A Day of Quilting

...but it's not what you think.

My sister and her family came for a visit over the Canada Day/July 4 holidays. She and I had planned on a half-day of working on a quilted wall hanging kit that we had each bought a year or two ago. Monday morning we got the machines set up and started to work on it.

When asked, her daughter and son said they would like to work on a project too. Her daughter wanted to work by machine, so I got her set up on my extra one. I had her choose some of my 2.5" strips and got her going on strip piecing.

I even had her working with the rotary cutter and she did well.

Anything I told her, she put into practice on the next step. It was amusing to overhear her talk herself through each step. I could tell she's been around quilting because she was familiar with the lingo and was able to evaluate each block on whether her points were matching well enough or if she should redo it.

Pretty soon she had some very good 4-patches:

While trying out a layout for a top, she decided she didn't have enough and set herself up for making some more.

Her brother wanted to sew by hand, so he worked on a 9-patch (on and off) all day.

You may have seen this one on Instagram.

He also chose fabrics from my 2.5" strips. But we subcut into 2.5" squares first, then he laid out his blocks. I had him trace a 1/4" seam on the squares to help him with his seam allowance. Every time he finishes a seam, I showed him which one to sew next.

He was very proud when his block was done:

He didn’t work on it steady so I wondered if his interest had waned, but no--as soon as the one was done, he asked if he could start the next. (Well, of course!)

And in case you aren’t impressed enough, I even had them furling their seams:

Yes, they did all their own pressing too.

Meanwhile, his sister had put together her top:

But I found out she wasn't done...she wanted to add borders. Well, ok! She looked through my fabric and found one that would work. (And that I would let her use. Let's be honest--I wasn't giving over my latest favourite batiks!)

I showed her how to measure the top in three places and to use the average for cutting the length of the border and that you add it to two ends at a time. In no time, she had it finished:

Something to be proud of!

And that is how I didn't get much sewing done but had a very enjoyable day of quilting!

Cardinal Nine Patch: Finished!

Spotted "in the wild." As soon as I had the last stitch
in the binding, this quilt was on the bed!

You know my nine patch quilt is done, since I've already told you so all that's left to do is to sum up and show lots of pictures!

Troy was willing and available to help me hang the quilt. Thank goodness, because there was no way I could manage this big thing on my own. My porch came with nails along the inside edge (presumably from the last person's lights or decorations) and at some point I realized they would be perfect for hanging a quilt. I use binder clips to hold the quilt. They're strong enough, but just barely. All this is to say that you can't just start at one end and clip, clip, clip. You have to hold up the weight of the quilt until you get enough clips on, etc. So all this is to say, thank you, Troy, for helping.

Of course, once I got him involved, he couldn't leave the quilt alone!

Obviously it needed a good inspection. :)

Here's a view of the quilting from the front:

and the back:

I was disappointed with how the colours look in the photographs. In real life this quadrant, for example, just glows with oranges and yellows.

In the picture, you can barely tell that there are oranges and yellows there. It's also hard to see the progression of colours and their organization into an orange quadrant, green quadrant, blue quadrant and purple/pink quadrant.

But you can see the general pattern of darker blocks in the centre and lighter blocks on the outside...until you get to the last row on the right and left. That's where, after hours of placing each block just so, my sister and I threw on two more rows when I realized I had extra blocks and decided to make the quilt a rectangle!

Let's look again at the binding that I put on the quilt:

A pieced checkerboard to finish the edge without boxing in the design.

On the back, the pieced border is attached to a strip of fabric to reduce bulk and make sewing easier:

Here is a shot of the entire back:

Calculations showed that I would need nine yards (yes the whole nine yards) of fabric to cover the back and I couldn't imagine buying that much more to finish this quilt. So I pieced together some leftover blocks and some extra of the red fabrics I had collected. I thought a nine patch would be the way to go with this quilt. :)

When I ran out of pieces big enough to do a section, I used smaller pieces of mostly similar reds to make nine patches for the remaining two corners. I wanted reds close enough that they would essentially read as the same colour, but with enough contrast that you could still see the nine patch. Because, you know, more nine patches.

Here is a final view of the entire quilt.

