Black and white challenge etc.

The Basement Diva's met yesterday for our monthly meeting and the big reveal of our Black and White Plus one color challenge. You can read about it here and see the quilts.

 

This is my quilt and I have posted about it previously while it was in progress. I am not going to say anything more about it now.

 

  Amy (from Amy's Creative Side)has her spring Bloggers Quilt Festival  coming up and I plan to enter this quilt and have a post about it at that time. it has to be a new post and not one that has been up before so I don't want to over do it to the point of boredom about this quilt.

I have been playing (for more than 15 minutes)with made fabric. I keep trying to put my bags of scraps away but something grabs my attention and I start playing with my scraps. I have about 22 blocks now and I put some strips and bits and pieces that I want to use up on the will above my machine. Each time I get back to this I do something a little different than the time before and different colors catch my fancy. It's good to do a little every day or so as it adds variety.

I have been trimming as I sit at the machine. I could say that it is in order to be more efficient but the truth is that my cutting tables are covered with bags of scraps that I sorted and got ready to put away and there is no room to cut.

A word of caution for you if you are cutting while sitting at your machine with a little cutting mat.

 

     If you are doing this............................................................don't do this.

 Fortunately the odd clunky noise alerted me that something was not right and I only took 3 stitches.

 

A peek at a finish etc.

I finished the hand stitching on the binding the hanging sleeves on my Black and White plus Red for the Basement Diva challenge. My wrists and my thumbs are still complaining a little today but that will pass (at least I hope it will). I am not going to show the whole thing today because I am going to wait until April 20 when we have our big reveal. I have shown it in progress and here is a peek at the binding. I found this back and white Michael Miller Bar Code Stripe at a LQS and I cut it on the bias.

I am happy with it. I think I should probably print a label with the rules. I should have signed it with free motion stitching in a lower corner on the front. Maybe I can still do that.
I  have not been doing much other sewing this week. I have cleaned cabinets and drawers and have a pile of thing to give to my kids. I have boxes of keepsakes that are never looked at except once in a while when I go through things to declutter.

I found some of my daughters artwork, probably from 3rd grade; there are several  pages fastened together.
Below is a booklet of hers with what appears to be book reports or maybe answers to  questions about something the class read. I have no idea what grade this would be. I am impressed with the neatness of her hand writing.

This is my husbands Cub Scout scrapbook. It is at  67 to 70 years old as Cub Scouts were 7 to 10 years old when he was in Cub Scouts, maybe that is still the age range.

I meant to give this to our son along with his Cub Scout Log book. He was in scouts up through high school and he was a scout leader when his boys were in scouts.
I gave John his book on Wednesday when he has here for dinner along with some artwork and things he had made. There was a book from high school with poetry and essays and other writings of the students from English class as well as a few drawings from students. He appeared to enjoy looking at it.
I have some boxes yet to go through and I will be giving both of my kids some more things from their childhood and also things from their children.

Star points

I am nearly finished with the quilting on my challenge piece. I have 14 star points to go. 
This shows one star that is quilted. The quilting doesn't really show up much and I decided that was better than having it show up done poorly.

This next photo shows the twist thread on a practice piece. It really shows up but after doing some more practice pieces I was not happy with the way it looked. It was really hard to turn exactly at the point. I learned from experience that if I have to fix my stitching by ripping it out and resewing I often end up with something not a good as it was in the first place. Still I wanted to give it a try so I stitched two star points with the twist thread and neither of them looked good or even passable. I made my decision at that point and ripped the stitches out and went with the black thread. It really doesn't show up but it flattens out the start points so they don't look like I forgot to finish them.

 Soon I will have to begin to agonize over the binding. I do not want a border and I thought all along I would go with a solid black binding but I think not. It will  be either facing or a black and white stripe or black and white pieced so the fabric is the same as the fabric where it is stitched to the quilt.

Maybe it will be something else.

We'll see!

