OnLine Gallery

For fabric artists who are interested in selling their work, here's an interesting idea. Zibbet.com is an on-line gallery, where you can post works for sale, and apparently there is no charge until the work sells. (My link is to a review of the site, not the site itself. I thought that might be clearer and more objective.) Obviously the site is aimed more at painters, but jewelry and ceramics are mention, so why not textiles?

Not Your Grandmother's Flower Garden

8" x 10"

I added a few beads, but only rearranged beads on one flower. Those things were TIGHT. When I bead, I bead. I also decided it looked better in this orientation than in the landscape one although I'm still not totally sure of that. I think I owe the idea of turning it to Nellie, who turned her "Imagine Monet" with wonderful results. I could critique on and on, but in general I'm pleased. There are a few stray threads in the picture, but I rushed to take the picture while the afternoon sun made the quilting texture show up so well.

Thanks for all the interesting comments on my math rant. I guess we all muddle through, whether we have math problems or not. The important thing, in my view, is to at least try.

Quilters and Math

This is a bit of a rant. I hope I don't step on any toes; I don't intend to be critical, just puzzled and a bit sad.

What is the problem with quilters and math? I've wondered that for a while, but it was brought to my attention again last night at guild when several people became practically hysterical at the thought of averaging three measurements of a quilt center to get a good border length. These are intelligent women; what's the matter?

I'm not a math whiz. I remember my high school math teacher, firmly planted on sturdy legs and arms folded on top of her massive bosom, announcing loudly to the class, "Kathy, they say you're such a good student. Why don't you know what 7 plus 9 is?" Actually, I do know what 7 + 9 is, but I have to think about it. I also can't remember numbers; I have to write down a phone number to dial it, and I have to write down the simplest measurement or I forget it. But there are calculators for people like me, and for everyone else too.

Actually quilters only have to remember a few simple formulas, like the square that is cut in half diagonally for half square triangles should be the size of the finished square plus 7/8 inch. (That sounds much more complicated than it is.) And if you can't remember, the formula, there are all sorts of charts available, and there is always Google. Otherwise, quilting is mostly just addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication, all easy to do on the most basic calculator.

Quilters Newsletter Magazine periodically has articles that try to help. There was one in the last issue about planning any block which was excellent. (I looked for it on the website and couldn't find it, but it's the January 2009 issue, I think.)

I think this problem of quilters is an example of the way many women have been treated by the educational system: girls can't get math, so they don't. "Math Phobia" was the popular phrase a while back. The sad thing about not understanding quilt math is that quilters are so limited in what they can do. They have to use patterns, they have to buy special rulers that put the right measurements in, they have to use pre-cut fabrics, they think they need a special calculator to figure yardage, and on and on. So, the next time you can't figure it out, don't panic stop, think, get the calculator, use Google, look in a quilting book. I bet you can do it. If someone who can't remember her Social Security number or doesn't know that 7 + 9 = 16 can figure it out, anyone can.

Moving Along

The quilting is done, and I thought the beading was, but then I dropped a few red beads in the center to see how they look, because the yellow ones alone aren't enough. Ugh. There will have to be some reworking there. Too bad; I find beading about as interesting as watching paint dry.

I don't do hand quilting because the carpal tunnel in my wrists begins to scream. But just a tiny bit I can handle, and it was fun.

One of my guilds is having a "paint chip challenge." Apparently this has been floating around internet sites for a while. You make a quilt using colors of paint chips whose names match your three initials. I had no intention of doing this, but I found some Grandmother's Flower Garden pieces I made years ago, and thinking about something for the Alzheimers' Quilt Initiative, began playing with them. Then I realized that there were three colors here, and maybe I could find some appropriate paint chips and kill the proverbial two birds. The "K" was a challenge, but I found a deep purplish red called Keepsake, and the rest was easy.

I took the piece along with me on a visit to my son's and did some hand quilting. Beads will be next, and a pattern of diamonds quilted in the background, perhaps with a few of the diamonds embroidered to stand for leaves. I actually like this, and while it won't be a winner, it may serve a good purpose.

A Prize

I was the lucky winner of a giveaway by Candace of Squash House Quilts to celebrate her 100th blog post: beautiful valentine fabric, pattern for a table topper, AND some real chocolate. (Wonder why the chocolate's not shown here...) Thanks so much, Candace.

