Just finished sewing the panel. No more mistakes that had to be taken apart! The stitching went smoothly. What I’m liking when I see it like this is the shading within the background – not too in-your-face. That’s probably because the contrast is strong enough to draw your attention away from the background.
Now to start on a backing. I’ve got to make two more bright blocks to create an on-point vertical row and several background blocks to fill in as triangles. I have two suitable light grey print fabrics that work together. With a wide strip between them they’ll work fine. (The point is to use what I have in my stash!).
On-point blocks get sewn together along the diagonal with the end triangles attached to the side of the adjacent block. So what emerges are the quilt edges.
I have to work from one corner to the diagonally opposite one, one strip at a time, making sure I’ve pressed the “matching” seams to the opposite side from the previous row. You’d think it would be possible to work from one corner to the middle, from the other corner to the middle and join the two pieces – but you could find you’ve got the nesting seams pressed wrong! So better to start in one corner and keep going, even though you have to work with the increasing bulk of the growing top!
Another possible pitfall – the one I fell into – was to attach the last row in the wrong direction so the colour flow I wanted didn’t happen! I had to rip that seam, carefully, rotate the row and resew it. You can see, I’m checking position of the next row before sewing it!
The quilt top is finally filled in, although I’m probably going to change the two top corners. I did a kluge, building on a partial block I had left over from the light blocks which I cut on the diagonal. However, the orientation of the corner blocks is obviously out of synch with the rest of the triangle border – I have to build one more large block and cut it into quarters to get the corner orientation I’m after.
Also this probably isn’t the final block placement – I’m happy with the bright blocks, but the light ones are still place holding. Nevertheless, you get the drift of how the quilt top will look.
I have to clear some of the mess on my cutting table and around the machine I was using to piece these blocks before I can assemble the top. Also I now need to think about what to do with the back! And it’s not too soon to consider how to actually quilt the project. Because the piecing is intricate, I may not get away with an embroidery based on curved elements. I may have to actually do a lot of echo quilting along the diagonals – not sure how my back will stand up to that close work!
For now, I better build two new corner blocks for the upper corners…
An update on the “log cabin” quilt – I’ve been building light blocks to fill in around the coloured ones:
Filling In
Eight of the light blocks are only partially constructed – I hope to complete them today. I think I’m also going to add one more row to the top end which will mean three more light blocks – that addition will add 6″ to the length of the quilt which will give it better balance: ~50″ (width) x ~68″ (length).
To be able to continue making the fill-in blocks I went shopping two days ago to pick up a half-dozen more light fabrics. I wanted a bit more variation in the colour pallet for those blocks than I had. Hard to tell from the photo but I’ve blended those fabrics into the blocks as I’ve been constructing them.
This project is coming along block by block. I’m not pre-cutting pieces, but rather working with the long strips and trimming after I’ve attached each piece to the block. When the blocks are finished, I need to do the triangle elements for the edges – those will be tricky because I want to include narrow contrast elements in them and will have to anticipate placement as I construct each of the large blocks (10 1/2″) from which the triangles will be cut!
When this yarn arrived, I thought I’d never bother knitting it into socks because the black was such a stark a contrast to the red and orange. But as my yarn stash has dwindled (I’m trying to use up what I have) I picked it up and started working on it. The dark red cuff/heel/toe balanced the black nicely. I finished the socks and put them in my sock drawer – perfect to wear with burgundy, or black, or dark grey pants.
JoAnn’s Socks Finished
JoAnn is a member of our Friday afternoon knitting group here in the building. Since everyone is knitting, she wanted to knit, too. Her hands no longer coordinate well enough to work with needles, but she was fine with a knitting “loom”.
Knitting Loom with Stylus
She’s worked away at her socks for the better part of two years, I’m sure. But last week she completed the foot on the second sock. I took over from there, taking the sock from the loom and knitting the toe for her. Then I washed and blocked the socks. I decided to add a row of single crochet to the top of the socks to stabilize that edge (careful not to make it too tight).
[I also knit the heels – I couldn’t figure out how to do that on the loom, so when it came time to turn each heel, I took the sock from the loom, put it on needles, turned each heel, then restored the sock to the loom so JoAnn could continue her knitting.]
JoAnn’s Socks
I was happy with how they turned out. I’m sure she will be, too. The mismatch happened because the pattern didn’t play out precisely the same in each ball of yarn and when she got to the second toe (the one on top), I had to work with a small ball of yarn leftover from the first sock so the pattern didn’t synch. Who cares, right? The toes are inside her shoes.
