Log Cabin two-sided block

Log Cabin two-sided block

After making The Island, I decided to experiment with construction a two sided block with different designs on both sides, and yet both pieced.  I have seen this done at a masterful level by Emiko Toda Loeb.  I first saw her quilts at the International Quilt Festival many years ago. Her work has different designs on the front and the back, both constructed with a log cabin process.  They are amazing and wonderful! Please follow the link above if you would like to be delighted and inspired!

At some point, I saw a youtube video showing how she does it.  I don't remember if I used her technique exactly, but I got the broad strokes.  I started grabbing strips of fabric that had been left over from previous projects, with little regard to the color palette.  (Sorry about that!) I mostly wanted to try this technique.  It works! And like all good things, it requires some patience and practice.  I have been sewing long enough to realize when things are not going well, it is best to rip out a bit, and reconsider my process. For mine, I needed pins from the front, and then pins on the back to hold the thing together while stitching. 

I had so much fun with this little experiment, I forgot to take process photos, which I normally do just to help my memory.  I am not sure I would make an entire quilt like this, but I do like how nicely it turned out.  It has the same quality of being quilted at the same time it is constructed or pieced. 

I had planned to make a series of these and practice sewing the blocks together, but I lost interest after doing the first block. I was thinking it would be a great summer project, because you could quilt the blocks before joining them.  I was thinking some hand stitching would look good! Then you would not be baking under a large quilt while quilting.  

The only thing left was to finish it up.  Instead of choosing a binding or a facing, I just trimmed the batting and tucked the edges inside.  This is called a knife edge finish. 

Now it is complete and about the size of a good mug rug!

The Island

The Island

30" x 30"

This quilt is a reminder of where I grew up.  Corpus Christ is on a bay which is protected by barrier islands and has a seaport with a ship channel that connects to the Intracoastal Canal and the Gulf of Mexico.  We refer, affectionately, to the barrier islands as the 'island' or the 'beach'. And, I really love, love, love the beach! 

The barrier islands also serve a very important ecological purpose.  They protect the shoreline from big storms.  They also provide a protected wetland for many plant and animal species including lots of birds. This is where they form a very protected and cherished place in my heart. I always thought I would want to live there, until I took a geology class.  It seems very wasteful to build on a barrier island.  They are not permanent and are constantly shifting.  Not ideal, but humans live in NOW time, and geology is a much longer time perspective. The islands are also under constant attack by humans, from our waste, our concentrated industrial waste, and our constant desire to develop in such beautiful areas. 

I made a smaller version of this quilt, Sea, Sand, Sky and I liked it so much, that I decided to try a bigger version of it. 

1. I wanted it quilted, but with no quilting showing on the front.

2. And, I wanted to put something cool on the back (okay, this is not new for me!)

The main idea was to piece each strip by sewing the seam on top of the batting and backing. This will both piece the front while simultaneously quilt the back. This meant that before I even started sewing the top, I needed to have the back ready to go. Note: I was also working on an even bigger quilt with this color palette and had decided to do some screen printing for it.  You may have seen some of my Instagram posts with the whales, turtles, crab, and the oil tanker? This new smaller quilt was the perfect size for 3 whales, so I printed it on a whole cloth:

I love the way it looks like they are holding "hands"!!!

Then I cut all of those strips. The width of each strip is 1/2" after sewing. I needed 1" strips slightly longer than 30" (to have extra to wrap to the back for the facing). And, it is easy to calculate how many, because....math! Sixty strips were needed, with the top and bottom ones slightly wider so that they too can be wrapped to the back. For a while, I had these up on my design wall, looking ever so lovely, but then I needed my design wall for something else, and needed to take the strips down. I wanted to keep them in the order that I planned to sew them. I came up with this, and it worked beautifully!

I layered them on the safety pin, one by one, and when I pulled them off, voila! They were still in the same order! Ha ha! Reminded me of geology and the Law of Superposition, which states that younger layers of rock sit on top of older layers.  A perfect law for sedimentary rocks and sedentary work!

My plan was to sew as you go, or maybe it is called quilt as you go?  I don't think this idea is original, but it was new to me.  After finishing the quilt, and deciding to blog about it, I decided to google it, and sure enough, there are a LOT of youtube videos on how to do this! For this project it was perfect, because the piecing IS the quilting.  It will look simple and flat with no extra texture on the front, and yet it will still be quilted for stability of the piece. 

