The Sampler Quilt – All Together Now

I’ve finished sewing together the blocks of the sampler quilt that I wrote about in my last post. As I suspected I would, I made a couple of changes to my original plan. I think they make it a better over-all composition.

My original plan was to have a strip of the green fabric along the right side, but I decided to use the main patterned fabric there. I think that balances with the strip above the bow tie blocks better than the green fabric would have, and I think the green would have been too strong. I also left out the small block of orange fabric that I had planned to insert below the 6 inch square of circle print fabric. This lets the fabric square with a 6 inch square of sashing fabric echo the log cabin blocks that precede it on the diagonal. I like having this sort of repetition in the design.

The blocks are all either 12 inches square or 6 inches square, so I used a 3 inch wide sashing in between. I used a 4 inch wide border all around to give the top a bit more of a frame than it would have had using 3 inch wide strips. The finished quilt top measures 51 inches by 66 inches.

A couple of friends asked me how I figured out how to piece the sashing to the blocks, and how to know what sizes to cut, so I thought I would share with you the sketch that I used for my calculations. I drew the blocks in my layout to scale on a sheet of graph paper, with 3 inches of space in between. I roughly sketched in the blocks and coloured in the green and orange bits with pencil crayons (the colouring was actually a part of my earlier design process, to see how evenly the two strong colours were distributed over the whole top).

Next, I drew dashed lines to indicate where the seam lines for the sashing strips would be. I tried to stick with the basic principles of quilt top construction that I’ve used so many times in the past – thinking in terms of building larger and larger units as I sewed them together.

Once I’d done that, I marked the finished dimensions of each sashing strip on the drawing. Then I made a list on a separate sheet of paper of each size of strip (adding 1/2 inch extra for seam allowance to length and width) and counted out the number of each I would need to cut. For example, I needed 5 strips at 3 1/2 inches by 12 1/2 inches. Working on another sheet of graph paper, I sketched out how to cut the strips from my fabric in the most efficient way I could manage. Then I cut all of the strips and squares except for the outer borders.

Once the strips were cut, I started to sew everything together in sections. First I took the 6 inch squares of sashing fabric and used them together with the log cabin blocks to create 4-patch blocks. Next I stitched each 4-patch block to the adjoining sashing strip and then to the 12-inch block next to it.  I continued in this way until the top was all together, except for the outside border strips.

I didn’t cut the outside borders until the end. This allowed me to measure the completed top and cut the border strips based on the actual dimensions, instead of the intended dimensions in my drawing. I know my piecing isn’t perfect, and that all of my minor deviations in sewing would add up. If I had cut the borders earlier, they would have been too short.

I am now working on piecing a backing for the quilt. It will be my first pieced quilt back, so I’m having fun playing round with the possibilities. I hope to use up most of the scraps of fabric leftover from making the sampler blocks. I’ll report on that soon.

Planning the Layout of a Sampler Quilt

Yes, I’m still here, but I have been pretty quiet on the blogging front. I’ve been sewing and knitting, and trying to get things done in between periods of  general busyness and bouts of fatigue. I have a few things (mostly knits) that need photographing before I can post them here, but I have been working on a quilting project that I wanted to share with you.

This year I joined in making a block-of-the-month quilt with my quilting guild. It was for a sampler quilt, and each month we were given a pattern to make a traditional quilt block or blocks. At the end of nine months we had to come up with a layout for the blocks and put them together ourselves to create a quilt. There were six blocks at 12-inch finished size, and three sets of four blocks at 6-inch finished size (which could be put together to create three 12-inch blocks if desired).

I decided right from the start that I wanted this quilt to have a slightly more modern feel than the usual sampler quilt, so I chose some fabrics that I’d bought a few years ago to go together. They are a little different than my usual selection of floral or leafy prints. I also selected a couple of lighter fabrics and a light background fabric to go with them.

Fast forward nine months. The blocks were finished, and now I needed to figure out how to put them all together.

