Bright Diamonds Quilt Top Assembled

When you last saw this quilt (in 2015), it was scattered over the floor after it fell off my flannel sheet design board. I thought the cotton just didn't stick to the flannel, but I later realized the window was open and the breeze would get behind the flannel and flick it against the wall, effectively tossing off all of the blocks.

I got busy with work or whatever and put these blocks in a box and didn't take them out again until last week.

It being winter (and freakishly cold), I didn't think an open window would be a problem if I used the design wall. I laid out the blocks again, moved them around a little bit and ended with this:

The diamonds have to be sewn together in diagonal rows. It's not any harder really, but it does take a little more thought to make sure you don't mix things up. I took the blocks off the wall from top to bottom in the rows from upper right to lower left. I pinned a number on them to indicate which row they were and then managed to sew them together. (I only put one row on upside down and caught it soon enough that I didn't do any more seam ripping than necessary.)

I put the completed top back on the wall and decided it was too narrow. I'm aiming for a single (I think that's the same as a "twin") and it was less than 60" wide. I decided to add half blocks to fill in the spaces on the right and left sides. This meant putting together more blocks.

I pulled out the fabrics and put together five more diamonds. I cut them in half to use one half on each side and cut two of the halves in half again for the four corners.

The quilt police would say that you can never make a block and cut in half to use like this because it doesn't allow for a 1/4" seam allowance. So you're supposed to make a partial block just a little bigger than a half block. With this pattern, I just don't have to be that fussy. The points of the main diamonds (the inner ones of each block) won't be cut off and no one will care that the border is cut off 1/4". Now that I've proven to the quilt police I know what they know, we can move on.

On the first side, I tried to "insert" the half diamonds with Y seams and without taking out any of the existing seams. I got it done, but it's not very pretty. On the other side, I did the extra step of undoing a couple inches of the existing seam before adding the new half block. It did take a little more time but it was less fiddly.

I thought about ironing all the seams between the blocks open so that they would be nice and flat and no block would be more dominant than another, but I ended up pressing to one side and furling the seams.

You can see the intersection circled in white. Sorry to keep showing it, but I still love the effect of this method! And since each block ends up with two seams pressed in and two pressed out, none of them dominate.

While I was inserting the blocks, I discovered that one of my border strips had a little cut in it. The fabric was cut just about to the seam.

This is probably an "overcut" from cutting a previous piece that I missed when cutting this strip. I decided to mend it instead of replace it, and just stitched it to the other piece of fabric in the seam allowance. Now there won't be any pressure on the cut and it shouldn't tear any further. The seam allowance will be slightly thicker but it won't be noticeable.

Once the top was together, I trimmed the points from the edges and sewed a line of stay stitching around the outside.

This helps prevent the quilt from stretching at the edges, helps to lock any seams that weren't backstitched to prevent them from popping open, and keeps seam allowances in place as you layer the quilt.

And then I could call the quilt top done:

I think I know how I would quilt this and (unfortunately) it isn't really suited to using a longarm machine, so that means quilting it on my home machine. But I am also considering having it done by a professional longarmer with a computerized machine. I have an idea how I would like that done as well so I'm going to get a quote.

So how long does it take to make a quilt? I bought the fabric over a couple days in 2014. I cut and made the blocks in a week in 2015. And I pieced the quilt in a week in 2018. So that's four years for a quilt top, right? :)

While I was adding the half blocks on the sides, I stitched some scraps together in between each seam. (This saves you from pulling out a few inches of thread at the end of every seam and saves you from cutting those ends at the beginning of each seam.)

I ended up with a 10" block and some units that can be used in a future block or other project. Slab blocks like this are so much fun. Sticking with one colour at a time makes them surprisingly versatile, but I have no particular plans for this one.

#Christmasiscoming

I don't know if you've noticed, but the Christmas music and commercials offering all of the things you should buy are already out. One even had the nerve to start with carolers singing Jingle Bells and the protagonist saying "Noo...it's only November" and then being convinced it is indeed time to start buying buying buying. I did not fall for that one.

But it is true that people who hand make gifts or like to make their own decorations do have to think about these things early. I don't mind if the fabric store has Christmas fabric in July. There's a good reason for that. And for whatever reason, my mind turned to Christmas about a month ago when I came across this image:

I only ever found this image. I couldn't find the source, who made it, whether it was a pattern or an item for sale. But for whatever reason, when I saw the picture, I really wanted to make this star pattern into a Christmas table topper. (Who can predict when inspiration and motivation will strike at the same time? If you could bottle that, "5 hour energy boost" would go out of business and you would be a millionaire.)

