Back To Grand Illusion

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! It's a weekend of holidays (Juneteenth, Father's Day, Summer Solstice) and I hope everyone is having fun celebrating something, or nothing if that is your thing....

This week I pulled out my Grand Illusion quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter.  Bonnie shares a free mystery quilt pattern every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas and this was  her pattern for 2015. Although I save the pattern each year, this is the only one that I've actually worked on. I finished piecing mine quite a while ago. 

Grand Illusion

Then, several years ago, I took it to a place where you can rent a longarm and I basted it by quilting vertical lines using water soluable thread. This quilt pattern ended up being a little chaotic for my taste so I decided I could experiment on it with the basting and the quilting. I decided to try what I call "stream of consciousness" quilting on it. Sorry, I don't remember the artist that I saw using this or what she called it. Basically, you just keep changing quilt motifs, using whatever motif you feel like sewing. Well, unplanned quilting is very uncomfortable for me and this was amplified by the puffy wool batting I used which made it difficult to avoid tucks in the quilting, so I ended up putting this quilt aside. I've been organizing my works-in-progress (WIPs) and decided it was time to resurrect this quilt. I looked it over to see what I was doing and to figure out where I ended, and picked up where I left off. 

Grand Illusion - Front Partially Quilted

Grand Illusion - Back Partially Quilted

Because of the chaotic piecing, you can see the quilting much better on the back than on the front.

Grand Illusion - Front Quilting Close-Up

Grand Illusion - Back Quilting Close-Up

I'll try to muscle through this project until I get it finished. I'll work on it when I have time at home since it's a large quilt and I'd rather quilt it on my home machine. At least I know I'll love it in the end because I love the colors and have really enjoyed looking at the fabrics as I've done the quilting. And I already have a prepared binding using a fun green cat fabric that is one of my favorites.

I've also continued to work on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. The is the English paper piecing (EPP) project that I generally work on at our monthly EPP group meeting. In the pattern, there are four large rosettes and then a bunch of small rosettes. I'm starting with the large rosettes to get them out of the way, then will work on the smaller ones. I've finished one large rosette and am working on my second one now. This rosette has gotten too large to fit into my normal project bag that I carry to our group meeting, so I'm trying to finish this rosette at home, then will start the next rosette at our meeting next month. So, this week I finished the round that I had started last week.

La Passacaglia - Second Rosette Finished Round

Then I had to pick fabrics for my next round. This is always the hardest part for me! I decided to go with fussy cut flamingos and a bright pink fabric. Here are the basted pieces set in place to see how they will look:

La Passacaglia - Auditioning Next Round

While I was picking fabric, I also selected some fabrics for starting the next large rosette.

La Passacaglia - Beginning Fabrics for Third Rosette

I'll surround this with the same black fabric I used in the first and second rosettes. After all of the preparation, I was also able to start sewing the next round on the second rosette.

La Passacaglia - Full Progress on Second Rosette

This round is going pretty quickly, then I'll have to pick fabrics for the final round of this rosette. The final round is a partial round of star motifs.

Finally, I did some more preparation for the three-day daytime-only retreat I'm attending next week. We will be sewing 9am-7pm on Monday and Tuesday (although I'll have to leave a little early to pick up Grace from doggie daycare) and 9am-5pm on Wednesday. I decided to do the cutting for my Night Howler quilt designed by Art East Quilting Co ahead of time because there are a lot of small pieces for this quilt and I find it easier to stay organized and cut carefully at home. I was glad I did this because I found out that I really screwed up when choosing my fabrics. I somehow didn't choose all of the fabrics that I needed and I also chose a background fabric that was too small. So, I rectified my choices and got everything cut out, ready for the retreat.

Night Howler - All Pieces Cut and Organized

This is now in a bin, ready to start piecing tomorrow. I also did some more organizing of my WIPs, making sure everything was in separate plastic bins and labeled, and making a list of some of the projects that are good choices for retreats and sew days. I decided that the extra projects I'll take with me tomorrow will be Lilah, which I started at a previous sew day, and Wild Women Don't Get the Blues, which I worked on at our last unfinished object (UFO) group meeting. These projects will definitely be enough to keep me busy all day. At the end of each day, I'll pick more projects to bring along based on my progress that day. That's the advantage of daytime-only retreats -- you can add more projects and pick up other things you might need each evening. Hopefully, I'll have a lot of progress to share next week!

Nancy

Pink and Gray Quilt Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We're having a nice, somewhat rainy day here. It's nice when Mother Nature waters my flower pots for me!

This week I was able to finish the quilting on my pink and gray quilt. Since I'd already applied the binding, this quilt is now finished!

