Hot Mitts, take two

Just a little something I put together. . .

. . .for my daughter-in-law Kim, who, when I posted them on Instagram said she liked them and “hint, hint.”  I was happy she wanted some!  They were for her birthday.

I used Malka Dubrowsky’s fabric again, as it hides cake-mix-on-thumbs really well.

I liked how the quilting looked from the back, on the heat-repellant fabric.  Click *here* for a pattern and how-to’s.

My husband and I drove in and attended my nephew’s graduation from University of Southern California, known for its well-endowed education in an academic sense.  In other words, lotsa money at this place.  Congratulations on finishing law school!

They had a little reception afterwards and it was like a garden wedding–and delicious.

But we took off and met the rest of the family at Bottega Louie, where this cool-looking St. Honore caught my eye in the dessert case.  Instead of trying to figure out how to get it home in one piece, I bought macarons in five different colors, and shared them all weekend with my husband.

But I have bigger news about this family gathering in the next post.  (No, I am not pregnant.)  Stay tuned.

Spoolin’ Around

This is my latest Schnibbles quilt: Spoolin’ Around.  Sherri, Sinta and I assume, Carrie, pick the Schnibbles pattern we are going to use, but then we all go to town putting it together in our own inimatable way.

I changed up the borders a little, because I wanted mine to all line up a little more, creating a different corner look. Read *here* about my fabrics, including using some sheets from the Porthault design vault.

Spoolin’ Around, au natural

I feel like I’m also creating a Tea Towel series, but really I’m not trying to.  It’s just that this towel from Padua, Italy was blue and white and the top just called out for this to be used here.  St. Anthony is a Big Deal in that town, as you can tell by his likeness, his basilica, his . . . We went to Padua to see the  Scrovegni Chapel.  Getting this tea towel was a side benefit.

I quilted this during the last week of class, while listening to Barbara Demick’s novel, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, and I quilted and quilted.  Not perfectly, but that’s also the beauty of making these small quilts–nothing’s so terribly precious about them.  They’re fun, not a chore.  And I aim to keep it that way, just enjoying the process.

I struggled with the border choices: green soft plaid, or yellow spheres, or red/white dots?  Not sure I’m entirely happy about this, but I did want something that wasn’t so serious.

I split the sleeve on the back, because I didn’t want to cover up the words.

And I kept their label: Puro Cotone, because I liked it.  I used bits and pieces of the border that was cut off from the top of the towel around my label.  I have to say it’s a bit wild looking, but again–I was having fun, and that’s not a bad thing when you are  quilter.  And that’s my June 1st deadline Schnibble, finished a bit early!

This is #114 on my 200 Quilts list.

FSF–iPad Cover

Okay, this was me this week.  Lost in a fog.  I even forgot to post on WIP Wednesday, which is usually like a religion to me.  Suspected sinus infection.  Exhaustion.  Suffering from What-Day-Is-It-itis.  Verified Foggy Brain condition.  But today, the sun it out, the day is pleasant and I have a mani-pedi scheduled in an hour.  All’s good.

And I finished up my iPad cover.  Somehow.  A blue ikat with a little happy surprise inside.  Front.

Front, with flap open and shy little orange bird looking all coy.  Like an idiot,  I cut it too close (there were some alterations after I had it quilted–double rats!!) and the other birds are peering out from underneath the bias edge binding.  But I love them all anyway.  Velcro sticky dots, which ruined a needle (you’re warned).

And the treasures peeking out: the iPad and a stylus.  Okay, I’m enjoying my iPad, but I love my laptop.  I’m sure it’s like anything–takes a while to figure it out and get it under your techno skin.

Here’s how, in a few easy steps:

Whack off a piece of fabric (I pieced the back for a little “interest” as shown here) about 3″ larger on all sides than your iPad. The piece on the left is row-quilted in varying widths. The piece on the right is trimmed up.

I flipped over the trimmed up piece so you could see that I am lining this with some birdy fabric on the upper edge and using Minky down below.

I thought I should lay them out to show you what my final dimensions were before I sewed them together (yep, I’ve already started with the binding).

The back, which includes the extra for the flap is 13 1/2 ” tall and 8 3/4″ wide.  The stylus case is 6″ by 1 3/4″ and the front is 11″ tall by 8 3/4″ wide.  I think the “body” pieces could be cut to 8 1/2″ wide if you want a bit snugger fit.  The way it is now, there’s some skootch room (the one I made for my husband is skin tight, but he says it’s fine).

