Almost Perfect

The flimsy Pizzazz, is complete.

I think I counted about 40 unique fabrics before I got confused. I really like it.

After I put it back up on the design wall I sat back and looked at it.

And found four mistakes.

Oops.

Three I will fix, but one I shall leave as it is. And I'm not telling you where they are. 

Oh well.

Next up: winding bobbins.

 

Where & How

 

My Rail Fence quilt is made according to Sujata Shah's instructions in her book, Cultural Fusion Quilts, which is still in print and available at quilt shops, and many online places, including Amazon.

It was Sujata's technique of cutting pieces with gentle curves that let me to this. I love the technique and have used it several times, including Lightning in the Night Sky, Waltzing Matilda and Carnelian.

Sujata suggests "gentle" curves in her book, but I rather take that to the extreme. I like them really cuckoo and extreme. As always, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), but I think the technique makes much more interesting quilts.

Here is the quilt so far. The left half is all sewn together. The right half all the blocks are sewn into rows, but I haven't put them together yet.

One friend thinks this has a lot of Pizzazz, and I thought that was a great name until somebody else suggested Shockwave, which I think I like better!

Incidentally, I have updated my profile picture. This is what I really look like now, with longer hair!

Ready, Set, Sew!

I've done a lot of tinkering on this. You'll have to enlarge the photo to look more closely, but I have worked hard to ensure that the same fabric does not touch each other throughout the quilt. It was quite an undertaking. After a lot of work, this is what I will sew together.

 

I don't sew a whole long row of 14 blocks together. I sew half of it. It's easier (for me) to sew two big chunks together rather than do long rows of 14 blocks, which is about 56 inches long. In the strip above, there are seven blocks, and 14 unique fabrics.

As we all know, a design tightens up when sewn together. Here are seven rows of 7 blocks each. This is looking really good.

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Fourteen blocks equals 56 inches wide and I like my couch quilts to be 60 inches wide so I have set down an extra block at the far left edge of each the top ten rows shown above. I'm not 100% sure I'll add those extra blocks. I'll make that decision later.

My pal Cherie says this quilt has a lot of "pizzazz," and indeed it does. I think she has named this quilt.

Moving Along

 

I figured out the pattern for this quilt design and worked out the easiest way to finish the design of the quilt.

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I made an assortment of blocks. I had them on the recliner,

the table near my design wall,

and the stepladder.

I've covered the design wall with blocks and while the pattern is complete, now it's time for some tinkering and fine tuning to get this really humming.

And yes, I know this is crazy.

Black Rail Fence Variation

 

When I conceived this quilt I knew I was not going to make traditional rail-fence style blocks. I knew I wanted to make long zig-zags, like this quilt, River of Light, that I made back in 2023.

My plan was to have the zig-zags that go from corner to corner be bright prints on black, and on either side of them will be brights on white and then I want ever other zig to be whites on black, and then another zig of black, and then the brights on whites, etc, which you can sort of see in the photo above.

Now, when you make strips for this quilt, you pair a light with a dark, but in order to divide the white zigs into colored ones and black on white ones, you have ate be a bit sneaky. Which of course you all know I love to do. So notice the fabrics in the zig-zags above - they are not all the same fabric. My goal (in pretty much every quilt I do) is to make you LOOK and notice things. I try to use different fabrics that LOOK the same but aren't.

Anyway, that's the plan.

As you can see, I have a lot of work to do.

New Year, New Quilt

 My studio is clean, and I took a small break from working in there. I wrote a few quilt stories, but writing isn't the same as working. I'm planning a new tutorial, but that won't happen just yet. I didn't know what my next quilt would be.

Inspiration always pops up though. This is the back wall of Studio C, where my Chair Yoga class is held. I've been taking the class for the last ten weeks and looked at this wall when I walked in the door, and it never really hit me until yesterday. That arrangement of three windows over two has possibilities, so before class I got up to take a picture. Needless to say everybody wanted to know why. I don't know what I'll do with it yet, but that's not my concern. Something will pop up.

I was writing the story of the Lightning in the Night Sky quilt, and I love working with those curved blocks. I thought, I'll make another one! But as my friend Janet said to me the other day, when I commented about the size of my stash, "You have to think of it as, 'I can't die until I use that all up!'"

So I looked at my stash. What did I have a lot of that I could use up?

The answer was Brights on Black. And what to use with it?

That answer was Black on white, but I also wanted to use up some Brights on White.

Now fear not, those aren't the only fabrics I chose. Each pile of fabric has ten strips in it, so you can't see 90% of the fabrics I chose.

The object was to cut as many strips as I could from the fabrics that I chose, like this one. I can get one WOF strip. The rest I will cut into Macnas sized blocks for a quilt sometime later. Although this did reduce the quantity of those fabrics in my stash, I still have a lot of quilts to make before I made a serious sized dent in the stash. But one step at a time. you don't eat a whale in one sitting.

This is a small preview of where I am going, but even this doesn't tell the whole story. This was as far as I got, but hey, I cut 70 dark strips and 70 light strips in one day! 

Happy New Year!

Working in the Studio

 

I spent the last couple of days cleaning the studio and preparing backings and bindings for the quilts I have been making.

Next up I'll be sewing the binding on the Green birds quilt.

For those of you who haven't made birds yet, you can get my tutorial for them here at my Etsy shop.

Blitzen

 The Christmas Macnas quilt is a finished flimsy. I've decided to call it BLITZEN.

Merry Christmas!

