My oldest work in progress

 In 1990 or '91, I was fascinated by MC Escher and decided to make a tessellating quilt. The traditional T-block is a simple but effective tesselation, and I was drawn to it after seeing a beautiful antique quilt in that pattern.  

I set out with a collection of scraps gifted to me by an experienced quilter, plastic templates, a sharp pencil to trace around each template, cotton quilter's thread, bee's wax, and a booklet of number 12 sharps, which is what the older ladies at the little quilting shop near me (Bits and Pieces in Livonia, MI) said were the essentials.

I knew about rotary cutters and rulers, and I had actually pieced a sampler quilt with those new-fangled tools, but "the ladies" told me that to get good sharp points on my half square triangles, hand piecing and cutting with templates was the only way to go.

My Tessellating T's quilt moved with me to another state. And it was still in many small pieces when I met and married a man whose last name started with a T.  I used a few of the finished blocks to make pillows to "mark our pew" at church, but the quilt as a whole stalled as I became more interested in other types of quilting, had access to much more interesting fabrics, and life in general became more kid-centric.

Every once in a while I think that some hand piecing would be relaxing, and I assemble a few more half square triangles before remember that it's not all that relaxing.

In my current climate of getting things done, I revised the original plan and am on track to complete this middle aged quilt.  I decided to keep the 9 more pleasing and completed blocks and assemble them into a small wall hanging (40ish" square).  The rest I discarded without any pain -- they weren't particularly attractive fabrics and age did not become them.

Because hand pieced blocks are not necessarily at their best with machine quilting, I'll pull out my old quilting hoop and revisit my not-recently used hand quilting stitching skills.  Now that big stitch hand quilting is kind of a cool thing, I won't worry too much about my stitch per inch statistics.  Back when the ladies were instructing me, they put a lot of value on 8 to 10 stitches per inch and I did in fact complete a pillow sham with a chalk stenciled feather motif that was pretty close to that. I used a poly batting to get that kind of stitch density, and I'm curious to see what it's like to work with more dense and stable modern cotton batting.  I'm planning to do a little experimentation before I layer and baste Tessellating T.

Since I have a son with the initials T.T., I think this relic may have a future home.

Lots of UFOs finished up-- it's a theme

 With our kitchen remodel going on longer than expected, and my sewing room literally the only room in the house that's not impacted by the construction, I've had some motivation to spend more time finishing up random works in progress (WIP) / unfinished objects (UFOs).

The February "Make a Thing a day" challenge on Facebook helped me keep on track too.

Hot pads

Pattern weights made out of "mistake" printed fabric.  I made a bunch of PECs symbol bean bags for Daniel to help him learn new symbols as we added them to his Dynavox voice output computer.  Obviously, for this page I forgot to reverse the printing.  I find these funny. 

This bed runner or wall hanging is actually a Morse Code Abecedarian.  I liked this, but got stalled in finishing it when I realized that it just wasn't going to be all square and perfect.  I decided to just get it done and embrace the wonkiness.  My imprecise wavy lines ended up creating a cool texture in the finished piece, and I like it again.

I took 5 orphaned blocks left from an Eleanor Burns quilt challenge and stitched them into a table runner.    I did free motion quilting in a black to silver variegated thread on the solid black background in addition to matched thread quilting on the colored elements. My son's cat Sol approved of the end result. He didn't get to keep it though.

I cut these clamshell blocks out about 6 years ago.  They're from a fat quarter bundle I bought impulsively while Daniel was hospitalized.  The colors in this photograph are not quite accurate -- these are intense oranges, greens and yellows, with some blue.  I decided that the thing that was keeping me from progressing was that I wasn't quite happy with the color balance.  I considered adding white or gray clamshells., but that didn't make me happy either.

 

What worked for me was pulling a blue fat quarter from my stash, in addition to purchasing 2 other blue fat quarters.  I feel like having more blue helps pull the other colors together.

The clamshell blocks are slow stitching for me.  I actually timed myself and it take me a full 30 minutes to piece a row.  So this small quilt is going to take 8 hours of stitching for just the pieced top.  I have fabrics from my stash for backing and binding, so this one should be pretty easy to finish up.

The finish it up theme continues, because yes, I have still more WIP and UFO in my sewing room.  Stay tuned.

