No. 5

30" x 30"

This is THE ONE that started all my HST series. I had a vision of this one while I was falling asleep, and woke up, made a quick sketch, and fell back asleep. When I woke up, I couldn't remember all the details, so I thought I could make a couple of samples...which led to more and more work.

I really love how the nine patches of different blues looks in the background, and I love the pops of color running through, as if they continue on to some other place, or came from some other place..

What may be less obvious, is that it started with a different color palette, that I kept until the end. The entire quilt top was finished, and then I realized that the coral pink color was making me unhappy. At the same time I bought a new yellow IKEA slip cover for the couch in my studio. So replacing the pink with yellow seemed like the right move. And it was!!

Some process shots for you. The first one is making the blue blocks. After they are pressed, each one is trimmed to the correct size.

Stitching together the blocks to make the quilt top. I love to watch how the entire piece seems to shrink!

When the top is complete, the next step is basting the layers and then quilting. I usually take some time to decide how I want the quilting lines to look, but this time, I just knew...

Next is trimming the extra batting off the quilt and then binding the edges. I was lucky to have a warm day this winter, and sat on my deck to do the hand work. It was so lovely!

And, if you want to have to option to hang the little quilt on the wall, (and I always do!), it needs a hanging tube. I also add a label too, that way, if it gets entered into a quilt show, it is ready to go. You would think it would be finished at this point, but no. 

You can't enter if you don't have a photo of your quilt. I delayed a long time to photograph this series. I thought I could do them all at once so that I wouldn't have to drag my photo equipment outside ten times. It was very rushed. And though outdoor lighting is usually best, on this day the lighting was not optimal. I did get a few good shots of some of the quilts, but not all.

The last part is processing the photos, and documenting the quilt on my blog, so....here it is!

Happy creation day, little 5!

 No. 2 and No. 4: Quilting

46" x 46"

When I put the wrong sides together for this set of quilt tops, I could feel a really large bulk of seams at every intersection. I decided I would try the trick I did on THIS quilt, to see if it helped reduce the bulk.

Thus began the trimming of the batting with scissors...

It seemed to lessen the bulk, so I kept going to cut out holes at EVERY intersection. 

My original plan was to use straight lines across the designs of No. 4, which would include horizontal and vertical straight lines. This also requires a stellar basting job of lining up the top and back of the quilt so that the straight lines will work on both sides of the quilt. Unfortunately, this plan failed miserably despite my best efforts. The quilt tops kept shifting while I was working and the tension was really bad when I got anywhere near the intersections of all those bulky seams. 

I opted to rip out the quilting, and try something else. The new plan involved quilting circles in the centers of each square. It looks rather interesting, and has the bonus of not touching those bulky seams.

The trick was still to keep the quilt tops lined up. I solved it this time by using pins. I would pin through the seam on the top and feel for it underneath. Then I would make sure that it also went through the seam on the back before passing it back up. When stitching, I would have at least 3 sides of each square pinned before starting the quilting. And I worked slowly, one block at a time.  

The circle motif was easy to follow with free motion quilting by making a lot of freezer paper templates and pressing them on. They could be reused multiple times. The trick was pressing them on without the iron accidentally melting the pin heads...oops! I learned that it was a sequence problem.  Iron the paper circles on FIRST, then put the pins in to line up the seams (front and back). 

The next part was to tuck in all the thread tails, one set for each circle. Not fun, but it made the whole thing work. 

I also decided that a hanging tube on either side would look bad, so I opted early on to make an internal hanging tube, like on THIS quilt. The quilting of the circles was compatible with the internal sleeve, and I lived happily ever after. ;)

Last, I thought I would save time by making these two quilts into one quilt, that way, I would only have to quilt it once. Sadly, it did not save time. And it seemed like a lot of extra work for two quilts that I did not particularly like. The best part of this project was finishing it and moving on. It is all part of the learning path of working in a series, and I am okay with that. 

