Wading In - Chester Creek, Week 2

December 4, 2020

 

This was a busy week in Quiltville North. Bonnie Hunter released Part Two of Grassy Creek. This Grassy Creek is Bonnie Hunter's annual quilt-along mystery. The task this week was to make hourglass units. 

Bonnie offered two methods to make the units. I chose the method that employs Bonnie's Essential Triangle Tool because it is fun and easy to work with.

 

Essential Triangle Tool

 I was experiencing a little slippage while I was using the tool, so I added some sandpaper dots, and that made a big difference.

The sandy side of a sandpaper dot

 

I made a number of quarter square triangles and then sewed them together to make hourglass units. Bonnie provided very helpful tips for cutting, pressing, and sewing. The center points turned out perfectly! 

I especially liked her suggestion for "spinning" the seam in the center to reduce bulk. Everything went together very nicely. 

Ta da!

 
 

Getting My Feet Wet, Thinking Local - Chester Creek, Week 1

There's a special feeling that comes with starting a new project. You have a clean slate and high expectations. I don't know what this quilt will look like - hence, the mystery - but I know it will be beautiful and I know the directions will be clear and precise and helpful.

My new project is Bonnie Hunter's 2020 Mystery Quilt-along. She has called it Grassy Creek, as she was inspired by a  creek of that name near her home in southern Virginia. Mine quilt is going to be called Chester Creek, for the creek nearest to me.

Screw you, Covid-19. I'm going to have fun staying at home and sewing. I have managed to get the fabric I need via mail-order (thank you Missouri Star), and I have put a new blade in my rotary cutter and would several bobbins. I even have new clips to keep the threads on my bobbins from unwinding. I have tried several different things to solve this problem and nothing has been satisfactory. I think these are going to work. 😊

The problem

The solution

What will Bonnie Hunter tell us to make first? Half-square triangles, using the golds and the greys! She offered several cutting methods. I chose to use the method which employs her Essential Triangle Tool. It seems to be the easiest.

Essential Triangle Tool

I really like the Essential Triangle Tool, but I did notice that it tended to slip when cutting a stack of four strips. I decided to add some sandpaper dots, and that seemed to lessen the GC 1-5slippage.

Sandpaper dot closeup

 

Another problem I encountered was the difficulty of cutting relatively narrow strips from the ends of the various one-yard cuts of fabric I was working with. In the past, I have generally worked with 1/4-yard cuts and I did not have to worry about cutting such lengthy strips. But this year, I had to order from Missouri Star and they have a 1-yard minimum for yardage. If I did another quilt like this, I would probably cut the pieces into 1/4-yard cuts before starting.

My third challenge was getting the finished size right. Bonnie Hunter said the seams should be "scant," but I usually ended up with finished squares that were too large, so I just sewed my regular 1/4" seams - which was easier to do - and my pieces ended up correctly sized.

Despite these minor issues, I finished Part 1 easily, and the pieces ended up looking very nice.

Part 1 pieces

Ta da! (Clue) One and done!

 

 

Play It Again, Ma'am

Part 7

For Part 7 I had to cut a lot of blue and raspberry Half Square Triangles. Then I had to sew half ot them together into squares, just like I did for Part 3 and Part 4 and Part 5. 

Oooohkaaaay. I can do that. But first I have to go to the fabric store and buy more raspberry fabric. I didn't get enough initially. And I didn't get enough different raspberry fabrics. I think this quilt will look better with more variety. That's one reason I don't make all of the pieces in a part (or clue) the first time through. If I end up getting more fabric later, I want to be able to distribute it evenly throughout the different parts. If I just plowed ahead and sewed all of the parts in each clue, I might run out of raspberry in Part 5 and the find out the shop where I bought it is now out, and I would get something different and then clue 7 would have only the new raspberry, and clues 1, 2, and 5 would not have any of the new raspberry, and it might not look good. It's possible it would still look good, but I don't want to take any chances.

The reasons I don't buy all the fabric in the first place so I can avoid running out are:

1) I am always hoping I will find another fabric that I love before I am too far along
2) The instructions don't usually specify how much is needed for each color

I might run out anyway because I made a mistake and wasted some fabric, or because the instructions were wrong, or  . . . . It happens.

These are some of the things that makes a mystery quilt interesting.

So, I was talking about making squares. After I made lots of squares, I had to take some of the squares and make them into pinwheels. 😾 I really don't like pinwheels. They are so hard. I can never get the points to meet in the center. There is always so much bulk in the center. Ugh.

