Forward!!

 I drew out four blocks to scale on graph paper, and now that I know for sure how it will look, I am very happy with the proportions of the block.

With that decision made, I rearranged some of the blocks. I still need to add blocks to the bottom. I had a brainstorm about that - I'll place the black and white pieces where they will look good and then I can easily add the colored triangles afterwards, Because this is so close to the floor, I'm going to sew the blocks together from the top down, so I'll have more room at the bottom of the design wall to work. At my age, getting down close to the floor is tricky.

When I conceived this quilt last week, I wanted the quilt to be stupid easy to sew together. No points at risk of getting chopped off, nothing complicated to sew. As you can see from the wrong side of the pinwheel block above, mission accomplished.

I've sewn the top row of pinwheels together, above, and parts of the next three rows.

I thought you'd like to see some of the blocks closer up.

Size Matters... I think?

 

I usually know what I'm doing. But that doesn't mean I don't get second thoughts. When I conceived of this quilt originally, I knew how big I wanted the triangle to be. I mean I thought I knew in my head. I knew I wanted the long point to be beyond the halfway point of the block. So I worked it all out in my head and made more than a few samples until I got it right.

But it wasn't until I decided to make these into pinwheels that I started to worry. On the design wall the pinwheels looked perfect, but once I sewed them together they would shrink in size. Would they be too small? 

Only one way to find out. So I sewed four together. The result is the photo above. But you know me, I had to know what the blocks would look like if I made it bigger, so I did that.

This isn't really a fair example because the pinwheel is VERY bright and the background is consistent,

Here they are side-by-side. My first impression was the bigger pinwheel was too big. I had originally conceived this as a black and white quilt with some color in it.

I sewed some more blocks together and put them on the design wall next to the un-sewn pieces and took a step back.

I hemmed and hawed.

I was torn.

Finally I called my son who has a terrific eye for proportion. His reply: "...this is an argument in millimeters." We went back and forth. I was really torn. "I don't think remaking the quilt is necessary. I think it looks good already," he reiterated.

I was still on the fence. "[Mom,] Proportions are perfect before sewing, yes. The ones you've sewn still look good. We're not into bad territory here. I think if you make them bigger you're doing to make them too big."

We talked some more and then he said something that made me realize when I sew the pinwheel blocks together, I'd lose 1/4" all around with the seam allowance. For some reason that finally penetrated my skull.

Then he added, "Glad you didn't line up the pinwheels, Mom, that would have been really boring..." I laughed. Gosh I love this kid!

So OK, I'm good.

I wanted to share this with you because I want you all to know that EVERYBODY has doubts, even me.

Court Jester Jokes Around

You know me. I'm never happy with the status quo. I moved some of the blocks around and got this pinwheel. I liked it, and thought I'd play with it.

I could have lined up the blocks so the pinwheels were lined up in rows and columns, but where is the fun in that, so I offset them. I liked the way this was turning out.

I made more blocks and put them up on the design wall. But something was bugging me. I have learned that even in the earliest stages of work, if something bothers me, I have to pay attention. 

So I backed up and took a good look at what was on the design wall. When I had the first few blocks up on the wall (second photo) I thought to myself that this was FUN. But as I looked at the design wall some of the pinwheels were not "fun." Why not? I had to think about it. Some of the pinwheels were FUN and some were not. 

I figured it out. Some were FUN and HAPPY. Those were BRIGHT. 

This pinwheel was not "fun." First, it was DARK. The opposite of fun. Next one of the wings was not reading as a solid shape (the one on the upper right.) 

So I started moving the pieces around, trying to make sure each pinwheel had a bright triangle in it, either yellow or orange or pink or a limey-green. After a few moves I had some blocks that didn't fit anywhere. I have learned to take a look at these.

These were all cut from the same multi-color fabric. That was a bummer. I had had high hopes for this fabric in this quilt. Well that's out!

I made a few more blocks and put them up and yes, the pinwheels were happier. 

There are other fabrics that may go (there's a green with boxes and a very busy black and white stripe I am on the fence about) but I have to put a whole lot more blocks up on the wall before I make big changes. I have enough black and white squares cut to fill the design wall, and I have to make those blocks and get them up there before tinkering starts in earnest.