I started with the backing and the batting. I decided to hand baste these two layers before stitching the strips in place. 

With the basting complete, I added the first two strips of sky fabric, and then stitched it.

This is after opening the first seam and pressing. I also matched thread colors for piecing because I wanted the different colors to refer to the colors on the front for the back side with the whales. 

As I made progress, I started to notice that there was some slippage.  It was getting increasingly hard to sew precisely on top of this spongy batting sandwich. Arghhh! My solution was to press the next strip in place, then pin it.  I next turned the entire thing over, drew stitching lines lightly in pencil with a long rotary cutting ruler, and stitched on the back side.

There was not a lot of room for the pins with such narrow strips, but there was enough. This shows the pins and the stitching.  Here's a photo from the back side:

I find it interesting that even the simplest ideas require practice and problem solving.  I also found that changing the thread colors 60 times did not make much difference at all on the back side (see below).  It is so subtle that I question if it was worth doing.  You might notice it if you stand really close and put your glasses on! Otherwise, it was a bit of a bust.  Ultimately, the back looks quilted (because it is), and the front does not (even though it also is).  I really like how this turned out. 

Last steps are the finishing, facing the edges and adding a hanging sleeve.

Since the back was white, I used a very small white strip to face it.  Because some of the front flips to the back, it makes a really nice graduated color frame around the whales.  

Here is the back completed:

This shows the back with the hanging tube on it at the top.  The hanging tube was top-stitched with corresponding 9 different colors so that it blends it and does not distract from the imagery.  

I like the richness of the colors on this quilt and currently have it hanging in my living room.  It will be nice to enjoy it in it's new space before entering it into an exhibit.  If it gets in, I will be happy that it gets to be seen in real life and hopefully inspire or connect with others in a way that is qualitatively different than seeing it on-line. If it does not get in, I will get to enjoy it longer.  One of the perks of spending the time and effort to make it! :)  Cheers and happy sewing!

Caterpillars/Butterflies

Caterpillars/Butterflies

64" x 62"

Whoot hoo!  Finally finished with this one! 

Caterpillar side:

Butterfly side:

This quilt for me is all about the similarities and differences between the four panels.  They each have things in common with each other, but also differences.  And, from my previous post... I love the way the tops of the butterfly panels flow together in a continuous arc.  It is a metaphor for the differences in individuals and yet they all belong to the same family or community. It is a feeling of belonging, like a safety net, or a protective arc, like an umbrella, helping us weather the storm.

You may notice that the white fabric on the back looks a bit less than white? Each panel has a slight color cast because there are so very many threads of different colors used for the quilting.

Quilting:

Even though I pin basted the quilt, I wanted absolutely no shifting between the layers.  I started in the middle and worked my way out by removing the pins, and replacing with hand basting every 2 inches or so.  Then I filled in with some machine quilting.  Then I went back in for the close spaced machine quilted lines.

You can see the front (the green and orange), with the rolled up section of the back (the blue butterfly).

The caterpillar side of the blue panel with all the quilting lines going through the tiny pieced "humps".

The same section of the quilt from the butterfly side showing the quilting lines and thread colors

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Quilt Textures:

You may remember from the previous post, my concerns about doing this matchstick densely spaced quilting over all the tiny pieces sections with lots of seam bulk? Well, I opted to put in the carefully trimmed batting.  In some sections, I even put in the extra batting just to add another element of texture design.  It is kind of cool how the circles show up on the other side, just from the extra individual circles of batting that are inside the quilt, and how they allude to the design on the opposite side of the quilt.

This side is the caterpillar side.  I inserted a circle of batting under the white circle.

This is the butterfly side of the same panel.  Can you see the evidence of the extra circle shaped batting?

It is a subtle effect but really quite interesting!

Two-sided binding:

The very top photos show the quilt photographed on a grey back board.  If you look closely, you can see that the binding does not distract from the design.  I pieced it to match the different colored sections, and I made it two-sided.  That way, it could be white on one side of the quilt, and black on the other.  This required a "knife-edge" binding, which was not at all easy.

Also, on the butterfly side of the quilt, I tried to match the black binding to the section of the wings that were going off the edge of the quilt.  I made a design decision to just use a solid black, even though there were more colors on the edge. 

Hanging tube:

The quilt was so heavily quilted, that a simple white tube (the same color as the background fabric), would have stuck out and not blended in. I made the painstaking decision to top stitch the tube with all the same colors.  Yeah, I did that!

