glittergoods

weekend (plus 3 months) quilt

Those of you who check out my Flickr stream may have noticed this quilt top I posted back in the beginning of March:

Just a quick little lap quilt, inspired by me having very much other work to do +  some genuine curiosity about whether I could put together a quilt in a weekend.  That was day one.

This was day two, after which the entire "weekend" conceit promptly fell apart because not only do I hand-bind my quilts, on any given quilt there is a 50% chance that when I trim the binding to sew it together I will cut the angle the wrong way, so to be safe you have to add swearing, unpicking, & patching time in to the handsewing time.

Besides, I didn't really have time to be finishing another quilt in March, & then I didn't really feel much like finishing a quilt in April, & when I picked it back up in May I started carting it around as my during-ballet, waiting-for-kids project, & the going, it was slow.

Which is all to say, I don't think I got an accurate answer to my question of timing, but I finally finished it & I sure do like it.

As may be obvious, I basically floated three pillow tops on a field of my favorite cotton/linen blend.

It's backed with a red & white teeny dot, bound with solid red cotton, quilted in freehand loops with red cotton thread.

The amazing squashy texture post-wash still slays me.

And I think the folding up of the freshly-finished quilt at the end might just be the most satisfying part.

crossing things off the list

Finished this:

[45" x 51", it's off to Auction 2.  I will miss it.]

Finished this:

[Sample custom pillow for Auction 1; silent auction companion piece to Auction Quilt.]

Still working on this:

[A lot, though probably not as many as we'll need, of glittered leaves for the three big mobiles I'm building for Auction 1 decorations.  My leaves have a crush on Meg's flowers.]

Almost, almost there.

and...it's finished (one of them, anyway)

Turns out that the silver lining to catching an awful achy fever the last full weekend before the first of the two upcoming auctions is that I had no choice but to spend an entire day on the couch, binding the Auction Quilt.  Binding the quilt & watching Wolf, Witches of Eastwick, the fourth Omen, & part of Sky High, ahem.

I was thinking, as much as you can think when you're sleepy, feverish, trying to keep your stitches even, & also half-watching an exciting wolfman wrestling match between Jack Nicholson & James Spader, about how much I always dread the time commitment that hand-binding a quilt brings with it, but how much I always fundamentally enjoy the process of wrapping a neat tight edge around a quilt with a gazillion snug little stitches.  It gives me a sense of tidy closure, which lasts approximately until it's time to put the quilt in the machine & then I stand around anxiously for the entire wash cycle, wondering if my quilting & or binding & or basic idea for a quilt is going to hold together.

Look at me, waxing philosophical about this thing now that it's done.

Done!  Hurrah!  (Lots more detail pictures in my flickr set.)

Not that I have been all quilt all the time, lo these many silent weeks.

Or not just the ONE quilt  This one is lap sized, destined for the second of the auctions.  I have to finish binding it approximately immediately.  Next year:  two kids, one school, one auction, can't wait.

This little one is on the bind too, but has to wait until next week.  When I'm totally going to feel like picking up a little quilt-binding project just to relax.

I mock, & yet...it's probably true.

 

The Auction Quilt, nuts & bolts

The auction quilt (The Auction Quilt!  I will capitalize it!) has left the building.  At least for a week or so, until it comes back to me for binding.  And by "left" I mean "is tidily packaged up waiting for me to drop it off tomorrow for the quilter to pick up, only I have to go buy a spool of thread to send with it first," so obviously my entire metaphor is seriously flawed, but whatever, it is ALMOST DONE.

So now, I can talk about it without hyperventilating. Without hyperventilating, & also at tremendous length.  Ready?

From this:

to this:

has been an interesting process for me. The Auction Quilt is a little bit larger than the other ones I've done (70" x 80" finished top) & it's the first one that has been entirely pieced, plus it's going to be auctioned off, so, you know, no pressure, for sure.

To start, each of our preschool graduates drew a picture representing friendship, which I then scanned & printed out on inkjet fabric.  Washability is important for a quilt like this, so I chose the EQ Printables Regular Inkjet Fabric from Electric Quilt Company (as recommended in the Purl book), & after some struggles with getting printer & monitor colors to match, was very pleased with the printouts (using Epson inks).  Bottom line? I'd use the EQ sheets again.

A few specific comments:

• The fabric initially looks off-white, but after printing, removing the backing & rinsing, is a bright, clear white.
  