This is not going to take long. Working title for this is Court Jester.

Cooking With Gas

 For the last few weeks I've kinda been stuck. I've had some things to do, (meaning in the studio) and I've done them but aside from checking them off the "honey-do" list, their completion hasn't really felt very gratifying.

Now the horrors (and I don't use that word casually) of the things going on in our country right now have certainly played their part. My heating company has already notified me that my monthly heating expenses will increase next month, and the company that provides my prescription coverage for Medicare won't be offering it next year. It's damned scary. Make sure to vote come Election Day. To say nothing of the price of gas which is over $4.00 a gallon.

I know I have to finish my granddaughter's no-batting quilt, but what's holding me back is the idea of ironing that gigantic piece of backing fabric, and then getting down on my hands and knees to lay the top on the back and pin it in place so I can tie it... I know I have to do it, but it's hard work at my age and I'm procrastinating.

And while I generally have SOME idea of what kind of quilt I want to make next, in this case I just haven't had a clue.

So I sat in my chair in the studio and looked at the stash. What did I have a lot of that I hadn't touched in a while? Black and Whites. I have a lot of them, and I have a sweater sized plastic bin full of bits of black and white fabrics. OK, so HOW could I use these and make something interesting that I hadn't done? I did not want to do another Macnas quilt, or another Scrap Slab Triangle quilt, or another bird quilt.

Flipping through a couple of quilt books gave me the idea of a modified Snowball block, or a square with one corner chopped off and another fabric inserted in a triangle in one corner. Yeah, that's nice, but I didn't want something too predictable. If I would use a lot of fabrics from my black and white collection, I needed the traingles in the corners to be different.

And I didn't want them HST's either. I wanted them long triangles, twice as tall as they are wide. And I knew about the proportion of them. I felt a 6" block would be too big, so I'd want a block that would finish  out at 4".

After MUCH tinkering, I had this, and I liked the size and the proportions. Getting to this was tricky because although I knew how to cut the colored triangle block consistently, but working out how to cut the angle in the corner consistently and reliably took several iterations of attempts.

I wanted the triangles in the corner to be exactly the same size throughout the quilt, so next I had to work out how to cut those.

As it turned out I could use leftover Macnas blocks.

Which was really good because I have a LOT of them.

Here's how I'll sew a colored triangle to the white "square." Yes, it's bigger. Lots bigger.

Once the triangle is sewn and pressed, I'll trim it using this ruler. As you can see I have marked the ruler with tape to identify the outside edges. I'll trim off the excess and end up with a perfect block, like the second photo in this post. 

Sure I've got to trim it, but quite frankly every block you sew into a quilt should be trimmed square before you sew it to other blocks. That's how your quilt will always lie flat. This isn't wasting fabric, although I've heard some complaints, but for me the greater waste is wasting TIME, because you can never get that back. Doing it my way means it's a lot less fiddly, with much simpler cutting and fewer burned fingers from pressing a too small piece of fabric.

So here are twelve of them. I don't like the pink at the center of the bottom row, but that's not the thing you know about until you put blocks up on the design wall. But I like the direction where this is headed, and I already have some ideas of how I will tinker with this. 

At 4" square, I'll need about 286 blocks to make a quilt 18 rows tall by 16 blocks wide.

I've got a fair amount of work to do before I can really see where this is going. But now I'm "cooking with gas!"**

** (translation: I know what I'm doing, and I'm humming right along.)

  

Blue Diamonds

After sewing all the rest of the blocks together for this quilt, I started sewing the blocks together into long rows. Here the top three rows are sewn up (but not to each other.)

A day later I sewed the rest of the blocks into rows and was in the process of sewing these rows together.

The top half was resting over the back of the wing chair in the living room.

Yesterday I put all the rows together.

Here is a close-up of one of the corners. You can see some of the different WOWs assembled into the blocks. I'm not sure how successful this idea is, but I like it.

Here's the body of the quilt rotated 90 degrees. I never said it was "wrong." I think it has great potential. I'd love to see somebody make it this way. I'd love to see somebody else's take on it.

 

Lazy Hexagons Grows

 I've started making the corner blocks for the Lazy Hexagons quilt (Needs a better name, suggestions welcome).

