Distraction and the Mundane

DISTRACTION:
I try to post weekly to DL2Q but sometimes life intervenes. Last week, I was unexpectedly away from my San Francisco Bay Area home for five days when my son in southern California needed an emergency appendectomy. His wife and daughter were visiting her family in Ohio. I was closer. My last minute airfares would be cheaper. There'd be no complications of child care for a 3½ year old and a 1½ year old. And although I would not wish the pain and unexpected surgery on him, I enjoyed the rare one-on-one time with my son. I was quite willing to be a mom again. I have no regrets whatsoever about the time lost; I rather viewed it as time gained. But, my quilting progress did take a hit. To keep my presence in the blogging world, though, I will report on the trivial tasks I did complete.

THE MUNDANE:
Not much creativity or artistic expression was happening here this week upon my return. I am entering three quilts in my guild's quilt show September 16th-17th. I judiciously chose to enter only quilts I had completed. I am so glad now I did not pressure myself to enter a fourth that still needed to be backed, quilted, and bound.  Yet "completed" is a relative term. All three needed quilt sleeves, two of the three needed labels, one needed to be bound, one needed to be washed and fluffed. I am reminded that all these mundane tasks usually take much more time than I estimate.

First up is my youngest son's Monkey Quilt, posted May 26, 2014, needed a sleeve. I like my sleeves to somewhat match or at least coordinate with the backing. This quilt was finished over three years ago but of course I still had the scraps. In the sewing equivalent of dumpster diving I was on a mission to find those scraps and see if I had enough that could be used for the sleeve. I had to go through only three plastic bins. Fortunately, I had been in the phase where I put all the scraps from a project in a zip-loc bag. I'd read a tip somewhere that doing so was useful because the colors already went together since they'd been used together in a project. Most scrap organization recommendations advise sorting by color, which I do not do.

I found strips long enough but not wide enough for a sleeve. I chose the lollipop fabric found in some of the rectangles of the border and the red dots used in the binding, each of a different width. Of course I wanted the sleeve to look like it belonged on the back of the quilt. Lengthwise piecing to the rescue. Then I had to decide how much of each fabric I wanted to show. I know this is just a sleeve folks but hey it counts. Decisions like these to take time and futzing. I came up with placing the red dotted fabric away from the matching binding. I think I would have preferred to show a narrower width of red dots, but I was limited by the my available width of the lollipop fabric. 

I found a couple arcs of the orange peel quilting lines that I had missed originally. Apparently the quilt had been without those for months, even with multiple uses. Once noticed, though, I needed to change to orange thread on my Pfaff and add them. However, a label was already on this Monkey Quilt.

  

Next up for sleeving was my Storybook Charm quilt, displayed in my July 5, 2017 post. I noted and inwardly groaned that I had not made my grosgrain labels for the corners. I dutifully made those labels. The inward groan was because I had to un-sew portions of the binding to slip the corners of the labels underneath and then re-sew. It was after doing this that I re-read my blog post. It stated that my intention had been to skip the labels and just write name and date information on the binding. Oh, well. Now it has grosgrain labels.

I did not have quite enough of the backing fabric for a full width sleeve. I pieced it in the center and sewed down the seam allowances so they would not catch when threading through the support pole for hanging. 

I used only a ¼" central seam and let the sleeve fall a ¼" short from reaching the binding on each end. I thought that was preferable to another seam for just another ½" of width.

Finally I had to label and bind my Out of the Blue quilt before adding a sleeve. Here are the corner labels, neatly tucked under the sporty striped binding.

I had a long strip of the backing leftover to use for the sleeve. It ran lengthwise though, so I could not line up the grid of flowers. In 20/20 hindsight, it is a square quilt, so had I rotated the quilt 90°, making one side the top, I could have aligned them. I was not about to remove labels and do that. Even I could acknowledge it was only a sleeve.

Here are my three quilt entries for the show: Monkey Quilt, Storybook Charm, and Out of the Blue. They are quite an eclectic mix. I am sure there will be an even greater variety at Let's Bee Social #193 so I will link up there.

Storybook Charm FMQ and Completion

I had assembled this quilt top rather quickly from charm packs and posted about it in my 5/31/17 post. Here are four representative blocks of the sixteen total.

Then I let the top sit and ripen because I could not decide how to quilt it. Since I had not invested a lot of time in the top assembly out of charm packs, I was willing to experiment with the FMQ and focus on the quilting being a learning experience. I established some guidelines for myself.

• I thought the quilt had too much white so I decided to quilt it in non-white thread. This is a risk because any awful quilting will show up more. But a professional long armer once challenged me with the question, "How can you ever get better if you cannot see what you are doing?"
• I wanted to call attention to the print blocks since the storybook images were so cute.  I would quilt those minimally, hoping they would pop out as the more heavily quilted white background receded. That was the theory, anyway. My approach was to constrain the quilting of those sqaures to around their edges.
• I was going to try to decide my quilting pattern as I went. I would "wing" it . This tactic would lead to more traveling and stitching back over where I'd been, but I did find this approach was a bit liberating.
• I would try to correct "errors" by further quilting. It is fairly easy to change a plan when you do not really have one.
• I would rip out only if absolutely necessary. After all, I wanted to get better at quilting and not better at ripping out, so better I invest my time in the quilting part of it.

