Another Quilt As You Go

Yes, it's another quilt. I actually do have a couple of garments teed up to sew, but I went to a quilt class with my friend Jessica the weekend before last so this project jumped the queue. The class covered a new-to-me quilt-as-you-go technique, and this quilt is the result.

The pattern is based on the Tic-Tak Wall Quilt from Cozy Modern Quilts, by Kim Schaefer. Each of the squares is 10 by 10 inches, so the finished quilt is 50 inches by 60 inches, or what I think of as a foot-of-the-bed quilt. Its mission is to sit folded at the foot of the bed so you can pull it up as a second cover on those especially chilly fall nights.

I used mainly Kaffe Fassett shot cottons for the big squares with a contrasting batik for the little inner squares. It's bright and cheerful, and it came together in about a week. I am a big fan of the quilt-as-you-go stye of quilting. It's quick and it feels less industrial than the more traditional quilting I've done. Instead of cutting out hundreds of little, fiddly pieces and then sewing them together with an accurate 1/4 inch seam, you work with one square at a time. You can change things on the fly; it feels a lot more improvisational. Plus, it's way easier to quilt a 10 inch square than it is to pull 6 feet of quilt through your machine.

We took the class at Back Porch Fabrics in Pacific Grove. This is a great fabric store, if you're ever in the area. They're focused on quilting cottons and they have a very nicely curated selection. They generally have an inspiring gallery of quilts hanging on the walls in the back of the store, which is where the classroom space is.

Here's the design wall with some of our first squares hung to view. Folks were working on just a few styles of blocks; it was fascinating to see how the same design could look so different depending on the fabrics and design choices each person made.

So, here's a down-and-dirty tutorial for those who may be interested in this technique.....

You start by cutting your batting to the size you want your finished blocks to be. For me, that was 10 inches square.

Then you whack your fabrics into roughly sized strips and start to sew your fabric pieces down to the the batting. Above is my central batik square quilted down to one of my batting squares.

Next I laid the first piece of the outer square atop the central square and seamed the pieces together to the batting. Then you flip the new piece to the outside and finger press.

You lay the next piece atop the prior two, sew the seam and flip to the outside again. You keep on going until your square is complete and your piece of batting is totally covered, with at least a one inch overlap of fabric on all sides. This is Greek to me, but one of my classmates said it was like doing English paper piecing, but you were piecing the fabric directly onto the batting.

Once the square is assembled, you press it and do any quilting you want to do, then trim the quilted square to size.

Here's the difference with the technique we learned in this class:

We trimmed the finished squares so that there was a 1/2 inch of fabric showing beyond the batting on all sides. When you sew the squares together, you use that 1/2 inch as seam allowance so you're sewing fabric to fabric and (ideally) the edges of the batting are butted up against each other without being caught in the seams. The idea is to avoid the additional bulk of two layers of batting in the seams.

With the method I've used before, your batting is cut to include a 1/4 inch seam allowance, so that your squares are sewn together with the batting sandwiched into the seam along with the fabric.

With either method, once your quilt top is completed you lay it out smoothly on the quilt backing and just stitch-in-the-ditch to tack the backing to the already-quilted top. Et fins!

So what's the verdict? I think I prefer the method that includes the batting in the seams. I used that method for my anvil quilt. I really don't notice the seams feeling bulky and I like the idea that the each batting piece is sewn down securely all around the edges. Just so things don't shift around when the quilt is washed and dried.

I have one more foot-of-the-bed quilt in mind, and then our house will be fully covered. I'm planning a dog themed quilt to amuse my grandson.

Next up, though, is a birthday dress for me.

Anvil Quilt Completed!

I've been thinking about making this quilt for The Man for a few months. What could provide better impetus than his birthday, which is in September. Strictly speaking, his birthday was last week, but better late than never, am I right?