First I put a piece of the background fabric on my portable design wall to provide a semblance of sashing strips. After some pondering over layout options, I tried one out on the wall. This layout started with the idea of putting the 6-inch blocks in vertical or horizontal rows, and then putting the bigger blocks between them. I inserted some solid blocks of fabric as well, to fill some empty spaces. (For those paying attention, I did not make the final month’s block (I didn’t care for it) so I do only have five 12-inch blocks).

I liked this layout. It was a bit unusual, and I liked the block of the main print fabric at the top, which balanced the visual weight of the Fair and Square block in the lower left corner.

I tried a similar layout next, with a strip of green inserted between the bottom two rows.

I didn’t care for that very much – the green strip seemed overpowering, and broke up the layout too much.

At this point, the idea of moving blocks around on my design wall over and over again seemed daunting, so I took a photograph of the first layout, printed it up on plain paper, and cut the blocks out. Then I played around with them a bit on a white paper background. This is a fun and easy way to try out different layouts with minimal work involved.

The picture above shows the layout that I decided to try out on the wall next. And here it is, more or less.

I was pretty happy with this, but I did do a bit more tweaking to balance out the distribution of colours and visual weight, and to have all of the angular movement going in one direction.

I liked this layout a lot, so I decided to go with it.

The next step was to calculate how much fabric I would need for the sashing strips between the blocks, and for the outer border. I did this by sketching the layout to scale on graph paper, showing the blocks at their finished size (the ones up on the wall all have a 1/4” seam allowance on them, which distorts the layout a little bit).

Of course, I ended up needing more fabric for the sashing and border than I had left of the cream-coloured background fabric. So, back to the stash I went. After a bit of searching, I came up with a fabric that coordinated nicely with the fabrics in the blocks, and did a nice job of setting them off. And I had a lot of it!

My next task is to sketch out a cutting layout, so that I can make the best possible use of my sashing and border fabric. I’ve been working on that. I’m trying to leave myself the option of making the outside border a bit wider than the 3” width I am planning for the sashing strips. I might end up making more slight alterations in the layout as I begin to sew the blocks and sashing together. I’ll see how things look as I go.

Planning the layout of this quilt has turned out to be a lot of fun. There are so many different ways to go, especially if I remain open to some new and different ideas to fill the space. Using solid blocks or strips of fabric, or leaving open spaces of background fabric to fill with quilting really opens up the options.

Block names:

Top row: Log Cabin, Fair and Square, Mother’s Baskets

Second row: Broken Dishes, Log Cabin

Third row: Baby Blocks, Peace and Plenty

Fourth row: 3-D Bow Tie, Steps to the Alter

Fall Flies Shawl

I’m still working on the Crooked Rail Fence quilts, getting them ready for quilting. Right now I’m busy cleaning up the back of the first one, before I sandwich the layers and baste them together. I’m afraid that the slightly rough handling of the strips when I was mixing them up for random piecing has created a lot of loose threads and fraying. There are too many strips of dark and light next to each other to skip this step, so I am carefully trimming away all of those loose bits, while trying not to be too perfectionist about it.

In the meantime, I finished knitting my version of the Summer Flies shawl, from the pattern by Donna Griffin. I’m calling it Fall Flies for the rusty autumn colours of the yarn. I started knitting this on the train to Rhinebeck in October of last year, and worked on it through the following months, setting it aside now and then for some Christmas knitting.  I modified it quite a bit, not only adding more repeats of the patterning, but increasing the depth of each pattern section as I went along. I also used a fingering weight yarn instead of a worsted weight, and a smaller needle to create a more dense fabric.

Here is the finished shawl before blocking.

And here it is while blocking. I just love how lace opens up when it’s blocked.

And here is the finished shawl:

I’m very happy with how it turned out.

The details:

Pattern: Summer Flies, by Donna Griffin (ravelry link)

Yarn: Gedifra Fashion Trend Sportivo in colour 5721 (no longer being made, but it’s a fingering weight sock yarn with a subtle self-striping variegation)

Needle size: 4.0 mm

Modifications: I added more rows of eyelets and butterflies, and more rows to the openwork section at the bottom.

