I've Got This Covered! - Good Fortune, Part 1

Right before our long trip we had people over and I had to put all my sewing stuff away. We have been home for a week now and I am slowly starting to reclaim my sewing space. But not without a fight - from various inanimate objects.

I successfully pre-washed the red and neutral fabrics. The edges did fray, but not too badly.

I set up the ironing board and started to iron and soon realized that the pad that came with the ironing board needed to be replaced. I had ordered one a while ago, so I thought it would be a quick, easy job. But nothing about it was quick or easy. First, where was the pad? A lot of my sewing stuff was in our son's old bedroom. I pulled several large tubs out from under the bed and rummaged through them. No luck. I looked in all the cabinets in the laundry room. Nope. I looked in the basement where more sewing stuff resides. Nada. I finally located the new pad in one of those stackable plastic drawers in our son's bedroom. That must have taken about 45 minutes.😣

I have an extra-wide ironing board. It works better for quilting. It came with a small metal tray on the end that serves as an iron rest.

There is no space between the iron rest and the end of the ironing board. One would have to pull it out in order to replace the pad. I pulled as hard as I could, but it didn't budge. I turned the ironing upside down to look for the little lever that would release it. It was kind of dark, so I picked the board up and moved it over to an area with better light. There was no lever. Absolutely none.

I tried pulling on it some more. I tried it with the ironing board upside down.

If I could remember the brand of the ironing board or where I bought it maybe I could Google it for instructions on changing the pad. I ended up Googling "how to change ironing board pad" and wouldn't you know that several folks have made YouTube videos on this. But none of the videos had an ironing board with a metal tray on the end. They were just plain old ironing boards with plain old ironing board covers. Do you really need a video to show you how to do that?

Eventually I asked my husband to help me. He tried pulling on the iron rest. It wouldn't budge. He got a screwdriver and a hammer and applied some strategic taps and it started to move.😙 Once the stupid iron rest was loose it was very easy to put the lovely new cover on. I really like it. It's much fluffier than the old one and it even has a little pocket for the special measuring cup for filling up the iron or for snippers or for anything else that is usually in the way on top of the ironing board.

Another 45 minutes? At least.

So I ironed all of that pre-washed fabric and snipped off all of those loose threads and started cutting some strips.

I used my new ruler stickers to help me cut my strips. They worked like a dream to remind me what line I should be using.

 
Then I was ready to sew, so I had to get my dear, sweet sewing machine out. I had put it away before our trip because we had people over and then we had a house sitter, so it was better to leave it under its dust cover. I schlepped it across the house and put it on my sewing table. When I checked the thread I realized the spool holder thingy was missing. Oy! 😞 

I wondered if it was left behind when I put my machine away ten weeks ago. Could I have seen it later and stashed it somewhere for safekeeping? I looked through all of my sewing bins and baskets and all possible logical places to put a thing like that. Unsuccessfully. Then I decided to look some more in the sewing room. I looked under the baseboard heater. Then, in a moment of pure inspiration I spotted it on the carpet, behind the table leg. You could only see it if you really looked. I suspect it fell off when I took the cover off my sewing machine today and bounced off the table without making any noise. Is that possible? That was probably a 30-minute delay.

Fortunately, I had no further problems of this sort. I sewed a few sample pieces (four-patches, as it happens) and then measured them in accordance with Bonnie Hunter's instructions. They weren't as perfect as I wanted them to be, but I honestly wasn't sure what to do about it. I had measured carefully and cut carefully and pinned carefully and sewed carefully. I followed Bonnie's Instructions to the letter. Despite my best efforts some of the pieces had one square that stuck out a little. How can this be?

What I ended up doing last time was making about 5% extra pieces. If one turned out badly, I could throw it out and I'd still be ok. I think that's the easiest way to do this. I'm still going to be as careful as I can, but I'm not going to sweat it if a few pieces are less than perfect. I just won't use those. Yes, I've got this covered!

Some of my 4-patches

Link to Bonnie Hunter here: Bonnie's Link-Up, Part 1 and see what this looks like in all sorts of different colors. So much fun!

Lessons Learned:

• When you are nesting two seams together, make sure they nest accurately all the way to the end.
• Make 5% more than you need to allow for imperfections to be replaced.
• Allow extra time to get set up for a big quilting project.
• If a spool holder (or any other part) ever comes off your machine, always put it back where it belongs (on the machine) immediately.

