Orange

 

I'm wrestling with the idea of Christmas colored scrap slab triangle quilt. Mostly I'm stuck with how to make it colorful and yet balance the colors, so I've set the idea aside for now.

 I went through one of my big scrap bins and pulled out all the orange fabric.

I ironed my fabrics and paired them up.

Then I cut them up into Scrap Slab Triangles. It's amazing how quickly I made forty of these.

I've made a dozen Scrap Slab Triangle Quilts, and I know there are more to come. If you want to make one, you can get my tutorial here.

Christmas Already?

 

When I was making the Kangamangus quilt I liked the way that six scrap slab triangles made a kind of a star.

I thought it could be fun to show them off as stars in a quilt for Christmas.

So I dug out my Christmas fabrics and made slabs, and then cut triangles. 

Here are a few of the blocks on the design wall.  I have no idea where this is going yet. Arranging them this way is too much like the Kangamangus quilt, so I will definitely change that idea up. Generally when I make a Christmas quilt I limit myself to Red, Green and Gold, but that might be a challenge in this. At any rate, I'm still playing with the idea. It will change. It's very much an idea in progress.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt, and you can get my tutorial for them here, at my Etsy shop.

In other news, I have been following a "pre-diabetic" style diet by tracking my carbohydrate intake and doing all the other things that diabetics need to do. I have been testing my blood daily and tracking my glucose levels. 

I went through all my cookbooks (I have over 100) and separated those that listed Nutritional information for each recipe. When I am planning my meals for the week, I reach for those first.

My A1C is where it ought to be, and I have so far lost 8 pounds. It's not just about the food. It's a complicated process, but I do not want Diabetes, and am fully aware this is a diet/lifestyle I must follow for the rest of my life. Because I plan to be here to live it.

Binding and Backing

 

I made the backing for the Needle in a Haystack quilt. I know it's going to be terrific!

I figured as long as I was at it, I should create the bindings for the other quilt tops I have waiting to be quilted. From left, the binding for the second Nightingale quilt; the binding for Needle in a Haystack; binding for the third Nightingale quilt; binding for the Joyful quilt, and binding for Cat's quilt.

I thought, well, in for a penny, in for a pound, so I also made the binding for three other quilts, the Bananas quilt; binding for the Little Boxe and the binding for the Harlequin quilt. And then I got the bright idea of labelling them in case something happened and I lost my mind and forgot which binding was for which quilt.

So here they all are, waiting for their appropriate quilts.  I'll be collecting the Joyful quilt next week, and will be dropping off Harlequin, Kangamangus and the Little Boxes quilts for quilting.

And by the way, you have not lost your mind. I have made tenths  quilt tops since I retired.

What's next? I did some stash replenishment shopping and I have ironing to do over the next few days.

Needle in a Haystack Flimsy

 

The Needle in a Haystack quilt is a flimsy. Here it is, above. You can click the photo and then click again for a closeup.

After a couple of false starts I decided not to have a border, and will instead use that lovely floral I showed the other day as the backing and binding.

I have gone shopping for fabric online and have done some stash replenishing, particularly yellows and oranges, were a bit thin on the shelf.

I still have lots of scraps and an idea based on the Kangamangus quilt, so I will be tinkering with that design to see where else I can take it.

You Really Didn't Think...

 You really didn't think I would make a quilt so uniformly ... Blue, did you?

SURELY, my regular readers would expect me to put in some sort of joke...

Or visual pun,

Or anomaly,

that MAKES YOU LOOK!

Surely you all know that I love nothing more than breaking the rules while following them at the same time. Above there is indeed one purple triangle. It's been in the photos all along, but you have missed it because....

VALUE SUPERCEDES COLOR!

(Nyah, ah, ah!)

So, for those of you who missed it, you can often substitute a different color in your quilt as long as it is the same VALUE. Most people will miss the difference, because it looks like it belongs. It DOES belong, because it is the same VALUE.

So the title of this quilt is: Needle in a Haystack.

As in, Needle? What needle? Where?

I love to put surprises in my quilts to reward viewers who are paying attention.

SO, why purple? Well, there are some pinks in this quilt, in the light blocks with the insects and beetles and the lotus leaves. 

Pinks are really light red-violets. You can see the relationship in the photo above. I tried this red violet block in the quilt but it didn't "hide" as well as the purple did when lined up with the other blue triangles.

As you can see.

Purple is a mixture of blue and red, so the purple block fit in with the overall plan. Of course I used a fairly nondescript print so it wouldn't draw too much attention to itself.

