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.

About Those Lazy Hexagons...

 You didn't think I was going to leave them alone, did you?

When I was first playing with this, I knew I wanted the triangles that make up those hexagons to NOT be dark blue, so I just grabbed random SS Triangles (yes, I have about 300 or so already made) from the SST bin and put them up on the wall to establish the basic design.

You can probably figure out why the triangles above are circled. In my opinion they stick out too much.

Remember, I have decided that for THIS quilt, I wanted to showcase the dark blue diamonds. 

They are not on the design wall because I have spent the last couple of days sewing the side triangles to them.

Now all art manipulates what you are seeing in one way or another. Packages are designed to grab your attention and advertising does the same thing. But good design means that the artist has considered what HE or SHE wants you to see, and has arranged the elements in the artwork (or quilt) so that you see precisely what he or she wants you to notice. I WANT you to focus on the blue diamonds. I do not want any of the other colored triangles to hijack your attention. 

The ones circled above, in my opinion, do just that. Remember the EYE is first drawn to CONTRAST of some kind. This is the way the eye in your head works. It has nothing to do with what you think you see first. We are designed to notice patterns, and that means we notice what sticks out of the ordinary FIRST. It goes back to Fight or Flight when humans first walked the earth and needed to keep themselves alive.

Now I do not mind the other triangles are different colored and I don't mind you seeing them. I just don't want the viewer to notice them FIRST or even second. I want them to be innocuous, and kinda boring. I want them to sink into the background just a bit. I want you to see they connect into those loose six pointed stars, but I don't want to hit you over the head to notice them. 

I could do that, of course. I could make them equally bright and busy. But then you would be looking at something that could be visually overwhelming and you might not notice the diamonds at all. There is, of course, a balance to all this, and good artists do it very well.

In MY quilt, I want the loose hexagons to be in the background. I want them to be the chorus, if you will. I don't want any of them to be the Divas.

So I have gone through my collection of SSTs and replaced the ones I thought grabbed too much attention with triangles that are less busy in terms of pattern or value. I have removed some triangles I thought were too dark, or the same value as the dark blue diamonds. I have for the most part left them in the same positions so you can go back and forth and see what I didn't like with what I changed. I am not sure I am finished, and quite frankly, I am not 100% sure I am done with making those changes. I have said it before and I will say it again, you can't really tell until you have ALL the blocks on the design wall. So when I have finished adding the side triangles to the 58 blue triangles that will make up the blue diamonds, I'll look at it again and reconsider. If I need to make more triangles I will.

Because I don't let one damn thing out of my studio that I am not 100% happy with. I know what I want, and most of the time I know exactly how to get it, so that's what I do.

I love reading comments that tell me you love me explaining the what and why I do what I do and the changes I make. Years ago one lady wrote that she could tell right away that something I had changed made all the difference, but she couldn't tell what I did. This post and the ones I have written and will continue to write about this quilt, will be my attempt to do just that.

Questions always welcome.

It's How You Look at It

 

I love taking an idea and pushing it around, to see what else it can do. These blocks are arranged the same way as in Saturday's post.

Here is the photo from Saturday's post, so you don't have to go anywhere else to see it. In the top photo the orange triangles form open six pointed stars and they have different colored diamonds in the middle.

In the bottom photo the same six pointed stars are less obvious because I have made them with different colored triangles. Your eye is more attracted to the dark blue diamonds at the center of each of the stars mostly because there is a strong light/dark contrast between the dark blue diamonds and the white background.

It's interesting how different they look.

The layouts above are about four feet across by three and a half feet high, so not quite big enough to fill out a whole quilt...

so I added more dark blue diamonds above, below and to the right of every "bowtie" pair of blocks. I like where this is going.

and because looking at something in a different way is always instructional, here is the same photo rotated ninety degrees.  It looks completely different, and oh, the possibilities this has!!!

But back to the unrotated view. Here I added more "bow tie" pairs thus surrounding the blue diamonds at the top and bottom with multi colored six pointe stars.

Now I am really loving this. I love the "graphic" quality of this. By "graphic" I mean "modern," "flat" (no three dimensional space), and "geometric." I love the traditional Amish quilts for the same reason.

While this is now five feet wide (60") it still isn't quite tall enough for me as a quilt. Remember I live where the ground freezes and it snows in winter. A lap sized quilt won't cut it here.

Here I have filled out the left and right edges and added more blue diamonds to the top and bottom. 

This quilt would be about 60" x 78" and that works for me.

Now this is a Scrap Slab Triangle quilt. You can see the others I have made here. And should you want to make one (and use up your scraps), you can get the updated tutorial here. I

n the past I have used small prints on cream or white fabrics to fill in the spaces around the slab triangles, but I have decided for this quilt, I will fill in the empty spaces with WOW fabrics.

Long triangles, left and right, which are NOT interchangeable in White On White fabrics which can be hard to tell apart.

What can possibly go wrong? (ROFLMAO)

By the way, Mom's boyfriend is doing very well. He can drive short distances and is going to physical therapy. 

Updated Scrap Slab Triangle Tutorial

 

Earlier this year I discovered the ruler set I use to make the Scrap Slab Triangle quilts was discontinued. I found two acceptable substitutes, and have been working to update the tutorial for use with the new rulers.

As long as I was at it, I added photographs of all the quilts I have made using this pattern. I also retook some photographs to make the ideas more clear, but the basic instructions remain unchanged.

It's live now. You can get my Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. I've made fourteen of these and each is different!

 

Jeweled Macnas Quilt Complete

 

The Jeweled Macnas Quilt is complete and I took it out for some beauty shots. 

There was a new stone wall in my neighborhood so I used it as a prop. I know I'll be photographing more quilts here.

I liked the sun peeking through the leaves for this photo. I've written the story of the quilt, and will gift it soon.

When I wrote about not hand sewing bindings on my quilts, I didn't mean to indicate I was doing it because I couldn't sew invisibly. I am going to stop because it HURTS when I do it, so the answer is definitely NOT to do my hand sewing on the back. I'm inclined to agree with Wanda. If the quilt is Very Special, I may hand sew the binding, but otherwise I'll sew it on by machine. Most people never notice anyway.