Improvisation

Wind Waiting

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I’ve begun my next project – this is a photo I took at least a dozen years ago when I was still paragliding. Retired, I had time to spend in Parrsboro (a two hour drive from Halifax) hanging out wind watching with these three paragliding pilots.

On this particular fall day we’re at Fox River (I think it was) on the Bay of Fundy across from the Valley Coast (able to see from Blomidon to Cape Split) feeling the strong wind whipping up the waves and inflating our jackets. It wasn’t a flying day! Wind much too strong.

Paragliding pilots are patient people – we spend a lot of time chasing wind which is either too light or too blustery. We hung around this location for quite a while before deciding to try further down the shore where we might find conditions a bit calmer.

What I love about this image is the three guys on the edge of the bank (about 100′ above the beach which is where we’d have landed had we been able to launch), patiently and calmly contemplating the weather. They’ve been here before with weather like this. Brian, the one on the left hasn’t even bothered to take out his wind gauge to check windspeed.

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Wind Watching

So this fabric wall art piece will consist of the background of white-capped waves with the bank in the foreground extended downward a bit further than it is in the photo. And then there are the guys. A week or so ago, I isolated each pilot and enlarged him. Last evening, I converted each image to black/white so I could see the contrasts more clearly. Last evening I outlined each photo so I could get an idea of how many different fabrics I might be looking for to construct this image – a lot of bits of closely related colours are going to be needed. This will necessitate a careful going through my scrap boxes and pulling out everything I think might work.

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Pilots rendered in black/white and outlined

I will have to print these images and outline them a second time – to give myself a copy I can cut apart, using the bits as templates for fabric pieces. The men are close to 11″ tall – they’re going to be quite large. I’m going to have to use that height to calculate the dimensions of the finished piece – I haven’t done that yet.

I’ve had the original printed photo at the right side of my desk for the past two months. I’m beginning to actually work on it. Next choosing fabrics, then bringing out my half sheet of styrofoam insulation to use as a pinning board.

This project is definitely underway. I expect it will take a couple of months to complete.

Improv #7 – Finished

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Quilt Top – Improvised Piecing

Another modern quilt completed. My goal was to complete ten quilts for the showing in Parrsboro in August. DONE! They’re all very different.

What constitutes a “modern” quilt – “Bold colors and prints, high contrast, graphic areas of solid color, improvisational piecing, minimalism, expansive negative space, and alternate grid work. (Modern Quilt Guild)”

More and more I’m being drawn to create simple but very bold quilts with strong colours and contrasts. I consider each new quilt an opportunity to extend my piecing and quilting skills. My boredom tolerance is low – I could never do the same quilt twice without pushing the design boundaries in some significant way.

In this quilt I was after a completely improvised top with a more traditionally pieced second side. In fact, in this quilt I’d be hard pressed to identify which side is “top” – in this quilt either side could be.

Quilt Back - Flying Geese

Quilt Back – Flying Geese

I felt under quite a bit of pressure to complete this quilt – tomorrow I have a friend coming to help me pack up my sewing room for the move and I really wanted to have this quilt finished. On Friday I could see an end might be in sight. I got just over half quilted on Saturday; finished the quilting yesterday, then bound it, last thing – added a label to the flying geese side.

With the quilt done, I was ready to move on. I spent the rest of the afternoon getting the packing of my sewing room under way. I carefully stowed each sewing machine (with its accessories) in its case. I packed each small tray/box of loose stuff in shoe boxes (saved for the purpose). Tomorrow I’ll get all the small boxes into a few large china barrels and move on to taking the shelving apart and breaking down the table assembled from Ikea parts – all ready for when the movers arrive in a week. The day bed is being picked up Thursday – it’s being recovered to be used in the sitting roomIMG_7675

My sofa is also being recovered for the sewing studio.IMG_7677

I’ve arranged for both pieces of furniture to be returned to the apartment. Looking at the fabric swatches I suddenly realize teal seems to be the colour I’m gravitating toward these days. Not hard to imagine this quilt draped over the back of either of these! Maybe that was unconsciously driving my colour selection for the quilt!

I don’t know how I’m going to occupy my time for the next month – I will have some knitting with me. It’ll be a time to read the unread books in the libraries on my phone. And there’s some travelling scheduled as well. I know the month will go quickly. I’m just impatient for the move to be over and to get myself settled into the new space.

 

Improv #7 – Quilt Back

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Flying Geese – corner to corner

I made just eight blocks for the back (needed only seven) but I want to do a whole quilt top using fabric from my scrap box. I think I can arrange the triangles in some interesting random array.

You can see I did add a bit of golden yellow in the insert – I thought the teal hues alone were a bit drab given that the top used a limited colour palette.