You may not know this about him, but The Man is an anvil fan with a small but select collection of early American anvils. Luckily he likes cute, little anvils. Like this one by our fireplace, which weighs 22 pounds.

His friend, Bill, is also an anvil collector, but he likes the two ton numbers. They're a bit more challenging to work into the decor.

This quilt started off as kind of a joke, but when you think about it, anvils aren't a bad subject for appliqué. They have strong, simple silhouettes and there's more variety in shape than you might imagine. The Man, of course, has what is THE book on American Anvils. More than 500 pages, all about anvils. I used the illustrations to trace my anvil patterns, so I can assure you that they are all anatomically correct.

This quilt is my second project based on the class, Cute Quilt-As-You-Go Applique Monsters, which you can find on Blueprint. My first rodeo with these techniques was with the Under the Sea quilt I made for my Granddaughter. The process is a bit down-and-dirty but it's also really fun and you can go from artistic vision to finished quilt lickety-split.

How about a few anvil close-ups? You know you want to...

Above is the classic one-horned anvil we all know and love. If you ask a kindergartner to draw an anvil, they'll probably come up with something like this.

This anvil is a bit different; it's a farrier's anvil. One horn, one drop and no table. Apparently farriers needed specialized tools to take care of those horse shoes.

Since we're talking about horns, here is a double-horned anvil.

This anvil doesn't have any horns at all. It's called a colonial or sawmakers anvil, and its job is to give a nice, flat surface for tensioning those saw blades.

Here we have an older style of anvil. It's called a bick iron. You could carry this one with you while traveling, then hammer the spiky part into a log and, voila! You could get to making horse shoes with a moment's notice

This is an arial view of the working surface of a single-horned anvil. That square hole on the blunt end is called a hardie hole and the round one is a pritchell. They're used for bending pieces of metal.

Here's an arial of The Man's Trenton anvil, so you can see the hardie and pritchell in real life.

If you've read this far, you now know more about anvils than 96% of your friends and family.

I used the left over fabric from this project to slap together the quilt back. I do like the idea of using my scraps but I keep forgetting that piecing the back is kind of like piecing a whole 'nother quilt.

I didn't have quite enough fabric to make the 6 inch wide outer border that I'd envisioned, so I did a double border with a mottled black. I had a heck of a time figuring out how to do a double border with quilt-as-you-go; my Blueprint class didn't cover that trick. While googling somewhat desperately I came across this tutorial, and it saved my bacon. Worked perfectly and was very easy to do.

Late fall tends to be heat wave season here on the Central Coast, so we probably won't be using this quilt for movie snuggling for another few months, but I'm sure it will come in handy once the days grow shorter and grayer.

Next up, a birthday dress for my granddaughter and then some more undies for me.

Carousel Lap Quilt, Jumbo Sized

 Behold my last quilting project for a while. Well, until I need to get working on The Man's anvil quilt. "Anvil quilt" as in "it has actual anvil shapes appliquueed on it.'" His birthday is in September.

This project was kind of a beast as it's the largest quilt I've ever completed. It's queen-sized, or about 90 by 96 inches. There were a few moments during the making when I thought we were going to have to get a bigger bed, but once the quilting and trimming and binding was done it's just about the right size.

We have family coming to visit from Chicago at the beginning of July and I really wanted to offer them something nicer than our faded navy blue duvet cover. I had an idea of what I wanted and my friend, Jessica, came with me on a fabric-hunting expedition to ramp up my supplies. Then, as is my wont, I began another project instead, leaving myself with precious little time before D-Day.

Luckily I had earmarked the Carousel Lap Quilt pattern from Cozy Modern Quilts, by Kim Schaefer. This is a great pattern to use for a rush quilting job. The squares are large (the batik bits are 6 by 8 inches), and all the pieces are rectangular. Even better, the layout has the squares offset, so you really don't  have to worry about matching corners or staying super tidy.

I finished this puppy in 10 days and I took time out to have gum surgery.

