All the Quilts; All the Time

It's perfectly normal for me to have many quilts on the go, especially since I tend to work on a quilt on and (mostly) off over at least a few years, bringing it out and packing it away for each new session. But this week I've taken it to a whole new level.

I'm sure this is the first time I've had four different quilts out and going, at the same time! Phew.

It started with an idea I had for the back of my Merrily Christmas quilt. I think I've mentioned that I wanted to make a second top to put on the back instead of a plain back. I'm not going to have many Christmas quilts about so I may as well get double duty out of this one. :)

I came across this book at the thrift store when I was visiting my mom:

and I was intrigued. Soon after I had the idea to sew up the words of the carol Joy to the World. Not so long after that, I was well on my way!

I really enjoy the improvisation of the process. The process uses strips of fabric in various widths and you build the letters up step by step, no measuring or figuring. This is my work station:

Sewing on the left, cutting/trimming in the middle, and ironing on the right, plus all the strips laid out on the parts of the ironing board I don't need to press on. Everything close and convenient. I did start to make myself stand up for pressing just so I would move around more. (I just read a book on ergonomics so it's still running through my mind.)

Making the letters is a prime opportunity to do some leader/ender sewing. The idea with leader/enders is that when you get to the end of a seam on the main project where you can't follow with another piece, you sew a seam of the secondary project. It works better to start sewing a seam when there's fabric under the needle and it saves on thread too, if you're counting that.

Well, as soon as I saw the Plaidish quilt pattern on Instagram, I knew I would be making it. You can click the link to see some samples--it's made from scraps and uses light, medium, and dark values to make a sort of plaid pattern.

The pattern was offered for free, so I downloaded it right away. Following the cutting instructions, I went through all of my scrap stash and started cutting pieces.

There are three different blocks and each requires three or four pieces so I kept them all organized in jars and whatever containers I could find while I was cutting (including an empty Kleenex box!) I got all of the pieces except a few of the dark squares from my smaller scraps! That's a win right there.

I put everything in a cookie sheet and set it by my machine so I could sew a seam whenever there was a gap in the main project.

 I had laid out some of the pieces to see if there was any way to organize the colours

but determined that with this many colours, it was just going to have to be random. But I couldn't do it all random. After sewing pairs together (like a rectangle or square to a narrow strip), I did some planning of what would be sewn to what. I wanted to maximize the contrast and not have the same fabric together in the same block.

I'm pretty far on this project by now. All of the A blocks and B blocks are sewn, and I'm working on the C blocks. Once the blocks are all sewn, I'll lay them all out to determine their placement. I'm sure I won't be able to put them together randomly.

Truth be told, I am really itching to get this one done; I'm excited by it. So sometimes I force myself to make some more letters just so I can piece more of these blocks! The letters take a lot more brain power and get tiring after a while, but having this project gets me fired up to go again the next time.

In the middle of July, I was getting a lot of quilting done on my bright stars on black quilt, including the borders, which obviously weren't quilted the way they were marked!

But then we had company coming and I thought that we might want to use the living room (where I was working) so I rolled it up and put it on a chair:

Which is were it has been sitting. I have the majority of the quilting done, but I was slowing down because I knew I couldn't get any further before I made the brightly coloured flange I was going to put along the binding.

Well. While I was going through the scraps for the Plaidish quilt, I came across a nice pile of leftover brights. So I started cutting them up too.

They are mostly left over from the bright diamonds quilt I made, and the pieces that were already cut into strips were the width I was going to use. Boom. That saved me a lot of cutting. After getting it cut, I measured about 500 inches of strips, so that will be enough to go around my 95 inch square quilt. Next step is to decide what is going where and to piece the lengths together.

And. Then. I could no longer wait to work on my Lucy Boston quilt. I had bought the solids I wanted for the sashing in July with my sister. (She patiently helped me pick out the perfect shades of grey among the many options. And then once we had a group picked, I saw three on the shelf that blended much better. They had more of a brown tone than the others, which is what I was trying to avoid, but the blend was so good, I went with it. So a lot of fussy work to narrow it down and then a 3 second decision to go with this other set. I told you she was patient with me.)

Another reason this project was on hold was that I was debating using another system than cutting shapes with a template and gluing the fabric to paper shapes. Linda Franz has a system she calls Inklingo where you print lines on the fabric for cutting and for sewing. This way you can sew the pieces together without the steps of gluing it to paper and removing the paper later. It was very tempting because it's a very slick system. But the very fact that I hadn't gotten to it was telling me that it was not the method for me. I enjoy the paper method.

So, I cut some strips and then cut some honeycombs:

I'm not going to cut them all out because I need over 1,300. I'll make them as I go. I got enough to start putting them on the first block,

 and just finished it last night.

One down, 55 to go.

I missed having a project to sew while sitting on the couch too brain-tired to sew more letters. And I missed working on these blocks. Besides, football starts tonight so I need some hand work to do! This project should be more than enough to keep me busy through the football season.

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.