Cherish Nature - Part 8

It's finially finished and it's a good thing since I meet up with Lyn for coffee tomorrow afternoon and I really wanted to get her this quilt to her in 2010 the year of her 75th birthday.  I'm only a few months off from the actual date (back in September) but life has a funny way about it and I'm just happy to get it done in the same year :-).  I know that Lyn will be thrilled to get it and will cherish it.

So this completes my quilting for 2010.  Tomorrow I will post a review of what I actually did in 2010, comparing it to my original goals that I set out at the beginning of the year. Then on New Years day it's time to post a new set of goals and the adventure begins again.

Merry Christmas & Cherish Nature - Part 7

Merry Christmas Everyone.  I hope everyone had enough time to get ready for the holidays and now there will be time to enjoy it with friends and family. 

Yes its been awhile since I have posted but in part that has been because the quilting on the Cherish Nature quilt has gone slowly.  It is mostly finished as of today, but I may have to do a little bit more around the inner border of the panel and I still have the binding to sew on.  A few weekends were taken up getting shopping and baking done for the holidays and then this past weekend I came down with the flu bug.  Thankfully I did take a couple of days off of work, rested, have recovered and all is good.

So here are some pictures of the quilting that has been done on the Cherish Nature quilt.  I'm not sure how well this shows here, but I quilted all around the eggs and in the pieced border there is a stylized symmetrical feather like pattern.  I have another shot from the back that will show the detail a bit better.

Then this picture is part of the Cherish Nature panel and I quilted around the lettering and the eggs.  Below that where you see the small green squares is the inner border of the panel and that is where I'm going to need to do a bit more quilting.  I think though I will first go and get the binding attached and then come back and see if I have any ideas of what to do in that inner border area.

So for those who celebrate Christmas I wish you a very merry and safe Christmas.  Happy holidays to all and please drive safely and keep well.

Cherish Nature - Part 6

This week was busy finishing up the trapunto work and then getting my quilt sandwich put together.  Here is a picture of all the little egg shaped pieces of quilt batting attached to the back of my quilt top.  I first fused Misty Fuse to one side of some scraps of quilt batting.  Then I cut out my egg shapes using an egg template that I made from a firm plastic that is used to make templates.  Yes I did count how many eggs I have on the quilt, and there are 260.  Once they were all cut out, the side with the Misty Fuse was ironed on to the back of the quilt. 

I also decided to make a couple of the birds and bees as well a the larger eggs from the appliqué work into traputo as well.  here is a close up of one of the bird quilt bats attached to the back of the quilt.  I will have to say all this extra batting has made this quilt more heavy than normal.

I also came across a new method of pinning quilt sandwiches this summer and I'm finally giving it a try.  Here is what the Pinmoor system looks like.  They are just these little foam tubes that you use with straight pins to pin the quilt sandwich together.  It's suppose to be easier than safety pins and not leave as large of a hole as does a safety pin.  I have noticed on several occasions that safety pins can leave rather large holes in a quilt top that you then have to try and smooth out.

Here is what they look like on the quilt sandwich.  Now I don't know about them actually being easier to use than safety pins.  I think because they are something new it will take a bit of getting use to.

These are the type of safety pin system that I use which makes it easier to install the pins in the the quilt.  I discover years ago the little plastic covers for the safety pins that makes it easier to grab a hold of them to pin them to the quilts.  I ended up using both systems on this quilt since I didn't have enough of the Pinmoors.  So I will let you know what I think of the new system as I work with them on this quilt.

Cherish Nature - Part 5

I got the back pieced for the Cherish Nature quilt.  I wanted to use up the rest of the blocks from the panel so this is what I came up with.  The mottled fabric is the same one that went around the main birds nest on the front of the quilt.  The brown fabric is Kaufman's fusion in espresso.  So my next step is to work on getting all the extra layers of batting on the eggs done for the trapunto that I will be doing on them.  Hopefully I will be able to get that finished during the week so that I can then make up the quilt sandwich and start quilting next weekend.

