Mrs. Lebo's Legacy - the Quilt

I',m learning a few things....Isn't it nice that we can continue learning decade after decade when we become quiltmakers?

First of all, one jelly roll of 42 fabrics is not likely to be enough for nine Dresden plates with 20 blades.

 I did cut each strip in half to yield a lot more variety as I piece.  That means I can cut eight wedges from each strip set.  Had I not decided to do that, each full width strip set would have yielded 17 wedges instead of 16.  However, if I had used the full width strip sets, that still would have given me only 170 blades--and 180 are needed for a quilt with nine plates.  I found some gifted fabric that works with the Bread 'n' Butter colors, but I think I'm still going to have only enough for eight plates, so I'm trying to come up with something creative for the ninth block.

 I'm using the Missouri Star Quilt Company's layer cake wedge ruler.  I think it may have been an add-on to an order I placed with them for something else; I know it's been around here for over a year, but I'd only used it once and that was for some smaller project.

 It was slipping a bit as I cut, so I opened one of the drawers of my treadle and pulled out a small rectangle of rubberized shelf webbing that I use when I quilt on the treadle.  I cut a couple of tiny rectangles and glued them to the back of the ruler with Elmer's water soluble School Glue. That is helping.

 It's important to remember to keep the narrow end of the ruler at the edge of the strip set as we flip and cut.

 Also, I can see that my scant 1/4 inch seam allowance, which I accomplish with a stack of post-it notes, was a bit too scant.  However, since I pieced all the strips and wedges with that allowance, it won't be a problem.  (Each four-strip set should have been exactly 8.5 inches wide.) I've also found that it's easy to let the ruler slip a little instead of keeping that 8.5 inch line parallel to the edge of the fabric.--Little lessons.

 I'm also separating the wedges into two groups as I cut, because that should help me get more of the variety I want.

The next step is to create the point at the top of each blade.
I also need to decide what fabric or fabrics to use for the circles at the center of the blocks.

Happy quiltmaking,....

Which Flying Geese Method Is Faster?

Because I decided to add flying geese to the fishing panel, I was curious about which of my usual three methods was faster.

I did not try the "four at a time" method, because I didn't think I wanted four of each fabric.

I have Eleanor Burns Flying Geese 3x6/1.5x3 ruler, so I tried that method.  Here are the steps in photos:

 Eleanor's method is extremely accurate and starts with two squares of different sizes.

 Stitching 1/4" on each side of the drawn pencil line.

 Cutting on the pencil line.

 To my small homemade pressing board, which is why there are lavender stripes.

 Pressing seams toward the background fabric.

 Laying them edge to edge and drawing diagonal pencil line.

 Pin and sew 1/4" on each side of line.

 Cut on pencil line.

 Note space between flying geese.

 Align ruler with flying goose and trim.

 Do the same for other goose.  The rotating mat was quite helpful.

The other method I tried was to cut goose fabric into rectangles and background fabric into squares.

 Strips of background.

 Sub-cut strips into squares.

 Align tape with needle.  Ruler helps be sure the tape is perfectly aligned.  (My Jansjo light from Ikea is reflected in the ruler.  Sorry about that, but it gives me a chance to mention how much I love using those lamps; much better than the lights on most sewing machines; of course, there are no lights on my treadles.)

 Place background square on goose rectangle and sew diagonally across square.

 Keep corner of square aligned with the edge of the tape.

 Oops!  Be sure to insert sewing machine needle in the correct place and do not try to just chain feed without lifting presser foot.

 Ripping/frog stitching tip.  Place the red ball of the seam ripper on the underneath side and keep the longer tip on the top of the fabric.  Much faster to rip, and since I don't use dull seam rippers, I don't have to worry about cutting fabric instead of thread. (If you've not tried this, do.  You'll love it!)

Trim seam allowance and sew the second square on. Check against Eleanor's ruler.

Verdict:  The second method saved over five minutes per pair of geese.  The second method also gave me four more half square triangle blocks for some other project.  I make that seam before I press and trim off the excess.

I did sew together too many flying geese units on one side, so I used my ripping technique again.  I think most people have been taught to keep the red ball of the ripper on top, but ripping with it on the underside saves sooooo much time.

The other two methods of making geese are perfectly fine, but now I know which method is faster.

I have the fishing panel with its flying geese borders finished, and am waiting for batting and backing to arrive. While I was hopeful that my college girl would hold it so I could get a photo while she was home for Thanksgiving, that didn't happen, but we had a joyful Thanksgiving.
I need to figure out a way to create a wall for taking photos of my quilts somewhere in this small house.  I've photographed a lot of quilt tops and quilts outside, but with winds up to 55 mph today, the outside is definitely not a choice. (Driving to and from church was a bit unpleasant today; we're experiencing the first of three consecutive storm systems.  Hopefully, they'll be through here by Thursday or so!)