First I did an orange peel style continuous quilting line along the edges of the print squares, leaving the white ones blank to be filled in later with central quilting. Since the white squares were untouched, the grouping of six rectangles from the white and print half-squares formed a wavy pattern.

I decide to play that up with some parallel wavy lines. I did some previews – just a few – on plastic sheet protectors to decide the spacing. I hesitated to get too densely quilted so soon into the project, but the ½" spacing really looked more to scale and better than the wider 1".

I kept my guideline of not quilting the orange peel pattern in the white half-squares but the disjointed appearance was jarring in the white half-widths and disrupted the flow I had going. Perhaps I would pick out those half arcs later. I stitched them in only a few places before deciding I did not like them.

You can see the orange peel pattern only in the print squares and the wavy effect I quilted in the half-square rectangles. I was a bit wobbly initially but I gradually got  better the more lines I did.

The small neon pink donut on the hopping foot is the Handi Quilter 1/2" echo foot accessory I used for the spacing on those parallel wavy lines.

As I did more of those parallel waves I wished I'd thought more about how to terminate them instead of abruptly squaring them off. But when you do not plan, you get what you get. I was leaving how to do the white squares for a later decision.

Staring at those wavy lines for a bit reminded me of gusts of wind. The prints from the Storybook charm pack were sky related: laundry drying on a clothesline, hot air balloons, clouds, and mini-airplanes. The sky and wind theme gave me the idea of putting wind swirls at the end of those streamlines of air. There was a stitching line across on the seam line that stopped the unfettered flow but I chose to stay with my guideline of not ripping out. Perhaps one night, when the quilt is finished, and I am watching TV, I might pick at it, but not for now. Had the thread been white, removal would have not been called so much into question. 

I was determined to forge ahead and not rip out. In one case I had connected the spiral to the wavy lines incorrectly (left image, below). I pseudo-corrected by strategically adding more spirals in the right image. Now the air streams appear to join up. But look carefully. It is not quite true.

It is like an Escher illusion of the staircase that never ends, also discussed in the Wikipedia article as the Penrose Stairs.

There were white squares that had no connectivity to an airstream. In these I doubled the orange peel pattern but softened it with a central spiral so that swirly feeling continued. That spiral, depending on the number of turns I gave it allowed me to travel from corner to corner as I needed to.

Did you catch me? That bottom left white square was adjacent to a wavy line block and so should have been connected. But my rule was to not rip out! Besides, it is at the edge of the quilt and the wavy block the full white one is next to is technically only half a wavy block. Those two facts are my rationale for leaving it. The half-block may very well be the reason I messed up made that design decision in the first place.

There was one goof I really did have to take apart. I accidentally caught my backing folded over under the batting and so caught it in the orange peel and central spiral stitching. (Nobody has ever done that, right?) When I noticed it, I was kind of hoping it was the same white square that should have been a swirl from an airstream. No such luck. Even from the back you can see it was beside a set of wavy lines and not at the end of them. This error required undoing and so did not break my rule of no unnecessary ripping out.

Here is my backing and binding. I just happened on the Cotton and Steel fabric for half price in a clearance bin last month and thought it would be perfect. I blogged about backing choices in my post for 6/7/17. I like that the non-rigid grid adds to the whimsy. The taupe tone was a key inspiration for my thread choice.

Here is the completed quilt. I am pleased I was brave to use a contrasting thread color and was not hampered – well, not too much – by analysis paralysis for the quilting pattern. My original focus was to have the printed squares pop and the white recede. I was not very successful with that goal, but I was successful in my more desirable goal of learning a lot and increasing my confidence to just go for it. I do not intend to invest time in a fancy label. I'll just use a fine line fabric marker to write the year 2017, the quilt name Storybook Charm, and my name in some yet to be determined location.

A closeup reveals a few glitches but overall I am pleased. The saying is not to worry about it if a mistake cannot be noticed by someone whizzing by on a galloping horse. In my case that horse had better be a Kentucky Derby winner with a myopic jockey.

Linking up now with Let's Bee Social #184.

Just for Fun Outings

Sandy Klop, designer of American Jane fabrics and patterns holds an open house quarterly at her home in Walnut Creek, California. I have been to her February 2017, August 2016, and June 2016 events, each time showing up with a different friend. Sandy this time called me an ambassador for American Jane. Since I have used up only a small portion of my purchases there from those previous visits, I was determined refrain from buying any more kits and to acquire only fabric with a specific purpose. I was pretty successful. My friend Renée who accompanied me this visit did not show as much restraint; however, I was very happy to shop vicariously through her!

