Finished (kind of) Projects!

A few months ago I mentioned my plan to add to the double wedding ring quilt I had made years ago. It didn't really turn out quite as well as I had hoped as a lot has changed in those years including my sewing machine and the neutral fabric I used. Also I didn't have Fergus to ruinate everything. Overall I guess it could have been worse, and I can put the new part to the bottom edge of the bed. :)

I did take pics of it's progress; this is one of the quilts in my original quilt journal, which years later I'm actually finding helpful in a few cases because I documented my process so well and it HAS been almost 20 years in some cases. So this is pretty pic heavy. Mostly phone pics, but I used my camera at the end.

Shemar crapped out in mid-December, and I finally got the time to get him out and to the repair shop, hopefully to have his hook race replaced. I pulled out the old QC to finish the edging of this quilt, as well as other projects awaiting completion since Shemar was sent on vacation while still insisting he prefers Versace. Anyway the quilt is still awaiting a binding. I fricking hate binding in case someone out there didn't know. Given my record I'll do it eventually in 10-13 years or so.

Crappy phone pic of the arc blocks with the various neutral fabrics I bought behind them.  They ended up not exactly the same colours, but I was still okay with the way the new matched the old colour wise. I did also find more of the original fabrics, and hardly had to use the jelly roll. So I still have most of a jelly roll for other things.

Unfortunately once I got the melons done, I learned why the quilt was smaller than expected all those years ago: the blocks that were meant to be 15" were all actually 14". I had to cut all the new blocks down to make them match the old ones. 

When I cut down the new blocks, it caused the four-patches to go pretty wonky. Above is an old four patch and the worst of the new ones for comparison. The patches, having been cut so much, were just not all the same size. This was really disappointing because at the time I was proud of how well the original four-patches matched up. 

Part of a completed new unit.

All units sewn together, ready to add to the quilt. Despite mangling the four patches, I was glad to see that they did in fact match up with the old piece. Alas, that was a temporary reality.

It also took some work to get Fergus the hell off of it so I could take a picture. Not the last time with this quilt, as you'll see. I threw him off, turned around to take a picture, and got this. He got kicked out and the door closed after this.

Beginning the process of ripping out the old quilt. Probably the easiest part of the whole process. I chose to hand sew a strip to the back so I wouldn't have to cut as much quilting out. I trimmed the batting to match inside. 

New and old pinned together, with the old backing and batting pinned away. Another problem is that these kind of blocks are meant to be sewn together in an "S" pattern. Because I was adding new rows, I had to add them in "C" patterns. This meant I had to hand sew the four-patch units while laying the pieces on the floor. So that was annoying.

Here it is after hand sewing, all in one piece. At this point I decided to add some paint to the four-patches to at least give the worst of them the illusion of matching better than they really did.

I didn't have my beloved spray adhesive, so I pin basted. It was challenging to lay out because of course there was a completed quilt on the end of it, so I taped the backing down and weighted the quilt so that it was still taut. I ended up with a tuck on the edge where the strip to add the two pieces was, but meh.

Pin basting in the hoop.

So once it was together I started quilting. I used the original quilting pattern as I had it in the quilt journal. As mentioned, this was the only quilt I ever completed on my hoop. Now that it is no longer in storage I pulled the hoop back out; it was far easier to use than I remember. Partly because I think I learned more about keeping tension right, and partly because I sat on my bed which is really really high. The hoop practically sat in my lap.  Here it is in the hoop, started on the rings then added the central motif.

I used a thicker thread which made me crazy and I had to use a needle slightly larger than a between, but over all it was fun to do. I tried to match but the stitches were slightly smaller than the original. And with less tension in the hoop, it was much less painful to do than the original. Helps not having an arthritic flare up too.

Fergus thought this was a "box" and tried to sit in it whenever I readjusted the quilt. He also tried to chew the thread and jump on top of the quilt while in the frame. He got kicked out and the door closed...again.

New ring above, old ring below. I had been considering getting a smaller hoop for the frame (you can get different sizes) but now I find that while the large hoop has it's challenges, it's just not that difficult to use anymore. 

Ready to cut down, and...oh look it's Fergus the king of the aholes.

....yeah. He wanted in the kitchen as soon as I had covered the doorway.