Happy quiltmaking, knitting, sewing, and crafting,

Finding Time

Actually, I'm not finding time....However, I'm grateful to have friends who have asked if I've disappeared.  I do apologize for appearing to disappear.

No quilting has happened for several weeks.  Last month I did get to a lovely show where I made two purchases:

 These tools are a purple-ish violet, but the camera chose blue, and I wasn't able to edit the photo to make the color closer to reality.  These were purchased from Lumenaris. I had contacted Lumenaris ahead of time asking them to please bring me some violet colored tools.  I got to the show two or three hours before it closed the first day, and these two were the ones that were left. These are wonderful tools!  I did buy the extra stiletto tip for the screwdriver set so that I can have both the stiletto and seam ripper at hand.

The show was for sewing, quilting, and crafting and was mostly vendors with a few of the vendors classes thrown in.

 I also got more of this miracle fabric to cover a new rectangular ironing surface I want to make.  They do sell completely finished ironing board covers.  I made my first purchase from them quite a few years ago and would hate to have to go back to a regular ironing surface.  Those of you who prefer pretty ironing covers from quilt related cottons would still enjoy these.  You can put a pretty cotton cover on top of a cover made of this fabric, and it would still reflect most of the heat.  It is lovely to be able to have beautiful pressing without having irons at their highest temperature.  Goodness knows irons aren't built to get really hot anymore. This fabric counters some of that.

Some quilty items are wonderful investments and this is definitely near the top of my list.

I've done no quilting at all since our prayer quilt dedication at church in early April.  I'm overwhelmed with school stuff.  However, I hope to post photos of all the prayer quilts soon.

I purchased a new-to-me car just over two weeks ago.  Before I had it two weeks, I parked at the grocery store next to an end curb.  Someone intentionally ran a grocery basket into that small space, rammed it with great force into my car multiple times, did side damage and front bumper damage--$2200 worth.  The owner of the body shop said there is a lot of this going on and that I personally wasn't targeted.  But I'm wondering if someone saw the temporary permit we have to post in the back window until the license plate arrives and then targeted my car.  Ugly stuff.  So, Monday I have to take it to collision repair and pick up a rental.  I just dread the whole thing.

Right now I also have a lot of friends and relatives dealing with unpleasant health issues--which kind of tells me I need to be taking time to quilt.  There's also yard work to be done since we've had a lot of wind and tumbleweeds love to travel through and park in our yards on this street.  But every time I set aside time to do that we get another storm.  My school year will be over in two weeks, so I'm hopeful that I'll soon be able to let more quiltmaking be my therapy.

Time for some deep breaths!

Happy quiltmaking,.....

Friday Night Sew In...and more

For the first time in months, I actually took part in the Friday Night Sew In.

 I have a link on the right of my blog--but someone else is hosting temporarily--and I can't even find the post to link it.  So we are just hanging here.

I think it was last Monday that I finished the center and border one.

Because I had very limited yardage of the mossy green thread I wanted to use for the "basket," I used it for the vertical lines and a darker green for the horizontal lines--which was perfect, since these are Pepper Cory's Peppered Cottons [shot cottons] for studio e  fabrics.

My Friday Night Sewing was to finish the last two blue triangles.

I reverted to one of my decades-old marking techniques--slivers of hard-milled soap.  However, since we haven't used that kind of soap around here in years due to our hard water,  I sliced some slivers from an unused bar of Crabtree & Evelyn soap that has been lurking in my armoire for years.

That was Monday.  After an uncomfortable night, I awoke with a sinus/respiratory virus that knocked me flat.  I'd forgotten how miserable I could be when ill.  I'm doing better now, but can tell it's going to be at least a couple more days before I'm feeling somewhat "normal."  With my return to work scheduled for August 6, time is really, really flying, and I just lost five days!  Mostly, I slept, read, and dozed off again. (Truth be told, it's likely that any amateur sleuth could find me by following the trail of tissues and tissue boxes!)

We've had almost 4.5 inches of rain this month--something I don't remember happening in any single month in the entire quarter century that I've lived in the desert southwest.  The weeds are having a hay day (and I could use a baler!), and bug spray is now mandatory if spending more than a minute or two outside.  (I have the bites to prove it.)  However, we love the rain, and for the last few days it has missed us.

So, that reminds me to ask about something else.  Often, I read blogs on my Kindle. I've noticed that even on my computer, the font many people use is just so tiny!  Therefore, I'm wondering if my readers find the font I use is easily readable on their devices.  Please let me know--I can make it bigger and/or change to a different font.

Happy quiltmaking and knitting.....

Quilty Tips from the Patriotic Wall Hanging

I've received quite a few comments from various venues about this quilt.  I'm grateful for them; thank you. It makes me feel good that my brain, my hands, and my treadle sewing machine created something that others like.

