Cutting the Gordian Knot

Here's a project you haven't seen in a while:
The last time I wrote about it was October, 2015!

A summary of its history:

• The quilt top was purchased by my sister's mother-in-law in the 60s from the side of the road in Kentucky when they were on a trip.
• It lived in her attic until my sister was helping her clean out the house for a move in the late 1990s. There were three quilt tops; my sister liked two of them and offered this one to me. I took it gladly.
• I added the hexagons around the outside to get it to size. I made it into a duvet cover (because I was sleeping under duvets at the time; not quilts) and used buttons to hold the layers together.
• It was too warm as a duvet cover and the buttons were uncomfortable (mostly when sitting on the bed, not sleeping) and would scratch you. I disassembled the duvet cover which left me a quilt with raw edges.
• I decided to remove the buttons and hand quilt it, echoing all of the seams.
• My plan was to fill in all the spaces on the sides to get straight edges. I really disliked those points hitting me in the face especially. I even had extra triangles in the bigger blue polka dot fabric to use.

And that is how the quilt has been for almost five years now.

During this self-isolating time at home, I have had a need to finish projects that are stuck at some step. (I've also had a need to start new projects. I know I'm not the only one.) The problem with this one is that I really didn't want to inset triangles in all those spaces. They would need to be layered-- front, batting, and backing--and then sewn into position. Not an attractive project.

And then I had the thought, "I could cut the edges so they were straight." Just lop them off like Alexander and the Gordian knot. Boom.

I may have considered this before and rejected it as a hack and because I wanted the quilt to be big enough for our bed. Well I no longer worry about every quilt fitting my bed (smaller quilts have their place too) and it sounded like a good hack to me at this point. (No, it sounded like a great hack to me at this point.) So that is what I did.

No pictures of cutting the edges. More of a "don't stop me now" moment although it felt a little like a "here, hold my camera and watch this" moment. I wanted to take a full hexagon off of the sides so that only original material was left. I did first attempt to unpick the seam, but a lot of it had the seam allowance pressed toward the quilt and it was sewn down. That would give me nothing to sew onto. So I just cut it with the rotary cutter, about 1/2" from the seam line.

I wanted a little more length compared to the width, so I cut the top and bottom about 4" from the highest point of the white hexagons.

All I needed to do to finish it now was the binding. I was lucky to have one long straight piece of the big blue polka dot fabric that was long enough for almost all of the two shorter sides. I had some leftover hexagons in the same fabric and briefly thought about cutting them up and sewing them end to end, but that was crazy, right? My binding would be made up of pieces 4"-8" long.

But then I saw that I also had a chain of hexagons already sewn in a strip. Well, if someone else was going to have them sewn together for me, who was I to turn it down? So I got just about enough from that for the rest. I think I only had to add one more hexagon.

I only had enough because I decided to do a two-colour binding. In this case, I paired the polka dots with a white solid. The polka dot fabric was pretty thin. (You can see some of the blue from the seam underneath showing through here on the back:)

Doing it this way meant that there was solid white under the polka dots on the front and I could sew it down on the back into a sturdier fabric. And it also meant that I could use a thinner strip of the polka dots and that is why I could squeeze out enough from the little that I had.

It took a few days, but I did get the binding sewn down. It is a hot mess under there with the double seam allowances, but the binding looks great so no one can tell. There is not a single judge anywhere who could say that my binding was not filled enough. :) (Yes, they judge you on that.)

So I was done right? Well, while I was sewing the binding, I decided there was too much unquilted space in the top and bottom border. The batting is cotton and it really needs to be sewn in place or it will come apart and bunch up.

So I decided a simple diamond shape would work. I marked them with a ruler,

(ceramic pencil on the blue fabric; blue water soluble marker on the plaid)

and hand quilted it.

(This is the back, in case that is not obvious.)

Like the rest of the quilt, my stitches are not great. But that's what you get for using dense sheets instead of muslin. I matched my thread to the different fabrics on top and bottom so it doesn't stand out on the front but you get the texture.

Seven diamonds on the top, seven diamonds on the bottom and I'd be done.

It went faster than I expected and I had them all quilted. So I was done, right? Well, while I was sewing the diamonds I noticed there was quite a lot of unquilted space on each end of the borders. When I finished the diamonds I admitted to myself that I would have to quilt a triangle in each of the four corners. That went even quicker--half the stitching of a diamond.

So I as done, right? Well, while I was sewing that I found a hexagon where I missed some quilting! Can you see it?

It's all around the outside of the star.

So I threaded up the needle again and finished the star. And while I was sewing that...I found nothing more. So I was done!