I quilted it on my Babylock, using a very useful tip I got at our recent quilting retreat in Eugene: beginning quilters should use wavy lines because that makes it look like you did it on purpose. I did a line of stitch-in-the-ditch down the sashing and then waved my way down the center of each square. Badda-bing, bad-boom.

When I finished my last quilt I decided that I preferred the look of hand stitched binding, so I planned to stick to that in future. This quilt, however, had about 7 miles of binding to apply and ain't nobody got time to hand stitch that before July 1.

So I stitched it to the front, wrapped to the back, pinned pretty carefully and used my stitch-in-the-ditch foot. And it came out pretty darn good. Gosh, I love that foot. I have a bunch of feet for my Babylock that I still don't really know what they do, but this foot is one of my all-time favorites.

Quilting is fun, but I'm ready to sew me some garments. One of our visiting family members is an 8-year-old who might want to join me. I have a pile of kid-print jersey sitting in a drawer upstairs that just might be the ticket.

Bali Buddy Quilt

One evening at our quilting retreat our hostess, Lynndi, gave us all party favors. Mine included a pack of pre-cut 2.5 inch strips of fabric known as a Bali Pop. It just so happened that the quilt on our bedroom wall, which I loved, used a pattern that Lynndi designed specifically to work with Bali Pops. So I bought that pattern and made it up when I got home.

Here is the finished quilt being modeled by The Man.

This was my first rodeo with pre-cut quilting fabrics. It sure did save a lot of cutting, but the pre-cuts don't give you any fudge factor. Lynndi's pattern tells you to sew together your strip sets with a scant quarter inch seam. On account of those strips are 2.5 inches wide and no more, so if you sew at a quarter of an inch (or possibly a hair more) your finished blocks will not be quite the 8.5 inches called for by the pattern. Ask me how I know.

But, luckily, I could fiddle with my problems within the seam allowances, so all was well.

Here's a shot of the back of the quilt. I generally piece my quilt backs because I'm too cheap to buy yardage just for that purpose. Plus, I like to use those pretty remnants when I can.

I even tried two of the techniques I learned at our retreat. For one, I applied the binding by machine.

To do this, you attach the binding to the back and wrap to the front to finish, so that you can carefully machine stitch where it will show the most. I used one of the decorative stitches on my machine to finish off the binding, so it took almost as long as it would have to finish by hand the regular way.

I think in future I'll do the hand stitching for the binding. It looks neater.  But I was in a hurry to finish this quilt up because I want to pop it into the mail to send as a gift to a cousin. Plus it was about 90 degrees yesterday evening so the idea of sitting on the couch with a quilt on my lap while I plyed my needle was not enticing.

I also did a free motion vine around the border. Here's a picture of the free motion vine from the back, where you can see the stitching better. Which isn't necessarily a good thing because it came out a bit hinky. But from the front, with matching thread, it doesn't look too bad and it was kind of fun to do.

And here's a shot of the pattern. It was fun to put together and I finished the whole shebang in about a week of sporadic effort.

You can find your very own copy of the pattern from Lynndi@thumbuddy-special.com.

I hope to cough up one more quilt this month. We have family visiting from Chicago and I really want to ditch the worn out duvet in our guest room and replace it with a quilt by the time they arrive, which will be early July.

Then it will be back to garment sewing for me!

Under the Sea Quilt

I made an Under the Sea quilt for my granddaughter, pretty much on a whim. She's just about 6 months old now, and right at that stage where she wants to grab everything and put it in her mouth. I wanted to make her a quilt that had things going on; tentacles to boing, contractile arms to pet, and teeth to poke. I think they call them "activity quilts."

I made a sketch of the design some months ago, but I couldn't figure out a good way to get all those moving parts installed. Then I stumbled on a Bluprint class called "Cute Quilt-As-You-Go Applique Monsters," taught by Wendi Gratz, and all my questions were answered. Et voila!

