Quilt As You Go

Yesterday was spent finishing the quilting on the three sections of my Scrapbox City project. I had so much thread breakage and skipped stitching on the machine that I use for quilting that I just walked away for a while in frustration. After all the problem solving solutions that I know to try, I finally came to the conclusion that that machine just does not like that thread. I’m about ready to declare that machine a paperweight, except that when it works, it’s so wonderful! Okay–enough griping! Between my two machines, the quilting is done.

I kept my quilting quite simple. Spiral boxes in the “buildings” and straight lines on the white background.

Now it’s time to join the sections using the Quilt As You Go technique, as shown by Marianne at The Quilting Edge. I’m joining the sections with narrow strips. The top (white) strip is 2″ wide and the back (plaid) section is 1 1/4″ wide. The length of each section is 56″, so that’s how long I cut the strips. That should prevent any unwanted stretching on the sides.

By the way, I’m not going to reproduce Marianne’s tutorial here. I’m just going to show you my in-progress pictures. Her tutorial is the place to go if you really want to learn this technique.

Attach both the pieces to the first section.

Join the back piece to the second section.

Press front and back. And this shows that tiny little gap when the seam allowances should be meeting. I’ll take a tiny bit more generous 1/4″ seam allowance on the next one. I used quite a few pins at every step, just to be sure my edges lined up top and bottom.

Press the front section over and topstitch. This is what the front and back look like when they are joined this way.

I quilted a couple of additional lines right down that front section and you can barely tell where the sections are joined…back, too!

Repeat for as many sections as you have!

Ready to bind!!

What did I learn? It’s just as easy to join big sections as it is smaller blocks, but it’s harder to get accurate squaring up with long pieces. That fabric can stretch a lot but it’s also forgiving when you need it to be! That this made quilting so much easier, because I could do it in small sections. That if I wanted to add more to this, it would be easy to do. That I love this technique and I’ll be doing more of it! It’s integrated into the design and that’s what makes me like this technique over many of the others that are out there.
Please give it a try and I really want to thank Melody Johnson at Fibermania and Marianne at The Quilting Edge for introducing me to this technique!

I’m linking this to Nina-Marie’s blog, too.

Scrapbox City Update

Not trying to bore you with partially finished projects, but I have something I’m going to try with this one. I’ve been following Melody Johnson’s blog Fibermania and she’s been working a lot with a quilt as you go finishing technique. It looks good; not like an afterthought. Integrated into the design. She credits Marianne at The Quilting Edge and her great tutorials. All I know is that I want to finish this project with this method.

Advantages: quilting smaller sections at a time. Easier with a domestic machine. You can also add sections to change the size of the piece or the look of the piece at any time, even after you think it might be done!

So–my sections are assembled and ready to be quilted. I made a rookie mistake in the beginning and started squaring things up as I put rows together. Duh! I need extra fabric all around for the quilting and then trim and square up AFTER the quilting is done.

I want to show you the origin of this project. You might think you need to have everything all figured out and planned and drawn to scale and a real pattern before you start. NOT SO! Here’s my plan—

And I don’t usually start with this much! I just had a bunch of scraps, some white fabric (and I never use white), and the idea to make wonky nine patch blocks in different sizes. The rest is all just arrange as desired and fill in the gaps! Fun, challenging, nothing is precise and you can’t make a mistake. My kind of quilting!

Not sure when I’ll actually get back to it. My next several days are tied up with the quilt guild workshop weekend. Maybe Monday. I’ll let you know how the quilt as you go assembly process works…probably with pictures and hopefully NOT with cursing and gnashing of teeth!!!

Always color…

My color decisions today involve beads. I’ve been slowly working on this piece, little bits at a time when I have a bit of time! It’s only about 16 x 20, but I’ve not been working on it very steadily.

I have my big rectangular dark beads on. I have my dark curvy lines. And then I have the pinky/orange/floral parts that I originally fell in love with. They’ve been totally ignored and now it’s decision time.

The flowers are subtle, but there, if you know what I mean.

These are the most clearly seen, quite pink, with just a touch of the orange on the right side.

These are almost completely pink with no orange nearby.

More very pink, no orange.

And a big swath of orange with no flowers.

