Basting Begun

An update on the quilt I tried to baste last week.

This quilt was born because I fell in love with a fabric line and had to use it right away! At the time I bought a layer cake (set of 10" squares) and that is what I used for the body of the quilt (plus a lot of my own stash in suitable colours and tones).

Even after I finish a quilt top, my eyes are still caught by fabric that would have been good in it, or, in this case, caught by a mini charm pack of the same fabric line. ("Charms" are 5" squares; "Mini charms" are 2.5" squares. This pack contained 42 squares from the fabric line.) Even though the top was assembled and I had no use for them, I couldn't resist buying this mini charm pack. I obviously was not over this fabric line. (And the mini charms are so cute and only a few dollars. Very hard to resist.)

This charm pack has been hanging around in the room I use for sewing ever since, which is at least a few years. I don't have a set place to store fabric pre-cut packs because I don't tend to buy a lot of them. And I didn't want to break up the set and put the squares with my scraps. So the neat little bundle moved from surface to surface as it needed to be moved out of the way. Repeatedly getting my attention but it was never the time to use them.

Until.

Until I needed just a few inches more width on my quilt back! Sewing them together in one long strip and inserting them as a stripe might just add the width that I needed.

I decided to piece them alternating light and dark.

I did it in sections instead of one long strip because it's very easy to have a long strip warp or curve on you. So they were pieced into 8" and 10" sections and then I added a solid border on each side. I had extra of a tannish brown colour that worked well. (I bought it online for my Lucy Boston but it really wasn't the right shade. I had just enough for what I had in mind here!)

I put 2" (finished) on each side and the top and bottom.

I didn't have enough of the brown for the full height of the backing so I added strips on the top and bottom. I looked through my scrap bags, and found leftover pieces from making the top, including more fabric from the same fabric line.

With this extra 6" in width, the backing was just wide enough:

I laid the top on top of the backing and the backing is 2-3" wider than the top. Not enough extra to quilt it on a long arm machine, but enough for me to work with on my domestic machine.

Once that was confirmed, I secured the backing to the table (good side down, of course; not like pictured above), covered it with the batting and then the top. The batting was also just large enough. I buy queen size battings and usually have a comfortable excess on the width and plenty of extra on the height. Not in this case but it was enough.

Then then pinning started.

And continued and continued. I had two and a half hours to do all this (including a final pressing of the top and steaming the batting, which I have not shown) and that was not enough time. As my departure time approached, I was able to confirm that the room wouldn't be needed by anyone else in the next week so I left the quilt set up on the tables and will continue--and hopefully finish--next week.

Also, I need to buy another pack of pins because I have enough for the center but not the borders. That will mean I have 900. Surely that is enough?

Basting Busted

I've had a quilt top, batting and backing packed in my car for a couple weeks waiting for a chance to baste it together. I like to baste at church where I can put three tables together for a big work surface. But every time I've gone to the building, my day ends up being too long or getting interrupted so that I can't get to the basting.

Last Saturday, I needed to be somewhere for about an hour that was just down the street from the church building. Ok, I would have time to baste after I was done. Excellent.

I got to the church. No one else was there. I set up my tables. I pulled out my supplies.

The first thing I notice is that the backing fabric that I thought was a wide backing was not. I would have to sew two widths together for it to be wide enough. Ok, I can fix this. I know there's a sewing machine at church. Can I find it?

I did find it (in the attic space) and it had just enough thread loaded on it that I thought I would be able to sew the seam. I set it up on a piano bench so it could be close to the outlet

 and took a look.

It is a pretty old machine but I had used it once before so I thought I could figure it out. It looked like a stretch stitch was the only straight stitch available! I started sewing the seam with that, but after a couple inches had to stop because using a stretch stitch was ridiculous. (Because it goes forward and backwards as it sews the seam, it is slow and uses a lot of thread.)

So I looked again and decided I would try the blind hem stitch with a stitch width of 0. That worked. I folded the fabric in half and sewed along one of the long edges. Now I had to cut at the fold so I could open it up to the full width. I had no scissors.

Obviously the office had scissors. They were the "craftiest" quality scissors an office might have, but I got them to work.

