SewDay with Judy

June 3, 2011September 5, 2011 Elizabeth E.Leave a comment

Last week we had Quilt Night at our house, and yesterday (since all the tables and ironing stations were still set up), a friend came over to quilt since she couldn’t make Quilt Night. We were working with the same stash of fabrics from Fabricworm (I love their bundles!); Judy purchased two in order to make quilts for her granddaughters and I liked it so well, I got one to make a Bento Quilt.

I’d been admiring Bento Box quilts for a long time, and when we were in Nova Scotia–Cape Breton’s small town of Mabou–I purchased a pattern at Fiddle Stitches, a quilt shop there in town. Good memories while I stitch. Here’s a slide show of our day of sewing. I may yet cross off all my quilting tasks off my summer To Do List.

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Some explanations:

Judy was making rail fence blocks. We dangled little bits of her sets off the end of the table so she could initially keep track of what strips she had used, but later on, didn’t need them. I thought they looked like a bunch of jewelry dangling there.

We made a mess of every surface in my living room: extra table, dining room table, piano–you name it.

When I was a young mother I used to read my children a poem about rainy days from a Richard Scarry Book. The illustration had the children making blanket tents, arranging toys, emptying cupboards, while the rain pelted the windows.
Substitute “sewing days” in for rainy days, and you have:

On sewing days we stay indoors,
We have a lot of fun.
But there is so much work to do
When sewing days are done!

Lollypop Trees Block Two

June 2, 2011June 1, 2011 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

Before.

After!

Thoughts so far:

My block number one is Kim McClean’s block number two , as numbered in her pattern. My block number two is her number three.

It took me about a day to pull all the fabrics together. Some have said–on the Glorious Applique blog (which features Lollypop Trees)–that taking the first dive into cutting up the fabric is difficult. I recently have come to the place where I’ve realized that saving “for the best” must come to an end. What am I saving all these Fassett fabrics for if not to cut up like Swiss cheese and use?

It took me the better part of a day to stitch down the pieces.

I think those little yellow flowers on the green shoots look like cactus flowers. Well, maybe it’s the green shoots that evoke this.

I’m tired of applique. Today a friend comes and we do patchwork!

The book I listened to is The Weird Sisters.

I recommend it highly.

Creating · Quilts

Lollypop Tree–Block One

June 1, 2011June 1, 2011 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

One down! Who Knows How Many to go!

How I did the machine applique:

You saw the earlier post on preparing the pieces: freezer paper lightly glued to the back of the fabric with a regular glue stick, the edges pressed over onto the waxy side, tamping them into place. I got out a stiletto to assist me wherever the going got tough: where there was a tuck, or a sharp corner that normally, with the edge of hand needle-turn applique, would be smoothed out. I lined up my piece with the center notch of my presser foot, and with a narrow zig-zag (1.0) and smallish stitch length (1.5 on a Husqvarna), went sort of slowly.

Remember that I’m a beginner.

Then I cut out the back of the pieces with the freezer paper (mostly the large and interestingly shaped pieces), leaving a 1/4-inch seam allowance. The glossy surface you see is the waxy side of the freezer paper. Kind of pull–a bit–the edge of the applique to “break” the seal of the bond between the fabric and freezer paper, then place your scissors (closed) or your finger under the freezer paper and snap it out.

I took the paper out, finished cutting, then pressed it all, face-down on the ironing board.

I’m still stewing about whether or not I want to do hand-applique. We’re in the middle of watching Foyle’s War, a BBC-TV production, and there’s something so relaxing about hand work and television. But I also know that while I really like this pattern, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life making it, and I’m not that fast of an appliquer.

Fret. Fret. Fret. I hope I’m not the only one in Quilt Land who stews about these kinds of decisions–should I do it this way, or that? Use this technique or that?

Creating · Quilts

Lollypop, Lollypop

May 18, 2011May 18, 2011 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I have struggled to find time to work on this quilt this week. It wasn’t that there weren’t the hours, but that it was a struggle. I just was a bit mentally worn out and this block requires some enthusiasm. As Mary Poppins would say, “Well begun, half-done,” or something like that, so I thought it best to begin the task.

First, decide on which blocks. Check.

Then lay out the first one and trace it onto freezer paper. I completely did NOT think about if it were to be reversed, figuring whatever I started with I would end with and so it would be okay. Plus I knew that these flowers/plants were symmetrical.

Cut out on the lines. No, wait. There are WAY too many pieces!

Number all the pieces on the pattern, then number all the pieces on the freezer paper, then cut out.

That funky stamen/petal-y thing in the middle is going to require a different sized piece of freezer paper so it can tuck under those outside petals. Can you tell I never studied botany?

The pattern calls for 4 different background colors in the blocks. I’ve decided to make 12 squares (but am rapidly backpedaling to maybe only 9) and here’s my fabrics. They are all sort of gridded in a way–from mini-checks to a bubbly-looking print, upon the advice of Kathy from Material Obsession. She’s done all this and so could give great advice.

I laid out the stems on the back of my brown fabric, placing the matte side of the freezer paper DOWN, and anchoring the freezer paper with a little bit of glue from a glue stick. Then I trimmed the seam allowances to about 1/4-inch and using the tip of my iron, eased the seam allowances onto the shiny, waxy side of the freezer paper, letting the heat of the iron stick it down.

I found I could do the first method (above) on the big circles, but the little circles required a few more steps. First, sew a running stitch around the outer edge, then draw it up over a plastic template. I like to use gray thread–it just blends and blends.

Like so. Give it a squirt of spray starch (I lay a scrap piece of fabric on my ironing board to catch the build-up) and set the iron down onto the circle for a few seconds, helping to dry the spray starch and flattening all those little pleats into place. When dry and cool, ease the plastic template out of the circle and put it into place.

While doing some of the eight billion little circles this block called for, I decided this may take me the rest of my life to finish.
I also decided to only do one block a month, otherwise this summer will ONLY be Lollypop Tree blocks and I’ll get nothing else done.

I lay the pattern over my pieces and use it to nudge the pieces into place.

TA DA!! First one laid out. I haven’t decided whether or not to hand-applique this, or machine-applique with mono-filament thread. While the hand method is very portable, if you have creaky hands (like I do) the thought of doing 12 of these makes me wilt. But, with the machine, I will be tied to it–never able to take the block downstairs to watch Foyle’s War, our current BBC-TV favorite. If I ‘m doing 12, I could get a lot of TV watched.

Decisions, decisions.

I learned on Come A-Round ( my dotty circles quilt) not to obsess over every little piece, but instead go with the flow and realize that any quilt is greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, don’t sweat the small stuff. Get it done. Remember Mary Poppins and that nursery clean-up. Snap!