I want to emphasize the flowers, pull in the orange flavor, but not overwhelm the subtlety of the flowers.

I started with the very lightest flower and used a gray/white bead.

Haven’t gotten too far, but I pulled these beads. I think I can achieve what I want with these…just don’t know how heavily I will cover the flowers with beads. I think a light touch is called for.

May not get this done for a while since it’s the “work-on-when-I-have-tiny-bits-of-time-piece” but I’ll post a picture of the completed beading. Then I have plans to add some hand stitching before the whole thing is done. Yep, little bits of time, but eventually it will get done!

I’m going to link this to Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday. I love to check out what everyone else is doing–you might, too!

Love this project!

Went to open studio at USArtquest this week and learned a new process to use with mica. Several of us made mica beads and rather than use them in a necklace, Sue decided to showcase them on a textile piece. I got to do the quilting and finishing and I just love the look of this project.

Don’t know if this is supposed to be super secret, but you can have a good sneak peek at another project full of fun!

Here are a couple details and here’s MY secret–it doesn’t matter what you do to these tiles, they all come out absolutely gorgeous!!!

I love wonky blocks!

My scrap project is now officially going to take forever and a day. And I don’t care! To make it match the picture in my head, I just cannot bring myself to square everything up and have it all neat and even. What that means in terms of construction is that there is no stacking and cutting of layers, no chain piecing, no shortcuts. But it’s all so much more unique when you customize every part of your work that it is just plain worth it!

Have you added wonkiness into your quilt life? I made a lot of crazy nine patch blocks and now I’m going to add some inserts into some of them. Just in case you haven’t tried inserts, here’s how I do it.

I’m using fairly wide strips for my inserts, because I don’t want to drive myself totally bonkers!

This block already had one insert and I’m going to add the striped one, also. The strip is one inch wide, so the finished insert is 1/2″ wide.

Simply slice your block where you want your insert to be.

I try to avoid seam intersections, but if you hit one, it’s not a very big deal. Sewing the left side first is what I usually do, lining up the edges, just as if it were a regular block. When you add the second side, you have choices.

Line up the edges again, as shown by the fat arrow, and sew. Don’t fret about lining up the other insert that’s already there or the block pieces. This is wonky and doesn’t need to match. Your second choice, shown by the skinny arrow, is to put the left edge of your presser foot closer to that first sewn seam. That makes your insert skinnier and by following the first seam line, your insert is straight, too. Or you can start with a skinnier insert piece…I don’t do that very often, but if you want to see great, skinny insert work, check out Kathy Loomis’ work at artwithaneedle.com She is awesome!

So, back to my fat inserts…I press the seams towards the insert.

That fills up the insert with fabric and you don’t end up with a big sinkhole in your block. See–nice and full and fluffy and the orange strip even accidentally matched!

Notice that I have not squared up the edges of the block. I save that part until I am actually joining my blocks. That way I can put off the final size decision a bit longer. Procrastination works well for me when I’m doing wonky stuff!

So this is what I’ll be doing for the forseeable future. I’ll try not to bore you with updates about doing the same thing over and over–I’ll save the next post about this piece until it’s done. I just want to encourage you to find something you can cut into without a heart attack and do something wonky, too. Quilting is supposed to be fun and this is lots of fun for me!

I’m happy to have something to share on Nina-Marie’s blog this week. Check out all the cool blog link-ups.

Today’s beading lesson is…

Outlining–creating a nice, smooth curve–not as easy as I thought it would be. There is, of course, more than one way of doing this, but I have chosen to use a backstitch. It feels like I’ve done about 20 miles of outlining on this piece and I still make errors.

Part of the problem is that I’m beading on an already quilted piece, scrunched up as I work, so the surface is not nice and smooth. The ideal technique is to thread on your beads, snug them up to the previously set beads and insert your needle straight down.

When you are holding that scrunched up, quilted piece, often at a weird angle to reach the center of the quilt, you sometimes lift the beads a little and your needle gets off target.

For me, it’s usually too close to the previous beads and that results in beads sticking up and not laying nicely in a smooth row. A smidge too much thread is better!