The Great Big Scrappy Quilt of 2021

 Like most quilters, I have a lot of scraps.  They're little bits of left overs from previous projects, or baggies given to me by a friend, or sometimes a random fat quarter purchased impulsively.  I love scraps.  But I also struggle to control the scraps.  So, I have rules.  I have a limited number of bins for scraps.  And when my scraps start to overflow the bin, I have to use them or get rid of them.  Since some of my scraps have been with me since the 1980s, we have some attachment issues, and I am pretty motivated to use my scraps rather than discarding them.  One of my strategies for scrap control is to make a large, scrappy quilt every year.  I make blocks or units of the quilt throughout the year, and my rule for myself is that however many blocks I have on Jan 1 of the new year is the number of blocks I have to work with.  I try to get it assembled and quilted by the end of Jan.  

So here's my GBSQ for 2021.  I don't really have a name for this pattern.  I was given an orphan block by a quilting friend which I used for inspiration.  It's basically just flying geese and 4 patch units.

I played around a bit with extending the pattern into the border to make it more interesting

The backing is pieced of two chunks of yardage I had on hand -- pink polka dots and a yellow geometric.  And with all that color and pattern going on, why not add some bold stripes as binding?

Project Quilting Season 13 roundup

 I enjoyed participating in Project Quilting again this year, and I completed entries for all 6 challenges.  I added rules for myself-- I wanted to use up scraps as much as possible.  And I wanted to avoid purchasing new fabric, in keeping with my sewing room clean and declutter process.

Challenge 1:  All the Colors

I made a table runner and a set of 4 placemats using all scraps. I used heat resistant insulbrite as batting-- gifted to me from a Buy Nothing Neighbor.  Quilting is walking foot straight lines using a rainbow variegated thread.  The backing is a batik that I've had in my stash for probably close to 30 years, so it's definitely time to use it up.

Challenge 2: Silhouette

My sister gifted me with a vinyl transfer she created on her cricuit.  Anyone who's seen what a house with two English labs looks like knows why she gave it to us.  Here's what I made.

The scrappy border is all from my tiny bits scrap bin. I free motion quilted in matching colors and the straight line quilting highlighting the silhouette is again that variegated rainbow thread.  I have a wall of dog memorabilia and photos where I plan to hang this.  Or I may turn it into a a throw pillow.

Challenge 3:  Kitchen related.

Well, this is what my kitchen looked like that week:

Yeah.  We're in the first stages of a complete remodel.  But using the colors we selected for our new kitchen as inspiration, and addressing an unmet need, I created this unique thing:  

I call it a duck egg skelter parking lot mat.  I have a small flock of back yard ducks who reliably lay about 100 eggs a month between them.  Best practices for home egg production is to keep eggs unwashed on one's counter in order of production -- hence the use of the skelter (so we use the oldest eggs first). Unwashed duck eggs sometimes look as if those ducks have been playing soccer with them, so isolating the grubbiness from other counter-top functions in the kitchen appeals to me -- and that's why I made this duck egg parking lot mat.  The block pattern is the traditional Duck Track block, of course.

Challenge 4: Diamonds

I have an accuquilt die for making those pesky half rectangle triangle blocks which lend themselves to a diamond design.  I decided to use that die for this challenge, and recalling that it can get tricky to deal with right and wrong sides of fabric with this shape, I opted to use only solids from my scrap bins.  Turns out I have a lot of solids.  I cut more than enough to make a queen sized quilt and two pillow shams.  By Wednesday of challenge week I realized that completing the entire queen sized quilt top was too ambitious an undertaking, so I completed one sham in time for the challenge deadline, while still working on the quilt.  It took 2 weeks to complete the diamond quilt, with lots of free motion quilting and ruler quilting, plus some straight lines to mix things up.

With that pieced backing I finished off some awkward remnants that have been sitting in a drawer for years.

Challenge 6: Repetition and rhythm

Again I used an accuquilt die that I've had for a while but not used in any large project -- the Local Color die.  I had an idea of creating the effect of overlapping layers, and I think I achieved what I had in mind.  All the novelty print fabrics came from scrap bins.  I did used yardage for the solids and the black batik, but all from stash, so no new purchases.

And the final challenge, Number 6: Flying Geese 

As I cleared my sewing room of bins and bags, I found all the scraps from a quilt I completed last year.  The good thing about left overs is that you've already done the work of deciding that the fabrics work together.  So I decided on a 3 by 6 inch finished flying geese block and cut every piece that was large enough for this next project.  As luck would have it, I had enough for 99 Flying Geese units.

