Size Matters

 

I've prepared about 75% of the blocks needed for the no-batting quilt for my DGD. The design wall is not nearly big enough, since this quilt needs to be about the same size as a flat sheet for a queen bed. There needs to be about six more rows added to the length....

and this piece will be added to the right side of the quilt to make it big enough. I calculated it would need about 450 pairs. I've got most of those made, so now I have to start sewing the blocks that are up on the design wall and get this going.

I'll be working on that this week pretty intensely as the pool at the Y where I go for my Arthritis Swim classes is closed this week for the annual maintenance. It's amazing how much I miss it.  Can't wait to get back in the water, exercise to oldies music and catch up with the other ladies of the class.

I don't usually make quilts this large. It veers into territory I consider "quilt wrangling" which is simply awkward to maneuver around. I'm 72 and although I can get down on my hands and knees and get back up again, it isn't as easy as it used to be and it sure isn't fun.

The reason why this quilt is so big is that it is destined to live on a bed just atop the flat sheet whenever the weather is warm  - so it substitutes for a blanket, but isn't as heavy. Therefore it needs to cover the entire bed, be long enough to tuck under the mattress at the bottom and to cover the body or bodies of whoever is sleeping in the bed.

You can see the no-batting quilt I made for myself in action in the photo above. Mine lives on the bed all the time, on top of the top bedsheet and under the blanket. In the summer I replace the wool blanket with a cotton one, and on hot nights, I toss the blanket aside.

I Hate it When...

 

I've decided to make a "Nonchalant" quilt for my DGD as her no-batting, not quilted quilt. I want to use up the leftover Macnas blocks I have, so I counted how many I had, then went through my scraps of white fabrics with bright colors and cut Macnas sized blocks. I had to cut enough WOWs (about 400), so I did that. Over the last few days I have been sewing pairs together. 

So far so good.

Then I ran out of white thread, so I got another spool of thread, threaded my machine and sat down for a power sewing session. I had about 50 pairs to sew.

After I was done, I started cutting them apart. Imagine my dismay when I saw this on one side of the blocks.

All fifty of them!

No point in getting aggravated about it, so I got my seam ripper and ripped all the seams out, then rethreaded my machine, sewed a couple of test blocks and sewed those fifty pairs again.

Sigh.

Steps

 

I taught a class on my Scrap Slab Triangles quilts this past weekend at the Night Owl Quilt Studio in Amherst NH. I brought seven of these quilts to show the students, and discussed what was different about each of them. It was a great class.

Later at home I worked out how to make these look like boxes or stepping stones. So that will be my next one. This photo shows how, above. It was made with my leftover pieces and needs a bit of fine tuning, but you get the drift.

If you are interested in making a Scrap Slab Triangle quilt, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Happy Birthday DGD!

 Here's an early birthday wish to my Darling Granddaughter. I don't know how TEN years have passed! 

Her thrifty grandmother has been counting all the extra Macnas blocks that were bright colors on white and there are enough to make a good sized no-batting quilt for her, so that is in the works.

Join Me Up!

 

It was time to sew this quilt together. But first I had to cut the setting triangles for the sides and bottom.

It was easier not to put the pieces I had sewn together back up on the design wall. Eventually it was easier to see how the layout was working and not to be confused about what was to be sewn to what, I just moved all the pieces to the floor of the studio.

Any concerns I had about the success of this design just evaporated as soon as I saw it like this. This is going to be a knockout!

DGD is thrilled.

Sliced and Paired

 

Slicing the blocks in half diagonally and then matching pairs together and sewing was fun. It went faster than I had expected.

Now that the quilt will be a bit smaller, it will only need 50 or so blocks. I have them all sewn, but haven't really tinkered with the design yet. The half square spaces on the bottom and left will be black, and the ones on the top and at right will be white.

My DGD is very happy and excited with this. I am also thinking about what to do for her "thin" quilt. I shall make it the way my grandmother made ours all those years ago - tied with crochet cotton. All the knots are still intact. I have one that is almost 50 years old and it has held up rather well. We used them daily and they were washed regularly.