Thank you everyone for the kind words about my star quilt. It is now totally finished, and I'll send it off to Deb Geyer for quilting soon. She has a beautiful Valentine quilt on her blog today. In the meantime, I have been working on some projects for Debra. I finished a scrap baby quilt, and am going to add borders to a lap size UFO for her Quilts for Women project.

Otherwise, it's uneventful here. My son sent me a video of Conor looking at his valentine and making fire truck noises on cue. His brother then followed up with a truck sound as he looked at his card. Actually both sounded about the same. The video was adorable of course, and it was such a sweet thing of them to do.

Text on Post Card

Since I can't draw, I like to combine fabric motifs and words on fabric postcards, but I've had trouble planning how to place the words so that when I put the fabric through the printer they are in the right location on the card. I figured out a way to do it last week when I made little cards for the grandchildren.

First I made a layout of the fabric motifs, scanned it into Photoshop, and sized it to 4 x 6 inches. ( It has to be reversed on the scanner bed, which was tricky for me at first.)


Then I made a new layer and put in the text I wanted, placing it correctly.


Then I made only the Text layer visible, and fed the pre-treated fabric fused on freezer paper into the printer. This gave me pale blue fabric with red lettering, and no image of course.

Then I fused the fabric motifs into their place on the background, and finished the card as usual. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture before I mailed it, but it was very cute. The outline heart was red, of course, and the edges were finished with red zig zag.

You could also print the entire card from Photoshop, making a colored background layer, but I like the combination of sewing and printing.

This process may be blindingly obvious to many people, but it was a breakthrough for me, and didn't strain my very meager knowledge of Photoshop.

P. S. After finishing this post, I remembered that I CAN treat you to a look at the one where the printing smeared so that I had to do it again. So I guess the final lesson of this tutorial is DON'T FORGET TO HEAT SET THE PRINTING.

"Too Late Smart"

All the time I pieced those Lemoyne Stars, I used my Janome's quarter inch seam foot, but was unhappy with it. The flange makes it difficult to stitch close enough to a marking pin and the foot doesn't ride easily over bulky seam intersections. Finally, as I tried to do the last few stars for the outer border, I decided I'd had it. First I tried the regular foot (moving the needle), but although it went over seams easily, it has an unfortunately placed bar that makes it hard to stitch a Y seam accurately. Then I tried one if the applique feet, moving the needle position to 5.5. Perfect! I can see, I can stitch right to the pin, and I can go over bumps. So much better. If only I'd known that fifty stars ago! I don't know why I didn't. I used the applique foot on the Viking for piecing, but somehow, I thought I should be impressed with the fancy quarter inch foot on this machine. It's good for some things maybe, but not for this kind of block. Live and learn.

Peppermint Stars Done!

Finished! This was the original design, but I am thinking of adding a red band on the outside, perhaps with small stars as cornerstones. But that should be straightforward. There's still pressing and de-linting to do. Deb Geyer has agreed to quilt it for me.

I'm happy with this quilt. I had been thinking about using this block in striped fabrics for several years, and it's satisfying to see it done. Every star is different, although the fabrics repeat. Seeing all the different effects produced by different combinations or arrangement of the fabric was the fun part of the project. The piecing isn't as good as I had hoped to achieve, but it's respectable, and I think the design is a strong one. It was a challenge, for sure.

It's Square, It's Square!

You have to imagine that sung to the tune of "It's May, It's May, la la la la lah." I put the zig zag borders and their framing yellow borders on the red, white, and yellow monster, and IT IS SQUARE, and at least within easing dimensions of the star border. So that is next. No pictures yet; I'm just going to do it. I am very, very tired of this quilt. Never another large one, I say, as my husband says, "Isn't it smaller?" (He's looking at center w/o borders.) "I thought it was going to be queen size." The Robert is all about practicality, in quilts anyway.

To the machine--

More Odds and Ends

I met the goal of finishing the zig zag borders. Now they must be trimmed from the last post to this.

Scary, because it's easy for the ruler to slip, and also the edges are now all bias. Then comes the really tense part of doing the math for the coping strip, sewing the borders on, hoping they fit,

As an exercise in avoidance, I sewed borders on this little block I found in my orphan blocks box, planning to send it to the Alzheimer's Quilt Initiative.



I paper pieced those narrow strip borders so that they'd be perfectly straight, and that worked out beautifully. That's a technique that would work on any small quilt. What a pain paper piecing is though! I don't get the fascination with it.

Also in the orphan box was an oak leaf shape left from another project, so I made this, also for Alz Quilts.



