Family Crafting Retreat

I had the great pleasure of meeting a couple of my sisters, my mom, two cousins and an aunt for a crafting retreat this past weekend. This all came from my cousin posting her quilts on Facebook, our comments, and a chance remark about getting together to quilt (and craft). The snowball rolled from there.

And speaking of which, it snowed non-stop all weekend. I went out for a couple walks, but otherwise didn't have to be out, so I didn't mind at all. But it was surprising to look out the window for three days and have it snowing every single time. Thankfully someone else was taking care of snow removal.

The building where we were staying.

What did I work on over the weekend? Glad you asked because otherwise I wouldn't have much to talk about here.

First was the quilt I am currently calling Bright Stars on Black. I got it organized before I left and had already cut the parts I would need and pieced a lot of half square triangles (HST). I started by sorting them into sets of 8 for stars and sewing them into pairs.

Then I added the center black square:

Or I put two sets on the black square, anyway. My preparations neglected to include cutting the smaller black squares needed for the outside corners. So that was as far as I got with that. But that took quite a bit of time, so that's alright. Part of the time was spent pressing all those little seams.

Troy and I finished a new travel ironing board just in time for this trip. It has legs so it can be set up on a table, but I quickly realized it worked great sitting across my lap. I really can find a way to do anything while sitting on a couch.

Obviously I'm not pressing the HSTs in the picture, but the parts for the large stars all still needed to be pressed as well. It was a good chance to sit and talk.


I discovered a few of them hadn't had the outer corners trimmed, so I did that and immediately made some scrap blocks from the cut off triangle pairs. I didn't trim them to size or anything. I just ran them through the machine and matched up what I could.

These squares will finish less than 2" - piecing this small isn't crazy if you do it right away while the scraps are still fresh and the two triangle pieces are already matched up (as these were). Of course, I would be crazy to put these aside for using later. They are too tiny.

Although my aunt would say it's all crazy. (In fact she did say that on the weekend about someone else's quilt with small pieces. She was voted off the island.)

What will I do with these little squares? Who knows. For now they're in with the scraps (bigger scraps) and will get put into some slab block or scrappy project. Meanwhile, they're cute!

I did finish sewing and pressing all the large star pieces for this quilt and had been hoping to lay it out while I was there. But the building really didn't have any spaces large enough. I left it alone for a while, but it was nagging at me so I finally tried it on the kitchen table.

First I laid out all the star sets, organized by colour:

I figured out how many I had of each colour group and worked with some options on paper for what I could do with them. After I chose an arrangement, I picked out the best blocks for the layout.

Somehow I made twice as many star sets as I needed for one quilt, so there were plenty enough to choose from!

Then I laid out the pieces one row at a time and sewed them:

None of the rows are joined to each other yet, but I think you can get an idea of how it will look. I have to cut some black filler blocks for the edges too, and I didn't have the fabric with me. I was very happy to make this much progress.

In the time when I didn't think I had room to lay out the quilt, I did some playful sewing with scraps:

I got as far as I could with red scraps in making a slab block. It's not up to 10" yet but I can add more later. The squares on the right were cut offs from the quilt my sister was doing. She doesn't keep scraps that small. Again, these are not intended for anything yet, but things like this have a way of being perfect for something (one day).

Holding gifts that a few of us made for each other--
mug rugs, pin cushions, and matchbook needle cases.

A close up of the mug rug I chose.

We also worked on a puzzle - of a quilt of course.
Mom made it her first priority to get it done!

You can't really see it in the picture (right) but my sister is holding a blanket she is knitting. It's covered in cables and I showed her how she can do them without using the cable needle. (Essentially by permitting yourself to take the stitches off of the needles for a moment.) She sent me a note later that said it was one of the best things I ever taught her. :)

When I wanted something simpler I could do while sitting and talking, I pulled out this sweater.

I bought it at Goodwill to harvest the wonderful yarn. It will be perfect for a Wool-Aid project. The sweater was slightly felted so it was going to be a two person job to ravel it -- a perfect job for me and my mother.

One of us would pull the yarn from the sweater and the other would wind it into a ball.

By the end, I had four satisfying balls. (And we both had tired arms because we were trying to "keep up with" the other.)

A project I started over the weekend was a new shawl:

I got a little further than this but I have realized that I'm going to have to add the beads the pattern suggested. I thought yarn-overs would be enough, but they're not. So I have ordered beads and will have to start this over. I'll give more details about it in a later post, but if you're curious you can see the Ravelry project page by clicking here.

And finally, when I wanted to work on some hand sewing, I pulled out my Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses blocks. On the last night, I laid them all out - some sewn, some partially laid out, some partially sewn - and pulled out the new fabric I purchased on the drive there.

I had this block laid out except for the four feature pieces:

I found the brown fabric with orange flowers at the shop and added them. I sewed it together over the weekend.

I purchased some of this fabric:

and cut out and shaped this border from it:

Nothing is pieced, so I could still separate the sets of 8 matching pieces. We'll see.

Here's another border I cut out from a new fabric.

I'm not sure I'm going to keep it with the green center.

And finally, I tried out a different layout of pieces I had already prepared:

I like the spiral and sewed it together on Monday when I was home. I'll be playing with this some more.

What a fun weekend it was. There's talk of doing it again next year, so that would be great.

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.

Gift Card Holder

My church organizes an "Angel Tree" each year where tags are hung describing items needed by local families that could use some help. You pick a tag (or two), buy the item, wrap it, and return it with the tag.

I usually grab the gift cards because they're easy and it seems other people don't like to buy them. I assume they don't think they're any fun. They might not be much "fun" to receive either - there's not a lot of excitement you can get out of what gift card design was chosen.

I've been obsessively watching a new podcast - the Stitch TV Show - and one of the hosts mentioned making little quilted gift card holders. Maybe that would be fun - for me to make and the recipient to open.

So I googled tutorials or patterns and used this one on So Sew Easy. But instead of using one plain piece of fabric, I used some of the "slab blocks" I had put together previously. They were mostly square and I needed a long rectangle, so I just cut them up and pieced them together again to get the right shape:

Then, following the tutorial, you do a little folding, sew around the outside, turn it inside right and you have a little gift card holder:

Front - with pocket.

Back

The many seams made it harder to turn inside right so the corners are not too square, and I think I should have made it about an inch longer so the flap would be longer. But it's a fun little piece anyway.

Tie it with a ribbon and it's all set to make someone merry.

_____________________
Linking up with Oh Scrap! from Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework.

...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. :)