"Yellow Star on Blue" Wall Hanging

Last time I talked about this project was April when I completed the top and basted the layers together. Then I left it hanging on the display board.

I really can't remember over what time period I worked on the quilting, but by January 7 of this year, I had the center portion quilted:

.

I marked all of the lines with disappearing ink and free motion quilted it.

I repeated the back and forth lines on the outside of the star in the center as well, except I made the lines wavy to match what was going on with the fabrics. (This piecing was an improv technique learned at the class where I originally made the center star.)

I can't say I think it looks great. Now I know.

In the yellow part, I did curves from point to point that are similar to what was done in the yellow areas of the wall hanging I have been trying to match.

The only thing left to quilt was the outside border, which would be done in a "square in a square" pattern. I thought if I put the binding on first, I could make sure the points lined up exactly on the edge. But I didn't want to tackle the binding because it included piping and that was just a step to far at that point. So it was left hanging again.

Two things pushed me to pick it back up:

1. It was listed on my UFO (UnFinished Object) list in the Ravelry quilting group. I hadn't participated in the UFO Club in the summer and fall, but signed up again in January for the winter quarter, and even signed up for the "send" group. That means, if I finish a project, people would send me a FQ!! (FQ=fat quarter, a quarter yard of fabric. Well, never mind, it's fabric!) One member went so far as to tell me she had one that she had been saving for me--she knows I like elephants so I have reason to believe I'm going to like that one! ;)

2. Joy at the Joyful Quilter issued a "Table Scraps Challenge", with extra kudos for including the Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour of the month. Although I was making this project as a wall hanging, it could easily double as a table topper. And the colour for February was yellow!

Last week, I pulled this star off of the board and took a look at what it needed. Fortunately I had cut all the remaining pieces because without them, I would not have remembered my plan at all. I chose to use blue piping instead of yellow, in part because I just didn't have any more of the bright glaring yellow that I had used on the other one.

I pulled out my Piping Hot Binding book and tool and applied four strips of piping around the edge in pretty short order.

Then I realized the difficulty with quilting the outside border. The piping is designed to lift up--it's only sewn on one side. So do I line the points up with what was visible? Do I line them up with the actual seam (which was under the piping)? Further complicating it was that if I pulled the piping far enough back to not cover any of the points, the edge of the quilt wasn't going to be caught up in the binding seam. /big sigh

I just did the best I could, balancing the need to capture the raw edge and not covering up too much of the little squares.

After that was done, I trimmed the quilt and applied the first two sides of the binding. Then, thankfully, I tried to fold the binding over the edge to see how it would look...it was too small! It also happened that the binding lined up so that a seam would land exactly at a corner--not good! Obviously, I was going to have to remove it and try again.

On another day, I gave my seam ripper a workout and removed the binding. I trimmed the quilt with the smaller setting on the tool and started again, making sure to shift where I placed the binding! No seams landed at the corners and all was good.

I gave myself one more problem before I finished...when I cut the binding to attach the end to the beginning, I measured perfectly and then cut the angle the wrong way. So instead of the two edges aligning,

they made a big empty triangle. 

Did I throw up my hands and walk away? No, I did not. I sewed in a short piece of binding to fill in the gap, thus giving myself more opportunities to practice the skill.

Then it was done. Oh wait. No. I had to sew the binding to the back, which I did by hand. That was done during daylight hours considering it was dark blue thread on busy fabric.

As with the first wall hanging, I sewed two triangles on the top corners for hanging:

You slide the ends of a dowel under the triangles and it holds the quilt up. On smaller pieces, it's a nice way to avoid having to do a hanging sleeve along the entire top edge.

And here are the two pieces together:

I have to admit I didn't really like how the blue and yellow in the outside border lined up on the two of them. (I have no memory if that was a conscious choice or if that's just the way it turned out.)