Many people were surprised that I did this on a treadle.  My treadle is a class 15 type sewing machine, so its bobbin holds a lot of thread, and it is a vertical bobbin, meaning the thread path has one less twist than horizontal bobbins.  But the main things are that the needle goes up and down and works with the bobbin to create a lock stitch. Aside from chain stitchers, that's what sewing machines do, whether they started stitching over 100 years ago or are brand new, made of plastic, and cost up to $10,000.  They just stitch.  We stitchers get to create the magic with our imaginations, skills, and patience; that's pretty wonderful. 

There are a few things about quilting and finishing this quilt that I was able to do fairly easily.  While some quiltmakers have already used these methods, others may wonder about them, so Ill share some things that made this creation easier.  

When it was time to quilt some stars into the upper portion, I needed a way to mark them so I could see where to quilt.  I began with a short strip of freezer paper that I folded into six layers.

On the top layer I drew one star that was slightly smaller than the stars I appliqued. Then to create multiple small stars, I unthreaded my machine, held the layers firmly, and stitched through all six layers.

I cut out the paper stars and positioned them on the blue background in what I felt was a pleasing arrangement.

The addition of these paper stars illustrates how more stars could have been appliqued on the blue section for an equally pleasing arrangement.

I needed to find this alternative way of marking the stars because none of my markers would show up on the blue.  Many years ago, I used to mark quilting lines with little slivers of unscented soap.  I couldn't find any of those old slivers; we've used liquid soap around here for at least 15 years!

To hold them in place, I pressed with a small iron.  (The little mini wand iron would have worked great, but I seldom use it and couldn't recall where it is right now.)  No steam, just heat.

 Then I was able to stitch carefully around each star as I came to it in the quilting process.  I found the quilted stars looked best if I stitched right next to the paper and then about 1/8 inch further out.


The next puzzle to be solved was about the central spine of the feather on the left side of the quilt.  For the one on the right, I had just looked at the quilt, judged how I wanted the feather to flow, and had free motion quilted it.  Ordinarily, I prefer that my quilting design maintains a certain spirit, but that when something is repeated in a different area, it needs to have some variation, just to hold the viewer's interest.  (Yes, there was once a time when I thought every repeated design had to be exactly the same--and I see that carried out on a lot of my quilts from 25+ years ago.)

So, to solve the problem of how to get a nearly identical spine onto the left side of the quilt, I had to be creative.  I flipped the quilt to the back and ironed on a larger piece of freezer paper, thinking that to create the pattern I'd again remove the thread from the needle of my machine and just stitch down the spine from the right side.

However, when I ironed on the freezer paper, I could see the earlier quilting design on the paper.  (That was kind of surprising since I'd purposely used a thin batting.)

 So I just traced the spine with my pencil.

Then I cut the freezer paper along the right side of the line, repressed the freezer paper on the front of the quilt, lining it up as carefully as possible to create a mirror image of the the line I had quilted already.  I drew along that curve with a water soluble marker (the blue kind some people are afraid to use).

 That produced a shape somewhat like the frame of a lyre.  I quilted that side much like the right side but with a few variations.

The other thing I had to be careful about with this quilt was the binding.  Since I'd made the binding from a fat quarter (I cut the strips 2.25 inches wide), I didn't have a lot of extra.  I always want to be sure I don't have a seam on a corner, but by the time I reached the third corner, the seam was falling where I needed to miter.  Therefore, I needed to take a small piece out of the binding to keep the seam on the third side above the corner.  You can see below where I marked a short distance above the previous seam.  I would have been wiser if I'd removed only an inch instead of two inches.  If you make this quilt, you'll want to be careful about that too unless you cut from a full width of fabric instead of from a fat quarter.

I sewed the raw edges of the binding to the front of the quilt, folded the folded edge to the back, and stitched in the ditch from the front side in order to catch the binding on the back edge.

Since the greatest percentage of the quilt was red, I used red to stitch the binding.  This photo and the next one shows that line of stitching is barely visible.

I did was go back and add more lines of stitching to the raw edge appliqued stars--just to give them a little more dimension.

This photo shows how I hid the date in the quilting.   If you look at the first red strip you can see the 2 followed by the 014.  Also, you can see that the entire lyre portion of the quilt began with a star from which the feathers sprout.  For that star I used a slightly larger card stock template than the one used for the appliqued stars.  I also stitched around it twice to help define it.

One of my readers commented that the quilting in the star section looks like some of the work done by Lori Kennedy.  She is correct.  Van Gogh and Lori Kennedy were my inspiration.

Now I'm really looking forward to seeing what other quiltmakers create with these simple ideas. Please share your creations with me.

Happy quiltmaking, and have a safe and wonderful Independence day, and a great weekend whether or not you get to celebrate.

P. S.:  It began raining about 6:00 p.m. this evening, so one of the things most people in these parts will be celebrating is the fact that we've had another inch of rain.  Hooray!  Our corner of the world will be greener this weekend.