Happy, happy

Happy Thursday, everyone, happy July 4th, happy summer day, happy quiet day, happy rainy day, happy day indeed!

You may be wondering what all the happy is about, and I will be happy to tell you - the Whatever quilt that will be shipped off to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham sometime next week is finally done. Yeeey!

I did something totally scary this week which could have turned out Oh so badly, but everything fell into place at the end of the day. Literally. Making the decision of adding yet another element to the finished quilt was easy. The execution however, was a challenge.

Goal: add a simple outline of the applique shape semi-overlapping the applique.

Method: make a plastic template, draw the outline with glue, add yarn, let dry, zigzag stitch in place.

Template: ok

Glue: making way too fat lines

Yarn: glue all over the place, had to be removed

Result: glue blobs on the quilt. Not a happy sight

Solution: dabbing the glue off with a paper towel, well most of it anyway, and free-couching the yarn using the template as a guide. The plastic template kept sticking to the bottom of presser foot, so I tried working underneath the edge and that worked like a charm.

Did I rip out part of the couched lines the very next morning? Yes, indeed, and quite happily so. It simply was too much.

Now both labels are secured to the back and just needs to be covered up with a piece of muslin before shipping. I have not decided on the packaging issue yet, so I might need to pick your brains on that later.

See, happy!

The Day

I’m calling it the day on the Whatever quilt. I think. Although I am enjoying the mixed media quilting journey very much, I find it hard to decide when I have reached my destination. It’s all about finding balance, only adding what will improve the quilt, connecting all the elements and making it into a whole. Sounds easy, but it’s not.

I got working on that last layer yesterday, all the pent up frustration from the past 3 weeks just waiting to be stitched out, anxious to see how my new and somewhat fever induced plan would work out. Well, it didn’t. The first attempt at creating little hints of vegetation crashed and burned, and so did the second.

 The huge spool of raspberry t-shirt-yarn that I had envisioned being perfectly transferred into beautiful straws was way too chunky against all the delicate sheer fabrics and simply had to go. That’s all right, I am sure I will find a use for it later, and also the rest of the raspberry stuff that did not make the cut this time.

The third attempt, however, was successful, and soon after eagerly stitched onto the quilt.

Then it was button time, and the plan of adding lots and lots of buttons was adjusted to adding just lots of buttons. To keep the button arrangement seemingly random, I spread them out on the quilt and used glass head pins to keep them in place while hand stitching them onto the quilt.

By the end of the day my fingers were really sore. Pulling pearl cotton floss through layers and layers of heavily quilted fabrics does that to you.

The rubber needle-pulling-thingie wasn’t in my hand sewing kit, so I went looking for a balloon in the kitchen junk drawer. There were no balloons, but I found a roll of band aid. It worked like a charm, just fold it around the needle, and your grip will be so much better. I wish I had thought about it sooner, before my fingers got so sore.

Now it’s time to hand stitch the hanging sleeve and label to the back of the quilt. I just need to make really, really sure, yet again, that it’s finished as adding anything afterwards will be difficult.

Thanks for stopping by!

Whatever, The setup

I have done a little remodelling of our dining room table, transferring half of it into an ironing board. Having learned from previous Oh... moments (it turns out that neither our tables nor the floor take heat (nor safety pins for that matter) very well, who knew), I have padded the surface properly and then some.

One double layer of felted wool, one layer of really heavy weight felted wool, and one double layer of heavy cotton fabric. I’m not using steam, and have checked if the heath travels through all the layers, and it doesn’t.

The appliqué pattern is blown up into the right format. I often find that the first sketch I make is the best. No matter how many times I try, I never seem to get it totally right again. Like ever. This time I transferred that first sketch onto semi transparent paper, and borrowed a copier to do the blowing up part.

I know, the picture looks a bit like a murder scene, but I promise, it won't in the end. The sketch was maybe 4” tall and needed to be 38”, so there were quite a few A3 sheets and yards of scotch tape involved in making the simple pattern.

The Whatever quilt will be an exhibition piece, so I will only be able to share snips and pieces from now on. This, however, is my "paint" - plastic bags with scraps of sheer fabrics which will be transformed into appliquê, one layer at a time. This will be the fun part.

