filmstrip quilt – Knit-Spin-Quilt

2012 Year in Review

1. FinalWhole, 2. FQ-Close, 3. Front_garden, 4. Full_front, 5. BlueBlack-staggered, 6. Henrietta1, 7. Notebooks, 8. Sarah’s potholders (front), 9. Black bag 1

In 2012 I started quilting seriously, started blogging, met a whole bunch of really lovely people and learned tons from advice and tutorials and quilt-alongs, and finished a lot of small projects and several quilts, including one that isn’t featured in this mosaic.

In 2013, I’ll be joining the Inspire circle of do. Good Stitches (which I’m really looking forward to) and trying my best to keep up with the Pile O’Fabric Skill Builder Block of the Month in hopes of learning how to sew curves at the very least. And ideally, I’ll be a little bit better at keeping up with this blog during the spring semester than I was this fall.

Finished Filmstrip Quilt!

Filmstrip Quilt: based on the tutorial written up by Crazy Mom Quilts
The prints are Cosmo Cricket’s Circa 1934, the cream fabric is Kona Cotton, the black fabric is something I had in my stash, of unknown maker.

I managed to get photographs of this quilt on Wednesday morning before work, so that I could set up a post about it for today. The quilt has been finished, and all the little ends sewn in and so on, but hasn’t been washed yet: I want to get some color-catchers before I do that, because I’m not certain I trust the black not to stain, and that would be a pity.

It was already hot outside at 8am: I was really glad I didn’t need to huddle under the quilt for any photographs.

The backing is a single piece of red and white striped fabric that I’ve had since about 2007 or 2008 — I picked it up at a yard sale on a whim, sure I’d make something out of it. Well, I did! Finally. You can see the scrappy binding pretty clearly in all of these photographs.

I quilted it in straight lines about 1/4″ from the seams between the blocks and the sashing, using white thread, which more or less disappears into the cream/red fabrics, and provides a little bit of pop for the black. The lines are very, very wobbly: this is not a quilt that would win any awards for precision. At least some of it is because not all of my blocks lined up perfectly, so there was the occasional wonky intersection. Part of it, though, is probably sheer impatience: I find straight-line binding really boring, and about 2/3 of the way through I really just wanted it to be DONE.

Still, overall, I’m pretty happy with how it came out!

Quick post!

I’m running off to California for a wedding this weekend, and my computer will be staying at home to avoid flying hassles at security, so I’ll be a little scarce, but I’ll be back on Monday!

I just finished my Filmstrip quilt Tuesday evening. It took me about three and a half hours to hand-sew the binding onto a quilt that only had about 200″ of binding: this is why I usually machine-bind my quilts. Perhaps I’ll get better and faster if I do more by hand. And I watched some episodes of Chevalier D’Eon while I worked on it: the dub is really quite awkward, and the premise kind of absurd (that’s not how alchemy works, guys!) but I still want to know what happens next.

I’ve tried to photograph the Filmstrip quilt and I hope to be able to post about it on Friday as part of Thank God It’s Finished Friday, which Plum and June is hosting this week. But that may not happen, depending on how busy things are once I get out to California. I’ll be staying with my college roommate, and I’m not certain how much free time we’ll end up having.

In the meantime, I’m auditioning colors for the “frames” of my Kitchen Window quilt. I’m torn between navy blue and black. Here are two photographs:

The photo taken with flash:

The photo taken without flash:

Opinions would be greatly appreciated. I like the warmth and interaction of the blue, but I find it draws my eyes away from the prints. The black is a lot starker, but I find that that makes me look more closely at the prints, ignoring the black as if it were a framed photograph.

What do you think?

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Linking up to WiP Wednesday, because, hey, this Kitchen Window quilt is totally a work in progress, and there are always some really excellent projects and posts linked up — go check some of them out!

A thoroughly relaxing weekend.

Last weekend was great: I went to see Avengers on Friday with a friend who hadn’t seen it yet, went to the Brooklyn Flea with the same friend on Saturday, and spent the rest of the weekend hiding in air conditioning and quilting. My family was out of town, so I had the house more or less to myself.

I’m almost done with the Circa 1934 Filmstrip quilt: all I have to do is sew down the binding. This may take me a while, though, because I’ve decided I want to do it by hand, and I’m terribly slow at sewing by hand.

I made it a scrappy binding, alternating black fabric with strips of the various prints used in the front of the quilt: I had just enough to make it work, with hardly anything left over at the end.

The backing is a simple red and white stripe — I’ve actually had the fabric for years, trying to figure out what to do with it. I suppose this will only encourage me to be a packrat in the future. (Ooops.)

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I also cut fabric for my next project — a Kitchen Window quilt. Because I don’t have enough half-done projects already, right? But I know myself well enough by now to know that I’ll pretty much always have more than one WiP at a time: I do it with knitting, with spinning, even with reading books: I like to have a variety to flip back and forth between.

I’m torn right now between using a black fabric for the frame and using a navy one — I’ll have to lay them both out for a little bit and look at them in different light, I think. The sashing between windows will be a deep green to pick up some of the teals and greens in the panes.

How were your weekends? Anything out of the ordinary, or interesting projects?

If you have time, check out the Monday Link-Up at Plum and June:

And keep an eye out for the Let’s Get Aquainted blog hop posts this week: there are three on Tuesday this week!

Circa 1934 meets Filmstrip.

Happy Friday the 13th!

This quilt is (hopefully) going to be a quick project. I’m following the tutorial for a Filmstrip Quilt at Crazy Mom Quilts.

This is what it looks like right now:

I’m not happy with the way the print repeats in the upper right hand corner, but I’m not sure how to fix it. Suggestions would be awesome.

I cut out the pieces on Tuesday night and Wednesday night, and ironed the ones that were being stubborn about curling where they’d been folded. (I know I should iron before cutting, but I was just so impatient… it hasn’t caused any problems yet.)

I’m using five fat quarters of the Circa 1934 and 1 yard of a Kona cream-colored cotton (I don’t recall which exactly), which were enough to make 15 block centers and 15 block borders, with a teeny bit of each print left over, which I may add to a scrappy binding, spaced out with black. I may also just bind it in a red-white-stripe. I cut my solid stupidly, and had to piece together my last two 9″x2.5″ strips together from scraps, which was a little annoying. I’ll know better next time.

This is it all cut:

I pinned all of the blocks to their short borders first, which took a while, but meant that I was able to chain piece the 15 red-centered blocks in one fell swoop, which was nice and fast:

I finished all the white-bordered blocks first, before embarking on the red-bordered ones.

Another two bouts of pinning and ironing and trimming later, I have all of my 30 blocks, trimmed to 8.5″.

These pictures show half of them, before I trimmed them:

I made up a schematic the other day and decided that I really want there to be sashing between the blocks: so I’ll be adding 1.5″ strips of black between the various blocks, and arranging the blocks diagonally, rather than horizontally. This is my very awkward mock-up:

I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m going to do with this quilt once it’s done, but I can figure that out later.