But when I displayed them side by side, I liked it a lot more:

There were several design things that went wrong on this latest piece. Some I corrected and some I left. Now that's it's finished, I think it would have been a stronger piece and a better match to the first if the light blue area around the star was filled in with dark blue squares instead. But when I made the original block,

I didn't know this was what I was going to be doing with it! :)

It was an interesting challenge to try and make a match to the first piece a few years later. I still had some of the same fabrics, but had to find substitutes for others. Some things I had to piece together to have enough (like the backing) and other things were solved by a combination--did you notice the narrow yellow border is different on the second one? I had to find a second fabric to have enough to go all the way around. I ended up piecing the fabrics together so that the original is in the  middle of each side and the new fabric is in the corners. (You can see it in the detail pictures of the piping above.)

Linking up with the Joyful Quilter February Table Scraps Runner/Topper Challenge, and

Quilting is more fun than Housework Oh Scrap!

Project summary

Started: Center block made June 21, 2018; wall hanging started February 23, 2020

Finished: February 19, 2021

Size: 18"x18"

Pattern: my own

Material: 100% scraps, almost all cotton quilting fabrics

Cotton batting.

Walking foot and free motion quilting on my Viking Sapphire.

All blog posts about this wall hanging: link

Elephants : Quilted, Bound, and Done!

Last time I showed the Elephant Squares quilt I'm making, it was being pin basted. I think the first time I found time to work on the quilting, I was supposed to be packing for a trip but Troy was napping in the bedroom. What can ya do? ("Quilt" is always the answer.)

I found a rainbow variegated thread in my stash that matched the colours. I'm not crazy about the look of variegated threads, but I was happy to use something I already had and it did match really well. It was a 30-weight (meaning thicker) thread so it did show up nicely on the front.

I put on my walking foot and stitched on both sides of each seam.

I got through the one direction in about an hour and finished the other direction on another day.

I was disappointed that even though I used the walking foot, the fabric was still distorted.

Can you see how the middle seam (from top to bottom between the pink and blue, the left polka dots and right polka dots, and then the green and pink) is lower than the seams on the left and right sides of the polka dots? It definitely was off enough that it affected the stitching going in the other direction because the seam wasn't straight anymore. I'll have to see what more I can do to control the fabric movement (on the next quilt).

I ran into one snaffu. While quilting, the edge of the backing fabric got caught up in the stitching.

I was not happy about the thought of undoing all those seams and sewing them again. (The variegated thread wouldn't match; there would be all these starts and stops in the quilting.) But then I realized that all of the fabric folded back under the sewing was excess fabric. (You always make the backing bigger than the top and cut it off at the end. It works better; trust me.)

So I took some sharp scissors and cut the fabric away right beside the seam:

Then I took a thin tool I have and ran it along the seam on the other side pulling the fabric from under the seam:

Here, no longer a problem:

I did that to the fabric everywhere it was caught under some stitching and got it all straightened out:

Ok, it looks like a mess, but that's all getting cut off anyway!

Once the quilting was done and the quilt trimmed, it was time for the binding. I had been thinking about this a lot because the colours of the front and back aren't perfectly agreeable. I thought about a red to match the backing (or some of the backing itself) but the only red on the front are a few of the elephants. Not enough for a red binding to look good.

I finally decided that I would use the blue from the front. It would match the back well enough. But when I looked, there certainly was not enough blue. (I only started with a fat quarter, after all!) My next idea was to do a scrappy binding with the four solid colours from the front. Would there be enough?

I looked at what I had:

One strip of each colour. But they were a little more than 5 inches wide and about 20 inches long. So I could get about 40 inches of 2.5 inch binding from each of them. Was that enough? I measured a side of the quilt and it was about 35 inches. Since there are four sides at 36 inches and four colours of binding with 40 inches...yes there was enough!!

I cut them up and sewed them end to end.

Since I didn't have a lot of extra, I did a perpendicular seam instead of a bias one. I might have anyway because I liked that the colour changes were straight perpendicular lines instead of an angle.

I decided to sew the binding to the back of the quilt first,

and then flip it to the front to be sewn by hand.

I had been thinking I would sew it by machine while I was making it, but near the end I had the idea to hand stitch it with some visible big stitch sewing with the variegated thread.

I like it! I had some issues sewing down the corners with the visible running stitch until I realized I should sew the miter folds of the corners before I sew the edges down with the running stitch. That fixed it.

