Snowballs Make a Perfect Border

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

~Ambrose Bierce

Quilting

The snowball borders are finally sewn on the Wheel quilt. Wheee!

Snowball border on the Wheel quilt

Oh, joy! Not that the quilt is done but at least the top is finished. It's too large to get a full photo right now. Hopefully that can happen once it's quilted. Next will be an excavation of my stash to see what white fabrics lurking there could become a back. I can't remember any right now but am certainly not purchasing more before checking the piles already here.

The quilting plan will also take some time. While the backgrounds are not solid white, they are very low-volume so the stitching will show. What will look good? Does the sashing need any or can it just be SID? Fortunately my trusty vinyl is at hand so sketches should be easy.

Clearing Out my Stash

I pulled fabric for six more totes. Although I'm trying to make some for young men, they all look like a tote for little kids or little old ladies. Perhaps solids will work better for older boys. Next month I'll look for those. Each tote uses two fabrics: one yard that becomes the inside and sides plus half a yard for the front. The print in the top left is in two other totes {middle and left on the bottom row.} It's a beautiful {to me} Rose and Hubble print that's so old my hair wasn't grey when I bought it in Lewisville TX. There wasn't enough for a big shirt and it's been sitting in my stash long enough.

Six tote bags

I also finished a dozen pillowcases which should keep my whole family provided. The king size ones take a yard plus a third for the cuff while the standard take two-thirds of a yard plus a third for the cuff. Most of my one-yard lengths got a serious look to decide whether they would work for either a pillowcase or tote. This batch took twelve and two-thirds yards. Now they are ready to gift throughout the year.

Twelve pillowcases

Masks and Gowns

No new masks. Like Robin, I think I'm done until something needs to be replaced but six new isolation gowns this week. In addition, five gowns were sent to me for minor repairs. It's great to have a large group of sewers but would be better if they would read the directions. So that was not so fun but hopefully these were "first round" mistakes. Sewing 4 Good has a small group of paid sewers at a southern California shop but many volunteer sewers. As businesses reopen, I believe we volunteers will fade out; however, all our hospitals and care centers have spent their budget. Some are even laying off staff in the middle of this pandemic. So we will be sewing through the end of the year and probably beyond. Not as fun as quilting but way more important.

Reading

I alternate books online with physical copies but almost always am on the waiting list. A whole bunch came due this past week so I chose The Cuckoo's Calling, the first of a series of crime novels by  Robert Galbraith. That is a nom de plume for J.K. Rowling. {I must be the last reader to find out she has a new series.} Her protagonist, private investigator Comoran Strike, is a disabled Afghan vet looking into the death of supermodel, Lula Landry. I enjoyed it and placed a hold on the second one.

Movies, TV, Etc

We just finished the fourth of nine episodes of Home from Apple TV. If DH wasn't so adept I wouldn't have found this series and it's wonderful. Each looks at one builder or architect in one location, what they built, why they built it, how they were inspired. The homes are stunningly different, from a Swedish log cabin inside a greenhouse to the tiniest apartment in Hong Kong. That place had moveable walls. Not like Japanese sliding screen, these move like shelves in my chemistry lab and reconfigure the space for cooking, working, entertaining, or sleeping. If you see it, let me know which episode most intrigued you.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Heading for the Border

Make the best use of what is in your power and take the rest as it comes. If you seek truth, you will not seek victory by dishonorable means; and if you find truth, you will become invincible.
~Epictetus

Quilting

I used a dark brown to post the stripe at the corners of the wheel blocks. The value is quite a bit darker but the pieces are so small they don't overpower the softness of the rest of the top. Well, soft for me.

Center of the wheel quilt sewn

Now for the border. My original plan was to create a grey/tan and white hourglass inner border and sew the rest of the wedges as Coins in an outer border. Eventually I noticed that sequence {or at least the Coins} has occurred in several of my quilts, including Chinese Coins II, III, and CCIV, and the Polka Dot. It's time for a new idea.

One that I've wanted to try for a while is the snowball. Again, examples abound in current and vintage work: Sujata's book, Audrey's Scrappy Tulips, Julierose's Autumn Snowballs. A photo of Yoko Saito's glorious taupe Snowballs is here.

Snowballs work as a sixteen-patch as well as a nine-patch. Those definitions just locate the grid a block fits into. Each side divides into four equal parts for a sixteen-patch while a nine-patch divides into three equal parts. Of course, I'm not going to measure my corners. Somewhere between those will work just fine.

The backgrounds are squares of pink, white, cream, tan, and a couple of light yellows. I raided my overflowing scrap bin for corner fabrics and that's where the trouble arose. This first pass included any fabrics that seemed to go but mostly dark values. Too dark. It's overpowering the soft wheels.

Snowball corners in darker fabrics

So I removed the darkest by pulling out my trusty Value Finder. In years past I always used it to select fabrics but haven't needed it for a while. This helps me calculate the range of values that will work: 8-10 for snowballs, 5-7 for corners {with perhaps a few 4s.} This second iteration is better but still too bright. The corners need to be quieter still.