• The Regular sheets are very...crispy.  I assume they'll soften some with washing, but I don't know whether that will come at the expense of some color fade.  I am not unhappy with the texture for this project (plus, we were able to gang six 5"x5" images with 1/4" seam allowance on all sides onto one 11"x17" sheet, so the Regular was definitely the most economical choice), but if my design depended on more printed real estate, as it were, I think I'd give the EQ Cotton Lawn a try. 
• I saw some pretty significant color bleed, particularly in the magenta/purple/brown range, as the sheets were drying after rinse.  I got mostly around this by letting the sheets sit longer the recommended 15 mins after printing (up to a couple of hours), then doing an initial room-temp rinse, then a very warm soak with a little Synthrapol, then back to room temp rinsing until clear.
  
• Probably because I used a warmer than recommended water, I saw about 1/2" shrinkage widthwise across the sheets.  Even when sticking to room temp water, though, I was still getting up to 1/4" shrinkage, so I definitely recommend factoring a generous seam allowance with this stuff.

Ok, so, printing aside, the overall plan was 5" art squares, framed with squares of red, blue, or green, then finished out with a linen/cotton blend to make 10" blocks.  We ended up with 37 art squares; I made a series of smaller log cabins to go in the center of the remaining 19 blocks.  Everything was improvisationally pieced, though eventually (& arbitrarily, it just made things go a bit quicker, plus I loved those specific  blocks) I settled on doing sets of 3 when it came to some of the smaller log cabins.

Maybe a quarter of the way into piecing the blocks, I suddenly realized that if I just made the center parts & then chain-pieced the centers onto the linen strips, things would go much much faster.  It was revolutionary!   Also head-slappingly obvious, & I am grateful that I was only about twenty-five percent done when I figured it out.  The way I did it was not particularly thrifty of fabric (though I generally don't worry about this, since all leftovers but the smallest trimmed-off slivers go right into the scrap boxes), but it was an efficient way to get the off-center grid look I was after.

I cut my linen, selvedge to selvedge, into strips of various widths (3", 3.5", 4" mostly, though I did use some 5" strips on the smallest of the non-art centers), & then chain-pieced as many block centers as would fit on one strip.  I made sure to leave some blank linen space between the blocks, so I could follow the existing block angle through the linen strip when it came time to cut them apart.  Trim, rotate, repeat.  I varied the width of linen strips I used based on the size of the log cabin center, so that when it came time to trim the blocks to their final 10.5" square, I had plenty of flexibility in terms of angle & centeredness.

Possibly the most challenging part of the entire project was figuring out the final layout for the blocks.  There are three major color groups (reds, blues, greens), & since I was working improvisationally, choosing border colors based on the colors in each child's drawing, I had no particular layout plan other than:  "Oh, you know, kind of random.  In a cool way."  My friend Kirsten worked on it with me, & eventually we came up with something that had 1. a reasonable color distribution of art blocks; 2. a reasonable color distribution of non-art blocks, with careful attention to scattering the three sets of three far enough away from each other; 3.  no awkward clumping of art vs. non-art; 4. no obvious color diagonals of three blocks or more; 5. no accidental straight lines.  It took us kind of a long time, & Kirsten is very patient, but we got there.  Eventually.

(I made sure that this particular square, made by my particular daughter, is prominently placed.  There has to be some payoff for all this work, right?  Kirsten's son's square got good placement too, but sadly I do not have a picture of his fine, fine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.)

Here it is, laid out in sandwich form for basting, looking more or less like I first imagined.  You might notice that the top is far less bubbly than in the first picture of it above -- after looking at the first pictures I took of it, I fled back to the ironing board to do some serious further work on pressing my seams out.  You might also be able to imagine my relief upon discovering that it was my ironing, not my sewing, which had caused the problem.

Tomorrow it goes out to the woman who will quilt it (2" diagonal grid, natural colored cotton thread), & I will have a week to breathe work on other auction stuff before binding time.  When it comes back it will be all grown up into a quilt (Quilt!), & I will have no choice but to sit under it for three days, watching DVDs & handstitching the binding.  The sacrifices I make, right?

skidding in under the wire

There's about a half-hour of January left, & I am bound & determined to get one more post in.  Because of my grand plan to post every day all month, you know.

Mostly, I have been working on the auction quilt.

It's turning into a lovely project, though the logistics of getting all the necessary pieces threaten to drive me up the wall at least once a day.

So then, I bake cookies.

(These are Unbeatable Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies, & while they are indeed very tasty with a nice chewy texture (not quite as cakey as I personally like), they were excruciatingly frustrating to make, due to the chocolate chips' inability to stay in the greasy batter (final cookies are not greasy, I should point out).  Note how the chips have a desperately clinging, smashed-on look about them.)

And stare longingly at all of the clothes that I don't have time to make for my daughter right now.

