Final Tour: Propellers and Planes with a List of Previous Posts

Propellers and Planes, my Steam Punk, hung in our guild show this week along with many fabulous quilts by members of SCVQA and BAM. It's the first, and probably only, photo of the entire quilt. The colors aren't quite right; they are much truer in the previous posts, but at least you can see the entire layout of the quilt.

Propellers and Planes quilt

Here it is again in lighting that shows the colors better. But it's not hung high enough. This really is a softly colored quilt with small bits of bright fabrics on occasion.

Propellers and Planes quilt

There is a huge variety of fabrics in this quilt. The oldest was purchased in Boston about twenty-five years ago. The newest were purchased last year. Sue Benner gave me one of her hand-dyed pieces. After being saved (and petted) for more than a decade I used it here. There are scraps from quilts I made for my children, my new daughter-in-law, my parents and my dear friends. Some, like the 50's mannequins, simply make me laugh. All bring back memories of people and places I know and love. Now we sleep under it. What great good fortune. I wish everyone could wrap themselves in cherished memories every night.

A collage of some of the fabrics incorporated in Propellers and Planes

Not wanting to piece batts, I looked for a really large cotton one. There were not many choices but Pellon (yes, the interfacing company) makes one. It's 100% cotton with a very flat, almost felt-like appearance that reminded me of Warm and Natural. It is also warm, heavy and has a beautiful drape - think brocade. It would be a great choice for a wall quilt. Unfortunately, it was only 120" in one direction and I had to piece about four inches of batt in the other direction. Grr.

I used YLI invisible thread (nylon monofilament) for ditch stitching along the sashing then switched to Aurifil Mako 50/2 in grey and light green for the rest of the quilting.

Here are links to previous posts.

Steam Punk Blocks, February 2014
Second Set, March 2014
Third Set, June 2014
Fourth Set, July 2014
Fifth Set with Construction Notes, July 2014
Final Set, July 2014
Putting Steam Punk Together with Sashing Notes, August 2014
Where Do You Get Your Ideas, August 2014
Steam Punk Back, August 2014
Enlarging Circular Blocks (How I Made the Large Propellers), December 2014
Quilting Steam Punk, January 2015
More Quilting, January 2015
Binding, February 2015
Quilt Show Ready, February 2015

Wow. A year of work and fifteen posts. I like to read about your processes and hope you like this much information, too.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Improv Curve Quilt Finished

Here's the final photo of my Curved Improv quilt. It was in the guild quilt show last weekend.

Improv Curve quilt

Because the sides are definitely not straight of grain, I wanted a straight edge binding. But the circle at the bottom needed bias binding. So I used bias on that curve only and switched to straight of the rest of the quilt. So far so good. I think it helps stabilize the quilt and minimize waviness.

Although the curve sections look may look like they are uniform width, that's not quite true. For each curve I started on one side or the other stitching parallel with a walking foot. Then I echoed that curve until I ran off the section. That side has quilting lines that run into it. This is probably the first quilt that I did NOT stitch-in-the-ditch. It was pretty scary to start quilting without the stabilization ditch quilting provides but it turned out well. Sometimes we need to try something different.

Because of the improvisational nature of this quilt, a few tucks developed. Each time I re-stitched some of the blades (by machine or hand) to re-flatten the quilt top. One of them appeared while I was quilting. That was a new experience but wasn't too difficult to fix.

The thread is Aurifil 50/2 cotton in beige, pink, green, blue, red and grey. The batting is Mountain Mist Blue Ribbon Cotton. The back is the same two fabrics as the binding. The quilt finished 50" by 58".

When I had trouble deciding how much to trim the sides of this quilt, Lara B. suggested cropping photos to test different amounts. That was a great idea. Here are some of those examples.

This first one has a bit more taken off the sides than the finished piece. Although this is my favorite view, I simply couldn't bring myself to cut off so much of the top.

First possible crop
of Improv Curve

 I wondered if cropping part of the large circle would make the quilt more active.

Second possible crop
of Improv Curve

Or if the blue circle would be missed.

Third possible crop
of Improv Curve

Here are links to previous posts about this quilt (in reverse order.)

