works in progress – Page 3

Mixtape quilt basted!

It feels like a long time since I’ve posted about this, but the mixtape quilt I’m making for a friend’s son is all basted and ready to quilt!

I love the way the blocks are arranged: if you look closely, every set of four (2×2) has one from each color group. I’m always impressed when people write patterns that lay blocks out in regular but not immediately obvious ways, so this pattern has been a lot of fun.

The back is fairly simple: just a strip of white separating two of the small prints used on the front.

One thing I’m really pleased about is the fact that the stripe on the back lines up almost perfectly with one of the strips of sashing on the front of the quilt. This will really only ever be visible when the quilt is folded partway, but it makes me happy.

For right now, it’s basted with pins at the corners of the blocks, but I’m not sure that’s enough. Anyone with more quilting experience: is that enough, or should I pin the centers of the blocks, too? They’re eight inch blocks. I’m torn, because I don’t want to have to quilt around even more pins, but I also don’t want things to shift about too much. Advice would be wonderful.

Finally, I’ve done up two samples of ways I might quilt this sucker. They’re done in black thread against a light background to make the stitches more obvious — it also reveals that I probably need to adjust the tension on my machine a little bit, since you can see the white thread from the other side poking through a bit here and there.

I’m not really sure how to quilt it — loops or zig-zags are probably easiest, as far as free-motion quilting is concerned. I’ll have to talk to the recipient and see what she likes best, and go from there.

As for other projects, I’ve been chugging along on the blocks of the month, but I just made my first large piecing mistake, so I’ll leave that (and its fixing) to next week.

Knitting WiPs, or, sock roundup.

Apologies for the silence here! I was wrapping up the semester and then at the medieval congress in Kalamazoo, and that all added up to not very much getting accomplished, craft-wise.

Today’s post is a knitting round-up. I tend to have a few projects going on at a time (this is probably evident in how I’m going about starting quilts right and left) and I have a couple too many knitting projects going on right now. Hopefully this will incentivise my finishing one or two of them.

There are socks for my mother, which are this close to being done:

They’re actually a lot of fun: the yarn is Malabrigo sock, which I’d never knit with before – it’s a joy. The pattern is 2k-2p-inside-out, and I really like the way it forms little ribbed chevrons down the foot.

Then there are the blue socks for me, which are the only socks I’ve knit for myself in at least a year (what can I say, I have a family that appreciates hand-knit socks!). I”ve just started the second one, and I have about three inches of it — it’s slow going, but it’s good subway knitting.

They’re in Claudia Hand-Paints, which I love knitting with, but always knit from toe-up, because its skeins are on the small side, and my feet? Well, they’re on the large side. Better safe than sorry, no matter how easy it is to call different-colored toes a “design feature.”

There’s also a red sweater that I started two Novembers ago as an attempt at National Sweater Knitting Month — I got almost all of it done, realized my gauge on the bottom half of it was wrong, ripped it all out, and haven’t picked it up again for ages because it’s so disappointing to have to re-do so much work. It doesn’t get to have a picture, because I don’t love it enough right now. Also because the red yarn photographs really badly in artificial light.

I have two projects that are so close to being done that, apparently, they have encountered Zeno’s Paradox and will now never be finished. I started to teach myself how to knit entrelac last summer, got almost to the point where I’d have to bind off the scarf, and completely lost interest. I also knit a baby sweater for my little cousin (the same one who got the ladybug quilt) and didn’t finish it in time for her to still be small enough to wear it. Hopefully I’ll finish at least one of them over the weekend, and be able to post them next week. I figure someone I know has to have another baby eventually, so the sweater can just lay in wait for that. The scarf, though, is probably going to be re-purposed as a pillow, since it’s too wide and short to make a reasonable scarf.

Finally, there’s the “I have the brainpower of a really small rock right now” project:

It’s the Log Cabin Baby Blanket from Mason-Dixon Knits, done in Cascade Eco Wool and Cascade Eco Plus (which is the same thing, only dyed all kinds of colors). It’s great for watching television or sitting in the car, because it’s all garter stitch, and there’s no thinking other than stopping once in a while to find out you still have way more ridges to knit before you’re done with that block. I love that the blocks are asymmetrical and the pattern doesn’t expand in a traditional log cabin fashion: I can’t wait to have this finished and be able to curl up under it, though at the rate I’m knitting, I’ll finish it sometime in June.

I think that’s all the projects I have going at the moment. Wednesday, back to quilting!

Mixtape progress and Block of the Month question

First of all, here’s the rather pathetic progress I’ve made on the Mixtape quilt since the last time I posted about it:

I’m looking forward to finishing it up, but I think it’s going to have to wait until the end of the semester: something about the potential finished-ness of it once I sew in the long sashing strips is giving me pause.

In the mean time, however, I’ve changed up the fabrics I’m using for the Block of the Month quilt:

The new one in the dark blues is the cities print from 1001 Peeps; the yellow dotty ones are Ta Dot by Michael Miller, which I’m fond of.

