UP 2012 #1 - Green Chinese Lanterns - the next stage.

And here are the finished Chinese Lantern blocks laid out together to get the right distribution of light and dark fabrics and balance of patterns. And to my surprise! (not really) I have made two halves too many and the layout of blocks didn't match my hand-drawn draft. I've got four whole lantern blocks in each column instead of three that I drafted, but I also have only six columns instead of eight.

And I have noticed that there are some variances with the block widths which might make for some tricky sewing as I continue. Oh well! I've had worse! At this stage it's currently about 57" x 55" in size, which should shrink some with better placement and seam allowances. But it should make for a small double bed size quilt when I add borders.

At this point I will walk away and do something else and periodically come back to check the placement of blocks and make any adjustments until I'm entirely happy that all these blocks can stay where they are permanently. This advice I pass along from the lovely ladies who ran Mad About Quilting at Morningside, which is sadly no longer there. Layout your fabrics and then walk away to refresh your view.  Come back and check things out in different lights, angles and try different fabrics, which can be a delaying process but it makes for no regrets after things have been cut and sewn and quilted. Well, in most cases.

Unfinished Project #1 for 2012 - Circa 2000

Okay, well since last post I've fallen out of interest with my project involving the reuse of old embroidered doilies and resurrected a project that I started back in 2000. When I started this project "Chinese Lanterns" from Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine Vol 8. No. 1 I had made three quilts and all of them I had given away. And with this pattern I had found a design that appealed to me and I was making this quilt for myself.

But I hadn't until this time used a pattern based on templates. Cue music of doom. I didn't have the skill or experience to work with templates under my own steam.

Hence why this project has been packed away throughout the past 12 years; even though I have collected green fabrics over the years with the intent to be incorporated in the quilt.

I loved the picture of the blue lanterns on their cream background, but in my head I saw them as green lanterns, green being my favourite colour, so I started getting together some green fabrics. (Like I needed the excuse to buy more fabric, but it helps with the rationalizing if you have a specific project to use as an excuse).

And I went about collecting my materials at Mad About Quilting, Morningside, where I found a lovely floral green dot-print on cream background that I would use as the quilt background and was going to use 36 different green fabrics for each lantern. Until I started making the blocks.

Cutting with template plastic is not fun or easy or quick. You need to know what you're doing. And I didn't. At all.

And even when I got advice from the lovely Caroline at MAQ, I couldn't seem to improve the way I pieced together my blocks. So as my frustration mounted with each block I assembled, coaxing the strips to align in vain I felt it was best to put everything away until I knew better.

That took 12 years.

But I have been doing well these past few weeks over the Easter break, and I've got about twenty blocks now, with only a few more blocks to make to complete a rectangle big enough to maybe fit a double bed with borders.

The best thing has been that I found some green fabric leftover from my first ever completed quilt and I have got a green lantern made out of it to go within the quilt. This is going to be a sentimental memory quilt for me.

My aim for this year is to complete my unfinished projects. At least one every three months. And I've got a few to go.

New Project - Reuse Recycle Reenjoy

Well the Mighty Rose Quilt of 2011 is finished and waiting for some professional quilting to happen.

It's weird but I've known about professional quilting services and long arm quilting machines ever since I first started patchwork sewing and I've always dismissed it as being too lazy or too expensive for me to consider. And all the quilt fairs, quilting & patchwork stores I've wandered through over the past ten years have been littered with plenty of notices and adverts offering professional quilting services high and low. But now when I actually know that I cannot handle the quilting of a quilt, I cannot line up anyone to get it done. Amazing!

I was checking out a site last night whose pricing included how a formula to calculate how many sq feet are in your quilt @ $9 per sq feet. The Mighty Rose Quilt is almost 45 sq feet. Aie-Currummba! That's expensive. Anyways, hopefully someone will call me back and we'll have some quilting organized before Ma'nPa make their way down south for Easter.