1. How I Finally Sewed the Curves
2. Curves Continued
3. Curve Quilt Progress
4. Curve Quilt

What Sherri Lynn Wood wrote about her Mod Mood quilts here inspired me to try this process. I'm so glad I did!

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

Windmills

Oops. What happened to the New York Beauties? They're still on the design wall because...

While reorganizing my sewing room some fabrics kept insisting they would look well together. So I pulled Sujata Shah's wonderful book, Cultural Fusion Quilts, and read the instructions for Windmills again.

Although she suggests WOF cuts, several of my fabrics only made one or two squares. It just adds to the diversity.

 Improvisational Windmills 60"x60".

Here are a few blocks in progress. Don't they remind you of dad's old ties?

Improvisational Windmill quilt blocks before trimming

I plan to make the back from leftover fabrics and blocks.

Linking up with Scraptastic Tuesday which always has wonderful ideas linked.

Enjoy the day,

Quilt Show Ready

As you know, there are so many little details before a quilt is truly finished: burying threads, binding, label, sleeve (if it's in a show), washing, blocking. But finally, all three quilts are ready for the SCVQA quilt show March 14-15 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.  It's not judged; simply a way to share what we've been working on the last two years. And Bay Area Modern has a section, too. If you're in the area I hope you will come.

My entries are Round Robin Improv (workshop), Curved Improv and Propellers and Planes. There's no room in my house to get a photo of the entire quilt. Hopefully I can get one at the show. And that will be my last photo of this quilt. Promise!

Propellers and Planes (118"x118"), partial view.

Now to clean up the sewing room, relax a bit and then see what I can do with those New York Beauty blocks. Don't forget Pi Day! 3.141592653... translates to March 14, 2015 at 9:26.53 AM. How are you celebrating?

Enjoy the day,

Valentine Pillow

By a bit of luck, I found Sanae's blog in early January where she and Ute were hosting their second Secret Valentine Exchange. We filled out a questionnaire with contact information, favorite colors, and places we posted (Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, blog) which were sent to our secret Valentine. Sanae suggested using our stash to make a present.

My Valentine is a lovely Irish woman who loves mustard. Me, too! Tracking through her photos I saw several pillows. One was made of mattress ticking (I had some leftover from the placemats.) Several others had beautifully tied bows. Suddenly I had an idea.

Bow tie pillow with mattress ticking

The pillow is 16". Since the mattress ticking is canvas-weight, it didn't need to be quilted. The bow is  8" wide indigo and 8.5" wide mustard broadcloth. Both were cut about 18" long to leave room for the gathering. These were sewed into a tube, then turned and pressed so the mustard appears to be a narrow piping. A second, smaller tube made the center of the bow.

ChrissieD had a wonderful tutorial on her blog for a hidden zipper closure on a pillow. Ironing double-sided fusible to the zipper made it the easiest I've ever put in.

Here's a close up of the zipper...

Bow Tie pillow back showing hidden zipper

and a full view of the back.

Bow tie pillow back

Thanks, Sanae and Ute, for a delightful Valentine party!

Enjoy the day, Ann

Round Robin Improv Quilted

Next in the queue is the Round Robin Improv quilt from a workshop with Sherri Lynn Wood. Several anonymous people worked on this top which I think turned out beautifully.

 The technique is one of the scores in Sherri's upcoming book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Practical Guide for Creating, Quilting, and Living Courageously. Her book is coming out next month but you can purchase it early at QuiltCon. See her post here.

Round Robin Improv quilt

Someone added the lovely fabric with large dots. This inspired my choice for the red and black sunflowers on the left side as well as the appliqued circles. All the circles are leftovers from Propellers. How lucky is that?

Originally I tried this little wavy zig-zag stitch several others quilters have used. The thread is a softly variegated 18-weight cotton. It seemed to pull the quilt a bit tighter than I expected. The reason shows on the back. The bobbin tension is much too tight.

Machine quilting with very bad tension.
The bobbin thread is much too tight,
pulling the top thread through the quilt
and creating eyelashes.