It made for a very autumnal feeling piece, and I used a pumpkin colored fabric I've had for at least 30 years as the backing.  If I can believe the bolt I had this fabric stored on, it cost $1.90 a yard (that was a super sale even 30 years ago).  I often find it difficult to come up with a quilting motif for flying geese blocks, but I like what I came up with for this piece.  I decided not to use rulers and just embrace the unevenness of free hand free motion quilting.  This quilt is probably destined to be a wall hanging-- sized right for behind a couch, so I put in a hanging rod pocket as I bound it. Scrappy binding helped whittle that scrap bin even more.

So that's it for Project Quilting Season 13.  Always a fun way to start the year.

Being all trendy and making a quilted coat

Key themes for me in  2022 have been using up scraps and completing unfinished objects.  I've really powered through quite a few quilts and smaller projects already this year, but there was one quilt that just wasn't making me feel excited to dive in and get it done.

It's this one.  

I call it Zen Presbyterian.  

I used a layer cake of Shibori II by Debbie Maddy for Moda together with a few pieces from her Machi collection, some similar fabrics from my stash and the "fish eye" grey fabric which was a super buy at a store-going-out-of-business sale.  I remember the sales lady commented that nobody ever wanted to buy those "fish eyes" since they made your eyes go squirrely -- not great sales technique I thought at the time, as I bought the remainder of the bolt.

My original idea was that I would make a queen sized quilt to be used in my AirBnB rental.  I used a very simple pattern, with the intent of practicing free motion ruler quilting skills.  

Even though it's a super simple design, I still messed it up, which you can see if you look closely at the gray stripe and triangles.  I was having a hard time with details at the time-- it was very shortly after Daniel's death that I pieced this top, so 2017 or maybe early 2018.  I was trying hard to get back to quilting, but it just felt like a chore, and I made lots of mistakes and had a hard time with sticking to anything. (Normal for a brain in grieving and loss mode.)  

Ironically, after a day of frustration sewing, ripping out seams and getting very aggravated when things that used to be easy for me were just incredibly confusing, a friend from my yoga class commented that I was such a "zen" person, so calm and even-keeled.  I had to laugh, because her perception was so at odds with my internal reality, and I told her that if I was zen, I was a zen Presbyterian.  Yeah.  That makes no sense, but that's what I said. I then told her about the very simple quilt I was struggling with, and how frustrated I had been just hours before class.  She commented that she just had to see my Zen Presbyterian quilt-- so that's how it got named. 

So trying to be as zen as I apparently appeared, I accepted the layout error as a design feature, and I got the completed top layered and basted. It then sat languishing for a few years.  The cats liked burrowing into it. I moved it from closet to closet. It showed up on to-do lists for several years.  And I kept feeling bad about not finishing it.  

This year as I sorted and purged my quilting room, I realized that my failure to finish this particular quilt was due to several things.  

1. I wasn't as zen about the mistakes in layout as I liked to think I was. I knew it was going to bug me every time I looked at this quilt. The more simple a design is, the more the mistakes show up.

2 .With more experience as an AirBnB host I realized a handcrafted quilt wasn't my best option (my guests value freshly laundered bedding more than unique quilts, and washing any quilt multiple times a week is excessive.) 

3. After a little experience with ruler quilting, I knew I wasn't going to enjoy manipulating such a big and heavy quilt on my domestic machine while using rulers. 

4. I've quilted two large quilts in the last two months, and the arthritis in my hands is annoying enough to make a third big quilt project unappealing.

I've seen the quilted jackets (and other garments) popping up on social media and I'm apparently subject to peer pressure just as much as the next person, so it occurred to me that a quilted jacket was a good way to re-purpose Zen Presbyterian (ZP).  When I saw the Ruby Pea Coat by 5 out of 4 Patterns, I knew it would be a good choice.  Pockets!  Hood! Relaxed fit but not shapeless!  And I know from experience that 5 out of 4 Patterns are always well drafted and have good instructions, even for people like me  who are not primarily garment stitchers.

Because my fabrics were not pre-washed and I know that my free motion quilting creates quite a bit of shrinkage, I sized up. I measured an XL, but I cut 3X.  Originally I planned to follow the lined jacket directions, and I separated the quilt, tearing out the small amount of quilting I had already done and setting the lining to one side, keeping the pieced top pinned to the batting. I cut out the major pieces using my projector, but also made a paper pattern (projected onto paper and traced that) because I was having a hard time figuring out a layout that would economize but also result in good pattern matching of the gray stripe feature.  I also tried to avoid quilt piecing seams along the edge of the coat pattern pieces because that would result in very bulky seams in the finished garment. I also eliminated the back seam and cut the jacket back as one piece to eliminate another seam.

