A Done Deal

"Ambition is enthusiasm with a purpose."

~Frank Tyger

When looking ahead there seem to be so many long, time-consuming steps to finish a quilt. Between that and anxiety about our quilting, it's no wonder we set tops aside. This one is finally finished. It's a perfect size to snuggle under during this cold weather. I'm keeping it.

The Square Deal quilt

As I mentioned earlier I divided the quilt into three sections: the Square Deal center, the sashing, and the outer border. After simple SID around the sashing, each section was quilted with its own designs. The sashing was the simplest - just wishbones - and that finished the quilting.

Wishbone quilting in the sashing of the Square Deal

Binding is the next step. I pulled several fabrics and laid some under the edge of the quilt to see how they might look. I thought light blue or green would work best but chose the pink.

Binding choices for the Square Deal quilt

There was just enough. Only four inches overlap. How's that for using every last bit?

Binding pinned and ready to attach to the quilt

Here's a detail of the binding and back.

Binding and backing for The Square Deal quilt

Quilt Specifics

Size: 71" x 71"

Design: The Square Deal (with leftover Chinese Coin units) and Lattice

Batting: Mountain Mist Cream Rose cotton

Thread: 50 wt Gutermann light blue, Metler red, and Aurifil white cotton

Quilting: SID, FMQ curves, feathers, wishbones, and parallel lines

Approximate yardage: 13.5 yds

The quilt started with some leftover Chinese Coin strips. Well, they weren't exactly leftover. The quilt they were supposed to become looked terrible. And there were too many to waste. And I didn't want to put them in the scrap bag because "I'm going to use it up now." Haha.

The lattice border was a collection of blocks that never got sewed up. I guess they were in the Parts Department that Gwen and Freddy espouse. They all fit together beautifully {only six extras were made for this quilt and you can tell which they are because the Xs are much wider} and reinforce my opinion that everything from our own stash will work together because we each have an innate and individual sense of color and pattern.

Previous posts:

1. The beginning
2. Finding border blocks among the leftovers
3. Choosing the sashing
4. Designing the border
5. More border work
6. Finalizing the border
7. Using the leftovers as a baby quilt
8. The back for the baby quilt
9. Finished Square Deal baby quilt
10. Quilting on original Square Deal begins
11. Quilting continues

We viewed an interesting exhibit at SF MOMA by Turkish-German artist Nevin Aladag who incorporates a variety of musical instruments into her sculptures. Here's a video of musicians playing her Resonator which includes drums, chimes, harp, didgeridoos, acoustic and bass guitars, and parts of a mandolin.

Resonator sculpture with Social Fabric:
Percussion in the background.
Both by Nevin Aladag

The wall hanging, which at a distance appeared to be a detailed painting, is composed of precisely cut rugs and carpets. {She must have a very sharp knife.}

The museum also has a room of Alexander Calder's mobiles with several of his sculptures on the adjacent terrace. This mobile entitled Double Gong includes two mallets which makes sounds when the wind moves it. {No breezes in the museum though.}

Sculpture and mobile by Alexander Calder

I first enjoyed Alexander's work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago where we found the Catmobile. {Dada dada dada dada. Who remembers that theme song?}

Chat-mobile by Alexander Calder, 1956.

With all the reds and pinks, the Square Deal makes a lovely Valentine. I wish you all a Happy Valentine's this week.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Moving on to the Square Deal

"Your future depends on many things but mostly on you."

~Frank Tyger

The Square Deal is finally moving ahead again. My machine is threaded and raring to go. This one might be finished in a week or two. I divided the quilt into three sections: the center Square Deal blocks, the white sashing and inner border, and the outer lattice border. Each will have different quilting.

Free motion quilting in progress on The Square Deal

Angela Walters' recent FMQ Challenge inspired the quilting design here. It's looking better as more blocks are finished. Isn't that frequently the case? A little bit looks terrible but adding more hides flaws or at least blends them. Those straight lines are only straight-ish and their spacing was eyeballed but mostly they show as a unit that contrasts well with the curves in the red HSTs.

The first row of the design took a day with sketching, planning how to move across the blocks, and practice drawing to build some muscle memory. The next day I finished that quarter of the center but all four sections were completed by my fourth day of quilting. No, I don't quilt all day... at least I didn't this time. It was good to see my speed pick up as the quilting design became ingrained.

