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?

Mug Rug Swap (2018)

I've mentioned the quilting group on Ravelry that I'm a part of, Quilters Knitting. This summer they organized a mug rug swap and I jumped on board. Sign ups were closed June 15 and the mug rug had to be delivered by August 15. (In their hands, not in the mail.) One person organized it so that we were all given a person to send to and someone else would send to us.

The last week of July, I received this beauty:

Isn't it so wonderful?! Here is the back, nicely "signed":

And here are some detail shots of the quilting.

She said she is new to free motion quilting and pieces like this are great to practice on.

She did a great job.

Meanwhile, I had already been working on my mug rug. I had bought a pack of english paper piecing papers on sale when the local quilt shop closed earlier this year. I knew I'd do something with them!

June 9: The papers were small diamonds for making a star pattern. I pulled out some fabrics, covered some papers, and started playing with a design.

Soon I had the design laid out,

except I needed to make special pieces to make a straight edge. I simply took the three pieces needed to fill the space (bottom of picture below) and taped them together to make one piece (upper piece in picture below).

Then I could cover that one piece with fabric and save myself a bit of sewing. There was no need to make all those pieces separate.

By the end of the day, I had pieced together the centre star with the background pieces.

Isn't it so cute!?

June 10: All the pieces are sewn together and it is time to take out the papers:

Even though the diamonds were very small, I still punched a hole in the middle to make it easier to pull them out. After loosening the glue holding the fabric to the paper, I insert the seam ripper under that paper through the hole and pop the paper out. This is not only easier but saves a bit of wear and tear on the edges of the fabric.

Once all the papers are out, the pieces looks a little ragged,

but nothing that a session with an iron won't fix.

Look at all those furled intersections! I love it. This happens automatically, as long as you wrap your fabric around all the papers in the same direction.

This was a nice trial to see if ironing the fabric before washing out the glue would harm the iron or cause any other problems. It all worked fine and now I know I can do this on my Lucy Boston blocks if needed.

I did, however, go ahead and soak the piece to get out the glue before proceeding. After drying and ironing, everything looked neat and trim:

Next stage is to layer it with batting and a backing.

June 11: The quilting is done. I hand quilted it, outlining the individual pieces in thread that matched the colour of the front.

I had enough of one of the blues to use for the binding. It was a small piece, however, so I had to use a few short cuts of fabric.

The first time I tried to sew it on, I got a seam of the binding in the corner three times. So I took off the binding and started in a different place so the seams would land in the middle of a side instead.

Here is the backing that I chose to go with the binding:

It was a beautiful piece of orange and blue batik. I only had a small piece, but it was enough for this.

Here you can see some of the design made on the back by the different colour threads:

And here is the finished piece.

A mug rug in three days. I was done in plenty of time for the deadline, but then I decided to enter it in the county fair. So my poor recipient was forced to wait. On the good side, it did get a blue ribbon! :)

I mailed it yesterday and my recipient should have it by Thursday (August 9 - so plenty of time before the deadline!) I really loved making this piece and the final result, so I hope she likes it. I know she really likes stars in quilts, so I think I'm safe.

Block 9: Gingham Block

This is a simple block that I assumed would take a lot of work because there are a lot of tiny pieces. It turned out not to be too bad! I worked on it while my sister was visiting. I wasn't sure if I was going to hand sew it, but not surprisingly, I did. It's just so easy to pick up the hand sewing and do it while we're talking, etc.

I remembered to take some in-progress pictures this time, so I can show you how I put this simple block together. I sewed across the rows without cutting my thread (although I did anchor the thread at the beginning and end of each block).

Below you can see that several seams are sewn and I am working on adding another row across the top. I'm half way through sewing on the fourth block and still have to add the pink block and the plaid block to the last two columns.

Here all the horizontal seams are sewn. Since I didn't cut my thread between blocks, they are held in place--sort of basted together.

It makes it very easy to sew the remaining seams. There's no mixing up the blocks or confusing how the rows go together. Here the block is turned 90 degrees so the vertical seams were the ones done first, and I have two of the cross seams done.

I think you can see how it is coming together.

Here is the completed block:

The fabrics are extremely thin and I think I will back this block with a piece of white material to give it some extra support.

Here is the back:

I made sure to start and stop each seam in the first step 1/4" from the edge. This meant that I could flip the direction of the seams at every junction and open up the intersection so that they lie flat. Here's a close up:

I've shown this before and I'm becoming quite enamoured of this step. (That's probably becoming obvious to you!)

Here are the blocks in a sample virtual layout:

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Kim's block is a stunner this week. :)

I will take credit for getting her to use the orange/brown/green bubble fabric in this block. I was imagining the fabric put together with solids, but Kim took it up a notch by using it with two other polka dots. I really love it.

Block 8: Simple Star

Oh, are those frollicking elephant puppies on a yellow
background? Yes, yes they are.

There are several star blocks in this quilt. I think there is one named for each season and then this one, simply called "Simple Star". It is about the most basic star pattern so the name is apt.

I hosted a debate on my Facebook page once on whether if something was "deceptively simple" that meant it was easy but looked hard or hard but looked easy. I'm not sure we ever settled it so I can't tell you if this block was deceptively simple or deceptively hard, but I basically did it twice since I had to redo so many steps.

First thing I did after pulling out all the fabric, was cut apart the wrong piece for the star points. The star points start as a larger square and the first thing you do is mark some lines and then cut it into quarters. Well, I confused my fabrics and cut up the wrong square. I noticed this on the next step when it didn't match up with what I was supposed to sew it to.

I guess that's what happens when you cut your fabric ahead of time and then don't mark what the pieces are going to be used for.

Then a lot of the pieces that make up the border (with the star points again) didn't come out to the right size so I resewed some seams to adjust that. This was pretty easily done since I could resew the seam with the old stitching in place and then pull out the first seam afterward. (Can I say again how easy it is to rip out hand sewing compared to machine sewing! It's also less damaging to your fabrics.)

But then all the pieces were the right size, I cut out a new blue square for the center and everything went together beautifully. I like the soft look of the square and that the blue ears of the elephants match so well with the blue fabric in the center. (Did you notice what that fabric is? Little red riding hood. There are little wolves concealed in the print.)

And here is the mock (or virtual) layout with all the blocks so far:

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Here is my sister Kim's block:

Aren't those pretty colors!?

Block 7: Feed and Seed Block

Ok, is that not the cutest bunny in the middle ever!!
And you can see my frolicking elephant "puppies".

I'm not sure how the block name relates to the design, but that's ok. This was an intricate piece of work.

I stitched it by hand again. I had to work around one spot where the designer had you stitch some pieces together and then cut it apart, but with a little finagling I got it done.

The block ended up "mostly" 6 inches. It is not really square and is a bit slanted. I'm thinking of ways to fix this with the sashing because I really don't think these blocks are going to just sew together nicely. Too much variance. But I have a plan cooking on the back burner.

I love that the pink and greens are the same value or tone and blend together a lot. And then the dark blue adds a little punch. I feel like the block would have been more cohesive if I used orange instead of pink because of the orange tone in the background, but I really didn't want it to be too matchy. So pink it was. (And I was dying to use some of that elephant fabric. Did I tell you I bought it in three colours?!)

Here is the mock layout with the additional block:

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Here is Kim's block:

I think hers has a little more punch to it all around. Very dramatic.

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.