The Sticker

I was shopping at the Night Owl Quilting Studio when I saw this sticker for sale. 

Yeah. Had to take that home with me.

I stuck it on my sewing machine. I sent the picture to my friend Julie. and she asked if I could get one for her.

So I did.

 

It's in the Details

The design for the Christmas Macnas Quilt is very predictable and basic, but that doesn't have to mean boring. I have done some things to make it a little bit special. To wit: 

Notice how the evergreen trees all point UP, the arches on the red blocks point UP, at the cats with the little red caps are also right side up.

The letters in the light fabric are all right side up...

And all the cars going "over the river and through the woods" are facing in the same direction. This isn't a big deal, but your eye notices these subtleties. 

Of course, you don't want to do this. (Sigh.)

Here, the top eight rows are all pieced together into one panel. In the lower left quadrant, the pieces are all sewn together in rows.

Working Out the Kinks

 

I replaced the fabrics that weren't working. (I left the cats alone. They were fun.)

Now for the slightly complicated part. 

I like my comfort quilts 60" x 72". With this size blocks, that works out to 15 blocks across by 19 down. In the photo above, there are 14 blocks. OK, no biggie, just add a block to the end of each row. Well, thing is, there are rules.

Rules?

EVERYBODY has rules in their quilts! These are the internal rules we believe will make the quilt better, or how we distribute the fabrics, colors, or whatever.

In this quilt, there is a pattern: Red, Green, Multi (repeat). Five Repeats equals fifteen blocks. BINGO!

AND the pattern of the blocks shifts by one-half block in each row.

BACK TO WORK!!

Christmas Macnas in Progress

 

Since I wanted the blocks to be arranged regularly, and on the diagonal, work on the quilt moved right along.

A couple of days later I had all the blocks on the design wall and the design was complete.

There were a couple of things I wasn't quite comfortable with, but after a lot of intense work, I needed to take a break. I took some detailed photos, so maybe you can see some of things that bothered me.

These are okay.

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The light fabric between the dark green and the lollipops is too bland.

The striped fabric next to the cats doesn't "read" as one color and it's distracting. And I'm not sure about the cats.

The musical notes fabric isn't working. Again, it's distracting.

OK, more work to do.

Christmas Macnas Begins

 Most of the Macnas quilts have blocks that are more-or-less randomly arranged, but for the Christmas Macnas Quilt, I thought about arranging them in diagonal rows, like a candy cane. So I cut some blocks, made some pairs and put them up on the design wall. I thought this was pretty good, so I kept going.

It looked okay, but I figured I'd need more than four rows to tell me if I really liked it.

This showed I definitely needed more rows. but it also showed some things I didn't like.

For one thing, there was a particular fabric that I just like, so I had to take those down, and find other fabric to use in it's place.

For another, I had to rearrange the blocks so they were angled more like a real candy cane.

The overall look is getting closer to what I wanted, but some pairs didn't work well next to others, and I had to change several.

For example, in a close up view of the photo above, you can see four very busy fabrics next to each other (which I don't like), and one light fabric that while a Holiday gold fabric, just looks blah.

This is the kind of thing that often looks good on your worktable, but just really bad once you get it up on the wall.

Changes will have to be made. What else is new?

The Next One

 

I've been sewing the blocks of Little Brother together. The big sections on the left are sewn together as is a big section at the upper right. I've been sewing the blocks in rows of seven blocks instead of one long complete row of fourteen blocks just because it's easier to wrangle. This might have a border, or not. I haven't decided yet. But I do have the backing on order.

A couple of weeks ago I got the brilliant idea of making a Christmas Quilt. So I ordered a bunch of Christmas themed fabrics, without really having a specific plan for them. They arrived yesterday, and I ran them through the washer and dryer.

The Christmas quilts and wall hangings I already have are red, green and white, with some gold. I don't have blues or other colors. It just isn't my thing, so I kept the fabrics I ordered in that range. I ordered some reds,

These can best be described as "multi's."

These are greens (duh).

And these are the whites and lights.

Some of these I found in my Christmas stash. It's pretty clear to me that a Christmas Macnas Quilt would work with these, so that's the next one.

I've actually got several Macnas themed quilt ideas floating around in my head.

So, Wordle. It's a puzzle. You have six tries to guess a five letter word. I like to start with a particular word. My current streak is 160. My win rate is 98%. I used to think I was pretty good, but a friend of mine consistently got the answer in fewer guesses than I did. Anyway, I don't care how many guesses I need as long as I solve the thing. 

What's really funny, is that I am MUCH MUCH better when I trust my gut. So I will put in my first guess, and the thing tells me if I have any letters that are correct. Then I have a standard second guess. I like knowing if I've got the vowels. What's funny is after that guess a word often pops into my head. I mean it just POPS! I don't know where it comes from. I have learned to trust it, because most of the time, that is the correct word. Sometimes I will consider the word that pops into my head, and look at the results in the game and my brain comes up with many other options (or it simply has no logical idea whatsoever) and I think, No, it couldn't possibly be THAT, and I will enter some logical answer only to be told it is wrong.

And then, when I give in and say, oh what the fart, I'm going to enter what my Gut says, and I do, and damn it, my gut was right.

You would THINK I would listen to said gut all the time. 

Nope. My BRAIN has to butt in and be all logical about it.

Today's World 1642, after my two guesses, my gut gave me a word, and I didn't listen. Fourth guess I enter what my gut's answer and it was right.

Too freaking funny.