I should be making new clothes for myself (Liesl + Co is 25% off today!) or for the kid, or sorting my scraps, or finishing a quilt that was started for someone not in my life anymore. Should. But my sister has been waiting for her promised quilt for a decade now. So I’m prepping to print Storm at Sea using red and black fabrics for a scrappy look.
I like to use a little pillow for lumbar support in the car. I don’t need it, but boy does my back feel better when i use it! But my current pillow is getting old, so I thought I would take the opportunity to replace it. I couldn’t find a pillow form of the same dimensions, but did eventually find a smaller pillow form that I think will work just fine. Of course, a pillowcase is required! After considering a few ideas, I decided on using the spool block (or x and plus block), because I also wanted to test a minor re-scale for another quilt which uses a similar block that finishes at 6 inches. Linda created her spool block at 7.5 inches which doesn’t quite fit in with the pattern but I’d really prefer to Inklingo it, if possible! (There is a lot of rescaling to achieve this to stay with the exact pattern, so I may just end up machine sewing according to the pattern instructions)
ANYway, I printed the shapes at 80% but they’ve sewn up to 6 inches unfinished, so my calculations were a little off. Good thing this was the test!
I splurged on some fat quarters:
Here are a couple completed blocks that I remembered to take a photo of: And here is one side basted:And here is the other side, waiting to be basted:I’m looking forward to doing some quilting again!
This skirt has been washed in my front loader many times now, and dried on a clothesline. I know I was curious as to what it would look like after several washings, so I thought others would be, too.
That’s right, I’ve started another project! This one will hopefully not take too long, seeing as how I’ve barely pieced 12 of the 49 blocks of the baby quilt I’m making. This is the start of a pillow case for my back when I’m driving. The old pillow is at least five years old and in pretty shabby shape. So of course, I couldn’t resist! I’ve printed up 12 Combo 1 pieces from the Inklingo Spool collection and combined them accordingly in the above photo. One block is already pieced and I think it’ll be done in a week. We shall see…
This is the first side I’ve started of the embroidery. I’m using perle 8 thread and chain stitch. I’m going all the way through the quilt and anchoring the thread by weaving it through the stitches instead of using knots. I suppose I should grab a shot of the underside!
So I need to transfer the poem extract to the quilt. I did some research and decided against using tulle, sewing through the paper, and various products conveniently available for sale and pricey. The carbon paper I have appears to have permanent properties, so I put that away. I decided that I was quite happy quilting through the wash-away pen, so however I transferred the design, I wanted to finish with the pen. This evening I tested out a few techniques. I tried the prick method but didn’t have any pounce, so I tried just stabbing through the holes I made with the wash-away pen. I had limited success with that. Then I tried the cheap carbon method where you take a pencil to the back of the design and then trace onto the fabric with a pen. I need a much softer pencil because that didn’t show up at all!
I found some old interfacing that used for a pattern to test with. I thought maybe the pen would go through as easily as tulle. Not the first time, but the third go over the same line proved moderately successful! Further experimentation proved that holding the pen in place for a second would allow enough ink to flow through the interfacing to the fabric beneath.
So this is my plan for transferring the text to the quilt:
1. Trace the words onto the interfacing.
2. Lay the interfacing on the quilt, maybe use some spray adhesive to keep it in place.
3. Dot the wash-away pen in 1cm intervals.
4. Remove the interfacing and connect the dots
5. Embroider!
I’ll hopefully be able to get all four sides marked up this weekend.
Since I last posted. I’ve been busy quilting and quilting! Here’s a picture of my current method of quilting.
I’m now quilting without a hoop at all! I feel I am able to because I used Sharon Schamber‘s method of basting. It is fortunate, too, because the weather has been ridiculously hot and having the quilt on top of me would have been in possible. Instead, I’ve been laying the quilt over a little folding table and quilting the drape. I’d better supply a picture of that, too!
In the meantime, I’ve also been playing around with a new plug-in for Lightroom that will export directly to WordPress. This means that I’ll be able to post better photos more easily!
It took about 2 days to complete, but it’s done and waiting to be cut and sewn!
So much printing! All up, 108 pieces of fabric ironed with freezer paper and printed on. Total number of shapes: 300. Monkey’s cheat sheet was invaluable!
I decided to make this cute little bunny toy as a quick baby present for my friend because it’s looking likely that the baby quilt I’m planning won’t be finished before she is born. So I downloaded the pattern from the Alabama Chanin site and printed it up, cut out the pieces. But they didn’t make sense when you put them together. The pocket is massively huge, the apron doesn’t reach the sides of the body piece and the ear insides are bigger than the actual ears. To illustrate, I overlapped the pieces.
I checked the book that the pattern is originally published in and the scale is the same as the scale in the downloadable file. I found this completely aggravating as I had to recut three of the patterns (keeping the original body size) before it would look remotely like the photo they provided.
After rescaling, you can see the difference is significant.
This isn’t the first time I’ve bumped into difficulties with Alabama Chanin patterns. The other pattern was the Indigo Star Throw (which I still haven’t finished!) where the supplied “templates” refused to match up to a logical size. I ended up buying the Inkling0 6″ Le Moyne Star collection as a compromise.
Here is the Bunny Rabbit pattern with the pieces in correct scale with each other.
It’s more than a little disappointing that I have to do this.