So today, while the heavens were saturating Brisbane and the environs I got to thinking about some of the languishing projects I've put on hold (or shelved) while THMR quilt was being created, and I've started working on a Doily Quilt.

Last year or the year before, a friend's friend created a wonderful quilt of 1930's fabrics and doilies which absolutely inspired me. It was fantastically creative and brilliantly inventive. I hadn't seen anything like it at all. It knocked me on my a*se as I should have thought of doing something like it, which isn't meant to sound as stuck-up as it looks.

I mean I spent all my time growing up in second-hand and charity retail stores searching for fabric and vintage styles that weren't available commercially and then collecting all my finds around me like a demented and colour-blind bower bird. I remember when Ann St in the Valley was just full of charity clothing stores and I often scoured through them scoring heaps of old tatty dress patterns which I would make up and wear to college. When they would fit. I wasn't great with measurements.

Since I encountered the Doily Quilt, I have been collecting some great doilies with the idea that I'll create a similar quilt. And today I started on an idea that has been percolating for a while using the doilies put together like a crazy quilt.

I thought about replicating the quilt I saw with using 1930s fabrics and sewing the doilies onto the fabric keeping the crotchet edging, but being a patchworker I didn't like the idea of layering the fabric needlessly.
I saw a magazine article where someone had created a bag out of old doilies but they had only used squares of the embroidery rather than the whole doily.

I have this idea of four corner blocks of doily embroidery sampled together haphazardly, joined together with a unifying fabric. I think it will be simple but effective and a lovely way to recycle these neglected household items of a bygone era

I often wonder about the creator of the doily, thinking about if there was a purpose why they spent time selecting colours and patterns and then toiled over it for hours to place it with pride in their home for all to see. Was it part of someone's trousseau? Or was it an obligatory chore to appease someone? Did they agonize over purchasing the threads or was it the last doily they created after a lifetime of sitting and sewing for relaxation.

And then I feel a little sad that there are bins filled with these gems selling for $1 a bag in dozens of charity stores around the country.

It feels good to reuse them.

It is finished - well the quilt top.

It's Wednesday the 14th March 2012. And the final outer borders have been sewn on and ironed flat. The quilt top is finished.

And the borders are going on.

Luckily I've had a productive day. I've assessed my leftover fabric and test driven some available fabrics and I've settled on the borders for the quilt and even when I come back to check them later they still look fine.

I'm going with three borders; an inner border of dark pink, a middle border of a lovely civil war reproduction pink print which I couldn't seem to tone in with other pinks to use for a rose, and finally the outer border is a broad stripe of the light green fabric which was used for the light green leaves in the rose blocks.

A dark fabric as the inside border contrasting with the blue of the quilt top makes a unifying frame for all the different pink fabrics.

(You can see my lovely clean kitchen floor here where the light was the best this afternoon.)

I've found this great app for my android phone called QuiltCalc which has been developed by Robert Kaufman Fabrics and Quilters Paradise and allowed me to work out how much fabric I needed to cut and how many strips for each border. I just need to enter in the quilt top size, the width of the fabric, then each borders' width for the number of borders you want to add onto the quilt top and it calculates the number of strips to cut, the width to cut for each strip (adding on seam allowances) and advises the amount of fabric you will need to have on hand for each border. It has the border options for up to four borders.

I have always been terrible with working out the number of strips for borders so I find this app fan-freaking-tastic!

And now I've cut and sewn together all strips for each of my three borders and I've sewn the first border onto the quilt top. The only issue has been that the QuiltCalc told me to cut 7 strips for the inner border and I ended up needing an extra strip, so I've also added an additional strip to the second border and I assume will have to with the outside border too.
There is a margin of 10 cms included in the calculations but I guess that isn't enough for the way I lay out border fabric.

I lay the quilt top out flat and then along a centre line in the quilt top I double the border fabric flat and then cut to fit edge to edge. Then, doubling the border strip I iron the centre of the strip to create a centre-line then I match this line with the centre of the quilt top edge, pin, and sew. Some easing is required to make sure the border fits the quilt top, but it makes the border fit the quilt top neatly.