Make your binding by cutting a bias piece of fabric 1 1/2″ wide.  I seamed a bunch of strips together to make one long piece  (add up the dimensions if you must have an accurate length–I’m guessing mine was in the 45-50″ length).  Take it to your ironing board and press all seams OPEN, then press it in half along the length.  Now press both raw edges in to the ironed fold, making double-fold bias tape.  I offset the folded edges slightly, so that when I laid it against the raw edge of my quilted piece, the back would be slightly longer.

Bind the upper edge of your shorter body piece.  Bind around the stylus case.  I left those edges square.  That was a nutso thing to do, so on the back body piece, I wised up and placed  a spool of thread to mark a rounded edge.

Sew on the stylus case on the front, centering it.  Stitch around three side, leaving the side open.  I realized I would be slipping this case in and out of my school bag/church bag/whatever purse when I put it into use, so I tried to incorporate the stylus case where it would be out of the way, yet accessible.

Now line up your front, shorter piece on top of the longer, back body piece WRONG SIDES TOGETHER, leaving the extra on top (where my birds are) as the flap.  Stitch down one side, using a 1/4″ seam allowance, then across the bottom, then up the other side, stopping where the front body piece ends.

I know a lot of sewists (sewists?  can you get used to that word–I can’t! I still like “sewers”) make a “lined sack” sort of arrangement for their cases (yes, I Googled “iPad Cover Tutorial” and there are a lot), but I wanted a quilted body and a smooth interior which would be fuzz-less for the iPad.  [Once we had to make a little trip to Apple when the pocket fuzz from my husband's pockets clogged up the earbud port.  Apparently this happens a lot.]

Begin stitching on the binding about 2″ down from the fold of the flap.  Here I’m going around the flap outer corner, and that sweet yellow bird is keeping an eye on me.  The bias binding really goes smoothly around corners.

After sewing on the bias, turn it over and try not to curse when you notice all the places that didn’t get caught in your sewing.  Re-stitch those, which is another reason why I chose a colorful fabric for my bias binding.  It hides mistakes.

I had not planned to put on Velcro dots, preferring instead to simply fold it over, but row-quilted fabric apparently has a mind of its own, and it’s comparable to a two-year old’s who wants the Skittles from the back of the cupboard.

So on they went, obscuring two of my favorite birds (rats!).  I ended up putting a third dot in the middle, hand-stitching it to the stylus case, but machine stitching it to the flap.

So now I can be cool with my ikat fabric cover.  And not worry so much.  I may yet get a black foldable cover but I looked at the ones in my local store and wasn’t that thrilled with them.  This is fine for now.

And I’m out of the fog!  Happy Quilting this weekend.

Be My Valentine

Okay, I know I’m late.  Late for Valentine’s Day.  But better late than never, right? Another entry into Friday Finishing School.  In fact, today I have two!

I finished sewing down the binding on my LOVE mini quilt–here it is!  Okay, on to the red and white.

Be My Valentine, front.

I threw a color catcher into the washer to catch the red dye–obviously I needed two, judging by the fact that the little ladies now have a light pink background instead of a white background.  It’s interesting how some of the whites were tinted pink and others were not.  Go figure.

The back.

I wanted something fun for the label, so I cut out a piece of fabric from the front, and printed onto that. It really is squared up.  Ignore the photo.

Beauty shot of the quilting on the front.  I used a thicker thread–King Tut, because I wanted those circles to stand out.  I have to say I really like quilting with Superior Thread’s King Tut.  And I buy my thread from them, just like everyone else does.  No, they are not a sponsor.  Yes, we are having a giveaway but only because I like their product.  I also use the Guterman that I get on a 50% off coupon at  the big box fabric store, but I’ve only really been happy with that for piecing, not for quilting the top.  (And no, I don’t buy into that myth about polyester thread “cutting” the cloth.)  I have also used Sulky on occasion, but sometimes I don’t like the shiny look of the polyester, and head back to the cottons.  Some quilts call for one kind of thread, other quilts call for other threads.

And on the back I used Superior’s Bottom Line thread in white. How did I ever start using this?  It was when I was sewing my Empty Next, Full Life quilt (up there in the masthead, if you want to take a look), and I just couldn’t get the threads to balance properly with their locking of the stitch in between the front and the back.  I think I had purchased a spool of Bottom Line at the last quilt show I’d gone to and in desperation, wound it onto the bobbin to try.  It’s a lighter weight thread, and I think Heather (Mother Superior, as she is known on the website) told me that a lot of show quilters used it because they could more densely quilt their quilts.  That fact didn’t sway me at all (you know how much I hate densely quilted quilts), but the fact that I didn’t have loopy loops or pulled threads to the front did convince me it was something to have around.  I loosen the tension on the top a little, sometimes a lot.  Then I write that on a post-it note and keep it near the machine for when I have to come back to it.  Generally, with a thicker thread on top, I lower it by one full point–from a 4.0 to a 3.0.