Once I had some guidance on technique it was all pretty quick to do. Wendi Gratz has you quilt the individual squares, then use HeatnBond and a hot iron to fuse your little bits to the surface. Then you just stitch around the edges and Bob's your uncle. She says she's made quilts for her daughter that have been washed 300 times and everything holds together just fine. We shall see, because my granddaughter and her co-conspirator (her big brother) and sure to spill things on it daily.

Character #1 is a shark. There's a viral video called Baby Shark that both kids love; very catchy tune. So I had to include a shark. I used some little bobble trim for the teeth.

Character #2 is an octopus. Four of the arms swing free and they have minky on the back side, so they're kind of fun to finger. I tried to find something for the back that would be like suckers, but no dice.

Character #3 is a jellyfish. There's a narrow elastic in each of the tentacles, so you can pull them out and they boing back.

Character #4 was the last one I came up with. It was going to be a clown fish, but I couldn't find any good clown fish fabric. I did see some orange batik that I liked, so instead he's a Garibaldi fish. That's the California State marine fish, in case you're wondering. Normally he hides in the kelp, but you can take him out and boing him around on his elastic if you want to.

In the center there's a starfish that's stuffed with a little bit of batting to make her 3D.

This was a really fun project to do. The actual sewing only took a couple of days. I spent longer trying to get that danged elastic inside the jellyfish tentacles than on anything else. I ended up finishing and turning the fabric tubes and then threading the elastic through with a darning needle.

My granddaughter gave the quilt a workout during my visit last weekend. She went right for the tentacles, as I would have done myself.

Plus, she figured out how to get the Garibaldi fish out of the kelp in mere moments. I think she is a genius.

I was a happy Craftsy user for quite some time. I tried to resist buying a Bluprint subscription for months. I worry that it's going to become just another streaming TV station and go over to the advertising dark side. They finally offered me such a good rate that I buckled and joined for a year. And it's been good so far. I've watched classes that I probably wouldn't have purchased under the old Craftsy model and I've enjoyed some of them very much.

This class is one of those serendipitous finds. If you have any kids in your life who might enjoy a tactile quilt, I recommend it!

Actually, this style of quilt would be fun to do for an adult if you use less childish imagery. My friend Martha and I were saying I should make an anvil quilt for The Man. He's heavy into anvils at the moment, and they have distinctive silhouettes that would lent themselves to this sort of thing. Hmmm.

Holiday Sewing

Why, yes, I am still finishing up some of my holiday gift sewing. How about you?

Here it is: a set of six placemats, with napkins, for The Man. I'd made him placemats for his birthday some years ago. It was probably not the most exciting birthday gift he'd ever received, but we have used them enough that they've started to look pretty beat up.

I made those original placemats at my sister's house so the he could be thrilled and surprised when he opened the package. This time I made them at home so he could hear me cussing and ripping. As I'd told my nephews all those years ago, if you grow up to have a girlfriend who makes you placemats for your birthday, what do you say? "Wow, now I know how much you must love me because placemats are a big pain in the ass to make."

I stole the idea for the pattern from a booklet called Magic Inch Quilts that I got at Back Porch Fabrics in Pacific Grove. I was there to admire a quilt display with a couple of friends. One of the quilts from this book was hanging on the wall and I thought it looked very nice; colorful and happy and moderne.

The book is only 25 pages long. It explains the "magic inch" technique and then gives you some quilt patterns to practice its use. The patterns are all pretty cute, I think:

Cute quilt one

Cute quilt two

To deploy the "magic inch," you start with a fabric block of your chosen dimensions. I cut six blocks sized 8 inches by 15 inches. Then you cut a bunch of one inch strips in contrasting fabrics.

Then you slice up your fabric block and insert those one inch strips in whatever fashion tickles your fancy. I did slightly wonky stripes.

Since you are inserting a one inch strip of fabric and subtracting four 1/4 inch seam allowances, the measurements of your original block stay the same. Magic!

