Wonky free motion quilting

This is my quilt folded, pretending it's finished

So as I was saying, we only had a handful of trick-or-treaters. Possibly Bradley's jack-o-lantern was too scary? I will have to alert him to this issue.

But now, onto the quilting. I finished my second quilt top a long time ago, the Denyse Schimdt Single Girl, but since basting it together, it has languished around being a big disappointment. This is because I made a few choices for it that I later regretted.

This is the hand-quilted part

First of all I used muslin for the background, and once it was finished it suddenly seemed a bit drab to me and I wasn't crazy about it. I had considered a white cotton initially but it seemed too bright next to some of the vintage prints. So there's that.

Then I also decided to experiment and used curtain interlining for the batting. It's sort of soft and fuzzy and thinner than the other batting I've used so I thought it would be easier to do nice fine hand-quilting. Plus it was an inexpensive option. But once it was all pin-basted together the lining seemed to make the whole quilt sort of heavy and droopy. So there's that.

Then I decided that I would hand quilt it. As I expected with the thin "batting" I could do nice tiny stitches. I used the circle design suggested by the pattern. But once I had finished three rows I wasn't thrilled. It just didn't seem quilted enough, there were large areas that I felt would need lots more quilting. Which would take ages. Especially as I wasn't motivated to finish it since I didn't love my quilt anymore.

So enough complaining, because.. I've sorted it all out! I decided that I would cut my losses and switch to machine quilting. I decided on free-motion quilting because I have a darning foot already for my Bernina, and I don't have a walking foot yet. Plus I wanted to try free-motion. And I love it! I love the way it looks, I love the way it feels and I like the muslin now. Even the interlining seems right now, it's a thin quilt (which was the original plan, I like thin quilts) but with a nice textured feel. And it's so pretty!

Detail of the machine quilting

I did a very simple scribbled loop pattern, just the same loop over and over, one column at a time. It seemed like an easy way to start and I like the design. There are lots of mistakes but you'd really have to examine the quilt to spot them, so I just don't care. Which isn't like me at all. I may do more hand quilting someday, but somehow for this quilt, machine quilting has been the answer. It does mean I will have to undo lots of hand quilting.. yuck.. but I really think it's worth it.

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Yellow log cabin quilt

I've been wanting to make a yellow quilt forever. So just in time for the rainy days we've been having, I've finally gathered up the yellow prints I had on hand. I've never sewn a log cabin quilt square before, but I've read online that it's addictive. Now that I've made my first one I can confirm that it's true! I decided to do my cutting freehand, just making strips as I went along and not worrying about having them all be the same width.

I like the result. At the end I will true up each square using a cardboard template and then when I join all the squares my quilt won't be too wonky! At the end when I have a stack of squares I can arrange them before joining them together and make sure the quilt is balanced. I'm not sure yet whether I'll add sashing (extra strips between the squares).

As usual I have hoarded tiny scraps of my favourite prints, so it's been very nice to finally be able to use even the smallest pieces. Things have been busy lately so this quilt could go very slowly, but I've decided I'd rather just do a square at a time, and not cut it all out beforehand, and maybe even not do any chain piecing. I've found it very relaxing to just choose and cut a piece at a time and put it all together.

This square went together very quickly so I think you could whip up a quilt top this way in no time. For the quilt back I think I'll just keep an eye out for a vintage sheet with some yellow. My quilt is going to be so cheerful!

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Single girl assembled

a glimpse of our new backyard

The "single girl" quilt is now assembled. It turns out I had only bought enough batting and backing fabric for the twin size so I couldn't make it larger after all.I finished the piecing last week, then sewed together the back panel which is orange floral My Folklore fabric. Before assembling you can use the template provided in the pattern to mark the hand quilting lines. I liked the way the circles look so I did use the pattern.

Here's a picture that shows the hand quilting:

I marked the lines on with a 2B pencil

I've done the bottom row of the quilt so far. It's a twin so it shouldn't take too long, except insofar as it always takes too long to finish hand quilting a quilt. I'm already thinking about my next quilt so I have to try to stay motivated to finish this one.

I basted with safety pins this time, much quicker!

A detail of the hand quilting stitches

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Single girl quilt update

Sorry I've kind of gotten out of the habit of posting! But now my camera is back and working again. I've also been inspired to try to finish up my single girl quilt top. This stage is very satisfying, I've finished all the quarters, and ironed them and I now have a nice neat stack that just needs to be put together into complete rings.

