My first quilt, or Has it really been 30 years?!?

This year marks my 30 anniversary of graduating from high school. Not only that does make me want to freak out on many levels (Where did the time go?! How can I possibly lose so much weight in 3 months??), but it also puts me in a contemplative mood. Ironically, I now live once again in the same neighborhood as my alma mater, so I find myself thinking a lot about the past.

I started this blog as a journal of quilting; to mark my accomplishments and note what works and what doesn't work in the creation of my quilts. Naturally, it should include my past, and my first quilting attempt.

When I was in high school, I had a job at Payless Drugs. I started as a checker, but eventually made my way to work primarily in the fabric department. Aside from cutting and straightening and pulling old patterns, I also got to make samples for display. One such sample was a crib quilt from a magazine article. I'm not sure why I chose browns, because that has never been one of my favorite colors, but I did. I also improvised the ruffled binding. It was such a hit that one of my co-workers commissioned a queen-sized quilt in the same color scheme. I believe she paid me $100 for it. And that was the last quilt I'd do until 1997, when the impending birth of my daughter prompted me to take a quilt class. Just how long it took me to complete that baby quilt is a story for another day...

Weird week

The school year is coming at us full force and summer is literally moments away. How did that happen? Haven't had a chance to sew yet, but I bought and cut out most of the pieces for a table runner. Went in my sewing room last night and just looked while waiting for Reaper to start. Yesterday was lost to getting the AC in my car repaired. Already forget what happened to Monday. Suffice it to say, this is shut-down week for my husband, so my schedule is not entirely my own...

Did buy a copy of Megan Cox's The Quilter's Catalog. Got it from the library and there is so much good stuff in there I just "had" to have it for my own. I also showed off some of my quilt designs to my husband, who was ironically "complaining" that I hadn't yet made a quilt for our bed. I am taking that as "permission" to go for it. I've been hanging back partially because Quilter's Design Wizard is overwhelming me with choices and limitations (more on that later), but also because obviously it will cost more than the table runner, which so far I've spent $17 on.

So with the quilt I want for my room, I want a somewhat reversible quilt with some kind of simple yet optical illusion-ish design on the backing. I've kind of forced QDW to do a couple of entwined chains by using a couple of simple blocks and just coloring with them, but as my husband pointed out (damn him, the engineer) it is kind of a lot of work for the effect. I will have to find another design or different blocks if I actually want to be able to use the yardage feature for the quilt back. So this is a limitation of QDW that I can live with for now, and as long as I can jerry-rig it to do what I want on the screen, I can always figure it out on my own. 

A bigger limitation is not being able to do anything with the design files: you can only print them within the confines of the program. I can't, for example, make them into PDFs and display them anywhere, as I'm assuming you could do with EQ6.

Off to errands I go. After I get my car, I have to finish my newsletter draft for the STC, update the website for the soccer club I volunteer on, and then I get to quilt.

And here it is

I really have a steep learning curve sometimes. I took pictures of this prior to washing it but had the camera set on some funky setting, so I took more today after washing it. Kyra and I gave this a trial run last night while watching "Lie to Me" and she pronounces it "cuddly and warm".

What I like about this layout is the squares within squares (or diamonds). I also like the pinwheel quality to it, and less massing* of areas of meandering and just stitch in a ditch (the "birds").

I impulsively added some waves or curls in the border that came out...OK. I sort of steam-rolled them and was not always precise. Still, to an impartial observer they look alright. I am annoyed by the areas where the darker fabric in the seams shows through the yellow, and I guess I'll have to watch that next time.

*(Here's a picture of the massing I was talking about: a convergence of 4 triangles equals a bunch of area to quilt. I tried a feather wreath and it came out alright.)

Lessons learned

Take two on my quilt is almost finished. I have shown some improvement in this second quilt. I bought a book on free-motion feathers, and couldn't quite get them, but tried something similar in meandering and it came out fine. One thing I didn't quite figure out was the tension or some other thread problem. I started out skipping stitches, so I read up on that and changed my needle and then needle size and then rethreaded my machine a million times and it eventually got...better, but not totally fixed (so I'm thinking I need a tune up).

The lilac colored thread on the top looked best on the prints not the yellow. I'm anxious to see how it washes up. Don't ask why I think that will help, but I think the thread will relax a bit. Other than that, the ivory thread on the backing looks great.