It's not surprising I was attracted to a star made from a sixteen-patch and half square triangles. It seems to be what everything I'm doing right now is made of. And it's scrappy. Need I say more?

One problem was that I had absolutely no Christmas fabric scraps. I don't mind using some non-seasonal fabrics if the colours are right, but none? That doesn't seem right. So I called my sister and asked her to bring what she had and was willing to give me. She saved my butt.

We had fun looking through all the fabrics. I had no problem adding some more reds, and then we went shopping where I picked up a few more fat quarters that I thought would work. (Ok, like 10.) We did a general sort of layout where I decided I could group the flowers/stars by colour instead of doing it completely scrappy.

I also decided that there was no need to do HST for the flying geese border. I cut 2.5x4.5 rectangles instead and sewed them together like you would sew a flying geese unit. It saved a lot of seams and made for a smoother look.

I decided I couldn't do this quilt table topper unless I laid it all out and planned where everything would go. With the restriction of the colour placement I wanted and with a piece this small, you can't sew pieces together and arrange them afterward.

In the picture above you can see the three stages of the stars. The blue is laid out but nothing is sewn. I kind of simulated the triangles that would be sewn. The red has the HSTs sewn but none of the squares are sewn together. And the green has all of the star sewn together. (Isn't it amazing how much difference in the size sewing the seams makes, even with only a 1/4" seam?)

In the border above, the rectangles are folded in half so I could see the colour progression. They look like squares but they're not. :)

Once I had the center together, I couldn't stop and put the border together as well.

It's not sewn to the center yet in this picture. I had to put that off for another day.

Here's a close up of each star:

One of the fabrics my sister brought had very fancy gold trimmed poinsettias. I didn't think they would fit in the design (and hated to cut them up), and then I had the brilliant idea to use them for the center of the stars. I love the effect.

You can see the background is made of a lot of scrappy neutrals. This is something I am learning and having fun experimenting with. I did try to group neutrals with green or red or blue in the area around the corresponding star.

After I had the border sewn on, I layered it with a piece of red damask and pin basted it. I decided not to use any kind of batting. I wanted a very flat table topper.

I've started to quilt it and so far I am pleased with how it's going. There is a ways to go, but I am confident I can get it done by Christmas season.

Linking up with Oh Scrap! on Quilting is more fun than Housework.

Dye Job (and what a job)

Once again, in an effort to clean up a corner of my house, I end up in the middle of a bigger project.

The goal was to clear off a window sill of two sweaters that have been waiting to be pulled apart in order to harvest the yarn. After a day's work, I had some nice yarn:

 Wool/angora/nylon from a Carole Little sweater

 and a kitchen-sink blend from Ann Taylor Loft:

 The yarn felt great, but I really didn't think I would use it in this yellow colour.

So I thought I would dye it before I put it away. I set the yarn to soaking and started to concoct plans and sort my supplies. I'm mostly off of KoolAid dyeing these days because the Wilton's dyes offer a lot more control and options.

I mixed up jars of icing dye, water and vinegar in yellow, pink, blue and red.

Once the yarn had soaked, I laid it out in a baking dish:

For the first skien, I poured a little dye from the jars and "smooshed" it into the yarn to make sure there was enough coverage. This looked a little muddy from the colours mixing so for the next skein, I applied the dye mixture with a toothbrush. That took a little too long and there wasn't quite enough coverage, so on the third one I did a mixture of both. Then, on only the third skein, I added some drops of straight yellow and pink icing dye in an attempt for more vivid colours.

Once the yarn was covered with dye mixture, I laid it into a casserole dish with a lid. There was enough liquid from the dye that I didn't have to worry about the yarn drying out during the heat process.

I popped the dish in the microwave and did 2 minute heat and rest cycles. The first two skeins only took three cycles (6 minutes of heat) before the water was clear and the yarn appeared hot enough (~180^).

Here's the yarn fresh out of the microwave oven:

Once it had cooked enough, I set it aside in a pie plate to cool in its own time.

After I had cooked all three skeins,  it looked like I had a weird pasta dinner going on the counter.

Once they were cooled, I rinsed them and the first two skeins were hung to dry. The third one wouldn't stop bleeding yellow, so I ended up rinsing it a lot of times. I assumed it was bleeding excess dye because I added drops of straight colour. When the rinsing wasn't really working, I put it through two more heating cycles as well. Finally it stop bleeding colour.