So far I have 5 out of the 12 rings completed (shown above). This is the amount needed for the twin quilt. But I'd like to make the quilt bigger so I've had the idea to finish the quilt top as suggested in the pattern, but then add extra plain panels on the sides to make it wider. This way the rings cover the top of the bed, but the sides are plain.

I'll have to find some muslin to match the one I've been using if I go ahead with the side panels. The muslin was from a curtain, so I'm not sure if I can find more of it that matches. I'm not even sure if muslin was the best choice for the background. I figured the curtain had been washed a lot so there was no evidence of pilling but a quilt can take so long to make it makes sense to use top quality materials. Well it's definitely too late now!
In case you're wondering, I finally gave up the hand quilting and finished up the quarters by machine. I guess it was nice having a portable project while we were selling our house. I had to put away my sewing machine for showings, and I was also getting kicked out of the house all the time. But now that we're settled in the new house I can leave my sewing machine out on my desk in my own workroom.

My thoughts now are that I prefer machine piecing for quilt tops but I still love hand quilting once the quilt is assembled. Although I do think I benefited from trying the hand piecing because it forced me to slow down, so the pieces are more accurate. Tiny errors can really compound so now I know I have to work carefully from the start in order to be happy with the finished result.

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Hand piecing

So I've tried it out and it looks like I'll be hand-piecing the single girl quilt. I didn't sew the pieces together in the order it suggests in the instructions since I wanted to see a finished square and see whether I was happy with using the muslin for the background fabric.

Denyse Schmidt's Single Girl quilt instructions suggest sewing all the first quarter rings first, then all the second quarters etc. It makes a lot of sense to put together batches at a time and then you could also chain piece as well and save time and thread.

Part of the reason I went ahead with a full ring was that I had laid out the whole quilt and made sure I was happy with the prints in each ring. Mainly I was checking that there were no duplicate prints in each ring.

The rings are mainly all the same, except you substitute in a few different prints so the overall effect appears random. I had done that and spent some time making sure I liked the placement of my random prints. So I want to keep all the pieces for each ring together as I go along.
Now that the first square is done (11 more to go!) I'm really happy with the results. When I sewed my last quilt I quickly machine pieced it and while I was fine with the way it turned out in the end I was a bit bothered by the way some of the squares didn't line up perfectly. In retrospect that was also about cutting out imperfectly - some of the little pieces of fabric I had were just slightly too small and I wanted to make them work.

So as I was methodically hand sewing my ring together I found I was able to line up the quarter rings almost perfectly. And I was thinking of a saying that my grandfather used to say from time to time: If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well.

This simple phrase haunts me. Anytime I do something in a rushed, haphazard way and I know it's not going to turn out as well as it could I have a sort of guilty feeling. I question whether it's worth doing, and if so why am I not doing it well?

So in this case I'm slowing down and I think it will be worth it in the end. Not that I'm against machine piecing! Not at all. I may very well go back to it for my next quilt. Which I'm trying not to think about so that I can focus on this one. But I will say the next one is going to be made up of yellow prints. I love yellow.

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Single girl cut out

All my Single Girl quilt rings are now cut out and ready to sew. I finished up with the cutting at the workroom during Quilt Sunday, then when I got home laid out everything on our living room floor. After a few more tweaks I'm finally happy with all the prints I have and how they're arranged so it's time to sew it together.

Katrina asked me about whether I would do hand piecing and I said "no" to doing that. But tentatively because I was thinking about it. I did a little reading online last night, and found an appealingly simple discussion/tutorial on the purl bee.

I started hand piecing but I'm not sure if my patience will hold out. I actually like the idea of having a little portable craft project on hand. Especially as we're still showing the house, so setting up my sewing machine and putting it away all the time is an extra chore. But it still means really slowing down the creation of this quilt.
And seeing all those circles lined up on the floor got me really excited about the quilt top!

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The single girl update

The two purple floral prints are Liberty

So I've made lots of progress cutting out pieces for the single girl quilt and I have lots of fabric to spare. It's a great way to use up scraps as the main part of the quilt is just solid white. Although of course you can change that and I've seen some great versions with colour backgrounds.