One color at a time, I went down the tube and traced where it should go. This is the mostly empty sleeve on top of the back of the quilt.

Nearly there, I am almost finished with this blue section and ready to move on to the warmer section on the right.

Here is the tube sewn with a tuck and pinned to the back.

The photo of the butterfly side of the quilt at the top has the hanging sleeve already sewn on it.  Can't see it? Yep, that was the point!  Success!!!

Quilting over seam allowances

Quilting over seam allowances

My most recent finish was a two-sided quilt, and the front side has some tiny piecing on it, which makes for some hefty seam allowance bulk for my consideration. Just recently I heard about hump jumpers. (You can google it to find places to buy one or see youtube videos on how to use them.)

Perhaps you have experienced the really bad tension problems that result from sewing over a bulky seam? The reason for the biggish loops of thread that appear on the back side is that your walking foot is not level while sewing over them. As it approaches the thick stack of seam allowances, the front of the foot tilts up. As you sew over and exit the thick stack, the front of the foot tilts down.  I don't know why that should matter, but it does. The hump jumper is meant to place under your sewing machine foot, first in the back, then take a few stitches, and then move it to the front....all in an effort to keep your sewing machine foot level while going over the changes in thickness. This sounds fine and reasonable to me, with the exception that there are just so many changes in thickness as I sew across a section of tiny piecing. It would require so many stops and moving of that hump jumper, that I would NEVER make it across an entire seam, much less hundreds of lines of stitching. 

My quilt required great precision on both sides though, because it is two-sided, so I had to do solve the dilemma. That's when my mind thought up this crazy scheme. I tried it out on a practice sample first.

I decided to use batting as a way to build up an extra layer of thickness near the bulkiest seams, in an effort to keep the walking foot slightly more level as it goes over. I put a piece of batting on the back side of the sections with tiny piecing. Then I cut a circle around the most extensive bulky seams, for each seam. 

I pinned the Swiss cheese looking batting in place (which will be basted if I decide to use this technique). Then I added a second layer of a full batting, and then sandwiched the entire thing together with top, the two batting layers and the back, held by more pins. 

Then I went crazy with the matchstick quilting. 

For convenience, I opted for one color of thread for the experiment. I was surprised how this much  orange thread changes the appearance of the white fabric. Regardless, I was very satisfied with the performance of the process. There was also an unexpected "gift" in this process. Either the cut out holes or the bulky seams left a vague texture that can be seen on the back. 

My mind reels with possibilities of how to use this in the future! And, this little sample was successful enough to give me confidence to move on the machine quilting of my Caterpillar quilt.  

Life imitating art?

Life imitating art?

I just saw this on Facebook (okay, with my scheduled posts, that was probably a weeks ago!), but it so closely resembles my art, that I found it a bit uncanny.  And, the truth is that this type of urban development is not new.  My work was based on Central Park in NYC.  Still, I like that developers are considering open space and recreational activities for residents. 

It reminds me of this quilt (Central Park), made in 2010. You can read more about it here.

They look remarkably similar, yes? Amazing!!

Sea, Sand, Sky

Sea, Sand, Sky
18" x 18"

This is number 5 of five in the little series. I wanted to try a view from the water and I love the way this looks! A great change of perspective, this one is my favorite. This might be my point of view if I were swimming in the ocean looking back at the land, or on a sailboat, or perhaps a surfboard. I didn’t quilt this one because I love the pure distinct lines of color. 

This one also presented a number of technical challenges.  Because I chose not to quilt it, it was substantially floppy. It was not really sturdy enough to hang on a wall.  And, I didn't make it big enough to wrap around a canvas.  Ultimately I decided to piece a white border on it, add some batting, and then wrap it around a canvas.  It made for a little bit of bulk on the edges and corners, but mostly those don't appear obvious. 

Here's a photo of it hanging above the mantel by my fireplace, along with some shells and dead coral I found on a trip to the Bahamas when I was a teen. Sharky is fond of it too! :)

Sand, Sea, Sky

Sand, Sea, Sky

11.5" x 11.5"

This is number four of five in my little series, a small abstraction of being on the beach and looking towards the water. Breathe in, breathe out. 

This little quilt has 24 different colors of fabrics, each one was cut 1" wide, and then the strips were sewn together to leave 1/2" strips visible.  I quilted each row with a variety of threads, some that were matching, and some that were not. It blurs the lines between the colors and makes the edges look a bit fuzzier. Kind of like drifting to sleep.

