Free Motion Friday - May 31, 2013

I've been getting ready for a bout of free motion for the last couple of weeks. I've pieced a quilt top. I've put my hexagons on the black fabric. Both of those are now wrapped around gift paper rolls waiting for their turn.

I also pieced two log cabin blocks. One rather wonky and the other a classic one. I've got piecing problems with both of them, but they were pieced to be learning projects, so I decided to just keep on.

Today I got to the free motion part of the project.

I started out with some stippling on the sandwich I use to warm up on. I hate stippling, even good stippling, and mine isn't good. I decided to try the stippling Sharon Schamber taught in one of the DVDs that The Quilt Show is allowing their members to watch for free. It is a bit different from the method Leah Day teaches. And at least I didn't find myself having to cross over. But it is still pretty ugly.           

 I had made up a bunch of 7 inch squares and put a 4 inch square in the middle of them. This is the first one. The pattern is one Leah Day taught on her web site this week called Inside the Sun. This is the first time I did 4 inch squares, and I think they are a good idea, but I'd like more fabric around them to make handling the fabric easier.

I'll use the rest of the ones that are made up, but I'm going to consider drawing the squares on a larger piece of fabric and having multiple squares on one piece of fabric.

 I also stitched it into the middle square on one of the two Log Cabin Blocks. This isn't a great photo of it. All of the fabrics are darker, and the thread is a beige.

Leah Day has a point that stitching with contrasting thread helps you see the stitches and over time will improve your free motion quilting. That is what I hope will happen for me.

Take care all

This Week

I have been quilting this week. What I have not been doing is blogging, mainly because it turns out that the computer chair has been a factor in my walking issues. So for several days I've avoided this computer and this chair. I do have a laptop that I almost never use, so I've been fighting the computer wars with that laptop. One of the things that happen when you don't use a computer for months on end is that the updates pile up. Yesterday it literally took hours to deal with backed up updates including a full scale service pack that had never been applied to the laptop.

Right now, I can't blog on the laptop. I don't have a way to get the pictures into the blog from that computer. My intentions are to get a new chair into this room, but that also has to wait until I'm strong enough to go and get it, and can set someone up to help me get it out of the car and into the house. Not that easy on a holiday weekend.

 So here are the updates on the current quilting projects. The Coin Quilt top is finished. I rolled it on an old wrapping paper roller until I can get to the next step, which is putting the sandwich together and quilting it. I'm not sure what kind of quilting it will be, but it will be free motion. And probably more complex than most of the things I've done so far.


I've gotten almost all of the papers out of the hexagrams. I left the ones on the outside on purpose. It turned out it was not necessary to remove the basting except from the first one. I used my Purple Thang to dig under the papers so I could get them out and it was extremely easy.

I did the kind of basting where you do not put the thread through the papers. Once I learned that method it was all very easy to do.

It is going to make appliqueing this to the black background very easy. I have not decided if that will be done by hand or by machine. Not sure which way to go at this point.

Meanwhile, I've pieced two log cabin blocks. One normal and one wonky for one of Leah Day's Craftsy classes.

Yes, the block really is bowing out. This is the first log cabin I've ever pieced and I learned some important things doing it. Since it is actually a practice piece and probably won't be turned into anything other than a tote, and maybe not even that, I'm not redoing it to make it perfect. It will be enough for my purposes and frankly it might be a good thing to learn how to deal with a block that isn't quite all straight lines.

The second block is intentionally wonky. What is interesting is that it is not bowed out in any direction. It is a little too big for the backing fabric I cut, so I will cut it down to match the size of the first block.

The various things I'm doing for my knee and my walking are working, but slowly. More another time.

Take care all.

Finally Quilting Again

Not sure what is going on. I got back to the machine last week and this week just looked at what was going on and left it alone. But this morning I did sit down to sew, so I can report some progress on the sewing front as well as on the knitting front.

One of the seams you are looking at is just pinned. I've got that one and one more long seam to sew and then the top and bottom borders to put on and I will actually have a quilt top. Once I've got that I'll be able to sandwich it and begin some more free motion quilting, which I really want to do.

The fabric has arrived for the tote bag pieces for Leah Day's second new class. I figure I'll be using stuff from both of the new classes on these two projects. The off white fabric in the Coin Quilt (yes it has a name already) isn't actually a solid, but it reads close enough that I should be OK if I use a dark enough beige when I'm quilting. The fabric for the tote bag pieces is all solid fabrics of a medium to dark color range. Not quite as dark as what Leah Day is using in her sample pieces, but much darker than what I normally would use. They will be quilted in white thread.


