Joy to the World Continues

I finished making all the words for my Joy to the World quilt (back of the Merrily Christmas quilt). I got as far as the first four lines of the verse and thought that was probably enough; I didn't need the last line to make the point and I thought things might be getting too crowded. (And I hear you should always leave them wanting more! :)

To test my theory, I took the Merrily Christmas quilt and laid out the words on the back of it. That way I could see exactly how the words would fit in the space.

I moved them around a bit and liked the result. To record the positions, I took pictures of all the spaces with a ruler laid out. Both word spacing:

 and line spacing:

It's hard to read like this, but zooming in on my camera works just fine. And we're not dealing with very precise measurements. Once I had numbers for the length/height of each word and the spaces, I laid out a plan in Excel.

I already had some 10"x10" squares made so that is why I used blocks of that size across the top and bottom. The other areas were broken into chunks that I could make separately and put together like a puzzle. The four outside strips (including the top which was broken down into 10"x7" pieces on the plan) will be continuous strips of one fabric. (Or one fabric each side.)

I started with the smaller spaces between the words. Then I started to make chunks of "made fabric", attach them to the words, and put them together.

 This is what my work station looked like:

Tiny pieces on the side table (in the lid), strips in the container, and larger chunks to the side of the machine. I enjoy the raised work table for the flat sewing surface, but sometimes I think the best part is that I can keep stuff on the table and it won't encroach on the sewing area. (I also have two levels to hold stuff.)

In a little while, I had this much done:

Felt like a lot when I finished sewing but doesn't look like as much when I see the whole quilt top!

I really wanted a design wall so that I could see how it was coming together, what colours (maybe "shades" would be more accurate?) or accents I may need to add to keep it balanced, etc. But I really couldn't think of any place in the house. When I decided to settle for the spare bed, I realized it should work fine. Right now, anyway, I don't have to lay out the whole quilt, just the centre part, and it fits on the bed just fine.

Part of why I wanted to take a break from sewing is that I was loosing track of what reds I had. When I went though my fabrics, I had sorted out some smaller chunks (smaller than a fat quarter), which I would use in this quilt, and fat quarters/larger chunks, which I would store with the other fat quarters. But when I started sewing, I found three piles! What was the third pile? I'm not sure but it might have been a pile of additional fat quarters that I decided to use in the quilt. Obviously I lost track of what I was doing!

Anyway, skip ahead to where I laid out all the fabrics I had:

Now I know exactly what I have and won't cut into a larger piece when I have a smaller piece of the same fabric. It looks pretty and organized now -- I'm sure it will be a big pile of mess once I get sewing again, but in the mean time I feel like I'm on a little firmer ground to start again.

#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.

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!

...and a Coaster

This is really a postscript to my last post. I forgot to include a cute little coaster that I made with a "slab" of red fabrics. This was my warm up project before I made the mug rugs.

I used a leftover piece of batting that was cut off of my orange and grey zig zag quilt. And for the backing, I used the fabric from that quilt which was still attached to the batting.

The size was limited by the size of the batting and backing that I had. It's a little smaller than I would have made it otherwise but I'm ok with that.

I added some straight line quilting. The lines are probably even close enough together to be considered match stick quilting.

I changed the direction of the lines one time to match an angle of a piece on the front.

The coaster has been put to use at work. I'm glad to finally replace the coaster I inherited from the last person--it had a picture of a man in a kilt doing a reverse Marilyn. And no, you didn't have to wonder if he was wearing anything under his kilt as his bare backside was showing! I have been using the coaster upside down for years, but I'm much happier using this new one. :)

Quilt Blocks Squared

At O'Hare airport

I have been rather obsessively sewing my red nine-patch blocks whenever I have a chance, including when Troy is driving and during the bus ride and flight I had recently. And lots of time on my couch in the late evenings, of course.

I don't have a count of how many I have sewn but I am keeping track of how many I have cut out. I divided the squares into two groups first: red and not-red. Then each group was separated into four categories from light to dark

Then I mix and match them with the lighter reds going with the darker not-reds, etc. I also make sure that I have equal number of squares with four dark patches and five dark patches because in the final quilt, you need half of each.

While I was at my sister's, she let me go through her scraps. She always says she doesn't have many and doesn't keep small pieces, but I found plenty to work with! I didn't cut any yardage she had; just the leftover bits. I cut 2.5" strips whatever length I could get (anywhere from 2.5" to width of fabric). When I got home, I cut them crosswise into 2.5" squares:

Isn't that a wealth of scraps!! I was just itching to use them up! It was fun to have fresh fabric to pair up with contrasting pieces.

Following are pictures of all the squares done so far on my flannel wall. I tried to lay them out in pattern, but for some of the groups, I had more of one layout than the other. Don't worry...I've cut out and set up the right pieces, but they haven't been sewn yet.