So I tend to use it always in the bobbin.  I’ve always wanted to try it in hand piecing, as it is as fine as silk.  Some day.  There you go–two Friday Finishes!

Checkerboard Border

Been one of those weeks when I’ve felt more wobbly than usual for some reason, so everything’s been on Slo-Mo.  That’s slow-motion.  But today I woke up without a headache and headed to Free-Mo.  That’s Free-Motion Quilting.

I’m working on the table runner for the Red/White Challenge hosted by Temecula Quilt Company, and the deadline is September 15th.  All the blocks came in from local quilters and from around the world, so I put it together in a quilt sandwich and went to town.  It went quickly, and it was good to just dig into something to get it done.

I’ve had this idea to put a checkerboard border on it, as this will be used at Christmastime and during the patriotic holidays, and I wanted to jazz up that edge a little.

Okay, while I was trying to put away the box of French fabrics (it goes on the top shelf, and I’m a shortie), this quilt fell down.  It’s a seaside quilt that I stated long long ago.  And abandoned.  It is NOT on my list of lifetime quilts, as it’s sort of in this limbo of that place whether or not I want to finish it or not.  I mean, I LOVE the background fabric and the turtle (raw-edge applique) turned out well.  But I know to really make this quilt something else, it will require digging into that drawer marked “Coral Reef” and cutting and sewing and appliqueing a whole host of creatures.  I even have a child’s picture book in that drawer, purchased after I took the class, because oh my! the teacher’s quilts were so incredibly cool and I wanted to learn from her.

True Confession:  I also have a Ricky Tims quilt in about the same stages, but it’s a square-within-a-square quilt.  I went down the night before the class to hear him speak at our quilt guild and loved every minute of it.  So I showed up for class and . . . didn’t love every minute of it.  I felt he was distracted and just punching a time clock that day.  We all have days like that but it taught me one more truth about the quilt world: some of the famous personalities we see are fabulous in front of the camera and some are terrific teachers and sometimes you have both.  But not always.

One teacher I’d take again in a New York Minute would be Roberta Horton.  I’ve had several classes from her (is she even teaching anymore?) and I’ve gone away from every one of them amazed at her ability to gently, yet firmly, bring her students to the place of creativity.  I’ve finished very quilt I have started in her classes.  Two other honor roll teachers are Jane Sassaman and Katie Pasquini-Masopust.  I’ve finished all of their class samples, but by then I’d learned to make a small quilt–less than 15″ on the longest side–in order to learn the technique and to have a “finishable” piece of art.  I have also taken a class with Ruth McDowell, and she ranks right up there as well, although after a 4-day class, I don’t know how she kept us motivated and going.  We were all exhausted!  It took me more than a year to finish that quilt, as I wanted it to be nearly perfect.  I think you’ve seen it all before, but to contrast with the unfinished seaside quilt, I present Heart’s-ease.

One of pansy’s other names is Heart’s-ease, as it was thought to be involved with the affairs of the heart.  It actually refers to the “viola tricolor” which is an ancestor of our modern-day pansy.  Now you know more than you ever needed to know about these sunny little flowers that bloom around here in Spring.  And which, because of Ruth McDowell and this quilt,  I have blooming on the guest-bedroom wall all the time.

Squiggles, AKA, Stipples

It all started with this video, which I saw on Boing Boing:

It reminded me of quilting.  Of our famous all-over squiggle quilting, AKA, “The Stipple.”  But the gal in the video goes on to create some really interesting things.

When I walked through the Springville Art Museum’s Quilt Show, I, too, focused on the quilting, and on the different iterations of it, although not to the Hilbert Curve level.  And since I’m always collecting interesting photos of quilting patterns, I thought you might be doing the same.  Enjoy the show.

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Family Tree

I really shouldn’t let this quilt show its face in the quilt world.  Really, it has that many problems.  But sometimes these quilts are fun to look and to remind myself of how far I’ve come as a quilter.

So the idea was, since we were headed to a family reunion, to make a banner for my husband and I, like I’d made for my mother.  Hers was more successful, and it’s all on account of the quilting.  I hadn’t yet taken a fusible class, so I was working with my old stand-by which unfortunately leaves the fabric like a slab of wallboard.

