Learning Experiences

It is said that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes.  If someone says something was a “learning experience”, they often mean that many mistakes were made along the way. Some births are more difficult than others and so it goes for quilts, it seems.  Some of my projects have gone off without a hitch and others have been a real trial.  My latest quilt is named Thorny Roses, because if I could screw something up with it, I did.  It’s a gift for a friend.  She wanted compass roses and I love freezer paper piecing, so I decided to give them a shot.  Turns out even these roses have thorns.  I got a book about them but quickly realized that I could easily draft a rose that was well beyond my capabilities to sew.  While the book does a good job of explaining how to design them, there’s no explanation of how to break the project down into sewable pieces. After months of trying to make my design work, I ended up buying some patterns on line and then enlarging them to the size I needed.

The sewing went no better – the blocks didn’t quite come out to the size wanted, but I fixed that with narrow sashing and in the long run, I think that looks better than without.  Then I discovered a block that was mispieced, so I had to tear out several seams to fix that. At least putting on the border went well.

Then I start to quilt.  All is hunky dory, but then I spy another part of one of the blocks that I pieced with the wrong color.  Oh well, too late and I am NOT starting over. Several times I run out of bobbin thread only inches away from completing a pattern.  The final straw came when I put in the final stitches on the border quilting, flip the quilt over and discover that part way through some of the backing had folded over.  So I had to tear out a bunch of quilting and redo that. I screwed up sewing the strips of fabric to make the binding. I am using batiks and so the right and wrong sides of the fabric are not apparent.  Thus I was not consistent when placing “right” sides together.  It took several tries to get it right. Sewing the binding on was no problem, but when I sewed the beginning and ending together, I managed to twist one end, so I had to redo that, too.

It’s washing now.  I gave it a double whammy of Retayne, so if it still bleeds I am going to cry and scream, whatever.  No, I do not wash my fabrics first.  My bad, perhaps, but I like working with unwashed fabrics better.  Ah, I just took it out of the washer – looks great.  WHEW!

Yet, despite all the goofs, this still came out nice and I think it will look great on her very large dining room table.

Thorny Roses top - 28"by 70"

Thorny Roses back

I discovered one very good thing during this project, however.  It’s hard to hang on to a larger quilt while quilting on a domestic machine.  I don’t want to use a hoop and I hate using quilting gloves.  I like feeling the fabric and I feel I have finer control without gloves.  Diane Gaudinski doesn’t use them but makes her fingers more tactile through hand lotion.  I am concerned that lotion could leave stains and I hate having sticky hands.  Recently I bought a used book by Nancy Zieman about landscape quilting.  In it she shows using the rubber finger tips people use to turn paper or count money.  You can buy a box of 12 at an office supply place for under $3. They come in 3 sizes. They worked fine, but I didn’t like the fact that the tips of the fingers were covered, which makes things like using scissors or pulling thread up in the machine difficult.  So I cut off the ends.  I find using one on the first finger and the thumb of each hand enough.  I sprinkle a little baby powder on my fingers before putting them on – keeps them from getting all pruny.  I can do all the fine motor stuff without having to remove them, but I can hang on to the quilt like I want.  The only issue I see for someone else is that I think they are made out of latex, which is a big problem if you have a latex allergy.  I luckily do not, although my dad did and my daughter does.

Finger tips for better grip while quilting.  The one on the left is as they come, the 2 on the right after cutting the tip off

So tonight my friend will receive the quilt as her Christmas present.  Hope she likes it!

To any readers of my blog – hope your Christmas was joyous and may next year’s quilts not be difficult learning experiences!

Printing PDF Files to Scale

In various discussion boards I have encountered numerous comments regarding inability to print out pdf pattern files to the correct scale.  I think the main reason is that people overlook a sneaky little thing that Acrobat Reader does when you want to print.

First, don’t print the file through your web browser.  Some browser settings can interfere and cause the file to print to the wrong scale.  Always save the file first.  Usually right click and save file or save page as does the trick here.

• Open the file.  Either click on the Acrobat Reader’s print icon or go to File and Print.
• A window pops up like shown in Figure 1 below.  
• In the middle of it is a Page Handling section. 
• I have pulled down the Page Scaling menu.  Often Reader will default to Shrink to printable area.  Notice the word shrink – that’s what it does.  Always select None, as shown in the Figure.  Now print it out.  Measure it several ways - it should be to scale.

Figure 1: Acrobat Reader's Print window.  Note the page scaling.  Make sure to select none!

Mitered Corners

I love mitered corners on multiple strip borders, although butted borders with cornerstones are nice, too.  In a small table top quilt I am currently making, the mitered corners echo the corners in the quilt block itself

However, getting everything to line up precisely isn’t always easy.  Borrowing on a technique used by Sharon Schamber, I have found an easy way to get the corners to match as well as possible.