Cherish Nature - Part 4

I have finished piecing the Cherish Nature quilt top.  I now have to prep the egg borders for the trapunto work, and I'm also thinking that I might enhance some of the blocks that were appliquéd with trapunto. For example the 3 small blocks below the large bird nest, I'm thinking of doing some trapunto work on the birds and the bumble bees. I also still have to figure out the back for this quilt.  I have some left over pieces from the panel that I think I would like to use up so I will have to play around with that idea.

Cherish Nature - Part 3

Here is the progress I have made so far on the Cherish Nature quilt. Blocking the panel section only made a partial improvement to the bird nest section so I decided to cut the inner border strips wider. Then after I sewed the inner border to the bird nest centre I squared up that section back to the 17 1/2 inch square it was suppose to be with the inner border. When you look at the middle section you can see that the width of the inner border varies all the way around but I'm going to have to live with that since there is no other way around this mess with panels that are being printed off grain.

Next I'm planning on working on the appliqué that goes on the quilt.  I've just put up the various pieces.  I still have to cut some leaves that will be going on the teal sections on the left and right hand sides.  I figure it will be easier to do the appliqué at this point than when the whole quilt top is finished and then I have a lot more fabric to manipulate.

Cherish Nature - Part 2

Well I finally started on the Cherish Nature quilt, but I have to tell you this quilt is going to be a challenge.  First the panel wasn't printed on grain.  I had this problem when I did the baby quilt back at the beginning of the year.  I'm beginning to wonder if this is a problem with most panels.  The large bird's nest picture is approx. 15 inches square but it is almost 1 inch out from top to bottom and even the small bird and bumblebee squares are out.  So what I decided to try is blocked these pieces to see if that will fix the problem otherwise I'm going to have some serious issues.  The small squares aren't as bad of a problem since they are only being appliquéd onto the quilt, but the large bird nest piece is the centre of the quilt and if it's out then the whole quilt is out.

Then I had to make half rectangle triangles instead of half square triangles.  Well I found out that you simply cannot cut 2 rectangles and put them right sides together sew down the middle, cut and expect to have 2 half rectangle triangles like you can with half square triangles.  In the picture below the top block is what you get from doing it that way.  As you can see the final shape isn't a rectangle.  It comes out this weird dimension and I'm not sure why it does this, but it does.  So it definitely needs to be paper pieced, and the example below it is the paper pieced method.  So I have to make 7 more paper pieced half rectangle triangles.

Finally the egg fabric also wasn't printed quite on grain but at least it was only slightly off and since my egg borders are only 2 1/4" wide I don't think that if they are slightly off grain that it will affect the outcome of the quilt that much.

Given all the issues that I came across today I think I now know why it has taken me several weeks to get into the mood to do this quilt.  I must have suspected that there were going to be issues with it and I didn't want to deal with then.  Hey at least I got these ones figured out and I hope the blocking of the centre piece will fix it and I will have a square centre.

EQ7 & Cherish Nature

This past week was very busy at work including working late so I didn't get much much quilting done. I did manage to figure out the modifications for the Cherish Nature quilt and here is what it will looks like.

The inner section of half square triangle squares have now become half square triangle rectangles. The top and bottom ones had to be reduced in height while the side ones had to be reduced in width to accommodate the increase in size of the inner border that you see represented by the egg fabric. In reality the egg fabric requires 2 1/4" to ensure that the eggs don't get cropped. The original border was only 1" wide so by increasing it by 1 1/4" I had to reduce the inner half square triangle blocks since there were only a few of them. Otherwise the outer set would be completely off and much harder to fix. Also on the inner set there are various appliqués that will be added on top so I felt it really doesn't matter if these blocks were square or rectangle in shape.

My sewing machine came back from being serviced and it sews like a dream. This weekend I got all the stitch in the ditching done on the orange quilt so I can now move on to the actual quilting. I'm looking forward to starting that and hopefully work won't be crazy busy this week.