Now I had to press the seam. I knew there was an iron and board around. It took me a while, but after looking everywhere I thought it might be, I remembered where it was normally stored and there it was.

I think the board is the same vintage as the sewing machine, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work!

So I pressed the seam open and was ready to go.

I laid out the top on the tables. I put the backing on it to check the size.

And it was short. If I could use the selvage, it was only a couple inches short. But since I shouldn't use the selvage, it was at least 5 inches short.

I couldn't fix that. At least not there at church.

So I packed everything up, put everything away, and aborted my basting.

A disappointing end to the story, but I was still closer to a finish. I now know exactly what I have to do to make the backing work. :)

When Stars Align

I've been itching to clean up some of my sewing stuff that has been lying around, so of course, I did this by working on a project. I pulled out my blue and yellow star wall hanging because I knew it was close to being done. Last time I talked about it, I had put it in a time out. The final border of 1" squares did not fit.

You can see the excess length at the top that was not going to "ease in". I made the strip of squares fit by sewing some of the seams a little bigger. When I had done five seams, I tested the length against the center of the quilt and it fit, so I went with it. You might protest that all the squares are not identical in size and in fact are not even squares anymore. While that is technically true, it is not at all noticeable and does not detract from the effect. Which is good enough for me.

I sewed one strip of squares to one side and then a second one to the opposite side. Then I had to make the corner squares. The square-in-a-square units are tiny and fiddly, but I managed them with paper piecing, but no pictures, I'm afraid. You'll just have to see the final result after I sewed on the final two strips with the corner squares:

 And the top was done!

While I was at it (I was trying to clean up, after all), I pieced together some pieces for a backing and found a scrap of batting that was big enough.

I decided to go ahead and baste the layers together. My good basting pins were packed away with a large quilt I was preparing to baste, so I used my "bad" pins.

Long ago, I separated my "craft" quality safety pins, but never got rid of them. (Surely they'd be good for something?) I decided to suffer using them for this project just to get it done. I got the piece basted, disposing of about one pin in ten that was just too bad to keep.

I hung the basted quilt on the board above my sewing table. The clear bag is holding fabric I cut for the piping strips, the binding, and two squares for the triangle corners to hang the quilt. Now that I had everything I needed to complete the quilt, I could empty the project box of yellow and blue fabric and redistribute it to my fat quarter and scrap fabric storage.

Here you can see the uncompleted wall hanging next to the original one I'm attempting to match it to.

Not really a matching pair, but I think they look like they go together.

So I have one less box with a pending project inside and was able to organize and put away a lot of scrap fabric pieces that were lying around. Not the quickest way to clear off a work table, but the best way for me to feel more organized and less scattered. Plus this project is only a couple of straight forward steps from being done.

Linking up with:
  -"Finished (or Not) Friday at Alycia Quilts
  -"Oh Scrap" at Quilting is more fun than Housework
  -Quilting Patchwork and Applique

A Story of Three Fabrics

Apparently it is too much for me to haul out the laptop, edit and load pictures, and then write a post. So I'm trying this on my phone to see if that feels any easier to me. Maybe I will update here more often then.

What I'm showing you today is a little quilt that was born of various fabrics coming together.

First I had the little dotted squares. It was a charm pack (5" squares) I picked up because I thought they would make great cornerstones in sashing, especially if cut into four smaller squares. (Like you can see on the far right of the picture.)

Then my mom went on a trip to Pennsylvania with my quilting sister and "somehow" ended up in a lot of fabric stores. Well, the fabric fumes must have overcome her too because she bought some fabric for me, including a fat quarter bundle of the bright semi-solids. (They're similar to a grunge look.) I noticed right away that they coordinated perfectly with my dots. (There was a green too but it somehow got separated and didn't make it into this picture.)

Then sometime in the last year when I was at my mom's, she had some fabric from an aunt that my sister and I could go through. We took turns choosing but we both knew the elephants were mine! :) And then look how well those colours went with the rest. Kismet!

I vaguely debated for a while with myself about what design to do and eventually settled on something simple that would use some of each type of fabric in each block. The size was mostly determined by the size of the cornerstones (2.5"). By cutting the 5" squares into four, each one would work for one quilt block. I paired the dots with the solids and made 16 blocks.

