Beta Testers Wanted

I made this panel some years ago for a quilt for a sick friend. I'm writing my tutorial on free pieced letters and I need a couple of beta testers.

I am looking for a couple (no more than four) of capable quilters who will make letters according to my instructions on the letter tutorial. I will need these folks to be willing to make every single letter in the alphabet, upper and lower case, and pretty much anything else I ask.

Beta testers should NOT have any previous experience making free pieced letters. I need novices.

I will need honest feedback and we will likely go back and forth. Remember my letters aren't paper pieced and they don't use templates of any kind. Letter making can be a frustrating business until you get the hang of it. I need folks who will be persistent and adventurous. 

I will need these folks to NOT talk about the work on any social media site until the tutorial goes public. No blogging, no Instagram, no Facebook, no anything else.

Beta testers will receive in process copies of my tutorial while I am writing it and when it is finished they will receive a final copy, and credit. Sharing is strictly prohibited.

Now if you are an experienced letter maker, I may call upon you to review the tute when it is in the final stages. So Brenda and Valerie, you are on my radar!

If you are interested, email me at patcherymenagerie AT gmail DOT com.

I've got a beta posse assembled. Thanks to all who offered!

thanks
Lynne

The UFO Question

I get asked a lot of questions. Some of them are fairly predictable (how do you store your fabric? (where I can see it); how much do you buy? (half yard cuts); what kind of iron do you use? (Sharp, and I use steam); do you wash your fabric before you use it? (always); how many quilts do you work on at one time? (My favorite answer: I can only have one lover at a time.)

The Holiday Quilt is away being quilted.

But one question puzzles me. "Do you have any UFO's?" (Un-Finished Objects)

It's puzzling because I tell everybody I only work on one at a time. So why ask?

Finally I figured out that it wasn't unfinished quilts folks were asking about (and I do not consider a quilt that is waiting to be quilted as a UFO), it was ABANDONED quilts. Do I have any abandoned and unfinished quilts hiding away in a drawer or bag somewhere?

this wasn't working

Answer: NO!

Getting rid of the white mini diamonds was the solution.

Why not?

Because when I am working on a quilt, I have made a commitment. If the idea is worth it, and I am stuck, I am going to figure out what's wrong with it, and fix it.

I don't care how long it takes. I don't care how much fabric it takes. I don't care how messy the studio gets. If I have set myself up with a creative problem (which is what making quilts for me is all about), then I am going to solve it.

I don't stuff it in a drawer where I can't see it, because if I can't see it, it doesn't exist. I'm going to leave my work in progress up on the design wall where I can look at it. I'm going to check it out when I get out of the shower in the morning, or while I am brushing my hair before I go to bed.

I -want- the thing to haunt me. I -want- the thing to stay at the forefront of my thoughts. I -want- to be thinking about it on the drive to work in the morning. I -want- to be able to look at it and think about it when I -can't- work on it. It makes me think harder. It makes me push through the roadblocks and the trite, easy, predictable solutions to find something unique and interesting.

Remember, if you're working from a pattern, somebody else has made the design decisions for you. If you're working from a kit, somebody else has solved your color problem. I start from ground zero.

I don't have a complete plan when I get started. I have only a partial plan. I have a basic idea of the color I want, but I'm not usually married to it. I don't always know how big the quilt will be or what proportions it will be. I certainly don't know what fabrics I'll use. I don't know how long it will take, or if my idea will work or not. I don't even care if I don't use fabrics I bought for it. I don't care if I have to buy more fabric.

None of those things frighten me.

Instead they exhilarate me. Because there's nothing I love more than to crack that nut of a puzzle, turn it on its head and make it SING!

And THAT'S why I don't have abandoned UFO's hiding away at my house.

                                                         

Make It Work - Tout Fini!

Here it is, all finished. I am happy with it, but 3/4 of the way through sewing the binding onto the front of the quilt (which was harder than I expected due to the close quilting), I thought this would have been equally successful with a colored binding. It just goes to show that often, there is no single right answer!

Making it work!

I've finished hand sewing the binding on the small Make It Work quilt. Today I'll be sewing down the hanging sleeve. You can click the photo to enlarge, and click it again for more detail.

I'll be watching the French Open, rooting for Roger Federer.

Hanging Sleeve for Make It Work

Last night I sewed up the sleeve for the Make It Work quilt. It had been a rough day (doctor's visit plus LOTS of X-rays for a back problem, and an MRI in my future), so I started working on automatic pilot. As a result, I over-engineered the sleeve. Which is to say I made it strong enough to hold a quilt six times the size. Oh well. Better more robust than wimpy.Julie told me how to make a hanging sleeve, and it's great. It's a "D" shape and holds a quilt beautifully. Thing is, it takes a piece of fabric the width of the quilt by 24" (Bear in mind the MIW quilt is about 24" square.) I don't mind the fabric requirements, but I like the backings as well as the hanging sleeves of my quilts to look nice, and not be made out of fugly fabrics. However, in the end you only see 6" of that 24", and I hate wasting 18" of "good" fabric (read: fabric I would use in a quilt.)

So I figured out how to use some "fugly" fabric (these roses) in the parts of the hanging sleeve nobody would ever see.
Heh.

Make It Work ~ Quilted!

You know the phrase "Read it and weep?"

Well, check out the phenomenal quilting Chris did on my little Make It Work flimsy!Look at it and SQUEE!

You should have heard me SQUEE when I first saw pictures! Chris calls it McTavishing. I call it OUTSTANDING!

I love this so much, I might just have to hang it over my desk at work! Well, at least for a little while!