Finished size: wingspan 109 cm (43”), depth 51 cm (20”)

Thread Painting a Pear

While I’m busy working on the Crooked Rail Fence quilts, I thought I’d write a post about a little thread painting piece I did a while ago. It’s a pear – a lovely shape to work with, with gentle curves and rounded contours. This was something I did for the art quilting classes I took in 2011, when I did a number of small pieces to experiment with different techniques.

To begin, I drew the rough outline of a pear shape on a piece of thick Vilene interfacing. Dense stitching requires a heavy, stable backing in order to stay flat. I used a variety of thread colours, all rayon, to stitch the pear and the background. Using free-motion stitching, with the sewing machine’s feed dogs down and an open-toed presser foot, I started by stitching the pear in horizontal straight stitches, and then switched to vertical ones. That helped to evenly distribute the direction of pull on the stabilizer created by the stitching. The purple background was stitched in free-motion as well, but I set the stitch selection to a wide zig-zag stitch, and worked primarily up and down to fill in the space.

This photo shows the stitching in progress.

In this next photo, I’ve added more stitching, and more colours to add depth to the background, and shading to the pear.

When I was happy with the stitching, I trimmed the excess interfacing off, and finished the edges with a satin stitch in varying shades of purple.

When I went searching for a backing fabric, I found one that I had painted several years earlier with Colour Vie fabric paint in exactly the right colours. The pattern in the paint was created by putting a wood trivet under the fabric and scraping excess paint off with a flat edge scraper. It’s fun to see something come together like this without advanced planning. (It also validates my habit of saving all of those bits and pieces in case they might come in handy one day!)

I quilted the background by stitching around the petals of the imprinted flowers.

To finish it off, I used satin stitch again in a coordinating rayon thread, and inserted grommets so that I could add it to my little book of quilt art samples. The finished size of this project is 8 inches square.

Getting Unstuck

Now that I’m home, all of my recent travels are finished, and the garden has almost been put to bed for the winter, I decided that it was time to dig out a UFO (unfinished object) and get to work. I have a few of those around, both quilting and knitting ones, and I don’t like to have them lingering. They loom over me like a big looming thing, casting a shadow over any desire I have to start something new.

I recently finished off three knitting projects that had been UFOs for months and even years. It was such a relief to get those finished. Now I’d like to get a couple of these quilting UFOs finished, too. With this in mind, I dug out the two unfinished Crooked Rail Fence quilt tops and had a look at them. They’ve been sitting in a plastic bin for almost 3 years, along with fabric that I had purchased for borders and backings.

Here is one of the tops:

Now that the quilt tops have been sitting on my ironing board for a couple of days, I realize why I stopped working on them. I’d run into a problem. I wasn’t happy about where I was going with them, but I wasn’t sure why. I was stuck. So I did what I often seem to do – I put them away and did something else.

When I stop to think about it, this is why most of my long-time UFOs end up lingering. I reach a point where I am stuck. Something goes wrong and I don’t know what it is. Or I do know what’s wrong, but I don’t know how to fix it. Or I know what I want to do to fix it, but I’m not sure that I’m up to the challenge involved. Or the next step in the project is something that’s difficult or new and I’m hesitant to do it in case I mess it up. What those reasons all boil down to is that I get stuck, and instead of working to get unstuck I set the project aside and ignore it.

I’ve been asking myself why I got stuck when making these two quilts, and the answer I’ve come up with is this: I don’t want to put borders on them. I’d spent all kinds of time trying to decide on the colours of the borders and how wide they should be, without really stopping to consider whether I wanted borders on them or not. What finally got me asking this question was the lecture I attended at the International Quilt Festival in Houston on Modern Quilts. One of the features of Modern Quilts is that they often don’t have borders.