The last pic was taken after I had quilted and edged, but before washing. Glad I did it, because after washing, the new rings all shrunk considerably. They are now significantly SMALLER than the old ones. I think it's because I used kona cotton for the centres instead of broadcloth, as originally. So I didn't need to cut them down anyway, they would have shrunk down. That said, they wouldn't have matched. Still, I did a lot of extra work on them because they weren't the right size, then they SHRUNK. PHEH.

There's now a ripple in the middle of the quilt though it's more noticeable on the back, as can be seen here (note the hand-sewn strip too--been awhile since I hand sewed like that, and it wasn't the straightest, heh).  It also shrank more to one side than the other.

This is how much smaller the three new rows are. :( Mama and I did tug-of-war with it for awhile to stretch it but mostly only succeeded in almost knocking each other over a few times and lawling at each other. It really didn't stretch too much and mama once again reminded me of how often I fail at my bad ideas. Sigh.

Anyway here's some more pictures of the finished quilt. It really has turned out to be quite large and it was hard to find a wall big enough for it. The darkest rings all ended up in the last row and colourwise I think that's the only thing that looks a little weird (more noticeable in the pic with Ferghole the douchecopter). 

 The entire quilt, new part on the top so there's some rippling to the larger bottom. I had to actually Hammer push pins into this wall! This apartment has some kind of rock hard particle board that nothing sticks to or in for walls.

Look at that shrinkage. One thing I will say is that it makes the quilting look pretty nice...I mean for part of it. Really the quilting is where a difference is most apparent. 

 Quilting in the sunlight. We had a very sunny day today so I decided it'd be good for the colouring.

This picture or the one above probably show its colours best. 

I figure if I put the new part on the bottom of the bed with the smallest side against the wall, as it is here, its hardly noticeable that it's smaller. 

The DWR plus another quilt I just finished.

So though it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, they never really do. I know that it's not the best idea to pull the fork out again once you've declared something done, but I don't think it's a habit I'll ever be able to break. I do have a large and useable quilt now. And I want to hand quilt the New York Beauty even more now. Still working on the sashing!

Reworking Old Faves

I will always credit John Flynn for being the reason I still use Janomes and got a new sewing machine to replace my terrible first one (That first machine and Shemar have been my real Janome lemons, though meticulous cleaning and aurafil thread has helped with Shemar). I decided to make a double wedding ring quilt using his method, which involved strip piecing and resewing of all seams at a prescribed angle, which was marked out on the machine in tape.

The machine was HORRIBLE and since I had a warranty, It spent more time in the Sears Bargain centre getting fixed than it did at home. Every time I took it in, I would tell them "there is a piece of black electrical tape on the machine. DO NOT REMOVE THE BLACK ELECTRICAL TAPE". This happened frequently enough that the lady finally looked at me and said "haven't you been in here A LOT with this machine with the black electrical tape??" Yes, yes I have. "We'll make sure you get it back in working order this time" she said.

Then a few days later they phoned me to tell me it had been "broken in transit" even though it was never shipped anywhere and as it was under warranty I got to pick a new one, which I think probably still has the black electrical tape on it. That machine was great and I learned then that when Janomes are good they're very very good, but when they're lemons they're HORRID. And I like to think the lady at Sears Bargain Centre sent that other machine to some part of Chaplin Sk.

 I'm slowly plugging away at the new york beauty (half plus one of the sashing strips are done! 15 left...and then the rest of the top) but kind of want to do something else. This is all the amazing progress I've made:

Yeah isn't it underwhelming. I'mhalf done half of the top. Sort of. Still no blocks as each one of those sashing strips includes 40 seams. And I'm doing this the EASY way. Holy crap new york beauty. Still not happy with the lighter blue options, I begin to think the actual shade of blue I wanted doesn't exist.

But as the NYB is one of those patterns I have always wanted to make, It reminded me of the double wedding ring. I learned to quilt to make one of them, and it took about 6 or 7 years before I found the afore mentioned Flynn Method and did it. As I had a very small bed I made the quilt equally small.