You can't even tell that some of the binding is on grain,
some is off-grain and there are seams every 8" or so, right?

Crinkly texture!

(This is why you don't sew light fabrics with dark thread.)

A view of the back

It's laying on my queen size bed and just covers the top.

Project summary
Started: 2009 (this incarnation)
Finished: May 17, 2020
Size: 61"x76"
Top: originally made in Kentucky in the 1960s. I repaired damaged blocks and had to replace fabric in four of the flowers.
Cotton batting.
Hand quilted.
All blog posts about this quilt: link

Kentucky Quilt Quilted

I'll share the exciting news first: I have finished the hand quilting on the old quilt top from Kentucky that I have been working on! All the flowers are done and so are all of the setting triangles between them.

It's been about a six weeks since I last wrote about it, and since then, I have done nothing but quilt, quilt, quilt whenever I have been sitting on the couch. (And it's football season, so that is a lot of time!) I found working on the setting triangles was nice "straight line" work as I tried to watch the games.

I also had to replace the fabric in four of the flowers. (I thought I was done after three, but then found a flower I had missed!) Here is how I did it:

I put a piece of paper under the quilt where I wanted to replace the flower fabric.

I poked a pin through the fabric and paper at all of the seam intersections and then connected the dots, which yielded a pattern like so:

(Where I've written "pin" indicates the pin on the quilt so that I could make sure to keep the shape lined up.) I figured the quilt was so irregular that there was no way I was going to be able to use an "idealized" six-petaled flower and have it work in the block. The blocks are wonky; I may as well work with it.

After numbering the pieces, I cut them out and taped them to the fabric so I could mark a 1/4" seam on all sides:

Then I cut out the shapes:

I kept the paper on while I hand stitched the seams between the petals. It helped keep things lined up and gave me a reference for where to sew.

Removing the paper yields the flower:

After setting the seams and pressing them all in one direction (not for any good quilting reason; just because I couldn't make myself do it any other way):

And presto majesto, you have a replacement flower:

Yes, I could have cut out one piece of fabric in this shape, but I wanted to keep the block more authentic with the seams between the petals.

I then picked out the seams around the flower and took it out of the quilt. I was lucky with the first block that all of the seams were pressed away from the flower. So all of these muslin parallelograms are pressed under and ready to receive the new fabric.

I simply laid in the new shape (matching the "pin" marking I made at the start) and put the folded edges of the muslin parallelograms over it. I then basted it in place. I tried pins at first, but they allowed for too  much shifting of the fabric.

Once basted, I hand stitched the muslin down using an applique stitch.

Once the outside edges were done, I removed the center hexagon from the old flower, pressed it well and basted and stitched it down over the center of the flower.

Once again, I got lucky as all the seams were pressed toward the centre. For some of the later blocks, I had to iron the edges of the centre piece over. It was a weird fabric--definitely not 100% cotton--and didn't iron well, but we managed. Again, basting with thread helps a lot.

And after quilting and removing the basting, you have a brand new block!!

Here are the other new fabrics I used to replace frayed flowers. A nice stripe:

I studied stripes already in the quilt to see how they handled them. (Where they parallel to a certain side? Did they all line up? Did they run around the block?) And it looked like they matched the stripe to one side seam in each piece, but didn't worry about how they lined up in the block. So that's what I did and I still ended up with a sort of pattern.

The stripe was an older fabric, but this floral was quite new:

I thought it would blend in well enough. In this case, I radiated the stems of the flowers on the print from the centre of the flower.

And for the fourth flower that I discovered later, I used this "Persian pickle" pattern. Well, it's not quite a paisley but I thought it was close enough!

In this case, I deliberately matched two sets of designs that alternate around the block. I cut these pieces from leftover strips from the library quilt I made. I didn't have the right pieces to make six matching blocks (sort of a kaleidoscope effect), but I think this is nice too.

So now that part is done. I'm going to quilt the outer blocks that I added later by machine. I think it's appropriate since they were added later, and there's no way I could hand quilt through the sheeting fabric (as in, sheets cut up to use as fabric). I had a thought to remove them entirely, but by then I had quilted to the edges and couldn't take them off anymore! (Or not without more work than I was willing to do.)

Now I'm debating adding a wide border to make this more of a queen size or whether to just add a binding and call it done. I'll have a while to think about it because I have some other projects to get to and need to put this aside. (Or I'm going to try. My obsessiveness has latched onto this pretty hard. We'll see if I can transfer it to another project!)