Straight Line Quilting

I am almost finished quilting the straight lines 1/2 inch apart on the black and white quilt. It hasn't gone badly but it takes along time. I used black thread on the black diamonds and red thread on the red diamonds and white thread on the background. I quilted the diamonds first outlining everything with ditch quilting and then parallel straight lines following the diamond shapes by turning at the angles. One of the background fabrics was darker and was like a solid diamond shape underlying the open diamonds and I quilted that with black and I only changed direction on that in the center where all the the lines across the width of the quilt changed directions. directions. Around the whole diamond focal area I echo quilted. I thought a long time about what I wanted to do and I think I "got it right". I still have to decide about the black star points but I am pretty sure I will use a black and white twist thread. 





































I am going to take out the black stitching On the white background on the left here and use white like I have on the right. This is the where background is showng through where the open black stars overlap the open diamond centers. The area here with the black stitching was the  first quilting that I did on this and I changed my mind about the color thread; it just calls too much attention to my not so straight lines. I knew I was going to take out at least 2 of the lines but I thought I would do them over again in black. After doing the rest of the quilting I have come to the conclusion that a thread that has less or no contrast looks better for the straight lines that are not always perfect.

 Straight parallel lines are a challenge for me but I like the look so I will probably use them again.

Maybe I will get better at it.

Maybe I won't.

Oh well!

Quilting the Black and White Challenge Piece

I am quilting  my challenge piece and working at it on and off as my eyes will allow. Yesterday I needed to rest my eyes so I cleaned my kitchen. I  needed to do something that was not visually demanding and now my kitchen is nice and clean and sparkly.
 I find that it is easy to get lost in the middle of the quilt sometimes so I used EQ to color my quilt design in lighter shades. That would allowed me to print it and sketch my quilting design over it with a black pen. I am quilting straight lines about 1/2 inch apart on the diamonds. This is is turning out to be tedious as I have to keep stopping and starting as I skip over the star points and the intersections where the diamonds cross other diamonds and the quilting lines will be in a different direction. There are a few places near the center that I sketched my quilting lines in the wrong direction and they look like a criss cross grid; that is not what I intend to do.

I've been using black thread but I am considering red for the red diamonds and I  have a black and light gray twist thread that I am thinking about for the star points. Quilting this is really a challenge for me. Not only is it hard to sew black on black but I also not really great at sewing straight lines.

So why am I doing this?

I guess because the quilt is telling me what it wants.

I always listen to my quilts;

 sometimes I am lazy and

do it my way but not today.

 

 

 

Black on Black

I am giving my eyes a real workout. I am hand stitching the mostly black binding on a quilt with a mostly black backing. The other thing I am doing is machine quilting with black thread on my black and white and red challenge piece.




This photo below was taken when I was starting to sew the pieces together in rows (you can see my thread catchers on the ends of my rows at the top). I can't find a photo of the whole thing after it is together.





I am starting to ditch stitch to outline the large diamonds and the black star points. I am not sure what I will do after that but it will probably be straight line stitching, maybe echo stitching. I didn't have a real plan to start out and it is evolving as it go.

When I don't have a plan sometimes it is best to just start with something that I know I will do and then let things take its course. So far it is going well but eye strain comes pretty quickly and going back to the black on black binding doesn't work as a way to rest my eyes and neither is working on the computer to post.

 

I guess I could do some cleaning but

it is Sunday (a day of rest) after all

 so maybe I should take a nap.

Works for me!

 

 

Good vs. Perfect

 I sewed a little this morning and then we ran around first to the eye doctor  for Jack's last post op visit and then to Lenscrafters for new glasses. Jack is so funny with his new glasses. He is looking all around at everything like it is all new to him. After his cataract surgery neither of the lenses in his glasses were right and it was too soon until today for a new prescription. While we were waiting the hour for his  new glasses home I walked around the mall until I was tired and then we sat and people watched. We stopped at home for a short time and then went out to dinner for my birthday.
 After dinner I sewed a little more. It is good that the sewing today was on and off as that gave me a little time to settle my thinking. When I was still working ( hard to believe it was 16 years ago) I worked with someone who said "the enemy of good is perfect". I should remember that. I guess I do remember it but not when I am trying over and over to make something perfect.  I was working on and off today on my black and white challenge piece. I am down to the last long seam; I started the day with 3 seams to sew and', as I often do when I am almost finished,I got compulsive about making my points perfect. I guess in the back of my mind there is the thought that I don't want to slack off and become sloppy about my workmanship just because I want to finish.