Then I had fun trying layouts.

And decided on this:

It didn't take long to stitch the top together. I alternated all the seams so I could twirl the intersections.

And once that was done it didn't take long for me to find time to baste it too! I had just the right size of a different elephant fabric for the backing and taped it to my coffee table to keep it straight and taut.

I then layered the batting and then the top on top of it.

After sliding my cutting mat underneath to protect the table, I pinned everything that was on the top of the table.

I then took off the tape, slid the layers one way to pin one edge and then slid it the other way to pin the other edge. Now it's hanging on my project board again, waiting for me to quilt it. (Shouldn't take long, I would imagine!)

That Time When I was Suddenly Quilting

With the back and front of my "bright stars on black" quilt pieced and having a batting I could use, it was possible to move on to basting it together.

With travel and company coming, I didn't think I'd have time to actually quilt it but I figured I could at least get it basted. (It's not the best practice to have a quilt sit around folded after being basted, but I was willing to take a chance.)

I brought everything I needed to baste it together at church a couple weeks ago. I work there once a week, so I went in early and took advantage of the large tables. Three of them side by side is the same size as the quilt top.

Well, I brought everything except the big clips I use to keep the backing in place. (These are the clips I had to go out and buy last time I basted a quilt there. Maybe I should make a list?) I took a chance, and tried to keep the backing smooth without the clips.

It almost worked. I ended up with a fold in the middle (on the back) and had to undo and redo half of the quilt. I didn't take pictures, but hundreds of pins were used. But - importantly - not all of my pins were used. I didn't have to go out and buy more this time!!

The quilt sat in a basket for a while, but one evening I decided to pull it out. (I think the goal was to empty the supplies out of the basket and use it for laundry again, but one thing leads to another...) The only idea I had for quilting this quilt was black lines between the stars. Wavy, undulating lines or something to suggest motion.

But suddenly I was quilting around the stars -- big stitch quilting with coloured embroidery floss.

After outlining the star, I decided to echo the shape inside the star as well.

I made a paper template at the medium size, pinned it to the quilt and stitched around it (right next to the paper). The star shape is easy to make as it's two squares centered on top of each other, with one rotated 45°. Having four seams in the middle of the block makes it really easy to line up and centre the star.

Stitching around the paper was tedious and inaccurate as it kept shifting, so by the time I made the smaller paper template, I realized I could trace around it with chalk and sew on the line without the paper in the way. That is how I proceeded and it is working well. I mark each star as I start to work on it. If I did them all at once, I think the chalk would wear off of the stars by the time I got to them all.

After stitching the second star, I decided it needed something more in the middle, so I repeated the same star shape in the centre. Each leg of the star is only one stitch so it's a solid line instead of the dashed running stitch of the larger stars.

By the next day I had four stars done. Here is a picture of the back:

I love that the stitching lines are square with the lines of the triangles. It's easy to not line up the back and front perfectly when you're layering everything, but I'm happy it worked out! (I'm sure having a table top where I could see everything at once helped!)

The floss colours match the stars so the back will also have an ombre rainbow effect. Or it would if you could see the colours very well. The lines aren't thick enough to be distinguishable against the black in that much detail.

I am also pleased that I found a way to deal with the knots so that the running stitch is continuous on the back and the front. Ways I have done it before always left a gap or an extra long stitch on the back.

By last night, I had seven stars done: the blue one, the green ones, and three yellow ones.

I was thinking that was out of 16 stars total, but when I spread out the whole quilt I realized there are 18 stars in all. So I'm closer to a third done than half. (But it's still going quicker than I would have thought.)

It's a good thing I tolerate being warm (and generally seek it out) because having a wool quilt on your lap on a hot summer day isn't for everyone!! :)

I still don't know how I'm going to quilt between the stars; might be black lines, might echo the star shapes some more. I have some time to think about it. I also am contemplating the border. I may find myself "suddenly" big stitch quilting around those smaller stars too. A quilt wants what a quilt wants. Who am I to deny it?

"I am So Basted"

said my quilt today. Yup, I finally packed up the things I would need including the top:

and the back:

and got my quilt basted together. I've been ready and wanting to do it for a few weeks now, but stuff. But today it all came together.