My previous DL2Q post was about a spur of the moment quilt top I whipped together from a Moda Storybook charm pack in coral, aqua, taupe, and yellow. I needed backing fabric. Pinks are hard to match and so are blues so I thought a backing out of yellow would be the easiest. I found this cute fabric which is really four in one. I thought it would add interest if I ran it crosswise and used three of the four bands, eliminating the heaviest darkest one. I needed to back a 54" x 54" top and so calculated I needed twice the width, 108". I bought 3¼ yards crossing my fingers it would go with the yellow of the Storybook fabric.

I had some fabric swatches with me but only in the taupe, coral and aqua, none in yellow. This meant I had only cell phone pictures to go on - not a wise approach, I know. They are shown them in the next picture. I knew that banded print was not the true lemon yellow of the upper left corner of the nine-patch. It had more of a gold tone but I hoped it might read like the yellow chickadees on the taupe background in the lower right of the nine-patch. I would need to wait until I returned home and could see the top and backing together to be sure.

Once home, when I saw them together for real, the blend was not as pleasing as I had hoped. Bummer. At least I was very fortunate that those 3¼ yards were of a fabric in 4 bands. I now had about a ¾ yard of each of four different yellows to pad my stash. I could easily incorporate them in quilt blocks since each was a fairly workable mini-print type blender. Those 3¼ yard strips of the alphabet were a nice bonus for accent stripes or narrow sashings. Also ¾ yard is just enough for a binding. That is my recovery plan and I am sticking to it.

I also picked up a packet of one dozen jelly roll width strips at the American Jane open house. I like that Sandy Klop repackages her strips in quantities less than a jelly roll and in a self-consistent color palette. It makes them much more useful. I think the previous time I was at her quarterly open house (in February 2017) I bought a similar packet also in oranges. The strips are originally intended to go into a paper-pieced mandala like I'd made once before and liked. This second packet will allow me to double up on some of the prints I like and substitute out a few that are cute but sort of seem to stick out. The zippers and multi-colored pezzies can be grouped by themselves for example. I had checked out at the register and was feeling pretty proud of myself that I had limited my purchases. Then a tote bag pattern caught my eye and I added it to the mix. I may or may not use the multi-colored strips omitted from the mandala to make this carryall, but the pattern looked easy enough and very scrap friendly.

After leaving the open house, my friend and I went about 15 minutes south to stop at Wooden Gate Quilts in Danville. I was browsing the 50% off sale rack and POW – I spotted it – the perfect backing fabric. I did have some fabric scraps with me that I laid out on the bolt and I knew instantly that this backing option was just right.

The wavy lines give a bit of whimsy but still echo the grid idea. The darker tone offsets the abundance of white on the front. I bought 3¼ yards at half-price.

Also in the bargain bin I found a yard of a green grid fabric that reminds of a Frank Lloyd Wright window.

I'd seen this lined grid fabric, shown on the left, the previous time I'd been at Wooden Gates and liked it, but passed it by. The fact that I still liked it and it was still there was a sign, so I bought it. I also saw among the fat quarters a funky dot shown on the right. It is from the Tula Pink Tabby Road line and is called fur balls. I thought it was oddly ugly enough to be super cute. The periwinkle and barfy green color combination and irregularly shaped splotches called to me.

Renée was not as enamored with it as I was until, when we got home, I looked up the Tabby Road fabric line on the computer. She is a cat lover and when she saw the line had kitties and cans of tuna she was determined to get some of those food tins for herself. I teased her that I had unleashed the fabric monster in her.

We left the Wooden Gate quilt shop and had a pleasant relaxed lunch before heading home and re-examining our purchased treasures.

The next day I headed out to the downtown quilt shop of my home town of Livermore to spend a gift certificate to In Between Stitches. I selected a pattern and a book, still trying to rein in any impulse purchases for my stash. A patriotic quilt pattern called to me. Look at all the reds, white, and blues I can use up! Zinnie's Choice is by Lynn Wilder, a local designer we are lucky to have live and work in our area. She has a blog of her own titled Sew'n Wild Oaks and here is the link to more details about this pattern.

Then I bought the book Angles with Ease 2 that is to be used with a wedge ruler. The back cover is what drew me in. I think those monsters are outrageously adorable.

I liked the winter quilt within called Let It Snow. I am attracted to houses and trees in quilts. I am not so sure about all the white to FMQ however. That could be a challenge for me.

The other patterns in there all had an appeal and a charm of their own. The third one in from the right, Petals on a String was featured on the front cover. But I think it was really the monsters from the back cover that sold me.

I have shared my purchases to a sufficient level of detail to satisfy my quilty daughter. Also I have procrastinated long enough with seaming the backing and creating the quilt sandwiches for my Storybook quilt above and my Whirligiggles top, that I am off to do that now. Yee gads! I just noticed that the last time I'd touched my Whirligiggles quilt was three months ago, with a lot of activity back in February, my most recent DL2Q post being February 22nd. There are certain transitions in quilt making that always seem to halt my progress. Seaming the backing in order to make the quilt sandwich and then deciding on the FMQ pattern are two of them. Maybe with practice or an attitude adjustment I will get better at these steps. After linking up to Let's Bee Social #180, I really will get to those quilt sandwiches. Hmmm. I hope I have enough batting...