The Certificate of Completion
I even did up a “Certificate Of Completion” to celebrate her accomplishment!
More Sock Repairs
Debbie’s Heel RepairRuby’s Toe Replacements
My friend Ruby slowly knits away making socks but when it comes to repairs, forget it. The socks on the left belong to her daughter Debbie. The heel (of the sock on top) came to me with a very large hole in the heel (why one heel and not both I can’t explain). So I cut out the old heel and knit a new one. I had more yarn like the original (it’s no longer in production), just not in the same colour. Same with the toe replacements on Ruby’s socks – the mismatch is less obvious there because I was able to find a spot in the yarn that kind of matched with the original socks.
I still have one last repair job waiting for me. My very old LL Bean cotton sweater has worn out in one arm – I discovered a large hole the last time I wore it. The question is whether to do a visible repair, or to see what I can find in a matching yarn, to close in the hole. I want to get to it soon so I can clear off the table beside my chair where I knit in the evenings (while watching TV, of course).
One Last Thing
Today my boomerang quilt was showcased in Nancy’s Notions Thursday Newsletter! I submitted the information (with photos) a couple of weeks ago. I’m delighted the quilt will be seen by a lot more people. It may inspire some to improvise from quilts they come across, or at least try to replicate them without a pattern. As a teacher my aim is to help people learn to deconstruct how a quilt is assembled so they can improvise quilts of their own based on traditional quilting techniques. In the piece, I explain how I made this quilt so others can give it a try themselves.
I had time early afternoon to construct five more blocks and set up three more with red centres which will be predominantly white. So try imagining the empty spaces with blocks constructed using just the light fabrics (with maybe a hint of grey, or perhaps a touch of red/orange in one of the layers.
I’ve decided laying the blocks on point lets the colour flow better than having them sewn in straight horizontal/vertical rows/columns. (Although I may try that layout once I have all the blocks constructed.)
I hope to get the remaining coloured blocks sewn tomorrow. Then on to making a bunch of white one.
I have completed five blocks. I don’t have a design wall so I’ve laid them on the floor in my sewing studio area. Although it’s difficult, I can still manage to get down, and then up again, as I move blocks around on the floor.
This is a first go at laying out blocks – I will actually complete all 19 blocks I’m working on before making any decisions about placement. I don’t intend to use all of them in the quilt top – I’m building as many as I am so I have some for the back (or a second quilt – I have a ton of strips of all three sizes – another quilt is taking shape in my head). I will also need a bunch of predominantly “white” blocks to fill in many of the spaces. I will also need many half blocks to fill in around the edges – how many will depend on how many I put in the rows and columns.
What I have on the floor at the moment is a placeholder – it will get changed as each new block is auditioned in the array.
I spent the morning adding the round of narrow strips to each block. That sewing didn’t go quickly because I can’t chain piece anything – each strip had to be constructed as I worked my way around a block; no two strips are the same. I’ve made an effort to not use any fabric more than once in each round to avoid duplicates when I start joining blocks.
Once I was finished adding the narrow border to each block, I laid them all out and placed the strips for the next round on each, doing my best to avoid repeating, in this final round, any fabric I used in previous rounds. I will check that each block has no repeated fabrics when I go to sew this outer round of strips. I have enough different fabric strips to be able to do that. That’s the case for both the “reds” as well as the “greys”.
So how do I organize the fabrics, the cutting, and the collecting so I can make ~20 different blocks? I figured out I needed to cut and sort three different sizes from each of the fabrics – 3/4″, 1 1/4″, and 1 1/2″. I sorted the sizes into different boxes (I had neither enough room nor boxes to sort colours, greys, and background light fabrics into separate boxes, so I sorted just by size.
3/4″ Sorted
I did the cutting and sorting yesterday. I also bordered and trimmed all 20 center squares (3″ blocks”). The bordering went quickly because I was able to chain piece the strips one side at a time. This morning I laid out all 20 of the bordered squares
Top: Bordered Centre Square / Middle: 1 1/4″ Strips To Add; Bottom: Level 3 Stitched
I’ve decided to add 1 1/4″ strips to 15 of the blocks, but to use the narrow 3/4″ strips with 5 of the blocks – so they’re not all the same construction.
Blocks with Level 2 Narrow Strips – Ready To Sew
The remaining blocks will have 1 1/4″ strips at Level 2, with narrow 3/4″ strips at Level 3. All blocks will have the same strip width (1 1/2″) for the outer round.