Pink and Gray Quilt - Front

Pink and Gray Quilt - Back

For quilting, I first did stitch-in-the-ditch (SID) between each of the blocks. I was able to do this with my walking foot, so that was quick and easy. Then I did SID quilting inside the frame of each block using dark gray thread for the dark gray frames and light gray thread for the light gray frames. I started doing this using a ruler to keep my lines straight, but I had a lot of trouble keeping the stitching on the seam so I switched to doing that stitching free motion and was much happier with that result. Finally, I stitched a motif inside each square using a curved ruler and pink thread.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Quilting Motif

Pink and Gray Quilt - Curved Ruler

The length of this ruler made it very difficult to align things under the sewing machine and then to maneuver the quilt, but I got it done. It's not perfect, but I think it still looks good!

We had our monthly UFO small group meeting this week. A lot of people were able to make it so I decided to do handwork there to leave more room for others using sewing machines. This was a good opportunity to start doing the hand embroidery on my Wild Women Don't Get the Blues blocks designed by Karen K. Stone.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues - Hand Applique

I'm randomly chosing the colors and the stitches. Originally, I was going to have some blocks with circles and some without (so with grids or scattered stitches), but after embroidering these four blocks I think I will have a circle motif in each block. I think it adds a nice coherence. But I will be varying the size of the circle in the blocks. I'm going to lightly embroider all of the blocks, then decide if more embroidery is needed. I'm guessing I'll want to keep the embroidery light, but we'll see....

We also had our monthly English Paper Piecing (EPP) small group meeting this week. It was a fun meeting, as usual, but a little more fun this month because we celebrated the birthday of one of the group members. She has celiac disease so our host's husband made a gluten-free chocolate cake. He used a King Arthur cake mix and I wanted to share it because it was incredible. Nobody, myself included, would have guessed that it was gluten-free! It was moist and tasty -- the perfect chocolate cake. I'm guessing it was the mix here, but only know that it was King Arthur and was gluten-free. I highly recommend this cake mix! Anyway, I continued to work on my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein.  Since I usually just work on this quilt at the monthly meeting, the progress is slow but I'm loving the results! This week I finished the yellow round and started the blue and gray round.

La Passacaglia

This is the second large rosette in the quilt. I haven't started any of the small rosettes yet. This one is now too big to fit in my project bag without folding, so I think I'll try to finish it at home and then start the next large rosette at our next meeting. That way I don't have to carry around my huge project bag that I made large enough to hold the large rosettes without folding. It's a nice bag for storing the project, but not very convenient for travel.

I also pulled fabric for my great nephew's quilt this week. He is due in September or October so I have plenty of time. I found a pattern I liked at the quilt shop when we met there for our cross-stitch group a couple of weeks ago. (I'm going to try to buy something from the shop every time we meet to thank them for letting us meet there for free.) So I went through my stash this week and pulled fabrics for the top. I'll be making Night Howler designed by Art East Quilting Co. 

Night Howler

I like the color scheme that they used in the pattern, but decided to use patterned fabrics rather than solids. I looked through my stash and found fabrics that I think will work well. Week after next I'll be attending a three-day daytime-only retreat. I'll probably piece this quilt there. Then I'll have plenty of time to think about the quilting.

Finally, I also made more progress on my Kallara shawl designed by Ambah O'Brien. 

Kallara

I've made it past the widest part of the shawl and am now starting the decreases. It decreases more slowly than it increased so I'm probably about a third finished with this shawl.

Nancy

Wild Women Blocks Assembled

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Summer is definitely here! It's been warmer than usual, but we have had some of the thunderstorms that are common this time of year. As usual, I appreciate any rain we can get! I bought a bunch of flowers that I put in pots on the deck. Probably too many, but I love them! And the hummingbirds love them, too! It's nice to have something that I can put out for the hummingbirds without worrying about attracting bears!

After putting the binding on my pink and gray quilt, I decided to assemble the blocks for my Wild Women Don't Get the Blues quilt designed by Karen K. Stone. I'd been wanting to get these block put together so I decided to do it before setting my sewing machine back up for ruler work.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues - Close-Up