No. 4

46" x 46"

This one...working with a plan, and then the reality looks different. It is disappointing. I am obviously still not fluent in the language of commercial solids.  No. 4 is the confluence of two ideas. I wanted big blocks of different blues interacting with colored stripes running through them and the intersections changing colors to present the idea of transparency.  My 9 blue blocks do NOT look like 9 blue blocks. The blues appear random, but they are not if you look closely. However, it was supposed to be obviously 9 big blue blocks, so that was a fail. The transparency is okay, but I have seen much better attempts than this one. To be fair, I opted to use only colors that I had in my stash, so it limited the choices a bit. 

Here is the layout of the color stripes.

Then I started cutting out the blues and did not have enough. 

I usually shop locally first, and then I turn to online stores. To purchase the colors I want, I have a set of sample colors for 4 different manufactures of solid fabrics.  Unfortunately, those sample fabrics are TINY little squares of color (as you can see from the tiny blue squares on my design wall here). It is challenging to say the least. And, though I think I am in control of the colors I want, I am frequently choosing colors that do not please me. Perhaps I need to be more flexible.... The quilt is very nice, it is just different than what I was going for....

On to the piecing of the half square triangles...

Ironically, I seriously love this half completed version of the quilt.  I love how the half square triangles look like they are disintegrating from the bottom of the quilt where the square patches are still whole. 

Earlier on, it looked like this...I started piecing before my new blue fabrics arrived:

And, as an abstract, I like this version the best. I wish that I had stopped here. Fortunately, I can still make THIS one, at some time in the future. It is definitely an idea for my series that I would like to pursue! Even the 'failures' lead to other ideas to follow, which is making this series of work really fun for me!

The quilting. I layered this one with the top from No. 2 to created a two-sided quilt. I planned to use long linear lines to quilt it.  Unfortunately, even with really good basting, I was having an impossible time getting the front and back to stay lined up. And, the spots in the corners of the front and back, the spot where the seam allowances are maximized, were extremely bulky. So, I am going to write another post about the quilting.  Coming soon....

 No. 3, the quilting

I meant to show these photos in the blog post from last week, but I couldn't find them.  Meanwhile, above is the little quilt hanging in our front sitting room. (See, the cat is sitting there!). No, I did not make this to match the wallpaper. I am inextricably drawn to this aqua blue color. I used it to cover the chair seat (one of six).  I used it to paint the dots on the chair.  This room used to be white wallpaper, but I painted over it to make this lovely blue.  Yes, a darker version was used to stain the concrete floor....

Meanwhile, back to the quilting.  I wanted concentric half circles for the yellow parts, and I wanted them reasonable evenly spaced. I didn't think I had the skill to free motion that design.  So, I opted to draw some circles on freezer paper, and iron it to the quilt.  

Once I stitched the edge of the paper, I pulled the freezer paper off, and cut the outer most ring along the pencil line. Then I pressed it back on the quilt surface and stitched the next line.  Slowly, but surely, I made it to the innermost tiny circle.  Since my paper template was limited by the size of my compass, I then used 1/2" masking tape for the outermost circles. The tape does a good job on curves, but when the curves get small, it gets increasingly difficult to tape a smooth circle, hence the freezer paper first. 

The straight lines were very easy to stitch. But each one had a discreet stopping point for the beginning and the end, which leaves a LOT of thread tails to tuck in. It is not difficult, but it is more work. They are stitched every 1/4". 

Many, many quilters would solve this problem by stitching a continuous line that goes back and forth. I like the way the discreet lines look better, so I am creating my own problem here, and I know it. But, I really, really like the effect.

Thanks for popping by.  Next week I will have a post about No.4, which became a two-sided quilt with the top for No. 2. 

No. 3

25.5" x 25.5"

I had several ideas about how to make this one. I opted for drawing a template for each block that had a curve to see how well that works. It worked great! I made the shapes exactly how I was hoping! Sadly, it was so tedious and not fun, that it is unlikely I will want to do this again. That's the way it goes sometimes. However, I LOVE this little quilt. It is so pretty and simple, and it brings me joy!