I followed Bonnie Hunter's directions very carefully. I measured whenever she said to. Bonnie says to keep the line on the ruler up on the fabric, and I did. Bonnie says to allow for the fold in your measurement, and I did. Bonnie says to trim slivers using the Simple Folded Corners Ruler after you sew the squares, and I did.

And you know what? It worked. I am VERY pleased with how nicely my pinwheels turned out. They are flat, and the correct size, and the points meet in the center. Whooppeee! These are my best pinwheels ever.

Play by Play

Part 3

Part 3 of the Frolic! quilt calls for half-square triangles with a neutral fabric for one half and either dark blue or light blue for the other half. I used Bonnie Hunter's Essential Triangle Tool to cut the pieces from short (for greater variety) fabric strips. There are other methods for cutting half-square triangles, but I really like this method because it seems to minimize waste. It's also fast, because you can cut both halves of the square at the same time.

Some of my half-square triangles

Part 4

In Part 4 I finally got to use some of my aqua fabric. I found a really fun print that I am going to use as an aqua. I almost could have used it as a neutral. It has accents of raspberry, dark blue, and sage green (coming up eventually), and the pictures are soooo charming. (OK, so I realize they won't be that charming after I cut the fabric into a lot of little triangles, but I will know what was there.)

Part 4 was very complicated. I had to make a number of sets of blue and aqua. Each set has 4 half-square triangles, which I had to cut out and sew, and 4 blue quarter square triangles plus 4 aqua quarter square triangles, which I did not have to sew (yet). Each set can (and, for a scrappy look, should) be different, but the blue and aqua fabrics within a set have to be the same for all the pieces in the set.

I can't show you a picture of a complete set because I used certain elements of each set in a later part. Here are some of my completed HSTs. Each one is from a different set.

There is a way to cut out both the HSTs and QSTs from a single strip (if you are careful!) using the Essential Triangle Tool. I had to make some adjustments, but I was able to do it.

The Essential Triangle Tool

One aspect that was especially tricky was getting sufficient contrast between the aqua and the light blue. I like contrast a lot, and I wanted to have as much contrast as possible, so I tried to avoid certain combinations of aqua and light blue. I am probably going to end up with about 70 to 75% of my sets being made with dark blue, but I think I will like that. Here is a pairing that I made where I didn't love the contrast.

Here is a trick for studying contrast. Change your photo to black and white and see what the contrast looks like.

It's actually not as bad as I thought. 

But look at the contrast between aqua and dark blue. It is much stronger for the five dark blue HSTs than for the light blue one in the upper left corner.

 

I am going to trust Bonnie Hunter and keep some light blue in the quilt. What do you think?

Essential Geometry - Good Fortune, Part 5

I decided I really don't like that blue-and-white-cracked-eggshell fabric. I probably won't use it any more in this quilt. The blue-on-blue-cracked -eggshell doesn't bother me, though.

This week we made squares out of triangles. Two small triangles (neutral and orange) to make a larger triangle, and then the resulting triangle plus a larger blue triangle to make a square - three triangles total. I had to make half of the squares in a mirror image layout, so it did involve a little thinking.

I used my rotary cutter a lot. I think I might need a new blade, even though I put a new blade in when I started this Good Fortune project. I googled this and the consensus seems to be that a blade will last for one quilt/project, so I'm going to keep going with the same blade for now.

Overall, this week's assignment went more slowly than I was expecting. Cutting had to be very precise, as did the sewing. (Did I develop some bad habits during string piecing?) I used the Essential Triangle Tool, though other methods were also included in the instructions.

An extra step, not on Bonnie Hunter's directions: I had to trim each finished square. They were all a tiny bit large. I also had about a 10% do-over rate for square or triangles I just wasn't satisfied with.

I have finished about 1/4 of the required pieces, and I have another 1/4 partially finished. Here is a link to Bonnie's Mystery Link-up, Part 5 to see all the fun colors that others have chosen and all the fun fabrics that those of using Bonnie's colors have found.






























Lessons learned:

• When cutting out triangles, the direction of your cut makes a difference. Start at the "skinny" end. If you start at the other end, the fabric will move when you get to the skinny end.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Good Fortune, Part 2

December 3

We had a BIG EARTHQUAKE three days ago. It was a 7.0 on the Richter Scale. Our power was out for three hours. I didn't get much quilting done that day. Some of our stuff fell off shelves and broke, but luckily, fabric doesn't break.

I could say that I had to clean up the mess from all the papers sliding off both of our desks, along with a cup of coffee, so I didn't have time to sew, but that wouldn't be accurate. 