When I was taught how to make a quilt, I was taught to add at least one border, and sometimes two or three of them. Borders could be plain, pieced, or appliquéd. They could be narrow, wide, or in between. But they were always there. They were the frame around the picture that was the quilt top. They made the quilt bigger. They were often a place to add some fancy quilting. I’d just assumed without thinking that these quilts needed borders. But when it came time to cut the fabric for the borders and sew them on, I just didn’t want to do it. And now I know why.

Now that I’ve made that decision, I’ve had another look at the size of the tops as they now stand. They are each 8 blocks by 10 blocks (each block is 6” square), which makes them 48” by 60”. I don’t think they’re quite big enough to be good napping-under quilts. I don’t want them to be full bed-sized quilts, but I do want them to be big enough to cover a snoozing adult. I think that if I add one more column and two more rows they’ll be a perfect size. That would make them 9 blocks by 12 blocks (54” by 72”), which is almost the size of a standard double bed mattress (54”x75”). A little math tells me that I need to make 28 more blocks for each quilt top. I think I can manage that without too much trouble. And I can use up some stash fabric in the process.

It’s interesting to me how much better I feel now. These quilts have been causing my brain to itch every time I thought about them. I wasn’t happy, but I didn’t know why. I just knew that I didn’t want to work on them.

Being stuck – it isn’t much fun. Getting unstuck takes a bit of investigation, and perhaps some inspiration, and a few new ideas. Sometimes it takes a bit of courage to try something new, or a bit of instruction in how to do something unfamiliar. Sometimes it might even mean giving up on the project. Whichever it is, it’s much better to get unstuck than to let unfinished projects linger forever.

What I Did On My Fall Vacation

I suppose I should say “vacations” since there were actually two of them. The first one was my annual trip to Rhinebeck, NY, to meet with friends and to attend the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival. The second one was a trip to Houston, TX, with friends, to attend the International Quilt Festival for the fourth time.

I’m afraid I didn’t take any pictures on the first trip. I can’t explain that omission, other than to say that I was having too much fun. I took the train from Toronto on the Wednesday before the festival weekend, and enjoyed the following two days catching up with everyone, and making a few visits to area shops and restaurants. Saturday and Sunday were spent at the Festival. Monday was the long train ride home. We rented a house in the Rhinebeck area for the second time and it worked out very well once again. It allowed for a lot more comfortable visiting than staying in a hotel does, plus group meals and assorted other food preparation. It was a wonderful trip, made all the better by being able to meet with friends that I otherwise only see on Ravelry.

I didn’t buy much at the fairgrounds, just a few skeins of sock yarn intended for making shawls and fingerless mittens.

The yarns are (from left to right): Holiday Yarns Flocksock sock yarn in Pinot; Cephalopod Yarns Skinny Bugga! sock yarn in Other Mother, and Golden Tortoise Beetle; and undyed Hudson Valley Sheep & Wool Co. sock yarn.

My second fall trip began only eight days after getting home from the first one. After a big rush of catching up with laundry and errands, not to mention sleep, and some tense hours worrying about Tropical Storm Sandy, I was on a plane to Houston.

We arrived on Tuesday (Oct. 30) and got settled into the hotel. I took 3 classes on this visit to the Quilt Festival, and attended 3 lectures. In between I shopped and looked at quilts – such amazing quilts!

Here are some of the results of the classes I took:

From left: “Applipiecing” Curves, taught by Caryl Bryer Fallert; “Under the Sea” fabric manipulation and embroidery (not yet finished), taught by Judith Baker Montano; and “Heavy Metal Play Day” (embossing metal for art quilts), taught by Judy Coates Perez.

I also attended a lecture on “The Elements of Art Quilting” by Lyric Kinard, and one on Modern Quilting by Heather Grant. Both were great – interesting and enlightening. The Modern Quilting lecture was eye-opening for me – I realized that this is a style of quilt that interests me a lot, and that I’d like to explore in the future. (Check out the Modern Quilt Guild blog to see what I’m talking about.)