Now to bite the bullet and trim the other three borders!

Odds and Ends

So far, so good.



Goal for the day: finish two more zig-zag border strips, and put together a Valentine postcard. This one is off center. I have no excuse for being unproductive, my husband is out of town, and there are no current crises around here.



The new Issue of Quilter's Newsletter is a good one. I had almost given up reading it, but they keep hanging in there. The cover quilt, by the Japanese quilter, Hideko Kubota, is a beauty. It's a lovely mix of tradition and whimsy, with wonderful unexpected fabrics and color. Irene Berry's scrap quilts are beautiful, and there's a brief tutorial by Pamela Allen about making fabric portraits. I also liked the pictures from the Hands All Around Exhibit. Quilts from other countries are particularly interesting to me; they seem so much fresher and less driven by the market and current trends than American quilts do. Of course that may be just because I don't know what the hot trend is in Europe or Japan.

Last week, I sorted through some bins of non-quilt fabric and found several vintage tablecloths. I used to use these in "wearable art" clothing, but had several untouched ones, so I put them on eBay. Here's the link if anyone is interested in that sort of thing. As you will see, the bidding isn't exactly hot, and you can get a real bargain in 50's pink and grey!

Judges Report

Ghost Orchids just came back from the Road to California show with nice comments about design, execution, and machine stitching details. The comments also said, "Binding should be the same width on both sides." Where is that rule engraved on stone tablets? I made the binding wider in the back to make the quilt hang better. It's twice as wide, so the difference is obviously not a mistake. Argh!

I also received a comment that batting should fill binding. I deserve this one, I think. I know you can avoid this problem by sewing the binding on before trimming the excess binding, but it's hard to square a quilt that way. I haven't found a marking tool that really shows up well enough. Does anyone have experience with either one of these issues?

Maybe I'll Stop Here...

Finally, a layout for the red stars! My design wall is too small to hold the entire thing, so I've folded over part of the center. Just focus on the upper left-hand corner.

That little zig zag border has caused endless trouble. It's described in The Border Workbook, and isn't really difficult, just requires careful stitching and cutting (of course, I've only made this little sample). It also requires lots of math to make the border fit, especially around the corners, and this required an email to That Patchwork Place for an explanation of one section of directions. The number given made no sense to me. I got an answer in less than 12 hours, so they deserve lots of credit for that.

This was last week; in the meantime I've been toying with many other ideas for that section. This has actually been so exhausting that I feel I've finished the project! Time to stop. Seriously, I'm planning a real push to the finish line. First step is to cut lots of red and yellow squares to frame the border stars.

In non-quilting news, we have bought a new car. My husband's "winter" car gave up the ghost on our driveway Monday morning, so we have bought a new Ford Fusion. Since I am partially housebound because of weather and a car shortage, Bob has done the shopping. I took a very brief test drive last night; it was brief because a) roads were slippery, b) it was snowing, and c) it was 10 below zero. The heater, anti-lock brakes, and traction control seem fine. Other things, I don't know. We'll hope for the best. And yes, the Ford salesman seemed glad to see us.

Inspired by Debra's wonderful homeless teen quilt project, I quilted a guild charity quilt that I put together back in November. It's nothing special, but it was a chance to practice free-motion on the Janome using the push button control rather than the foot pedal. The results are very good. It's by far the best free motion quilting I've ever done. It seemed to take much longer though because I set the speed at medium and so had to move the quilt rather slowly. Usually I sew fast and drag the quilt around, trying desperately to keep up so the stitches don't get tiny. Once I got used to the slower and steady pace, I liked it.

I also invested in a bobbin case specially designed for free motion stitching. I don't know what the difference is, but this too seemed to give good results. I used Superior Bottom Line thread in the bobbin, and there are no pops and pulls at all, even though the top thread was a different color and a heavier weight. I don't know if other machines have this option, but I think it was worth the money.

I think I've come to a decision on how to proceed with the red and white stars, but have nothing to show for the mental gear clashing that has been going on. Maybe by spring--

Speaking of spring: we're having the worst winter weather here in years. Day after day of single digit temperatures, wind, and the infamous lake effect snow. A break in the weather would be good!

And finally, if you haven't looked at the Cyber Fyber Exhibition web site, be sure to do that. The postcards and ATC's are worth a bit of time for browsing, and the invited artists' work is eye-opening. I'd love to see it in reality.

Well, Duh!