And here is the quilt:

It's fun to step back and see all the elephants marching across the quilt. :)

Here's the back (for the record):

I used a solid thread on the back that matched the red. And yes, those are gloves on my hands. Yes, it was freezing. I couldn't feel the tips of my fingers by the time I was done taking pictures. So cold!

I did not planning at all for where the binding colours would land. Sometimes it matched a block,

and sometimes it didn't.

The only thing I did plan for was to end with a green strip so there would be less green when it got trimmed. (Sorry, green. I'm just not that into you.)

I still have to wash the quilt and make a label. But that doesn't keep it from being done. :)

Spinning Stars (fixing a quilt top)

In a few weeks, I will be going to the second annual family craft retreat. This has me focused on what I want to bring and what I may have to do to have it ready to work on (so to speak).

One project that I didn't want to just pack up and take was the quilt I'm calling Bright Stars on Black. I did a lot of work on it at the last retreat, getting it to the point that the blocks were assembled, final layout was chosen, and the horizontal rows of the top were sewn.

After I got home, I had to cut a few more pieces from the black background and got the top completely assembled.

I put it on my design wall to take a look and discovered that I had rotated the centres of a few of the blocks. I had carefully positioned them to flow with the light to dark pattern of the quilt and they had gotten rotated when I sewed the rows together.

And there the quilt hung. For quite a while.

When I wanted the design wall for another quilt, I marked all the blocks that I wanted to change and took it off the wall. I put a safety pin on the top right of each block I wanted to fix (purple circle below - obviously the quilt was off the wall and rotated by the time I took the picture). Then I put a safety pin inside the centre at the corner that I wanted to face the top right (green circle).

Some were rotated 90^ and some were 180^ and this way I would be able to keep it straight.

And there the quilt sat for quite a while.

But thinking about bringing this to the retreat and basically putting the top together again did not sit well with me. So I pulled it out and decided that if I wasn't getting around to this at the sewing machine, I would do it by hand. The sewing part would be faster by machine, but the "surgery" part of it was most of the work and would be the same either way.

I pulled it out this week and got to work. One block at a time, I took out the seams around the centre square and rotated the it so the safety pins would line up.

From the back, I pinned the centre of each side to hold the block in place.

Then I pinned one side at a time to be sewn.

Normally in hand stitching you would mark the seam, but I just followed the previous stitching line.

At the middle of each side, four seams intersected. I reinforced the two that I wasn't sewing so that the stitching wouldn't come undone. Normally it would be held in place by the crossing seam, but I didn't trust the hand sewing to do that very well and a lot of them had already "popped" open and had to be resewn.

I followed a path at each intersection to get through it all efficiently without having to start a new thread:

However far the seam had popped open, I just made sure to overlap with the previous stitches about an inch or inch and half each time. I had to do the same thing at each corner.

When I made it around all four sides, I was done!

Next I pressed the seams depending on which direction the seams around it were going. Sometimes the block fit in perfect, but a lot of times I couldn't quite continue the left-right pattern of the pieces around it. (For example, at the bottom left, two adjacent seams are both pressed down.) The good part about hand sewing is that you don't sew down the seam allowances, so I could decide which way to press the seams after the sewing was done.

A final press from the front, and the block was fixed:

I didn't count but there were maybe 6 or 7 blocks that had to be fixed. I got them all done this week, which feels great.

Then I pulled out all the little stars I made for the border.

I have to decide where all of them will go. I'll try to match the rainbow gradient of the centre of the top but I'm sure it won't work out perfectly.

I haven't decided how far I want to get this before the retreat but I did order batting for it. Which means if I get the top done, I have the supplies to quilt it (and finish it?) at the retreat. The place we're going to this year is specifically set up for quilters so there are large tables to use. That would be a lot better for basting then anything I have here. Seems like I should take advantage of that. :)

TBT - Remember these Socks?

Let's have a TBT (Throw-back Thursday) for this project that was finished last July and never shown here on the blog. In fact the last (and only) time I showed them here was when I cast on the swatch. That was March 28.