(ISBN 978-4-529-04437-0)

(Ottobre 1/08)

Tomorrow is February, which is the official start of birthday season planning around here.  Yesterday I ordered some new icing tips in preparation.  Sometimes I can't even believe myself, but then I remember that I can talk about it on the blog & you'll be out there nodding your head, having just come from ordering your own icing tips or etc, just because, & that makes me feel so much better.

I think these might be the exact same colors I used in the auction project last year

Thank you for all the terrific comments about the wedding quilt.  It's pretty amazing to put so much of myself into a project & then bring out the pictures to show to people who get it.  I particularly appreciate those of you who said you understood the fear of starting the quilting process.  I don't think I mentioned yesterday, I had to call my mother AND my husband for a couple solid rounds of stream-of-consciousness nervous chatter before I could actually start cramming the quilt through my machine.

To answer a common question:  the loopy quilting pattern is something I do freehand, not a machine stitch setting.  I started working with it on my quilted pillows a few months ago, & this was the first time I tried doing it on a large scale.  Despite the difficulties I had managing the bulk of the quilt while working my way across each row of loops, I felt very comfortable with the loop pattern itself -- probably because I had done a whole lot of quilt sandwiches (about 15"x15" so I don't have to wrangle material but have room to build up some movement, & I use that cheapo cotton solid from JoAnn so I can get a good look at what my stitches are doing) & over 25 pillow covers before I moved up to the big leagues.  Seriously, practice, practice, practice.  Also, practice.  I love that quilt, & complaining aside, am pretty satisfied with how the quilting went, but I came away from it wanting to practice more.

To answer Erin's question:

These are quilting gloves.  This particular pair is Fons & Porter, & they were very comfortable to use, even though the long-fingered among us should probably size up.  They're cotton, with little grippy rubber dots on the palms, & they were a huge help with moving the quilt around, though I don't think I'd bother on smaller pieces.

What's that those handy gloves are sitting on, you say?  Why, it's my little black quilting notebook, containing the beginnings of my next project:

School auction season & I are staring down the long lonely stretch of road at each other, revving our engines.

the wedding quilt post

Once upon a time, in the middle of planning for my sister's wedding, I decided that, much as the happy couple would probably like a new stockpot or etc, for their wedding present, instead I would make them a quilt.  In their wedding colors.  Sprinkled with little drawings I'd done for their wedding invitations.  So that they would never ever forget how hard I worked on their wedding that magical day.

(A less egomaniacal version of events is that there I was, gazing lovingly at the kona cotton wall in the local fabric store for no particular reason when I suddenly realized that those particular bolts of Kaufman "berry" & "sage" were perfect matches to Paper Source's "beet" & "pool," & what would it hurt to buy a few yards each, as if enough to make yet another version of A Day at the Beach?)

The plan, as it came together, was a big field of berry over a big field of sage, divided by a wonky-angled pieced stripe made up primarily of chartruese (the third wedding color), ivory, & black (my sister's wedding dress was this incredible ivory lace thing with a black ribbon sash), backed by wide stripes of grey & my favorite Amy Butler floral.

I was going to send it out to be quilted, but I didn't feel like I was finding a quilter love match, style & schedule-wise, so I just kept putting off the decision, & you see where this is going, don't you?

Meanwhile, I was learning how to do loopy quilting, & also letting the clock tick down until the endless & paralyzing recursive loop of "I kind of want to do it but it's too scary & I don't want to mess up the wedding quilt but I want loops on it but I should just send it out to someone else but I don't want stippled tiny ducklings but I'm running out of time but I want to do it" turned into me finally taking a good look at the calendar, shutting up, buying a pair of quilting gloves, & jumping in.

It was still terrifying.  Largely, I think, because the machine I was working on didn't have much in the way of throat space, & so there was a lot of quilt management that had to happen all the time.  Plus, turning it around to fit the other half in the machine?  Hello, backwards quilting.

But, oh, look how it turned out.  I didn't know -- as a little postscript to this quilt's reign of terror, I realized that I didn't know as I was putting the finished quilt in the washing machine -- how the loops would look post-washing on a large scale, but I think it turns out that they look pretty excellent.  I used an organic cotton batt, so got a nice amount of vintagey shrinkage, & the whole thing is squashy & inviting.

The screenprinted bits blend in nicely now, too.  I did their names + date, the cupcake, the paper airplane from their response card (a two color print, black & silver), & the ferry boat.*

I'm so pleased with it.  It's the...quiltiest quilt I've made yet, & I love most everything about it (except for some certain small parts of the quilting, you know who you are).  May it keep you guys warm for many years to come, sis.