Yes, you do have to include the width of the sashing strips when you figure the size of the setting triangle. If you don't you will get this weird looking yellow triangle where the block sticks over into the triangles.

If you do, the setting triangle neatly matches the end of the block.

As I was cutting the triangles, the book I was using (which I won't name) didn't mention how sashing would affect triangle size, so although I THOUGHT the triangle should be bigger, I managed to convince myself that I had done this before, kept the size the same, and it worked. It didn't.
Then I looked in Setting Solutions by Sharyn Craig, and there it is: a clear statement that you must include the sashing width, therefore cutting a bigger triangle. She has a neat little chart, telling you what size to cut, so there's no math required.

I was in denial for a while, thinking that the weird look would go when I squared up, trimmed the excess and added a border, but I finally had to face the truth, rip those triangle out, and sew in bigger ones.

Actually, this isn't as bad as it sounds. I have postponed making a decision on the next step. Still, it was pretty much a wasted day. So be warned, everyone.

Thinking

Thank you everyone, for the kind words about my stars quilt. I'm mulling over the next move. I've tentatively decided to put a pieced border in a folded ribbon design in that yellow space. Even using The Border Workbook by Janet Kime, this requires some heavy math, so I'll think about it tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara said.

In the meantime as a break, I made a Project Linus top to send to Quiltmaker for assembling. The directions call for paper piecing, and that's the logical way to make something that different quilters work on, but since I made the entire top myself, and I hate paper piecing, I pieced it the traditional way, and that worked fine. The whole project took about 3 hours. I had intended to add a narrow blue inner border, and that would have looked better, but I totally forgot until it was too late, and this is not a project to rip.



And another report on the Janome: for putting the blocks together, I chain pieced them, using the feature that allows you to run the machine with a push-button control instead of the foot pedal. (The speed is adjustable.) I'd been skeptical of this because I thought taking hands off the fabric to push the button would be a problem, but it worked beautifully, much faster and easier than reaching for the pedal all the time. When there are pins to remove, as there were in sewing the rows together, it was a bit trickier, but still worked well. The feature is supposed to be useful for free-motion stitching, and I'm looking forward to trying that.

I'm excited! Here's the center section of the red star quilt. It seems huge to me, but will be bigger, and rather less red, I think. I have to square off, do the math to figure out how wide the narrow framing red piece will be, and then how wide the yellow strip will be, and frame all the little stars, and then plan the applique on the yellow ring.

Out of the Basement to all of You: Happy New Year!

I'm thinking about reorganizing this mess as a New Year's Resolution, but am still at the thinking stage. I actually did do some straightening and sweeping this morning, but still this would qualify as a "before" picture in anyone's book. If there is ever a different "after" look, you'll be the first to know. Actually, although there's lots of stuff, the space is functional, and I do know where everything is.

As for other goals: I don't think I have any clear ones. The ones that do come to mind are rather negative. For example, except for the Hoffman (maybe), I don't intend to enter any challenges unless they let me do something I'd want to do anyway. At my age, time becomes more precious, and I don't want to use it on something that seems pointless to me. I think I challenge myself, and challenges from outside only cause pressure I don't need.

After I finish my current project, I will have satisfied my need to do a complicated traditional pieced project, so maybe I'll go back to something less traditional. Or not. I guess I'm resolving not to resolve, just do what feels right at any given moment. I do think it's necessary to keep working, keep creating, but I just don't want to be too goal oriented.

Of course, like everyone else, I do have a few UFO's, and lots of fabric to use!

I wish everyone reading a happy, healthy, creative new year. Thank you for all the inspiration, support, and enjoyment reading your posts and comments has provided me.

A Fiber Gift

My sister Marjorie sent me these wonderful mittens for Christmas. They're felted from old sweaters with vintage button ornaments on the cuff. What I particularly like about these is they way they go together without matching: a truly patchwork look. They're made by baabaaZuzu of Leland, Michigan.

In other news, I have finally finished the red and white stars and am choosing fabrics for the sashing, setting squares, etc. It's so large that it's overflowing my design wall, which makes for a challenge.

As a change if pace, I'm thinking of taking time out to make the Project Linus quilt from the January Quiltmaker magazine. Their projects are always cute, simple, and a way to help a cause. As a bonus, although I haven't liked this magazine recently, I thought there were several pretty and interesting quilts in this issue.

And finally, I'm glad Christmas is over, and I wish everyone reading a wonderful new year!