Big, Complicated Finish

Hi Everyone,

I was trying to wait for a nice day to take some outdoor photos, but after we had thunder, lightning, pouring rain and then snow and wind all in 24 hours, I decided it probably wasn't going to happen, so I will have to settle for showing you the photos I took inside.

After fixing my problem border sections, it wasn't too difficult to get all the border completed and sewn on the quilt, finishing my part of my big, complicated project that I wanted to make last year.

I have it hanging on the soffit of my basement.  It will be a king-sized quilt and measures 114" square.

It's from Judy Martin's "Extraordinary Log Cabin Quilts."

I love how you get curves and circles, but all of the pieces are rectangles or squares!


Now I need to get it to the long-armer.

After finishing such a major project, I felt compelled to clean up my sewing room.  Do you ever do that or do you keep things tidy all the time?  I tend to make a mess as I sew and then clean up after.  I even vacuumed!

Have a wonderful day,
JoAnne

Revisiting

Hello,

This has not been a traditional year for me in that I didn't make up a list of quilts that I wanted to work on this year.  I think it's because 1) There doesn't seem to be any "must make" projects for me right now and 2) There doesn't seem to ever be a time when I'm at a loss on what to make next.  Of course, as I'm typing this, I do recall that one thing I would love to make this year (finally) is the Amy Butler Weekender Bag.  I have the pattern, my plan, the fabric and notions required--all sitting on a shelf where it's been for nearly a year.  I have even made the piping!  I guess that will be my one goal for this year.

Last year, I wanted to work on a big, complicated quilt.  I was referring to it as my "BC" poject.  It is a project from Judy Martin's book, Extraordinary Log Cabin Quilts.  If you want to refresh yourself, you can read past entries about it here, here, here, and here.  The last link is my post about the retreat I attended last June.  During the retreat, I got the center of the quilt finished

 and began working on the border units. There are three types of units that are needed to complete the quilt:  a large unit, a smaller unit that is partially made up of a log cabin block, and the 4 corners.  I started on the large unit and got them half done.  By "half done" I mean that I need 20 total of these and I got all 20 of them half completed.

This is a picture of half the unit.  When I completed them and pressed them, I discovered, unpleasantly, that the tops and bottoms were wavy--that is, not a perfectly straight line.  (This isn't shown in the picture--I should have taken a photo of the "before" units. A quick check on strip piecing showed me my issue.  When you are sewing strip sets together, you need to always start from the same direction--either top to bottom, or bottom to top.  I was at a retreat and chatting and not really focusing on what I was doing.  The fix?  Ripping and starting again.  Or more cutting and starting again.  I put them away on the shelf and moved on.

Recently, though, I decided to get it back out.  I had two driving forces:  one being that it was a year ago that I said I wanted to do this project and two being that a friend was wondering how it turned out (and I had to say it was unfinished.)  Sunday evening I brought them out and began examining them and ripping off the stips that didn't match up.  A few needed to be entirely ripped apart--just into the six vertical stips in the photo above--I didn't have to rip the 4 pieces that make up each strip.  Some needed to be ripped apart three times, and some even fewer.  My husband was watching tv with me and offered to help. (He has ripped things for me before--such a sweetie.)  There are 20 sets and I was able to get them all apart (keeping them arranged in the right order) before bed.

Yesterday I sewed them back together.  I was careful to always start at the "top" and before I sewed, I matched the bottoms and pinned it. Yes, I pinned!  The time and care paid off, and now the tops and bottoms are nice and even and straight.  More important, the project has picked up momentum and now I'm eager to sew on it again.  In fact, I began the other half of these units after I finished fixing them.

I know I broke one of my cardinal rules when working on this.  I ALWAYS try to fix a major problem BEFORE I set a project aside.  Very often, if the project is fixed, it ends up getting finished and not set aside, which I one reason I think that I have few UFOs.  I nearly always realize that the problem is not as bad as I think.  This one really didn't take much time to fix at all.