First step was to draft it on paper. I was worried about getting confused with color on the blocks, so I used some colored pencils to color in the pattern. I also numbered the blocks in hopes it would help reconstruct the pattern, and that did help.

Then I cut the blocks apart. Many of the blocks have no curves, so I could easy construct those with a simple HST method. There were some aqua and black, and some yellow and black. And, the blocks that had a curve were cut along the curve with hatch marks for matching back up during the piecing process. For each little piece, I traced onto a piece of fabric with a pencil. And then I cut each piece out by hand, with scissors, making sure to add 1/4" seam allowance.

These were pinned and pieced, as you might expect...

And after making a set of two, I would place them on a black square block to sew them into HST's. 

The black piece is still one piece of fabric, so it stabilized the stitching while sewing along the diagonal edges. After cutting down the middle, I had two blocks ready to trim and put back on the design wall.

I worked one or two blocks at a time, so that I didn't get confused about their placements. I also anticipated that the paper templates for one quadrant would be able to be used for other quadrants if I flipped or rotated them. Unfortunately, that did not work at all. Only one set of templates was able to be used twice. This meant that I had to finish and cut out the paper templates for the other two quadrants of the overall square composition. The other problem I had, is that when working with solids, and tracing pencil marks on them, it is important to put the pencil marks on the backs of the fabric. And since they are solids, there is no obvious 'back'. I usually just experiment, and either do it wrong first, or get it right. Either way, it requires some thought, and some ....what do you call it? ....remembering.... Ha ha!

I also made changes to the composition after I finished the quilt top. I had planned to make a big circle, like this:

And, I did. But the more I looked at it, the more I wanted to rip it apart in the middle and reposition the halves. So I did that too. And I like it better, thus, the finished piece at the top.

The last part was the quilting. I have an irritation fear of quilting. I never believe that I can actually do it, and have it look good...which makes it hard to start. Regardless of my successes and years of practice, this fear is my nemesis. I confess that I was eventually able to start, and it was challenging, but it all worked out. I love the circular lines in the yellow section, and the contrast of the straight lines in the blue section. I also frequently annoy myself with the quilting design by coming up with something that requires a lot of stops and starts and thread tucking. But it all works out! And it was nice to try this on a small quilt because it was so much easier to push through the machine. It was also fun to finish something so quickly after years of making big pieces that take a lot longer. 

No. 2

45" x 45"

This one was an experiment to use HST to make a quilt with a reference to log cabin blocks. I think this variation of log cabin is called square in a square. I learned a lot making this quilt. I thought I could imagine what it would look like when I picked the color palette and started. It did not look like what my head imagined, which was both interesting and frustrating. 

Also, I continue to fight with photography of art that has both blues and oranges in it. I can usually get the exposures right if I shoot outside. That was not the case here. If I adjust settings to make the blues look right, then the oranges are wrong. And, if I get the oranges right, then the blues are wrong.  Also, some of the fabrics bounce light differently than how they look in real life. ???? What's that about? I used to shoot in the RAW camera mode, which was excellent, but my computer got corrupted and I don't have a way to process RAW images now. I should probably explore that more and find a new program that I can download and use. And, I will also probably reshoot the finished quilt and put a more color accurate photo in place of the one at the top, but not today...

The colors (below) more closely approach correctness when I shot some process photos in my studio while I was working. I really enjoy making different shapes while I work on sewing the blocks. When the blocks are completed is the BEST time to play with design!! This first one is called the big C. 

The next arrangement reminds me of those old tabletop rotary telephones.

Of note regarding design. When I made the center blocks, I was not expecting the yellow to look like an arrow pointing left. I think anyone with ANY experience with HST would know that, but I did not. I ultimately rotated the final design so that the yellow arrow would point right. And, I am still not sure why that mattered to me, but it did. When I finished the top for this one, I put it in a pile. I didn't really like the outcome, and was in no hurry to finish it. 

