WIP and Scenes from Italy

November 7, 2012 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

I think we are all breathing a sigh of relief that we can answer our phones again without being assaulted during dinner by robo-calls from a candidate. Or go to our mailboxes without needing a forklift for the thousands of pounds of campaign fliers. I live in California and thought I had it bad until we talked to our son who lives in Ohio. My sympathies to all who live in swing states; thanks for participating in the process.

So it is so nice to return to a routine, and today is Works in Progress Wednesday, hosted by Lee over at Freshly Pieced. Actually today it is being guest-hosted by Svetlana, and she echoes my sentiment of enjoying the weekly accounting that we do every week to keep us on track.

Last night as I watched the election returns come in with my husband, sister and brother-in-law (who are visiting), I was able to finish up this seventh hexagon. I just keep the basket of pieces downstairs by the television and work on it whenever I am parked in front of the tube. This hexie I could christen the political hexie, for it seemed like that’s what I was watching most as I worked on it. I don’t know what I’ll do with them all–Downton Abbey starts up in January so maybe I’ll have some more completed before I have to decide.

But I have just returned from a trip my husband and I took to Italy, where he participated in the Collegium Ramazzini, a scientific conference in Carpi (a little town northeast of Bologna). Not only did we visit Carpi, but also Bologna, Padua (and the Scrovegni Chapel), Venice, and Burano–a colorful island near Venice of brightly painted houses.

This is a wall from the 11th century in a church in Bologna. Love those patchwork designs. Everything old is new again, isn’t it?

I can’t believe they let us walk on this ancient stone floor from the Peter/Paul Cathedral in Venice, but here it is.

My husband found this fabric shop for us to look at (Bologna), but I only bought fabric in a shop across from the two (slightly leaning) towers. Below you can see the man cutting my wool challis.

I’m thinking a scarf or something. Fabric was really expensive over there.

But they do wrap it up nicely to bring home.

I’ve been collecting tea towels for use on the back of quilts, and here’s the one from Padua. We thought it interesting that the thing we went to see most — Scrovegni Chapel with Giotto’s frescoes — was not even listed on the back.

In sunny Burano, we saw a woman sitting out by the canal making lace. By hand. Burano is known for its lace and lacemakers, and apparently it’s a dying art because none of the young woman want to learn it. We watched her for a while, as she used her needle and thread to create tiny stitches and knots over a paper pattern.

Here’s a close-up of her pattern. She’s created the main flowers, then will come back in and create the webbing to hold it all together.

I found the quilt shop in Venice! This is right as you come off the Ca’D’Oro vaparetto stop.

But the prices are enough to make you swoon. Twenty-one euros a meter (39″) works out to about 25 bucks per yard. I try to remind myself of the luxury of all the fabrics we have here in the States at about half the cost. I’ve learned not to buy quilt fabrics imported from the United States when I’m traveling, but if I have time, I’ll duck into a shop for a pattern or an interesting notion.

I’ll leave you with three photos: the first two are from the island of Burano and the last is from our final, foggy, morning in Venice, before we headed home.

Snapshot: Constructing the Double Polaroid Blocks

October 16, 2012October 16, 2012 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

First, let me say a thank you to Lee of Freshly Pieced Fabrics, who is hosting WIP Wednesday for us. Click *here* to return to her blog and see other fabulous Works-in-Progress.

If you missed yesterday’s post about Snapshot, my latest quilt (above), scroll down as there is information for fabric requirements and a basic How-To for Polaroid Blocks.

The first picture (top) is Snapshot in a beauty pose. This one (above) is the one where she’s in under the fluorescent lights in her doctor’s office, wearing only a flimsy gown that opens in the back. You know the feeling. But we need to examine the quilt to see how it’s put together, so I thought you needed a clinical kind of picture. Here you can see some of the variety in the tilting, and in stacking the blocks. I had some scraps of fabric at the end and late one night made the one at the bottom left into two colors. (I should go to bed earlier, I think.)