Now, I’m ready to sew. I’m starting with the 5 blocks with narrow strips. First I’m going to set up all the strips by joining background to the colour and grey strips, then add the joined strips to the centre bordered squares. Next, I’ll continue with these blocks adding the next two sets of strips to complete these blocks. Last I will work on the remaining 15 blocks, working on each level for all 15 blocks.
Although I can’t actually chain piece, this will be more efficient than completing one block at a time. This way I can audition the coloured and grey strips with all of the blocks at the same time and get a sense of the coordination I’ll be looking for when I go to assemble the blocks into the top.
Once I have these blocks completed, I still need to create at least a dozen blocks from just the light background fabrics to intersperse among these coloured blocks. I’m after a minimalist feel to the quilt so I need to reduce the amount of colour in the overall layout. I’ll tackle that problem when I’ve finished these bright log cabin blocks.
Yesterday a friend asked me to shorten a T-Shirt for her using my Coverstitch machine – that’s the machine that does those two close rows of stitching at hemlines on ready-to-wear clothes. Expensive sergers have the capability of doing a coverstitch. My Baby Lock Evolution serger does, but it’s time consuming and a pain to convert from serging to coverlock and back, so a number of years ago I bought a Janome coverstitch machine! I now use my Baby Lock to serge, and my Janome to coverstitch. (My advice is if you don’t have a serger and are looking for one – buy a good mechanical serger that just serges and a separate coverlock machine to hem – together they’ll cost quite a bit less than a computerized serger with coverstitch!)
In the factory, hems are cut precisely and the coverstitch hem is done so the hem edge is enclosed in the stitching. I find it hard to achieve that 100% of the time because you’re sewing blind when you’re stitching the coverstitch – that is, you’re sewing from the outside of the garment, the raw edge is hidden underneath as you’re stitching, you can’t see it, so I do my best to fold and press the hem exactly, measure the hem depth, and set the “fence” on my coverstitch machine to that depth. But invariably I’ll miss a spot or two. On garments for myself, I don’t worry about it too much – I’ll hand tack the spots where I missed, but I did want this job to be done well. So I opted for not cutting the hem, but stitching it first, then trimming off the excess.
To do that I used my duckbill scissors. You may not have seen scissors like these before but if you’re a serious garment sewer they’re very handy to have.
Duck Bill Scissors
I have two pairs – a larger one and a smaller one. I use the larger ones on heavier fabric and the smaller ones on very fine. They work by snugging up against the stitching from the underside and cutting close to it just missing the stitches themselves.
That’s easier said than done, however, because the pointed blade is on top of the stitching obscuring it, making it difficult to see precisely where you’re cutting. It’s easy to nick the stitching. What I figured out today was if I trimmed the hem more or less in the vicinity of the stitching (I used the duckbill scissors for that), then I could come back, and, holding the hem over the index finger of my left hand which makes the excess fabric beyond the stitching to stand out, I could trim the small amount that was left very close to the stitches without cutting the stitching! In other words I took the time to cut twice, the first time a rough cut, the second time against the hem stitching. It worked – I didn’t cut any of the stitching!
Lord knows why I didn’t figure that out before today!
I haven’t been travelling, just getting on with life with small projects I haven’t bothered to report on.
Boomerang Quilt Completed
I finished the Boomerang Quilt ten days ago (seems longer than that somehow). I took it to Sew With Vision to show the gals how I used the fabrics I bought there. Sally wanted me to display it to advertise a class we’re scheduling – you never know whether there will be any interest or not.
I’ve been working on darning some socks – one pair for me, two pairs for friends. I’ve another sweater needing restoration sitting with my knitting waiting for me to make time to work it.
A while back I came across another minimalist quilt which I’ve begun working on. It’s based on the Log Cabin block which I haven’t made in a gazillion years. Made from scraps, I thought it worth trying. I have no idea what size the quilt in the image turned out to be; I want a lap quilt – so something that’s approximately 50″x 65″.
Improvised Block – 9 1/2″
My first try gave me an idea for proportions – some wider strips, some thin, ending with a wider outer strip which includes the seam allowance. I want a trimmed block that is 9″ square finishing at 8 1/2″ square. My test block works, but it’s too large at 9 1/2″; I started with a square that is a bit too large and it’s bound by strips that are a bit too wide. By shrinking the square by 1/2″, and the first strips by 1/4″ I should end up with a wider outer strip and be able to trim to 9″.
Now for a second block with some revised measurements to see what I end up with. I have a bunch of “Grunge” fabrics shading from off-white to cream. The “background” of the quilt will be a blend of the light with orange/gold/deep red and various grey/dark grey elements inserted in the strips.
jmn 