Good Fortune, Introduction - Thanksgiving

We had a lovely Thanksgiving yesterday.
I am thankful for friends and family.
I am thankful that I have the leisure and wherewithal to pursue my interest in quilting.
I am thankful for Bonnie Hunter's inspirational mystery quilt-alongs.

Today is the kickoff of Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune! mystery quilt. (Link to it here: Good Fortune!) 
I am so excited to be starting this quilt. I have eagerly anticipated it for several months. This is my fourth straight year starting one of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts on the day after Thanksgiving. Her generosity in giving such a gift to the quilting community is so uplifting and refreshing.

On Halloween Bonnie revealed the colors for this year's quilt. I was on a long trip and wasn't able to visit any quilt stores until this week. This afternoon I went to the Quilt Zone and was shocked to find an empty storefront with a "For Lease" sign in the window. What happened? When? I will miss this gem of a quilt shop.

I was also shocked to see that I haven't added to this blog in 11 months. I have spent a lot of time traveling this year. I guess that is why I have been feeling such a strong pull towards quilting lately.

A little more about Good Fortune! Bonnie drew on her recent trip to China for the the color palette for the quilt. It works for me! I just got back from a trip to China and other parts of Asia where these colors are prevalent. Here is a photo we took in the Philippines of goldfish in a feeding frenzy. This brings to mind the oranges Bonnie chose.

And here are my fabrics

To the golden oranges Bonnie added red, green, and blue. These colors are everywhere in Asia.
In Taiwan . . .

 In Okinawa (Japan) . . .

 and in Korea . . .

This traditional Korean dress is called a hanbok

 And here are my fabrics

To be honest, these colors are a little outside of my comfort zone. I suppose that's why I didn't have any of them in my admittedly tiny stash. (But it's so much fun to shop for them!) Bonnie always gets me to extend my horizons.

And then we have the neutrals. The one on the far right has a little bit of gold sparkle.

This time I am going to try something new (for me). I am going to PRE-WASH all of the fabric. I got a lot of these fabrics at Jo-Ann's. They had a big sale on fat quarters this week: 79 cents each! Wow! But I am worried that they may shrink or run, so all of it is going in the wash. I hope they don't unravel too much.

Lessons learned:

• I need a larger stash

On Ringo Lake, Rapid Fire Part 8 - A Distant Shore

The Rapid Fire series continues. Another day, another clue. I have seriously fallen behind now, but I'm going to try to do a little bit of this clue. Link to it here: On Ringo Lake

Today's clue puts the units from Part 1, Part 6, and Part 7 together to form a block. This is a significant clue! As soon as I saw it I realized that I was going to need at least 6 different salmon fabrics for the triangles in Part 7. Otherwise, my blocks will be too similar. The salmon really stands out because the triangles are comparatively large.

At this point my only Part 6 units are made from two different salmon fabrics, and I am out of other salmon fabrics. I am going to have to go shopping. I won't be able to go for a few days, but the roads should be better by then.

Several days later . . . 

I got some more salmon fabrics.

I didn't have time to work on this quilt for a few days after that, but I finally found a little time to cut out some Part 6 triangles from the new fabrics. I recalled that the size was a little different from what I was used to, so I looked over the instructions to refresh my memory.

Unfortunately, I cut the pieces an inch too small and I didn't realize it until I had cut many strips, squares, and triangles. I have wasted all that fabric and I probably will need to make another trip to the fabric store, but I do have enough right now to cut several more triangles.

My Scraps of Shame

What happened? I lost focus and I picked up the wrong ruler and started using it. I think I would have been okay if I had grabbed my wide ruler. I don't want to give away the actual measurements because Bonnie Hunter has asked us not to, so this will be intentionally vague and I won't show photos of the rulers or how I measured.

Also, my brain didn't immediately notice that my strips/squares/triangles were too small because I had not worked on Part 6 for at least 10 days and all the pieces were on another table and I didn't look at them. Ruler stickers probably would have helped avoid this mistake because they might have reminded me where to measure.