Lighter snowball corners with several brights

My next battle was removing the brighter brights - even if they are reds - and the blues. I'm not sure why I thought those would work. Looking carefully at all the wheels, the prints include orange, tan, brown, grey, yellow, purple, and pink in addition to red and green. When the border is reduced to these colors in quiet{er} hues within the value range it starts to work. Boy! Lots of hedging in that previous sentence.

Snowball corners that work with the quilt center

Finally I can start a little production line {because these babies are very fiddly and time-consuming.} That's what happened the rest of the week and I'm only halfway through. Funny how hard it is for me to use scraps in the corners and actually have them fill the entire corner {and have a bit showing once the seam allowances are in, too.}

Snowballs sewn and pressed waiting to be trimmed

In order to keep the various fabrics fairly evenly distributed it seemed best to divide them into four groups - one for each side. I'm sewing each on its own. One is done. These are the snowballs for the second side. Slower than molasses in January... and it's May.

Snowball borders in progress

Masks and Gowns

My final thirteen masks are made and shared with neighbors; 263 in all... I think. No more lining fabric right now. But work on isolation gowns continues. Six this week for a running total of 19. As I wrote before, they a delivered to a variety of sites: hospitals, social workers doing home health checks. For more information, check Sewing 4 Good.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Choosing Backgrounds

Blessedness is what can be snatched out of the passing day, and put away to think of afterwards.

~Ellis Peters in The Leper of St. Giles

Quilting

I collaged some photos of different fabric pulls for the next step in the fan quilt.  The top shows choices for posts and possibly a secondary sashing. Bottom left is background and more sashing ideas. Although a bunch of reds and greens were pulled for the wedges, the pile mysteriously decreased over time as other projects took precedence. When the wheels restarted, there were not enough soft reds. The crab prints on the right made me laugh. They might work as wedges; they certainly won't look the same cut into small strips.

Some fabric choices

Eventually I found two two-yard pieces of quietly printed cream fabrics in my stash {bottom left photo.} One includes a girl in a hat fishing. Now is the perfect time to use it.

This is improv so you won't be surprised to find I cut the fans down quite a bit. Why? At the larger size, only three background could be cut from WOF with lots of waste. That wasn't so bad {Scraps!} but I don't have enough fabric to create all the backgrounds. Decreasing the block size let me fit four across. Problem solved.

Trimming the fans to a smaller template size

There's also a simple trick to pinning: don't pin the seam allowances. Pinning between or near them lets them move and allows the new seam to curve rather than jerk from point to point.

Pin curves of the fan between seam allowances

As usual, I cut the outer background with half-inch seam allowances on the two straight sides to give me some wiggle room when squaring the block. I find it doesn't help to make every template larger, just that final outer one.

Squaring a fan quilt block

With the fans sewn it was time to settle the sashing. Another long-held idea was to use the red-and-white stripe. When the wheels were arranged it was too much for all the sashing. So... either between the arcs or around the wheels but not both. A light grey-brown worked as the alternate sashing, contrasting with everything else but not screaming for attention. It's not the same fabric as my original background plan but it's in the same family. So my color idea wasn't completely whacky.

Sashing layout choices

Next I had to pick a post and went with the lighter red on the right. Now I can sew the quarter-circle blocks into larger wheel blocks and contemplate a post for the stripe. {Those reds won't work.} These are not easy blocks for me nor have I seriously worked at low{er} volume before.

Choosing between two reds for the post

Reading

I started rereading the Cadfael chronicles, a successful 12th century mystery series by Ellis Peters which also adapted for television. In A Morbid Taste for Bones, Shrewsbury Abbey seeks to increase their prominence by acquiring the bones of a Welsh saint. When the leader of the local community objects, he is soon found murdered and Brother Cadfael must resolve the issues. It's even better than I remembered. This time I appreciated the descriptions of and the differences between the societal structures of the two countries as well as noticing the variations of religious practices, albeit both being Catholic. Of course, I devoured the maps of the region, city and Abbey.

Monthly FUR (Fabric Use Rate)

The 26 yards of isolation gown material did not come from my stash. {I sewed it but am not counting it in my rate.} Masks total 250. This month's total took 7 more yards while the pillowcases used 7.5 yds. April = 14.5 yards. YTD = 62.5 yards.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Helping

The most precious thing you can give someone is your time because you can never get it back.
When you don't think about getting it back, you've given it in love.
~Mitch Alborn in Finding Chika

Quilting

Just a bit of quilting this week. Sort of. No sewing, only arranging the arcs. They required lots of moving/adjusting. Because the values occupy a narrow band, the colors blend into grey-ness. {That's not a word but you can see what I mean. The greens and reds seem to blend rather than contrast.}

Arranging the wheel blocks into a quilt

But now... the original background doesn't work. It's much too strong against the sewn arcs. And there's nowhere near enough yardage either. Darn. This shot cotton in grey and brown has been pulled for every project for the last three years and never fit. Such a funky non-color. Of course I cut several before figuring this out. Audrey mentioned how much waste arcs leave - big melon shaped lozenges. She saved hers for an appliqué project. Mine are going into a bag for the future, too. They are simply too good to toss.