I cut out the tree, and then traced everyone’s hand for the leaves.  I slabbed on them on to a tone-on-tone background fabric (which, thankfully we don’t have around much as the fabric can change colors turning more yellow–I think the newer ones are better).

I then wrote our name using a Pigma pen, copying the style of my sister-in-law’s handwriting.

Then, for some strange reason, I decided to put it under my machine and quilt it.  Maybe I did that because this idea of quilting the quilt yourself was an idea that was percolating around; back in the Olden Days (when we wore skins and cooked over an open fire and used cardboard templates and cut everything out by scissors) there was no machine quilting on your own machine.  Either you hand-quilted it or you tied your quilt.  That was it.  Then the longarms started showing up, and then the idea came that you of course could do your own quilting.  This quilt is a testament as to why sometimes you shouldn’t.  Or you should take a class and get better.  (Which I’ve tried to do.)

Okay, here comes the prelude to the scary part.  Can you believe I switched out the color in the bobbin?  I did it again this year.  I’d better write this one down on the Things Not To Do list, and tack it up by my machine.

ACK!!! ACK!!! ACK!!!
Don’t you just love all the loose bobbin stitches, the globs of thread that burped out on the back, the horrendously balanced thread tension?  I give myself a little break because I WAS sewing through bunches of wallboard-glued-on-fused fabrics and that’s just about impossible.

But I have to say I learned a lot, and still am continuing to learn about the Big Three Elements of Free-Motion Quilting.  They are:

• Speed of the machine (how heavy your foot is in on the pedal)
• Speed of your hands moving the quilt around
• Tension/Thread/Needle Size.

I now sew with a size 14 Topstitching needle most of the time when I’m machine quilting.  Sometimes I bump up to a 16.  I ALWAYS test drive the thread tension — it can change with the thread you use –  on a small quilt sandwich that I keep by the machine.  And I really hope I never use a different color of thread in the bobbin again. (Cue: sound of head banging.)

Here’s a photo of my parents’ grandchildren all lined up by age.  Not all of them are shown here, but overall there are 27 of them.  And now we’re working on the next generation with nearly 20 great-grandchildren (an adoption or two are in process).  We’ve been at our bi-annual Reunion this past week, where I got to see all those new cute little great-grands, and they got to meet their auntie–me!

Machine Quilting: WIP

I’m still quilting along on this one, a quilt that seems to go on forever.  Perhaps it’s because I decided to quilt it all very close together.  Generally I don’t like this for a lap or bed quilt, because it makes it too stiff.  But this one’s art–a quilt to hang on the wall–so rigid isn’t necessarily bad.  I sometimes long for ideas in quilting, so have taken to hunting up pictures taken at quilt shows showing interesting patterns.  Other times, I just lay my translucent paper of the patch being quilted and draw until I’m happy.

Our local quilt show is fixated on heavy machine quilting, so much so that it’s skewed the typed of quilts that are displayed.  One year they gave several longarm quilters the same mini-quilt and let them go to town on the quilting. Here’s a sampling:

The lighting was bad on this side of the hall unless a flash was used.  But then the quilting would have been blanked out by the light, so hope you don’t mind the slightly blurry (but can see the quilting) photo.

So I liked some of these, but I have to admit to some discouragement, as a non-longarm-owner, in terms of how I could finish my quilts.  And while I love being inspired by some of these squares, some are just completely out of reach.  Like the next one.

It looks like those old Spirograph toys I used to have as a girl, where you do overlapping circles in a controlled design.

But, can I just say that this is a bit over the top?  That the machine quilting obscures the piecing design?  I get that it’s supposed to–I’m not that dense (well, at least not this morning).  But I always think a fine piece of art should harmonize on some level, and in cases where there isn’t enough quilting (I’ve done those quilts) or too much quilting (like the sample above), I think the quilt is not balanced.

Here’s another example.  This to me, is just thread-painting, a type of quilting art by itself (reference some of Hollis Chatelein’s work).

I thought the flames here were interesting and highlighted the yellow/blue piecework.

I’ve tried quilting feathers. . . and have mostly failed. Lots of picking out of stitches when I try them.

Don’t like this one at all, but it’s probably like that old line: “You say tomato, I say tomahto.”
In other words: “To each his own,” said the old lady as she kissed the cow.
(That’s an old bromide my father used to say.  I grew up in a family of seven children and you can bet that there were lots of differences of opinion!)