 

Later, when I made No. 4, I realized that it was the same size as No.2. And also, No. 4 did not appeal much to me either. So, I decided to cut the quilting work in half and make them a two sided quilt. One quilting motif, and two quilt tops quilted simultaneously.  Voila! This also went wrong in a number of ways which I will talk about when I get to posting about No. 4..... Suffice to say, that it did NOT decrease the amount of work.  Ha ha! I am still learning. And the learning is exciting regardless of the intention of the work. The 'failures' inspired me to keep working because I learned that I still had a lot to learn. 

No. 1

24" x 24"

Wow, it has been 6 months since my last post! I have been super busy creating lots of new quilts and I have not wanted to slow down from the making, to the documenting....a kind of working through my grief I suppose. 

It started with an idea that had been percolating for a long time (fyi, THAT idea would become No. 5). I was busy working on another project and didn't have time to start this one. And the longer I waited, the more ideas I had. I couldn't decide which one to make, so I decided to make all of them and at some point, pick my favorite, and make THAT one big. This would become a series I was not expecting. And, I am learning so much, about my work and about working in a series. It is not the linear path I was expecting. I am now on No. 14. 

Since the quilts were small, I decided to wait and quilt them until I finished the first ten. I am not sure that was a good idea, but it was fun quickly knocking out about a quilt top per week. I bought a king sized batting, and managed to fit all 10 quilts on it, cut them apart and start the quilting.

I planned to quilt the pink half in quilting lines that were perpendicular to the quilting lines on the orange half. Unfortunately, this left me with the big task of having to tuck in all of those pink thread ends. Annoying! But, I was really happy with the effect, definitely worth the effort.

The next problem, and one that I expected, was that the direction of the quilting lines distorted the shape of the quilt in weird directions. I did block it, but it was very challenging to make it square again. 

My last conundrum was the binding, as I wanted the mitered corner to change colors along the diagonal. It is already a little bit challenging to deal with the bulk of the fabric on a corner, but adding the extra seam allowance bulk was daunting. Then I remembered a sketch I made in a beginning quilt class about 30 years ago, and went searching for the sketch. It was right where I thought it would be! After some experimenting, I was successful in using the idea to make this work for me!

Love this shot of it in my garden. Quilts in the wild!

 

What's Next

What's Next

64.5" x 64.5"

 

This one gave me a perfect distraction and escape this last year while taking care of my mother. It was one of those projects that you could work on for just a few minutes a day, and still feel like you were making progress. I wanted something big and modern for the wall in my studio, and this looks WONDERFUL there!
The sections represent different stages of my life. I am wondering what is next in my life as I navigate a world without my mother. The grief so far has been hard to bear, it just leaks out unexpectedly. However, if I were to guess, when more time has passed, I think my next stage will have some joy, as that is part of who I am.

I usually start with a color palette. This got me into some trouble because I originally started with the idea to change the color palette for each section. I ended up hating what I was making, so I stripped out the inner corner, and decided to stick with the original color palette for the entire quilt. I kinda love the new inner corner now. Perfect! 

I also had to laugh because my color palette matched the color of the flower pin heads!

In the beginning I was cutting individual pieces of fabric and stitching them together.

By the time I got to the very tiny piecing of the outermost section, I decided to change my process and sew long strips together, cut them into chunks, and then sew those chunks together. It was much easier!

I also have to laugh at myself because of my quality check. If my work looks good next to my Unikko mug, then my quality of design must be good enough!!  Ha ha! I call it the Marimekko test!

Yep, it passed this time!

Sewing the last strips on,

A few close ups of the quilting.  

I still need to take a photo of it hanging in my studio.  I hung it as soon as I put the hanging tube on. It looks marvelous with my red Ikea couch!