Sometimes it looks worse while you are working on it. When you smooth out your piece, the lines smooth out, too! If they don’t, there are a couple of solutions. You can get out your pliers and crush a bead or two to give the others more room to lay flat. You can take out your beading and re-do it more carefully. Or you can leave it alone and live with it. That’s my choice on this piece, because in the overall picture, it’s not really that noticeable!

But when you get those nice smooth lines…

sweet!

Almost missed it!

One of my favorite area charities is Circle of Art for Food Gatherers in Ann Arbor. Artists get to contribute small art pieces, 9 x 11 or smaller for auction. The event is so much fun that you almost forget it’s a charity auction.

And I almost missed it!

The email with the call for artists went to my spam folder for some reason and I was lucky enough to see it in time to make a couple of small pieces. Whew! I’d have been so disappointed if I missed out.

You’ve seen this piece before, but it’s mounted on a green background now and I’m quite happy with it, and hope someone else will be, too!

Frivolity 8 x 10

This second piece grew out of my exercises with my Wacky Quilters group using the black and white fabrics. Not what I had in mind when I started, but these things take on a life of their own, you know!

We Sail Tonight 9 x 11

Hope you take a moment to click on the link and find out all about Circle of Art. It’s fun and for a good cause!

Wacky Quilters Today

Yes, I know, the group is really the Knot Even Quilters, but I still think of our beginnings when we were a tiny group doing wacky work! Not many people in the area were interested in art quilts, so we were really the oddballs. I’m not saying that we aren’t still oddballs, but there is a lot more interest in art quilting now.

We have been trying to inform ourselves of design principles and apply them to our work. Today we did a black and white exercise, to use just those colors, mostly lines, some shapes and curves and make designs. No color distractions.

I didn’t take pictures of everyone’s finished projects…just a couple, but I love the exercise!

So I took my black and white as far as I could…at least as far as I had fabric cut for! I happened to have 8 fat eighths of white, and I decided to just make them all up with black.

As I was making them, I decided that it was an 8 Day Week, either a series of little pieces or a set of ‘blocks’ for a larger piece. I’m fantasizing about what else I might want to do with them. Like screen print a design or pattern over the top of each one, in a single color or a different color for each one. Or add an identical ‘something’ to each one, maybe a fancy bead or a colored shape or perhaps the same type of stitching…for a simple little design exercise, this has given me a wealth of ideas.

It was a happy wacky quilters day!

New Beginnings

Since I have not been extremely active in my studio for soooooo long, I almost feel as though I am starting a whole new chapter in my life. I’m planning on exploring in two directions, that may overlap in many instances. Just sitting here typing up my intentions gets me itching to go!

Series are often talked about and definitions debated, but I’m of the opinion that a series is any body of work that you feel is connected! That’s what I’m planning…a series using more solids, my normal improv techniques and putting them together with traditional designs. The other direction is to explore more surface design, painting, stamping, inks, hand stitching and beads, of course.

Now, just talking about this isn’t getting it done! But it does help me to define what I need to do when I get off this computer and get down in the studio. Ready, set, go!!!!!!!

How disappointing…I went through my stash to get all my solids and start working with them. THIS is what I found, including a few tone-on-tones and barely there batiks and two sets of hand-dyed gradations.

I just don’t have solids. This either means a shopping trip or a dye day. Hmmm….so for today I worked with paint and I’ll tell you all about that in the next post.

A No-Reason Giveaway

I haven’t had a blog giveaway for a while. I don’t have any made-up reason, like a certain number of posts or a birthday, to have a giveaway. I just feel like sharing!

But what shall it be? A small finished piece? Fabric–commercial, that I don’t think I’ll use? Fabric–hand-dyed? Excess beads? Oh, wait! I don’t believe I am close to having excess beads!!

I shall search my studio and come up with something enticing to other quilters!

I found 2 groups of fabric that have been aging on my shelves for quite a while. I would like them to go to someone who would really like them. If there are no takers, it will go to my guild for charity quilts.

Here’s the first set, not necessarily intended to be used together!!!

Wavy, stripey—-1/2 yard of the bottom fabric, fat quarters of the other two

And the second group-

Purple-not my favorite color! 1 yard floral, fat quarter green

Leave a comment if you want them. I love the idea that they will be used and not just sit on my shelf any longer!