A Square Deal

Right before sewing things together, I found a huge flaw in my design: it would be just under fifty inches. Too large for a baby quilt and too small for a throw. This one feels like a keeper so it needs to be larger.

A double border overwhelms the small center {no photo} but increasing the block to a 16-patch makes it a bit larger without ruining the design. This works well for me. The layout works, the right scale looks good, and it adds eleven inches to the length. Two weeks later and I'm almost back to square one. Haha.

The Square Deal quilt block

In Jinny Beyer's Quilters Album of Patchwork Patterns, this block {without the strings} is called The Square Deal. It first appeared in the 1932 Kansas City Star. Was it named for Teddy Roosevelt's domestic program whose basic goals included conservation of natural resources, control of corporations and consumer protection? I'm not sure; however, anything that strengthens the middle class, reins in oligarchs, and protects our environment would be welcome to this day.

Work slowly continues on the sawtooth sashing for the New York Beauty/Rocky Mountain Road. Each uses twenty-one triangles. Currently I'm working on a few sets at a time so something is always "almost done." It's so depressing to work for a couple of hours and only see one triangle added to the overall lengths. Just a way to fake myself out.

Sawtooth sashing for
New York Beauty/Rocky Mountain Road

Enjoy the day, Ann

Using Little Bits of Time

This time I'm hand turning the applique leaves before attaching them. I haven't used this technique in years but it's going faster than I recalled.  As they are turned, more "space" opened up so I cut more leaves until the fabric ran out. This is it. Must work it out somehow.

Adding leaves to
Chinese Coins VIII: Strewing Roses

The photos were shot after dark making the fabrics darker than reality. But I like the way the leaves are backlit and/or they fill in the lightest area of the quilt.

Recovering my full energy has taken a long time. I'm not there yet but am better every day. In the meanwhile, I was inspired by Cathy's post last month detailing 20 minute work segments. While I can't work on as many projects as she does {How do you keep them all straight, Cathy?} this seemed a good way to push some older projects forward. As I learned from my Thirty-Year Sampler, consistent work is the only way to complete it. And besides, 20 minutes is about all the strength I have these days.

The Bars 4 quilt needs to be finished for a future gift. Again I'm using very simple straight lines with the  walking foot. Twenty minutes uses part of a spool and keeps it moving along.

Machine quilting Bars 4

After a nap I switch to these old paper-pieced sawtooth borders planned for the New York Beauty. The papers were drafted and strips were cut. It's been languishing under my sewing table for a couple three years and the blocks are even older than that. How time flies and styles change. I'd like to finish it before I'm completely disenchanted. BTW, I chose an alternate (and older) name for this quilt: Rocky Mountain Road.

Paper-pieced sawtooth borders
for Rocky Mountain Road

Several triangles can be added before I have to change the bobbin. And then it's time for another nap.

Enjoy the day, Ann

New York Beauty Still Progressing

The curved wedges of New York Beauty are finished. Just a few more blocks to sew together and then I can play with the arrangement easily.

New York Beauty blocks on point

When I started these blocks [years ago] I had a more limited palette of reds and greens. It only worked for the first few but I didn't want to expand to just any color. So it got put away.

Now the fabrics include blues and even some yellows and purples. I think it looks much better but perhaps it just looks more contemporary. Popular colors change over the years as well as the pattern printed on them. Many of my older fabrics have a mottled background - lighter and darker shades of whatever color they used. Current fabrics tend to have solid backgrounds. My older reds are almost neon while the newer ones are happier and more clear. (Can you call red "soft"?)

Most of the multicolored fabrics have colors of similar value. After much consideration, I added a light fabric printed with large white, pink and red roses. Very pretty but a strong value change within one small piece. Then I made a big mistake: I centered one of the roses in the middle of the template. Do you see it below?

New York Beauty with
"centered" rose in the background.

Centering the entire rose is distracting; it's too overwhelming and obvious. Being the highest contrast, it really draws the eye away from the arcs. So I recut the piece. Here's my second attempt. Note to self: sometimes it is preferable to be asymmetrical.

New York Beauty with large
multicolored rose fabric cut off center.