The border was next up because it's a larger area than the sashing and seemed trickier to fill. Better to choose this quilting before finding a filler for the sashing, which could easily have many simple designs. Part of my difficulty is that, unlike the center blocks, the lattice is free-hand cut.

As you can see in the photo below, the Xs don't line up. It looks lovely but finding a design became harder. Here are some sketches:

Border quilting ideas

I definitely want the quilting to move from block to block so I don't have to bury a lot of threads. Learned my lesson on those baby quilts. ;-) The continuous curves on the left mimic those in the center. Hey, good repeat. But... they will never line up well from one to the next because each lattice is unique. The spiral looks more like an Eye of God and doesn't seem to go with anything. However, the feathers on the side look interesting.

And here's what I finally went with:

Final border quilting idea

I almost didn't use this Greek key because its sides are straight and the lattice isn't but finally decided the contrast of straight and curves works, it repeats the straight lines in the center, and I can't think of anything else.

The quilting hardly shows on the front. It's much more visible on the back.

Quilting the lattice border

I'm just starting the first side of the border. Slow going because someone chose to quilt backwards. Instead of pushing the quilt away from me as I move from block to block, I'm pulling it towards me. When I get to the corner, I'll see if I can change directions. Too soon old and too late smart.

Reading

The plan last year was to read the books already on my shelf or dispose of them and the project started strong until it was sidetracked by many new and interesting tomes. Isn't that always the case? So much to read and not enough time.

However, several Charlotte MacLeod mystery series from the 1970s and 80s have been calling to be re-read. {Do they count if I've already read them once? I say, yes.} Charlotte writes with a breadth of knowledge about art, architecture, history, etc. {basically culture} in an equally broad vocabulary. There are words I rarely see, used with pleasure and playfulness rather than affectation. This writing style is not as common today {even though there are loads of cozy mysteries} and find I've missed it. She incorporates patter dialog - quick, fast-paced, funny exchanges that remind me of Gilbert and Sullivan.

The Sarah Kelling mysteries of Charlotte MacLeod

She had four series: Sarah Kelling {a young widow on Beacon Hill who meets an art investigator}, Peter Shandy {a New England professor of agriculture}, Madoc Rhys {a RCMP detective}, and the Grub-and-Stakers {a Canadian garden club.} Currently I'm finishing the Kelling series pictured above. The secondary characters are idiosyncratic and the situations are zany. These old friends delight my cold winter days and nights.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Back to the Square Deal

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. 

I acted and behold, service was joy."

~ Rabindranath Tagore

When I saw Tula Pink's Free Fall extra wide on a trip it called to be made into a dress but without the pattern I couldn't calculate yardage. The store closed and that opportunity was lost. Finding the fabric online seemed like a sign but... It's printed at a much, much larger scale. Instead of kumquat-sized circles, these are grapefruit. Who needs a quilt back 108" wide but only 72" long? The mistake compounds - absolutely not a dress and not enough for a larger quilt either. It could be the back to several baby quilts.

Tethys Waves needs a back but this is much too short so I pulled out other quilt tops. According to my calculations it was just enough for the back of Square Deal but once pinned it came up an inch short. Grr. Fortunately there's loads of width left so I matched the design as best as I could, pinned and then glued it in place, then took the whole mess to the machine to sew the seam. Crazy but it worked {if you don't look at the birds closely because they are different angles.}

Large scale Tula Pink Free Fall fabric back

SID the sashing and borders was my first task {Hey, I remembered!} then I stitched the edge of the quilt to keep it from pleating during the FMQ.

SID sashing, borders and sides of quilt

The dreaded thread color decision was next. I could use red to match the large HSTs, light blue to blend with the Coins, or nylon monofilament to cover it all. The blue looked terrible on the HSTs while the red wasn't quite as bad on the Coins {probably because of their variety} so that was the choice. You might have to enlarge the photo to see the threads crossing it. Let that be a lesson to us all; sometimes we create a bigger deal out of things than is called for. {I do this almost every time I choose thread. Sigh.}

Red or light blue quilting thread?

Because the back is light blue I tested that color in the bobbin. No threads are peaking through from the other side this time. Yea.

The quilting designs came from Angela Walters YouTube videos. While the wishbones are easier, I can't make the quilting travel easily so I'm going with the echoed lines although it involves more quilting and more time.