Since Troy was helping out, I could get a picture of myself with the quilt. :)

Project Stats and Facts:

• There are 255 nine patches on the front of the quilt.
• That means there are 2,295 2" squares, plus another 96 used for the binding.
• I spent 10 hours at the long arm store doing the quilting.
• The project was started in July, 2016 and finished in March, 2017. (Pretty quick for me.) I started it thinking it would be a slow project over many years. Then I got obsessed...
• Most of the blocks are hand sewn, although any with batik fabrics were done by machine.
• I worked on the quilt in two countries, at least six houses, my car, two churches and a library.
• A lot of the squares are from true scraps and leftovers, but I also purchased some 2.5" "charm packs" that appealed to me. Most of the reds were cut from my ever-added-to-and-never-used red fabrics.
• Originally referred to by the practical moniker "Red Nine Patch" because there is red fabric in every block, I changed the name to "Cardinal Nine Patch" because an early plan was that the nine patch blocks were going to be the "back drop" for a beautiful batik fabric I bought--deep red with a black cardinal design. As I worked, the nine patches took over and now I'll have to think of another project for the cardinals!

Nine Patched: Trimmed and Bound

Last time I wrote about my Cardinal Nine Patch, it was quilted and waiting to be trimmed. I was looking for a place to do it because you really do need to layout the whole quilt. Right now I have no space in my house where I could do that.

I debated bringing it to my church which has rooms I could use, but it's too far away to just run there for an evening if I don't have to.

And then I thought about my local library, which seems to do a lot more than lend books. (I've noticed they have a lot of local groups that meet there regularly and it was there I participated in a free exercise program. It was the one that convinced me I am never going to do an exercise class again. I truly hate it.)

Back to the quilt...I called them up and explained that I was hoping to use a large room to do this one step on my quilt. She checked the calendar and told me they had a room free for me to use. Hot dog. So that night, I packed up the quilt (I had to use my largest rolling suitcase), my cutting mat and cutter and whatever else I thought I needed. What I did not bring was my camera so these pictures from my phone may not display very well.

The room did give me space to layout the quilt when I moved a few chairs out of the way:

I measured it in three places in both directions to see if it was mostly even. I think neither side was more than a half inch difference. Over 90-100", I thought that was ok. (The diagonal measurements checking for square were further off, but there's less I could do about that.)

Once I decided where to cut, I then crawled along on the floor with my cutting mat, ruler, and cutter trying to cut a straight edge on all four sides that was square with all the other sides.

In theory, I should be able to follow the edge of the quilt but real life is not that simple. Some places stretch out, some are pulled in, and so it goes. If you have a solid border of any width, you can even it out pretty easily. But I didn't want to cut into my squares very much because the difference in size would have been very obvious. (And for the hand sewn squares, it would have made the seams become unstitched!)  I made compromises and did the best I could.

Then it was time to think about the binding. I told you I had a great innovative idea and now I would see if it would work.

First I took extra 2.5" squares that I had from the quilt and pieced them into long rows, alternating lights and darks.

I also cut long strips of a solid fabric, wide enough to give me a final binding of 2.5"

I cut the long strip of squares in half and then sewed them to a strip of solid fabrci:

Here is a shot of the back after I stitched the seam:

The seams were pressed to the side so they would nest with the seams on the quilt.

After pressing the long seam toward the solid fabric, I had some 2.5" binding ready to go...

The great advantage of sewing a solid piece of fabric to the squares is that I wouldn't be sewing through the multiple layers of the seams when I sewed the binding to the back. The solid piece was wider than the squares and would carry past the fold. Oh, and it meant I didn't have to sew as many squares together!

Now that the binding was ready, I needed more space again. I would be sewing along all four sides of the quilt and there was no way I was going to be able to handle that in the space I have. Fortunately, a couple events came up so I was busy in town for the morning and evening of the same day, but had all afternoon to kill.

I brought everything I needed to the church and set myself up with four long tables. Yes, it took that many to be able to move this quilt around without it wanting to pull itself to the floor.

Then I started on the work, first pinning the binding to the quilt, one strip for each side. I was so eager to try out the binding and see if all my squares would line up, I forgot to fold the binding in half!