•   Sew your strips together.
•  Sew the longer side strips to your quilt using a ¼ inch seam.  HOWEVER, stop and start ¼ inch from each end.  Backtracking at each end is recommended.  Press the seam towards the border or open, as desired.  Leave a tail of at least 1.5 times the strip width at each end. 
• Sew the shorter side strips on, starting and stopping right at the point where you ended the sewing on the previous strips.  Again, leave at least 1.5 strip width tails at each end.
• Lay one end of your quilt out of your pressing surface. 
•  Fold under the top strip at the corner to form the miter, making sure that everything matches the way you want it to – it may take a bit of futzing.

Initial positioning of the miter

•  Press this fold, using starch to make sure you get a sharp crease.

Iron in the crease

•   Fold the top piece back and run a fine bead of Elmer’s or Glue Baste It along the very edge of the fold.  Lay the piece back down and adjust it into place.  

Add a bead of glue to the crease edge

• Press again – this sets the glue.
•  I then pin the ends just to make sure nothing shifts when I move to the machine.

•   Open the top part to expose the crease and sew right in it, stopping (or starting) right at the corner where the borders seams meet. 

Open the fold and sew along the crease

 

• After checking that all is well, trim the tails to ¼ inch.  Press the seam open – you are going to have to open the part that’s glued – spraying a bit of water will help with this.

Final corner

Autumn Star

A few months ago I stumbled across a used book called Strips That Sizzle by Margaret Miller.  I was intrigued by all the things you could do to create great illusions and color play, 2 things that attracted me to quilting in the first place.

Basically you select at least 5 values from two color families.  The values should range from very dark to very light.  I selected browns and orange/yellow (okay, I know that’s 2 families, but it worked).  You cut a sequence of variable width strips across the width of fabric that range between 1.5 and 2.5 inches.  Then you randomly sew a strip of each value together, going from dark to light, to form panels.  I wanted 6”blocks, so the panels had to end up no less than 7 inches wide – not remotely hard to do.  You can use fat quarters or whole fabric width.

Taking a panel of each color family (let’s call them A and B), you lay panel A right side up with the dark strip towards you.  Lay panel B right side down on top of it, again making sure the dark strip is closest to you.  Now cut squares (finished size plus 1”).  Leaving these squares together, cut them diagonally – always make the diagonal in the same direction.  It’s best to move the squares as little as possible, so you don’t inadvertently rotate them.  Now sew along each diagonal using a ¼ “ inch seam: you are forming  Half-Square-Triangles.  Either press seams open or to one side, as preferred.  Trim to the desired block size.  I cut 7”blocks which I then trimmed to 6.5” blocks after sewing.

Now the fun begins.  This is where owning the book is good: Margaret Miller does a great job showing you the possibilities and how they work.  It’s out of print, but Amazon shows plenty of used copies available and apparently it is a print on demand book.  Visit her website as well.

I opted for a central Ohio Star pattern and as I wanted a rectangular quilt, I extended the top and bottom using some other placement strategies.  The outermost rows look a lot like Attic Window.

I quilted mainly feather motifs (see my previous blog about them). 

Autumn Star: 50"by 64"

Close up of some of the quilting

I love the overall result and my daughter is now begging for one.  It’s a great way to burn up stash.  Some examples in her book show quilts that used over 50 fabrics!  You also can do more than one color family – look at more examples of her website.

Autumn Star is a gift for a friend and is going to its new home in Germany in a few days. 

I Got a Cool Gizmo!

Okay, I LOVE gadgets, especially if they really work.  Unfortunately most don’t really live up to their hype.  Anyway, I am also always looking for things that can be used differently than intended.  

I wrote recently about blocking and squaring quilts.  As I have gained confidence and efficiency, my quilts have gotten larger.  While the laser works really well to show you the way, with large quilts even the smallest angle error results in large errors at the other end.  Add that I have to cut 2-foot sections (my longest ruler, not to mention the cutting pad) along the edge and errors only get larger.

Robbi Joy Eklow uses drop ceiling panels as large rulers to square up her quilts.  They measure 2 ft by 4 feet.  So today I went to Lowes to check them out.  I was disappointed – they are pretty flimsy.  I know my hamfisted self would break one in a heartbeat.   They are expensive: over $20.  So I checked other departments.  In the sheet rock cutting tools area I discovered a metal ruler 6 feet long!  $10.50.  After I apply the little sandpaper disks, I think it’s heavy enough to stay put.  I can lay it along the laser line, slide the cutting pad underneath without it moving and cut a good edge.  I have, God knows, enough other rulers to make sure the long ruler is laying square at the corner.  Anyway, that’s my intent.  I’ll let you know if it actually works as envisioned!

My new 6 foot long ruler!  I will use it to square the quilt I am currently blocking.