A Weekly Dose of Triangles: border ideas

It occurred to me, as I was editing these photographs of border layouts that these would make great striped designs as well. I’m not sure that I’ve seen a striped half triangle quilt. Sounds like a great idea for a “modern” quilt, with plenty of room for wonderful quilting. These strips could divide a quilt top into areas, like lattice does, or just be stripes. With most of the borders, I made sure to create a corner as well. Sometimes it’s hard to decide how to end one border and begin the next one.

These three designs are just one square wide. There are lots of ways to flip these single squares to make an attractive border design. In this group, the third design appeals to me the most. I love the wonky feel of the triangles flipping back and forth.

This pair is pretty great! The top one is a flying geese design. It’s edge made a box or square on point, which lead me to the next design. Piecing these borders would take some time, but they have a lot of appeal.

Of course in this set, I love the zig zag design and the way it forms such a tidy corner. The bottom border would be quite an intricate one to do and couldn’t be sewn to just any  sort of quilt top. I am not sure what I would do in the corner, obviously! That would take a bit of fiddling.

This is the last of my half square triangle posts. I hope you enjoyed them! I make a blog book at the end of each year and so I must admit that I did these for my reference. As I piece and piece half square triangles as leader-ender pieces, I will have lots of ideas to refer back to when I need inspiration.

In between working on house projects, Peter has been building our ark. Honestly – I don’t think short of several hurricanes we’ve lived through that I have endured so much rain. I neglected to take a picture when the rain was pounding on the roof and all the back yards were filling up. It looked like a model of the great lakes! Happily our house is on a little rise, but Peter had a back-up sump pump system put in a few years ago, and we’re so glad for it now. The sound of it emptying every half hour or so is very comforting! There are some daffodils in the front garden waiting for the slightest bit of sun to come out. The ones in the backyard are submerged. It’s been seriously nasty.

A Weekly Dose of Triangles: stars and pinwheels

Here’s another  post on creating quilt squares with half square triangles! This group includes star and pin wheel variations, which are some of my favorites.

This one is a bit of a cheat, as I put squares in each corner. It’s probably called a mosaic, but I’m calling it square in the middle star.

If you flip just the interior squares, you get the negative version!

This star has nice double points and you can see half square triangles in the corners.

This one is appropriately called Diamond Star. You can see it’s a smaller version of a whole cloth design I did. Imagine filling in the light parts of the yellow pieces and you’d get an 8 pointed star.

And here’s a star with a pin wheel middle. I’m sure you get the idea now, that rotating the half square triangles or playing with the fabric colors and values will produce an endless number of star variations.

This pin wheel is in the middle of a square on point. This might be a fun center for the quilt I plan to make.

I can’t remember where I found this pretty square, but it seems related to Yankee Puzzle or Flying Geese. There’s so much movement.

Here’s a great square called Windmills. I’ve seen some quilts where the pattern is even larger, making quite a dramatic quilt. This square is such a good example of how dynamic half square triangles can be.

I’m almost done, but there’s one more post coming next week, on using half square triangles in border designs.

All About (Animal) Faces; with Donna Hrkman

Donna showed us many of her beautifully designed and hooked rugs. I loved this one,which she made while working with a friend who was getting a teacher’s certificate. All the wools are dip dyed or what the fashion world calls ombre. To shade and highlight the flowers and leaves, you manoeuvre the strip of wool to get the lights-to-darks where you want them. It gives the rug a very soft feel, I think. In the front of the picture, you can see three hooking frames lined up. We were there to get lots of work done!

Barbara was hooking her dog, Leo. She spent almost a whole day working on getting his tongue, which is so key to the design, to look right. Isn’t it great? And Donna helped the animal lovers get that dot in the eye to make them look realistic. Can you see those tiny pieces of white wool hanging from his ear? They are a 2 cut, which is the teeniest tiniest piece of wool you can cut. I can’t wait to see her progress on Leo.

Pat was hooking her dog Karen. What a sweet face! The design was from a great close up photograph of Karen begging. I think this is the second piece of rug hooking that Pat has done – wow!

Donna is holding up Susan’s design of her dear departed cat Daisy.

And here is Daisy at the end of three days! The drawing of Daisy’s face is so sweet, but then adding the garland of the flowers underneath is such a great touch. Hooking since she was in her teens (;-D) Susan is very accomplished.