THIS IS IMPORTANT...

WHAT I WANTED was for the different block to DISAPPEAR with the others. I wanted it to be there, but I WANTED it to HIDE. I wanted viewers to notice it if they looked hard enough. Had I WANTED it to show off, I would have used the red-violet block. This was a conscious choice. The color, the print, the location for this block were all specific, conscious. and deliberate choices.

When YOU make YOUR quilts, you have choices too. WHAT do you want your quilt to say? How do you want your quilt to LOOK? How do you want it to FEEL (visual feel, not texture.) As Yogi Berra famously said, "If you don't know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else."

I knew what I wanted this quilt to be from the very beginning. The choices I made were choices that would make that idea come to life. It is very important to know that when you make a quilt, or any other piece of art.

Kill Your Darlings...

 

Sometimes no matter how much you like something, you have to recognize that it doesn't work and you have to get rid of it. In the block above, the color of the flowers in the blue triangle on the right match (and thus blend) perfectly with the blue in the fabric on the left.

This kinda breaks my heart as this fabric is the inspiration for the entire blue quilt. 

You can see that blue flowered triangles in the layout above. You can see that they attract the eye right away, and they also do not "read" as blue. There's a white flower up there, that is surrounded by blue and it reads as a "hole." That's a no-no.

Here I have covered up those flowered fabrics and the design really shines. What I want in this quilt is to emphasize the sharp blue triangles. Without those flowers, what you see is TRIANGLES. Which is what I want.

I also removed the light blues in the above blocks. These light blues "read" as too dark and were too close in value to some of the other blues that were used as "darks."

I ended up discarding 20 blocks, which is 12% of the total blocks on the design wall, so I had to make more blocks before I started to design the quilt for real.

And one more thing:

Am I the only quilter who has ever done this?

And I did it TWICE!

So How Did I...?

 

You're probably wondering how did I cut down the long triangles from the template (on the right) to the smaller size on the right. I mean, I'm sure you know how I did it, but let me tell you how I did it EFFICIENTLY. 

Because we all know I don't mind working hard, I just don't like working STUPID.

For this design I'd need over 250 left leaning right triangles. And they had to lean in the correct direction or I couldn't use them. I knew I sure as hell wasn't going to cut them one at a time.

I wanted to cut my traingles 8-1/2" tall, so putting a piece of painter's tape near that line would help me, but I'd need more than that.

I figured I could get two triangles out of a rectangle of fabric, but how big would the rectangle be? 8-1/2" was one dimension, but I needed the other, so I placed two properly cut triangles on my worktable and measured. It was somewhere between 5 inches and 5-1/4 inches. That was good enough for me. So I cut my WOF strips 5-1/4" wide.

Then I taped a 6" ruler to a 2-1/2" one and subcut my strips into two 5-1/4" x 8-1/2" pieces. This meant I had FOUR of each (because WOF = two layers of fabric.)

Next I flipped one piece over so both rectangles were wrong side up. I aligned the edges so one rectangle was perfectly sitting atop the other.

Next I lined up the top and left edges of the fabric with the top edge on the ruler and the 8-1/2" line, which I marked with the blue painter's tape so there would be no confusion. I cut along the long edge of the triangle, pulled the other pieces of fabric out of the way slightly and trimmed the corners.

Then I rotated the ruler, matched up the edges and cut the next piece.

Worked like a charm.

After that all I had to do was sew them up.

You know, "all."

***Now, I because I wanted my triangles leaning to the left, and because I wanted the template to face UP (I find templates slipperier if you turn them upside down), I had to cut my fabric from the wrong side. If I had wanted them facing the other direction, I would have arranged the fabrics right side up.

Monochromatic <> Boring

 

Just because something is monochromatic (one color), it does not have to mean monotonous, or boring.

This quilt is shaping up to be just what I had envisioned. It just took me 126 blocks on the design wall to know for sure.

Yesterday I still needed to make about 45 blocks, and for that I had to cut more fabric, so that is what I did. I cut the blocks and sewed them into pairs and put them up on the design wall. These are arranged willy-nilly, with no editing whatsoever. That will change later today when I get to designing in earnest.

Blue Grows

 

As I watched a movie over the weekend I pinned some blue triangles together to sew together later. I think there were almost 50 of them.

I added them to the ones already up on the design wall. These rectangles are about 4" x 8". I have to fill the design wall full of blocks, so I will need 135 in total. I need about 40 or so more blocks.

I am liking this very much.