I will not tell you how many times (double digits)I reworked the points at the top and lower right in the photo on the left.I started fussing about a difference of one or two thread widths that were not quite perfect. Every time I took out the stitches it looked worse. I finally settled for what I probably had to begin with and used my black Pigma pen to fix it. It was probably better before I did that too but none of it is going to show at all once this is quilted.

 

These next two photos are of a section I did a couple of weeks ago. I was in a more sensible frame of mind and while I could see that the points did not come together perfectly, they were good and did not matter in the overall picture as, you can see in the second shot below that is not such a close up shot.

Tomorrow (I guess that is really today but until I go to bed and sleep and then get up it is still Thursday and not yet tomorrow) I will sew the last seam and then I will put this to rest for a while. It will probably stay up on my wall so I can look at it and agonize about the quilting.

 

Catching Up

I have been falling behind in my posting, mainly because I have not been doing much sewing. Between trying to get my Christmas shopping finished and doing some of the things I had to do and losing days here and there because of vertigo, time just slips away from me.
I am finished with my shopping, all scheduled events and appointments are past, and I am feeling more nearly back to normal. I still have some gifts to wrap and then I can put away the wrapping paper etc and my sewing room and I will be ready to play.

This arrived yesterday while we were out shopping. I didn't open the book until after dinner because I knew dinner might not happen if I started reading it. I have done some of the exercises in the past but I see so many more possibilities, for myself or with a group, (the Basement Divas comes to mind). I am eager to start on something.






 
I am still  working on this; it has been on hold for a few weeks. I still have to sew the last 6 diagonal rows on the left.
This smaller photo shows how the right side really looks (before photo cropping). I am not sure how far I will trim back the right side; I am not crazy about the value of the darker background fabric on the lower right. When I had worked this out in EQ7 I had some red and black diamonds and triangles in the corners but I decided to "clean it up". Trimming it back like the cropped photo helps a little but I am not sure if it will be enough. There is no hurry as this Basement Diva challenge is not due until March so I can keep it up on my wall and look at it while I decide. 

Back to work on the Challenge

I finished up the place mats and with the smallish leftover pieces I made 2 potholders.  They turned out pretty good but I forgot to take a picture before I wrapped them for a shower gift.
Yesterday I had some of my family here for dinner so everything is all cleaned up and my sewing room is all clean and tidy. When there are going to be kids playing in the sewing room I get everything cleaned up and put away. So.... this morning I got back to some sewing on the black and white and red challenge.

I am amazed at how easily the 60 degree triangles go together:those little dog ears really help to line everything up and make nice sharp  points. I am getting nice points without having to pin and stitch and rip and re pin and restitch and rip etc. I have half the top stitched together and have only had to fix a couple of places. I am definitely going to do this again.

This has been a good learning experience. Next time I will use setting triangles on the ends instead of stitching many triangles together when I could have used one solid piece. I think I will buy a ruler that cuts diamonds as well as triangles; there are many more whole diamonds that I could have cut instead of sewing 2 triangles together. I am not a gadget person and I always try to figure out how to use my basic rulers for everything I can but when there are angles other than right angles or 45 degree angles a special  ruler is usually worthwhile.

Sewing at a snails pace

Nothing has been moving along very fast here in my sewing room. Lots of routine doctor appointments and the like have all fallen around the same time; add to that a decision for Jack to finally have his cataract surgery (today) and there is not much time for getting anything done.