I used regular copy paper for the paper foundations, rather than something easier to remove like newsprint or vellum, because I started this in one of Karen's classes and that's what she gave us. Paper piecing leaves you with lots of bias edges so they usually suggest that you don't remove the papers until everything is sewn together, but I wanted to get those papers out now when it would be easier. So I did a couple of things to be gentle with the bias edges. First, I removed the papers immediately before sewing each block together so I wouldn't take the chance of stretching a bias edge during normal handling of the units. Then, when sewing the units together, I reduced the presser foot pressure from the default 50 to around 25. This still allowed the feed dogs to control the stitch length, but reduced the pulling on the fabric especially when sewing over thick seams. For this pattern, I was sewing over six layers of fabric at the intersections. I also used a stiletto to help guide the fabric under the needle so I wasn't pulling on the fabric with my fingers. After sewing a seam, I was very careful when pressing it over. I first folded over the seam and carefully creased it with my thumbnail. For me, this works well to get a crisp seam without stretching the fabric. Then, I carefully pressed the seam, moving the iron up and down rather than sliding it around, and used a lot of steam. I feel like the steam helps correct any small stretching of the fabric. Finally, once the block was sewn together, I stay stitched around the outside of the block to help prevent stretching until I get the blocks sewn together. I plan to do some hand embroidery in the center of each block before assembling the quilt, so there will be a lot of handling of these blocks. The stay stitching should help keep them from stretching.

I also decided to make a quick bag before going back to my pink and gray quilt. I made the Sew Essential bag designed by Cheryl Von Ruden and Rosemary Wissink. I wanted to make a bag for the host of one of my sewing groups as a thank you. I looked through my patterns and chose the Sew Essential bag.

Sew Essential Bag

Sew Essential Bag - Large Pocket

Sew Essential Bag - Smaller Pockets

For the main fabric, I used a really cool batik that I bought in her little quilt shop. I never would have guessed this was a batik if it wasn't in the batik section of the shop! I know she really likes this fabric because we talked about it and she showed me where she used it in one of her quilts. I picked this bag pattern because I liked the way it would highlight the fabric. This pattern is well-written and easy to follow. I decided to make the inside pockets as suggested in the pattern. They say the large pocket is good for scissors and rotary cutters; the upper small pocket for bobbins and needle packets; and the lower small "pocket" (this pocket is open on the bottom) for spools of thread. If I make this bag again, I'll probably use lightweight stabilizer instead of Shape-Flex. I think the Shape-Flex made the pockets a bit too stiff. I might also try it with regular batting rather than the Soft and Stable suggested in the pattern. The Soft and Stable makes these smaller bags a bit stiff, although the regular batting might leave the bag too floppy. I think it's worth a try.

Finally, I started a new knitting project. I decided to start working on my Kallara shawl designed by Ambah O'Brien. 

Kallara

This is a good project for knitting group because it's mostly just garter stitch, so not much thought is involved. You just have to wrangle two balls of yarn, which is easy for me sitting on the couch at home but is a bit more difficult sitting at a table at knit group. I like the dramatic shape of this shawl along with the subtle striping.

Nancy

Added Binding to Pink and Gray Quilt

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well and had a wonderful Memorial Day holiday! Life here is good. I made it to the nursery last week to pick up some flowers for the deck. I got them potted and am enjoying them. I plan to pick up some more tomorrow. I like to keep adding to my collection as we move into summer!

This week I mainly worked on my pink and gray quilt. I continued to work on the quilting. I decided to do some simple ruler work in the centers of the blocks. I decided to quilt curved lines around the edges of the center block and also across the middle of the block 

Pink and Gray Quilt - Center Block Quilting Design

This should be simple to do and also provide the needed stability. The curves around the outside of the block allowed me to do this quilting without any extra starts and stops. I have a bunch of arc-shaped rulers to choose from. To figure out which curve would work best for this, I drew a 6" square on a piece of paper in pen, then drew the quilting in pencil using the different rulers and a 1/4" spacer that I got years ago. I can put my pencil tip inside the center hole on this spacer and run it along the edge of a ruler to get the stitching line that I would get when using that ruler.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Quilting Ruler Spacer

With my chosen ruler, I concentrated on quilting all of the blocks on the outside edges of the quilt. I wanted to get these done so that I could bind the quilt because the gloves I use for quilting really pick up the batting fluff and that drives me crazy so I like to get the binding on the quilt as soon as possible. Once I got the outside blocks quilted, I could concentrate on the binding. I had thought that the fabric that I have with the pink and gray stripes would be the perfect binding for this quilt.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Auditioning Striped Binding

Pink and Gray Quilt - Auditioning Striped Binding

I tried the striped fabric both with the stripes at a diagonal (which I thought would be perfect) and with the stripes straight up and down, but didn't like either. I felt like this fabric was too light and bright and would draw attention away from the center of the quilt. Next I auditioned one of the polka dot fabrics.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Auditioning Polka Dot Fabric

I thought this was better, but was still too much for the binding, so I tried a more subdued polka dot fabric.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Auditioning Subdued Polka Dots

I liked this a lot better and decided to go for it. I then spent this weekend applying the binding. I like to sew the binding to the front of the quilt with the sewing machine, then fold it to the back and hand stitch it. It's a lot of work, but looks the cleanest to me.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Finished Binding on Front

Pink and Gray Quilt - Finished Binding on Back

Pink and Gray Quilt - Quilting Close-Up

Now I can go back and finish the quilting in the rest of the blocks.

