Slice and Dice, Part 2

My first "art quilt" is finished. I really think of it as a practice piece more than anything. I learned several new techniques doing this project, and it was fun. The most amazing thing I learned was that it is possible to make a quilt without following any of the rules!

Ta da!

After I finished quilting the piece, I spent some time thinking about how to finish it. I thought that if I used a print for the binding it would look too busy. If I used a solid color, it would take away from the dramatic effect of the purple horizontal lines. My friend, Nan, had mentioned facing to me as another method of finishing. I decided to try it.

I spent a few days thinking about what fabric to use for the facing. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough of the backing fabric left for the facing. I wanted to find something that would co-ordinate nicely with the backing fabric - probably a solid. I wasn't convinced that it would look good to have a wide solid border around the back, but I told myself it would be on the back, not the front, so it would be okay.

As I was about to run over to the fabric store, I was struck by an inspiration. What if I used pieces of The Secret Garden for the facing? I had used it for the front, so why shouldn't I use it on the back? I didn't have to go to the fabric store after all!

I made the facing, and sewed it down by hand with a blind hem. It resulted in a rather thick edge, but it actually gives the piece a little more stability, so it is not a problem for this type of project.

I wanted to try out the monogramming function on my new machine, so I decided to add some monogramming to the facing instead of making a label. I thought maybe I would do it after the facing was sewn onto the edge. I don't know why. I think I was worried about placement if I did it before adding the facing to the piece. That was probably not the best way to approach it.

The back, with facing

I stitched a sample of the title, and it looked okay, so I stitched it on the facing. (Well, to be honest, it looked "okayish." My machine is not one of those embroidery machines. It can do monogramming, but it is not terrific.) As I was adding the monogram to the facing, it looked like the fabric was not feeding through the machine in a straight line, so I pulled on it a little to keep the letters in a straight line. Hah! That was a bad idea. The letters got scrunched up and turned out too close together. I had to do it over three times. It was a real pain to rip out the monogramming, but I didn't want to have to rip out the seam holding the facing on. It didn't come out as straight as I would have liked, and the fabric had some holes in it where I had ripped out the monogramming, but it's only the back, right?

Then I added my name and date to the other side.
After finishing the facing I started thinking about whether I should make a hanging sleeve, and how. Alas, my research revealed that it is better to think about this before you sew on the facing. Oh, well. Live and learn. 

Now that I know what I am doing (sort of), I will think more carefully about what fabrics I will use before starting a future piece.

Lessons learned:

• When you select a backing, make sure you have enough for a facing or binding, or else have a clear idea of what you will use.
• Plan your hanging sleeve BEFORE you do the facing or binding.
• Practice the monogramming, and don't try to pull it straight if it seems to be going crooked.
• Think outside the box!

Slice and Dice, Part 1

Nan wanted to know when I was going to finish one of the projects I started in Rayna Gillman's class. That is just what I needed to spur me on.

I decided to start with my first project from the class. You can see that project and read about how it was created here:
Reinventing the Secret Garden

For several days I thought about how to quilt this project. I wanted to come up with something easy, so I considered quilting straight across with horizontal parallel lines. I decided that wouldn't look good where the lines crossed the two purple stripes. Because the fabric strips do not line up, I was also worried that stitching straight across would result in stitching that "clashed" with the fabric.

I was afraid it would be too much work to quilt each third separately, but I decided to do that in order to get a better result.

Having decided how to quilt this piece, I  picked out a backing fabric that I had used in the some of the original Secret Garden blocks. I had just enough left. I used spray baste to sandwich together the backing, some cotton batting, and the top. 

No one tells you exactly how to use spray baste. I guess you are just supposed to know. I spread an old plastic table cloth on the floor and lay the backing on top of it. I used masking tape to stretch out the backing. Then I sprayed, added the batting, and sprayed again. I laid the top onto the sprayed batting and smoothed it out as much as possible. 

At this point I had a border of sticky batting surrounding the top and I needed to turn it face down and smooth out the backing. I didn't want to put it top down on the sticky tablecloth, so I tried the kitchen counter. (This works well for a small project, but the kitchen counter gets all sticky.  Next time I am going to try putting down some waxed paper first. I'm still thinking about how to complete this process with a bed-size quilt.)