The technique is straightforward and it feels very improvisational and happy-go-lucky, but you have to be accurate with your cutting and seaming. And with your pressing and fabric handling, so that your little bitty strips don't get torqued. As with most quilting, precision counts. Otherwise Bad Things can happen.

Cleverly, I gave myself some insurance by cutting my blocks at 8 x 15 when I wanted a finished size of 7.5 x 14.5. A couple of those blocks just barely trued up at the end.

I don't think I have the skills or the patience to make a bed-sized quilt featuring this technique, but it was fun to try. It might also be fun to play around with as an embellishment for garment sewing.

Madison Square

If it's March, it must be Sewing Camp. I had such a good time last year that I signed up for another three days of yakking and creative fervor in the Sewing Shack.

Most of the Sewing Shack crew are quilters, many of them very accomplished indeed (like Karen, a.k.a. the Capitola Quilter). I figured I'd bring a quilting project to work on so I could take advantage of their willingness to share their expertise with a noob like me.

Plus, I had promised The Man that I'd make him a "foot of the bed" quilt as a Christmas present. Yes, that would be last Christmas. So it was time for me to get to piecing. One of The Man's favorite artists is Hundertwasser. My aim was to come up with a quilt that was Hundertwasser-ish, which I think this kind of is.

The Man modeling the quilt

I used a pattern called Madison Square that I bought at The Stitching' Post in Sisters, Oregon while we were on vacation last summer. It wasn't until I started copying links for this post that I realized the pattern designer, Jean Wells, is the owner of the store. If you find yourself anywhere within a 50 mile radius of Sisters, stop by The Stitching' Post for a dose of inspiration. They have a yarn side and a fabric side.

I really enjoyed working with the pattern for this quilt. You end up getting a bunch of information about working with color, modern quilting and generally just loosening up and having fun with fabric.

I'm normally timid when combining colors or patterns. Improvisation is not my forte. I tend to like clear direction. This pattern was ideal for someone like me. It's kind of hilarious, really, the way she gently nudges you into loosening up. Before I knew it, I was just grabbing strips from a pile of fabric and going to town. Too long? Whack it shorter. Too short? Slap another piece on the end. It's all good!

She starts the instructions by talking you through choosing your fabrics, including a nice dose of color theory.

Then she has you cut long strips in three widths. I started out with my strips organized by color and width, but after 15 minutes of grabbing and sewing it looked like a rainbow snake had given birth on my work table.

Many, many fabric snakes

You can be happy-go-lucky for most of this project but precision still counts. Jean Wells urges you to hack your starting strips into parallelograms and join them up all catty-wumpus, but she has you true things up a key points so that you can join everything together in the end without driving yourself crazy.

I started the quilt on March 9 and finished it yesterday, March 24. It would have been quicker but I took a 10 day time out for a hellish sinus infection someplace in the middle there. Considering the last quilt I gifted to The Man took 5 years to complete, this was hella quick.

A very nice quilting lady at sewing camp showed me how to attach my walking foot (thanks, Michelle!), so I tried doing some machine quilting. It went surprisingly well! It was also surprisingly quick. I was all done with that part in a couple of hours, including a lunch break.

I did a little bit of hand quilting inside the colored squares. My hand quilting skills could use some major help. The machine quilting looks a thousand times better.

Binding shot

The pattern had you use scraps of your piecing fabric for the binding. That meant I didn't join the binding strips with bias seams, but it worked out just fine. I really like that narrow slice of color at the edge.

I used a fabric that looked like a topographical map for the backing. Nothing fancy there.

Peek of the backing

This quilt is supposed to sit at the foot of the bed, waiting to be pulled up as needed on especially chilly nights. We gave it a trial run last night and it worked out great.

I think I might have one more quilt in me. We could use a queen size one for the guest bedroom upstairs. I need a cooling-off period first though.

My pattern review is on PatternReview.com here