Fortunately I noticed before I sewed the seam. In the above picture, the solid fabric was folded up so the raw edge met the top edge, yielding a double binding strip. Then I could sew it.

Since I wanted all the checkerboard squares to line up, I didn't think I could do a continuous binding. I just didn't think I could figure out the exact length I would need to turn the corner and match the next intersection.

So I sewed a separate strip to each side and then did something I've never done before--sewed a mitered corner. I sewed a "V" shaped seam on the wrong side so that when I turned the corner right side out, I had a nice sewn mitered seam:

(I may or may not have used the hashtag "micdrop" when I posted this on Instagram. I was excited...)

Although it's pretty slick and I get the impression that it's what the judges want in juried shows, I'll stick to my folded continuous binding method. Since I have to trim the seam so close to the stitching line to reduce bulk, I think this method is actually less durable that the unsewn corner.

I managed to finish sewing all of the binding and corners in the time that I had that afternoon. When I left, all I had to do was sew the binding down on the backside. It was a long process, so it made it to a couple IG posts:

When I just started and had 382 more inches to go.

Nearing the end and on the home stretch...

But finally, last night, at well past my bedtime, it was done!!

I couldn't imagine a better binding for this quilt:

I love it.

It's Small and Fast and Sneaks up on You

Nope that's not the start of a juvenile joke I know. But it does describe the quilt I made last weekend.

Ya, one weekend, one quilt. Take that, Eleanor Burns.

It all started with the idea that I could use the leftover nine patch blocks from my big nine patch quilt for a baby quilt. (I have a coworker who is expecting.) I played with the blocks on my coffee table and decided I was on to something. Since I found fabric for the alternating solid squares in Missouri, I was all set.

Saturday turned into a free day for sewing, and sew I did. It turns out I didn't have enough nine patches by about half so I had to make 10 more. That was because I realized I couldn't use just any of the nine patches--for a proper design, I needed to use ones that had five dark squares, not four dark squares.

This creates the strong diagonal lines across the quilt. So I fished out some of the 2.5" squares left over from the big quilt and made sets for 10 more blocks. I also cut into some of the scraps I had just purchased in Missouri, like the reds in these two blocks:

And used some of the mini charms I bought, like these darling puppies:

And, after a time, I had this quilt:

It's about 36" square. That size, partly because I like the 6x6 block arrangement better than a 6x5 or 6x7, but also because that's about all you can get on a one-yard piece of fabric for the backing! As it was, I was very close on a couple of the edges. Fortunately with a smaller quilt, it's easier to make sure things are centered and that you haven't lost part of the backing in the layering process.

For the quilting, I kept it simple by following the grid lines suggested by the nine patches:

I marked the lines on the solid squares with a water soluble marker. I generally avoid stitching in the ditch (which is sewing right in the seam line) because it's not as easy as it is simple, but that's what this quilt needed so that's what I did. (Sometimes quilts are so bossy.)

A lot of times this quilt layout (called "Irish chain") is quilted in diagonal lines along the diagonal lines of the red squares and then a special motif is put in the solid squares. But that is not the type of quilting for me (right now). I wanted to fill the space simply and consistently.

Originally I bought the navy airplane fabric to go on the front but it didn't work at all with the nine patches. Fortunately, the light airplanes worked much better. This left the navy for the back.

It's pretty dark for my taste, but it's cute enough to make up for it. But it definitely meant I was not going to bind in the navy because I wanted at least the contrast of a lighter border.

I decided to try machine stitching the binding. Not something I've had the best of luck with in the past. This time I stitched the binding to the back of the quilt and folded it over to the front. I cut the binding 2.25" wide which made sure it was a little longer in the front and the stitching line would be in the field of the backing fabric. In other words, I wouldn't have to try and line it up with the edge of the binding on the back.

So I folded it to the front so I could sew it on the front and see what I was doing on the "good side." The navy thread blended so well into the backing fabric that I felt any wiggly lines wouldn't be noticeable.

In fact, besides one or two spots in the beginning where I did "jump" onto the binding on the back, the stitching all looked pretty good from the back and front. Maybe I'm getting better at this! And it helps that with the quilting lines I did, this extra row of stitching on the edge blended right in and just looked like another quilting line. I think it looks pretty good from the front too. :)

The baby's not due until mid-May, so I am done with plenty of time for this gift! Oh wait. I still have to make and attach the label. I guess I still have a chance at "last minuting" this gift....