This week we also had the first meeting of a new cross stitch group in one of my quilt guilds. The organizers didn't know if there would be much interest in the group, but we had thirteen ladies show up for the first meeting! I did some work on my Flying Beauties cross stitch.

Flying Beauties

It was a really great group and a lot of fun to have others to share my cross stitch with! The only down side was that I found out about a Web site that has some really cute downloadable cross stitch patterns, so I did end up spending some money! 😁 I look forward to our next monthly meeting!

Finally, i was able to get a little bit more done on my sampler from the big stitch class.

Big Stitch Sampler - Left Side

Big Stitch Sampler - Right Side

I would like to finish the sampler to get more practice at getting even stitches, but I'm getting annoyed with the pleats in the sandwich. I didn't have any painter's tape when we did the sandwiching, so I wasn't able to stabilize the back and get everything flat. One helpful thing I learned this week is that I probably don't want to use Valdani thread for big stitching a quilt. I used Valdani thread for the grid at the bottom of the right side of the sampler and had a lot of problem with the thread fraying. It just didn't stand up to all of the fabric and batting layers like the other brands of perl cotton I tried. It's still a lovely thread for embroidery, but doesn't work for me for this application. A great thing to learn from a sampler!

Nancy

Started Quilting Pink and Gray Quilt

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! This was a busy week, but it was good. We started out getting some wonderful snow. It snowed almost non-stop for three days with those large fluffy spring snowflakes. There was a lot of melting because the days were getting up to 40F so it was hard to tell how much we got, but I would say it amounted to 1-2 feet of snow. Things are really green and lovely now! It has warmed up so most of the snow is gone now, but there is some rain in the forecast. Luckily, the snow let up in time to allow me to go to town for the rest of the week. We had our quilt guild meeting on Thursday, a hand quilting class on Friday and a guild sew day on Saturday. It was great to see everyone, but I'm looking forward to spending the day at home today!

I was excited to start the quilting on my pink and gray quilt this week. This quilt was just small enough for me to pin baste it on my kitchen floor. For anything larger, I'll have to have a longarmer baste it for me. On our sew day, I was talking to the owner of the retreat center and she asked me about a larger quilt I had been working on (my Jungle Magnolia quilt top that you can see here). I told her that I had the top finished and the backing planned, but it was on the back burner because I needed to find a longarmer for the basting. She said that they would do it in the center if I wanted. Spectacular! Now I need to get to work on that.... Anyway, back to this week. I got the pink and gray quilt basted and started the quilting. I started with the stitch-in-the-ditch (SID) quilting on the seams between the blocks.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Quilting

You can't see the quilting well on the front (which is what you want), so here it is on the back:

Pink and Gray Quilt - Quilting on Back

Still not much to see, but st least you can tell what I'm doing. I hope to get the SID done on the insides of the frames in each block this week. Then I need to decide how I want to quilt inside the blocks.

Then there was the quilting class we had. It was a hand quilting/big stitch class taught by Katie Zahm. Katie specializes in designing modern quilts and combines machine quilting with big stitch in most of her quilts. She is a good teacher and did an incredible amount of preparation to make our class useful and fun. For the class, she designed a stitching sampler that we could use to experiment with different thread and needle combinations and to practice our stitches both in simple lines and in quilt block mock ups. A couple of our wonderful guild members traced the sampler pattern onto solid fabric ahead of time so we could make a quick quilt sandwich in class and get started with practicing right away. The sampler page was drawn with permanent ink to represent the "block" edges and iron-off ink where we would do our stitching. Then, when finished with the stitching, we can iron the piece so we can really see our stitches. She also gave us a thick and thorough write-up of everything she discussed in the class. 

Big Stitch Class - Full Sampler

Big Stitch Sampler - Left Side

Big Stitch Sampler - Right Side

We started with stitching straight lines using different thread and needle size combinations. For this section, dashed lines were drawn so we could work on our stitch sizes. When we found our preferred combination, we moved on to stitching around shapes. She showed us how she buries her knots and talked about things like how she decides where to start on a shape and what she does as she approaches a corner.

Big Stitch Sampler - My Quilting Around Shapes

She also talked about how she finishes her bindings. She sews the binding on the quilt front by machine, then uses big stitch or simple embroidery stitches to secure it on the back. The sampler includes a section at the bottom of the left side for sample embroidery stitches that are nice to use for bindings. The sampler book is designed so that, when finished with the stitching, we can add a binding using the embroidery stitch technique, then fold the book and sew down the middle to create a convenient record of our stitches. Very well thought-out!