Here is a room full of The Foxy Ladies, hooking away! It was pretty tight fit, so when anyone needed to audition colors, they went into the other room. In the other room, Donna set up a “store”. She had a lot of beautifully dyed wools, including many pinks and beiges for skin tones.

I suppose that my Eliza rug fits into the animal category, though I was hooking easy eyes and just fretting over color, not realism. Here’s my first try… There will be more on all my trials later, of course!

And again, I am missing the photographs I took of Diane hooking her darling dog pulling a wicker basket! Send me a photo and I will add it.

A Weekly Dose of Triangles: making squares

And the design ideas continue! In the last two posts I showed you a myriad of ideas using simply the half square triangle for all over quilt designs. Many, many, many quilt squares are made up of half square triangles. When I took a beginning class with Karen Buckley, and when I teach one, the first lesson is all about triangles. So here’s what I came up with!

This pattern is a sort of simple bow tie design. It also looks like an hour-glass.

I’m calling this four square, for lack of a better name. Using half square triangles makes it so much more interesting than four solid squares would be.

This square has the look of the overall quilt pattern I plan to make. The corner squares could be twisted any which way to make an interesting secondary design when pieced together.

And this one flips just the center blocks for an almost inside out look of the previous block. A lot of squares like this are simply called Mosaic. In The Quilters’ Album of Blocks and Borders , my favorite reference book, it is named Mosaic No. 16!

Dutchman’s Puzzle is a favorite pattern of mine and I think I have it in every sampler quilt I’ve made. It has great movement.

Double Z is quite an interesting design. As you can see, it depends a great deal on light and dark values for it to show up well.

You can see that as well as twisting and turning the half square triangles around, there’s also color happening. Lights, darks, color families are all playing together – it’s so much fun!

A Weekly Dose of Triangles: totally triangles

After sewing, pressing and cutting a lot of triangles, now we get to the seriously fun part, making patterns. Peter said that this could also be called tiling or creating a regular tessellation. I had never heard of regular tessellations and had to look that up !

There are many sorts of triangles, but the two you mostly see in quilts are the two you see below. On the left is a half square triangle; a square divided equally in half. On the right is a quarter square triangle; a square divided into four parts. Though these triangles look like they might do the same things, in quilting, the way the fabrics are cut is important, but that’s another lesson; let’s play with design. Charm quilts rely on light and dark values for their design versatility so let’s see what they can do.

For the purposes of these exercises, I made myself place the squares randomly on the design wall. You can imagine that if you wanted to take the time, you could play a lot – grouping the colors together in sub shapes, moving them across the quilt… endlessly changing your mind! (Please notice that in this page of patterns, I twisted the squares around in place; I didn’t take the pieces off of the design wall.) Here is the classic and most simple design; a sea of right angle triangles with lights and darks aligned in the same direction.

Turn every other square 180 degrees and here’s a scrappy diagonal stripe. The triangles I have completed so far are more in the light to medium range, so this design is not as bold as it might be.

Here are some little zigs, or perhaps chevrons. I like this tidy design very much.

And here are some big zags. I think if I chose this pattern to sew, I’d make sure to have more darks, for a bolder design. I made this stripe even, but it could become more erratic, like an EKG, or bargello pillow.

This is the kind of designing where a design wall is critical. I could have arranged these squares on the floor, but I’d really need to stand on a step stool because it would be very hard to see what was happening. My design wall is made of the stuff we grew up with as a bulletin board (homosote) covered in flannel and screwed to the wall. These small fabric pieces stick to the flannel and so I don’t need to use pins. In Asia, where we couldn’t make holes in the wall, I stapled flannel to foam core and hung it. It wasn’t great, because of the lightness of it, but it did the trick.

I hope you’ll check back next week - there are more designs for you to see!

“Eliza” Hooked Rug Pattern & a Finish!

This hooked rug pattern, called “Eliza”, was designed by Joan Moshimer, one of the doyens of the rug hooking world. It’s folk art/Fraktur quality is what still attracts me to the design. I bought it in the late 1980′s at her studio/store in Kennebunkport, Maine and it’s been tucked away in my rug hooking bin. I periodically get it out and look at it. I love the design but am not sure quite how I want to hook it. The flowers and hearts are so sweet and will almost hook themselves, but it’s the birds. There’s a little too much detail for my taste and I keep wondering, do I hook them realistically with plaids and earth tomes or should they be fanciful as the birds are in a Fraktur piece?