Knowing myself, I will need to let it percolate a few times during the creative process, but hopefully it will be finished on time. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, nothing gets those creative juices flowing like a real life deadline.

Thanks for stopping by!

Whatever; The background

The Whatever background is finished and all ready for play. It still needs properly pressing, but all the blocks are in the right place, and I'm happy to say - without any unstitching.

Don’t all the old recycled fabrics look great together? It’s hard to imagine these being smelly old household items in a thrift shop a decade and half ago. The tanned stripy one and the purple chequered one both comes from a duvet cover that had a different print on each side. To get an even bigger variety of fabrics, I over dyed pieces of both (and quite a few more fabrics) with tan using the washing machine. 4 different fabrics from one duvet cover is a good outcome, and I have used most of them up already.

The solid tan is from a washed out, well, very washed out sheet. I discarded the reverse blocks as they were a bit on the flimsy side around the edges. I used to have the busy flowery fabric with blue flowers in pink too.

The green Asian style fabric is from a heavy weight curtain. It was impossible to press the seam allowances properly, but that’s ok. I think my favourite one would be the white chequered fabric with the tiny roses. I don’t use white a lot, but I really should, they make everything so clean and crisp.

Do you use thrifted fabrics in your quilts, and why – or why not?

Whatever; The piecing

To make sure I would not mess up the far-from-perfectly-balanced layout for the Whatever quilt, I made one stack of blocks from each column and numbered them. I’m all for chain piecing, but not when the time pressure is up and there’s only one right way to put each block. I am occasionally directionally challenged, and when I come down with a touch of that, there’s no way to foresee the outcome.

Ages ago husband and I wallpapered a room and even though there were only 4 ways to turn the double sided wallpaper (up and down on the back and front), after 6 wrongs, we finally got it right. Most of the time. Now imagine going through that process in a whole living room. No wonder I do my piecing block by block when in a hurry.

Finished columns, still numbered, and ready to stitch together. The perfect way to spend a few hours on a Saturday I’d say.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Whatever; The wall

No matter how much I move the Whatever blocks around to get an evenly distribution of all the colours, I still fail. Actually, it seems like the harder I try the more of a mess I create. Add that I have to pin each block to the table-cloth-design-wall every time I move them, so it takes a while.

The solution – stop trying. I’ll be adding layers of applique anyway, so no one will ever notice the annoying overrepresentation of one curtain fabric in the top half anyway.

Stack them up and move on..

Whatever; The blocks

or Resizing at the speed of light.

I am happy to report that the AccuQuilt worked fantastically for resizing the Whatever blocks. The 6 ½” square die is the largest I have (are bigger sizes even available??), so 6" finished blocks it is.

I did a test run with one block first, then two. With all the seam allowances, 2 blocks at a time was the best I could do considering the goal was to get perfectly square blocks.

Woooosh, and there you go, 52 perfectly cut blocks.

I only wish the arranging, rearranging, re-rearranging and piecing part would go woooosh too..

Whatever; The start

I’ve been starting on a new project, the Whatever quilt. Working towards a deadline, I should have been way into the process by now, but there you go. Maybe blogging about the progress on a daily basis for a while will help me keeping up the pace. I’ll be merging my old thrifted stash with my new thrifted and repurposed stash. Sounds like fun, right!

First I’ll be making an appliqué background from light cotton (mostly?) fabrics – bed sheets, curtains, table cloths, all good.

Do you remember the table cloths from the 80ies which had different patterns on the front and back? I think this is from Södahl. I love the prints and that it is a two for one fabric.

To speed things up a bit, I will be using the Accuquilt Go to resize the pieced blocks. Hopefully I can run a couple of them through the machine at a time.

And just a little warning. I use a sports cap water bottle to fill my iron, and yesterday it started smelling sweet and funky. Then I realized I had filled it with the blueberry scented water that I mistakenly picked up at the airport.

I did the same using pear flavoured water once; and I who don’t even like the flavoured kind. Burned blueberry, yikes.