Three variations of a
quilting design from Angela Walters

OTOH ribbon candy might look nice on the sashing and straight lines here will add good contrast. That's my story for now. We'll see what emerges.

Merry Christmas to all!

Enjoy the day, Ann

Using the Extra Blocks

I didn't intend to reprise The Square Deal so closely but, while clearing up, four sets of HSTs already sewed into nine-patches surfaced. They surprised me so I dug around extensively but didn't find any more. These are the last of this combination and I need several baby quilts. Soonest! So here we are, choosing between two very similar white prints for the center cross: frogs in a pond or sea creatures.

At the last minute I added the squares to make a Churn Dash center again. It makes the center more interesting; however, the inner border is blue {instead of white.} A small change.

Final decision: which print for the outer border? My first thought was the lovely one at the bottom but after looking at the photo, the triangle print floats my boat. Why does it look better? When it was in the box, the colors looked quite different than the center blocks. Viewed through the reducing lens of a camera, it changed appearance somehow. It has a richness the other lacks.

After looking at this photo for a few days, I've decided the scale of the right border relates to the center better than the bottom border. They are nearly the same colors but the slightly larger design on the right gives them more presence. What do you think?

Enjoy the day, Ann

Several Improvs in One

It's been a while but I finally pieced the border of the Square Deal. After swearing I wasn't going to make more blocks... I did. The top needed a few more strong reds and light blues.

The Square Deal quilt top

What's different? Compare the upper right corner of the final version above with the previous {partially sewn} version below. Five blocks were changed out on the top and right. They were lovely blocks but "pushed the envelope" a bit too far in value. The borders were getting muddled. That's always an issue with printed fabrics where several colors coexist. It can add movement or simply cause designs to become lost. Now there are still diffuse areas but also more definition.

EDIT: I reshot and replaced the photo above. The colors were too acid. I still think the photo below has truer colors though.

Previous layout for The Square Deal quilt

Do you notice my crosses became much wider with each set of Xs? The last set is pretty wide indeed. The first ones were so narrow that the seams overlapped after pressing. Guess I loosened up as time went on.

Evaluating this quilt it meets criteria for:

1. Chinese Coins {because those were the original units for the striped triangles} 
2. Two Blocks
3. Red is a Neutral (because I played with several fabrics before deciding red looked best with those striped triangles}

However, this is not exactly what I envisioned as a Red quilt. Here red becomes the foreground while I wanted to use it as a background - more like Cathy's Confetti quilt. So another quilt idea goes on the {increasingly} long "to-be-made" list but it still feels good to combine several challenges into one quilt especially since life intervened several times keeping me from fully participating.

At some point I need to make a back and baste this top. That's a task for another time.

Enjoy the day, Ann

The Square Deal and the Venice Canals

While the outer border is not as blue as I want, it seems to be done. There are enough extra blocks to make one or two toddler quilts. It seems silly to continue making "slightly better" blocks and I'm out of that light blue that looks so good to me. Time to sew it up.

The Square Deal quilt in progress: working on the outer border

Before the wildfires, business took DH to LA and I tagged along for fun. The first day was spent wandering through the Venice Canal neighborhood. Built in 1905 to mimic the waterways of its European namesake, it originally included gondoliers singing in Italian for the tourists. However, most of the canals were filled in by the 1920s (voted by the city but costs paid by the neighboring homeowners) to allow cars. The few remaining blocks were saved because there weren't enough houses to cover the costs of infilling.

No gondolas now. It's all privately owned with one narrow street paralleling the beach that allows autos. Only a block from the beach and so, so quiet.

Here are views of the canals and their bridges. I especially enjoy the variety of homes spanning the past hundred years.

Venice Canals, Venice Beach CA

A few detail shots. Look at the wavy panes in the windows. And the balcony railing would be a good quilt border. Most of the homes had a small yard in front that included a dining room. How lovely to eat al fresco daily. There must not be many mosquitos; no screens.

Details of the Venice Canals

There's a charming fountain in the lower right photo. Loved the casual design with upside down flower pot base and copper spigot mouth. It made such a relaxing sound, too.

History of the Venice Canals can be found on this website.

Sorry this post makes the area appear pristine and perfect. Venice is about 20 miles from Malibu where lives and property have been lost in the Woolsey Fire. The worst fire in California is the Camp fire near Paradise. So many people have lost everything. Photos of the devastation frighten me more than hurricanes. Absolutely nothing left.

Enjoy the day, Ann