The purple floral at the bottom of this picture is Liberty

I haven't decided for sure but I think my background is going to be a cream coloured muslin. It seems to harmonize better than white with several of the vintage fabrics I've used. Almost all the fabrics were odds and ends from my stash, but I did buy a few of my favourite pieces on holiday. They're all Liberty prints from a few different places.

The 3rd-from-left floral is Liberty fabric cut from a nightgown from the Gap that was too big.

Our trip began with a flight to Glasglow and I just happened across a great fabric store while we were looking for a bus stop. It's called Mandors, and it was a large shop with lots of variety, including a corner full of tartan wool fabric. They also had some great Liberty prints, even some large scrap pieces of Liberty fabric in a basket.

The 2nd from the top is Liberty fabric from the Glasgow shop

One of my other favourite fabrics was from etsy, a tiny set of 24 quilt squares made from vintage fabric. But they were too small! I liked them so much I seamed them together so that I could create the 12 pieces needed for the pattern piece. Extra work but the print was so perfect, with purple and orange, I just hope the seam doesn't show too much.

The orange and purple floral near the top is the one I seamed together from smaller pieces.

I'm liking the orange and purple together.
And finally of course there's also lots of prints from the workroom, including this adorable Matrushka doll print. I just picked up a big stack of fat quarters there at Quilt Sunday (where I did more chatting than cutting but had a great time). Next I'll show you the pillows I made with the green bamboo print!

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The next quilt

I know this doesn't look like quilt preparation but I've been thinking a lot about my next quilt. I've decided on the pattern but I think I will show you that later. But first of all, the colour scheme was inspired by this little vignette in our living room.

As you may know I like monochromatic colour schemes, but sometimes even I get bored of it. But it's definitely not going to be some madcap multi-coloured extravaganza. Maybe someday...

I also just spent the evening sorting through my quilt scraps. Which is a small white vintage train suitcase filled with little pieces of fabric that I've saved up especially for quilting. They're either flea market bundles of quilt pieces I've bought, bits I've picked up at fabric swaps or leftovers from other projects.

I organized all of them by colour so I could see how much I had. So now I'm thinking the colours will be orange: And purple:With some yellows and pinks thrown in. Oh! and white.

It's a bit odd because lately I've been loving green. I guess that will have to be the next one...

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Quilt "finishing"

The update on my quilt is that I've finally finished hand quilting the entire thing, but now I'm planning to add double the number of rows. There are diagonal lines of stitching through each full square, but I'm going to add extra rows so that each full square has an "X" in it.

In the meantime I decided to bind the edges so that while I'm working on it there's no risk of the quilt top pulling apart at the seams. Also it's satisfying to see it looking more finished.
So I have a tip for a binding without bias tape or anything else. I'm not sure how to reference this, but basically I just saw some quilters on tv doing this on their historical quilts. The only difference is that their quilts were much loftier, and their borders were bigger.

This is the view of the underside - there's no seam!

So what you do is use the bottom panel of fabric for the binding. Fold it up and over the top and hem it in place with mitred corners. Mine is about 3/8" wide. I decided to stitch it in place by hand as I knew I would never be happy with a machine-sewn finish and besides I had already gone to the trouble of hand quilting. I knew it might pucker or something and I'd just spend more time picking it out.

Of course you only need to stitch the top side, I used an invisible stitch.

Here's a close-up of one of the mitred corners:While I was trying to figure out how to hand quilt I found this helpful tutorial on youtube. I love that people take the time to make these movies to explain things.

And while I was at youtube I found these wonderful vintage Singer commercials: She Caught on Quick, Three Smart Daughters and this one from 1956-8. My favourite line: "Of course I want a Singer, who doesn't?"

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1930s basket quilt

First of all, no I didn't make this quilt. I bought it on ebay because I really wanted a vintage quilt, especially now that I'm working on one of my own. I've always loved them, but now that I'm making one I have lots of questions about all the details and I wanted to have one up close so I could sort of refer to it.

Then I saw this one and fell in love with it, I love the colour scheme with lots of white, and so many charming little floral and plaid vintage prints. Handmade quilts can be very expensive but this one was surprisingly not, and I think I know why. Vintage quilts seem to be valued on a few factors as far as I can tell, such as the overall condition and the evenness and size of the hand stitching. Patterns that are rare and especially one-of-a-kind are worth more. Quilts that have some history, such as a date and signature are in demand. Then there is the overall artistry, the way the colours and patterns work together.

