. Rather than pick the batting back up again and cart it back upstairs to the dryer, I crawled around on the floor smoothing out the batting as best I could. I rationalized to myself that a few speed-bump-type lines were acceptable. Maybe they were not. Also, once I have made the sandwich I generally flip the three layers over and repeat the smoothing process on the back, doing a quality check. I was juggling such bulk with this king size quilt that I just plain forgot this step. In theory this additional smoothing step should have been redundant, but possibly it was not not. Whatever the casue I needed a recovery plan.

There were no other options to remove this tuck other than to "unFMQ". Picking out the stitches would be excruciatingly slow. Fortunately I was still near the two edges at one corner of the quilt so I painstakingly and resignedly set out to slice the stitches from their edges rather than pick them out from the top and bottom, using a "skin a quilt" method. I peeled back the backing from the corner and cut the stitches with a sharp tool using the batting as a buffer and being careful not to cut the backing. See YouTube skinning a quilt video.

I tried several tools to see which was sharpest and had the best geometry for the job. I thought it would be a rotary cutter with a fresh new blade or a razor blade; but, no, the best was the scalpel at the lower right. How appropriate for quilt surgery! Just touching it to the stitch under tension split the thread apart – except at those pesky asterisks where the lines had been double stitched. There stitch removal was a struggle and I had to be super careful to slice only threads and not fabric.

The residual clipped threads formed ghost images of circles. These came as a bonus secondary pattern surprise to me. It was tedious removing the thread snippets with tweezers, but I took my time. A lint roller worked well on the quilt front or backing fabric but not so well on the batting, already fluffy and slightly tacky from the temporary spray adhesive. Odif 505™ is a great product. It grips the layers well, but still it is forgivable for repositioning the fabric – kind of like the quilting world's version of Post-It notes.

My scalpel wielding skill failed me only once, slicing a small slit less than ¼" in length in the backing. A circle of Wonder-Under® ironed on to backing will fix that. I pinked the edge so its presence in the quilt would not have a defined ridge that could be detected easily, and then ironed the spot onto the wrong side of the backing fabric only, much like an "on-the-spot" round bandaid. Although I peeled away the paper backing, I did not heat the area to adhere it to the batting just yet. Heaven forbid if I needed to do another "skinning". I did not want that one spot stuck where it should not be. I will complete the heat press later once the quilt stitching is complete. That is... if I can find where it is! For now the location is marked with blue masking tape.

After losing about two days to repair – and let's face it, also to despair –  I forged ahead completing the pink and moving on to purple and blue.  By Wednesday, I had completed the green and part of the orange. Thursday morning I went straight to FMQing still in my PJs and completed the orange.  I do like how the triangles seem to fluff up like puff pastries or three sided ravioli, if there is such a thing.

 

I still need to stitch the squat isosceles triangle edge inserts. Then the final stitching will be the asterisks central to each hexagon. After completing the jewel-toned triangles I decided to spread the quilt out on our king size bed in our master bedroom to check for mistakes. I had my fingers crossed there would be no repeat tucks. When I asked for his help in spreading it out, my husband asked what I was doing and why. He turned off the lights as he entered the room and proceeded to close the plantation shutters at the windows. He quipped, "So you do not find any mistakes." When I gave him "the look" he opened the shutters, turned on the lights, and asked if I needed a flashlight. I said thank you, but no. Then he brought me a magnifying glass directing me to pose using it so he could snap a photo.

 

Happily I found no tucks, just one snarled bird's nest of green thread where I had not thoroughly moved a thread tail off to the side. (Actually, my husband found it.) I easily clipped it away. I did find that I had stitched over a piece of masking tape meant to remind me where there was a manufacturing flaw in the fabric. The flaw was fortunately near an edge that would be trimmed off and I was able to tear it away at the perforations without any hassle or residue. This slit is a different one from the slice I inadvertently made during my adventures in quilt skinning. 

 

What I did not find was that tiny piece of masking tape marking where I needed to return and press down the second side of the Wonder-Under® patch, securing it to the batting – at the slit I did make myself. At least it is good news that I can't see it. My backup plan is to dry press the general corner area in the pink where I had skinned that portion of the quilt. Somewhere, the sole plate of my iron will find and heat set that jagged-edged Wonder Under spot. I see a few more hours (days?) of asterisk FMQing and edge insert FMQing in my future; then on to the trimming and binding.

Third Saturday of September 2020

For "Hang Your Quilt Day" this month, the theme was fall. I chose to display three quilts in orange or straw colored hues.

The straw color in the largest quilt made me think of hay bales, hay rides, and corn mazes typical of fall. Fifty Shades of Taupe caught my eye as a kit from McCall's Quilting magazines, the Spring 2013 edition of America Makes Fast Quilts. I renamed it. It was published as Odds and Ends. My 6/29/2020 post is my last of five posts on the making of this quilt. It measures 60½" by 79½".

The trees in the medium sized quilt titled Orange and Grey have very sparse leaves which are not green; hence this quilt speaks fall to me with a modern twist.  Orange and Grey measures 40" x 50" and is made with fabrics by Lotta Jansdotter. My 8/10/2016 post describes its completion.

