Really???

That isn’t me at the sewing machine.  That is my daughter, who avoided the idea of sewing like the plague until a teacher at school started a 5th grade after-school quilting club.  After several sessions there she started eyeing my machine with a gleam in her eye.  I tried not to ask “Really???” too often!

On the weekend we used a gift certificate to buy a jelly roll of her choice.  Today was a day off school and she started working on a Jelly Roll 1600 quilt.  I’ve been itching to get into that fabric since Saturday, but I exercised some self-control and let her open up the roll of strips when she was good and ready to.  I even refrained from helping move things along faster.  I limited myself to giving instructions at each new step of the process, and straightening a very few too-wonky seams. (I went and cleaned bathrooms between steps, and if that doesn’t tell you how determined I was not to hover and interfere, nothing will!)

So far she has sewn a white square of fabric to each strip (that isn’t in the pattern but we thought that would be an easier way to add interest than to have her piece strips on the diagonal just yet), pressed, then sewn all the strips end to end.  She now has one long strip 2.5 inches wide by 50+ yards.  I’m being very good and not touching it while she’s in bed.  I’ll let her do the rest too, probably later this week.  I can wait. Really. I can.  I think.

In the meantime I’ll dabble in these fabrics.  The colours didn’t photograph well.  They are more vibrant than this but you get the idea.

Thimbles continued

Quilters are wonderful people.  Thank you to all who offered to keep an eye out for a replacement thimble for me, and to those who sent me links to places to buy what looked like my old thimble.  I went ahead and ordered two thimbles, one EZ7 like my old brass one and a second similar one, also by EZ Quilting, in a different metal.

The one on the left is my old worn out favourite.  You can see the one in front on the right is very similar, but the “recessed top” isn’t quite as sharply and deeply recessed so my needle is slipping out occasionally, but overall it feels just about right.  It is just as comfortable.  Turns my finger grey just like the old one too! (Nothing is ever perfect!)

I noticed that there was only one size available in this thimble, and one site specified that they could not order more, so I wonder if the style has been discontinued.  I thought it might be replaced with the same style in a different metal, so I ordered one of those as well. It is the silver coloured one in the back. It looked very similar, and was described as having a dimpled, recessed top as well, but that is really more of a decorative bump around the edge than a recess. My needle just skitters right off.  The metal is very slippery.  I think this shiny thimble will be relegated to decorative-only status.

Of course I had to actually start quilting something to discover all this. I was very good when they arrived on Thursday afternoon. I finished clearing the desk of paperwork before turning to the sewing corner to prepare a quilt back for Whimsy.  Groceries and laundry  and ferrying kids to and from school couldn’t be put off, so I didn’t get the quilt onto the basting frame until Friday night.  I basted on Saturday and finally tried my new toys on Sunday.  Here’s how far I got on Sunday:

Tonight I finished quilting in the white background and in 4 more green triangles.  That took me 2 hours.  I’m not sure I should have kept track.  It seems like so little accomplished in that time!  There are eleven more of these, plus 3 borders…  Oh well, it took me three years to get the top finished. I guess a few more months to finish the quilting won’t hurt!

Thimbles

Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville has asked her readers to link up with her blog to tell about what thimble works best for them.  I’m looking forward to seeing what others have to say, and perhaps find a new thimble to try, but first here’s my contribution.

I do enjoy hand quilting. The stitches on the back are not as even as on the front, but I’m working on that.  I think I did a better job of it when I wore the brass thimble. You can see it has a smooth, rolled edge so that it doesn’t dig into the side of my finger.  It also has a bit of a ridge at the top that is also an indentation inside the thimble so there is room for a fingernail.  The dimples do a great job of keeping the eye of the needle in place while I rock the needle through the layers of the quilt.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m not still using it.

Can you see why?  You aren’t supposed to be able to stand a needle up in your thimble like that.  That little white dot in the second picture? That’s daylight shining through.  Yes, I wore a hole through this thimble!  Yes, I did find out by getting stabbed by the eye of he needle breaking through.

I scoured the hobby stores and quilt shop for a new one, but couldn’t find the same kind.  I found the selection to be quite limited, unless I was willing to spend large sums of cash online for a custom fitted one.  I tried soft silicone ones for comfort but found the needle just slid right off the tip of those.  The closest I found to my old thimble was this one:

I’m sorry I can’t tell you what the brand is.  I found it on the notions wall at JoAnn’s a couple of years ago.  It is just OK.  The grid does help keep the needle from sliding off, but the thimble is nowhere near as comfortable as my old one.  The edge digs into the side of my finger if I quilt more than an hour at a stretch.  There is no room for anything more than a very blunt cut fingernail.

As I prepared this post I tried on the old thimble again and it reminded me how much more comfortable it was!  I miss it!  If anyone knows where I could find one I’d love to hear from you.  The only identifying info on it is “EZ 7”.  I bought it at a Walmart about 10 years ago for about $2.00.

