Grandkids – Page 5 – No Idle hands here

Almost done

Back of the quilt. This big bold seafaring fabric couldn’t just be cut up. A few ropes and anchors to make it large enough.

I don’t know why I was bending down on the floor to baste a quilt. I know why I never wanted to do so on my good tables, but DUH! I do have some of those folding plastic ones readily available in the garage.I put two side by side, pulled out a cheap plastic tablecloth. Even on these tables I’d rather not deal with spray glue residue. The top, back and batting have all been pre washed. I like a soft quilt but I also don’t want my quilting to disappear into crinkly-ness.It takes time to get the layers flat, without creases. This is so much easier done standing up.I used the broomstick to roll the quilt up and slowly unroll and and spray with the glue. I must have seen this somewhere on the web. It helps keep everything in place.

Once it was glued together I then ironed the quilt, this secures the glue as well as getting rid of any pleats or folds.Before and after marking and quilting. I got smart and did a test quilt. I marked the quilt with a Bohin Chalk marker. On the right I added some dark slashes and then washed the sample – thank God the marks did come out, now on to the actual quilt.This is not the quilt to try out any fancy quilt patterns. On the compass and the border, I simply stitched in the ditch around the triangle shapes.Waves in the background.Quilting done! Now to bind and wash.

Leah

Quilt for Westley Part II

Paper-piecing done.I’m very pleased with the result. Before attaching to the background fabric, I removed the paper from the compass – left the outer border intact.It’s a messy job pulling out all those bits of paper. Some snippets stayed in. It will be inside the quilt and eventually will disintegrate in the wash.My seams got ironed every which way. I’m sure someone will find that to be a problem. I don’t. These adorable pirate ships make a great background. Enough of a contrast with both the compass and the appliquéd name. I made sure to go with dark fabric for the appliqué – just so it will stand out more.I played with the direction of the boats behind the compass. Don’t really think it was worth the effort, but what is done is done. Then it was on to the first border. Here is my first try and to be honest, I don’t like it. So out it came. Have I mentioned that my favorite tool is the seam ripper?I like the grey/blue much better. Ties in the outer border of the compass. Right now it is going to be 1″ wide, but I may shrink it down by 1/4″. We’ll see. Working on a variation of flying geese for the final border. This quilt has been growing organically – I never sketched out any plan. Even putting the name on the front was a last minute decision. So far I like how it’s coming along.

Originally I thought I might use some smaller compasses as well. I have to learn to restrain myself. Simple is better. Otherwise it becomes a jumble and not a pretty cohesive quilt. All I need to do is make more quilts using other stars or compasses.

Shared at WIP Wednesday

Leah

couldn’t resist

JoAnn’s sells fabric that is already shirred with elastic. Very easy to make a sun dress or a skirt. I didn’t intend to buy this fabric, but I couldn’t resist. 1 yard of fabric, two shoulder straps, one seam and voila! A very happy granddaughter.

Leah

Quilt for Westley part 1

My son and dil are expecting their first in October. He has already been given the name Westley. Upon hearing the name I asked my son: Does he grow up to become the Dread pirate Roberts? (Princess Bride reference). Yes, the reason my son likes that name is because of all the years of watching and rewatching Princess Bride. Ahhh, it’s so nice when the fond memories of their childhood become important to them as adults.

The theme of the baby room is the sea. I have started making a very appropriate quilt. A mariners compass of course.I met Judy Mathieson years ago when she still belonged to the San Fernando Valley Quilt guild and I saw some of the quilts in person. So I knew that this book would be a very good primer on the subject.Paper piecing of course. I enlarged the star by 50%. Which meant cutting and taping. I think I need to buy a ream of legal size paper. The compass is made up of 8 segments, each broken down even further to accommodate the smaller triangles. My first few were built one at a time, to make sure I was sewing correctly.

Notice the fabric? Not only is this a sea themed design, the fabrics were chosen with the same theme in mind – including pirates of course!Here is the compass half done. Which brings up a sore subject for me. Fabric design. I studied and worked as a textile artist. One thing we never did was design one way fabric. Here is an example of what we never did.The anchors are only going in one direction. If you look back at my compass, I wanted this effect in the background, which means that I wasted a lot of fabric. From half a yard, this is all I had left as well as a lot of wasted triangles. I know, today every quilting fabric company is hiring 10 new designers by the hour to come up with new lines. There is a lot of creativity there but most of these women have no clue about repeats, or overall design. The companies don’t seem to be interested in this either – since fabric buyers are snatching everything up. Sure in many cases, when cutting up fabrics for quilts, the patches are small enough that direction doesn’t matter. I often find that this forces me into buying larger quantities simply so I will have enough fabric for my projects. If you look closely at the pirates and the blue anchors – the elements are tossed – which means less waste when cutting. Even having the anchors go in two directions would have been less wasteful.