EQ7 - Update

I got a call today that my sewing machine is ready to be picked up. All it needed was a good servicing. So tomorrow morning the shop opens at 10 and I should be there shortly thereafter. In the mean time I have been working on the quilting design for the orange quilt as well as trying to learn EQ7. I haven't tackled the quilt sandwich yet since it has been extremely hot this week. Today it finally turned cooler and it's suppose to stay this way for the weekend so you know what I will be busy with.

In the mean time I want to share with you my first EQ7 project. The Cherish Nature quilt that I also have to get made in the near future for another 75th birthday is being modified from the original pattern. I'm taking out the final border but also I want to increase the size of one of the inner borders so that the egg fabric will show a complete row of eggs.

As it currently is set up, that inner border lops off some of the eggs and I want whole eggs so that I can do them in trapunto. But this modification changes the measurements of the inner section which then will throw off the rest of the block measurements. So I'm thinking that I will reduce the size of the inner half square triangles since there are fewer of them and with the inner egg border still end up with the same final size. Then the rest of the blocks will just follow through.

So here is the initial quilt layout minus the final border in EQ7. It has taken me several evenings to get it to this stage. So it will be interesting to see how long the modifications will take. The most inner square is actually part of the Cherish Nature panel, and it is suppose to be the bird's nest. I just haven't had the time to photographic that fabric and prep it for EQ7 so I went with one of the other fabrics.

Cherish Nature - Part 1

I'm starting the preliminary work on a new quilting project that is going to be based on Moda's Cherish Nature fabric and the pattern that they developed for this fabric.  I found out a little while ago that our cat sitter Lyn is going to be 75 years young this September so I wanted to make a special quilt for her to commemorate this major milestone in her life. I've got 2 months which I hope will be doable.

I initially saw this fabric when several of the gals from our small quilt group went on a shop hop back in May and one of the gals bought a kit to make this quilt.  The fabrics were gorgeous.  Now I'm going to be modifying the pattern because first I wasn't able to get all the fabrics that they had recommended since I was trying to find them after they had been out for a while and second the size of the finished quilt would be too large for me to do the actual quilting on my machine.  Here is a picture of the original pattern.

I'm not going to be adding the final floral border which will reduce the size of the quilt by 12" both in width in length.  In addition I will be changing the small green border to the egg fabric that is on the brown background. The half square triangles will be slightly different in that I don't have the green bumble bee fabric, and in its place is the aqua bumble bee fabric.  I have the dark aqua sponged fabric but not the light aqua one so in it's place I have the natural sponged fabric. I do have the brown swirl fabric. 

Below is a picture of the full panel that portions will be used for the quilt.  I'm thinking that the other parts I may use on the back with Kaufman's fusion fabric in espresso.

The one thing that I wanted to do on this quilt is a trapunto effect on the egg borders.  This time I had a different idea from what I did with the cardinals on my Christmas quilts from last year.  I decided to take Misty Fuse and fuse it to some batting. Then using an egg shaped template, cut out egg shaped pieces from the batting.  Here is my test using the aqua egg fabric.

Next I placed the egg shaped pieces of batting with the Misty Fuse side down on the wrong side of the fabric over top of where the egg shapes are.

I folded over a piece of parchment paper and ironed on the egg shaped pieces of batting to the fabric.  When I ironed, I made sure to iron both sides to ensure a good bond with the Misty Fuse.

This is what the pieces of batting look like after they have been ironed onto the back of the fabric.

Next I put together my regular quilting layers of back fabric, batting and top fabric.

This is a picture from the top of the layers.

Then I free motion quilted around the egg shapes.  This is just a rough sample and there is some puckering because the fabric is not sewn down to anything else so it was moving a bit while I was quilting.  The egg in the lower right hand corner turned out the best.

This is a view from the side and as you can see the eggs do indeed have a dimension to them.