Fabric!

 

After every big project, it's only normal for there to be a letdown. I've had two big highs lately - the renovation of my bathroom and Julie's visit - and I'm experiencing the letdown. I can't seem to get much of anything going. Or I can start, but I can't seem to generate the steam to continue any one project.

Let's face it, I've expended a LOT of energy in the first part of the year and I've run out of "gas." I need time to recharge. So I've been doing a lot of resting, reading (more on that in a bit) and not too much else.

I did, however, do a little bit of fabric shopping. I've got a pink bird quilt I'll need backing and borders and binding for, and there was a sale...

I told you I was reading. Victoria Finlay has written several books - about color (the history of pigments, not how to use it), jewels and now fabric. I'm very much enjoying the journey.

I may not be doing much sewing, but I have been doing a lot of THINKING. I want to update my tutorial about using fabrics - Making Your Fabric Work For You (aka MYFWFU). I know everybody thinks color is the most important thing, but I think if you know how to use fabric, with all the print and pattern, then you can get a lot more bang for your buck. A lot of it is how you see your fabrics (Julie and I had a very illuminating text exchange this week about that) and I want to expand and improve that idea, so I have been doing a lot of THINKING about what I need to say and how I want to say it. Don't hold your breath, it's going to take a while.

Lastly, I really have to write the Story of Millie, and how she changed my life. Many of you know the whole story, but a lot of you don't. Millie's story is amazing, and I want to tell it. If it wasn't for Millie, you wouldn't be here. So I have to think about that. Millie's blog is still up, and if you have a lot of free time, you can start at the beginning and read forward. I promise you will be astonished, that you will laugh and cry. It starts in August 2006 and ends in February 2022. In between is The Cat of a Lifetime.

What's In, What's Out?

 Remember this photo when I got started? These are the 21 fabrics I bought for the pink quilt.

If you look at them, there are six fabrics I did not use.

I didn't use five of these creams from my stash. I didn't use six of the pinks on the left.

What didn't make the cut? Fabrics that were more coral (light red orange) than pink (which is really a light red-violet.) Pink is generally a little cooler in color temperature. What we call HOT PINK is simply a very intense (brighter), darker pink. It's a synthetic color, usually a variation of a Quinacridone. (Images here.) Of the lights that didn't make the cut, I used whites instead of fabrics with a cream background. This was more in keeping with the idea of the quilt as a cool tone.

To the commenter yesterday who asked how I would sew this together - in horizontal or diagonal rows, the answer is shown above. Why? Because each diagonal here is on the bias, (which means it can get stretched out of shape very easily), so my #1 rule in sewing things together is this: Always stabilize the bias edge. Sew it to something. Since sewing two triangles together here forms a rectangle, and since I am always careful to cut my triangles so two sides are on the straight of the grain*, all four sides of the rectangle are stable. 

Ask me how I know this. I've made enough quilts with diamond shapes to know this to be true. 

(Oh, oh, Snark Attack coming: I believe that anybody who knows how to sew clothes won't have any trouble making a quilt because they know how fabric behaves and how to handle it properly. That means they understand the bias. Folks who don't know anything about sewing clothes with have a tougher time learning to make a quilt. And I think that's because there is so much emphasis on making the quilt top and running a sewing machine, that nobody bothers to tell beginning quiltmakers the importance of the bias in fabric. To wit: If you overstretch it, (like if you press the bejesus out of it and now you have something looking like a potato chip) NO, there is No Way you can fix that. You have to start over.)

*In this quilt only two triangles are fussy cut with no regard to the grain of the fabric.

More Fabric

 Rebecca left a comment on my last blog post: "... you do that lead in thing very well..." which is a kind way of saying I left you all dangling and waiting for more. That is part of it, but the other thing is that I have friends from various parts of the country who will email me if I don't post regularly. "Are you OK?" they will ask, "You haven't posted on your blog in a couple of days and I was worried about you." So, sometimes, Rebecca, I just post something quick to let everybody know I'm still around.