Another thought that I had about these border units was that I wished I had cut the bottom red and white strips a bit longer, so I could trim them to be exactly the 15.5" I need.  But as I was thinking about that I began to wonder if I was relying too much on these sorts of "cheating" methods.  These days, I oversize both my half square triangles and my flying geese so that I can trim them to be perfect.  In doing so, am I risking my accuracy?  That was niggling around in my brain while I worked on these and so I was very happy that I could get them together perfectly.  I believe testing my accuracy was one of the reasons I wanted to attempt a Big, Complicated project, so I'm pleased.  Furthermore, I'm excited to get back to it, so I will leave off here and go sew!


Before I go, here is a picture of a quilt that is the same as I am making, only this one is a wall-hanging size, and I am doing a king-sized quilt.  This one has 4 white stars in the center, and mine has 25.  This was hanging in the Shipshewana Quilt Show last summer.

Have a great day!
JoAnne

Retreat

Hi Everyone,

I was gone a couple weeks ago to a quilt retreat.  I drove down to Tennessee to go with a group of quilters that my friend, Janice (from Virginia, now living in Tennessee) knows.  She; her identical twin sister, Jackie; Jackie's friend Susan (they both live in Florida) and I were going.  The plan was to meet up at Janice's cabin on a Sunday and then head to the retreat on Monday.  I procrasatinated the week prior to leaving.  Have you ever packed for a retreat?  It is complicated--you need your normal suitcase, etc. and then all of your sewing stuff, too.

I got my machine and basic supplies packed up and then decided what else to take.  I knew I wanted to take the bits and pieces from my complicated "BC" project that I'm working on this year.  You can read more about it here.  So, I packed all of that.  I also took a quilt that I've yet to start on, except for those 770 half square triangles I made last month when I only needed 600...  Because I didn't want to run out of things to do (like that ever happens at retreat) I also packed up what I needed for making the border that I wanted to add to my Austin Bluebird quilt.  And for good measure, a few small kits.

I knew that four of us would be going to the retreat in one vehicle, so I tried to keep it light.  This is the sewing stuff.  I also had a suitcase and snacks, etc.

I drove down to Tennessee on Sunday, leaving fairly early.  The trip was fine, except for an early detour, numerous road construction areas, and then in Kentucky and Tennessee, it was the campers/RVs on the road to deal with.  I arrived around 4 or so.  It was fun seeing the changes that Janice and her husband have made to the cabin as well as looking at their garden, flowers, etc.  I had met Jackie before, but Susan and I were meeting for the first time and I liked her right away!  I knew it was going to be fun.

Monday morning we got up and ready and began the ordeal of packing everything in the back of Jackie's truck.

Would it all fit?

With Jackie's great packing skills, we got it all in.  We had to unwrap a case of water and tuck the bottles in where we could, but we did take everything we wanted/planned.

Check in time at the retreat center wasn't until 3:30, but the plan was to meet up with everyone at a quilt shop and then visit 2-3 more and have lunch along the way.  The first shop was Pappy's in Maryville, TN.

It is inside an old gas station and doesn't look like much from the outside, but it was wonderful inside!  After that, we went to Sevierville and shopped at the Cherry Pit quilt shop, had lunch, and then went to the Red Barn and Iva's quilt shops.  Finally we headed for the retreat center, Carson Springs Baptist Conference Center.  The facility has a hotel, where we stayed.  We sewed in one of the meeting rooms near the lobby.  It also has a summer camp, and we were there along with 300 teenage campers.  They were elsewhere on the grounds in cabins, but we did share the dining hall with them.  We were allowed to eat first, though.  The food was great.  The best part was that we could sew all we wanted, and then go upstairs and eat--drop off the dishes, and go right back down to sew again.

There were 13 of us attending and it was a great group of diverse quilters.  Most of the fun of a retreat is seeing what everyone else is making.

Susan worked on this fun arrow quilt.

This is Janice's Kaffe Fasset strip quilt, all laid out.  She didn't get it sewn together, though.

Here she is with her hedgehog block.

One of the ladie's was making this wonderful giraffe quilt.  It is made up of perfectly cut-out flowers from Kaffe Fasset fabric and others.  That newsprint fabric behind it is perfect.  I guess she got the pattern at Paducah and everyone was in love with all the patterns, so the group put in an online order right there from retreat!

Here is Janice and one of her Tennessee friend, Donna.  