 It is probably a good thing that I have not been going full speed ahead (which isn't very fast anyway for me). I am learning a lot about sewing 60 degree triangles together. First I learned that it is best to work in diagonal rows when doing the sewing. then I found out how easy it is to get mixed up and turn something around. I started by sewing diamonds in each row then sewing the diamonds together in that row, completing each row as I went along. I had started on one end so the rows across on the diagonal were short which saved me from a lot more ripping of seams.I sewed about 4 rows before I came to the conclusion that I needed to sew all the triangles into diamonds in all the rows and put them back up on the wall before I started to sew the rows. I made one or more mistakes in every row up to that point.


wrong

correct




 Top row - sewed into diamonds
Middle row - whole row sewed
Bottom row- nothing sewed yet.
It is difficult almost impossible for me to line up the rows that have been sewed with the rows that  not been sewed at all and the rows that have been sewed into diamonds. Maybe you can see in the photo above how much different there is in the lengths. This is not an even symmetrical pattern that has an easy point of reference. It was just too easy to get something in the wrong place or oriented in the wrong direction. Still the construction is easy when my seam allowance is a good 1/4 inch and my seams are lining up. I am liking this enough to think I will do this again. I know what the pitfalls are so next time it will be easier. Right?

I am also making progress on the second tree skirt. I finally got out and bought fabric for the backing. I got the prairie points made and stitched on,  I am starting to move ahead.

.

Black and white and other stuff

I have been playing in EQ7 with my black and white challenge and after totaling up about 37 different designs I started eliminating and I finally started cutting triangles. After a while all that playing on the computer gets confusing.

Here is my stack of triangles. I didn't use some of the fabrics I was certain I was going to use after all. I did get the design up and my design wall and have fiddled with it for a couple of days on and off.

 

I discovered that I need to orient certain of the fabrics with the grain line perpendicular or they looked like they were not lined up right. Unless that is the look you are going for, it is not desirable. The white dots on a black background stood out like a sore thumb when the bias edges were not on the straight line on the bottom or top; it was the same with the black with the white squares. Some of the other prints do not matter but I decided that I will orient all the triangles so the bias edges are on the sides and that will make the straight grain on the top and bottom of the quilt and on the sides as well when the outside triangles are trimmed back. I started to sew it together and I learned the hard way that the best way (for me) is to sew it in diagonal rows. All this would have been much more clear to begin with if I had read the book before I started instead of just looking at the pictures .

 I have decided that I am only going to show a few small areas that I am working with on my blog and wait until I have the whole thing finished to show it here. It will take a while so don't hold your breath.

Sunday I went to a quilt show put on by one of the local quilt guilds.  Most of the Basement Diva group belong to the guild and I was eager to see their challenge quilts. I almost missed going because although I knew the date it just got here before I realized it. How did it get to be November so soon?
It is a good thing I went because my friend gave me this little zentangle inspired quiltlet that she made. It is about 4 1/2 inches square. Her challenge piece was zentangle inspired.

If you want to see her piece and more of the Diva's quilts and the rest of the challenge quilts they are on the Basement Divas Blog.



 

 

More Blocks and Playing with EQ7

I finished up my Friendship blocks on Tuesday. This pattern is Mississippi Mud, Mary Huey's version of the Mississippi block. These blocks are for Laura who gave us the fabric squares already cut. All we had to do was the construction. My favorite quilts are scrappy quilts with many colors and as many different fabrics as possible but I love this done in batiks. It has a more cohesive look and a much more sophisticated character. I am not sure if the whole quilt is blue or if other people had other colors.I missed the meeting last month so I didn't  see what everyone else had. 

 Mary Huey used to own a local quilt shop and taught this class in her shop. I seem to be the only one of my friends who never made this quilt. I may remedy that in the next year.

I have been playing in EQ7 with ideas for my black and white and red Basement Diva challenge, these are two photos of my computer screen with 2 layouts. None of the fabrics are what I will actually use but rather they represent value and color. You can check my post here on the Basement Divas  blog to see what I have settled on as my challenge.

I play in EQ with every quilt I ever make even the very simplest ones. It helps me understand the cibstruction or work out the construction problems.  I am able to see how changing something, maybe adding a line or eliminating a line might change everything. Maybe changing the value placement will make a difference. EQ helps me estimate yardage which was always a big deal for me. It also sparks my creativity. After I play on the computer for a while and have a pretty good idea of what I want to do, I start working with the fabric and of course everything changes.

None of my ideas are cast in stone and when I am working with the fabrics on my design wall I see new possibilities. I am already thinking that this may lead to another series. We'll see how it goes. Right now I am thinking that constructing this will go smoothly. If it doesn't, I will have to decide if there will be a series .