At our Saturday sew day, I got out my Lilah quilt kit designed by Yellow Cat Quilt Designs. This is the quilt I had prepared earlier by cutting out the pieces for the quilt blocks. At the sew day I sewed all of the pieces together to make the units for the first block.

Lilah - First Block Units

Not a lot of progress for a day, but it took me a while to square up the flying geese blocks and I did spend a lot of time chatting with others. It was a fun day!

On the knitting front, I finished my second Frozen Snowflakes Beanie designed by Deja Joy. 

Frozen Snowflakes Beanie

Then I used the leftover yarn to make pom poms for the hats.

Frozen Snowflakes Beanies - Pom Poms

It was nice to use up all of the yarn and I like how the pom poms complete the look of the hats! This is a fun and easy hat that I highly recommend.

Finally, I made some progress on my Rill Scarf designed by Miriam L. Felton. 

Rill Scarf

I've finished the increase section, now have a bunch of repeats to do for the body. With the lace weight yarn, this will be another wonderful lightweight scarf!

Nancy

Pink and Gray Top Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We had a beautiful, warm week here, but another little storm is on the horizon. It's supposed to start snowing tonight and should continue for the next couple of days. No word yet on how significant it will be, but crossing my fingers for a good snow!

This week I got the top for my pink and gray quilt finished.

Pink and Gray Quilt

One of the things I did while piecing the top was to twirl the seams at each of the block intersections.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Twirled Seams

If you look at the corner between each block you will see the twirled seam.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Twirled Seam Close-Up

What twirling the seams mean is that the seams are pressed in a circle around the intersection. If you look at the picture, the seam on the left is pressed down, the top seam is pressed to the left, the right seam is pressed up and the bottom seam is pressed to the right. When you do this, you get the mini 4-patch block at each intersection that you can see in the picture above. The reason for doing this is to even out the thickness of the seams. With the twirled seams, you have four layers of fabric in each square around the intersection. If you don't twirl the seam, one of these squares could have as many as eight layers of fabric while another square will only have one layer of fabric. So, the twirled seam will feel flatter and be easier to quilt. It's pretty easy to twirl one seam (although it takes a bit of thought the first couple of times to remember how to do it), but takes careful preparation to twirl all of the seams in a quilt because every other seam has to twirl in the opposite direction. But it really makes a difference in the final quilt top! I was also able to piece the backing for this quilt.

Pink and Gray Quilt - Backing

I like to piece my backings out of leftover blocks and fabric. It adds some interest to the back and keeps me from having all of these miscellaneous blocks sitting around. Some of the fabrics I used on the back weren't used in the front, but were included in the pile of fabrics I collected for this quilt. It was fun to include some of these extras on the back!

I also got a bunch of knitting done this week. First, I finished my Pluma Morada shawl designed by Joji Locatelli.

Pluma Morada

I made my shawl larger than Joji's because I had a bunch of yarn and I want to use this as a scarf.  I also did my normal "lazy" blocking, where I didn't take the time to stretch the shawl out and pin it in place. Doing that can open things up and make lace really pretty, but I'm usually fine with the results I get from a simple block.

Pluma Morada - Close-Up

I finished the edge they same way Joji did in her pattern, She said you could just bind off, but I liked how her couple of extra rows cleaned up the edge of the shawl.

I also went through my stash and pulled out a couple of new projects. First, I knit a Frozen Snowflakes Beanie designed by Deja Joy.

Frozen Snowflakes Beanie

I haven't done much stranded colorwork, so it was good to play around with this. I had trouble deciding which color to use for the background and which to use for the design. I decided to use the blue as the background since that seemed the more classic look for this hat. But when finished, I had enough to make another hat with the colors reversed, so I started that one, too.

Second Frozen Snowflaes Beanie

It'll be fun to see how swapping the colors changes the look.

I also started the Rill Scarf designed by Miriam L. Felton. This is a fun scarf that has a narrow lace band and a wide wavy edge.

Rill Scarf

You can't see the waviness yet, but that will show up on the right side of the scarf. It is achieved by using some thing called short rows, where you knit part way across the row, then turn back around and knit back. This adds extra knitting on one side of the scarf which will cause that edge to wave. There are already a couple of short rows in the piece providing a slight wave to that edge, but it will take a lot more length to make that noticeable. This is a bit of a difficult knit because it is knit with very thin, lace weight yarn on small needles. But the results will be lovely!

Nancy