New Quilting Project

I'm done enough of the hand-quilting on the quilt I made from this fat quarter pack, that I should soon be able to bind it, photograph it, write up the instructions, and post it on my Craftsy page.

That got me started thinking about what my next hand-quilting project would be.

I went out to the studio and retrieved this small quilt top that I sewed together a little over two years ago. Right away, I knew I wanted to do a large-scale, feathered motif. A heart perhaps? Possibly, but then there were still the corner areas to fill in. I wanted a design that would fill up more of the area by itself.

Because the quilt is as nearly square (maybe one-quarter inch or so larger on one axis), a feathered circle seemed like a good candidate.

I took this 8 by 8 inch template, draw the design onto paper, scanned it into the computer, and starting playing with it.

I made it as big as possible, tried a few variations, and soon arrived at this arrangement.

Rather than printing out the whole design on tiled pages and piecing it together, I am starting out with just the center, which measures about 13 inches in diameter. It printed out using just four sheets of paper. For the middle and outer parts of the design, I plan to redraw them so that there are four identical quadrants. As it is, the design is not radially symmetric, there being 23 feathers on the outside of the circle.

To be evenly divisible into 360, there need to be 24. That way, I only have to make a template for one-quarter of the pattern. That matters because of the way I make my quilting templates.

I print them out on paper, and then run the paper through my sewing machine (unthreaded) so the needle punches the design into the paper.

I use a Quilt Pounce to transfer the design to the quilt top, and then draw over it with a chalk pencil, since the chalk from the Quilt Pounce rubs off too quickly as I'm quilting.

I think I will use dark brown quilting thread.

Even Better Than Strip Piecing

A quilting-related blog that I look at every day is The Patchery Menagerie. I came across her blog through Tonya Ricucci's blog. Tonya is the author of Word Play Quilts, which I illustrated.

(Lynne's cat, Millie, has her own blog as well — another blog I look at every day.)

A couple days ago and then again today, Lynne wrote about a method for making scrappy blocks and using up bits of leftover fabric.

It's similar in spirit but different in process to what I endeavored to do with my Big Heart block.

I am intrigued, and want to try this myself.

More to come . . .

Big Heart

Some time ago, I took this block, enlarged it to 20" x 20", printed it out and taped the pieces together. This weekend, I finally sewed together strips from my scrap bag to make the center block for a quilt.

If I do another one (and I probably will), instead of paper-piecing, I think I will try using freezer paper. Wrangling a 20-inch-square paper foundation took some doing.

Not only is the heart pieced, but the background sections are as well.

I had a bunch of equilateral triangles and half-triangles left over from another project a few years ago. With so many fabrics in the heart, it seemed like it would be "too much" to have the background be scrappy also. But piecing the background from leftover bits seemed appropriate.

I used up most of the triangles, but I was able to find more of the same print online, even though I bought in some three years ago. I remembered it was from a fabric line designed by Minick and Simpson, was able to determine that they design for Moda, tracked down the name of the line, and ordered some here.

Next, I'll be making smaller heart blocks, also strip-pieced, to go around the large heart.

Weekend Miscellany

A little about a lot of different things.

SOCKS

Today, I finished the "first" sock of the pair I was knitting for Tim. Now there are two.

I finished the knitting part last night. That just left stitching up the toes and weaving in the ends.

He reports that they are very warm. Well, they should be. Have you ever seen a cold alpaca? (I stole that. He said it first.)

I'd like to start another pair, because I really like knitting socks. But I should get back to my sweater instead.

GARDENING

Today, we planted the seeds for what we hope will be our summer garden. Two kinds of lettuce (red and green), zucchini, pumpkin, and leftover California poppy seeds.

I could have posted a photo, but there's nothing to see yet. Just potting soil in little planter cups.

I also have a bunch of sunflower seeds that I harvested last year, that I will just plant in the ground. And the raspberry canes are leafing out nicely. I hope their output is better than it was last year.

GREEN LAKE

After a week of mostly rain, it cleared up this afternoon. That prompted me to suggest that we head down to Green Lake for a walk.

The turtles have been out of hibernation for a few weeks now. I thought there would be more of them out sunning themselves, but only a few made an appearance.

However, on the other side of the lake, we did see something a little out of the ordinary.

 QUILTING

I managed to get out to the studio for an hour or two. The project I am currently planning involves using leftover strips of fabric that I have collected over the past several months. I am sewing them into longer strips and trimming them to various widths.

I have drafted a larger version of this block, as well as a diagonal version, and will sew the strips together to make a quilt of a size yet to be determined. It will be unplanned, spontaneous and random. Very different from what I usually do.

FLOWERS

This has been a good spring for flowers. It seems like there have been more crocuses and daffodils in our front yard than in years past.

The dark purple crocuses showed up first, followed by lighter purple and white crocuses.

Then came the daffodils.

  

Soon, there will be tulips.

Last weekend, we enjoyed the warmest day so far this year. It was a beautiful spring day — the warmest day so far this year with a high of about 65 degrees. We were out and about around Capitol Hill and took a stroll through Volunteer Park. Many flowers there to see.

Lastly, inspired by our visit to Vashon Island a couple weeks ago and the Seattle Distillery where we purchased a bottle of their coffee liqueur (scroll down), I found a recipe for homemade coffee liqueur which I will try out, with some adjustments.

Today, I prepared the cold brew coffee and purchased two vanilla beans and a bottle of vodka. Stay tuned . . .

Currently On My Design Wall

Sometimes I like to plan a quilt; sometimes I just wing it. This quilt falls squarely in the latter category.

While I'm taking classes, it's a little difficult to give enough head-space to consciously designing a quilt top. So I go to the other extreme and just start sewing together random pieces of fabric.

In the course of making quilts, I'm always saving leftover bits and pieces. After awhile, enough of them collect that I can do something with them.

For this project, I started with an odd-shaped red rectangle and then started adding alternate light and dark strips to two sides. After adding four strips of each value, I trimmed the blocks to 9" square. Then I sewed the 9" blocks into four-block units. I came up a little short, and made five additional blocks.

I still have lots of really small strips left over now, and an idea of what I might do with them.