This quilt is nicely quilted, but the stitches are a little uneven, the patches aren't perfectly aligned, and the stitches which seem so small to me are actually only 6-7 per inch which is good but not considered Expert. And this basket style of quilt is fairly common.

But these little flaws appeal to me, and helped me decide how I'd like my quilt to be. Not Expert, but still very appealing.
Some of the patterns look surprisingly modern, but I think that's because everything old is new again these days and a lot of designers take their inspiration from these old prints. I think the 1930s is my favourite time for fabric. This quilt is so nice because when I'm in bed I can just gaze adoringly at all the prints...
In the meantime I've started quilting my blue Irish Chain quilt... very slowly...

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The Compulsive Quilter

I accidentally pressed "publish post" before actually writing the post..

Anyway, I've now finished piecing together the quilt and basting it together. This is the quilt after being pieced:
Then this is the quilt after basting with red and orange thread (to show up clearly):
Happily, you can now see the lattice pattern really clearly, which is what I had hoped for. Also everyone at the Workroom Quilt Sunday was really nice about the imperfections that were bothering me and agreed that this was good for something handmade. Also, Karyn has some great quality (but affordable) batting so I recommend getting yours at the Workroom. It's 90" wide so I only needed to buy 2 yards for this Double sized quilt.
I think I basted too much, but I didn't want to worry about shifting while I do the hand quilting. This way it's very secure and I didn't need to add any pins. Also I'd like to get by without a frame. Because I don't really need any more craft supplies and don't really want to buy one. (did I just say that??)

This is how it looks in the back:
I used a sheet for the backing, but if you do this just check that it's not a very tight weave which can be hard to hand quilt. In case you're wondering, I haven't done hand quilting before but I love the way it looks so I'll be learning how. I'll let you know how that goes...

Next post I'm going to be showing off a 1930s quilt I just bought. It's beautiful!

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The impatient quilter

I started a quilt at the workroom a month ago by cutting out strips of blue patterned fabrics I had collected from my stash. I started cutting fabric before I'd decided exactly what to do, mainly because a quilt is such a big project I thought I should just start or I never would. I thought I might just do horizontal bars of the blue prints.

Since then I was re-reading Jane of Lantern Hill for the nth time and discovered something funny. When I was little and read the book she described her bed as a wooden "spool" bed and I imagined something shaped a bit like a wooden spool of thread, but shorter and wider in proportion. Reading it again now I realize that a spool bed is actually one with turned wooden posts, which is exactly what we have(this links to an old post that has lots of "before" pictures of our house too).

So when I came across her description of three quilts that her father gave her for their new house on the island I looked them up online. The one she put on her bed is an Irish Chain, and I decided that was exactly the pattern I would like to do for mine. It's fairly easy to make, and pretty and has that lattice look I like. Also I wanted lots of white in the background so all the prints wouldn't look too busy.

It's very simple. First I cut 6" squares, then divided each one into thirds, ie. 2" x 6" strips (below right). Then these are sewn together alternating the colours with plain white (below bottom left). You do colour-white-colour, then half as many that are white-colour-white. Each of these are then trimmed into thirds again (below top left).Then you piece together squares that look like a checker board. At this stage I trimmed each square again to make sure it was just the right size. These squares are then alternated with plain white squares. Once you put it all together, you don't see the checkerboard pattern, but a lattice, ie. diagonal lines of coloured squares. Especially if you kind of squint your eyes when looking at it.

I laid out all the squares onto a sheet so I could see how the quilt would look and Bradley helped arrange them so that there was a good balance of patterns.
So far I've sewn together all the rows, and now I need to join the rows to each other to finish the quilt top. Which I'd like to do in time for the Workroom quilting Sunday and then I will work on basting the quilt top to the batting and backing.
I say impatient because I've rushed through a lot of this and it's not as perfect as I'd like. Little mistakes tend to compound and the squares don't meet perfectly at the corners throughout as they should. I realized partway through that I should be using the hem guide that came with my sewing machine and it's made a huge difference. I've had to rework a few pieces to make them the right size, but it's going together fairly well now and will probably be nice once it's done. I hope!

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