The pumpkin wall hanging, because of the subject and the orange colors, says autumn to me. It measures 31" x 39". The pumpkin blocks were contributions from guild members; I won them as part of a Block of the Month activity. My 10/31/2017 post  describes this pumpkin wall hanging's completion and quilting.

Beginning April 2020, my quilt guild members began a tradition of hanging quilts in the front of their homes on the third Saturday of the month as a source of enjoyment for the community and as a thank you for the essential workers during the pandemic. My initial post about this practice is dated 4/22/20.

Hexagon Top Prepped for FMQ

Yesterday, I was crawling around on my family room floor spray basting the hexagon quilt. I usually procrastinate when I get to this stage because it hurts my knees, tires me out, and makes me all sweaty. Correction – men sweat, but women glisten. Believe me, it was as if someone had sprinkled me with glitter I was glistening so much. Yes, if I were younger and in better shape I would not have these issues. But quilting should not be a cardio exercise. After laying down the backing, wrong side up, I taped down the four corners and the middle of all four edges. I then layered the batting on the backing and the pieced top on the batting. I surrounded the sandwich with folded pillowcases so no overspray got on the hardwood floor. The Odif 505 temporary adhesive for fabric is water soluble and wipes up, but still I avoid getting this film on the floor. I used to use newspapers and discard them but they tore and occasionally left black smudges; so now instead I use pillowcases. They pick up easily and go through a quick wash.

I taped diagonally across the corners directly onto the floor. The batting is 2 inches larger than the quilt top in both dimensions so it extends out an inch beyond the edges if I get it centered. Since I have a HQ Sweet Sixteen sit-down mid-arm, I do not need an excess of batting or backing along the edges for "loading". Still, I was cutting it pretty close here. The top measures about ~ 88" by 92" so it is easy to put the batting on incorrectly rotated 90°. Whew! I got it right. I especially love the backing fabric that is visible peeking out all around.

I knew which fabric I was going to use for the back. I had 8 yards of it! I had purchased it at a quilt show in Brentwood in 2017 and I blogged about it in my post for 8/21/17. I will repeat part of the story here:

The blue fabric below has a bit of a story. It was packaged in a zip lock bag to be cleared out, marked with the reduced price of $16 for 8 yards and a note with the sales pitch that it would make a great backing. The blue color has such depth and I was drawn to something about it - yes, other than the price! I was fingering it and murmured, "This is different." A member of my guild standing near my side overheard me and quipped, "Yeah, it is butt ugly." As I continued to finger and fondle it I replied, "But you know how something can be so ugly, it is cute? I do not know if this is peach pits or avocados or a reverse image of a hard boiled egg half, but it kind of calls to me." ... Like that unforgettable, scruffy, begging mutt at the dog pound that you just have to take home, I picked up the fabric and walked over to pay for it. The vendor, who was closing out her shop reminded me, "You know the artist who did this is blind." 

 

  

George Mendoza the artist, is also an athlete, and a motivational speaker. George Mendoza was a 1980 Olympian in track who has suffered since his teen years from a form of juvenile macular degeneration. He has no central, detailed vision but paints the peripheral colors he sees and interprets. Printed on the selvage, along with the artist’s name is the fabric title, Pebbles. That revelation solves the “peach pit”, “avocado”, “egg yolk” debate. I felt the scattered round shapes echo the medallion feel of the hexagons. This “butt ugly” fabric was perfect. The royal blue background was a feature color at my daughter's wedding in 2011. She even had blue flowers in her bridal bouquet.

 

In the last half yard of the fabric there was a tiny slit in the fabric, near the central fold. The backing took three lengths of fabric but the third length was a small enough width that I was able to avoid the flaw. My cut along the length of the ruler was within the slit location. Murphy’s Law did not prevail for once.

How many pieces are in this quilt? I have counted multiple times and gotten different answers! This time both my husband and I counted and we arrived at the same answer so I am calling it official. Actually, I had to piece one of the orange equilateral triangles, so that may add one piece. But really that orange triangle is two halves which still sums to one triangle. And then we couldn't find where that was; so, other than in this blog post, it shall remain uncounted.

170 six-triangle piece hexagons = 6*170 = 1020
3 non-pieced whole hexagons = 3 *1 = 3
11 two-piece "bowties" in each of eight twelve-hexagon columns = 8*2*11 =176
12 two-piece "bowties" in each of seven eleven-hexagon columns = 7*2*12 =168
7 triangular inserts along each of two edges = 2*7 = 14

TOTAL: 1020 + 3 + 176 + 168+ 14 = 1381 pieces

After the spray basting, exhausted and sweaty, I picked up the quilt sandwich and carried it over to the dining room where I spread it out to preview and decide the FMQ pattern. While I was doing that, my husband took the pieces of masking tape that I'd removed and made me a flower on the wall. Aw! Wasn't that sweet? He still likes me, glisten and all.