Here the light blue has benefited from the addition of some Ta Dots as well.

And because just cutting them was putting far too much temptation in my way, here are two blocks that I’m almost ready to sew together:

This is the March block, and I think I’m pretty okay with how it looks.

This is the January block. And for this one, I could use some advice: which orange? Or should I pick something else entirely from the fabrics I showed above? I’d love a second (or third, or so on!) opinion, because I’m really not so sure about this one as it sits now.

Mixtape Quilt

I’ve done a lot of piecework and blocks recently, but the project that’s taking up much of my time right now is one that hasn’t shown up here at all yet!

This is partially because I haven’t got the sashing material yet for my Simple Math quilt, so that’s on the shelf for a little while. (To pick out that fabric, I’ve got to find a time both its recipient and I are free to go to a quilting store, and that’s going to take some doing between our respective schedules.)

Fortunately, I haven’t had to sit on my hands. Instead I offered to make a quilt for a friend’s son. I sent her a handful of patterns, and I have to admit I was really pleased when she picked Mixtape Quilts, because I’ve been eyeing it for a little while. We went to The City Quilter together, and I read to her little boy while she picked out fabrics. It was really fun watching her duck from rack to rack accumulating fabrics and pairing them off.

It’s all purples and greens, though the colors don’t come through true in these pictures:

We bought white material for the sashing, but after I’d laid all the blocks out, it occurred to me that maybe a darker sashing fabric would be a good idea for a small child? So I laid out what purples and greens I had (solids, that is) under some of the blocks:

(The lighter green isn’t quite that NEON in person…)

What’s funny is that everyone who saw it had a different, very strong opinion. Definitely NOT white. Definitely purple. NEVER green. Maybe a different green. NOT purple. It was a complete failure of crowd-sourcing decision-making: no consensus at all. The recipient went with white in the end, so I’m working on sewing it all together with the sashing right now, which ought to keep me busy for a little while.

Quilting the Nine-Patch Lattice Quilt

Well, this week has been a thorough fail in terms of posting on-schedule.

In any event, I’ve all but finished the Nine-Patch Lattice quilt, so here’s a look at how I quilted it. I followed the instructions in The Practical Guide to Patchwork, with the occasional look at Elizabeth Hartmann’s very helpful tutorials on her blog.

First I laid out my quilt batting and top, and rolled them together. (I forgot to take a picture of this step.)

Then I laid out the back, and while the instructions I was looking at suggested stretching the back out and taping the edges so it doesn’t move, I thought – hey, I can totally do this, it’s tiny! – not my best idea.

I unrolled the quilt batting&top onto the back, and trimmed around the edges.

I’d decided to quilt along the lattice design: nice straight lines seemed like a good idea for a first try at really quilting something. I initially thought of quilting all the lines, including those within the nine-patch blocks, but I decided I didn’t want it to look quite that busy. And the batting I was using said it could be quilted up to 10″ apart, so I didn’t feel too bad about these blocks.

I attached a walking foot and a 14 needle (instead of an 11) and I started quilting along the lines of the lattice blocks. I started stitching on the batting, beyond the edge of the top’s fabric.

I rolled the quilt up as I went, and it’s a good thing it was fairly small, because it definitely took me a little while to figure out the most efficient ways to move it around.

One thing I didn’t think of for an embarrassingly long time is the idea of folding up not only the side that was going under the arm of the sewing machine, but the quilt on the left of the sewing machine as well. This made things a lot easier to manage.

Remember how I said I didn’t follow the instructions quite exactly? Well, it turns out that if you rely on just crawling around and smoothing, and you don’t really quite know exactly what you’re doing just yet, you end up with a couple of tucks in the fabric of the back of the quilt. I am surprisingly okay with this, because, really, for a first quilt (I really don’t count the two I made for my cousin’s kids, because they were so small and so completely without guidance or plan), it’s not that bad. But I still didn’t take pictures of the tucks on the back.

Once I’d finished quilting it, I trimmed the edges straight and cut and pressed my binding.

I pinned it to the wrong side, and sewed about 1/4″ from the edge, all the way around. One of the corners gave me some trouble (overstitching both sides of it? Not the best plan.)

Then I unpinned it, turned the binding around to the front of the quilt, and pinned it down. Then I sewed the binding down about 1/4″ from the edge of it. This left a second line around the edges of the quilt on the back, but I don’t mind the effect, and it was a lot faster (and I trust it a lot more) than hand-stitching the binding. I have very little confidence in my ability to sew things by hand.

You may notice, in this last picture, that I managed to put the pins in with their sharp ends facing me: OW. Not doing that again, if I can help it. I stabbed myself on their tips more times than I really want to remember.

When I get some decent light, I’ll photograph the finished quilt. And now that the Lattice quilt is finished, I’m working on a quilt for a friend’s son. It’s all greens and purples, and I’ve already finished all the blocks for it.

