Friends with Sewing Machines

What better way to spend a snowy holiday Sunday than sewing with friends? I have a new project and I needed a little push to get started so it was the perfect time for a Sewing Day.

I am making a wall hanging as a gift for some friends. It's sort of a surprise so I'm not going to say too much about it yet. It is based on a printed panel I bought. The panel came without any pattern or suggestion or idea for what to do with it. I spent some time surfing the internet and I was able to come up with a plan.

The panel has a nautical theme, and I found that there is a traditional quilt block called "Storm at Sea." I am going to place three Storm at Sea blocks underneath the panel and then put coordinating sashing around the panel and between and around the blocks. My inspiration came from this wall hanging I found on Pinterest. I knew right away it would be perfect. I don't know who made it.

Fortunately, Susan M agreed to meet me at the fabric store to help me pick out fabric. Actually, she insisted on being there. I'm glad she came because it was so helpful to have her input. She has such a good eye for color. She also helped me figure out how to make the panel and the blocks plus sashing fit together. You will see what we came up with in a future post.

Here are the fabrics I came home with

I made an inner border around the mystery panel, and then I started sewing the sashing pieces. They are actually rather difficult to cut and to sew.

Some of the sashing pieces in bad lighting. 

As I write this blog I am taking a good look at the sashing photo and the realization is dawning on me that I have probably pressed the sashing the wrong way. I don't think I can simply press them the other way because some of the seams overlap. I will have to see how it looks next to the batting. 

This is what happens when you are talking to your friends while sewing and working without a pattern or directions. :(

It wasn't all bad.

Susan M fixed a jacket. She shortened the sleeves and embellished it with molas!

 

Marilyn started a purse. She had some gorgeous Laurel Burch fabric.

Rebecca made a couple of blankets.

Sophia made progress on an adorable Elizabeth Hartmann quilt.

Susan DL experimented with knitting a kippah. Not a smashing success, but wouldn't it make a smashing tea cozy?

Now that I have started my project, I hope there will be enough momentum to keep me going without my support group.

A Revealing Feeling - Good Fortune, Parts 7 and 8

Bonnie Hunter revealed the full design of the Good Fortune Quilt this week after surprising us with Clue 7 a few days earlier. It's stunning. It's wonderful. I feel so fortunate to be a part of this quilt-along.

But, I now have a lot of work to do. I have to finish Clues 1-7. Then I can start on the two blocks and four borders described in The Reveal. Bonnie's finished quilt looks amazing. I am really motivated to press ahead and finish mine, but it will have to wait until I get back from my next trip.

I did a tiny fraction of Clue 7. This involved making lots of double pieces by sewing two pieces from Clue 2 together. In addition, we have to make a small number of quad pieces made with pieces from Clue 2. Here are some of the quad pieces:

Clue 7 also called for making some quad pieces with pieces from Clue 1.

Clue 7 went a little faster because there was no cutting involved, but I did make another trip to a fabric store this week, and that took up some time.

Now, before I go on, I want to talk about a New Thing. During this quilt I started listening to podcasts. That's a New Thing for me. I'm really enjoying it. My daughter recommended Serial, so I started with that. Then I added Lexicon Valley, because I love words and linguistics. Then I found a few more interesting ones. Then I got the idea that there might be podcasts about quilting, and I found several! These are some that looked interesting:

•  Quilting . . . . for the rest of us
•  Sit & Sew Radio
•  The Off-Kilter Quilt
•  Just Wanna Quilt

These quilting podcasts are not professionally produced (I assume) but they are something fun to listen to while I am quilting. Do you have any favorite podcasts?

OK, back to the Good Fortune Quilt. I didn't have a lot of time to work on it this week. I couldn't do much without finishing some of the previous clues, so the first thing I did was to finish Clue 1 completely. Then I decided to make one sample each of the two blocks shown in the Reveal. 
 