I did these in sets. You’ll end up making about 4 sets, alternating the blue fabric with the green fabric (only use one color at a time), as each stack is made up of 13 blocks. However, I made a few more of each color, because I doubled up on some colors for variety (you can see it above where there are two blue blocks together). So make 4 1/2 sets.
For each set of 13 double blocks, you’ll need:
8 strips of either blue or green (don’t mix), cut 1 and 1/2″ wide
2 strips of either blue of green (don’t mix), cut 1 and 1/4″ wide
26 Polaroid blocks, in pairs of two (take some time to match up the ones you want together)

Start by sewing the Polaroid blocks to to the wider (1 and 1/2″) strip, placing Polaroids face down. You are sewing this to the TOP of the blocks.

Lay out the strip of blocks and cut the blocks apart. With scissors. Remember those? We finished up our discussion of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Your Brains in class, and the last section talked about tools; when we adapt and adopt a tool, it become an extension of us and we may leave older tools behind if the new one suits us better. So if you feel like the rotary cutter is an extension of your hand, you may need to practice using scissors again. Kidding.

Press the fabric away from the block, like this:

Now sew another wide strip on the bottom of your Polaroids.

Here’s four blocks, with the top and bottom borders sewn. Again, you are using the 1 and 1/2″ width fabric.

Lay out a strip of the narrower fabric (1 and 1/4″) and place your blocks side by side, matching up your pairs. Separate them by about 1/4″ at the bottom. I pinned them so it would be easier to transfer to the sewing machine. Sew the first set (one side) onto the center strip. You should be able to get about 7 Polaroids per strip.

As you sew on the first set, pay attention matching the edge of the Polaroid block to the edge of the center strip, letting those little bits of borders stick out. You can cut them off in an earlier stage if you need to, but I did mine after sewing them.

NOW trim off the little edges if they bug you. For sure, trim off the big overhangs! Just lay out the strip as shown, and cut the overhangs off, even with the long strip. DO NOT CUT THEM APART!!! Let me repeat. DO NOT CUT THEM APART!!

Now, take your “right leaning” and “left leaning” PDF printouts from the last post, and set one of them at a time on the table while you do the next step. I made all the greens to lean to the LEFT. All my blues lean to the RIGHT. It feels backwards, but here we go. I used the picture to get in my mind which Polaroid should be 1/4″ up and which one should be 1/4″ (or the width of that top border) down as I’m lining them up along that center strip.

Notice in this high-quality illustration that the blocks lean to the right. To accomplish this, you have to offset them when you sew them to the center strip. The left block is “lower” on the strip, and the block on the right side is “higher.” This is why I used two colors: to keep things straight.

But my greens tilt the OTHER way, so I used the “left leaning” diagram to help me.

(Diagram in action!)

Again, to get the tilt, you need to jog the one on the top down about one-fourth inch. What I did was line up the edge of the green border with the top of my center picture in my Polaroid block. (I know this sounds confusing, so just look at the pictures.) This will give you that offset you need in order to tilt your block. Do this with the remainder of your pairs. Pin, then stitch.

When working with the blue, I reversed the sewing, stitching the blocks on the right-hand side of the center strip first, then the left.

Here it is sewn. You can really see the slipped alignment here. Press this seam toward the center strip. See two steps down, for the why of pressing.

Cut these blocks apart now; the cut will be angled to fit the skewed alignment.

Here’s one that’s been cut apart after sewing. Here you can see the shift.

And in comparing these two blocks (the one directly above and the one below), you can see the difference the pressing makes. The pressed edges can either make a block look like it’s resting on the top or like it’s “sunken” into the strips surrounding it. I wanted my Polaroids to have that look of being bordered by strips, not the strips “supporting” and “lifting” up the Polaroids. So that’s why all the pressing directions indicate which way to press the seams.

Here you can see the different pressing. All right Goldilocks, you are through the deep scary forest and just about to claim that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Using the wider (1 1/4″) strip again, sew the outer borders onto both sides of your block assemblage. Cut apart.

You should have 13 blocks that look like this. Now comes more fun, more forest.

Get out that PDF picture again. Lay it at the top while you trim your blocks. The size you want to trim to is 4 1/2″ by 7 1/2″.