I really do have something pretty cool in mind for those greens and yellows I showed the other day, but I couldn't quite get started because I had a small logjam in the shape of fabric that I had bought that needed to be ironed. (Which is only partly true. You all know I will throw fabric on the floor if I need space on my worktable...)

While I was buying some of the other fabrics, I also bought these. I love the black and whites on the far right, I love the top two in the middle (the topmost one is a rainbow of colors on black) and I loved the blue teal leaves. The pink one was on sale and I liked it when it wasn't on sale, so I bought some.

I like blenders, especially pale ones, because I like to fool the eye with them. They are not always easy to find, and since usually only shop when I need something, if I see something I can use, I'll buy it. The two on the top right are WOWs, so that's a no-brainer for me, and the one on the lower right is a slightly busier blender, so that came with me.

Anybody who knows me at all won't have any trouble understanding why I bought these two. LOTS of potential here, and I am a sucker for brights on a black background. I considered the white one at the bottom as the backing for the Gardens of Our Imaginations (Asterisk) quilt, but the shop only had 3/4 yard of it, so I bought it all.

I chose this quilt backing as the backing of the asterisk quilt, but now that it is here in person I am less than thrilled. Instead I will probably use it for one of the Bananas quilts, which will be a utility quilt.

I've put my hand here so you can see the scale of this print. It really would be perfect for the Asterisk quilt, but it is a digital print, and thus more expensive than most yardage. I believe the backing and binding of a quilt is as important as the frame around a painting, so it is important to me the find just the right backing for a quilt. I'd need six yards for the backing of the asterisk quilt, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt it really WAS the right fabric, so I searched online and found it. It is on order.

By the time my readers in the US are reading this, I'll be in the studio cutting up those yellows and greens I showed you the other day, but I must warn you, I will have a knockout quilt to show you (not made by me) and I will interrupt my posts about the green and yellow quilt when the story is ready.

I PROMISE it will blow you away. I love it when my students take what I teach them and make something of their own with it. Ronda made a bird quilt, quite unlike any bird quilt I have ever seen. YOU WON'T WANT TO MISS IT!!

 

Oh Rebeca, THAT was a tease (aka lead in...)

The Fabrics of Blue Ice

 

These are the fabrics I bought last week. They arrived, surprisingly enough, on Sunday. After taking this picture, I ran them through the washing machine.

My friend Buffy asked if I took my fabric out of the dryer slightly damp and ironed it right away to get rid of the wrinkles. As if. I get it out of the dryer, and then drape it on a table, like this, or over the back of a chair to minimize wrinkling. If I leave in in the laundry basket and Millie naps in it, I have to run it through the washer all over again.

Buffy asked about how I bought fabrics. "I was so surprised to read that you rarely buy more than half a yard." That's partly because I can buy more fabric that way, and it's also part of my experience. Unless I am making a quilt with eight major fabrics, I can get away with buying a lot less. 

I thought in addition to seeing what I bought in the top photo, that you might be interested in hearing WHY I chose the fabrics I bought, and I thought you'd like to see them "up close and personal." This dark blue black print looks pretty obvious when you see it with the light shining right on it, like in the photo above,

But this is what it really looks like, and once I get it up on the design wall, all you are going to see is almost all black. This is what I mean when Julie and my son say "your quilts look great in pictures, but in real life they are SO MUCH BETTER. It's like they are completely different." As you can see, I bought a full yard of this. I felt this was going to be the "backbone" of the quilt, and I didn't want to run out.

This blue is a bit too green, but otherwise this fabric most closely resembles the color story I saw on the road last week. When I buy fabric, I care not one whit about which manufacturer or which "line" I buy from.