Meanwhile I'm pretty pleased with having it done, improvement in my hand quilting skills, all the fun fabrics in the quilt, the look of the quilted fabric, and the fact that this really didn't take very long once I started actually doing it.

Hand Quilting

Having no knitting on the go, but wanting something that was "easy on the brain" after a long, intense day at work, I have pulled out the Kentucky quilt I was hand quilting. (But you know, hadn't work on in so long it was more like I was not hand quilting it.)

I got stuck when I timed it and realized it takes me two hours to do one flower. That means it's unlikely I could ever do more than one in an evening. That is a lot of time before this is done. But not wanting to just chuck it, I kept it around. And now I am working on it again. Everything has a season.

Because even if something takes a long time to finish, if you keep at it you at least have a chance of finishing it. If you never work on it, you're right--it's never going to get finished.

I had been trying to get away without pinning the layers because they are already basted by the buttons I had applied to the quilt in its previous life as a duvet cover. But I was starting to run into problems with the backing shifting around. So now I pin around each flower as I get to it. Safety pins so I won't stab myself repeatedly.

I put a pin in around each outside edge and then pin inside each petal of the flower from the backside so my thread won't got caught on the pins all the time. Seems to be working.

Another thing I've learned is to start the block next to an unquilted block so I don't have to cut my thread in between and can quilt continuously from one to the next.

You can start at any point where the two blocks touch; in the case above, I've started where the arrow is pointing. It only works for two blocks in a row, but that is still more than just doing one block at a time.

In previous stints of working on this quilt, I have avoided the blocks that needed to be repaired. A couple of the fabrics are quite thin and didn't stand up to the use. In this block you can see that I stitched up both horizontal seams in the pictures:

They were fraying horribly, but I just resewed the seam overlapping one fabric with the other. It's not exactly an invisible repair, but I think as you get a little further away, you will agree that it's not noticeable:

As soon as I repaired it, I quilted the block so that the fabric would have the support that it needs. I hope it will last for a while now.

There are still other blocks that I think I will have to replace the fabric. This one is frayed so badly in so many spots that I don't think I can save it:

I added the pins for support while I'm working on the rest of the quilt. But whole seams have frayed away:

and I don't think there's enough left for me to put it back together. I have some fabric someone gave me that they had had for years and I'm thinking some of that might match the "vintage" of these fabrics.

But there are others like this one:

that just need a little TLC and then I think they'll be fine.

I've been working from one corner of the quilt. I didn't want to jump around the quilt, and this helps me stay focused. (And prevents missing a block, which would be easy to do!) I'm in the middle of block #14. My recollection says there are 64 flowers. I don't want to recount now because whatever the exact number is, I still have a long way to go. But 14 is a lot better than the 5(?) or so that I had before I started stitching again. And don't remind me that once the flowers are done, I'll have to stitch all the connecting triangles and then the border blocks. I'll face that when I get there!

I've been enjoying the stitching. I enjoy many of the fabrics in the flowers so that makes it a pleasure to work on them. Many of them are not so lovely (and some are thick and hard to stitch through on top of that) but I am motivated to get those done too so I can move on to one I like more. It's all good.

And with this snap of cooler weather that's come upon us, I'm happy to have a quilt over my lap as I work!

UFO Night

We had another UFO last night with the ladies at church. I brought my Old Kentucky quilt again and finished another flower:

It was rough going as the fabric is thicker than most and the seam allowances were a little wider. This meant sewing through a lot of layers (and resulted in some pretty large stitches at times). I'm still happy to finish another little flower and very happy with the puckery texture that is developing as I get more done.

Another thing going on was a tutorial in melted crayon art. Julie showed us how to glue down crayons and then how to melt them with a hot air blower. (Hers was a craft tool, but you can use a blow drier.)

This sample from etsy seller TaltiriTavern.
Julie's version had a random colour layout.

The effects are pretty amazing. If you want more ideas, do a search on etsy or pinterest.

It was a fun night!

Fridays

Now that Friday has rolled around again, I have time to share what I did last Friday.

A woman in my church has opened up her home once a month for a "UFO" night with the bonus that she will teach you how to make several styles of cards if you want. She has a lot of paper craft/scrapping toys, I mean tools and is willing to share. (She has come to my aid in the past as well when I needed a little something cut or made.)

Here is a sample of one of the cards they made last week:

Isn't that pretty! And they did three or four different ones in a night.

But you can bring whatever you want with you. One woman was removing old pictures from frames for a friend of hers who moved to a much smaller place and can't hang them on the walls.

She's going to arrange them in an album so her friend can still enjoy them.

Someone else was working on entering recipes into one of those searchable recipe programs.