And so below is the first border on the quilt top. Only two more to go. Hopefully all done tomorrow and then long arm quilters can be scouted.

Success! We have a quilt top!!

Yes! At last all the blocks are sewn and joined together into the quilt top! Hooray!

It has been such a chore to get this far. I am so close to the finish line, only the borders to be sewn and attached and then the quilt top is completely finished and we can start looking at getting the quilt professionally quilted.

The quilt top without borders is 70.5 x 71 inches in size and, if I have calculated correctly with my lovely QuiltCalc app from Android, I have enough dark pink fabric to complete one whole 2 inch border as the first border. I'm relieved that I have enough of fabric that has already been used in the individual quilt blocks. I was worrying I'd need to source and purchase more fabric that would tone in with the fabrics already used. Always a quilters quandary - keeping the colours and tones and textures harmonious throughout. Also expensive at this stage in the game. As it is I have a few backs of scraps which I'm trying to work out how to use successfully in the border.

But I need a "framing" border to set off the fabrics already used in the quilt blocks before I think about fabrics for additional borders and then the binding.

Deadline is Easter which is when my parents leave to visit Aunt M and that's only three weeks away now. Good grief!!

But I'm glad I've pushed myself today and hopefully this progress will encourage me to do more and more often. My enthusiasm levels are flagging.

The Importance of Being Ironed

The big gap between last post and this one is largely due to becoming unemployed and enjoying a break from the 9-5 hustle but that has given me the opportunity to do some concentrated sewing and now all the blocks are finished. Phew!

I have taken a few photos while I've been sewing mainly for the technical nature in assembling this complex project. I counted and each block has 100 pieces of fabric cut out for the various 45 squares and rectangles to come together to make the rose block.

One of the things that I've learned over the past few months assembling these blocks, apart from realising that I always choose the hardest projects to complete (A'La Tin Cup and the River), is the vital importance of ironing and using cotton fabrics for their stretch and flexibility.

Especially with the last few blocks I found that to get the best finish for each section, it was best to iron the pieces flat before assembling together. And yes my fingers have been slightly singed on many occasions this month.

Also, the idea of ironing towards the light fabric works in some instances, but I had to combine this method with ironing seams out flat (as in the photo) and then I also needed to consult the pattern to judge where I could iron creatively so that there wouldn't be too many heavy joins because these made it difficult to get a flat front.

Quilting Truth #101: The foundation and background is just as important as the finished pieced front.

My Grandfather used to embroider in the evenings. He made these beautiful pictures with wool and silk thread and he used to say that the back of the picture should be just as good the front. I used to think this was a level of perfectionism that was just silly, but I can now see the sense in being just as neat and tidy in the background so that the finished front picture will have no unsightly bumps or skewed seams ruining what could be perfection.

Now my next task is assembling all the individual blocks into the quilt top and then when that is done I can work out what I can do with borders as I can't source additional fabric for some of the fabrics used in the quilt. Time to get creative.

By the way, laying out all the quilt blocks was a chore that almost twisted my brain the wrong way around. It had to have taken at least an hour, making sure that no two same blocks were too close together. Another task that was harder than it could have been because of my use of different fabrics. I am so in love with scrappy looks!

Below is rough look at how it will come together. There are 32 rose blocks; 16 pale rose blocks and 16 dark rose blocks. There are four different fabric combinations within each of these two different palette styles. Each rose is made up of 4 different pink fabrics. Which is making picking the right fabrics for the border a challenge.


I also wrote down a plan that I could follow when piecing each of the different rose blocks together, without laying out the blocks again. My cat has a bad habit of skidding through laid down blocks on my hardwood floors. She thinks it's great fun. Not happening this time!
Once they're all assembled I'll measure and start calculating how much fabric will be required for borders.