This is another fabric I bought a full yard of. For me it has POTENTIAL written all over it. I knew my quilt would have other colors than dark blue and blue and white, so to me, this was fine. I don't think "Oh that could be like star in the night sky...." I don't get that fussy. Generally I scream through the fabric options pretty quickly, stuffing everything I like in my shopping cart. When I've gone through everything, I'll open up the design board and put all the fabrics in it to see if they play nicely together. It's pretty obvious when stuff doesn't fit, so I delete it from the cart. I'll make decisions about how much to buy of each when I've narrowed down my choices.

If you want specific color combinations, you don't always have a wide selection from which to choose. If you say "Dark blue with black and white" 90% of people will think "Night Sky." This isn't exactly a wildly creative rendition of these colors, but it fits the profile of what I needed, so in the cart it went. Now look, we all know it is so dark I can't put it right next to the very first fabric I showed you (because that would make a BLOB of Too Much Dark), but I know that before I get started. So that's another reason I didn't buy a yard of this. Plus I think this print is a lot less interesting to look at than that first one. (Oh, and if you look up at the sky at night, you will not see blue patches like this.)

This is a gamble (for this quilt anyway.) It is Big. It is BRIGHT, it can steal the show. But all quilts need a little bit of the unexpected, a kick-ass fabric that grabs your attention and MAKES YOU LOOK. This could be it. Besides, as you will see from my other choices this fabric holds all of the other colors (literally) and will tie with all the other fabrics that have those colors in the quilt. AND ANOTHER THING. I have learned that the PRINT carries your eye, but also CONNECTS the colors throughout the quilt. This will have to be used very judiciously, so it doesn't take over. And if it does, it will be because I decided to let it.

I have no reservations whatsoever about this one. It will work just fine.

This will probably work. If the blocks are big enough this will be fine. But it wouldn't work for smallish blocks, because the light dragonfly bodies could bump up against other fabrics and "leak" into them. I don't like that. I generally like to see my fabrics and blocks clearly delineated.

There is ONE fabric designer I know and love dearly. This is Philip Jacobs. Why it is here should be no surprise to anyone who is familiar with my work. Clearly since I am planning to make "long rectangles" I will use this fabric in the direction for which it was intended, and because of the scale I bought a full yard. (Besides, it's Philip Jacobs!!!)

I don't think I fully realized the scale of this print when I threw it in my shopping cart, because it is pretty clear that while it is TERRIFIC, I should have bought more. This is a half yard cut, and I will have to use it very judiciously to get all the bang for the buck this fabric offers.

This is an interesting pair. They are from the same fabric line, and although when you look at them like this you can see they are clearly different, they share so much similarity, that in the quilt you may think they are the same print. So clearly I only needed a half yard of each.

These two are blenders. The one on the left, I have no doubt will work fine, the one on the right... I don't know. It's almost too pink. We'll have to see what happens on the design wall. Sometimes you don't know these things until the fabric is in your hands. If it doesn't fit in this quilt, no worries, it will land somewhere else.

Violet lives on one side of blue (blue + red = violet), and green lives on the other (blue + yellow = green). Teal is really blue-green. In the real world, according to our light spectrum, as things get darker they get more violet (not black, black is just the absence of all color because there is no light). So even though I am tinkering more on the blue violet side of the spectrum, as this moves to the light, there can also be green, and since so many of the other fabrics had some green in them, it is appropriate that these fabrics are in the mix.

(OK, so I didn't do that whole logical thing above when I was picking these fabrics. I just thought, Oh, these will go, so they went... right into my shopping cart.)

The fabric on the left brings the color story I have in my head into the light, but because it is a geometric, it might not work. (But it might, so that's why it's here. You never know until you try, and cut properly (you all know how much I love to fussy cut), this one could be perfect. The one on the left is roll-over-brain-dead obvious. (At least to me.) 

That's it for the "darks and mediums." Now for some lights.

If I want the one on the left to read as LIGHT I'm going to have to be careful about how I cut it. The one on the right is iffy, but again, no risk = no reward.