 

Hexagon Top Assembly Completed

Part of the painstaking effort for this quilt of hexagons is pressing the seams in a consistent direction so as to avoid lumps. When I joined the line of hexagons point to point with diagonal seams I made sure the hexagon midline seams alternated direction so that diagonal seams nested. This line formed 15 columns, 8 columns twelve hexagons long and 7 columns eleven hexagons long. When I was about to join those columns at the outer flat edges of the hexagons, seam direction was already committed and I needed to proceed at a snail's pace so as not to twist or flip the press direction at each multi-seam intersection. 

Still, flip or twist happened. I will admit, my patience for this part of the assembly was wearing thin. Careful as I was with those long seams joining the columns, I needed to do remedial seam direction flipping at several of the twenty-two 6-point seam intersections. It was just a few stitches to be picked out and less than ½" of seam to be re-sewn at each accidentally flip, but still I found the task annoying and tedious. But I had come this far, so I persevered. I certainly did not want the users of this bed quilt to suffer from The Princess and the Pea syndrome from scattered lumps throughout. The following photo shows ten columns but only five long joining seams. It was slow going, a column or two a day, because of my frustration level.

After sewing about six or seven of those fourteen between-column seams I realized that the flips were not random but consistent. Something must be flipping the seam allowances the wrong direction. I inspected my machine set up. I noticed there was a slight ridge between the cabinet and the front edge of the needle plate. I smoothed out that tiny level offset transition with a piece of masking tape and magically the problem disappeared – at least about 98% of the time. That simple fix was enough to encourage me to forge ahead and get those fifteen columns all joined. My rate picked up after my discovery and solution.

 

Then I made another design change. I was originally going to leave two opposing edges of the quilt straight and the other two opposing edges zig-zag. I did not want to not chop off parts of the protruding hexagons to even it out. I had planned to bind the jagged edge and turn all those corners. I had done that on my Whirligiggles quilt (3/23/20 post) and, although doable, it was an intricate effort. Instead on this quilt I would fill in those triangular gaps to make the edge straight. 

I chose to use the focus fabric that originated all those hexagons as the edge filler. It is called Celebrations by Robert Kaufman. I had ⅞ yard left. Just look at all those colors in the registration dots along the selvage – twenty of them! My daughter had expressed a desire to have the source fabric available for comparison on the quilt, so having it peeking out along two edges fits the bill. Those three hidden full hexagons also add to the hide-and-seek fun. See previous post dated 8/27/20.

I first cut a 4" strip across the width of the fabric. Then I taped off my Hex N More ruler 4" from the tip of the triangle with a long piece of blue masking tape. (Ignore the short blue tape; that registration mark was for another project). I lined up the edge of the fabric strip with the edge of that long blue tape and the pointy left tip of the triangle base at the selvage. The ruler does not extend sufficiently in both directions to form a triangle with a base as large as I needed; I would have to shift the ruler somehow. 

Here is my sequence in the next three photos. I made the first angle slice off the left end with the ruler triangle base-down and point-up so the long edge is on the left. 

I flip the ruler to slice the other side on the right. Note I drew arrows on my tape to remind me which edge of the tape I am using as a guide. This cut is also the first side of the base-up point-down triangle which is next.

To cut the second side of base-up point-down triangle, I rotate the ruler and align its left side with the cut edge and the masking tape with the top edge. Using the right edge of the ruler as the guide, I slice the second side of the base-up point-down triangle. By alternating directions I am able to get five triangles out of one strip. I need only fourteen and so from 12" of fabric, three strips, I have one extra triangle, plus some partial-triangles at the selvage edges. I have ½ yard of fabric left. This fabric is still available on eBay, called Mardi Gras Masks with the pattern number D#4857. I have no desire for more.

Insetting the  edge triangles required Y-seams. I had practiced many, many of them my Whirligiggles quilt (3/23/20 post) so I was undaunted. But first I deliberated on which triangle went where. I think it is in my nature to always fret over something. In my quilting I am a maximizer and not a satisficer. When you Google these two terms you find a smattering of information about the two psychological terms.

Maximizing means expending time and effort to ensure you've solved something as best as possible. Satisficing means picking the first option that satisfies the requirements. ... Prefer a faster decision to the best decision.
                                    AND
A satisficer is a pragmatic individual who makes decisions based on meeting requirements in a timely manner, finding the “good enough” solution and moving on. The word is a portmanteau of the words satisfy and suffice.

A satisficer would randomly inset those border triangles wherever, the only criteria being, "Do they fit the space?". Check. "Situation decided. Move on". However, let me give some examples of how I decided to inset those border triangles. In each case the inset triangle echoed a central feature in the hexagon above it. On the left, it is the brown peacock feathers and black starry background; on the right, it is the pink feathers of one mask and the partial face of the another.

    

Seeing them all inset in along one edge, I acknowledge that perhaps I may have fussed too much. They all kind of blend in. But then again, maybe if I had not preplanned, they would have stuck out awkwardly.

The top measures 84" x 89", close enough to being square that I will need to be careful of orientation when I attach the batting and backing. Piecing the backing and making that quilt sandwich is my next step and the topic of a future post.