Why the rant? Because I’m sick of being lectured by the greenies about how wasteful my life is and how I am no longer entitled to a plastic bag at the grocery store. I love the plethora of fabrics available now that weren’t there 5 years ago. I’m sure the companies are thrilled that I have to buy more yardage. Just wondering when someone will remark that the old way of laying out fabric was actually better for all of us. Rant over.Once I established that my segments work fine I chain pieced the rest before putting each segment together. Much faster. One issue with this technique, I had to match up the longer seams, so yes there was a lot of ripping out before I got them perfectly matched. A very important process, I want this large circle to lay flat.Here is it! It worked out perfectly. The center circle was appliquéd on. You will be seeing more of this fabric from Alexander Henry. When Elk and Mandy returned from their wedding they stopped off in Panama for a few days. So this is beyond perfect.I won’t remove the paper until the compass is inserted into the background. I need every bit of stability I can get.Looks even better from this angle.

I am loving this project. More posts to come as the quilt grows. I have no definite plans yet, the ideas will come as I approach each new stage.

Linked at WIP Wednesday

Leah

Baby sweater

Having a new grandson on the way means baby sweater knitting. Fun fast and easy. I bought this pattern 5 years ago and made a few versions for grandson #1.It is amazing how terminology and instructions have changed. I still do love buying patterns from Patternfish.I’m being very good about using what I bought on the yarn-crawl. Bunny already made, and the yarn on the right is what I’ve used for the cardigan.Quick knit, I didn’t even take in process pictures.Another yarn-crawl purchase, the buttons.Some strategic placement, so the white button isn’t on the white stripe.

I don’t have a model yet, so this bear will have to do.Since this was so much fun, I have more sweaters planned. As well as a quilt of course.

Leah

Butterflies

The napkin rings at a wedding we went to were butterflies. I took a whole bunch home and made butterfly crowns. That’s all it takes to turn grandkids into graceful flying creatures.

Leah

Balancing the giving

Having just given Aytan the quilt, I had to make something for Shira. To be fair, she gets a lot of handmade dresses from me. I could make some more shirts for Aytan, but that can wait.

Of course I already have a collection of children’s patterns, mainly little girl clothes. What I like about this is the semi circle skirt. It flows differently from a gathered skirt, I like it on myself and I like it on little girls. I collected my materials, yes, this fabric is Liberty of London that I bought at Pearl Soho Orange County, CA. It was no cheaper there than other places, but I think it may have been the bolt end so I got a break on the price. Liberty has wised up to us quilters, this is from their quilting line.I do not like the facings for the neckline and armholes that home sewing patterns have you do. I either line the bodice, or use bias binding. It can be either decorative on the outside or pulled inside and top stitched. In order to do that I needed to remove the seam allowance from the fabric. This time I am using fold-over elastic for that purpose.It was easy and worked well, next time I may stretch it a little more so I don’t get that wavy look. I didn’t have lime green thread, but I think the top stitching in the aqua works well.Exposed zipper are still very popular. I’ve seen zippers that are so decorative, they are made to be installed this way. I feel this upgrades the dress from pretty – to pretty stylish.That wasn’t enough for me, I had to do more. Lately I’ve been playing with EPP, English Paper piecing. I will have to write a whole post about that. Here is the wonderful Fisker paper cutter and the resulting hexagon flower.Using the same aqua thread to attach to the dress. This time I ‘quilted’ each hexie. At the age of 5 I was taught how to cross stitch by a wonderful German woman. She told me that the back of the work must be as neat and clean as the front. I try and do that with everything I make. Having a serger makes this very easy when sewing.The dress looks very nice on a hanger, but ten times better on an adorable model. I had given her the dress the night before, of course she wore it then and demanded to wear it again – WIN!Looking good from the back.One more, just because she is so cute and models the dress so well.

