The New & Improved Studio/Family Room

My blog buddy at Quiltfever commented recently that with all we’re doing to the house, we’d fall in love with it again. Not exactly, I am so ready to move, but with all the editing and reorganizing, I am remembering why we fell in love with it and bought it in the first place. And I hope that loads of potential buyers come and feel the same way.  ;- 0 Peter looked at the redesigned space and said that the family who buys the house will go out and buy a pool table and a huge T.V.!

I thought you might like a tour of the new/old basement area. It’s one of the big reasons why we bought it. The realtors here call it an “English basement” because of the windows. (I don’t know if that’s Midwestern?) Here is how my sewing table can look – like a side board. It’s a Koala table and I just love it.

However, I don’t plan to close it; I think with a quilt hanging over the edge to disguise what is under it, it’s quite a pretty sight. And I do want to sew. I really miss the design wall, but otherwise it’s very useable.

This area is for games. We had the electric fireplace in the livingroom, but needed a focal point downstairs and this does the trick. The table and chairs, with fresh cushions, used to be in my parents’ kitchen, and was in ours for many years. In this house, it’s always been a game table.

Here is the computer area. I was going to put this all away and then realized that most families want and need such a place, so it’s been compacted. The shelves beside it hold what’s left of my scrapbooking supplies. Turns out that I am not much of a scrapbooker; I use these supplies for cards and gifts.

And here you see some of my fabric stash. Quite amazing, isn’t it? (A few of you have actually seem my studios over the years and I bet you are stunned at how tidy it is.) I have endlessly folded fabric. Some went on these shelves and some went in boxes. Now you see it….

And now you don’t! I am aware of how overwhelming all of my “stuff” looks to a non fiber person. It’s too much! I spent quite a lot of head time after I decided to make a curtain trying to figure out how to attach the fabric to the shelves without drilling holes. Then one day when I was wandering around Joann’s, I came across Home Decor Velcro. One side is sticky to put on the furniture, and the other side is sew-on to attach to the fabric. To make sure that the fabric hangs nicely, I made a pocket in the bottom and put in a piece of wood for the weight.

We are “entertaining” realtors this week. We don’t have one in mind, so have invited several in to give us their idea for a price and their strategy. We’ve never done this before, and it’s been interesting. I must say that our hard work was rewarded!!! The words “pristine” “move-in ready” and “immaculate” rarely pertain to a house that I inhabit. One of the realtors asked if I had the house professionally staged. When I replied that I had done it, she said that I could do it for a living. One of the others said that the livingroom looked like it was out of a magazine. ;-D Still smiling about that one. I’m done bragging now, but it was really great!!!!

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.

A Weekly Dose of Triangles: more design possibilities

Today you will see the rest of the overall design possibilities for the half square triangles that I did. Really, I could go on and on but you get the idea!

This pin wheels pattern is a quilter’s favorite. For this design I think I would need more darks to make the pattern pop, or I could put a plain square in between each pin wheel. The movement is really great!

Here is another favorite quilt pattern design – flying geese. Though this design works, it might be nice to add a plain strip between each “formation” to give your eye a rest.

The geese don’t always have to fly in a straight line, do they? As I was taking the triangles off the wall at the end of the weekend, I “noticed” this design. I had taken many of the triangles down, so it’s not the same size as the other photographs.This one works well with my colors; perhaps it’s the relief of the light values between the darker ones.

This design radiating out from a square is really impressive. I guess it might be a Trip Around the World in all half square triangles. It could be fun to piece or applique a medallion for the middle.

I found many beautiful versions of this when I Googled half square triangle designs. The many colors make such lovely shadowy designs, and soften the edges of the squares. I’m calling it a square within a square.

These last three designs use another shape to make the design, but I wanted to audition them. This first one is called Ocean Waves, I think, and is a pattern that’s long been on my want-to-make list. I tried out several middle fabrics and Peter and I like this dark one best. Though I wouldn’t use a fabric quite this dark, it makes the candy colored fabrics really sing.

I saw a quilt top with this huge flying geese design at a little quilt show that I recently attended. Making a triangle out of triangles is quite striking, though sewing the big non pieced triangles might be a bit tricky.

This is a pattern that I have long admired. I am a great lover of stars and I’d like to do this one. Since I am without a design board, this one will have to stay on the want-to-make list.

Which design will I be sewing? I had a comment from Jo, from a family of quilters, and she asked which one I was planning to make, so she was paying attention. ;-D Peter checked out all the designs as I arranged them on the wall and then we looked over the photographs. He likes the square within a square one and I do too. Although I will have to arrange and plan this quilt, I can manage without a design wall. Meanwhile I have a great pile of triangles to continue to sew – you can see that what I have done is not enough for a quilt!

Look at last week’s designs as well as this week’s and tell me – which one you would choose to sew?

Next week – quilt squares made from just triangles.

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!

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…….

The Machine Quilting Project List

Like many quilters, I have a stack of tops to quilt. I  stacked them up for some years until Peter gave me the amazing Bernina with the BSR. I pulled them all out yesterday and debated which ones I should quilt. Machine quilting is a “tidy” project for sure, so hopefully I will get a lot done this Spring when the house is listed.

First up is the star quilt top that I designed in Gail Garber’s class. I will do a lot of straight line outlining of the stars and geese and then I can try something fun in the background. It’s on the small size so it shouldn’t be too difficult for me.

Then I think I will be ready for the sunflower from Melinda Bula’s class. And that will warm me up for…

… the zinnia. As I said in another post, fused quilt tops seem fragile to me. I am afraid if this gets folded wrong before it’s quilted, that pieces will crease or fall off. (There are lots and lots of teeny, tiny pieces) I spent too long getting them cut and placed and fused to let something happen to this top!