I had a special foot I wanted to try. When I got my new machine I received a generous amount of store credit and I used it to buy extra attachments (and a wheeled case). I bought a foot for quilting. It has two little metal pieces that you can switch out. One has a guide on the side that helps you sew a 1/4" seam. The other piece has a guide that lies in the middle and helps you stitch in the ditch.

I decided to use purple thread in order to tie the piece in to the vertical purple fabric strips. I stitched in the ditch on both sides of the purple strips. I was so excited about trying out the stitch-in-the-ditch gadget that I forgot about using the even-feed foot (a/k/a walking foot). The result was not the best. For whatever reason, the purple strips were a little bunched up. I think they were bunched up already, so I'm not sure that not using the even-feed foot made things worse. The stitches were really tiny, which means they were really hard to rip out, so I didn't rip them out. After I finished the purple strips, I switched to the even-feed foot.

Quilting in three sections turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated, even though there was a lot of turning involved. It went very fast once I got going. As with the sewing done in Rayna's class, there was no measuring; it was just "sew and go." This saved a lot of time.
 

The quilting is done!

This is the back

I decided to name this project Slice and Dice, because it is made from slices of The Secret Garden and because I sliced the whole thing into thirds after I had sewn all the little strips together.

I still need to ponder the stitch-in-the-ditch attachment and experiment further. If you generally want to use the even-feed foot when quilting, when would you ever use the stitch-in-the-ditch foot? Is there some way to pop it onto the even-feed foot and use both? Did I have the wrong combination of dropped feed dogs and other settings when I tried to stitch in the ditch?

Lessons learned:

• Use waxed paper when you want to smooth out something you just spray basted.
• Always make sure you are using the proper foot and you have the right settings for the foot you are using

Reinventing the Secret Garden

In 2014 I did a BOM called The Secret Garden. I started blogging about it in 2015, and I actually haven't finished writing about the process of finishing this project. I have covered 11 of the 12 blocks. I haven't written anything - yet - about the sashing.

If you have followed my commentary on the monthly blocks you probably realize that I don't like this quilt very much. I especially didn't like it after I did the sashing. I will write about that eventually.

But I am going to skip over that part for now, and talk about Day 1 of a 3-day workshop I am attending. The instructor was Rayna Gillman, from the East Coast. The name of the workshop is Cinderella Quilts! Reinventing the UFO.  (Quilters tend to have a lot of UFO's - UnFinished Objects.) As soon as I heard about this workshop, I knew I wanted to learn how to take unfinished projects and ugly projects and turn them into gorgeous, finished pieces of art. Rayna's work is beautiful, and I would like to try to tap into my artistic side (if I have one) and see what I can come up with. As Rayna says, if you don't like it, it can't get any worse, so don't be afraid to cut it up and experiment.

Rayna shows us how she made some of her "What-was-I-thinking?" blocks into fabulous pieces

I started with three blocks from the nearly-finished Secret Garden

The first step is to fearlessly grab your rotary cutter (by the handle, please) and slice up the sacrificial blocks. There are no rules, no measuring, no using a straight edge. Just start cutting.

This wasn't a photography class, and so I did not learn how to take photos with accurate color values. What you see below is not very true to the actual colors, but you can get the idea.

The first few pieces go up on my very first "design wall."

More pieces

Starting to sew the pieces together

There are 4 strips from Secret Garden lurking in here

After sewing all of the pieces together I squared it up a little and thought about what else it needed.
















I decided to cut it into thirds. After the shock of cutting up a block I had spent time on and effectively ruining the whole Secret Garden quilt, it was not as awful to cut up the piece I just made. I  tried flipping one of the pieces but I didn't like the way that looked, so I kept them with the same orientation but shuffled the order. I think that added a LOT of interest and movement to it.

That's as far as I got. It was a long day. Tomorrow I will decide how it should be finished how I want to finish it. No rules, remember?

And I will start on a companion piece.

Rayna has all kinds of helpful tricks. I'm not going to give them all away. You'll have to take her class or buy her book. Link to Rayna's Book

So many opportunities to recycle