Somehow it ended up in Regina and hidden under mama's bed in the crapartment, where I found it and then put it in the cedar chest when we moved. Over the summer the oppressive heat of the upper floor of the apartment required a) the home made air conditioner and b) different blankets so I was using the DWR, as it has ultra thin batting. But it's really too small to fit a regular bed:

 

 This really looks better than most pictures of it. The main background fabric was a leftover fabric I had used on the midsummer night's dream quilt (actually all of the background fabrics were) and I never liked it as much as the off white, which I had less of. But the colours look pretty good here.

So I've been thinking about what to really do with it, because I've rarely ever used it. I considered putting it on the wall, but I think I can actually make it bigger without too much difficulty.

I didn't bind it because it hurt so much to hand quilt it (my joints were flaring at the time), and once I zigzagged the edges I couldn't bind it. It was the only quilt I ever did start to finish on my hoop actually. Man it hurt. I never got back to it because I hate binding and I would have had to sew the back by hand with the curved edges.  But this means it will be relatively easy to rip out the zigzagging and add rows to it.

Painful and agonizing that quilting was. I would work on it for a half an hour max and my joints would stop working. I remember having to pry my left hand open. Yay for getting inflammatory arthritis at 15. I was trying to get the digital camera's f stop to work here.

These are the remaining original fabrics I still have, plus a few I picked out that I think would work as well. I was sure I had some more of them and I probably have to go back through my scraps again. I had to buy solids that matched the peach of the four patch and then other neutrals for the background (that didn't matter as much since there are already several neutrals in it) so I decided to get a 30s print jelly roll as well to make up for the lack of leftovers. 

Jelly Rolls! I love them more than bluesmen do. 

...Okay not those kind. 

There are some good coordinates here so I'm sure it will look fine. It's scrappy anyway and as long as it keeps with the 30s cotton candy kind of colourway I think it's not going to be too bad. 

 If you're wondering, what I will do is make three new rows of seven rings and sew them together as a unit. Then I'll split open the longer side of the quilt and sew the tops together on the curve, but probably add the batting and backing in a straight row to the back and then flip them over so they sandwich. Then I'll quilt them and edge it and probably not bind it. Because I hate binding so much and it will be soo big and I hate doing binding. 

This is what the quilt will look like with three more rows added to the side. I think this will make it a good size.

I still have the original templates but they're not that great so I re-drafted them. I'll still strip piece the majority of them, but I think I'll foundation piece a few arc units just to be able to use the smaller pieces of the original fabrics. Shouldn't take too long to sew a 3x7 set of blocks, and Sam is no longer around to lay on the blocks, as he did when I made the original. After twisting around on them and fluffing them up.

Yeah Sam. Sometimes I miss him then I think about things like that and him biting me.

After Four Years of Exile...

We have finally moved to a place that has room for all my fabric and Fergus (plus at least 20 other cats for Fergus to get beat down by, including a random grey kitten that ran into our apartment today). It also doesn't have the stupidest tenancy agreement of all time, so even though I'm paying more, it's probably all worth it. 

Since I can put shelves on anything that doesn't move and we're paying more for rent, we are getting rid of the storage locker. We have enough room that we don't need it, and while I packed it like tetris before the move, we finally got down to the original layer and brought it all home today. This was virtually all my stuff, including my quilt hoop, the parts of the industrial sewing machine (now in the basement), the homemade drumcarder and fibre, the tubs of dyestuff and pots for dyeing, and the two jumbo tubs of FABRIC.

Ooh tub of TREASURE. SO EXCITING. Those are the poly brocades I hoarded on top. I started pulling everything out of them as soon as possible and depositing it into multiple piles around the living/dining area.

Fabric piles everywhere! And patterns. And test designs. And things I sort of made. And interfacings/fusible web/buckram/timtex. And other wonderful things.

It turned out I had lots of white fabric (mostly silk) for dyeing. Some cotton, linen, organza and also some kind of stiff silk I have no idea what I'm going to do with. It's almost like paper. Definitely silk though, which is my favorite fibre ever:

Especially duppioni, apparently. I love the versatility of silk and the way it dyes. It's the perfect fibre and if silk worms weren't so disgusting and nasty, I would totally raise them to reap the benefits of their hard work and sad little lives. Yay! But they ARE nasty so someone else has to do it for me. I also had some silk hankies (these are pulled out cocoons) in there, which I used in felting projects mostly.

