Red Birds

Every month I attend a luncheon meeting of an informal ATC group.  Inspired by my piece Snow Fence, my atc's this month featured a red bird.  Worked with the theme of "Fifty Shades of Red".  This was also a chance to play with my new Ranger Distress Oxide.  I discovered this in a casual visit to a scrap booking store last week.  The lady there had taken some time to demonstrate how to use the stuff, as I had no idea.  I can't say that I got the same results, nor did I get anything near the picture on the package.  But I'm happy, and will certainly try this again. 

Here are my results, working on water colour paper.  The birds are just dimensional stick on things that I bought at Micheal's to use in the little quiltlet.

Unfortunately, I got so involved with quilting my "Oreo Inspiration", that I didn't make it to last Sunday's meeting.  I was also silly enough to date the cards.  Big sigh.

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network.

The Hexie Saga continued

Yesterday,  we re-arranged the upstairs studio so I could start machine quilting my hexie quilt. I have entered this in a judged competition, and wanted to do everything myself, and perfectly. Despite, or maybe because of, my enthusiasm (not!) nothing worked out as it should.  I started with black specialty thread (Invisifil) on top and and a dark grey Superior Bottomline in the bobbin.  I will often use slightly different colours, so I'm able to tell the top thread and bobbin thread apart.  I decided to use black on top, as this is what worked best in hand stitching the hexies.  Well, my machine doesn't like the Invisifil,  and fought me  every inch of the way, breaking and snarling. Finally, I changed the upper thread to a basic 50wt cotton poly blend.  That problem solved. By the way, this is also the largest quilt I've ever attempted to quilt on my machine.  Not an easy thing for me to do, and very awkward. ( Yay! for long armers!) After an hour, I accepted that the workmanship was never going to be good enough to enter into a judged competition. A disappointment, but this allowed me to accept the level of work being done, and relax.  I took breaks, and worked very slowly.  After about 4 hours work, I had about 25% of the black quilting done. I should have the black finished today. This turned out to be one of those few times, that my push button start-stop was a hindrance, so I plugged in my foot pedal for more control.  Not necessarily a good thing, as I found out how much my control has suffered with using the push button.  But that is very much dictated by my arthritic hips and knees.

Even having abandoned the intent to enter this in competition, I have to look at this process as one of practice.  I still want to do the best possible job, but neither do I obsess over small mis-steps.  Not every mis-step is corrected, unless it might cause some sort of functional issue.

But I must keep in mind that a couple of my followers have asked for a bit of a tutorial about the making of this quilt.  This just isn't the sort of job in which one can take a "selfie", so my husband tried to help, but he isn't always sure exactly what  the focus of a picture should be.  Nor is he comfortable with my camera, and the minor zoom function.  We really only have one picture that might be of any use.  

What I'm trying to show is the quilt rolled (sort of) and draped over my left shoulder, as I push it through the machine and onto the table behind the machine.  The table supports the weight of the quilt and makes the "pushing " much easier.  Because the configuration of the hexies, I was using free motion, and initially tried to "stitch in the ditch" but quickly abandoned that in favour of "echoing" along the edges of the black rows.  The beige areas will be done separately, later, with a beige thread on the top.  Since I'll be able to see so much better in those areas, I will try the "stitch in the ditch" again.

I plan to link this with Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday, and The Needle and Thread Network

Snow Fence

Here is the finished piece-"Snow Fence".  It is 11" by 8 1/2".

Something entirely different

My newer, big machine has gone in for servicing.  Probably not any too soon--according to the technician.  This leaves me with my much older, and smaller machine.  I've held onto this machine, both as a backup machine, and because I find it much better for precision piecing than the newer machine.  Quite recently the opportunity arose to enter three small wall pieces into a traveling show.  Working small ( not miniature, but small scale) presents some unique challenges.  There is also a loose theme to the show, that has to be considered.  One of the techniques I've chosen is Seminole Patchwork.  There isn't much more demanding precision piecing than that!  I have also chosen to limit my colour choice to black and white.  Again, a somewhat very challenging colour scheme.  ( I thought about red and white, but that's been done to death over the past year of celebrating Canad'a 150th birthday).

Knowing that I have a few followers who may not have heard of this technique, I decided to take pictures.

First, I pieced together five strips lengthwise.  The white strips were 1 1/2" wide. and the black 7/8" wide.  I used scant 1/4" seams, and reduced my stitch length from the 2.5 default to 1.5, as I knew I would be slicing it into smaller pieces.  

Then the resulting pieced length was cross cut into 3/4" strips.

Then a black strip, cut 7/8" wide, was added to one long side of each small white strip.  Again using a scant 1/4" seam allowance.  

The whole strip was cut into small segments, and these were sewn together long side to long side.

Here is the resulting long strip, which has been trimmed along each long side.  This long strip was placed over backed batting, and carefully centered.  Then wide white strips were sewn to each long side, using a sew and flip method.  This will now be machine quilted, trimmed to size and bound.  

I plan to link this to Lisa-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday, and The Needle and Thread network.

