Tea Towel Take 6 (?): Border 2 in progress

The deadline for finishing the Tea towel challenge is at the end of this month, and although I won’t be able to do the quilting by then with Easter coming up and all, I still want to have the top finished. The quilt is to be a medallion quilt with as many or few borders as we like. My plan is two borders (first one here), but this second border will hopefully be a two-for-one border, so maybe 2 and a half...

To have lots of options both size- and colour wise, I made approx 60 jagged border units. None of them are alike, but they will be cut into 3 different lengths as the borders will be 6”, 7” and 8” (finished width).

I did not audition the units on the design wall (flannel backed vinyl table cloth) first, which was a mistake. Although the first right side border looked fine at first,

I noticed how much defined the pattern was on the left border, and how washed out some of the units on the right looked in comparison.

Not wanting to make the same mistake again, I auditioned my replacement units before I did the actual rip/restitch work.

Aaah, so much better!

Top border; I’ll replace the corners, but I’m very happy with how the jagged pattern comes to life.

And bottom border without corners.

I’ll switch the top and bottom borders as it seems a bit off balance, and I’ll have to work out how to do the corners. I have an idea though; I'll keep you posted on how that works out, but for now I'm just enjoying the process very much indeed.

Thanks for stopping by!

Quilt Day

Happy Quilt Day everyone! My name is Nina Lise and I am a Norwegian quilter who most of all love the creative side of quilting and to share my favourite pastime here on my blog Mrs Moen, through my book Gledesspredere, as a designer for the Scandinavian quilting magazine Quiltemagasinet, and through teaching a variety of quilting classes. You’ll find tabs to my pattern and tutorial pages on the top of the page.

Although I did not get to spend the whole International Quilt Day quilting, I made progress on two projects – the christening quilt and the tea towel quilt.

This fabulous stack of blocks

will soon become my first ever jagged border for the tea towel quilt. I have been planning the border for a couple of weeks, and the plans have changed more than once. As soon as I thought I had a brilliant idea, I changed my mind. In the end I had to just go for it, and after spending a whole guild meeting ironing scraps and cutting strips, I had a stack of rectangles in different lengths but with the same width, 4 ¼”. The light fabric is the duvet cover which I used for the text, and the dark pieces are the same fabrics that I used for making the scrappy blocks.

There was some slashing and bias piecing involved, and now they are ready to get pieced into borders. I think they will look fun; we’ll see, the colours are certainly fun.

Then I started working on the portraits for the christening quilt, fusing yesterday’s faces to red felt and managing to melt the (synthetic) felt with my iron. I was listening to a podcast which had me laughing and I wasn’t paying attention (that darn multitasking thing again).

I spent quite a while trying to get it off - until I realized I could scratch it off with my fingers. While I was at it, I also tried to remove some of the burned gooey that has been there for ages but with little result other than feeling somewhat queasy from the smell of rubbing alcohol. Any tips on how to do that? Without the alcohol?

Anyways, queasy or not, I stitched around the portraits,

cut them out and spent some time arranging them on the quilted background. It’s not looking right, again. The portraits are small and it's way too busy. I’ll rearrange them in a more orderly way tomorrow, but the faces will still be small. There's no way I'll make them a third time, but maybe I can replace some of them with the first batch of big heads, they've got to be somewhere around here.

 
So that was the quilting part of my Quilt Day, how was yours?

I’m linking up with SewCalGal’s International Quilting Day Virtual Sew-cial.

Breaking it up

I have been playing with my letters for the tea towel quilt today; just trying out how the light letters will look against the stripes and how to arrange the words.

The fabric is from a thrifted duvet cover from my ancient stash from when I first started quilting and it’s ever so soft and wonderful and has a light, light washed out green colour with an even lighter printed pattern. I did not want stark white as there’s already a lot of white in the towel. I was able to center the words as planned although I could not fit as many letters on each line as expected.

I decided to appliqué the letters instead of quilting them down as I normally would do. Usually I would add some kind of stabilizer on the back, but my towel is rather thick and tightly woven, so I skipped this step. To avoid lots of twisting and turning, I decided to free motion stitch each letter twice.

It worked out ok, I only got a little puckering but that will probably iron out, or at least quilt out.