After I cut out the coat, I cut the quilt backing as the lining.  At that point I realized that I preferred not to follow the pattern's instruction for the coat lining, and I cut the lining more as "side 2", just replicating the main coat pattern pieces.  From there I assembled the coat fronts and backs for both side one and side 2, and then stitched them together right sides facing, leaving the arm holes open and only using a long basting stitch along the neckline. Because my jacket's side 2 alleviated the need for a hem, I cut off the hem allowance and skipped making the facing called for in the pattern. 

After trimming all the batting in the seam allowance right to the stitching line and grading the seams, I turned the garment right sides out, pressed, added pockets to side 1, and then did the free motion quilting through all 3 layers, leaving a margin of a couple of inches around the neckline unquilted because I knew the hood was going to need to go there..  

I assembled the sleeves, side 1 and side 2 with batting in between and free motion quilted them while they were flat. Strips of flying geese blocks which were originally part of the quilt back were part of the sleeve cuff on side 2. When I assembled the sleeves I used inserted biding strips as suggested in the pattern to create a finished sleeve on side 2. As a quilter I'm used to hand stitching binding, so my binding strips are finished with an invisible slip stich by hand.

More of the flying geese blocks made it into the hood on side 1.  The hood was easy to assemble, and I pretty much followed the directions in the pattern.  I free motion quilted the hood when it was assembled, after the top stitching step (3-D free motion quilting--yeehaw!).  Attaching the hood to the jacket was easy -- I removed my basting stitches at the neck of the jacket, and stitched right sides together of side 1 jacket and side 1 hood.  Then I slip stitched by hand to attach side 2 hood and side 2 jacket.

Attaching the arms to the jacket was standard, except I used binding strips to cover the seams and create a finished sleeve on side 2.  Because the fabric is pretty distracting (thank you fish eye fabric), I find the join is not visible at all. 

I wanted both sides of my jacket to be equally functional, so I added pockets to side 2 using scraps and hand stitching the pockets.  If I really thought about it in advance, I probably could have figured out how to machine stitch both layers of pockets at the same time.  Or maybe not.  Hand stitching wasn't so bad.

For a fastening, the best option I could come up with that was truly reversible was snaps.  After trying on the jacket and thinking about how I will wear it, I opted to put the snaps lower than the pattern calls for.  

Luckily for me, a friend let me use her Kaz snap setter so I was able to add my snaps easily and with none of the drama I've experienced in the past using the old spool and hammer setting methods. (Thanks again, Cathy!) After playing with her cool Kaz, I started to think I may need my own snap setter.  I think snaps would start appearing many places around my house.  So much cleaner as a finish than velcro, and so much faster than buttons and button holes, or even zippers.

Things I would do differently next time:

• I would cut the quilt top into manageable chunks and then layer the top, batting and backing and free motion quilt the pieces before cutting out the coat pieces.  I would then follow the directions for an unlayered jacket and would use binding (maybe matched bias binding) to cover my seams and serve as a hem.  That would have been an easier and more logical approach.  
• I would make pockets without batting between the pieced surface and the lining.  If I wanted a little more body, I would put a layer of flannel in there in place of batting so that the quilting would have some texture but not so much bulk. As it is, with two layers of pockets in addition to the jacket itself, there's a lot of bulk.  I could use the pocket area of this jacket as oven mitts.
• I would make the arms longer.  I did add 1" to the pattern length to make up for shrinkage from quilting, but that wasn't enough, so my sleeves are more like 3/4 sleeves on my ZP coat.  I'm fine with that, as it works in our PNW climate and my casual wardrobe.  

As many online commenters from the 5 out of 4  FB page pointed out, I could add cuffs or bands to lengthen the arms.  If I find that I don't enjoy the jacket because the arms are too short, I will in fact add quilted fabric bands. It wouldn't be all that hard, and I definitely have enough scraps left over.  We'll see.

Anyhow, there it is, at exhaustive length. How Zen Presbyterian became a Ruby Pea coat.  If you take away nothing else, read this as a history of figuring it out as you go along. If I knew exactly what I was doing from the first step, it would have been a faster project and the construction more straightforward.  But I actually enjoyed taking each step as it came and then working through how best to apply the process to the particular materials I was working with.  That's probably not exactly zen, but it's close enough for me.