Donna's roomate and best friend, Delight, made this great curved log cabin quilt.

Jackie worked on this batik quilt after she finished her bag, below.

This is Susan working away.

And me?  I worked for two days making these:

Sashings for my BC quilt.  I think I needed 40.  They took forever!  After I finished them, I began working on border units, but I didn't get them done.  When I realized I wouldn't finish the border pieces, I decided to use the sashings to put the blocks together.  (I brought the blocks with--I'd finished them already.)

This is the center of the quilt.  It's going to be king-sized when the border is completed.  You can see the bits I did get finished up at the top.  

We sewed all week until Friday morning.  We had to check out at 10.  We went back to the Cherry Pit quilt shop and hit a JoAnn fabrics, had lunch, and went to yet another quilt shop on the way back to Janice's cabin.  

Saturday morning, it was time to leave.  Just as we were loading the cars, it began to rain.  The rain accompanied me most of the way home.  It poured through all of Kentucky, but I made it home safe.

Have a great day!

JoAnne

Beauty and the Bissel

Hi All,

Its just after 8 AM here and I've been up for a few hours.  Do you ever have some of those chores that you put off but then the time comes when you can't deal with it and even if it is 6:30 AM, you simply have to steam clean the living room carpet?  Today was the day for me.  I'd been noticing that I needed to do it, and then last night my baby nephew came for a visit.  We usually move the coffee table out of the way and remove some other items that aren't child-safe, thus exposing much of the floor to view.  This morning, I had not yet put the items back and decided to tackle that job.  The good thing is that it is now over and I can get on with more fun things, AND most of the day is left.

I opened the drapes and found this lovely sunrise.

I love the effect of pretty light when there is snow on the ground.

It has been a busy week.  Yesterday I taught a class on back-basting applique at the local shop.  I had 4 students and they all did a marvelous job.  It had been a while since I've taught it and I think I did okay, but there are a few things I'm noting to change:  like to have more than one sample of each step, in case I need to repeat demonstrating it, and to use a much shorter length of thread in the examples so that I don't have to spend time untangling.

Project wise, I put together the courthouse steps and the flying geese from my big project into 26 blocks.

I need 25 for the quilt, but I made an extra in case I want a different choice when assembling.  Those blocks must be nearly half the quilt in size, but there is still plenty more work to be done to piece all of the sashing strips and border pieces.

I was at this point when another project interuppted me.  I'll share about it in my next post.  Our guild members are all asked to contribute one kid quilt each year.  There is a camp held nearby in the summer for kids who have been diagnosed with cancer or brain tumors and our guild donates enough quilts that each camper gets one to use and take home.  While I like to make charity items, it seems that I have to get in the right mood.  The right mood hit me on Tuesday morning, but as I said, I'll share that next time.

Have a wonderful day!
JoAnne

Progress

Hi Everyone,

It has been a fairly quiet week here.  The weather took a turn towards "cold," giving us below zero temps and lots of snow.  School delays and closing abounded, so it ended up that my niece spent the day with me yesterday when her school was called off.  It seems that the record amount of snow days that last year's terrible winter produced inspired the school to adapt e-learning, so instead of building a snow fort, baking cookies, etc., she spent most of the day on my laptop, doing school work.

I have made progress on my latest, Big, Complicated (BC) project.  So far, so good.  I needed 65 cream courthouse steps blocks.

I got them done easily enough.  I felt for a while like I was a modern quilter, making a "low volume" quilt.  

Also, while I was sorting out all of the pieces for this quilt, I had come across a pile of 3.5" navy squares.  My list of pieces didn't show any needed, so I thought I might have mixed up something and I set them aside.  It turned out that I did need them, so I got them back out.

I also made 104 of the flying geese from these pieces.

However, I realized I didn't get a picture of the completed geese.


As I work on a project, I like to make extra pieces along the way--just in case I miscounted, or I would like another option when laying out the final quilt.  What isn't used gets tucked away for later use.  It seems to me that I would much rather make a few more as I'm assembly sewing vs. wanting one later in the process and having to start all over.  Do you ever make extra?