They got pushed aside (as far as writing them up here) as I got increasingly busy and didn't write a lot here through the fall. Then it was due to the lack of good pictures. I rectified that last Sunday and here we go...

As you may (or may not - I wouldn't blame you if you don't) recall, I started these socks, well first because I loved them, but also because the Vogue Knitting group on Ravelry was having an anniversary challenge: knit something from this year (2017) and something from a previous decade year ending in 7 (1997, 2007...you get it.)

So I swatched these not once,

but twice.

The first was too tight a gauge and I didn't want my socks to be too small. The little needles were also killing my hands, so I was glad to work with bigger ones.

I did take a few progress pics that were posted on IG. Apparently this was a big event:

I had completely forgotten about it, but I think I had crossed the two-stitch cable the wrong way. I raveled out those two stitches all the way down to fix it. As I now recall, it took me three times because I kept making different mistakes as I worked my way up.

But here we are:

I take it this picture was taken to show that all was well again!

I finished the first sock in mid June

and the second sock about a month later:

Then began the saga of deciding whether to add pompoms. Once that was decided (in the affirmative), which pompoms? I didn't want yarn ones and was drawn to fur poms. A recommendation on Ravelry led me to Mokuba in Toronto, to which I finagled a trip when I was home visiting family. Not until I went to put them on the socks did I realize I had mistakenly bought two poms instead of four! (facepalm moment for sure)

I was not going to go back to Mokuba so I shopped online and ended up with the cutest little pink ones.

I had in mind to use some sweet ribbon for the tie but that didn't work out. I didn't knit holes in the cuff and the ribbon didn't look good going between the stitches. But I did have some leather cord around so I tried that, a little leather and lace type look. I wove the leather cord through the cuff and glued a pink pom to both side of each end. (So I used eight, in case you're counting.)

Then I waited six months to take pictures. /crickets/

What had become part of the challenge was to take pictures that replicated (however loosely) the pose and look of the magazine shot. It was a lot of fun. So I waited for a day when all of these things came together: I felt like doing it; the weather was suitable; it wasn't so cold I couldn't stand the thought of it; I had the time; I had the energy. So mostly me and the weather I guess.

But everything aligned last Sunday and here are the results:

(C) Vogue Knitting magazine

My version.

(C) Vogue Knitting magazine

My version.

(C) Vogue Knitting magazine

My version.

Ok, not bad, right? Sometimes it pays to have a beaten up front door and concrete porch.

Here is the back of the socks where the cable pattern is decreased (from the top down) for shaping.

I made a few changes to where the decreases happened, but I'm not sure they were any better than the designer's.

Another change I made was to mirror the cables from one sock to the other. I feel it's unbalanced to have them all leaning the same way on both socks.

I also added a gusset so the heel would fit better.

I've learned that this fits my foot better, but I also observed that the socks on the model were pulling a lot across the top of her foot (opposite the heel). (You can see it in the third Vogue picture above-the cables are stretched severely from side to side.) I've had this in socks before and it is not comfortable.

Confession: I have been wearing these over skinny jeans from time to time. Feels like the look is a little young for me, but when I feel like it, I go for it anyway.

The bigger issue is that I don't have any shoes to suit the look. (The high heels were only for the pictures!)

And yes, sadly, they do fall down all the time.

(Although it's not as bad over the pants.)

Project Stats
Started: 7 May ‘17
Finished: 5 Jul ‘17
Pattern: #12 Over Knee Socks by Yoko Hatta (風工房) in Vogue Knitting Late Winter 2017
Materials: 3.5 skeins of Zealana Cozi (58% Merino, 22% Nylon, 15% Possum, 5% Alpaca) $60 (The pattern recommended 5 and I bought a spare, so I actually spent $90!)

I've been interested for a long time in knitting with possum (New Zealand possum, not North American possum - big difference apparently) so when I saw that this pattern called for this yarn, I went ahead and ordered it. I hardly ever go with the recommended yarn so this was a new experience.

I can't say it was an especially glorious experience, but the socks are very warm and I'm glad to be able to cross it off the bucket list. :)