I've tried to make sure the same fabric isn't next to itself. It sure does help to have a black light.

It's easier to put these on the floor rather than get up and down the ladder to put them on the design wall.

Here are six rows sewn up. Obviously this is looking at them the "wrong" way, but it's still fun!

Rolling Along

 

I've pinned the side triangles to the remaining colorful triangles.

I've sewn them all together and pressed them. Next I have to trim them square. I trim every block because no matter how good I think the blocks look, they always need to be trimmed.

In the corners where there are no colored blocks, I plan to make blocks that are all White on White.

Green Birds Beauty Shots

 

Last year several readers made suggestions for the title of the Green Birds quilt. There were a lot of good suggestions, but I decided to with "Green With Envy."

Here's a closeup of the quilting, which is pretty stellar!

If you want to make your own birds - of any color - you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

You Can't See It... But!

 

I've sewn all the WOW side triangles to the dark blue center triangles, trimmed the blocks so they are perfectly square and put them back up on the design wall. I have also sewn the white side triangles to a few of the blocks on the left hand side of the quilt, but you can't see them in this photo.

However when I turned the lights off and shone my black light on it, then modified the photo so it showed in black and white, you can see what I have done. You can see which blocks have the white sewn to them. 

The empty blocks are where I have moved the colored triangles so I can pin the side triangles to them. I normally do this while "watching" television.

So while you can't see much change happening, I promise you I'm really working.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle quilt. I have made thirteen of them. This is the fourteenth. I was amazed at how many variations there are. If you want to use up your scraps to make a quilt like this you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's been updated with instructions on how to make it with the new rulers and has images of all thirteen quilts.

Beauty Shots

 

I finally got outside to take some long overdue beauty shots of a couple of quilts. This is Nonchalant. Everyone who sees it loves it, and I agree. There's a lot to like. It's something anyone can make. It's just bright prints on a white background alternating with White on White blocks. This one has spectacular quilting also.

This is Blitzen, a Christmas themed Macnas quilt that LOOKS simple, but really isn't. The colors repeat in a very specific pattern, each print is kept right side up throughout the quilt (no upside down trees) and the values are very precisely placed. It's a Christmas themed quilt, but I didn't want to knock you over the head with it.

It was my pal Julie who long ago inspired me to make pieced backings for my quilts using leftover blocks and fabrics. The leftover blocks in this quilt are often prints that didn't work on the front surrounding a Christmas themed pre-printed panel. While I was arranging the quilt to take this photo a pinecone dropped on the quilt. It seemed appropriate so I left it there!

The gate to the community garden in my neighborhood is a great place to display a quilt. It was cloudy the day I took this quilt out for beauty shots, but it seems perfect for the mood of this quilt.

I showed this photo the other day, but it's just so pretty I had to show it again.

These are Macnas quilts, inspired by my pal Julie Sefton. She and I have each made about a dozen of these. I still have four that have yet to be quilted. Nothing really special about these - start with blocks that are 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" and have some fun.

Hijacked!

 My brother is visiting from California. I knew he was coming, but I thought it was a bit later in the month. My mom got the dates wrong. So my schedule got a bit messed up.

My brother was here to visit my mother and give a talk about rock climbing to a group at Dartmouth College. We got to see the autumn foliage on the drive up to Hanover NH.

I agreed to make us all lunch to eat after the hour plus drive and before the lecture. I had wanted to have everyone over for dinner and this turned out great. I had a lot of fun putting these lunch boxes together. I made tuna salad sandwiches on home made bread, veggies and hummus, cheese, crackers, cookies, a hard cooked egg, a bag of crackers and a bottle of water. My brother described it as beyond anything he had expected and it was "fabulous."

This is my brother on the right, with the guy he climbed El Capitan with for the first time, over 50 years ago, talking to someone from the audience after the talk. My brother has recently retired from rock climbing. He is 71, and was up on El Capitan as recently as last year.

I finally finished the Little Brother macnas quilt. I had made it around Christmastime last year, and got it back from the longarm quilter in June. This is one of my favorite beauty shots of the quilt.

I'm finally caught up in taking beauty shots of the quilts I have finished this year, and I'll be showing them off over the next few days. Work on the scrap slab triangle quilt has been set aside with my brother's visit.