I haven't been able to do it at home because 1. no space to lay it out and 2. so much mess from blowing insulation last weekend. So I packed it up and went to my church to use their large tables. I couldn't get three together, so I made do with two.

I taped the back of the quilt to the tables so it would stay taut.

I didn't pull it tight because I didn't want the fabric to "bounce back" when released. But I had to secure it from moving around and getting wrinkles or folds.

Then I laid on the cotton batting I was using:

I smoothed it out over the backing and didn't tape it down. The batting sticks to fabric like flannelgraph so no tape is necessary.

Then came the top:

I could easily line up the centre with the back because I had put the centre along the join where the two tables met. I methodically smoothed the top over the batting so it was lying flat and wrinkle free. Again, no need for tape.

And then I started pinning.

(and pinning and pinning...) I used my trusty spoon tool to save my fingers. It's ideal for helping the pin through the fabric layers and then lifting the end so it's easier to clip shut.

I only pinned in the orange zig zags. My plan is to quilt the grey zig zags first, without having to remove any pins, and then to quilt the orange zig zags after removing all the pins. The stitching on the grey areas will hold everything in place well enough.

That's the theory anyway. I figure it should work similar to how it worked out when I quilted circles on the crossed canoes quilt. (I quilted circles twice as far apart as I wanted, removing the pins. Then I could quilt between the circles without having to remove any pins.)

It saves a lot of time and makes the quilting smoother if you don't have to stop to remove pins all the time. I think it should work fine even if the pins are a little further apart than I would normally do them. All the quilting will be in one directions with the quilt fairly stable, and I'm not moving it all over like for free motion.

Once everything on the table was done, I folded one edge over and slid the quilt enough to pin the side.

Then I did the other side. And presto! I was done. It look me two hours. Any quilters out there--does this seem long or short to you? I'm curious, but have no idea.

The table height was adjustable and I moved them up, but I still had to bend over to work on the quilt. I think I was better off than my usually position (working on the floor), but two hours of standing and bending over is still pretty taxing. I didn't have enough energy to start sewing, although I had my machine in the car in case it got that far.

But I hope to be stitching soon...I would like to get this puppy done!

Spring Quilting

I have a quilt I want to give away for a graduation present, so it really is time to get on it. Because when I say I have a quilt, I really mean that I have a backing, a batting, and a top. Those are the ingredients to a quilt, but not yet a quilt.

Time to put down the knitting (when I'm at home anyway), and work on some quilting...

First up is basting. I had a hard time gearing myself up for this last night, but I was able to get all army sergeant on my own ass and get going.

Since my living room has been rearranged, I had room to lay out this roughly queen sized quilt. First the backing.

I taped it down at the edges so that it wouldn't shift as I added new layers.

Then I added the batting.

I think this must be a new kind or variety, or at least something I haven't used before. It's from Warm and Natural and it's needle punched cotton. It feels soo soft. While I was smoothing it into position, I thought that maybe I could just wrap up the batting and give it as a blanket. So cozy soft! But no, that wouldn't do...

Finally, I added the pieced top:

This was a little trickier as I wanted to make sure that the center lines matched up. Since the backing was pieced, it would make a difference if it wasn't centered properly. This actually went more easily than I anticipated because I could just make out the seam line through the batting. (And I didn't worry about being exactly exact.)

And the final step of it all is to pin the whole thing. That was more than two hours of finger breaking work!!

But once I figured out where to place pins relative to the pattern, it became rather mindless and not so bad. I ran out of pins for the edges of last two sides, but I will get them later.

If you don't know this trick, try using a spoon next time you have a lot of pinning. You use it instead of your fingers to "catch" and push up the pointy end when it's coming through the quilt:

It saves your hand a lot of pain. That makes it easier to focus on your other hand which gets sore from pushing on the pins! ;) It's even better if you find one with a comfortable handle. I use an old "camping" spoon and after two hours, the handle is not my best friend. I'll have to keep an eye out for a better one. (You don't want to use your good cutlery as the pins will leave scratch marks.)

As a final step before I cleaned it off the floor and gained back the use of my living room, I marked a circle in the center to get me started:

Next up...actual quilting!