I was anxious to see how my vision worked out, and I absolutely love the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t-effect. The text breaks up the stripes really nicely and quiets them down, which is what I wanted, and the soft text is like a whisper. “I am great, and yet… I am humble” (from the TV show Shark).

Looking at it now, I can hear that it wants to be rectangular. Does your work speak to you? Whisper? Scream? Am I going mad from all those stripes breaking up?

I am wondering what the jagged border will say when I start slashing tomorrow. Ouch??

Task of the day, March 11

The weekend was busy with lots of play; not with fabrics, but with the grandboys that spent the weekend with us. My plan was to get to work when they left, but I ran out of steam. It happens all the time, and I never learn - when the kids go home, grandma needs some down time.

I was going to start making the jagged border for my tea towel quilt this morning, but then I decided to do the centre applique first as it will be easier. I am using one of my favorite TV show quotes and I'm thinking light text on top of the bright stripes. I can not add links from my phone, but you can read about the Tea Towel Challenge by clicking on the label at the bottom of this post.

Have a great Monday!

Tea Towel Take Two and Three: Border 1

My Tea Towel quilt (you can read about the challenge here) has been moving forward little by little, and yesterday it made a big leap. I had previously made quite a bit of made fabric by adding bits and pieces neatly arranged in a picnic basket picked up from a remnant table to the humble beginnings of Take 1.

Seriously, I was really proud of these, each one of them could have been a small quilt.

I’m not sure what I was thinking making so much scraps as there are enough for many quilts in there, but I did.

Although I enjoyed looking at my pieces of made fabric, it was time to cut into them already, working from this very professional looking sketch with measurements and all. If you look closely you can see that the borders are not symmetrical, but the tea towel will end up in the centre when it’s done, that is if I stick to my original plan.

I still don’t get a lot done in 15 minutes, but after a couple of hours of cutting, adding, pressing, recutting, and fretting about umpteen layers of seam allowances, I finally had the needed number of blocks which thereafter were stitched into the first border. I took the top outside for pictures, but the light was a bit weird so the bright looking fabrics did not shine as much as expected.

They really are bright.

Anyway, big chunk of progress made and now onto the next border. As you can see from the very good looking sketch above, it is going to involve some triangular piecing.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tea Towel Take 1: I'm making scraps

I never pictured this would be my answer to any question, but last week I said these words out loud to my quilting buddies at our monthly guild meeting. I was ironing my stack of fabrics piece by piece and started slashing them totally randomly and when my friends asked what I was making I truthfully answered “I’m making scraps”.

Having been under the weather for quite a while, I could not seem to wrestle up enough energy to start digging through all my scrap boxes in search for suitable scraps for my made fabric (using made fabric in the quilt is a part of the Tea towel challenge). Instead I decided to use fabrics from a closet in my sewing room where my oldest fabric got stashed away years ago. I have been working my way through the content for a while and thought I would keep at it until everything gets used up or tossed away.

That first session at my guild meeting was spent ironing, slashing and piecing two and two pieces together. My box was quite full and my scraps rather messy when I unpacked it the other day, but still looking good.

For my next session I dug out my bag with almost empty spools,

made room for a cutting mat next to my machine and started adding pieces and strings, that is after ironing all the crumpled pieces.

Can you tell I’m a newbie at making fabric by the content of my waste bin? I find myself obsessively straightening up all the edges all the time which is a total waste so I won’t be doing that anymore.

Anyway, here’s the start of a few pieces of made fabrics.

I’m using quite large scraps or I’ll be making fabric way into 2014. Working with bright colours has been wonderful, but I think I’ll be enjoying the process even more without all the cutting...

Going sewing

Yeeeey, I'm going sewing tonight! It's the first Wednesday of the month and the kids are staying with our co-grandparents tonight which means the night off for grandma to spend with quilting friends.

I have been digging through my old stash for fabrics for the tea towel quilt and came up with lots of cheery colours. To keep it on the non-tooth-aching side of sweet, I'll be adding a few dulls and neutrals. I have also a box of scraps and leftover shapes and blocks to add to the mix and even a little tumbler top which has been waiting around for a while.

Now, should I start ironing fabrics or just enjoy an empty house for a while. Hmmm, maybe I should lay down on the couch while deciding...