I’ve now pinned the top, batting and back together and am ready to quilt the sandwich. I’ve set up an embroidery design for the 360 x 200 hoop – by my calculation it should take 35 (5 x 7 array) repeats to edge-edge quilt the whole thing.

Quilt Improv #7

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Quilt Top


I was supposed to teach a class on how to take a piece of fabric (a ~7″ square, for example), slash it, insert a narrow strip, slash a second time, crossing the first insertion, and insert a second narrow strip. The first insertion is easy, the second takes a bit of adjusting. I called the quilt “pick-up-sticks”.

Rather than make another Pick-Up-Sticks quilt for myself, I decided to use the technique to create a wide panel the length of a quilt top and insert it into a length of background fabric for the top. Not difficult to do – I cut two 16″ WOF pieces, cut off a segment at a time, slashed the fabric (rotary cutter and ruler), laid out the pieces, then added insertions.

A slashed segment


The trick with this technique is to keep the pieces laid out in order so you can tell which bit gets joined to what! Also I was careful to mark the “top” edge of the uncut fabric, as well as the top edge of the growing  strip – that’s because I was cutting my large sections of fabric as irregular quadrilaterals, not as rectangles, so I needed to be able to align the bottom of a finished segment with the top edge of the subsequent one. 

I created the full panel with seven segments. The piecing went quite quickly. I used 1/2″ inserts (1″ strips) which made up for the seam allowances and maintained the original dimensions of each uncut segment.

Now for the second side (I hesitate to call it a back because there will be quite a bit of piecing involved).

Flying Geese Block


Flying geese blocks – they require precision in the cutting, in the stitching, and in the trimming. I finished one block when I realized I needed a narrow strip on two sides to provide contrast for the final triangle to show up against the background fabric! Now I’m thinking I want a wee bit of a golden yellow in there as well – maybe as strips to join these blocks into a panel to be inserted into the background fabric….

Shadow Quilt – Just Finished

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Quilt Top

Just finished! Label and all. Took the better part of three days to quilt all the blocks. What I like about this embroidery is that it fills the block completely. In fact, after I pin basted the layers, I didn’t stitch in the ditch to tie the top / batting / backing together. I left the pins in and simply embroidered each block – 48 blocks, plus the borders (24 repeats) and corners (4). I used a 200 x 200 quilting hoop for the blocks, the grand endless hoop for the borders – I love using the endless hoop because I don’t have to remove the hoop from the machine, just move the quilt edge along after each embroidery (once I figure out where I want to position it for the placement I’m after). The borders go very quickly.

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Quilt Back

The backing started out with 2 1/2″ strips – sewn together in pairs – had I thought about it a bit more I’d have been better off using 4 1/2″ WOF cuts and cut the triangles from those – the diamonds would have stood out better. Not that there’s anything wrong with what I’ve done. I will have to try another quilt using half diamonds from a single fabric to see what that will turn out like.

This is quilt #9 for the showing at the end of August. I have time to make one more before I pack up my sewing room. I bought fabric last week – IMG_7705

My plan is to cut two 16″ WOF strips from the dark print and 1″ strips from the soft, pale blue/grey (which will give me 1/2″ inserts). I will do an improvisational strip like one I used on the back of an earlier quilt – but this time the strip will be much wider and will be the top of the quilt.

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Quilt Back from Pick-up Sticks Quilt

I have been thinking about the back of the new quilt as well – I bought a couple of  sets of fat quarters in shades of teal (dark and light) when I visited Keepsake Quilting two years ago – one of the sets includes just 6 pieces of fabric – that will be enough to do something within an overall backing fabric – no idea yet what colour the backing should be – somewhere in the teal family, I’m guessing, to go with the top. Tomorrow I will cut the fabrics for the top and begin piecing and see what I end up with.

I love starting new projects – I never quite know what I’m going to get.

Multi-yarn Socks II

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Finally finished this pair of socks made from two different variegated yarns. I could have bought two 50g balls of either, but wanted to see what I could do by interleaving the two.

The two variegated yarns were based on blue – one more strongly patterned, the second subdued. Unlike the previous pair where I alternated rows of each yarn, this time I knit 10-15 rows changing yarn when I thought the colours would blend. My problem was because I couldn’t discern the repeating pattern in either yarn it was impossible to duplicate the starting place on the second sock – so the two socks, while related, are different.

Nobody will notice when they’re being worn! So into the gift pile they’ve gone – I know a couple of wearers who will smile when they put them on.

Sewing Inspiration

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It’s very hard for me to shop because I look at garments and notice the sewing imperfections and remember fabric in my stash and think how easy it would be just to make it. Instead, “shopping” for me is about ideas! 