Here they are:

The Spinning Star Block

The String Chain Block

These blocks alternate in the finished quilt in a checkerboard pattern and the result is wonderful. I like the Spinning Star Block a lot. I'm not so sure about the String Chain Block. I don't think the red and orange work well together. There is not enough contrast for me. However, I think (hope) that when it is all put together and viewed from a few feet away it will look fine.

Please take a look at Bonnie's Link-Up page and check out some of the finished blocks (and even finished quilt-tops!!) that other people have done. It is so much fun to look at them.

Lessons Learned:

• If you can't sew with friends, sew with podcasts.
• Procrastination has its rewards. I only had to make 192 pieces for Clue 1, not the 240 originally specified.
• Doing sample blocks to start is probably a good idea. The blocks are supposed to be the same size. It turns out my String Chain Block is almost 1/4" larger than the Spinning Star, which is the correct size. I need to think about this before I do any more work with the String Chain Blocks or the components thereof.
• There is treasure at the end of the rainbow! Just be patient and follow it.

 

Comes with Strings Attached - Good Fortune, Part 6

Are we there yet? Not yet. We have string piecing with neutrals to make this week.  I am close to using up some of my neutrals, and  I am still going to need some to finish up the pieces I must make for weeks 1 through 5. Fortunately, there will be sales at some of the local fabric stores right after the end of the year.

This time, our sets of strips are a lot larger and need either a full phone book page or a full piece of notebook paper.

I thought this would go faster, because it was string piecing. It didn't, but it was still fun. Maybe it was because Susan and Sophia came over to sew with me and too much talking happened. Maybe it was because it was hard to get a lot of variety in my blocks without enough variety in my fabrics. Each set of strips had eight to twelve different fabrics in it. I tried to achieve greater variety by varying the width of the strips, and, of course, by varying the order of the strips.

Is it okay to use the same fabric twice in the same strip set? I don't know, but I avoided this, for the most part. I also tried to limit the number of strips that had a blue or green design on them. I want these pieces to look overwhelmingly neutral. Yeah, I know. I'm putting way too much thought into this.

Let's see what the others did on Bonnie Hunter's Week 6 Mystery Link-up. And here is what I did:

Lessons Learned:

• It's harder to sew strings together in larger blocks and using full phone book pages. Be careful to keep the fabric flat on the paper so your finished size will be accurate. It slips around and bunches up at the ends. If it bunches up, tear off the paper before cutting the final blocks out.
• Don't use phone book pages with light colored fabric. Tiny pieces of the paper get stuck under the stitches and some of those have black ink on them.
• Each page has at least 8 strips, so the more fabrics, the better. Twelve different fabrics isn't enough.
• Sew with friends.

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.

String Theory - Good Fortune, Part 4

This week we are making orange pieces for the mystery quilt. Bonnie Hunter recommends using the string piecing technique. Should I be worried?

It was EASY and it was FUN. I didn't really know what it was, but it turns out that I had used this method once before, in Rayna Gilman's class, and I blogged about it here: Reinventing the Secret Garden.

The great thing about string piecing is you don't have to measure with exactness, you don't have to cut with exactness, and you don't have to sew with exactness. This adds up to a FAST process.

Bonnie added a very interesting twist to string piecing. She uses pages from an old phone book as a base for sewing the pieces together. Again, no measuring, etc. Do take a look at Bonnie's Mystery Link-up to see what others are doing: Week 4 Link-up

I was amazed that it was so easy to sew on phone book pages and even to iron them. And Bonnie thought this through really well. She suggested using a larger needle and smaller stitches to make it easier to tear off the paper later. 

Here some strips that have been sewn onto phone book paper. They will be trimmed into three blocks each.

I had about 10 or 12 different orange fabrics. I thought that would be enough variety, but it probably isn't. I have used 5 or 6 different fabrics in each piece. I felt like all of my string sets were too similar. It will be hard to tell until the final mystery clue is revealed. It might not be a problem at all.

These orange blocks demanded that I store them in an orange box.