Simple Math blocks completed!

Those four stacks are all one hundred twenty (120!!) blocks for my adapted-to-double-size Simple Math quilt. There are four widths of crosses: 1″, 1 1/4″, 1 1/2″ and 2″. There are fifteen fabrics total, and two patches in each width in each fabric.

I made up blocks in five patterns each of light, medium and dark fabrics.

Here are the light-colored fabrics I used:

The center block in the back row is Kona cotton, because I wanted to add a solid to each group. The one in the back right is from the fat quarter bin at my local fabric store. The other three came from Jo-Ann fabrics sometime in the last four years.

Next up are the medium fabrics:

The center top is a Kona cotton solid again, and the bottom left is from the local fat quarter bin. The other three? Same as above.

And the dark fabrics, which might be my favorite:

Top right is the Kona cotton solid, which looks black here, but is actually the same deep blue as the Nine-Patch Lattice Quilt I made last month. Bottom right is Illuminate, from Lizzy House’s 1001 Peeps collection. I love the whole collection, so when one of the generic calicos I had for this didn’t work out, I was pleased to be able to pull this one in.

But now that they’re all done, they’re actually going to have to sit for a little while, until I can find a time when both my mother and myself can get to a fabric store together to pick a sashing fabric (and a backing fabric!). Once that’s all done, I can start putting them all together and worrying about how to quilt it properly. (I have some ideas, but they have to wait until I’m sure I know what I’m doing…)

In the mean time, I still have to quilt my Nine-Patch Lattice quilt, and I’ve started another quilt for a friend’s son, which will show up next time.

Sizing up Simple Math

The Simple Math pattern (by Elizabeth Hartman of Oh, Fransson!) as written makes a finished quilt of about 47″ x 62″, made of 48 blocks. Now, I’m all for reasonable-sized projects (well, sometimes), but I wanted to make it in a size I’d actually use on a bed: I’ve got enough lap blankets knit up to last me quite some time, and I’m not much for hanging quilts on the wall. (Well. Not yet, at least.)

I figured out that if I wanted to make a quilt roughly twin sized, I’d need to make 80 blocks. Well, I thought — I’m well on my way! Look, I have 64 of them done!

All right, so it doesn’t look very impressive in those little bitty stacks. But that’s still 64 6.5″ square crosses right there!

And I only have two more colors to go, to get this all cut and sewn, see?

And then my mother (for whom I’m making this quilt) said: “Well, we don’t really need a twin size quilt. What about a full size one for the guest room?”

So I agreed, sighed, looked at the pattern, and drew myself a new mock-up. This one takes 120 blocks:

Here’s my logic in putting this diagram together.

I’m putting 2″ strips between the blocks, so that works out to 1.5″ of sashing on each side of a block (assume 1/4″ seams). The blocks are squared to 6.5″, so they will be 6″ square, if I put them together properly. This means I can increase this pattern by increments of 7.5″ (6″ block + 1.5″ sashing) So I did that, and increased it in size to 10 x 12 rows of blocks.

You’ll notice one other difference from the pattern as written: I decided to add a striped border using the scraps from the fat quarter fabrics. It will be 3″ wide, striping blues and the white background fabric. The white stripes will always be 3″ square, but the blues will vary in width from 1 1/2″ to 2 1/2″, in the same increments as the crosses. I’m looking forward to piecing that part together, though I suspect I’m going to hate it just a little bit when I’m putting it together.

That striped border adds 3″ to each side of the quilt, for a total of 6″. But then I wanted to be sure I had plenty of material around the edge of the quilt to trim and still have enough room to sew on the binding without it obscuring the stripes. So I added in a 3″ strip of sashing around the outside of my impromptu striped border, which adds another 6″ to the final dimensions.

And when you do the math for all of that, the finished quilt ends up being a whopping 88.5″ x 103.5″

I’m a little daunted by the idea of quilting all of that, but I’m pretty sure I know how I’m going to do it, so that part, at least, is a little less scary.

Of course, increasing from 80 to 120 blocks doesn’t just happen by itself. So I walked over to the fabric store, and picked up three solids and two prints, to make another 40 blocks:

The solids are Kona cotton, the prints are whatever happened to be in the fat quarter bin and caught my eye.

I’ve cut three of them so far, but then the draft deadline for the paper that will become my thesis called, and I’ve paused right now, about to cut out the stripes from the last two fat quarters, and then cut 40 more 6″x6″ white blocks for the backgrounds of all those new crosses. I’m just glad I have a few extra yards of this white background fabric: otherwise I would be very, very sad.

Better photograph of the Scrap Attack quilt

I finally pressed it, (not that you can entirely tell: the light green fabric is a little cranky) and it’s all ready to quilt and bind. Then, of course, I have to decide who to give it to. It’ll probably sit on a shelf for a little while until a baby or a birthday comes along.

(More information about the fabric and so on is here.)