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.

Hard Week

For some reason, everything this week has turned out to be harder than it needed to be.    For example, both my work places are implementing new computer software this week.  When I was running errands, every time I tried to pull into a parking space, there was a pedestrian ambling in my way and just when I thought I could pull in, they would do something stupid like open a car door into the space or stop walking gaze the opposite direction.  And my cell carrier would give me an employee discount...but I had to print a paystub which it turns out I could only access at work (it was my day off) and my husband had to come with me to approve changing the account into my name.

In keeping with the undesireable theme of my week, I decided to do the FMQ challenge block tonight when I got home, because I'm tired and I never have been good at feathers.  Why start doing things the easy way now?   Just for good measure, I used strongly contrasting thread so everyone could see how bad things really look.

What I liked:  The idea of varying the feather size along the same stem and the multi-branching feather ideas.  Drawing it out with pencil first gave me confidence, even though I don't believe I actually followed any of the lines.

What I don't like:  The small space I have for my fingers on my traditional machine makes it difficult to make smooth curves especially on bigger petals.  For some reason, I found it harder to leave space b/w petals than to backtrack. Even echo was very hard for me tonight especially on the outer edges.  I also found it very challenging to make the petals from the bottom point upward to the center divot since that is the exact opposite directions in which I normally draw hearts.

So, that's it.  My feather attempt for now.  Maybe I'll try again after I've logged another dozen hours of FMQ and I've spent time in staff meetings doodling feather designs on my notes.

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.

Pun Winners!

We picked our favorite puns, and then randomly selected the prizes that went with them.

Sallie said...

After careful planning, a thief in Paris stole paintings from the Louvre, and made it safely to his van.
He was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.
When asked how he could mastermind such a crime yet make such an obvious error, he replied, “Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings. I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.”

Quilting "b" said...

A man walks into a doctor's office and asks the doctor to inspect his leg. The man says, "Here, put your ear to my knee."

The doctor puts his ear to the man's knee and hears very faintly, "Come on, can I have five bucks, just five bucks?"

The doctor steps back in horror, and the man says, "I know, but it gets worse. Put your ear to my shin." The doctor puts his ear to the man's shin and hears very faintly, "Come on, can I have ten bucks, just ten bucks?"

Once again, the doctor stands up, very perplexed. The man then says, "If that surprises you, put your ear to my ankle." The doctor puts his ear to the man's ankle and hears oh so faintly, "Come on, can I have twenty bucks, just twenty bucks?"

The doctor then stands up and says, "Well, I can I make just one conclusion. Your leg is broke in three places." 

Pippa Parsons said...

When people first heard of ABS, it was braking news

Ella said...

What do you call the short fortuneteller who escaped from prison?

A small medium at large.

Gwen said...

A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger." 

QBL Donation Quilt

The Quilt Block Ladies have been putting together 5" charm squares to make donation quilts for a local women's shelter.  I managed to sweet talk my way into this set of fabrics before the slicing began.  I wanted to combine long strips of 5" wide fabrics with the charms as well as making some HST and using a solid border to add a little variety to the quilt while still keeping it fast and easy.

I am making progress at "random" and "scrap", but I still have issues looking at, let alone working on wildly multi-color quilts (which I refer to as "Ativan Quilts" since they make me serious anxious just to look at them).  Which is funny because I love fun, bright colors.  I can only handle 4 together at one time though.