Yesterday Sheila and I dropped into Desigual – their stuff is interesting although their sizing doesn’t fit me, it’s intended for women 40 years younger and skinnier than I am (I wear a size 12-14!) I actually tried on a black and white shirt in a large (forgot to photograph it) but I’d have needed an XXL (which they don’t make) to hang properly and even then I think the shoulders would have been too narrow.

But there was inspiration galore:

A denim jean jacket with inserts and sleeves in an almost sheer print fabric used in the shirt underneath. I’d never have thought of doing that but now I might.A shirt in contrasting bold colourful prints – I might have considered doing something like this. It’s a reminder to look through my stash of shirt fabric when I get home with something like this in mind.

Inspiration everywhere!

Socks #365+

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Finished last evening. To make these socks, I bought two 50g balls of Fabel sock yarn – one in shades of turquoise, the second in shades of grey. The variegated pattern in both was subtle, not a lot of change, so I decided to interleave the two yarns throughout the whole sock – that way (with cuff, heels, and toes in a complementary solid Sisu yarn) I’d have enough yarn to make a pair of socks.

Because they go well with my turquoise wool crewneck sweater (from Woolovers) I decided to keep them. I wore them today!

The next pair will be similar using a variegated with a strong pattern in blues along with another ball in subtle shades of blue/grey. This time I might knit whole sections in one yarn, then change to the second, and back again. We’ll see once I get beyond the cuff.

More improvisation!

Improvisation #6 – Finished

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Finished yesterday, label added today.

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Quilt Top

I’m please with how lively the quilt is and how the full and partial circles turned out. Not a usual layout for drunkard’s path blocks but one that works well with these fabrics – prints with an Asian/Japanese flavour. I like the contrast between the blacks/lights and brick fabrics. The dark border also helps the circles pop.

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Quilt Back

For the back, I used blocks that didn’t quite make it up to size (most of the initial blocks) – I trimmed them by 1/4″ and was able to use them here. Notice, one circle just above the mid point, the rest of the blocks arrayed in one of the more traditional drunkard’s path layout.

To quilt my quilts I usually assemble the whole by pin basting, then stitching in the ditch along the block edges. This time, I stitched only around the border, leaving the pins in place while I quilted each block individually. Quilting this way covers any misalignment of the back strip with the columns on the top – that misalignment does show up if I’ve stitched in the ditch – I’m not usually out by much, maybe 1/2″ from top edge to bottom, but I can see that slightly off vertical line in the quilting on the back.

The design I created for this quilt aligned so the beginnings and ends of each embroidery link up and the whole looks as if I’d done the quilting edge to edge on a long-arm quilter (I’m getting better at this!). The border design is the same design, just downsized so I was able to stitch out two repeats using my grand endless hoop – that hoop makes the whole process go very quickly unlike having to individually hoop each of the 63 blocks in the quilt top. I was able to align each new start precisely with the ending of the previous stitch-out.

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Quilt Detail

I chose a darker Sulky variegated thread for the border (darker than the thread I used for the blocks – a predominantly a brick colour) which still seemed too light, until I fancy stitched the binding in place using the brick coloured thread – that toned down the border quilting so you can see the design, but from a bit of a distance it doesn’t shout at you.

Started piecing the next quilt (I’d already cut the fabrics late last week). No name for this quilt yet.

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This quilt will consist of three columns of black/white fabrics attached by the midline of the rich red Kona cotton background fabric. The arrangement of the strips will be different in each column. I can see I will need to do a bit of “fixing” near the top of this strip where the center line bows a wee bit to the left – the fix: to shave a bit off the bottom right of background strip #4 – that will straighten the strip.

The columns will be joined with sashing in the red solid fabric, the outer borders will also be 4″ of the red fabric (to match the 4″ top and bottom pieces for each column.

The back piecing? Haven’t thought about that yet!

Improvisation #5: Finished

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Improvisation #5 Top

Finished with binding this morning. In the end I added an outside red small print border. The challenge with this quilt was the quilting. The blocks were too big to quilt in any but the large reversible hoop so I decided to try quilting “edge to edge” using the 360 x 200 hoop. I started the quilting in the upper left corner – the design I’d set up had the start align with the end so I was able to use precise positioning to connect each consecutive embroidery as I worked across the width of the quilt. Four and a half repeats in each horizontal pass; nine passes from top to bottom. I could have nested the embroideries a bit more closely and done ten passes. Another time I will attempt to “overlap” each pass a bit more.

The nice thing about “edge to edge” quilting is all the borders are included in the overall quilting – no separate designs to quilt them.

Improvisation $5 Back

The back used up the five extra blocks I constructed.