Make It Work, Redux

I moved "it." over to the left, added a tiny bit of yellow to the left, and I am very happy with this. Here's a photo you can use to compare the two, before and after. (Before is on the laptop.)

You can click the photos to enlarge.


(blogger is being a pita this morning)

Making it work!

I've finished the "Make it work!" quilt top. It's 24" (61 cm) tall by 25" (63.5 cm) wide. As you can see, I made some modifications.
The M is quite large, and visually heavy. I didn't mind that, as it needed that to emphasize it's importance as the first letter in the phrase.But the "w" and "o" were also visually heavy. I couldn't place the "w" on the same left edge as the "M" because the "M" and "w" would make the design unbalanced. Even sliding the word "work" over to the right didn't completely resolve that problem.So I trimmed the "w" a bit, first in the middle, then on the left, and I also made the letter "o" skinnier. I removed the cool yellow strip of fabric just above the "w" because I felt it drew your eye away.

The placement of the word "it" was rather tricky. It isn't quite in the center, because I didn't want the vertical of the "t" to line up too perfectly with the upright of the letter "k" in the row above. Your eye would connect those two verticals and create a very strong vertical line and I didn't want that. Also, if it -was- centered, then the word "work" below it would have to be centered, and then the three uprights would almost line up and divide the piece in half vertically.

I liked the tall "k" in work, and wanted to keep it, but if there was too much space underneath the word "it" and the word "work" below it, the two words wouldn't connect visually at all.I moved "work" slightly over to the right. I also wanted to create a bit of visual tension and interest and I didn't want the design to be too static. Working with words, I believe readability is very important. If I had wanted the piece to be primarily a graphic design, and the phrase a secondary element, I might have arranged them differently, but this piece is all about the phrase "Make it work!" so the letters had to be easy to read as words.
(View from this morning... I might add a bit of yellow to the left edge, as it seems a bit cramped over there. I'll have to look at it for a while to be sure, and I'm not sure if "it" shouldn't be moved over to the left a bit...)

Happy Easter!

I've got all the elements of the "Make it work!" quilt ready to sew together. Here are a couple of how-to photos for the "k". You can click the photos to enlarge.The phrase really needed an exclamation point at the end.ta-da!

Now I have to choose a backing and a binding!

Making it work

I've made all the letters for the Make it Work quilt, and now I am fine-tuning them. The upright on the last "k" needs to be a bit wider.

Can I Have an "O"?

Can I have an O? Can't be that hard, right? A center block, then four strips around it like a log cabin block? Not too difficult, not too much to ask, right?

Apparently not if you're me, and you simply MUST go through EVERY single box or bin of leftover fabric scraps looking for JUST the RIGHT fabrics to play a new game together.
So here it is. In the end, I was pretty pleased with the result. It will be trimmed, and it will not sit on the same baseline as the "w".
You can click the photos to enlarge.

It!

I had fun playing with the i in "it" for the "Make it work" quilt.
I was so preoccupied getting the W to look "right" that I forgot to make it a little bit silly.But I love the free pieced letter W, so it's staying put. For now.

Make Me!

If you've ever made free-pieced letters, you know how it is. You get started, and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose, and you just can't stop.

Last night, I got home and wasn't really interested in making dinner right away, so I made the "k." After dinner I made the "e."
The letters aren't sewn together yet.

Those of you with eagle eyes will notice the "M" has been changed too. As soon as I put it up on the wall the day I made it, I knew that plum colored area on the left leg attracted too much attention. It had too much contrast; your eye went right to it - and stayed there. It was a big hole, and it had to go. I was kinda hoping it would go away on it's own, but you know how that works.So I fixed it.
Here's the original, for comparison.

Give Me an "A"

I should have been more specific yesterday, when I said the "Make it work" quilt was coming only from fabrics in my stash.

Big deal! We all have stashes big enough to make several quilts. I will make the letters -only- from fabric scraps in my little bins. I keep all my little bits from the quilts I make. Partly because I'm cheap, but mostly because I have learned (through the "make it work" ethic) the value of keeping these little bits. I will allow myself to use my "regular stash" for the yellow for the background, and the backing and binding for the quilt when it is finished.

With that said, here is the "a."

Oh, and since my pal Julie says my letters are very precise and planned... another self-imposed rule for this quilt... no drawing letters in advance. Just cut and sew.

Make It Work!

I've been a fan of Project Runway since the very beginning, and I instantly fell in love with Tim Gunn and his wonderful phrase, "Make it work!"

I'm reading his Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making it Work, and I am enjoying every word.

You can go read about it to find out more, but reactions from many readers about how I worked my way through the white rules quilt really got me to thinking. I changed directions several times while making that quilt, but I never gave up. I never put it aside, never started over. I was amazed that several readers congratulated my tenacity.

What was I supposed to do? Throw it all away? Not me. I had given myself a challenge, and my goal was to meet it. I had put a lot of work into it, and a lot of it was good. I wasn't going to quit.

Gunn writes, "Making it work means finding a solution to a dilemma..."

To make it work you have to figure out what the problems are, and find a solution using the skills you've learned and the materials you have. When you've made it work, you realize that you have the ability to solve the problem, and it gives you confidence to take on other challenges.

So my next lettered quilt will be a small one, an homage to Tim Gunn. It will say...

Make it work!

I have to figure out how to do that.

I've decided to use upper and lower case letters. I've decided I don't want the letters lined up perfectly on their baselines, and I want the letters to be made of more than one fabric. I've decided the background should be yellow. Most importantly, this quilt can only use fabrics that are in my stash.Here's the first letter. I always make my letters big so I can trim them down if needed. This M won't be either as tall or as wide as it is right now.