Charity quilts

The whole culture of charity quilts is huge within quilt making.  Reading some of the various "link up"  sites would seem to indicate that there are those who appear to dedicate most of their work toward charity, and that's a wonderful thing--for both the maker and the person ultimately receiving the gift.

I make quilts for charity, mainly smaller ones aimed at children's  charities.  I have several simple scrappy patterns that I use.  I love the almost mindless process of putting together the pieces, choosing the colours, and planning the machine quilting.  The effort helps me reduce my "stash" of older fabrics, which pleases my family.  Many of the older fabrics are dark in value, so most of my charity quilts are intended for little boys. I sometimes think I could cheerfully putter along making these, until the "stash" runs out.

But--my deepest pleasure comes from my art.  The challenge of solving technical problems, and the joy of endless FMQ'g and constantly creating new designs for it.  The serendipity of LWI dyeing, and Shibori.  

This week I realized, not for the first time, that, for me, the process of producing traditionally based charity quilts, can sabotage the deeper challenge of producing true art quilts.  For some reason I find it too easy to slip into the much less difficult more traditional process.  Maybe, I'm basically a very lazy person.  ( Not a new thought.  lol)

So, is there any way I can do both?  Not in any inter-mingled way.  I think I'm going to have the schedule a 4 week period, about 1X yearly for a marathon of charity work, and strictly discipline myself the rest of the time.

Here is the traditional charity quilt top I finished yesterday.  It will be quilted within the next month, but not before I design the 3 small art quilts that are on my "to do" list.

I hope the link this with The Needle and Thread Network

Word for the year

This time of year there is always much discussion, on my internet groups, about picking a word to guide my studio work over the next year.  This isn't easy for me, and, in 2017, it took a couple of months to come up with the word "opportunity".  I have an unfortunate history of not accepting opportunity when it's offered to me, so decided to accept every opportunity offered for the last half of 2017.  This left me so busy, that there were times that I didn't know whether I was coming or going. But I'm overjoyed at some of the opportunities that came my way.  This year, I know that I just can't accept everything that's offered, but how does one pick and choose?  How do you assess the value of an opportunity, when it's presented?  So-o-o, I've decided to "slow down",  to accept no more than two opportunities at a time, and then no more until those two are dealt with.  We'll see how that works, and I reserve the right to change my word at any time.

Looking for a support group

Several years ago, when my health took a downturn, I took a look at all of the special interest groups I paid dues to, and culled the list.  I spent time to evaluate all of the groups in terms of how much effort I put into them, and what perceived benefit there was.  One or two were iffy, some I left and never looked back.  I kept only two, and one of those because I was a life member, with no cost involved.

I firmly believe that you get what you put into an organization.  So when I get involved, I usually volunteer quickly, as I've found it a great way to get to know people and get to know the organization.

This fall, in a better place health-wise, I re-joined one of the iffy groups and signed up for a very new group just getting organized.

Today was my first membership meeting with the "iffy" group.  I went prepared to volunteer.  One of the reasons I had decided to re-join was that I had been told that there was a whole new group of people who have become active since I left.  What a disappointment!  Same old, same old.  Same people and same issues.  But some of the programs that caused me to join in the first place, those many years ago are still active, and appear to offer a potential opportunity for me.  So, I will give them this year, a hold back from volunteering, until I get to see if there might be other  opportunities I've missed.

Poor neglected hexie quilt

Last fall I was busy hand piecing a quilt of black and beige hexies, and documenting my progress on this blog. Finally a bit of progress.  The piecing was finished, several weeks ago, and today I moved on to basting the quilt, preparatory to machine quilting it.

Fortunately, I own a basic, old fashioned quilting frame.  My father made it for me many years ago, and it isn't in great shape.  The last time it was actually used to hand quilt  was probably in the 1970's.  But over the years I've taken to basting larger pieces on it.  Normally this is done, outside in the garage, during the summer. I am a real fan of spray basting, and for that, one needs good ventilation.  Not too practical when the temperature, with windchill is -39C. 

So, before Christmas, knowing that this was coming up, and that there was a second quilt needing the same thing, we brought the frame into the house. Today we set it up, and I started pin basting, as my husband believes there is a respiratory hazard with spray basting in the house and I agree.

Here is an end view of the frame.  It's based on a type of ratchet system, where the bars are held in place with two penny nails, put through the bar and into a hole drilled in the end piece.

The backing is then pinned to pieces of denim that are stapled along the length of  the bars.  This is then tightly rolled onto one of the bars.  The batting and quilt top are gently laid on top of this with one end just inside the edge of the rolled backing. As one works, the basted edge is gradually rolled onto the bar.

In this picture, I would be sitting at the back (top of the picture), and start working in the middle of then quilt, and then to each side, as I pin.  As I work, the basted quilt is rolled onto the bar in front of me. I store my pins open, so as to reduce stress on fingers, and then close them, once into the quilt, with a grapefruit spoon--one of my very favourite quilting tools!

As you can see, in this quilt, I chose to pin every second vertical row of hexies.  I try to pin so that no unpinned area is larger than my very small closed fist--about every four inches.

The whole job, putting up the frame, and pinning a 45 by 65 inch quilt took about 2 1/2 hours.

I plan to link this with Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday, and The Needle and Thread network.