This grey-brown is too dark for the background

Masks and Gowns

I made fourteen more masks and am almost out of cotton knit for the lining. Then a friend asked me to join a non-profit group sewing isolation gowns. There is little I can do to help right now other than stay home so I was honored to join. The group provided the fabric, velcro, and elastic. We provided polyester sewing thread. I sewed twelve this week. They need 10,000.

The design is very basic but the protective treatment on the fabric means we cannot iron it. Finger pressing bias strips for necklines and ties while wearing masks and gloves. The masks aren't difficult to use but I have trouble pinning and finger pressing in gloves.

The good news is this first batch is on its way to a New York hospital. Even though new cases are declining, staff is seriously short of gear and these should help until commercial manufacturers can ramp up.

Coronavirus Study

Stanford Medicine started a daily survey to predict future outbreaks and help direct medical resources. You can help if you live in the United States. Here's the link for more information and to sign up. It took me about two minutes to fill out the original questions and less than a minute for the daily update.

Reading

Once the gowns were finished I was, too. For relaxation I read The Secret Commonwealth, the second book in Phillip Pullman's Book of Dust series. When Pan witnesses a murder the victim entrusts him with his wallet which brings echoes of their old adventures. The clues lead twenty year old Lyra on a search for a city haunted by daemons.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Taking the Wheel

"You may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now,
because the world is yours and it is up to you.
Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world,
it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvelous joy."

~Susan Cooper in The Silver on the Tree

Quilting

Combining regular spring cleaning with the deep cleaning pushed me to sort and cull. Clothing, dishes, books, cleaning supplies. Everything is getting a second look. Is it being used? Is it needed? Does it need replacing? Of course, cleaning also brought a bunch of UFOs to the surface. Like this one.

It's been a while since starting the first wheel. The plan was to make a very scrappy wheel but the narrow wedge ruler I found seemed a better way to start/practice. So I quickly sewed one up... and what a mess. The middle was loose; the background was missing. I finally unsewed them into quarters with the idea of re-sewing the circle after the background was attached. I pulled a variety of pale yellowish greens {not chartreuse} and red-on-white prints that intrigued me. And that's when it sank into a UFO.

Possible backgrounds and sashing for the fan/wheel block

Last year Sujata proposed the UandU QAL to recreate a quilt from Rod Kiracofe's fabulous book, Unconventional and Unexpected. There are so many to choose from and every time someone posts their own progress I want to make that one, too. Looking through it last week I was struck by three quilts with the same design - just like my old sample. Sort of. Well, enough to make me dig through the pile.

Unconventional and Unexpected: 

Wheel of Fortune, p 66

and Fan, p 146

The one with the Lone Star reminds me of last year's baby quilts. I want to make more but am running out of sufficient yardage to make the background. Here's a possible way to get away with less of a single fabric.

Wheel and fan quilts are traditional blocks that have been revived recently. Several people have created designs with unique names which are still the same basic block: a small center {quarter} circle, a wide arc sewn with wedges, and a curved background to square them up. The difference I see between wheel and fan is the center sashing. Also, wheels are frequently appliqued to a single background.

My original plan was to make very large wheels, 20-25" wide but the ruler was shorter. Clockwise from top left. After cutting ten-inch WOF I laid the wedge ruler on top with my regular ruler next to it. Removing the wedge ruler gave me a long side to cut. Next I replaced the wedge ruler, lined up the longer ruler to its left, removed the wedge ruler and cut the left side of the wedge fabric.

Extending a short ruler with my regular ruler for cutting

Despite a very limited color palette, or perhaps because of it, there are special issues to address. Value becomes even more important. Fabrics work differently after they are cut than they did when they were originally grouped. The darks and the lights below paired up well until they were cut. Then there was too little contrast within a single fan and too much contrast from one fan to the next.

Changing out blades of the fan block

My solution was to move the blades around until the values of all the fans were closer. These were switched between four sets to balance them better. Almost done cutting blades.

Laying out parts of the stash fan blocks

Taking the bull by the horns or the circle by the quarters. It's finally moving forward.

Masks

Still making masks. Sixty-two more this week brings the total to 127 and more to come. I made significant progress on DH's t-shirt quilt as the leftover material made mask lining. Most of the large logos are stabilized.

Reading

The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper is on my shelf but this is a re-read for me. It's another series catalogued as children's books. While on a Cornish holiday, three human siblings join their great-uncle Merry, Will Stanton {Old Ones}, and later, Bran Davies, searching for artifacts of power that enable the Light to defeat the Dark. Cooper blends English folklore and Arthurian legends with Celtic and Norse mythologies to create a new tale of mankind's passage to adulthood. That's what I read in the quote that begins this post and why this is a relevant set of books for adults to read also.

Of the five contemporary fantasy novels the first received a Newbery Honor while the fourth won the Newbery Medal as well as the first Welsh Tir na n-Og award and the final book also received a Tir na n-Og award.

Stay safe. Enjoy the day, Ann