And what did I bring along? My super-sized UFO--the old Kentucky quilt top:

I haven't done much (any?) on it since the last time I wrote about it, but I decided it was just the thing to throw in a bag with some supplies and take with me. (If only I had remembered to throw in a thimble--my finger was pretty ripped up by the end of the night. Ow!)

The flower I worked on was this one:

It was fairly thick cotton and working over some of the seam was pretty tough. But I got it done in the evening. My stitches still are large and amateur:

but like I said last time, I enjoy it. And I put this picture up for all of you out there who feel bad about your stitches and are unwilling to show them. It's ok! You can also see in this picture that the centre of this flower will never sit flat. The piece was not cut out or seamed correctly. It's a fun little wonky quilt.

So I now have four flowers done out of 64. 60 left to go. If we keep meeting monthly, the flowers will be done in five years...

April Quilt "Day"

It was a close thing, but I did manage to fit in some quilting time on Sunday for my personal monthly quilt day. (Second Sunday of the month.) I had to help my honey put up some siding all afternoon--it was a lovely day so it's not like I really begrudged all the time outside. But it was about 7:00pm before I could get to some quilting!

I knew it would not be the month to do something big, new, or complicated. I didn't feel quite ready to make the final square for the country fair raffle quilt. So I thought I'd pull out this quilt:

I have had this quilt top since about 2004, I'd say. My sister got it from her mother-in-law as she was helping her clean out the farmhouse they had lived in all her married life. She had kept a lot of stuff, including three quilt tops she bought off some ladies at the side of the road in Kentucky during a road trip in the 60s. (This was apparently pretty common then.)

Yes, she had these quilt tops for over 40 years and nothing had been done with them. (Does that make you feel better about your UFOs?) One was a very bright orange. To be honest, you'd have to call it hideous, but in that wow-that's-so-ugly-I-like-it way. My sister claimed that one for the cottage she hopes she might have some day.

I don't even remember the second quilt, but the other one was this hexagon flower quilt. My sister was scared of the uneven edges--it would be a hard one to bind!--so she gave it to me.

Well, what I first did with it was to make some blocks to edge the quilt. They were cut from some sheets I bought and cotton fabric I had lying around. I went with blue and white because of the blue and white polka dot fabric used for the flower centers and the triangles between the hexagons. (The only consistent parts of the whole quilt!)

I then layered it with batting and a white sheet and then used another sheet to make a "pocket" to use it as a duvet cover. What about quilting the layers together, you ask? Well, I opted for tacking it together with buttons.
I tried to use just flower buttons. I don't think I got a more perfect match than this faded pink button on this pink paisley flower. I was really happy with that combo.

But as time went on, I realized that the buttons weren't nearly enough to hold the batting in place. And this very many layered cover was way too warm with a duvet inside. So last year I took it all apart and decided I was going to attempt to quilt this and quilt it old school--by hand!

It's been slow going.

But I'm ok with that.

To give you the stats: it takes two hours to quilt a flower. There are 64 flowers in the quilt. I've currently finished three. Yup, things are looking pretty grim for this sweet little quilt. But I figure it waited 40 years to even see the light of day again, so it's probably learned to be a patient sweet little quilt.

My hand quilting skills are very beginner-ish and by that I mean pretty bad. This is my first flower:
Big uneven stitches and the lines wander from 1/8" to 3/8" from the seams. (I'm aiming for 1/4" in case that's not clear.)

This is my third flower:
Even with the very infrequent repetition, I think my stitches are improving. Not by leaps and bounds, but still...

There are many reasons why this quilt will never be a "show-quality" (or probably even county fair quality) quilt. Besides my amateur stitching, you'll notice in all the pictures that the points were just a very rough guideline of where the seams should be. Seams are uneven, yadda, yadda, yadda. But it's still so charming.

Other problems I will deal with when I get there. For instance, ripped fabrics:
It's just too thin to take the strain. (One of the reasons you shouldn't wait to quilt a top. The quilting really helps to stabilize and support the top fabric.) The really sad part is that this is a really charming fabric. I will repair where I can, but I suspect the fabric in this particular block will have to be replaced. (Right now I'm thinking I'll basically applique a new flower fabric over the damaged fabric.) Hopefully I'll find something I like just as much.

I presume the use of actual scraps determined the combination in this quilt:
From sweet pinks to bright bright yellows to, what's that? yes, camo! And you can never have enough kerchief fabric in a quilt, right? You see why this quilt is so beguiling?

I can't promise it'll be done soon, but when I work on it, I enjoy it. What more can you ask, really?