 I took most of the quilting cotton in the form of fat quarters with me and they sat on the shelf of my room, but a few of the larger cuts I put into storage. I found some nice plain blacks and whites, both of which I've bought more of since. Plus some cotton, wool and silk/wool batting. Unfortunately I can't decide which is the wool and which is the silk/wool. Love wool batting though.

 

Various apparel fabrics plus the sari I bought all cheap. I also had a couple of patterns. I keep trying to do clothing sewing, but I'm just not that good at it. Mainly because I want to be able to sew like Alexander McQueen already and am always sadly disappointed that God didn't just make that happen like when the lame walk and the blind see.  IT'S JUST AS VITAL. Like who wants to make t shirts? I want to make COOL STUFF.

I totally did buy that Japanese Vionnet book in anticipation of him changing his mind on that this time though!!

These are muslins, test blocks and half finished projects. Never have known exactly what to do with some of these. I also have the ties and bits for the crazy quilt I have always been planning. One of these days I'll start it!

 I even found actually finished projects as well (yeah I do have a few of those). This was my big bagua batik. The tiger was probably my favorite, and I dyed the colours with procion mx and sodium alginate. I remember the black being really problematic and it ended up fading quite a bit after I put it in a window, though it was meant to fade out on the edges. Mama was like "let's put it on the table for decoration" haha.

  I also found the logwood dyed things had shifted quite a lot into brown from purple. Gotta watch those browns. And logwood of course. The dye woods are in their own tub, though I suspect I'll have to replace all the noxious chemicals I'm still not supposed to have.


Also,  FYEAH DRAGON











I did not find the three missing quilts. I think they are gone. Mama keeps saying "I didn't take them, just the other ones you found under my bed!!" Sigh.  It's possible they got moved, but they are not in any of the places my other things are. RIP quilts, where ever you are:

:(

Quilts 2013

   

Since I bought Shemar in January, I've gone back to making traditional quilts. And given the harp space, many of them have been larger bed sized quilts. Unfortunately Shemar is turning out to be a machine riddled with problems and I'm not sure what to do about it.

I do like being able to work on the large quilts. Just wish the machine worked properly! I've oiled this machine more than any machine I've ever owned and we have an old school cast iron singer that needs to be oiled in about 15 places. Typical for Janomes, the biggest problems always originate in the bobbin case, but this machine also has some bizarre engineering quirks, like a bar beside the presser foot that makes it ultra difficult to change the foot, and a power foot that makes the machine run on its own while I sit across the room and watch it go. The quarter inch foot is wobbly and inaccurate; I had to buy an accufoot version, which helped the wobbliness, but have to really watch that I'm getting a true quarter inch on it.

I bought it for quilting of course and while the foot feeds really nicely, FMQ is where the bobbin problems become most apparent. This is disappointing. But I'm stubborn so I insisted on making it work as best I could.

The first thing I did was pull out a quilt I had started on the hoop back in 09, which was put into storage when we moved to the crapartment along with the hoop. I pulled it out to work on quilting. Forgot what a pain in the butt polyesther batting can be. Mama bought herself a jelly roll to make an apron, which I ended up making for her.  Then I took the leftovers and made this quilt. I still haven't bound it because I hate binding and always will.

The problems started with this quilt as the bobbin casing became dislodged. It originally did it very occasionally, but as sewing progressed it started to happen more frequently.

Second quilt, which I made for Christina for her grad. She picked the style of quilt and I used mostly quilts that had a vague "baroque" style in pastels because this is what she likes.  After this one I sent Shemar in for servicing because it was knocked out of time from the bobbin casing sliding out of place. Uncool. This machine is LARGE and not easy to tote across town for servicing everytime it does this.

 

 

Front and back respectively. I've been piecing all the backs with leftovers lately just because you don't need such a big piece of fabric to cover the back, and it's interesting on both sides. When you do machine quilting you don't really need to be able to see the stitches perfectly.

 

Detail of the quilting, which was a feathered swirl.  Also ran out of thread twice, so there's three shades of turquoise on it.

The third quilt was a medium sized one I made from a charm pack for Quilts for Calgary. Because I straight line quilted it, there were fewer problems, but it still wasn't problem free.

 

I pieced the back of this one, but don't have a picture of it. 