*More pictures of details in my flickr set of the quilt.

December in the rear-view mirror

Wow, a low-grade, all-encompassing seasonal illness plus the secret + scary quilting of a very important project plus the usual holiday mayhem sure takes the will to blog right out of a girl.  Looking back over my shoulder, it doesn't seem like it was SO bad, which is probably the same sort of naturally-occurring blind spot that results in second children.

I made cookies:

{Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies from Martha.  So, so good.}

We made cookies:

{Thumbs up to Perfect Vegan Sugar Cookies, which are indeed quite perfect, definitely the best of the vegan recipes I've tried.  Thumbs, sadly, down to those cute little squeezy bottles I got for easy & fun cookie decorating with the kids.  There's a reason that pastry bags are tried & true, & that reason, my friends, is air bubbles.  I think I'm going to look into one of those icing caulk gun situations for next year.}

I finished the house pillow:

{For my father, who is a collector of house-shaped things, & I have only not capitalized "collector" because there are no caps LARGE ENOUGH to describe how much of a collector he is, so the pillow was well-received.  I made the house up as I went along, with about a 50% success rate in my attempt to be intuitive about necessary seam allowance additions, but in the end it turned out more or less as I'd planned.  I have some things to learn about piecing triangles, though.}

I also finished, on December 23, the wedding quilt for my sister & brother-in-law, then spent all day December 24 in mild fits about whether it was going to 1. survive the wash, 2. emerge from the wash without any remaining chalk lines, & 3. be dry in time for Christmas presentation.

{The answer is yes on all three counts, I am very proud of myself (also:  phew), but no finished project pictures here because I think I am going to give it a whole post of its own.}

The kids put together an ode to Santa, poster-style (complete with short song at the bottom):

{And Santa did not disappoint.}

Yeah, it wasn't SO bad. 

I'm hoping to whip out a couple pairs of New Year's pajama pants before bedtime tomorrow night, but a certain almost-seven someone who had plenty of time to cool his heels & ogle the wares at craft shows this month has some sort of stuffed monster animal project in mind for tomorrow, so we'll see what gets done.  Either way sounds like a pretty good way to spend tomorrow.  2007 is all but done!  Bring it on, 2008!

and now back to our regular obsessive progamming

It feels like fall around here these days, which means a variety of things, like leaf mold & the first worthwhile apples of the season; don't mess with my delicately orchestrated tivo setup, dear husband, & I'd better hurry up & find a winter coat for the girl, & wait, HOW soon do shows start?  It's got me thinking -- unusually for me -- about warm colors & I even bought a little bit of orange fabric.  Orange is consistently one of those colors that I can truly, deeply admire when I see it on or around other people, & I have a lot of respect for the particular quality of its...orangeness, I guess, but I always have to kind force myself to use it.  So I'm starting with red instead.

It suddenly struck me, late yesterday afternoon, that I'd really like to try quilting this one with red thread, only my husband wasn't going to be back from his business trip until after the fabric stores closed & I didn't feel like dragging the princess & the soccer hooligan out on a thread quest, but then, lo!  Turns out that way in the back of the drawer where I keep my quilting thread was a big spool of red thread purchased for no specific project that I can think of, which just goes to show that sometimes you really DO need to buy random supplies because they're pretty just in case.

I like the way the red thread adds another tonal layer to the front, but I really especially like the way the back of this one looks.  I'm having a little bit of a conceptual moment about colored quilting thread right now.  Up until this point, I had considered myself to be completely devoted, no muss-no fuss, to the school of "natural-colored" cotton quilting thread, but I like the red enough that this afternoon I went & bought a handful of other colors. Including orange.  Just in case.

return of procrasti-pillow

Shockingly, the second loopy pillow did not follow my failed-sophomore-effort rule, though this is perhaps because there was enough failed effort involved in the first go-round. I even managed to make the cover a little bigger, though am told by certain significant others that they are still too stuffed. (I don't know what happens, I swear, I cut them out the right size & then the ease just melts away. It's like magic, ruinous, irritating, sewing magic.) Better overstuffed than flabby, I say!

Thank you for all the wonderful comments about my free motion quilting. I'm finding it both easier & harder than I imagined, which is to say that I quickly learned that the whole effort has a lot to do with a relaxed but controlled touch, which is easier said than done. It actually reminds me of spinning, especially the incredibly tense hands & forearms of the novice part. Ow, a little bit. But it's addictive, plus more forgiving than the straight-line quilting I'd been doing on the pillows, so I'm hoping that the more I try it, the more natural it will feel.

Good thing I'm already planning my next one.