My husband's desk is usually very, very neat, but not after an earthquake.

I absolutely had time to sew - once the power came back on. After all, this was the day Clue #2 came out.

So I did get some of the half square triangles for Clue #2 done. I used the Essential Triangle Tool. The test pieces didn't come out quite the right size, but I trimmed them down and they were fine, and I vowed to be more careful with future pieces. Actually, I thought I was being very careful in the first place. Careful measuring, and careful cutting, and careful sewing.

As I went along, they did seem to become more accurate and they didn't require as much - or any - trimming. That's a good thing, because I really don't know what else I can do to make them the exact size they need to be. (Don't tell me to buy an AccuCut system. Too expensive. It really ought to be possible to do this without an expensive piece of equipment.) 

I did find a good article on half square triangles here: How to Make Half Square Triangles

Here's a link to Bonnie Hunter so you can see what other people did: Bonnie's Link-Up, Part 2

Lessons learned:

• Don't leave piles of paper on your desk or on shelves or on top of filing cabinets
• Probably not a good idea to leave your iron sitting up
• Always unplug your sewing machine when you are done working. Who knows when there will be a power surge?
• Don't cut all of your strips before you make your test pieces. You might decide to use a different HST method.

On Ringo Lake, Part Six - Taking the Plunge

Part 6 looked like it was going to be pretty easy, but it called for salmon fabric, and I was down to one small piece and one even smaller piece, so I knew I would be needing more. (It may be called "coral" or "melon" where you live, but here in Alaska the name of this color is SALMON.)

(Image credit: Leela Cyd,on thekitchn.com)

The roads were very icy and I only had it in me to go to one fabric store. I could only find one salmon fabric that I liked there, so I bought it and went home to sew, with plans to get more fabric soon. 

The assignment for Part 6 was to cut orange triangles and sew them onto the brown and aqua triangles from Week 4 to make squares. Bonnie gives us two cutting methods. The "regular" method is to cut squares, and then cut them in half diagonally. The Essential Triangle Tool Method has you cutting a strip and then using the ETT to cut triangles from your strip. You end up with triangles with one dog ear missing (which is not a problem). You have to be careful because the cutting dimensions for the two methods are different. 

I decided to use the regular method because it seemed easier. I had used the ETT Method last year and I wanted to compare. (Maybe it's not realistic to try to compare methods a year apart, but . . . whatever.) 

This was going to be such an easy week! One piece to cut, and one seam to sew.The cutting seemed to go fast, though I quickly used up all my fabric.

The sewing - not so fast. I had a fair number of do-overs. I had hoped that I could just whip these out without pinning, but that was not to be. I found that there was quite a thick fabric bump in the middle of the new seam where two previous seams came together. It tended to push my presser foot to one side, so I had to be really careful. 

Another problem I had was at the beginning and end of each seam. The thin points of the triangles tended to slip one way or another and sometimes the seams would be too narrow and other times too wide at the ends. It later occurred to me that trimming off the dog-ears on the leading edge of each piece before sewing the Week 6 seam might help it feed into the machine more smoothly.

After pressing the squares open I had two annoying dog-ears on each piece. I used the Simple Folded Corners ruler to trim off the dog-ears while also checking to make sure each piece was square.  I was pleased that my pieces, for the most part, turned out to be very nice and square and the proper size. I think all the extra effort during Week 4 helped to give me good results here. The SFC ruler made it very easy to check squareness and also to check that the Week 6 seam was centered.

This week turned out to be quite a busy week for mystery quilters. Bonnie Hunter always has surprises for us. I like surprises! Read about it in Parts 7, 8 and 9.

Lessons Learned:

• I like the "regular method" better for making right triangles. I found that all the flipping around you have to do with the ETT tends to make you drift away from a nice 90° angle. I probably wasn't being careful enough.
• I learned from Bonnie that you don't have to (and perhaps should not) make the point of the aqua square touch the Part 6 seam.

On Ringo Lake, Part Four - Treading Water

I'm treading water. I'm working hard, but I'm staying on top of this project. Here is a link to this week's clue: On Ringo Lake, Week Four

This week we made triangles. 
I will need an awful lot of them, and I have only made about one-third because this is a very busy week. They do go much faster than last week's pieces, and I'll take that.

I used the Essential Triangle Tool to make the brown wing triangles. I like this method because it minimizes waste. I also like the way you end up with notched corners on one side.