The quilting in this blue corner reminds me of the block Storm at Sea for some reason.

Check out the checkerboard in the blue corner.  A (mostly) blank square alternating with a square with the teensiest stippling stitch which creates a relief, almost like trapunto, to “pop” those squares out.  Sometimes what we don’t quilt adds to a design.

I have to say I walked away from this just wondering about the direction of quilts in this day of machine-machine-machine, quilts stitched to within an inch of their lives.  And sometimes killed in the name of “surface embellishment/machine quilting.”  One of the more beautiful quilts I have seen on this theme, was a whole-cloth quilt, where the machine stitching WAS the point.  It’s when we try to balance it with the piecing that I think we can run into trouble.  I had that experience sewing on my WIP.  Sometimes I wonder if I quilted it too heavily for the fabric, and in some blocks I stitched a design and ripped it right out again (which is one reason why it’s taking me sooo long!).

Here’s a couple of quilts that show varied stitches for inspiration.  Fabulous ferny feather to the left of the lower flower.

I liked this photo because it shows that even echo quilting can be effective.

I remember listening to an elderly speaker once who held up a three page letter someone had written him, all done on the computer.  He made some reference to if it were written by hand, the wandering prose might have been reigned in and the letter’s author might have gotten to the point more quickly. I sometimes wonder if we don’t suffer from the same sort of lack of editing with our swift and powerful machines these days.  I can admire a heavily stitched quilt and can emulate what I can on my smaller, regular machine, in order to get my quilts made.  But when I look at what Suzanne Marshall has done on her quilt (below), The Legend of Guimar, I often wonder if we might need to reign it in a bit.

Her hand-done quilting enhances the design, augments her beautiful applique.  I realize by writing this post, I sound very much like that Granny character in Toy Story, who drives an old Model-T.  We type-cast those older folks as out of step and unable to adapt and change.  But perhaps they see things we can’t, as in love as we are with our technology.

I guess I want it both ways: I want a quilt to be well-quilted and hope that the quilting harmonizes, augments and enhances the design, instead of running over it in a flurry of stitches.

Thanks to Lee, for hosting WIP Wednesday!!

Funnies

I spent most of yesterday–the Fourth of July quilting.  Pedal-to-the-metal type quilting.  Red-Pepper-Quilts-type quilting.  But first, I put in two tomato plants, some basil and some herbs.  That’s pretty funny to do it on the hottest day of the year, a full six weeks behind schedule.  But that’s because I vowed No Garden this year, given our usual crop of $60 tomatoes, an old joke on how much it costs to do home gardening.  The possum and raccoons are kind of ticked off at me for closing the kitchen this year, tipping over pots on the patio in search of the usual canteen.  So we tilled the soil a couple of days back and amended it today with Miracle Gro (I need some stuff called Miracle Quilt, as does the granny in the cartoon) and little green plants are wilting and wavering in the hot breeze.  I’m calling this a preparation-for-winter garden, with some summer enhancements.

More funnies are in how stiff a body can get while sitting quilting.  The foot hurts from up, down, poise and the shoulders ache, even though I’ve propped up my machine with two door stoppers at the back to guarantee a good angle.  So I have to take a break every once in a while–as the more elderly woman at our quilting bee once advised.  She had a timer strung around her neck, purchased after her doctor said to take a break every 30 minutes.  So we’d sit there at the table, quilting and chatting along when all of sudden we’d hear a bell, and she’d jump up and stride around our U-shape of tables, arms swinging high as her cropped hair all the while she encouraged us to “get off our duffs” and stretch.  More encouragement every thirty minutes until at last, by the end of the bee, we were in need of some stretching and allowed ourselves to be bullied into moving our duffs at least back and forth in place.

Five years later, I still think of her, and try to schedule a break from the machine to read Sunday’s leftover paper, get a drink of water, change the laundry, and yes–write a blog post.

Here’s a photo of the fireworks in black and white–a new twist on our traditional (4th of July) event.  They shoot off our fireworks on top of the local mountain–and every once in a while, like tonight, a rocket goes haywire and burns Mt. Rubidoux.  No worries, billions of fire trucks are there and are prepared with fire cannons, sirens and a little excitement.  We left our downtown viewing spot, winding our way home along all the clogged streets to our quiet house.  Much later we heard the cannons going off, and we watched the end of the show from our upstairs bedroom window, the lights flashing for the grand finale, with the thundering sounds arriving seconds later.  A  good 4th, this year, I think.