Another lesson learned, or something to watch out for: I noticed with the first quilt that the backing flannel was "stretchy" and since I bought the same one again, this 2nd one was also stretchy. In addition I messed up when I cut my backing into two pieces. I cut at the halfway point but then ripped it, and it was apparently not cut straight on one end because I ended up with one side one inch too short and the other side 4 inches too long. Sigh. Measure twice, cut once....grrrrr.... Then I pinned the top with not enough backing on the top and had to take all the pins out and move it and pin it again. So really I am learning, but very slowly... This is the floppiest flannel I've worked with, so I think it is the brand. I also had trouble with the thread breaking. I didn't have that problem before, but I want to play with heavier thread weights next time. I also had more problem with catching the backing into funky pleats while quilting. Sigh. Maybe I need to look into starching or doing the adhesive between layers. It was harder to get this quilt taut while pinning--or I was being lazy because I knew I was keeping this one...

This time I ironed the backing's edge into a fold for the binding, if that makes any sense, and I had less problem making a neat corner in the binding. I hand sewed it again and I must say it took much less time, but it does leave my left arm oddly sore (and I'm right-handed), so I can't do more than an hour or so at a time.

First Impression: Quilt Design Wizard

I bought a copy of Quilt Design Wizard by The Electric Quilt Company. First of all let me say "phew!" that it installed and worked on Windows Vista despite the package saying it works on XP. (As it happens, the website does say it works on both XP and Vista, but still I wish I'd checked before I tore into the package and made it unreturnable...)

Considering I was playing with it without going through the lessons or reading up much on how to use it, I was able to create a couple of interesting designs right off the bat. One frustration was not being able to find solid fabric choices, but again I haven't finished looking at all the instructions. And I also had trouble changing the border after initially picking mitered border. Still, it seems to have a bunch of interesting fabric choices and many interesting blocks. I was able to download some extra projects from the website, but thinking back on it, I may not have completely installed them, so that's something else to check. I've got my eye on Electric Quilt 6, but that will have to wait for more solvent times. In the meantime, I can have some fun with this. Too bad there isn't a function to click and have the quilt pop up in real life (dream on...)

Block Study

This week I finished 1 of 2 quilt, and I'm close to sewing the blocks into rows for 2 of 2 quilt. Duplicate quilts: you may wonder why.

Well, one of my biggest struggles has always been following instructions. I think that's what urged me to become a technical writer by trade, believe it or not. You may see words, but if the text is too dense I just see "blah blah blah". Maybe it's a learning disability, maybe I'm a visual learner. Whatever. The saying "measure twice, cut once" just seems like an optional suggestion to me. So when it came to me designing a quilt for a friend's little girl, I found a pattern and decided to mix it up a bit. First off, I took the block size from 3" to 12". Next I took it from 5 rows across and 6 down to 4 rows by 4 rows. Then I drew it out on grid paper and set about making my list of materials. And that is where things get fuzzy.

I based my blocks on the 12" Flying Birds block from "501 Rotary-Cut Blocks" by Judy Hopkins (off-topic, but that's my maiden name, although I'm not related to this lady). Problem is the block in the book has a big triangle of light material, 3 light birds, and the rest is dark fabric. My design, based on Darlene Zimmermann's "Hot Tamale" from "Fat Quarter Small Quilts: 25 Projects You can Make in a Day", had the block opposite that, with the patterned fabric as the birds and big triangle. I didn't notice until after I'd cut out 16 triangles in my background color and 16 assorted colored triangles.

Fortunately, while I was picking the fabric, I ended up "fortuitously" picking some of my favorite colors: teal, purple, coral and fuchsia. So what to do with the extra 8 background triangles? Make a second quilt, of course. At that point I also realized that the original design didn't call for any background triangles, but what if I did 8 regular, per Hot Tamale, and 8 reversed, per 501?

Another lesson learned on this project was about fabric calculation. I went back to the store for more background material twice before I had enough, and I ended up having to search for and find 2 of the colorful fabrics online.

Once I had all the blocks finished, then the fun began. I arranged them in several configurations on the floor and took pictures of them to choose which one I liked best for the project. Indecisively, I emailed the recipient for input. The dominant patterns of the blocks created an "X" or a diamond. I found 7 variations the first time around, and today I found 3 more. I will probably still go for option F, with a diamond shape and the blocks making more of a windmill effect.

One of the reasons I liked the pattern originally was the prairie points. My son and my friend's children are all from Nepal, and the flag there is a unique shape of 2 triangles. I liked finding something that vaguely spoke of the kids' origin without smashing anyone over the head with it (like a flag blanket, found for sale on many adoption-themed websites ). The prairie points ended up being not as hard as I thought, and they maintain shape after washing. The one thing is I have not found what the trick is to making the corners of the backing come out OK with the bulk of the points and the quilt top. Funny how the instructions from several books just gloss over how to finish that backing...

Other valuable lessons: reinforce intersections where there's a lot of bulk. Don't use a varigated light to dark thread for the machine quilting unless you are really good, although in general I thought it made some of the designs wishy-washy where the thread had the least contrast. I'm using a solid orchid/lavender on the quilt I'm keeping.