 

Part of the problem was that the thread was making lint in the hook race; never seen a machine pick up lint like this one. For that reason I decided to try invisible thread again for the next one. While it didn't dislodge the  bobbin casing, the thread nested really badly; had to cut it out and start over a few times. And it's invisible thread. That stuff is as awful as I remember.

 

Still turned out pretty well. This was for the baby of a co-worker. I used moda "flirt" fabrics and I wanted to add the picture panel to the back.  I echoed the pattern of the panel in quilting and then quilted the rest in hearts. Man that invisible thread was a pain. Thinking if I buy some good stuff it might be a better choice for shemar though. I did finish the last bit with grey thread because I ran out of the invisible stuff. I wanted to make it white originally, but I felt there were too many prints with a white background and did a grey background instead, which I think turned out really well. 

This quilt was made for the co-worker from whom I got Fergus; he likes sitting on the quilts as soon as I lay them out, even when the quilt is still in pieces and he's stretching them out of shape. For this he has received the beats many times.  He still tries. He's a little speshul. And stubborn. 

I made one for cruz that was originally going to be all turquoise and black, but Richard said they were decorating his room in monkeys. I've had two sock monkey fabrics hanging around for years, but could only find the red one. So it became red and turquoise. Very similar in colour to the previous one, except more red than orange. I also used a couple of leftover pieces from the other one.  

Front and back of the quilt. I quilted this one in straight lines again. This caused fewer problems, though the tension was off at times and I had to sew very slow. Sometimes I had to just stop and come back a few hours later and the machine would work fine. I also bought a couple of accufeed feet which stablized the piecing and made it a bit more accurate, which I needed because these were all quarter square triangles and therefore bias edges.

I've noticed that I'm getting wavy edges; usually this means a quilt that wasn't quilted evenly or that has stretched. Not sure why this is happening but thinking it might have to do with the tension problems? Not sure.

When I went to buy the moda fabrics, Avery was with us. He wanted a quilt made with this horse fabric. So I told him to pick the fabrics and the design he wanted; this is what he chose. It turned out bigger than I intended--almost full bed sized. The orange fabric was a pain--moda marbles tend to warp and fray for me always.

The rope pattern in the borders quilted nicely, but the FMQ I did between the horses was a nightmare to do. I did everything I could to get it to work but I had to rip the threads apart several times, and quilting that should have taken a few hours took days of ripping out and starting again. Ugh. By far the worst experience. Pure awfulness.

The last one I made was mem's Thing.

 

I found this OSU fabric on Fabric.com so I made him an O quilt out of it. Kansas Dugout FTW, again. It truly is one of the most versatile of all the simple blocks. I had the least problems with quilting on this one, but I did a lot of work to keep it from being ruined. I must have oiled it 10 times. The blocks are gigantic--18 inches. So it turned out to be a large throw size.

I ran short of fabric so pieced the back pretty extensively. I didn't lay it out quite straight so the backing is cockeyed compared to the top, unfortunately. Lack of space in the crapartment makes it hard to lay out large quilts properly.

 I quilted the centres with footballs, but apparently only Canadian footballs have stripes all the way around. So they're Canadian footballs.

   

No matter because I added a patch to the back to represent Mem's favorite CFL team (by my dictate and according to the anti-blue-and-whore-gold-pact we made ages ago) to the back, the 101 Grey Cup Champion Saskatchewan Roughriders. :) 

 

I printed it from a block print with pigment ink which unfortunately washed out. So I had to try to print it a second time post-quilting, which didn't totally work. But at least it's there to remind mem of the best professional team evAr. :)

I am still disappointed with Shemar and may end up trading it in because it is an extremely finicky machine and as I mentioned has some really weird design issues. But definitely enjoyed going back to old simple style quilts, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. It was fun to work with simple shapes and colours, and I've always been a fan of heavy quilting even when I did it by hand. The FMQ foot does work so much better than my old one, which was a jumping foot. Just wish the bobbin behaved better. :(

Next I think I will make one of the trendy union jack quilts. I'd like to do the Kafe Fasset "pickle dish" that isn't really a pickle dish at all and use the John Flynn method on it, but I'm really not sure Shemar can do something that requires that kind of accuracy. Perhaps will try to paper piece instead and see.