My "Problem of the Week" is the failure of the wing triangles to align sometimes:

Yes, I pinned, but I still have about a 20% reject rate. (Pout.) I tried flipping the pieces over and sewing with the aqua square on top. That helped somewhat, especially when sewing over that seam while adding the second wing triangle, but I am still getting rejects. It's really frustrating because I have been cutting and sewing so carefully.

Last week I mentioned that the Oversized Method didn't waste much fabric. Here's the proof:

On the left: waste from the No-Trim Method - On the right: waste from the Oversized Method

I continued making Week Three pieces after I published my last blog. I really liked using the Oversized Method and found that I could use that method without pinning. How great is that?

I have also been thinking about two particular neutral fabrics I have been using. I really don't like them. They have a very low thread count, and I just don't like the way they look.

Not happy with the way these fabrics look

I got them at a "good" quilt shop. I KNOW that fabric from places like Jo-Ann's usually has a low thread count. I didn't expect it from the more expensive fabric sold at a good quilt shop. I was mainly paying attention to color and pattern at the time, not to fabric quality. I bought a fat quarter of each. I don't think I'm going to use them any more.

Lessons Learned:

• Always pay attention to thread count and fabric quality, no matter where you are purchasing it, and no matter how great the fabric color/print is.
• Don't lean your cutting mat against a wall where there is a baseboard heater.

On Ringo Lake, Part Three - In Over My Head

I did not quite finish the many pieces mandated for Week Two. I spent way too much time ripping out and re-doing. I had to re-sew 40 to 50% of my pieces because 1) I am a perfectionist, and 2) the pieces were slipping too much when I sewed them.  I tried pinning. It didn't help much. I tried using more pins. That only helped marginally.  I tried pinning more "strategically." I tried adjusting the presser foot. I tried sewing faster and sewing slower.  I don't know why this was so hard for me. The pieces were fairly small, and I think that magnified any discrepancies. Whatever the problem, it was very frustrating.

I told myself I would try another method when I finished using all the pieces I had already cut. I know I didn't have to do that. I could have just stopped using the already-cut pieces. I could have started to cut new pieces using a different method before I had used up all the old pieces. But I did not want to throw out perfectly usable pieces, so I just kept on keeping on.

When I finished up the pieces I had cut in advance, I switched to the Oversized Method. This method is described in the instructions that come with the Simple Folded Corners Ruler.  

This is what the Oversized Method yields, before trimming. I have drawn a blue box to show the trim lines. Notice how forgiving this method is.

Up to this point I had resisted the this method because I thought there would be a lot of wasted fabric. Once I started using the Oversized Method, and I began to understand it, it became clear that this method didn't waste any more fabric than the No Trim/Exact Size Method, which is the other method described in the instructions for the SFC Ruler. (If you really care about not wasting fabric, Bonnie Hunter also describes a no-waste method, using the Essential Triangle Tool, in the instructions for Week Two.)

I think I have found something that really works for me! Not only does the Oversizde Method seem to minimize ripping out seams and re-doing, I am finding that I can use it successfully WITHOUT ANY PINNING. And, as a bonus, it is not necessary to cut the corner pieces with extreme precision because you will be trimming them later. (You should still be fairly careful, but you don't have to be extraordinarily careful.) So I am getting my pieces done much faster.

That's a really good thing because Week Three's pieces also have folded corners, and there are even more pieces this week than last week. Here is your link to Week Three: On Ringo Lake, Part Three

Some of my finished pieces. How will they fit together?

I am also working very carefully with these pieces because I want to make sure I pay attention to the directionality. I am making twelve at a time so I can keep track of things.

Despite the method breakthrough I am still way behind on my Week Three pieces because I spent a lot of time on Friday visiting fabric shops. I needed more melon and neutral fabrics. I did well. I got more of one of the neutral fabrics I had bought as an experiment, and I got several new fabrics which either recently arrived or which I had previously overlooked. Whatever, I am happy! Pretty new fabrics!

I love this one so much I don't know if I can bring myself to cut it

Lessons Learned:

• There may be more than one method to cut and sew a particular piece such as the Flying Geese
• If one method isn't working well, or is a lot of work, keep trying other methods. I tried a total of four methods for Flying Geese.
•  When you have a lot of interruptions, it is helpful to break complicated work down into bite-size pieces.

Facile et Rapide - En Provence Part Five (#2)

Week Two for me, Week Five for everyone following along with the mystery in real time.

This was an easy week because Christmas fell during the week. I just had to make a relatively small number of half-square triangles. I used Bonnie Hunter's Essential Triangle Tool and the cutting just flew along.

Here is the link to Bonnie's Link-Up.

It is so much fun to see what fabrics others have chosen.