Partly Sunny Binding & Review

I am hand sewing the binding on the Partly Sunny quilt. Regular readers know I sew mine down on the FRONT of the quilt, because I like it better and my hand sewing is very good. Can you see my stitches? You cannot. If you want to know what propelled me to this decision, you can read this post.

If you want more details about how I do my binding, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It isn't just my hand stitching that makes my bindings successful. I will tell you everything you need to know.

In case you didn't notice in the photo above, the quilting on Partly Sunny is YELLOW!

By the way, I did not make Partly Sunny. My friend Julie Sefton did. You can read the quilt's story here. Be sure to read those posts, and make sure you read the comments I left.

How did I eventually get to be the owner of this quilt? It was something unexpected. Sorta. You can read that story here.

The story gets more interesting. I was preparing the backing when I made a startling discovery.
At the point, the quilt became a kind of collaboration. I love this quilt, and I love the story. I love my friend Julie.

A Square in a Square

OK! This is easy. Take a 7" square and sew some of the 4-1/2" strips around it to make a block like those above.

BUT WAIT.... THERE'S SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT TO DO FIRST!!!!

If you select a "calm" 7" square, you MUST surround it with a "busy" print. And if you start with a "busy" 7" square, you MUST surround it with a "calm" print.  This is very important. For the quilt to be truly successful (and let's face it, nobody wants to make a dud quilt), you MUST follow this rule.

Half the blocks should have calm insides and busy outsides, and half the blocks should have busy insides and calm outsides.

Now I decided to keep my pairs together, but you are under no such restriction. Do whatever you want.  HOWEVER...

If you end up with a pair of blocks like this, (and really, this looks better in the camera. In real like I could barely tell this two fabrics apart at a distance) you must recognize failure when you see it, and set it aside and try again.

 This is a much better combination. There must be CONTRAST between the two fabrics. If you don't have that, you might end up with a dreaded blob of dark in your quilt, and it will look terrible.

 Sew the long strips around the square...

Then trim off the excess.

42 blocks will make a Queen sized quilt, 6 blocks in 7 rows.  The Sunshine quilt had 36 blocks, 6 rows of 6, and it's fine for a double bed.

So make your blocks. I'll show you mine tomorrow.


oh, by the way... DON'T SEW THE BLOCKS TOGETHER. We're going to  (...gasp!!!) cut them apart!!!

Fun! Fun! Fun!

When your name is Lynne, L-Y-N-N-E, you don't get to 60 years old without having corrected people your whole life long.

"Is that L-Y-N-N?" folks ask.

"No, it's got an E at the end of it. L-Y-N-N-E."

But folks get it wrong all the time. Lynne, or Lynn, is a name from the fifties. Most Lynns (and Lynnes) were born then. It's much rarer after that.

I almost never meet another Lynne, so when I do, it's an event, as it was when Lynne Berg buttonholed me at the AQS show in Syracuse last Saturday.

She squealed, and grabbed my arm as I walked by, then held up her name tag to explain why.  I squealed right back and gave her a hug. She and her husband had a vendor booth, and they make and sell the most gorgeous solid wood custom sewing and quilting cabinets I have ever seen. We chatted a while, and then had lunch together, where we talked football, of all things.

I had a great time looking at quilts in Syracuse, but meeting people like Lynne really made it a special trip.

Countdown..

1. Clean the House. CHECK
2. Laundry.  CHECK
3. Prepare menus. CHECK
4. Groceries. CHECK
5. Order tickets for Quilts and Color show at MFA Boston. CHECK

6. Fill car with gas. CHECK
7. Get the car washed. CHECK
8. Vacuum studio CHECK
9. Print bus tickets for trip to Boston. CHECK
10. Figure out how to get to Tosci's from the MFA. CHECK
11. Make reservations for Zimmerman House tour. (The Zimmerman House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) CHECK
12. Millie performs QA check on Julie's new quilt.  CHECK

Millie's comment about Julie's quilt? "Mine."

13. Determine hours for Valley Cemetery. CHECK
14. Clear tables in sewing room (to do Thursday morning)
15. Plan visit to Quilted Threads on Saturday. CHECK
16. Make list of all possible places to get terrific ice cream. CHECK
17. Turn OFF alarm clock! CHECK
18. Do weekly bookkeeping and pay bills CHECK
19. Forget about work, housework, alarm clocks, diets, fabric budgets. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK, CHECK and CHECK.

20. Meet Julie at the airport. (Counting the minutes)
21. Have fun. CHECK!

Truthful Thursday

This is my son, holding up some fabric I bought at Momen Plus, a Japanese Fabric Store in Torrance California. It obviously isn't Japanese, but we both thought it was pretty funny. I can think of lots of places to use fussy cuts from this.

 See! I did say Japanese fabric store, and I wasn't kidding. I was there during a big sale, but my suitcase is so tiny, I couldn't buy anything else.

Yes, this is me, in front of a sunset on the Pacific Ocean. (Manhattan Beach in LA, to be exact.) I'm having an outstandingly wonderful time.

I'll be home by the time you read this, and I'll tell you more about it later.

Woo Hoo!