Light reds with medium-dark not-reds

Medium-light reds with dark not-reds

Medium-dark reds with light not-reds

Dark reds with medium-light not-reds

I think you can see how even though there are lots of colours, you will still get the checkerboard effect because of the light and dark values of the fabrics.

Right now I am thinking they will be arranged in the quilt either in a gradation of light blocks to dark, or maybe more of a colour wash--yellow toned blocks moving into orange into green, etc. while the red remains a constant. I think there will be a lot of playing with this one when the blocks are done!

I'm planning on 15 blocks on a side so that is 225 blocks. I'm pretty close to having enough pieces cut out but I have quite a bit of sewing to do!! Most of these are hand sewn just because I can take it with me and I enjoy doing it on the couch while watching TV/Netflix. But I'm not handsewing the batiks so they are all done on the machine. I also can't imagine doing the long seams by hand when I will be assembling the top. But we'll see...

I'm still excited about this crazy quilt of mine. It's a fun experiment in "what happens if I..."

New Project: Nine Patch in Reds

I've been reading more quilting blogs that use scraps and taking note of the way they organize their scraps and keep them ready to use.

One thing a lot of people do is cut them to set sizes. That way your pieces are ready to use and manageable and basically you make yourself some precuts.

Recently, I took a bunch of my scraps that weren't in big enough chunks to use for much else and cut them into 1.5", 2" and 2.5" strips. There are lots of patterns to show how to use strips to make all sorts of quilt designs.

And smaller pieces, I cut into 2.5" squares. Here a few leftover from the Nocturne Star quilt (which was made from a lot of leftovers itself):

I've also picked up a few mini charm packs (also known as "candy"):

Mini charms (or "candy") are 2.5" squares.
Charm packs are 5" squares, hence the mini-charm.

They are hard to resist at only $4-$5 each. (I bought the first one (top right) because I thought it might be helpful in my Farm Girl Vintage quilt but I never ended up using it. But once I had one, others were quick to follow.) They give a good variety of fabric, but all from one fabric line so they will coordinate.

In reading some quilting blogs I saw a nine-patch design that piqued my interest. I can't find it now but it was mostly nine-patches with a larger feature block in the top middle of the quilt. The main point is that it got my mind going and I decided finally to do a "red" quilt.

I have been collecting red fabrics (fat quarters and half yard pieces) since I've been buying quilting fabric. It always catches my eye and I find it hard to resist. I've always had in mind to combine it with other colours and either do some type of wash from light to dark or hold the red constant while running the other colours through the rainbow. Anyway, obviously just a general idea right now.

But I decided to start. So I took out my box of red fabrics and went through them all and cut mini-charms from almost all of them:

They are roughly sorted into light, light-medium, medium-dark, and dark piles. I got seven squares from most of the fabrics. Some I cut double that amount depending how much I liked the fabric or if it was a tone that I thought I needed more of. But there are also true scraps in there where I only had enough fabric for one square. I'm still deciding if I will keep matching fabric together as much as possible or if I will mix them all up.

I will be bringing all of these mini-charm squares with me on a trip and we will see how I start to put them together. That will be all hand sewing since I'll be on the road. But I'm sure I'll sew some of them on the machine as well. (It would make a good "leader and ender" project. That's where you sew pieces for a project like this at the beginning and end of your chain piecing of another project.)

My mind is always churning with these ideas. It's nice to try some of them out!

Project Spectrum: May into June

The first month of Project Spectrum 5 has ended. May was the month to explore the colour red. I don't need any extra encouragement in that. (I thought about photographing just my red shoes, let alone the rest of my wardrobe, but decided against it. Off the top of my head, though, I could think of six pairs...and that's before I started digging!)

To my surprise, I did not see a lot of red in my daily life. No red front doors I hadn't noticed before. No surprise of red flowers in the ditch. I don't know...whatever I was expecting didn't happen. But I brought some red into my life.

I started the Making Waves Cardigan and got the body done. (It's now waiting for sleeves.)

I started a stole out of my slow colour changing Evilla Artyarn 8/2 wool.

I also captured a few flowers that did catch my attention.

Here is my May collage [click to enbiggen]:

Clockwise from top left: the first blossoms we've ever gotten on our peach trees!; trying on Making Waves; fuchsia buds at my BIL's family nursery; a "surprise" tulip in the yard that a squirrel must have planted; early bday present from my sister--a brooch and earrings in fire engine red enamel; Evilla Artyarn wool for my triangles stole.

June is a month of green. I don't have plans to start any new knitting projects but maybe a little sewing/quilting will find its way in and I just may use this as an excuse to finally fix my poor neglected Leaf Beret.

Here's collage of pictures I found in my archives to celebrate the many shades of green [click to enbiggen]:

From left to right and top to bottom: Pine bough in Kentucky; Leaves Beret; vintage thermometer; various threads; Texas Cactus Apple; Troy's sprig green soap; Outside In socks; necklace of green stones; palm tree, Dominican Republic.