It was very time-consuming to make the two blocks pictured here. Issues:

• Some of my flying geese units were not square and I did not realize it until I had sewn them into a row. It would be helpful to check them earlier in the process.
• I laid out the blocks before sewing them to make sure there would be sufficient variety in each block. This made me a little nervous about chain-piecing the units and rows because I didn't want to get my layouts all jumbled up. Does anyone out there have a good method for keeping it all straight while chain-piecing?

I do like the finished blocks quite a bit, and I have learned quite a bit so far, so all's well that ends well.

Lessons Learned:

• Measure, check the directions, measure, check the ruler, then cut out two or three pieces and make test units before you cut all of the pieces.
• If it has been more than a few days since you last worked on your project, repeat the previous step, even if you have already made several of the same unit.
• Time to treat yourself to some ruler stickers.
• Try not to use a ruler with orange tick marks when measuring salmon fabric.

On Ringo Lake, Rapid Fire Part 7 - An Unexpected Sprint to the Finish

Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts tend to follow a predictable pattern. One clue comes out every week, on Friday. This year Bonnie has surprised me by revealing Clue 7 only one day after Clue 6 was revealed. What happened to my "easy week"?

Well, maybe it's not so bad. All I have to do is join Week 2 and Week 5 pieces. (And make most of the Week 5 pieces, and a few more Week 2 pieces.) Love those flying geese.

"Ok, so this looks pretty easy," she said to herself optimistically. There is NO CUTTING, and just ONE easy seam. So, why was it so hard? Why did I have so many do-overs?

Earlier in the day I had set up my machine differently so I could work on a free-motion quilting project. I set it up with the needle plate that came with the machine. This plate allows zig-zag sewing. I didn't really think I'd need it, but as long as I was in there cleaning lint out of the bobbin area, it was a simple thing to switch to the zig-zag plate. I didn't realize I'd be returning to "On Ringo Lake" so soon. 

The zig-zag plate

I was too lazy to go back to the special needle-plate-for-straight-sewing that I use for piecing. I have always had problems with the zig-zag plate when working with small quilt pieces. The fabric tends to get sucked down into the larger needle hole. Guess I thought that problem had magically disappeared. Silly me. After I chain-pieced about 20 sets of flying geese I was forced to admit that I needed to go back to my more reliable needle plate.  

The special plate for quilting

By the way, this is a problem I have never seen mentioned anywhere. When I first encountered it, I called the sewing machine store and someone there suggested that I try the special needle plate. I did and it made a big difference.

I also had problems with the "bump" where the point of the brown triangle touches the seam.

The "bump" - Does it have a technical name?

 And there seemed to be a little slipping at the beginning and end of each seam, as with Part 6. I pinned and tried to be really careful and watched out for the bump but I had a significant number of do-overs. It turned out to be very slow going. Not a sprint. Not even close.

From these . . .

. . .  to these

Lessons Learned:

• Don't take the lazy route. Just change the needle plate already.
• Sometimes you can get great advice at the sewing machine store.
• Flying Geese are hard to make and once made, they're hard to work with. But they look cool.

 

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 Five - Keeping My Feet Wet

I managed to do hardly any quilting this weekend. Just enough to keep my feet wet. It was another week for flying geese in the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt. Lots and lots of them. (Here's a link to On Ringo Lake, Week Five.) 

I just started cutting without really thinking. Just mindlessly following the directions as to cutting size. Forgetting that the Simple Folded Corners Ruler had alternate directions. Forgetting that "folded corners = flying geese". Not remembering until I had made a bunch of unacceptable flying geese.

I had used the SFC Oversized Method for week three, which wasn't exactly flying geese, so it took a while for the little light bulb to go on. You have to think about using the Oversized Method BEFORE you start cutting.

So here are some pieces that turned out okay:

"Honk, Honk!" they said

I am sure I will be able to make quite a few more before Friday. 

These large squares will be cut diagonally to make large triangles for the oversized Method.

Is it just my imagination, or does this year's mystery quilt have a lot more pieces than previous Bonnie Hunter mysteries? 

The rest of the story, since Vireya asked:

This is where it was stashed. Bad idea!

It just doesn't want to lie flat any more.

I tried ironing the mat on the lowest setting (before the photo above was taken). It helped somewhat. I need to keep working on it. The worst that can happen is I can ruin the mat, right? 😉 

Lessons Learned:

• Before cutting all the fabric, make a few samples. Or, review all prior instructions carefully. 

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.