Now THIS is the effect I was looking for! Finally I know exactly how to get precisely the effect I was after. Oh boy, I am really going to have some fun with this technique.

A Little Fun

The letters in this FUN are about 3-1/2" tall and the word is only about 7" wide. I haven't decided where it's going to go yet (or even if I'll use it).This is an example of why it's important to keep your scraps. I had two pieces of this fingerprint-y batik fabric - one about one inch wide by about 22" long, the other, about 1-1/4" wide and about 18" long. I bought it (and used most of it for another quilt) three years ago.

UN

I've been really tired lately, so last night I just sat on the couch (with Millie purring nearby), watching tv (The Making of the Universe: Black Holes, then The Big Bang), with my sketchbook in hand. I worked on the UN in FUN. Here's what I ended up with:and then I flipped it upside down..
and for what it's worth, I like layout # 2 best in Sunday's post also.

The Making of F, Day Two

I've been busy. This is what I have so far. (Part One is here.) I will promise step-by-step photos of how I got to this point a bit later, but I have to go brush the snow off my car (sigh).

The Making of F, Day One

I decided to make the letter F in this nice vibrant PINK! What else would be FUN? The white strip is 8" wide by about 18" long or so, the pink, about six inches wide. I'll cut it down and use it for other things.
I sewed the two pieces together on the long edge, then trimmed the pink piece down to about 1-1/2 inches.I lined up the wider pink edge to where I thought it should go, then sewed it in place.
I trimmed that piece down, and sewed a piece of white to the end of a piece of pink, then lined that up and sewed in in place.
That corner needs to be softened, so I sewed a strip across the bottom.
Here I'm checking the angles against my drawing.
Laying some white strips along the outer edge helps me figure out what the bottom curve should be.
I use the pins to mark the lines, and then start sewing white fabrics to shape the outer edge.
Continuing to shape the lower edge...
One piece at a time... it's coming along nicely.
I've set out some fabrics to see where the top and middle crossbars should go, and sliced it across.
Here, I've sewn a strip of white to the end of a long piece of pink for the crossbar.
I sewed it in place, but looking at it now, I think it's too narrow. This piece needs to be removed and replaced with a wider strip....

More later.

The Evolution of Fun!

When I made the letters for Helen's Rules quilt almost a year ago, each letter was made out of one fabric. I decided to make the word FUN from several different fabrics. I had planned to sew up the word like this:I have a cat, Millie. The letters were laid out on the floor, in the path you take to go from the sewing room to the hallway. (You can see where this is going.) I was trying to work out the letter spacing, when Millie came tearing into the room, knocking the letters helter-skelter. I looked at what she had done and laughed. "Thank you Millie," I told her. "Good girl." I sewed up the word FUN with the letters jumping around at different angles.

For Tonya's Rules, I did the same thing, letters made out of several fabrics, bouncing around. Tonya's has four exclamation marks, and each of her four cats is represented.
For Julie's quilt, No Rules for Julie, I had the idea of adding extra "FUN's" around the big FUN, but having them made out of fabrics that would almost blend into the background. Julie calls them "shadow funs." Their visibility depends on the light. In some lights, you can see them all, in softer light, some disappear almost completely. That was my plan. You might miss the fun. (get it? miss the fun?)
For Julie's quilt, I made the "shadow" FUNs first, and then made the real FUN to fill in the space I had left. (yes, dear son, I -know- that you'd like to see the "F" and "U" closer together, but dammit, it's harder than it looks.)
So now I am making two more Rules quilts, and I want the FUN to be DIFFERENT. So I am thinking, how do I do that?

Dunno about you, but I get my sketchbook out and start drawing. I don't draw block letters, that doesn't work for me. I -write-. And when I wrote this one.. this cursive "F" (You know which one I mean, the one with the box almost drawn around it)... I knew I was on to something.
Now, by the way, this is a Moleskin sketchbook. There are five squares to one inch (2.54 cm). So we're not talking about gigantically huge letters here. I drew out a larger box, twice as big as the original and then drew out the letter F until I got a nice shape I liked, then I cleaned up the lines with my eraser. In the final stitched version, each square of graph paper will equal one inch, so this F, should (in theory) be about seven inches tall and about ten inches wide.
My friend Julie tells people I work out my letters on graph paper ahead of time. Well, yeah, I guess, but that's only so I can see the size relationships before I sew them together. (Because I'm a cheap New Englander and I hate wasting stuff.)

I do not slavishly follow my graph paper drawings. I sew the letters completely by eye. I wing it, I guess, I experiment, I rip stuff apart, I make stuff two and three times, (yes, I know this statement contradicts my earlier one, but I'm an artist, and artists tolerate ambiguity) but I do NOT "enlarge based on the grid."

Notice you don't see anything on this drawing indicating how I should sew it together. THAT, I never do. I'll just take this drawing into the sewing room, and start sewing.

You'll see the results, I promise. Now it's time for me to sew...

(you can click each of the photos, and most of them can be clicked again to enlarge.)

A Fine Ending

When you've had a day from hell at work, can anything be better than coming home to a package of fabric that you bought on sale?No.