I am about to get help with that! Foxy Ladies Rug Hooking Guild is having a national teacher, Donna Hrkman, come for three days to work with us. We will all have different projects going and she will work with each of us several times a day, I would think. There will be some general teaching as well on topics we’ll all be interested in knowing more about. I am really looking forward to finally working on this project, as well as eavesdropping on what the other ladies are doing. ;-D Back in January, when I was trying to get messy things done, I dyed up a color family I want to use. They are primaries with a bit of black to tone them down. My first big question will be what color background I might use. There are two background areas, one in the middle and one on the border, so I am thinking light in the middle and dark all around. Another burning question is how many kinds of wool can one hook in a rug and not make it too busy. You know me – more is better! Lots more on this topic coming soon.

Any rug hooker will tell you that one issue we all deal with is how to store all the wool for a project. This is my latest idea – here you see a divided container that is meant for Christmas ornaments. I think this will be great, but we’ll see how it works once I start cutting the strips and hooking madly… (Now I’m wondering if I should have two of them.)

And here’s a finish! I debated how I wanted to use the piece I made in Susan Quicksall’s workshop. I do not need anything more to hang on the walls, so I wanted to make it into a pillow. I am one of many hookers who finds finishing wool mats as pillows very difficult, so I bit the bullet and took it to an uphoslery store. They of course charged me more than I really wanted to pay, but the man agreed that it was no easy thing to do. Here is the completed pillow, looking wonderful in the livingroom! Yippee for me!

A Weekly Dose of Triangles: just the beginning

I have stacks of the leader/ender triangles done. Last weekend, I pressed and cut them to size, and finally it was time to play. (Now that I have finished playing with the triangles, the design wall has to come down. The painters are coming…)

I know that many of you who read my blog are not quilters, so I though a little lesson was in order, and if you are new to quilting, perhaps you will enjoy this as well. If I make a quilt using just one shape, it will be called a charm or one block quilt. Many quilters pooh-pooh this sort of simplicity, but wait until you see what these simple shapes can do. Let’s look at some common charm or one square patterns.

These pieces are made up of equilateral triangles. Remember Sophomore Year geometry with Miss Detweiler? If so, then you know that these triangles measure the same on each side.

Back to geometry class, can you see that these shapes are 60 degree triangles? This pattern is called tumbling blocks or baby blocks. They are such fun to play with; to form a block you sew a light a medium and a dark piece together and you get this 3D illusion.

I call this shape swirling stars and it’s the curvaceous relative of a baby block. Look at the baby block above – can you see where six 60 degree pieces intersect? So these pieces can make the same shapes as their straight-laced cousin.

Here is my favorite shape – a hexagon. Not only does its six-sided shape make many, many lovely designs, it can be divided in half, in thirds and even in sixths, if you want to do some really nasty piecing.

If you are interested in starting a charm quilt, Pat Yamin has loads of templates for all of these fun shapes and more.

Please stop by next Friday to see some of what the humble half square triangles can do! It’s quite amazing.

The Livingroom Rug Quilt is Completed!

Hooray! I have declared that this quilt top is  finished. I was debating making it bigger, but the borders are wide and this quilt just needs to be done. As you can see, I added a corner detail to the border. I dug out the discarded color samples of flying geese and New York Beauty and added some of the vine-y fabric that is in the centers of the quilt squares. In looking at Toby’s quilt, there is a detail that I have been debating – the bias binding. She hand sewed it along the edge of all the flying geese.  I am thinking that I may just do it around the center medallion. It’s beautiful, but again, she was making a show quilt.

While I was sewing the blocks together I flipped them the wrong way and discovered  another interesting variation of this pattern. Wouldn’t three of the medallions be pretty down the center of a bed? I laid it on our queen and twin sized mattresses, but I think it would be a perfect fit for a double bed. Playing with the setting of quilt squares is really fun!

Here is the livingroom quilt with the livingroom rug and a chair that it might sit on. (The quilt is brighter in this picture; the background is close to the golds in the rug.) I’m pleased. I think I’ll call it Dreaming of India.

If you know and love cats, then you get this picture. When I am doing just about anything, the kitties are nearby. Gizmo thoroughly sniffed the quilt top as though he’d never done so before and then burrowed underneath it for a nap. I guess the Inspector has approved it.