Several samples later with no better results, I changed to 50-weight Metler cotton in grey-blue (#0789.) Random straight lines with a walking foot cover the quilt. I considered following the flare of the patchwork but decided I wanted more uniform widths across the quilt. I started quilting about two-inches apart then came back and filled in. This keeps the quilt better aligned. The "cross angle" didn't look good when the spacing was wider; however, it improved tremendously with closer quilting. It's not as close as matchstick; more like channel quilting.

Round Robin Improv quilt detail

Remaining decisions:

1. Would you keep the quilt edges like this or straighten them out? 
2. Would you choose a regular wrapped binding or knife-edge binding that won't show at all on the front?

Previous posts about this quilt:

1. The day of the Round Robin workshop here.
2. In progress plus a link to all the quilts from the workshop here.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Binding Propellers and Planes (Steam Punk)

Propellers is finally quilted. Wavy free motion lines about a finger width apart fill the border. It's an easy, relaxing design which I needed after wrestling with the bulk of this large quilt. Maintaining a relatively constant width was the hardest part. Do you find that your line spacing grows and shrinks depending on the day? I certainly do.

Propellers and Planes quilt detail

When we visited friends in Berkeley last fall, I took the opportunity to purchase the binding and border at New Pieces. The binding is cut on the bias to create diagonal stripes. The first side of the binding is attached (by machine) and I'm hand stitching the back in the evenings.

It still needs a label, hanging sleeve and a good soak and block. It will be in the SCVQA quilt show at the Santa Clara Convention Center March 14-15. If you're in the area, please stop by. It would be so delightful to meet in person.

Some of my backs are unusual, even downright ugly. In my opinion, people only see one side of bed and wall quilts. That's my excuse to cobble those backs from leftovers and older fabrics. Propellers is a good case in point. The squadron of planes on the back used up many quarter yard remnants. These are good quality fabrics; many were used on the front. Most of the back's sashing is leftover from previous quilts. This keeps my stash and scrap bag in stasis. And it amuses me to think I'm providing fodder for future quilt historians.

Here's a view of most of the back...

Prop planes in formation, back of Propellers and Planes quilt

followed by a detail of one single prop plane.

Prop plane quilt block

The quilting shows up better in the detail, don't you think? All the quilting is Aurifil Mako 50/2 except the ditch quilting which is YLI Wonder invisible Nylon in Smoke on top and Aurifil in the bobbin. Smoke show less with medium to dark fabric values.

Sketch of airplane block here.

Lucky me. I recently culled some fabrics from my stash but forgot to take them to the guild meeting. They will make good hanging sleeves.

Enjoy the day, Ann

Monterey Pines... Someday

The large pine cones I collected this fall to put in decorative glass jars had pine nuts. [Since I obviously don't have enough to do] I planted them. Here's my method:

1. Put the seeds in a glass of water overnight.
2. Keep the sinkers and discard the floaters.
3. Put them in a small zip lock bag with a damp paper towel and store in the refrigerator for a week. (I left them for a month.)
4. Plant in potting soil in a starter pot (or a cardboard egg carton.) It felt like grade school science fair!
5. Transplant into ground or larger pots.

Ten of the twelve came up within two weeks. They grow a very long, strong taproot which easily broke through the egg carton. I now know exposure to the air is not good for new pine roots.

Monterey Pine seedlings at 10 days.

Don't you love the way these seedlings squeeze out of their encasing brown pod and white kernel? They remind me of construction paper lanterns. Once free of the kernel, the seedlings spread like the ribs on an umbrella.

Monterey Pine seedlings transplanted to larger pots for their first year.

Eight healthy seedlings need to be transplanted to a permanent location this autumn. Any ideas?

Enjoy the 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

Photography Class and Propellers (Steam Punk Quilt)

There are many talented photographers in my family but I am not one. They very kindly take photos for me on all occasions. However, with everyone scattered across the country they are rarely on hand.

My youngest sister and I signed up for Ricky Tims' year-long online photography class. It was all her idea. I will learn basic photography skills such as how to do anything fancier than point-and-shoot. Baby Sis can improve hers since the class includes composition and photo editing.