Basting geese

No, I’m not roasting a few geese.  I have however basted my Wandering Geese quilt.  Basting is still not my favourite part of making a quilt, but my new basting frame improved things.
I remembered reading about this but couldn’t remember where so I Googled “quilt basting frame” and came up with several references and some instructions.  I settled on the inexpensive option: four 8 foot long pieces of 1x2 lumber, 4 C-clamps and strips of inexpensive muslin.  I had to cut two of the pieces of lumber down to 7 feet so I could use this frame downstairs with the low ceilings. I wrapped the wood with the muslin, tacking the muslin down in a few spots with a staple gun.  I then used the C-clamps to clamp the pieces into a rectangular frame just a bit smaller than my quilt backing.  All the instructions said to balance the frame on 4 straight-backed chairs, but lacking those I balanced two ends on small tables of similar height.
After pinning the backing fabric to the muslin wrappings, pulling it nice and taut as I worked, it looked like this. 
Next I spread the batting on top, then smoothed the quilt top on top of that.  I pin basted all the way around the edges then enlisted help to prop the frame up against the wall.

It worked!  No sagging, no crawling around on hands and knees, no wrinkling of the quilt sandwich while crawling around and no accidental pinning of anything to the carpet!
This was easier than trying to baste in sections on the kitchen table, too.  It also had the advantage of not having to get all the basting done in one go so we could clear the table for supper.  I sat in a chair to baste the bottom half, and stood for the top half.
Now for the next step!

Sneak peek…

Whole lot of cutting

I spent both yesterday and today at a mini-retreat at the local quilt shop:  quilt all day, go home to sleep and come back to quilt all day again.  Though I brought my sewing machine I didn’t do much sewing.  I sewed a few units but I mostly cut, cut and cut some more. I discovered that the cutting table at the retreat is at a much nicer height for this task than my kitchen table.  Since there are 882 pieces in this new quilt I decided to use the better table while I could!

I managed to cut 596 pieces, and have 78 other pieces cut that need to be subcut into 156 kite-shaped things.  When I went back this morning I remembered to bring ziplock bags to sort all the pieces into before they ended up scattered all over the workroom.
There is still the matter of trimming points on most of the pieces.  I did try skipping this step but found it too difficult to figure out how to match up angled sides without the trimmed points.  The trimmed points match up beautifully with each other so despite the tedium of trimming it will save time and gnashing of teeth when I start sewing.  At least I can trim points a few at a time as I am ready to sew them.
So far I have this sewn:

I am making a serious dent in my blue stash!  This will turn into a version of “Kyoto Garden” by Judy Martin from her book “Stellar Quilts” (thanks for the book, Mom!).  The colour selection and placement in her version are very carefully  planned, but I decided to try random and scrappy.  As I placed everything on the design wall tonight I started having second thoughts about that, but all those pieces are cut so I’ll press on the way I started!
I’m not sure when I will have progress to show on this one.  I have two quilts to baste and start quilting, I need to sew the backing to the back of the prairie points on the leaf quilt (the blocks are all quilted!), and I’m toying with the idea of painting the kitchen, and maybe the living room…

Snipping threads

I have never worked with fabric that frayed as much as the fabric in my Wandering Geese quilt.  I’ve spent hours snipping fraying threads off the back, and I’m sure there will still be at least one stray one that will sneak onto the white bits and show through after I have everything quilted! 
I have no idea what this fabric is.  I bought it as fat quarter bundles and there wasn’t any identifying info on any of the selvedges.  I wasn’t thinking about fabric quality when I bought these.  I was just sucked in by the pretty colours.  I still like them.  I just wish they would stop fraying already!
I’m almost ready to baste and quilt the quilt.  Here’s the backing all ready to go.  All I have left to do is assemble 4 8-foot-long 1x2 pieces of lumber, muslin strips and 4 C-clamps into a basting frame and I can get to work.  I have never used a basting frame but I haven’t been happy with how I’ve basted the last few quilts.  The backing wasn’t as smooth as I would like.  I remembered reading about a basting frame in a library book (don’t remember which one!) and decided it was inexpensive enough to be worth a try.  The book suggested that once the quilt was on the frame it could be propped against a wall to make it easy to reach the center.  I won’t get around to this until early next week.  I’ll let you know how it goes.
Now I’m off to hand quilt the last block of my maple leaf quilt (the one from my header).  Yay!  I’ll need to add a bit of quilting to the borders after I finish the edges (I need to leave about an inch unquilted until the back is sewn to the prairie points)  but the end is in sight!

One more border down

I finally decided what to do for a border on my flying geese quilt!
I had planned to piece a border of colour rectangles end to end but decided it wasn’t the look I wanted.  I then visited the local quilt shop with quilt in hand and came home with the perfect fabrics for a pair of plain borders. Of course those fabrics turned out to not be right either so in late October this quilt went into the UFO bin.
After finishing the top for Whimsy on New Year’s eve, border battles included, I was inspired to take another look at these borders as well and spent a couple of days auditioning fabric in various configurations.  It’s funny how I came almost full circle to my original idea, with a pieced border made up of all the quilt’s colours. I just placed them in a piano key pattern instead of end-to-end.

Enough chat.  Here’s the quilt, all my own pattern:

Hmmm,  I really think it looks better in person.  I suppose I could have waited for better lighting to snap the picture…
I considered putting in a narrow inner border between the center and the piano keys, but nothing seemed quite right.  Looking at the picture I think it could use one, but  full size in person it doesn’t seem to.  Doesn’t scale just mess with the mind?
I’m planning to machine quilt this one.  I have a few ideas, but I’ll let them simmer a little before I start to be sure I end up with what I like.  I do know I plan to bind the quilt in the two fabrics I intended for borders:

No name for the quilt yet.  Maybe Wandering Geese since they don’t seem to know which way to head?