Here's a closeup of some of the threads. 

Ha! Sorry, that is not a very close detail shot! Trying again....

I also discovered that this many rows of stitching changes the texture significantly.  That can be a good thing or a bad thing, but I think I liked it better before I added the stitching.  So my next one will be THAT.  Just the pure simple strips of color.  

Sand, Sea, Sunset, Sky

Sand, Sea, Sunset, Sky

12..75" x 12.75"

This one is pretty simple.  I just wanted to make a slightly bigger grid of these colors, and keep the colors and values more horizontal in composition.  It is still a lovely abstraction of the beach and the ocean and the sky.  Then I kept seeing in my head, a brilliant contrast of orange between the top two lines of blocks, so I auditioned the fabric.  I loved it! I have always been a fan of orange and blue! Meanwhile, there is some irony here.  I grew up on an east facing beach.  We see sunrises over the water, the sunsets are over the dunes. My memories of sunrises don't look like this at all, this one reminds me of sunsets. And, if that is so, it cannot be an abstraction of my home beach.  However, and regardless of all the thinking about this piece, it is ultimately about the 'feels' that come with it. And, I really like the feels. It is even softer and more wonderful in real life because you can see all the thread colors in the different stripes, and it's fun to throw in some unexpected colors!  It adds interest and movement and texture, all wonderful!

Since this little quilt has more contrast than the previous two, I call it the high drama one! Ha! What appears to be a calm sunset hides the dangers lurking beneath (sunset is when the sharks come out!).

This next photo, I was playing around with adding some shark fins. I did not ultimately decide to put them on, but decided to share it with you because I find it amusing and laughing is good!

Between Me and the Beach

 Between Me and the Beach

12" x 12"

For this one, I was thinking about obstacles to traveling.  The white grid work alludes to all the things that keep me from the beach, some internal and some external...like covid.  My heart longs for the sounds and smells and sight of the beach. 

For the quilting, I wanted all the lines to go horizontally, following one line of color across the entire piece before changing thread colors again.  However, I did not want them to go across the white grid.  I wanted them behind the grid and associated with the sand and the water.  So, I realized that I should have quilted the grid work first, and then found a way to add the white on top.  That would have been a lot easier than what I actually did, which involved a lot of starts and stops.  I really like the way this one looks though, and may try another version of it, but this time planning ahead better. 

Ocean Circles

Ocean Circles

10.5" x 10.5"

I have started a new series of work based on a palette of solid colors I bought. There are a lot of them, so there will be a lot of fabric to make things from.  My inspiration is the ocean.  I have missed visiting the beach where I grew up because of the pandemic.  I also stopped going after my dad died, a little over 2 years ago.  It was hard to face the grief in such a familiar place with so many memories.  Now, I am ready to go, but also not ready to go.  I miss the beach, the water, the waves, the salt breeze, the dunes, the seagulls and pelicans.  Soon....

My plans for a big quilt began, and then I started having doubts, so I decided to make some small samples to see which one I would like the best.  It is interesting to me that my favorite was not the crowd's favorite (according to Instagram).  So I present to you, the crowd's favorite, Ocean Circles, the first in the series of five so far.  It alludes to the constantly changing shoreline from the waves lapping along the shore and the wind blowing the sand and dunes.  

The circles are hand cut and needle turned applique.  I pieced the blocks before attaching the circles, then the quilting.  This one is densely matchsticked quilted with a LOT of different thread colors.  I don't mind changing the thread in my machine now that I have a needle threader.  It make it so much easier and faster.  I like the texture and how the lines of color seem to change with a different background color as they move across the quilt. I also wish I had made this a bit bigger on the outer squares, so that there would have been room to face it and turn the edge under.  Or so I thought!  After picking these 2 colors for the binding, I am really please with the reference to land and water.  Sweet!

I also tried coloring these on paper first, to get an idea of the scale of the squares and circles.  The watercolors just did not give the same feeling as the fabrics.  In fact, if I had only used the paper for inspiration, I would have stopped.  The feeling I got was closer to "ick" than "wow, that is so calming".

This is the part where the experience of working with the actual medium that I am going to use saves the day.  I believed in the fabrics and the emotional appeal of the colors.  So I let the sketch go, and trusted my instincts.  

Of course, now that I look at the collection, I am having more ideas to investigate!