We flew to Philadelphia last month. Along with lots of baseball, we saw Betsy Ross' (alleged) house. From the second floor, here or in the house next door (which no longer exists) she and her first husband lived and ran an upholstery business. Betsy, a Quaker, was read out of meeting when she eloped with John Ross.

Betsy Ross house

She and John attended Christ Church where his father was assistant rector. For more than 50 years the steeple was the tallest structure in the United States. As such, it was used in maritime navigation.

Christ Church, Philadelphia

Their pew was adjacent to George Washington's and located on the same side as the wineglass pulpit, commissioned in 1769.

Wineglass pulpit, Christ Church, Philadelphia

We also visited the Free Franklin Post Office. Benjamin Franklin was our first postmaster and this post office cancels letters with a replica of his postmark, "B. Free Franklin." I loved the models of postal workers in uniforms over the years. There was more memorabilia in the museum upstairs.

Models of postal worker uniforms
in the Free Franklin Post Office

Happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans. Freedom and democracy are very precious.

Enjoy the day, Ann

New York Beauty Progress

Here's my current progress on the New York Beauty blocks. I'm making haste slowly. Somehow the colors in this photo are a bit off. Older posts here and here.

New York Beauty blocks in progress

I started them in a workshop with Karen Stone at the Quilters Guild of Dallas... sometime around the millennium. I made a spreadsheet of the colors to ensure they were spread across all the different parts of this block. Unfortunately it wasn't working as the quilt got larger. I threw it away and simply grabbed some fabrics to expand the conversation.

Trimming the seams from the back really helped get these pieces to fit properly. Here are three steps in a row.

Trimming seam allowances from the back.

Line up the seam allowances of two fabrics with right sides together. Set them along the dotted line so the one closest to the paper completely covers the lower numbered wedge. Check that the other fabric will cover the higher numbered wedge when it's turned then sew. Fold the paper back along the sewing line and trim the fabrics to 1/4". Then you can align the seam allowance of the next piece properly.

Trimming the seam allowance on paper piecing.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Pi Day 3.14.15 @ 9.26.53

It's Pi(e) Day. Another crazy reason to celebrate.

Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It's an irrational number (which just means it can't be written as a fraction because the digits don't end or repeat) whose first few digits are 3.141592653... March 14 is extra special this year because we can correlate those digits to a specific time down to seconds. Nerds are thrilled.

It seems like a good day to celebrate circles in quilting. My favorite circles are my quilt guilds: currently SCVQA and QGGH. I've joined a guild everywhere I lived. They are always a source of friendship, inspiration and education. I hope you have a group of friends as inclusive and supportive.

On to circular quilts.

Although New York Beauty isn't finished, there is some progress. Only sixteen more. Even though these blocks are a decade old, I still like the colors and the pattern. {Why, oh why, didn't I finish it with the millenium?}

New York Beauty in progress

All my quilts in the show this weekend have circles or curves. There have been many photos, but here's a new one. I used this fabric (a decade ago) to applique on t-shirt quilts for my daughter and her friends who all had dogs. This is the last of it. Does that make Propellers and Planes a scrap quilt?

Steam Punk quilt block
from Propellers and Planes
with dog face conversation prints

Windmills is my current project. The block has slight curves. I'm echo quilting a quarter circle over the top.

Quarter circle curves echo quilted across Windmills

The quilting shows up better from the back.

Windmills back with leftover blocks. 

I drew one line on the quilt using my cutting ruler. I placed it in one corner, rotated the ruler and marked with chalk at intervals. Then I connected those dots. That was my first quilting line. Subsequent lines are a walking foot away. This seemed like a better idea than starting in the corner.

Example of marking the first line of quilting on Windmills

And we're having lemon meringue pie for dinner. Yum.

Enjoy the (pi) day, Ann

A Very Special Pi Day

Carpe diem! This past Friday was National Pie Day in the States. Quite delicious. But another Pi Day (3.14159...) is coming in March. This year we'll see 3-14-15. Quilters can celebrate by making quilts with circles instead of (or in addition to) eating pie!

New York Beauty blocks, 2000

These blocks were tucked in my stash along with some fabrics I planned to use. Pi Day is the new deadline. Propellers and the curve pieced tops should be quilted by then, too. Lots of pi for me!

What about you? How will you celebrate Pi Day?

Enjoy the day, Ann