My DIL teased that her daughter's room would have the highest concentration of Lynne Tyler quilts anywhere.

"Not hardly!" I texted back. "You can't compete with this!" It's my quilt closet, and this isn't even all of them.

We Interrupt...

 

I finished up making the blocks and then sliced a couple and sewed them together, threw them up on the design wall and took this picture. Then I sent it to my son and DIL.

DIL: OMG that's going to be a really cool quilt!

DS: Hang it in a museum!

So I text back that I think, YES! It's going to be a hell of a quilt, and I had to ask if they really wanted me to tie it instead of having it quilted.

My DIL texts that she thinks it ought to be quilted, but that my DGD really wants a thin quilt like the green one I made for them.

So we go back and forth, and we talk to my DGD. She wants a thin quilt. I'm happy to make her one.

But it won't be this quilt.

Blushing Zebras

I'm almost finished sewing the blocks together, but I simply had to slice a couple of them and resew them to see what they'd look like.

CLEARLY this is going to be really cool.

I sent the photo above to my granddaughter and my son said not only did she think it was pretty but she "squeeked really high pitched." They all love it and my DIL loves the name I have chosen, Blushing Zebras.

Thank you Starsthatblaze! Haven't heard from you in a long time. Nice to know you're still around. Also hello Sewgirl!

I should finish sewing the blocks together later today (Friday) and then over the weekend I'll start slicing the blocks apart, matching pairs and resewing them together. REALLY looking forward to this next part. 

 

Lynne Changes Her Mind

Once I had designed all the blocks in the BWR Quilt I put them up on the wall and stood back. One of them stood out like a sore thumb for being too wimpy. It's the second from the right on the top row. From a distance (hell, even close up) the outer fabric looked too much like the fabric in the center and it just seemed insubstantial compared to the others.

So I made another block using a fabric that had more contrast in the outer ring, and I like it a lot better, and will make the remaining three blocks using the zebras in the outer ring.

They look better now. I still have fifteen more blocks to make before I slice the blocks in half diagonally and match up pairs.

Here are all the blocks I have sewn on the design wall. It doesn't really show what it will look like eventually, but it kinda sorta gives you an idea.

This is still fun, but it needs a name. Any suggestions?

More DGD RWB Blocks

 

I've designed the last three blocks for my granddaughter's Black White and Red quilt. I will be making 64 blocks in all, 32 with a black center like these, above,

and 32 with a light center, like these above.

Twenty of the light-centered blocks have red in them. I've made all those, but now I have to make a total of four of each of the blocks I have designed.

Here are all the blocks I have designed. The sixteen different blocks are unique, but there are fabrics that are used in more than one, but I have changed their placement.

I have made 32 of the 64 blocks, so I'm getting there. 

More DGD Black White Red

 
I was eager to see the fabric combinations I had planned made up into blocks. So I made one of each. I have plans to make four each of these color combinations, but I wanted to see the blocks next to each other. These are the three combinations in the last photo from yesterday's post.

These are some darker blocks I had planned to make.

I always tell my students not to get too hung up in sorting, organizing or shopping for fabrics by category. I think making categories is a bad idea because things could get "stuck" there. I found this fabric above in the Christmas section of my local LQS. The Christmas section is often a great place to look if you want reds or greens, but often you have to hunt through the store to find it. XOXO! I mean Hello! Do you not think this is a perfect fabric to include in a quilt for someone you love?

(Incidentally ALL fabric in my stash is sorted by COLOR and COLOR only.)

I needed more red blocks, so this is what I selected when I was planning all this the other night.

But then I remembered I have a big bin full of black and white scraps. Very often fabrics in this bin wasn't of sufficient quantity to make the outer edge of the blocks, but it was a perfect place to find fabrics for the centers or even the middle section.

The XOXO red became this, which I like very much...

But I found a better option for the center of this red block. I bought and used that black and white cat fabric back in 2017...? 

You may have noticed a preponderance of cat fabrics in this quilt.

Because, like, duh!