On a completely different topic:   I'm afraid I have a bit of a rant to share.  Now that we have our own house, my husband decided that he would like to have a rain shower head for the shower in our bathroom.  I thought our current one was fine, but since I'm sure he thinks I have plenty of fabric but never says anything when I get more, I decided not to say anything and so we went shower head shopping.

We found one which proudly stated on the packaging that it would not only provide a rain shower experience with multiple settings, but also "boost" the water flow.  We took it home and my husband installed it.  Do any of you have one of these things?  The first issue is that having showered with a normal shower head that shoots the water at a slant for around 40 years, it is quite different to shower with water coming straight down from above.  The second issue is that there was NO WAY that it was "boosting" the water flow.  It seemed like just the opposite!

The result was that I became convinced that there is some sort of "regulatory" office somewhere in the depths of our beaurocracy and that this office gets heaps of money to determine the amount of water that should flow out of a shower head.  I'm sure that they are granted the money on the basis that it is noble to conserve water.  I'm equally sure that every member of that group is bald, or nearly so, and bitter about it, and so have conspired to find the exact rate of water flow that will rinse shampoo out of the normal head of hair, and then they lowered the shower head flow to just below that rate.  (Incidently, they are in the neighboring office of the regalatory goup who governs the temperature of all irons produced, and have determined that pressing fine fabrics is more important than pressing cotton, and have lowered the allowed temperture of irons so that they don't get "too hot.")

After my first shower with the new head (in which I froze because the hot water didn't seem to hit any part of me and I couldn't get the shampoo and conditioner out of my hair), I told my husband that it was going to take some getting used to.  After the second, (when I turned on the shower and had to let it run while I made the bed and sorted laundry--it took that long for the hot water to make it to the shower, thus conserving no water at all,)  I said I was having a difficult time determining which setting was the best.  After the third, I dropped all pretense of being a good sport, and begged him for the old one back.  Luckily, he wasn't enjoying it either, and was so willing to accomodate me, that he changed it right then.  My shower yesterday was bliss!  (Just in case you have had a similiar experience, he did check for the gizmo inside the shower head that could be removed to increase the rate of flow--and it didn't help at all.)

Have a great day!
JoAnne

My New "BC" Project

Hi Everyone,

I felt that the New Year needed a New Project.  Lately, I have been wanting to work on a Big project.  Something a bit Complicated, hence my "BC" abbreviation.  I got a book a while ago, and it really has me drooling.  This is it:

I chose it as there is a particular project in it that I want to make.  However, on New Year's Eve we went to Shipshewana, and in one of the quilt shops, there was an awesome log cabin quilt hanging, and it was from this book, too.  There are some really cool quilts here, and they have a lot of pieces, but aren't that difficult--its just log cabin.  You may have to sew a few colors together to make a log, but it is all straight sewing!

This is the quilt that I want to make.  The red, white, and blue one (on the right) of course.  Do you see how there are 4 stars on the wall hanging version?  Can you see the bed-size version on the left has 16 stars?  Remember that I'm doing Big for this project, so I'm going to make a larger bed-size that will have 25 stars!

I began the cutting for this project while still in Virginia, but I just now got it out to go through everything.  Luckily I made good notes about the pieces I needed and how many.  I had placed them in the book, which was a miracle because I will often write up great notes and then lose them.

I think Judy Martin is a brilliant designer.  Does she teach?  Has anyone out there had a class with her?  I read the book and she has great tips about cutting.  She advised to organize the strips in silverware caddies, baggies, etc.  I looked around and decided on some of the craft holders with the removable dividers, as for beads or other small piece storage.

Here are the dark blues.  The container is perfect for 1 1/2" strips and I could position the dividers to the legnth I needed.  You may not be able to see it, but there is tape labeling the size of each strip.

Once I counted up what I already had, I started cutting the rest.

Cream strips with longer ones in a baggie.

The red strips.  There aren't nearly as many red as the other colors.

Squares all ready to make flying geese with the Fit To Be Geese ruler

And finally, other random pieces--2.5" squares for centers of blocks and a whole lot of small blue bits that didn't fit into the divided container. 

That's it!  It doesn't look like much, but there is a huge quilt hiding there.  There are hundreds of strips and I have lots of bobbins wound and ready to go.

Have a great day!

JoAnne