The colour of the rinse water was yellow or orange, but the extra processing somehow washed out all of the blue dye and caused the colours to spread and mix. The yellow was overwhelmed by the red and pink. Here are the three skeins after they had dried:

Skein 1:

The colours are muddier because they mixed more in the baking pan.

Skein 2:

Applied with a toothbrush, instead of being poured, the colours are more distinct.

Skein 3:

The colours are saturated, but all of the blue is gone and the red and pink overpowered the yellow.

That was the end of phase one.

Phase two was to overdye the skeins with blue while leaving spots of the colours from the first dye. I decided to only overdye skein 1 and 3 because they had similar yardage and it would be enough for a pair of socks.

So I tied some tight cords around the skeins every 6-8 inches or so:

You can see here, that in places I split the skein and tied the two parts in different spots:

I was trying to tie up the particularly bright spots and I wanted to make sure that all the spots wouldn't be spaced the same. (I didn't want them to "line up" when I was knitting them.)

The overdye with blue was a lot of work. Blue is a tricky colour anyway--it doesn't seem to set during the heating process. You have to let the yarn cool in the dye water and the dye seems to set more during the cooling process than during the heating.

So the actual dyeing in a pot was easy enough, but the yarn would not stop bleeding blue. Once again, I'm not sure if it was excess dye in the pot (I used quite a bit because I wanted a dark blue) or if it just wasn't sticking to the yarn.

I did multiple rounds of soaking the yarn, rinsing the yarn and heating the yarn. Finally the rinse water started to clear up.

Skein 3, which came out with the stronger blues:

and Skein 1, which was more on the teal side:

Presumably the strong yellow tones in skein 1 shifted the blue more green

And now it was time for the unveiling...what would the yarn look like under the resist ties?

I unwrapped the white yarn and didn't see much of a difference:

Before I had a chance to get too worried, I opened up the tightly wrapped yarn and saw that there was still lots of colour inside:

Here's a picture of skein 1 (left) after it was re-hanked (to mix the colours up) and skein 3 (right), where you can see the colour blocks because it was not re-hanked:

And in case you can't get enough, here they are again:

And a close up of skein 1:

Isn't that so pretty!! The colours are pretty subtle, but I think they'll add just the right punch to a pair of dark blue socks.

Still want more? Ok, here it is caked up:

This is skein 1 and 3 caked together (double stranded). Even though the two skeins came out quite different colours, they will make a beautiful blend as I knit with a strand of each held together.

Here is skein 2 caked up:

Since it was an odd yardage compared to the other two, I left it after the first dye. I decided I would use it for contrasting toes and/or heels on the socks.

In fact, here is the toe of the sock I couldn't resist casting on:

I've chosen a subtle textured pattern for the body of the sock which will be done in blue. Not too detailed since you wouldn't be able to see it on the dark yarn, but something that will break up the plain field of knitting. The scattered purl stitches should highlight the pops of colour in the blue.

And that, people, is how you clean off a window sill.

Project spectrum: July into August

Another month is gone. Project Spectrum is almost half done.

I didn't think my blue pictures lent themselves to a collage so I'm going to post them separately this month.

I got a polarizing lense for my camera and it can really make clouds pop against a darker blue sky. Here are a few:

It doesn't hurt that we have had some really amazing cloud formations the last few weeks. An ever changing delightful display.

I also took a few playing with the white balance:

It made this perfectly normally looking setting sun completely eerie.

And let's not forget my one blue project. (I guess I shouldn't feel too bad since I didn't do any green ones for June!)

Next month we move into PINK! A colour I was really into a while ago thanks to the pushing and prodding of my baby sister. I guess I haven't seen her enough lately because my pre-occupation with pink has definitely waned. Before that, I really hated pink thinking it was too cutesy and too girly for me. She let me embrace my inner girly-girl.

Here's a little collage from my archives to get us all in the mood:

Clockwise from top left corner: tulip in the garden; 3 cotton knit bibs; cotton toddler sweater; pink toddler bed quilt; fluffy chick I pull out every Easter; jewellery set; matching purses for my all my sisters to wear at the youngest's wedding (3 of the 6 anyway).

I don't know of any pink projects on the horizons, but who knows! I will also keep my eye out for pink in unexpected places. See what you can find, too!