You need to tilt your ruler a bit, making sure you leave at least 1/2″ space between the edge of your white Polaroid interior block and the planned cutting line on the outside edge of your ruler. (This is why you make extra blocks, if you get my drift.) I tried to vary my cuts, because I think one of the charm of these Polaroid blocks is their wonkiness when set into their frames, much like a child would paste vacation photos into an album. So sometimes I was just over 1/2″ from that edge, and other times I was closer to 3/4″.

Keep at eye on that 4 1/2 line, as well as the 7 1/2″ line. Be a juggler, keeping all these things in mind as you go for your first cut, slicing off the top of the block. Then flip it around, putting the cut edge at the bottom.

Lay the 4 1/2″ line of your ruler at the bottom, lining up your freshly cut edge. Check your measurements. You want the bottom lined up, but you also have to check that the block is centered so when you cut off that right side, you’ll have an evenly centered 7 1/2″ block. If you are good to go, slice off that right-hand side.

At first, I flipped it around again, as I’d only have to pay attention to one last side (shown above). But after a while I became confident enough to slice off the top, >flip<, slice off the right and top edges again, then >flip< cut the last edge off. Which is what I’m doing in the picture above.

I took this photo mid-cutting to show you how the block can feel skitty-wampus when you look at the first two cuts. But then you slice off the two side edges and you are Through The Forest Again! In the arrangement of my quilt, I used 28 blue double-Polaroid blocks and 24 green. Make enough that you have some to play around with, and if you like decorations on the back of your quilts, include some for that too.

NEXT POST: Putting the quilt top together, and one day closer to my surprise giveaway.

Quilts · WIP

Work (still) in Progress

October 10, 2012 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Many thanks to Lee of Freshly Pieced, who hosts a group of quilters hard at work. Schlep back over to her blog to see others who are working hard. And yes, this week, I am a Work, (Still) in Progress.

I’ve feel like I’ve been hardly working on quilting this week, and boy, does that make me tired and cranky. Creativity really can nourish the soul–cliche alert–but hey, sometimes cliches fit the bill. Sorry.

I actually have spent many hours on a project that I’m just not ready to show. It’s not because I’m in a book or something, or that some famous person has asked me to test a pattern. It’s just me. Working hard.

But here’s something I will write about. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I made a king-sized quilt for my son Matthew and his wife Kim. They wanted desert colors and liked the log cabin block, so eight billion hours of piecing later, they had a quilt.

Here it is, with Matthew standing on a chair on one side and Dave (my husband) on the other. Can you spot the turned square (the mistake)? I didn’t until the moment when I got it back from the quilter, bound it and had these two fine men hold it up. I died a little, but it’s still there.

I had made extra squares to make them pillow shams, which I did, but then I had a few other squares leftover which I remembered all of a sudden on Friday morning. I stitched them together, did a pillowcase backing, quilted it, making a fall table runner.

Here’s the backing: Halloweeny fabric. So now I’m set for both October and November in the decoration department. I should make some fabulous pumpkins like those on Barb’s blog. Go and see and tell me you don’t covet them. Especially the one with the bird’s head. (Now you have to go and look!)

EPP · Giveaway · WIP

Quilting Along

October 2, 2012October 2, 2012 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

This is a picture of my latest start of my hexie blocks series, taken in my super-duper photo studio: a piece of batting laid down on the kitchen counter, making sure that I don’t put it near the dishes, or onto any stray bits of gravy. Other times my photo studio is a bigger piece of batting, laid down on the guest bed upstairs, or if it’s medium-late in the afternoon, I can smooth it out on my pinwall, drag in the torchiere from my husband’s den, prop the other light up on the small stereo speaker on my desk, and make sure I turn on the camera’s flash.

Actually, considering my week, this is a stupendous output. You know, some weeks are GetMoreDone and some weeks are BarelyQuilting.

Now you know way more than you want to about how things are at my house, but I do want to thank Lee of Freshly Pieced for hosting us on WIP Wednesday, where we all scramble to get something done–or partially done–so we can post it up here and say Yes! I’m still quilting along! (I love WIP Wednesdays.) Click on her name to head back to her blog to read about others who got way more done.

But don’t forget to enter the Almost to 100 Followers Giveaway, on the post just below. I’m giving away two sets of fat quarters–in black and white–perfect to rustle up some Halloweeny quilting!