BY THE WAY... and totally off topic, go watch this: Seven Minutes of Terror. (It isn't what you think.)

Yes, you have seen this print before. This is a different colorway.
 

These are the fabrics I had in my stash when I got started. CLEARLY this are too much the same, and needed help. I put my hand down so you could see the scale.

Here are more from my stash. Some of these might work, some won't, but hey, better to have a BIG selection from which to choose.

Many of these PROBABLY won't work, but hey, quilts change direction midstream sometimes, and you gotta go where it leads. What the quilt wants, the quilt should get.

If you haven't heard me say it before, let me say it now: The success or failure of a quilt depends ENTIRELY on fabric selection.

Well that's it for now. I hope you have enjoyed this trip through my head and why I bought each fabric in this group.

A Little Retail and Baking Therapy

After class at QT on Saturday, I did some shopping. I have been thinking about making a pink barn, but more on that later. I found these...

and thought, oh, I can fussy cut the hell out of these.

So they both came home with me.

I have also decided to make a smaller bird quilt so it will be easier to display as a sample quilt. I'm not teaching until August 10 when I am teaching Birds at Quilted Threads, so I am going to enjoy having my weekends to myself for a while.

 I've had a hankering for a good sandwich, so I made some bread this morning.

I also made homemade angel food cake (really) because I have been thinking of this dessert a lot lately. You can see how to make it here, on one of Millie's blog posts from 11 years ago. Hint: It's kind of like an adult s'more. I made it as the dessert on my son's Night Before The Wedding Dinner for 35 people, but I had bought I think four or five angel food cakes from the grocery store that time. Even with that many people, and that much cake, there were no leftovers, this was so good. It's perfect for summertime.  Try it and see!

x

This and That

While I was at Quilted Threads over the weekend I also bought these fabrics. I liked the one on the left but I don't know what I'll do with it. As for the one on the right, I know exactly where that is going to go.

I know where these two are going also.

This was on sale for 30% off. Two rows was one panel and one panel was six bucks, so I bought four. I don't know where it will go, but if I don't cut it up it will make a nice backing to something.

I also discovered I had made a mistake on the class list in my sidebar. I'm teaching Letters in May and Barns in June. I thought it was the other way around, and I had plenty of time to get my letters class tute ready. Um. Not so much! Gotta get going on that ASAP! (By the way, the information in the sidebar is now correct.)

Mellow Yellow

I got my taxes done (Whee!) and then I went to QT to buy some yellow fabrics for my Golden Zebras quilt.

I saw this one of the "Ghastlies" and bought enough of it so I could use it in a signature panel on a quilt. Maybe instead I should use this on a quilt that says, "NO, this is NOT paper-pieced."

ROFLMAO!!!!!

To someone who asked how much fabric I buy when I buy fabric, or anybody else who is interested in my stash, you can read this post about it here.

Oh, Those Pesky Raw Edges

I've read a lot about how quilters are annoyed there are so many threads that come loose when they wash fabric. I've read about how some sew a line of stitches 1/2" away from the raw edges to prevent this fraying.  To me, that is WAY TOO MUCH WORK.

I wash every piece of fabric I buy in warm water (yeah, I know the label probably says COLD, but if it's going to shrink or fade, I want that to happen BEFORE I put it into a quilt.)

and before I put the fabric in the dryer, I grab those pesky frayed threads,

and pull until they break.

I keep a cheap pair of scissors near the washing machine so I can cut threads that are too tightly wound. Then I shake out the fabric so it won't dry crumpled, and toss it in the dryer.

The threads go in a small wastebasket I have nearby.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. There's not much you can do about the raw edges of fabric fraying when you wash them, but you don't have to get yourself all worked up about it. If you want to whine and moan and swear and get all frustrated about it, well go right ahead. I'm old enough to have learned that life can be as happy or as miserable as you choose to make it and I just don't have time to waste by letting a piece of fabric get the better of me.

