Month: May 2021

Next Quilt – The “Escher” Quilt

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After I had the third diamond quilt underway I came across what’s called the “Escher” Quilt.

There are a lot of examples of this quilt online – I don’t know who developed the idea originally. The assembly creates the illusion of impossible interlocked elements. The quilter who’s photo I’ve shown below (whom I know only as “chiquitatarita”) posted photos of her quilt top in progress (she’d bought a kit using Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics)- here she had two columns assembled where you can see the construction clearly. I even have quite a few of those particular fabrics!

https://imgur.com/gallery/mykhRJO

I could make this simple and enrol in a class or I could buy a kit (which includes fabric, a pattern and instructions), but I decided to try on my own to see what I can construct using a relatively simple block.

Next I came across another blogger who also described how she worked with the kit she’d bought:

First we made a chart, and laid out all the fabrics, from one to eight down, and L/M/D across.  After cutting, we needed to then pair up the pieces according to the chart.  Each piece has a light, a medium, and a dark bar, but they’re different depending upon their relative location in the row.

http://sewinginwisconsin.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-escher-quilt-progress-made.html

This helps me figure out how to go through my fabrics and set up an 8 x 3 array as Sue describes above.

So I set out to create the basic block – it took several attempts to establish a size for the block using paper and pencil. Then I cut out bits of fabric to see if my calculations worked – they didn’t – not at first. However, I did finally manage to work out a reasonable size block which went together pretty well.

Triangle Unit
Triangle Unit 1

This block is one of a pair – the second one assembles in the opposite direction which lets you put the triangles together to form a connected “diamond” where the same fabric abuts to form a wide angle – you can see two in the photo below – one in brown, the second in green (I’m just working with scraps to see if I could set up a couple of blocks):

Three Triangle Units Sewn Together
Three Triangle Units Sewn Together

The precision issues won’t be with my cutting – I now have the dimensions I know will work. It’s my sewing that will create issues – I will have to be extremely careful to sew a “scant” 1/4″ seam. When I attach the triangle to the first trapezoid I need to stitch a partial seam – which is completed when I add the third trapezoid. Then I need to carefully press each resulting triangle so the centre triangle seams are pressed outward. Finally, I will need to press the block-joining seams open, so the assembly will lay flat. I also have to remember to create my blocks in pairs – one block having the small triangle at the left of the first trapezoid, the second having it at the right end!

Now it’s time to go through my fabrics – I want 24 – set up in eight sets of Light, Medium, and Dark. I don’t have complete colour ways sets of three but I’m sure I have enough variety in my collection of Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics to make something that will work.

Diamonds III – Completed

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Finished the quilt yesterday – at least for the moment I’m considering the quilt done. I’m still contemplating quilting the seams in the ditch but pressing has flattened the 6-point joins reasonably well – I may leave well enough alone.

Diamonds III - Finished Top
Diamonds III – Finished Top

Finished size: 47″ x 66″.

It’s hard to see in the photo but I finished with a 1/4″ binding using what scraps I could scrounge from the backing cut-offs (it was close – I have nothing left over!). In this case I stitched the binding to the front, hand stitched on the back (I usually stitch a binding to the back, fold over, and use a decorative stitch on the front). Stitching to the front with this quilt made sure I had an even 1/4″ dark edge to the quilt top.

Diamonds III - Finished Back
Diamonds III – Finished Back

This is the seventh quilt finished since last August – I have time to work on one more for the showing in Parrsboro, scheduled to happen through July this summer. I have more than enough of the Kaffe Fassett Collective fabric to work with – no point in saving it because I have more KFC fabric ordered to arrive sometime in June.

I signed up for the July/August “Kaffe Quilt Along – Gathering No Moss” online workshop being offered through Hyggeligt Fabrics in St. Mary’s ON. It was the colour of the blue collection that caught my eye. I don’t expect I will construct the suggest quilt – if I do work on that quilt block, I won’t make it using just those fabrics – the blues need some kind of an accent to liven the array. I registered because I’m interested in seeing what Fassett has to say about choosing colour and planning layout.

I knew of Kaffe Fassett’s work through his knitting books and even tried a couple of his sweaters – first time I tried intarsia knitting (not my favourite kind of knitting – too fiddly).

From Fassett’s 1985 book “Glorious Knitting”

Then I as a novice quilter I came across the You Tube videos of his Tampa weekend workshop Oct 17/18 2008.

I watched all three sessions and learned a lot about colour flow. (Here is another video where he discusses colour.)

Over the next year or two I did a series of quilts with batiks (as well as large scale print fabrics) using what I’d picked up from watching the workshop videos. So I’m curious to see what he will have to say this time as people work through four different colour arrangements of the designated quilt.

Diamonds III – Diamonds Quilted

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I just finished quilting all ~135 diamonds (I haven’t actually counted them). It took me four days to stitch/embroider all the diamonds – somewhere in the vicinity of 16 hours.

Yesterday I learned two new things.

First – I use the Precise Positioning feature on my Pfaff Icon embroidery machine – however, in all these years I’ve been quilting my quilts I’ve used the left/right up/down feature but except when I was learning what Precise Positioning could do, I have never used the rotate feature! This set of diamonds and positioning a design within each block required I also rotate the design slightly to make sure the end of the design finished in the right position.

Second – When I’m quilting, I bring the bottom thread to the top before I start stitching. Sometimes when the machine starts the top thread gets pulled beneath the quilt sandwich, often leaving a bit of a bird’s nest below. Yesterday, I found out why that was happening! I discovered when I bring the bottom thread to the top, I have to make sure the needle position is rotated past the highest point. If I’m careful about that, my top thread stays where it is.

Diamonds III - Quilted
Diamonds III – Quilted

There are lots of things you can’t tell from the photo which looks a lot busier than the quilt does “in person”. You can’t see that I change thread for each block to minimize the impact of the quilting. You can’t see that I’ve embedded all thread ends from the start and stop of each embroidery. You do see the overall effect of the precise positioning of each quilting embroidery.

I still have the edge half-diamonds at the top and bottom to quilt, as well as the triangles along each side. I’ll get to that tomorrow; it won’t take long. Then, as I did on the Diamonds II quilt, I will stitch in the ditch over the entire quilt to give definition to each diamond/cube.

Still lots of work to do here.