I think I overdid it with classes and lectures this year – by the time I got to the last one I was a bit brain-fogged and saturated, and was glad the class wasn’t too demanding. In the future, I think I should allow for more free time, and fewer early mornings!

I didn’t buy a lot at on this trip, either, but here is a picture of what I did buy:

On the left are some pieces of Thai silk, in the middle are some half-yards of fabric from Marcia Derse, and on the right are some fat quarters of Cherrywood fabric in a yummy array of colours. In front are a couple of strands of beads, and a skein of embroidery floss from ArtFabrik, which are dyed by Laura Wasilowski. I seem to be in an orange and purple phase of stash enhancement. I wonder if that means anything?

I also want to mention that I sewed a new bag for myself to use at Quilt Festival. I wanted something small that would hold essentials. I’d seen a leather bag at Roots that I liked, so I decided to copy it in fabric. I’ll probably write a blog post about the making of this bag, but I thought I’d show it off here.

It has a long strap to sling the bag across my body, and both outside and inside pockets to hold everything. It worked out perfectly.

Now it’s time to sit back, relax, and reflect on all that I’ve seen and done in the past few weeks. And to sleep late, rest up, and recover from this jet-set lifestyle. And maybe rake some leaves or something.

Where Has the Summer Gone?

So, the sewing room sorting and decluttering that I wrote about in my last post have been continuing since then. It’s almost finished now, with just a few things left to sort through. I’ve got most things back in the room, or in alternative storage spots, and I’m very happy with how it has worked out so far. I’ll post an update with photos when it’s all finished.

In the meantime, I have been doing all sorts of things. I finished knitting a pair of socks:

I participated once again in the Tour de Fleece. I finished spinning the lovely blue Polwarth that I had started spinning in 2011’s Tour, and made some good progress on the Merino/Tencel blend.

Shortly after the Tour ended, the Ravellenic Games started on Ravelry. I joined the team from the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Group, and entered into the WIPs Wrestling event. The WIP I chose to wrestle was a shawl I’d started way back in September of 2009 (details below). I had become so frustrated with trying to learn how to knit nupps that I’d put it away for years. I didn’t manage to finish it before the end of the closing ceremonies of the London Olympic Games, but I did make a lot of progress and hope to finish it soon.

In addition to these crafty things, I also did a lot of very tiring garden work, and spent some time helping my husband with a large project to fix up the garage.

Now I find myself itching to get back to quilting. I have a number of projects on the go, both traditional and arty, that I hope to get back to soon. I also have some ideas for new things I’d like to start on. As the summer winds down and fall approaches, my thoughts turn to getting back to a normal routine, including more creative time (and more blogging!).

Some details on the above projects:

Stripy Blotchy Socks:

Pattern: These are simple socks in stockinette, with an afterthought heel that I took from the Crystal Socklet pattern in the Spring and Summer 2012 issue of Knitty. It’s the first time I’ve knit an afterthought heel, which is worked after the main sock is finished. The benefit of knitting the sock this way is that the stripes in the self-striping yarn are not interrupted by working a typical heel as the sock is being knit. I like the crystal heel a lot, and will definitely use it again. It offers the extra room I seem to need to allow for my high instep.

Yarn: On Your Toes 4 Ply with Aloe Vera, by S.R. Kertzer (a self-striping fingering weight yarn)

Needle size: 2.25 mm

Spinning:

Polwarth: 115g of hand-dyed roving from Sheep and Spindle, which yielded about 157 m of 2-ply at about a sport weight.

Merino/Tencel: 113g of hand-dyed roving from Fiber Optic Yarns, in colourway Ruby Slippers Batik.

Triangular Summer Shawl:

Pattern: Triangular Summer Shawl, by Nancy Bush, from Knitted Lace of Estonia. More about nupps here. YouTube video with tips on knitting nupps here.

Yarn: Sliver Moon Farm lace weight merino in colourway Eh, What?

Needle size: 3.5 mm