The Stash

 Everybody comments on my stash, and I am embarrassed to say I don't think much about it. This is pretty much IT.  The little bins on the top shelf hold the tiny bits bigger than 2" square, but smaller than, say 6" x 8".

(All photos will supersize when clicked, then clicked again if you want to study each stack more closely.)

The bookcase is a simple melamine bookshelf three feet wide by six feet tall. Yes, it's messy, but I've been busy.

This is what it looked like when I moved into this house a year ago. Nice and neat. I haven't really added a lot to it since then, so most of what was in the stash in this photo was used to make the Fall House Top, Blue Deco, Blue Boy, Triangle Dance, Petals and the Diamond Jubilee quilts.

These are the White with Colors, Orange and Yellow stacks.

 Here are the Acid Green and Green stacks.
  

Next shelf down is the pink, lavender and blue.

  Light blue, dark blue and teal (blue-green)
 

Red and Purple.

 Black on Black (BOB) and Black with Colors.

Black and White (I LOVE B+W, but you knew that, right?) and Grey, a new stack this year.

 The the creams and browns and tans.

And these are my WOWs and very light things.

These photos were taken Thursday evening October 8, after I finished the Diamond Jubilee quilt. I like to have fabrics that are blenders, some that have smallish allover designs, and some that have medium designs, some with larger designs, and some giants, but generally, I like fabrics that I can do lots of things with. I don't get all too worked up about it.

Why am I showing you this? Because Jackie said "You must have a fantastic stash..." and she wondered "when you purchase fabric is it for a specific project or just because and if not for a project how much do you purchase randomly?"

I bought these fabrics when I visited Kathy in Belfast Maine this past July.

Wow. Talk about a good question.

First, look back at the stash. I buy a lot of pure, vibrant color. I do not buy muddy values, and I can't stand the  "civil war prints." Too tiny, too dull, and frankly too hard to work with. Most of what's in my stash reads as ONE color, with the obvious exception of the large prints, which I like to use as backings for my quilts. I tend not to have any of the "modern" fabrics either, because a lot of them don't know which color they are.

The two on the right were used in the Diamonds quilt

Fabrics that can't decide what color they are are too hard to work with so I don't usually buy them.  What does that mean, too hard to work with? It means the fabric can't decide WHICH it is, so neither can the viewer, which makes it a bad choice.

These are fabrics that were given to me, but they are examples of stuff that's really hard (for me) to work with. I don't buy fabric like these.

What I have come to recognize as my "style" is my ability to put different prints together and make them "flow" from one to the other and look good. I can do that because the fabrics I generally select lend themselves to this kind of work. They're basic, and don't fight with each other.

 
Then again, being trained as an Artist, I know how to make a color look good. Remember, colors are affected by the colors they are next to. So you can make a color look brighter or duller by changing its neighbors. That makes it look like you have more fabrics than you really do.


By and large, when I buy fabric, I buy half yard pieces. I might buy a fat quarter if I need a particular color and can't find yardage, but I don't generally hang out in the FQ section. If I'm making a house quilt, and I need a brown for tree trunks (for example), or I want a stone foundation, I'll check the FQ section, but that's about it.

I never buy more than one yard of ANYTHING unless I have a specific use for it. And I rarely buy  backing for a quilt until the quilt top is finished. (Ask me how I know this.)

NOW... I have my share of novelties and things that I just think are irresistible, but I know full well buying them that they are not the most "flexible" things in my stash.  Look closely at the yellow stack. There's a fabric in there of black and white zebras on yellow.  Not exactly user friendly, but I thought they were fun. At the time I had a yellow and grey and black and white quilt in my head, but I used a lot of the grays in the Petals quilt. Oh well. They'll end up somewhere. Remember, I'll fussy cut ANYTHING to get the look I want.

I adore "The Ghastlies" and someday I'll use them in something, but I don't know what. Stuff like this, I only buy a yard or one pattern repeat.