And here is my red and white house quilt, completed some years ago. It’s probably the easiest of these tops to quilt, but it is much larger and therefore more difficult to manoeuvre in the machine.

That is a big list and we’ll see how it goes. It really would be wonderful to get these quilts done and then find a new home to hang them in….  ;-D

WIP Wednesday 1/30

Slowly, but surely, I’m making progress with my WIP’s. When Peter is on the road, which he has been for most of the month, I seem to have an extra hour or two in the late afternoon. In these hours I get restless and want to snack or get into some other trouble, so I make myself sit down and sew. I have been diligently working on the livingroom rug quilt (and the leader/ender half square triangles project). I am happy to say that I have made progress!

Here is Toby Lischko’s quilt so you can see her design; I am not duplicating her quilt. Can you see the corner detail? She changed colors in the squares and also hand appliquéd some geese flying in the border. She was making a show quilt and I am making one to cuddle under, so I have decided to keep mine simple. I need to get this particular piecing project done and soon – it is very messy. I am not going to show you pictures of it, but I have a very large pile of fabrics that I cut pieces of for the red flying geese and the green Lady Liberty’s. When I paper piece, it always looks like a hurricane has been whirling around my sewing machine!

I continue to practise quilting with my Bernina stitch regulator. I have filled 12″ squares with designs and am trying to relax and move smoothly. It’s interesting; the BSR does regulate the stitch but I can still make long jump stitches and unpleasant looking designs. It certainly doesn’t “do” the work for me!

At night, when I am watching a show that doesn’t need my full attention, I am hooking on the Vermont Shells rug. I have made some good progress since I finished dyeing the new wools.

Here’s a cautionary tale for my fellow bloggers. I printed a book of my 2012 posts with blog2print. It’s really fun to have a book with everything you’ve written for a year. As I was looking through it with Peter, I noticed a problem. On the last 10 pages of the book, all the photos had been replaced with my blog header. I had a bad feeling but I did call customer service. Of course I was supposed to look through all 200 pages online and then approve the book and pay for it. I did not. It is my fault, but I do think there might be something they could do. I’m certainly not going to pay to have it reprinted. Next year I will be more diligent…

Project: Leader/Ender Quilt Design Ideas

The last post was about what I hope not to do; now I am working on to-dos! I am one of those people who love The New Year and the notion of a fresh start. I did enjoy the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Peter and I worked on a jigsaw puzzle, tackled some word games, took long walks in the crisp cold air and ate too much. But, every year, come January 2, I am so anxious to get back to my work. Doing things with my hands is visceral for me – I crave it. But whoa – we are selling the house, so I have to really consider what to projects should be on the list!

The last time we moved, I really “thinned” the studio area and packed up lots of boxes of fabric which we put into a storage area. And then the house was on the market for months and months and suddenly I needed some of those fabrics for more projects to keep crazy me busy. Did I dare ask Peter to help me root around the storage room going through taped and cataloged boxes???? Oh, nooooooooo. So I had to buy some more fabric. This time I am trying to be a bit smarter about this process.

I have some ideas for projects to keep me busy, and here’s a quilt that’s underway. On Thursday, I spent the night looking at my Pinterest quilting ideas page and going through my quilting ideas folder and playing on EQ7. By bedtime, I had chosen a pattern that I have been dying to piece. The next morning, eating a biscuit at Mc Donalds, I decided that I was crazy to pick something at all complicated and re-thought the choices. Simple. That is the idea.

So – I have decided to sew many, many half square triangles and then choose a pattern. My beginning sampler quilt class with Karen Buckley began with half square triangles and I remember making a lot of different squares because it was fun to play with the design possibilities. Of course I do need a color plan……

I love my black/multicolored section. The problem with blacks is that they fade very quickly with washing and exposure to the sun. This will be a bed quilt for somewhere and so black doesn’t seem like a good idea.

For the light side, shall I use beiges and off whites? White with multi-colors? Whites with blacks?

Pale batiks with brighter ones? I am always drawn to the two batik shelves (which need to be expanded because a lot is on the floor!)

The blue and green print shelves appeal as well.

After consideration, reds, dark blues and dark greens are out and pales, and bright colors are in. Yet to be determined is whether I will add prints on the “dark” side.

Leader/ender quilts are hard to explain to a non quilter. Here is a link to Bonnie Hunter’s website;  she has written a whole book about the topic. Frankly, I don’t think this saves time, but sewing the paper pieced livingroom quilt is really boring now, so this new quilt is a carrot for me. I did sew and press and trim just a few squares to preview them.  ;-D

I don’t feel like doing teeny, tiny triangles, so I will be mass producing 2.5″ squares (2″ finished). 2″ will show off fabrics in a nice way, and I feel like scrap quilts are “scrapbooks” of one’s fabric collection.

Merry Christmas Grandmother’s Flower Garden Quilt

Ta dah! Here is my latest Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt top, the result of several years of hand sewing in hotel rooms, on vacations and at odd moments at home when I needed hand work. And to be clear, it’s hand pieced; I only do English paper piecing on tiny hexes. Each side of these hexes measures 1.5″.

This was a lot of fun to piece.

I try to avoid buying Christmas fabric (and Halloween too!) but it calls to me in fabric stores!

What’s great about a Grandmother’s Flower Garden sort of design is that it combines lots of fabrics that would not look good right next to each other.

I plan to piece the backing as well, with some of the bigger Christmas prints, which will reduce the stash a bit… I would have liked to get it quilted for Christmas this year, but because of its size, it’s low on the machine quilting list.