Putting it Together, Front and Back

<= This is how I spent a lot of January: watching football playoffs and sewing all my nine patches together. (Two of my favourite things, so yay!)

First I sewed all the seams in one direction (without cutting the thread between pieces) and I could throw the top over the couch and it (almost) looked like it was done.

But of course, it wasn't done yet. Only about half.

So I doggedly worked on the seams in the other direction. As I did so, I had to decide which way to sew the opposing seam allowances. Notice (below) the longer horizontal seam just in front of the needle:

Does it go forward or back?

You have to look at the seam on the opposite side of the square--if it goes forward, then the one you're sewing goes back, as seen below.

You could also say that they are both going away from the middle of the square. If, on the other hand, the other seam goes back, then you sew this one forward (and they both go toward the center of the square). Got it?

What also helps, is that the direction is always going to alternate from one square to the next, so I could get into a rhythm if I wasn't interrupted by replays.

Once I had the whole top together, I was left with long horizontal and vertical seams that needed to be pressed:

But I couldn't press them until I picked all the seams inside the seam allowance to allow me to furl every single last one of them. That got me a whole quilt that looked like this:

It really is a shame all of that great care has to be hidden on the inside of the quilt, but that's how it is.

After I sewed around the outside to stabilize it and pressed it, I threw it over my couch and I had a finished top:

Yell a cheer (woo hoo!), take a breathe (in...out) and then on to the next step: piecing a back.

I checked my numbers a few times, but the back of the quilt really was going to take over 9 yards of fabric. I still can't really wrap my mind around that. I certainly didn't have nine yards of one fabric to use and I was not interested in buying a piece for it. So I looked through my box of red fabrics and started on a plan.

The plan started with some leftover nine patch blocks that weren't used in the top. Instead of doing solid nine patches, I alternated them with squares of one fabric.

After sewing all the seams, I was left with some pressing decisions. On the first seams (vertical in the picture below), I chose to iron toward the solid piece of fabric. Makes sense because I don't want to press a seam back on itself if I don't have to.

But now if I try to do the same thing on the horizontal seams, it leads to trouble at the intersections. In order to furl the seam allowances, they have to all go in the same direction (clockwise or countercw) and that's not going to happen if I press toward the solid square.

So it was time to choose my poison: press seams back on themselves on all the nine patches in order to furl the intersections OR press seams back on themselves on half the nine patches by pressing the seam in one direction. Both would lead to some bulky spots. This was on the back of a quilt where there were already a lot of seams on the front. If they all lined up in an unfortunately way, it could lead to problems when sewing through all the layers.

So I choose a third bottle of poison: I cut the seam allowances and pressed them all away from the nine patches. There were still some bulky spots, but not as many. So I snipped on one side of the intersection:

and then pressed:

A compromise I was  happy enough with.

You can see the checker board section in the centre of my pieced backing:

which is essentially a giant nine patch!

I was going to cut the four dark corners from the same fabric because I had plenty of it. I had enough of it that I used it for the plain squares alternating with the nine patches in the middle. (Cue the ominous music...) Yes, after I had pieced the middle section, I cut out the large pieces for the other sections and did not have enough to do all four corners. Apparently I used just enough for the centre section that I was short, by about 3". :( If only I had really measured because then I could have used a different fabric in the middle and the four corners would have matched.

So enter another compromise, I mean solution. I didn't have enough of any one red to cut out the third and fourth corner pieces. So I cut smaller squares of a bunch of fabrics and made nine patches of similar reds to use on the last two corners. Are my nine patches in nine patches in nine patches getting fractal yet?

In the end, I did manage to put together a back for this quilt. It was sized about 6" bigger on all sides which is what I needed. And I met my very firm goal of not buying more fabric for the back.

When Good Enough is Good Enough

Last time I showed my Cardinal Nine Patch it was hanging on the design wall, which turned out not to be big enough.