 For me, the novelties are the extra goodies I put in my word quilts as visual "jokes." They will be a letter "i" that is really a cat, for example, or something like the ladies in the Rules quilts.

I'm not going to use a lot of the fabric, but when I do, I usually get a big impact out of it, so it's worthwhile. Stuff like this, I buy a yard, not more. Generally I see a print like this, and if I can see possibilities, and I like the colors, and it isn't "cute" or "cartoony" or "corny" or "tacky" I'll buy some. Yes, I am very, very picky. (And yeah, I know I'm opinionated too.)

Generally, I don't buy fabric unless I need it. I mean, OK, you've seen my stash, so that's not a big surprise. I just made two quilts (Petals and Diamond Jubilee) where I ONLY used fabrics from the stash. Look at the top photo. There's a LOT of fabric in there. There are more quilts to be had from my stash.

One exception is WOWs, or White On Whites. When I make a quilt with a "white" background, I use WOWs. So when I see one I like, I will buy a yard, but usually I buy four or five one yard cuts of different WOWs. In this case, more is better. I like a variety of pattern and texture. Regular readers know I use them randomly and interchangeably. I think they add interest and I like the way they reflect the light differently.


ONE THING I NEVER EVER EVER EVER DO... Well, OK, two things.
1. I never buy precuts. No jelly rolls, layer cakes, charm packs or any of that crap. Never. Ever.
2. I never buy everything in a designer "line." Oh, gag me with a spoon, how dull. Much, Much, MUCH more fun and interesting to combine a fabric or two from one line with blenders, batiks, or anything else from among the thousands of fabrics at any given quilt shop.

Okay, three things. I don't buy solids either. I use blenders instead.

ANOTHER BIG LESSON...
I never buy fabric I fall in love with, unless I have a specific plan to bring it home and cut it up for a quilt I am making.

I bought these fabrics five years ago, and only cut into the one on the lower left when I made the Diamonds quilt last week!

Why?
Because it will sit in my stash for years before I cut into it.  That's a waste of money and storage space.  I keep threatening to teach a class and tell my students to bring their favorite fabrics and then make them cut it up. Does this thought make you cringe? Gotcha!


The only time I might buy something I really don't need is when I see a fabric and it's a beautiful pure color. Believe it or not a "true blue" is almost impossible to find, so when I see some, I'll buy a yard or more. As you know, colors come in and out of "style" so you can't always find what you want for sale in the shops. So I try to make sure I always have the basics.

I view my stash as my "Raw Materials." If it's in there, it's meant to be cut up. And one other thing. My stash is right out in the open. I never put fabric in a drawer, or wrap it up. For me, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist. I am not made of money, and storage space at my house is not infinite. Buying fabric I don't need, and then putting it away so I forget I have it, is a waste of money and space. I live by myself, so I don't have to worry about hiding my fabric purchases from a husband.  Believe me, I know full well that I spend more money each year on fabric than I do on clothes, but then, clothes are kinda boring.

LOL!


I can do what I do and make the quilts I make because my stash has a wide variety of colors with varying scales of patterns. I have them on hand. If something isn't working, I can walk over to the stash (which is right next to my design wall) and rifle through it, looking for something else.

If you don't have a wide selection of fabrics in your stash, you might settle for something less than what you need. If you've read this far, you know I don't do that. I never settle. I keep pushing. Having a good stash makes my life a lot easier in a lot of ways.

The stash on the evening of Friday October 9th. I just had to organize it while I was working on this post.

I've been building the stash for five years, and let me tell you one other thing. It will NEVER get bigger than what's in this bookcase. Too much can be overwhelming. Sometimes endless possibility can be endlessly frustrating. You've heard me say it before, sometimes having fewer choices forces you to be creative about what you do have. Tim Gunn says "Make it work." I'm not above cutting a shape out of the middle of a piece of fabric if I want that part of a print to do something special.

I look at my fabric not so much as what it IS, but of what it can BECOME.