Meanwhile, on the quilting front... I finished all the straight lines on Propellers (the name for my Steam Punk quilt.) Here's a photo of my worst straight line quilting. This block is near the center so was much harder to manage. I tried many methods to get the lines straight: walking foot, marking lines with pen and chalk, darning foot alone, ruler work (without the proper foot) and painters tape. All these methods work very well on a smaller quilt or closer to the edge of this behemoth (it's 116" square.) Just manhandling the quilt under the small throat plate made most of them ineffective closer to the center.

All propeller blades quilted.

I think I'll quilt around the blades next. More or less than the straight lines? Would you use 'swirls and pebbles', stippling, McTavishing or something else? In true Scarlett O'Hara fashion, "I'll think about that tomorrow."

Enjoy the day, Ann

Quilting Steam Punk

Steam Punk's been pinned all fall. I even ditch stitched the sashing to stabilize the quilt with dark YLI invisible thread in the top and grey Aurifil 50/2 in the bobbin. Then I was stuck. A quilt this large and heavy needs more quilting simply to keep it together during use. I wanted some straight lines but not the same grid used on Trip Around the Block.  Life intervened: several family events, trips, and colds were a perfect excuse to set it aside for a while.

When I restarted last week, I decided to put straight lines on the blades. I marked endpoints on each blade and drew lines with a washable blue pen or white chalk, whichever showed up better. I only mark four blocks at a time and always start with the chalked marks since they seem to disappear quickly. By starting where the blades of two propeller blocks meet, I can work my way around all four without stopping. This saves times in starts and stops as well as having fewer threads to bury. I used grey Aurifil 50/2 cotton thread in the top and bobbin for the FMQ.

By starting where two propellers meet,
I can work my way around
all four blocks in this set
before stopping.

Because the ditch work subdivided the quilt into 18" sections, I started on an outside row. It's easier to work out problems there rather than in the center of such a large quilt.

Do you know how much I hate marking? What a chore; then it's still hard to see. But... the straight lines provide such a contrast. I usually use my walking foot to make straight lines; however, it was not possible to turn the quilt so frequently (and bunch so much under the quilt arm.) So I've been thinking about ruler work.

Detail of one propeller blade on Steam Punk block

Amy's Free Motion Quilting blog has a wonderful section on ruler work with a stationary machine. Her posts share loads of information about how to work with the rulers, which feet to buy or how to adjust your feet so they don't slide under the ruler. My question is how well this will work with my older machine (Bernina 1230.)  The throat plate is less than eight inches. Something to ponder.

After all the blades are quilted with straight lines I'll add curved free-motion quilting behind them, finish quilting the sashing, and do something in the border. Not sure what; time will tell.

Enjoy the day, Ann

How I Finally Sewed the Curves: A Third Method

Here's a closeup of some of the curves in my curve pieced quilt. Everything looked straightforward but there were a few issues.

Whenever I took pairs of curves off the wall to sew them together, the darn things grew! They never fit back in the right place. There was always a gap to the left, the right or between the sewn section and what remained on the wall! Finally I pinned all the curves to each other.

But when I removed the top from the wall, showers of pins scattered across the floor. I must have picked up a thousand pins.

Curves overlapping each other,
before trimming and turning the seam allowance

So I put it back on the wall. See how the curved edges are slightly uneven in the photo above? As I turned the seam allowance under, almost every short wedge left a gap in the top. I hadn't overlapped the curves enough and the uneven raw edges hid that fact. Trim both inside and outside curves evenly first!

With a clean raw edge, turning was much more successful. I pinned parallel and as close to the curve as possible before steam pressing the top.

Curves with seam allowance
turned under and pinned on the outside

Next, I grabbed part of the seam allowances on the wrong side of the top between my thumbnail and index finger. Then I removed the pin on top with my other hand and repinned it along the pressed seam line. I repeated this process until the seam was pinned along the fold line on the inside of the quilt top. See the photo below.

Curves pinned on the inside

I sewed along the fold line, removing pins as the needle reached them. It's easier to remove the pins if they point towards the needle.

Machine sewing the curves
along the pinned seam allowance

I pressed the seam again when the stitching was done and then trimmed the seam allowances to a quarter inch.

It's neither Sherri Lynn's nor Vikki's method but it worked for me.

Enjoy the day, Ann