Blue Triangles Start

 I started sewing pairs of triangles together and put them up on the design wall. One of the things I liked about the Triangle Dance quilt was its liveliness, but I have not yet decided if I want this quilt to share feeling. Originally I conceived it as an all blue quilt.

Here I have cut more blocks and threw them up on the design wall. 

Arranging blocks is often like creating a Sudoku puzzle. It can be tricky to evenly distribute the various prints. Here I tried to put the busier colored lights in diagonal rows. Didn't thrill me.

Here I played with the idea of two different triangles next to each other creating parallelograms. This is a better idea in the imagination than in real life.

When I get stuck I remove ALL the blocks from the design wall and go back to the start. In this case, my original idea (even if I have since wondered if it would be too boring.)

It is quite literally monochromatic (one color) but that's not always a bad thing. I'm going to keep along this route, making more blocks and seeing where it goes. I have kept the busier blue prints in the "light" category for now. I always like to have a little surprise.

Nightingale Goes Home

 

Me, Erik & JF.

Tony, Erik & JF.

Tony is my insurance agent. At a meeting last fall when we were discussing my retirement, he mentioned that Erik's house had. burned down last summer and that he and his fiancee had escaped with nothing. They lost everything.  "Oh my gosh, does he need a quilt?" I asked.

Tony practically exploded from his chair. "That's a terrific idea!" 

I brought out my phone and a picture of the Nightingale quilt. "This is a picture of the quilt I just finished. Would that work?" Tony thought the quilt was stunning. "YES!" 

So we made plans. I wrote the story and send the quilt out to be quilted.

Tony and I presented the quilt to Erik on Wednesday. Erik is a big guy, and was near to tears when I told him the story and presented him the quilt. He kept saying the quilt was so beautiful, and he loved it, and his fiancee was going to love it too. We took pictures. 

I then presented the printed copy of the quilt's story to Erik. "I could tell you this story, but you'd forget it. This way you can remember it and share it with Jessica." Erik said, "Wow, now I'm gonna cry." He paused,  "I thought I was in trouble when Tony called me into the office!

"Well you will certainly be invited when the house is finished and we have our big housewarming party."

I accepted that invitation right away.

Erik kept saying he couldn't believe it.

Then it was time for me to leave and Erik and the team to get back to work. "I'll be here, but I don't think I'll be able to concentrate..." Erik laughed.

It's always fun when you gift a quilt!

New Blue Quilt

 

I ordered a bunch of lovely blues and I have been thinking of what to make with them. Here are the middle range blues. 

Finally I figured out what I wanted, and I would need some light blues too, so here are some light blues.

In 2015 I made this quilt from scraps, and I always liked it. The first question was how big did I want the triangles to be:

The triangles on the right are 9" tall and I thought they were too big. The ones on the left are 8" tall, and I like the fact that they lean to the right.

One of the things I liked about the inspiration quilt was the bright colors in the light fabrics, so I went through my stash and found a few I thought would work. I've started cutting some pieces, but I have a lot more to cut.

I'm looking forward to playing with this shape and the blues.

Backing for Nightingale # 3

 

To add the birds panel into the backing of the 3rd Nightingale quilt required a fair amount of math. The colored feather fabric was a 108" wide quilt backing fabric. I had to figure out how to cut that big piece apart intelligently so I could reassemble it and have it fit the way I wanted to. 

The first thing I had to do was cut two 30" panels by the length of the fabric I bought - about 2-1/2 yards. So easy peasy, right? Cut two 30" panels out of that?

Yeah, no. I'll spare you the details, but I did it. Then I had to cut two pieces of fabric to go above and below the center panel, then I had to sew the two long pieces to either side. Now you can see why I added some dark fabric around the bird panel before I added it to the backing.

Since working with these big pieces of fabric needed the whole table, I removed the lip on the bottom of the big work table that normally keeps things from sliding off. I realized I had done it when I heard the pin tin slide off and hit the floor, spilling pins all over.

Fortunately this was a non-event as I use steel pins and have a powerful magnet I use for just this purpose.

Answers to questions about yesterday's post:

Hudson wanted to know what fabric I bought for the Kangamangus quilt. It is "Quilting Treasure Frond Nouveau - Lush Leaves in Autumn. I found it at eQuilter.

Dear Naan, The Kancamagus Highway is spelled K-A-N-C-A-M-A-G-U-S. The only K in the name is the initial letter. I am spelling the title of my quit the way I heard the name way back when I was about 10, which is say I am deliberately spelling it wrong: Kangamangus.