Bella Ties

Bella has taken over the silk tie quilt.   It has been delivered to the original owner of the ties and the pooch immediately took ownership.



Executive Woobie Finished

Pull out the smelling salts.  I've finished another quilt.

I've finished 1 quilt since October and now 3 this week.  I guess that makes sense given my 6-8 quilts per year average and the fact that at any given time I have about 20 projects part-way finished.

You can read about the evolution of the project here: washing the ties, making pinwheels, hating the border, coming up with a solution, and using the leftovers.

This silk tie quilt was a finished top and I spent yesterday quilting it onto a soft fleece backing.   It was pin-basted in place then the top and backing (no batting) stitched with a walking foot.  (Grey on the top, black in the bobbin)

I trimmed the fleece to 5/8" from the edge then flipped it over the edge and stitched the raw edge down.

Because of the stretch in the fleece and using cotton thread the top did not stay flat at all.  If you click to enlarge the first picture, you can really see how the pinwheels bunched up.  I actually quite like that.  It picks up more of the sheen of the silk.  And I'll just ignore the wobbliness of the edges.

Papa Woobie

Here's the "Papa Woobie" aka, the yellow silk tie pieces revisited.

This morning I  took the remaining pieces and made a Rail Fence variation in 6" blocks.  That was only about 22" square.   I thought it would be a good baby quilt, but wasn't quite big enough.  When I went to the fabric store to buy Minky, I thought I'd get enough for strips on the front as well as the back.  Unfortunately, the only yellow they had at the chain fabric store was dark gold, not this pale yellow.   I hadn't taken this piece of fabric and didn't realize how very terrible it looked until I got home.  So, plan B was to add 6" strips of mauve silk.

I spent the afternoon quilting this with the walking foot and pale yellow thread.  I continued the random width strips into the outer binding, and I'm shocked about how much I like the yellow stitching on the mauve silk.  The quilt ended up 33" square.

If you haven't been following this step-by-step, each piece of silk has light weight fusible interfacing on all the silk fabric.  I didn't add any batting, so it's just the silk, interfacing & minky backing.  I pre-washed all the silk fabric in cold then air dried.  Then it was ironed on hot with steam, and a spray bottle of water on occasion.  After all the machine quilting was done, I serged the raw edges and threw it into the washing machine on warm/cold with regular detergent, then dried on medium heat in the drier.  This is what it looks like now.  Silk is super tough...I'm not sure why everyone thinks it's destined to undergo terrible dry-cleaning chemicals.

What's with the "Papa Woobie" name?  I was thinking about my brother who donated the ties. He is newly a  Grandpa-by-marriage.  And then I started thinking about my dad, whom my girls referred to as Papa.  He was famous as a "nap coach".  This quilt is so amazingly soft that I think it would have amazing magical properties in making anyone wrapped up in it fall asleep instantly.  It's not quite big enough to be a respectable quilt, but it has passed the Skater Girl Amazing Texture Woobie rating.  This quilt and a good story (yawn) will make anyone (sigh) ready to ...snooooo ooo oo zzzz ZZZZZZ ZZZZZ

Tie Quilt Solved

It isn't everything that I'd hoped for, but it is better than it was.  By pulling the yellows out, I no longer hate it.  The greens show up more in the photo than they do in person, but the blue/yellow I don't like in person disappear here, so I guess it all averages out.

I'm thinking about backing this with minkee, and skipping the batting.  That should make a very soft quilt that shows off the drape and shine of the silk.  I'm now calling it an "Executive Woobie"

Tie Quilt Update

Thanks for all your tie quilt suggestions.  My challenge remains that I have used all but very small bits of all the silk ties that I have.  Unlike a traditional cotton quilt, I can't just pull a yard of navy blue out of the stash. And if I'm going to spend money on nice silk, it certainly won't be for a quilt.  

Joanne came to my rescue with some ties from her newly retired hubby's closet.  At first glance these are far more tan than the existing collection.  I may be OK swapping these reds for the yellows in the piano key border.

I stopped by the thrift store on the way home, but I am NOT going to pay $5 each for used silk ties to finish this quilt.  I did cruise the women's blouses though.  For $4 I have a "new" red silk blouse for valentines day.  And a $2.50 purple cotton sheet to back a quilt (it was half-price purple tag day at Savers).

All of this digging through my regular sewing stash for hidden silk has also spurred an old need to work my way through the fabric-for-clothes bins that remain piled in the garage.   Great.  Just what I needed - more UFO's to taunt me.

Tie Quilt Stalled

It turns out that I had enough grey for the sashing. Hurray!!!

This morning I worked on making a border using the rest of the ties.  Unfortunately, I don't like it.  I think that all the color detracts from the pinwheels.

Problem is that w/o those borders, the quilt is only 45" square.  And I'll need to make a second quilt to use the strips, but it will also have to be small and/or combined with cotton fabric.

Visible Progress

I've been trying to clear the Living/Sewing Room of projects in preparation for the Super Bowl.