Leah

Boxcars on the Track moves to it’s permanent home

Last week Aytan was over and the quilt was ‘finished’. Except for the label, so I wasn’t willing to give it to him yet. Here he is before I bound it, wearing his Spiderman sweatshirt, introducing Mickey to his boxcar on the quilt. Then a few days latter, the binding is done and once again, he has it and is loving it. He likes to put it over his head like a tent. I think his face says it all! I was able to get it away from him that day, I immediately set to work on the label.With big bright embroidery thread I set to work. His name, my name (Savta is Grandma in Hebrew) and of course another train.Then I sewed it on the back with blanket stitch and it was done.I still wasn’t ready to give it to him. Once he has it at home, I’ll never be able to take it away and of course I had to take it to share at LAMQG, my quilt guild. There is nothing better than sharing one’s work with other quilters who appreciate what we do. Except giving it to Aytan himself.

So last night we popped over and gave him the quilt. He had friends at the house but he got so excited. Actually, they and their mom did too – they all liked the trains and Mickey. Aytan knew just what to do.

First you put it on the bed. Yes, trains are a theme in his roomThen you climb into bed and pretend to go to sleep. Two seconds latter he was up and running off to play. According to my daughter-in-law. At night he didn’t want to sleep under the quilt (maybe it was too hot?) but he demanded that it stay on the floor right by his bed. I think we have a winning quilt here. I have achieved what I set out to do – made him a beloved heirloom.

Leah

Quilting

Have I mentioned how much I love my Juki TL2010Q? The quilting was just so much fun.Here is the section of the background. Doing swirls and circles. It just went so smoothly. I used Aurifil thread. Yes, it’s the go to thread for quilters these days and I’m on the band wagon.When I quilt, things are much more bunched up, but hey, here you can see quilted vs. the unquilted section yet to come.I used a special quilting ruler and a special quilting foot to get the straight lines.I did not switch to the walking foot, two many turns. I love all the other quilters and crafters with blogs, I learn so much about the different tools out there. This ruler and 1/4″ thick quilting foot really make a difference. Using quilting gloves helps as well.I needed a special quilting foot as well. The one on the right came with the machine, you can see it has a thin narrow foot that sits on the quilt. It would just slip under the ruler and that defeats the whole purpose. I paid a lot of money for the foot on the left, simply because it stated that this is for the Juki, I am being very careful not to use something that might damage the machine. As you can see, the foot part is 1/4″ thick itself and glides smoothly next to the ruler.Quilting done! My SIL mentioned that the straight lines reinforce the box-car while the swirls look like smoke.I bound the quilt with the solids, a nice colorful touch.Spiderman has place of honor on the back. I put a line of box cars there as well, I actually like how they blend into the background fabric. And of course, the remainder of the train tracks.Just a close-up of the quilting from the back.

The spray-basting worked! I don’t have creases on either the front or back. I have since learned a few new tricks that I will use on the next quilt I need to baste. Always learning, there is never a point where I can say I know it all.

So it appears the project is done, not quite. I need to make a label as well as do a final wash. I really want to see how pre washing the batting affects the quilt. That will happen very soon.

Linked at Freshly Pieced

Leah

Basting the quilt

It didn’t take long to finish the top.I don’t have a design wall to pin up my quilt. I use the floor, yes a messy floor with the fabrics lying all around. This way I can see if the distribution of colors is working. As the quilt grows I do have to move out to the living room for more space.Box Cars on the Rails, I think that will be the name of this one. I went outside to photograph in natural light. Hence the shadow of the camera. I have no interest in learning photoshop – I’d rather be sewing, so the shadow stays.Over at Mama Loves Quilts Nicole gives a very good tutorial on pre-washing and drying cotton batting. Since I like the idea of a smooth quilt with well defined stitches I gave it a try. Of course I also pre-washed the fabrics. I’m hoping that this will take care of the shrinkage so when I wash the whole quilt – there won’t be too many changes.Assembling the items for basting. One thing that is missing is the masking tape. It’s there, just not in the picture.There are quite a few quilters out there who have posted about this kind of basting. I’m not sure I like doing this for a large quilt. One of my big problems was that the batting got heavy and pulled away from the wall. So I moved to the grass.I think I should have tried to smooth the batting out more, I was able to smooth out the top and the backing, but there are some creases in the batting which hopefully won’t be noticeable once the quilting is done.

I try and use as many of the fabrics from the top in the backing, I’m sure you noticed a new fabric that has nothing to do with trains or Mickey Mouse. Yes, that is Spiderman. Aytan is loving everything Spiderman right now. I didn’t want Spiderman on the front, I’m hoping this quilt will last a long time, so I figured, the back is the place for him. That way in five years Aytan can look back and remember what his favorite thing was from when he was four. At the moment he seems more excited about the back, he wanted to take it home, luckily I managed to get it away from him without tears.Looking good, now onto the quilting itself.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday

Leah