The idea is to begin to allow myself to see the thread. But it was very hard to actually buy solid fabrics. I'm not a solid fabric person.

The hexagons still have all their paper in them, but that also is almost ready to be attached to the black fabric I chose to mount it on. Again, not a solid, but something that will read as a solid most of the time.

Take care all.

On My Needles - 5/18/13

One thing I have been doing is knitting. I enjoy having something to knit while I watch TV, which probably means I'm unlikely to ever do really complicated patterns where you have to pay attention to what you are actually knitting.

The shawl has grown. Still not sure what kind of yarn this is because it came from Big Lots with their label which frankly doesn't say any of the standard things. What it looks like is a self-striping sock type yarn, but it is thicker than sock yarn normally is.

At this point it almost fills the 40 inch cable of the circular needles it is on. Pretty soon I will not be able to spread it out to take the photo. I'm almost, within half and inch to an inch, from the place where I will do more open work rows. Not long after that the self striping will pretty much end because the total number of stitches will be so large that the red color or the green one won't make it all the way across the row.

I'm learning a lot knitting this. It is essentially a standard top down, two triangle, shawl. It has a nice two stitch and one yarn over garter stitch edge on the side edges. I would not have thought two stitches would look that nice, but it looks like it is almost a rope edge. It also looks like it is going to be a warm shawl, so I'll probably use it next Fall and Winter.

Take care all.

I New Quilt in Progress

During my long dry spell caused by not feeling well enough to put time in at the sewing machine, I knew I wanted to make some kind of mostly improv coin quilt. I found one in the original issue of MODERN QUILTING and I started it this week.

This is the kind of project most quilters can put together in a day. Maybe two if they only cut fabric on day one. It will take me a lot longer. The long coin strips are now actually cut to the correct size.

My quilt won't be exactly the same as the one in the magazine for several reasons.

I've cut the coin strip wider than they suggested. And I'm not sure I'll be cutting the fabric in between the strip the same size as theirs either. I will probably have a top and bottom and side borders for two reasons. It is much easier to square up a quilted quilt if you have made extra wide borders. And I won't be straight line quilting this.

Instead, I think this is going to be one of the projects that I'll use the designs from Leah Day's two new Craftsy classes on.

The background fabric is not a solid white. It is actually a beige and white print that reads as white. I'm not sure but I think I'll be using a slightly darker beige thread on the quilting because this time around I will be happy to have it show.

The coins are all from my scrap boxes since there are very few duplicates. The background from fabric I bought for a quilt along that I was too sick to join up with. So all stash. I like working from stash.

Take care all.

Changes

It was time for some changes at my house again. The 75 gallon water heater was beginning to make some very odd noises when it heated up the water. And I really didn't need a 75 gallon water heater anyway. It was what came with the house and I gather we had to have one because of the tub that also came with the house.

The water tank was huge, but compared to the wine cooler my husband had brought with us from California it looked pretty small.

The wine cooler will go to my daughter's house at some point this summer. In the meantime, it is living in my garage. And once both of them were out of the Utility Room, there was room for a tankless hot water heater and the water softener I've been wanting since I moved into this extremely hard water area.

So there it all is, taking up a lot less space than the other equipment. The washer and dryer are in that room too, on the other wall. I did some laundry this morning and there is a lot more room in there now.



Take care all.

On My Needles - May 10, 2013

I'm knitting in addition to quilting and getting ready to quilt. I actually swatched for this project, which is rather funny considering what the project is and what the pattern said.

The pattern said that you could use any yarn with it, although the size would change depending on what you used. They were using what sounded like a fingering (sock) yarn and size 4 needles.

The yarn I picked out is a $1 a ball yarn from Big Lots. I've got no idea what it is made of. I think it is either sport weight or DK.

I started with size 9 circular needles because this thing is going to get big and it will be big fast. That was too loose, so I tried a size 5 needle. Better but still rather floppy. This shows the project begun with a size 2 circular. All of the needles were by different manufacturers and that turned out to be interesting in itself. But that is a different post.

They yarn is really nice to work with. Right now it is self striping and trying to make little patterns. That won't last long once the numbers of stitches doubles and triples. I'm adding 4 stitches every other row. It feels soft and rather silky. And the colors are so pretty. There will be blocks of islet rows later in the project. This yarn is somewhat different from what I expected knitted up, but I think it won't matter because the "lace" blocks aren't all that complicated.

Take care all.