I posted my feathers on green Wed night after I'd finished, but wanted to show it from the back side.  It really isn't as bad as the previous picture suggested.  After a good washing, that cotton batting should make it look down-right wonderful.

When I started this morning, the FMQ foot was still on the machine, so I pulled out one of the crazy patch panels which will go into the Fall Stripe quilt that each of these FMQ practice panels will become.

This is the fill from the back - the heart shape leaves from the FMQ challenge January tutorial with the spiral variation posted on Francis' blog.

I had made HST blocks for the Silk Tie Quilt earlier, and this morning put the rest of them together into pinwheels.  One trick that I learned from doing very fussy and detailed piecing projects is to press the bejeebers out of it at every step, and TRIM.  Each pinwheel ended up a perfect 7" square.

You remember that I have issues with random and scrap right?  So I had to fuss with the pinwheels to distribute the reds, the abstracts, the paisleys and the geometrics.

I started with the blue ties and added strips.  I forgot to take pictures, but the process was simple.  I trimmed on rough edge of the tie pieces for a straight edge and sewed them to opposing sides of the pinwheel.  The width of the pieces dictated my next decision, which was to trim the outer edges to 1.5" from the sewn edge, which made my final raw-edge square 9.5".  I tried to distribute the blues across the quilt.

Next I did the blue/black/grey.  I was hoping I'd have enough ties to make the frames on all of this section blue, but it didn't work.  So I finished up with some reds. Some of the blues and reds for the frames aren't on the pinwheels b/c the wear marks on the ties kept me from being able to cut a 6" square for the HST.

Now I'm at a decision point.  I want to sash these with grey, but I'm going to have to do some careful math (not my forte) to be sure I have enough to pull it off.   I also want to make a piano-key border for the outside using the scraps from these ties plus the ones I didn't use, which include some yellow and a light pink.  I'm trying to decide b/w cutting them into even width strips, or try to match up the existing angles from the tie pieces for a slightly wonky strip.  I also need to decide if this quilt is going to be square or rectangular.  I can make it rectangular by making the stripped pieces 6" on 2 sides and maybe 2" on the others?  Think I'll have a glass of wine and wait for inspiration.

Silk Tie Quilt

I'm not very good at finishing a project before I start on the next one.  I've been prepping these ties for a couple weeks.  I machine washed them, let them air dry, then used a seam ripper to disassemble the ties.  After ironing the ties flat, I used a lightweight fusible interfacing on the back of each of them.

This weekend, I cut 6" squares from the wide part of most of the ties.    Some of them had wear marks that showed when they were opened up.  I also set aside the yellows and a green for later.

Remember how I complained about this technique for HST?  It put all the joining edges on the bias.  Since the tie was cut on the bias, it makes the outside edges straight of grain!  Well, at least for the tie pieces.  I found a yard of blouse-weight grey silk in my stash (purchased 20 years ago, before children, when I wore silk all the time, and thought I'd have the time to sew clothing. LOL) which I used for the contrast color.

The grey edges are on the bias, but the interfacing that I used is keeping it from stretching.

Here are the first 4 of 16 pinwheels.  They are currently at about 7".  Next step will be adding some tie strips around each.  I'm letting this quilt evolve one step at a time.  Stay tuned to see what's next.

I continue to make progress on hand quilting the Double Wedding Ring.   I've been hanging out a lot on Celebrate Hand Quilting.  You can see my recent post about this quilt and give your suggestions on that post.

And I have a few more panels put together from my old-stash green for the FMQ panels that I started working on earlier in the month.   I actually thought that I had a lot more of these greens when I designed this project.  I'm either going to have to use some that are more olive, or buy new forest green to finish up.

Justified Paranoia

I decided that I'm overdue to make some Quilts of Valor.  I picked up some red fabric at the chain fabric store on the way home for work.  I also had some reds in the stash, so I threw them all into the washing machine on hot, since I inherently distrust red fabric.

The pink selvage proves that my misgiving was well founded.

Even while it was in the drier I was dubious about it's potential malicious intentions.

So I washed a second time in hot water, with a color catcher.

Damn Red.

The blues really weren't much better behaved.

So much for my idea to make a red/white and a blue/white quilt.  The blue and red will have to go together.  It's the closest I can come to "time out" for fabric.

Meanwhile, I've been searching the Internet for every silk tie post I could find for ideas and I finally ran across one that told me what I wanted to hear.  One blogger said to just throw them in the washer, disassemble them and press them on cotton setting with steam, then back with fusable.  If I ever find that site again I promise to let you know and give proper credit....

You see, it's been one of THOSE weeks at home and work.(so very much more complicated than I'll share with the world).   I hate full moons.   So, this was my evening... hovering over a washing machine, watching it create macrame out of a box of ties while drinking beer (uh, oh yea, I gave up alcohol for the new year. Fail.) and wondering how much silk ties really do bleed.
What do normal people do for entertainment?