I made some wonky strips. These strips looked a lot less wonky when I cut the block into three pieces and the strips became very short. I had to be careful that they didn't get too narrow or too wide at the ends.

Wonk, wonk

I also made some wonky blocks by trimming them at a slant. I'm not sure if these will look good in the final quilt. I don't think I'm going to make any more of these. Yes, I admit, I didn't finish this easy-clue-week assignment. I had to put all my sewing stuff away last night because we are having people over tonight for a big open house. If you must now, I haven't finished any of the previous weeks either, although this week I came the closest to finishing thanks to the ease of the string piecing method.

Lessons learned:

• Don't be afraid to try new techniques
• Sometimes quick and inexact is good
• If you plan to do string piecing, you may need more fabrics than you think
• Don't throw out your old phone books!

Starting off on the Wrong Foot - Good Fortune, Part 3

This week's pieces are hard. You can link to Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Link-up here to see what the pieces are and how others have interpreted them. 

I sewed a few pieces and measured, as suggested. They seemed to be the correct size, so I began cutting like crazy. When I had cut some strips from each green fabric, I stopped and cut some neutral squares. This phase went quickly.

The next step, using the Bonus Buddy technique, involved marking two lines on the back of each neutral piece. The fabric kept sliding around on the table, so I grabbed a newspaper and put it under the fabric. This turned out to be a mistake because the newspaper ink sometimes came off on the fabric when I applied pressure to draw a line. It probably would have worked better to use my cutting mat, but I didn't want to get marks all over the mat. I'm going to try the mat, though.

I have a variety of marking tools. I tried a grey pencil, a dark blue pencil, and a pink merking pen. They all claim to be "washout" pens or pencils. I won't know until the quilt is all finished and I can throw it in the wash. (Maybe I can do a few test pieces right away. I still have to pre-wash my orange fabric, so I can throw it in with load.)

I wasn't sure how to pin the squares to the green strips. I could pin along the edges, or I could pin along the diagonal lines. For my first batch, I pinned along the edges. This probably wasn't the best choice. I ended up with corners that were not in the correct spot.

Changing my pinning method helped a lot but did not completely eliminate this problem.

I was having a lot of trouble sewing next to the pencil line per Bonnie Hunter's instructions. In my defense, I had a friend over, She brought her two daughters, who are learning to sew. There was a lot of talking going on. I might have been doing some of the talking. It was kind of distracting.

After sewing a number of pieces and thinking that it was very hard to see the line I was sewing next to, it dawned on me that I was using the wrong foot. I was using my quilting foot (1/4" seam foot) instead of a foot for regular sewing. I replaced it with my satin stitch foot and things got much easier. Easier, but not easy. I think I should try the zigzag foot, too.

L to R: zigzag foot, satin stitch foot, and 1/4" seam foot

I hardly got anything done. At the end of 4 hours I only had about a dozen of these half-chevron pieces finished. 

But I did get all the time-consuming stuff out of the way, and today I made excellent progress and got many more pieces done.

And, there is a surprise ending. When I ordered the Essential Triangle Tool, it came with a free Bonus Buddy Ruler. I have never used the Bonus Buddy Ruler, but I used it today. I am pleased to announce that, as a byproduct of using the Bonus Buddy method, I ended up with a bonus pile of little half square triangles (all finished !) which will be used later in this quilt!

Hooray for Bonus Units!

Lessons learned:

• Test your marking pens and pencils to see if they really do wash out.
• Use a cutting mat, not newspapers, for a base when marking small pieces of fabric.
• Pinning matters. Pin on your sewing line, even if it is not along an edge.
• Do not use a 1/4" seam foot on a diagonal seam.
• Don't expect to get much done when you have friends over. 
• Sew with friends from time to time. Use the occasion to show off your work. Problem-solve and brainstorm with another person who is really into sewing. Get the next generation hooked on sewing. Socialize. Don't be a hermit and spend all your time alone with a sewing machine. That's no fun.

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.