I took all the blocks down, more or less in order, and then took them all with me to my mom's when we went home for Christmas. After all the excitement and festivities, my sister and I had an afternoon to hang out at the church and use the large floor in their fellowship hall. My sister worked on cutting for one of her quilts while I worked on laying out this getting-to-be-overwhelming project.

First I laid out the blocks I had on the design wall (the far side of the photograph, on the floor near the table). Then I laid out the rest of the blocks. I started on the table, but of course that was not big enough and then laid them out on the floor. My niece helped with that and we put one in the center of each floor tile. Because OCD tendencies don't run in this family for nothing!

I then looked and looked and thought and hemmed and hawed and decided that I just had to start over. For one thing I didn't see how I was going to work all of those loose blocks into the existing layout. (There's a reason for that but I'll get to that in a minute.)

The second thing was that I had noticed that I had a lot more blocks on the light end of the spectrum than dark. So although I would prefer to have the quilt move from light in the center to dark on the outside, that didn't make sense if I had more light blocks.

So I started a new layout a few feet away with the darkest blocks in the center and worked out from there. I started with the orange tones in one quadrant. I shifted to yellow on one side and green on the other.

Each time I finished a section or got stuck, I pulled Kim from her cutting and we talk it through. It took a couple hours (really) but we ended up with something that mostly followed the light to dark pattern and the colour gradations I was thinking of.

We had to accept a lot of decisions that were "good enough" though. The blocks available weren't always in the colours we needed. I really did no planning as I sewed scraps together so this wasn't really a surprise. One thing I didn't think about was the decision to make nine patches instead of four patches or sixteen patches--this meant that block placement was constrained by whether it had five dark squares or four dark squares. If I had done four- or 16-patches, I could have put any block in any position. File that under "Live and Learn".

Since the whole idea was to make a scrappy quilt, none of this was a tragedy.

The big surprise after all my counting, figuring, and writing things down--I had left over blocks!! I didn't count them but in the neighbourhood of 12 to 20 leftover. This is after we decided to throw an extra row on the top and bottom just to make the quilt more rectangular. All I can say is it's better that it was too many instead of too few. (And now I have some starters for the next project!)

I found the last photograph a little hard to get a good view of the whole quilt, so I did some work in Photoshop to adjust the angle and proportions:

I think it's a little harder to see in the photograph than in real life, but the orange dominates the lower left. Green takes over the top left and shifts to blue in the upper right. I didn't really have enough purples, but they mix with the blues in the middle right and shift into some pinks as you move down. I had to mix in more greys in the purple and pink section so it's not quite as colourful as the other side where the oranges are.

The red doesn't anchor the quilt like I thought it would. Next time I would/will definitely stick with one tone of red (all mediums or all darks, for example) and let that be consistent while the rest of the colours change.

I converted the above picture to black and white to get a look at the contrast and tones:

It does generally move from dark in the center to light on the outside. You can really see the top row was added later as there are many more blocks with dark squares than the second row.

I don't think it is the most "successful" layout these blocks could make, but I was pretty happy with it at the time. I thought about redoing it to incorporate the blocks from the top and bottom rows better, but I think in this case good enough really is good enough.

I started to sew the blocks together, and so many of them still please me so much. I think I will really enjoy this quilt sitting over my lap or when I'm laying under it and can just see small bits of it. It's really not made to hang on a wall. So, yes, good enough is good enough.

It was good to have Kim helping me. First of all, she was the one to give me the push I needed to get out of my mom's comfie living room and go to the church to work on it. And she gives good advice that I often take, but she doesn't mind when I ignore it to do what I want on my own quilt! :)

Kim hamming it up.

As I said, I started to sew these blocks together. I have five or six columns sewn together. I thought I was doing well when sewing the first two columns together, to mind which direction the seams were going in so they can all interlock correctly. Well, I noticed I did well on all but the top row. So I need to remove those blocks, take them apart, and then sew them back together in the right orientation and then carry on. Yup, that's where the project is stalled. (My excuse is that the overhead light was disconnected while Troy was doing some electrical work.)

I expect I'll get back to it soon. I'm hoping this will be my first quilt on a long arm machine after my lesson on January 13. So I have to get it together and then figure out a backing. (Perhaps that's where my extra nine-patches will be used!)