And here is something for quilters only! I found this on someone’s Pinterest page and sent it to all my quilting buddies. Here’s the link for you.

 Of course, now this quilt top moves to the machine quilting to do list…….

Color Block Woven Runners

I know it seems crazy for me to be starting a lot of projects, but there’s a method to my madness. The looms are always a bit of a problem when the house is on the market. They do collapse a bit, but they are large and are not something that we will take to the storage place. The best idea is to warp them and have something pretty to look at – they are great pieces of furniture. An then they are warped, I can pack up a lot of the weaving supplies.

This is a rag runner that I made several years ago. Sitting on it is our Dansk wedding china. Even after all these years, I still love it and am so happy to get it out every winter. I like this runner and thought I would make more runners or some placemats. I like to use runners around the house in the Fall and Winter .

Here are the colors I used for the last warp, in the order that I used them. They were nice, but nothing exciting. I have a box of cotton rug warp and I dug through it to see what I might have with more contrast.

And these are the choices. I dreamed up some interesting weaving/color plans and then on the day I started to wind the warp I thought “keep it simple”. {This should be my mantra for the forseeable future!} And honestly, there really is not much sense in threading a complicated pattern and then weaving a variety of busy fabrics through it. The pattern won’t end up showing much.

This is called a warping reel with part of the warp on it. It’s a great tool but takes up a lot of space.

Here is the warp ready to put on the loom. I decided to use almost all of the possibilities in a color block sort of design. I can weave randomly, or in stripes or I can try for checks.

Ta da – - -Now that I am finished making warps, the warping reel comes apart for easy storage, moving and transport.

This little Schacht Spindle loom is for sale, so a rag runner warp will be a good thing for prospective buyer to test drive the loom. I’m weaving away on the runners so I won’t mind cutting the warp off at a moment’s notice.

Weaving a Looper Rug

I know it seems crazy for me to be starting a lot of projects, but there’s a method to my madness. First of all, the looms need to be warped so they look attractive. I find that people are always drawn to something being handwoven, and then the realtors don’t hound me to move them. Since I “work” at home, I need projects to keep me busy when waiting for the house to sell. And then when the looms are warped, I can pack up the weaving supplies. First warp is going on my big Macomber loom.

I can’t remember when I might have discovered loopers, but I have had a big box of them for years. Can you guess what they are?

Sock ends!!! Take off your tube socks, turn them inside out and look at the toes. Imagine that end being sewn together and then for a neat edge, a machine or a person cuts off the excess – and there’s the loop. When you were a child at camp, you used smaller, probably nylon ones to weave on the potholder looms. Mine are cotton so that I can dye them. Here is the looper rug which we use by the shower. I’m thinking I wove it before we moved to Asia, which would have been about 1992. You can see it’s quite faded, and flattened, but it still feels nice underfoot.

I did a little research and it turns out that you can still buy loopers! I have no idea where mine might have come from, but here are two sources. Great Northern Weaving has loopers and is an actual B&M store in Kalamazoo MI, that looks quite interesting. Cotton Clouds carries loopers too. They have been in business for many years and I used to buy lots of fibers from them. They are a great resource for cotton and I was interested to see that they have loopers. Should you want a completed rug, there are also weavers on Etsy who sell woven rugs in very pretty designs.

I dug around in a box of carpet warp looking for colors for the rugs. Here are some choices certainly influenced by the dark and dreary weather we’ve been having.

Surprise – {not if you read my blog a lot} – I decided to use all of those colors. Does this warp look too bright? I’ll let you decide as I show you the progress. I wound a warp for two 24″x 36″ rugs, I hope. There is a lot of take up when you weave with loopers. What that means is that the loopers are fat and fuzzy and very irregular sizes, so they take up a lot of room as you weave them.

Another reason for the large amount of take up is the way that the loopers are joined. If you look at the wound ball as well as the woven section below, you can see that I join the loops by knotting them together. This creates a large bump, which takes up a lot of room going under the warp. {The bumps feel really nice on your bare feet!} The knots and irregular sizes of the loopers also make it difficult to get a nice selvedge, or edge. Looper rugs are always look handmade and a bit rough and shaggy, but that’s their charm. It will be great to have a new one in the bathroom.

When I get the other loom warped, fabrics dyed and quilting projects re-started, then I can seriously pack up and thin the overwhelming studio. Pictures of all this to follow…