Granddaughter Black White & Red

 

I mentioned briefly that my darling granddaughter (DGD) wants me to make her a quilt that is black, white and red. I kinda sorta knew where I was going with it, but that idea didn't thrill me so I got out my quilt books and started browsing. The quilt above is SLICED, which I made way back in 2013, from Amy Ellis's Book, Modern Neutrals. We all know how much I love neutrals (NOT!) so naturally I did some tinkering. I liked this quilt back then and I thought it would be suitable as a Black, White and Red quilt for my DGD, so I sent her a picture. (Remember she lives on the other side of the country.)

My son said she loved the design. I had another question. More BLACK than Red or more RED than Black?

The answer was MORE BLACK! 

Well all righty then. Not quite what I was expecting from an almost ten year old girl. When I told Julie she asked, "Does she know black fades fastest of all colors?"

"No, of course not," I replied, "However, you and I both have one person in our lives for whom we would do anything. I'm her grandmother, and I'll pretty much do anything she wants."

Besides, this is the quilt that is going to hide under the blankets during the day, or at least that's the theory.

I did, however, extract some concessions from DGD. I could use black and white fabrics, which she likes, and the blacks could have bright colors on them. With those two concessions I knew I was in business.  No problem. I can do that. Now that the work on the floors is all done and I have put the house back to rights, I can get into the studio and get to work. I made a couple of test blocks and then went through the stash to make combinations I thought would work. You can see some of them above.

Of course I started working before I figured out how many of each block I needed, but I wanted to see if what I had in my head would work in real life before I got too committed. But once I had these blocks on the design wall I knew I was good to go.

I did get my notebook out and I did the math. The amounts on the page above are wrong. I need 20 Red, but only 10 of the Dark "L" blocks, and I need 30 of the blocks with the dark center and Light "L."

Here are the fabrics for those ten dark L blocks. I will be making four blocks from each combination. It's always good to have a few extra.

This is to give you an idea of where this is going.

Living Room Before and After

 

This is the before photo of my living room the night before the installers came to replace the floor.

This is  an in-process photo.

This is the after. I really like the new floor and I'm very happy with it.

Here's the Silver and Pink quilt along with the backing fabric I have chosen for it.

The Blackest Black

 Black is a hard color to dye because there is no single "source" for it. Most black is a mixture of  several other dye colors, and manufacturers have to use a LOT of it to make black fabric BLACK.

So it wasn't really a surprise last week when the color catchers that came out of the wash with the black fabrics I bought were this dark (and actually they are DARKER in real life).

Now, I should tell you that I wash EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF FABRIC before I even bring it into my studio. I never used to use Color catchers when I washed new fabrics because I (erroneously) thought that washing the fabric would remove ALL the excess dye. I was mistaken, so now whenever I buy fabric I always include color catches in the wash cycle.

Since I bought these black fabrics to use in a Black, White and Red quilt for my granddaughter, I knew the blacks would bleed into the other fabrics after the quilt was complete. I didn't want that, so I decided to soak the black fabrics in detergent using Vickie Welsh's instructions, here. 

Doing the red fabrics last week showed me the faucet in the bathtub leaked, and while it was only a drip drip drip, that was enough to almost fill the tub to overflowing if I let something soak all night. (Can you say, saved by the skin of my teeth?)

So when I needed to soak the black fabrics I used one of the large plastic storage bins I have. As you can see from the photo above, taken over twelve hours later, the fabric really needed it, and a lot of black dye was released.

This is what it looked like when I drained the tub.

This is what the color catchers looked like after I washed the black fabrics again. You can see they are lighter than the light gray fabric from the pink and silver quilt and just a bit darker than the white bath towel visible in the background.

I've since ironed all the fabrics and will be ready to start on my granddaughter's quilt early next week. The guys are going to be here for the next two days replacing the carpet in my living room with Laminated Vinyl Flooring, so my house is going to be in disarray for a few days.

I have one big long seam to sew to finish the Pink and Silver quilt top. That and getting the backing ready for it will happen while the guys are working on the floor. (I'll be taking refuge in the studio.)