Practice Makes Perfect?

As is true for any skill, if you want to get good at quilting, you need to quilt – at least a little bit every day.  I haven’t been doing that, and I think that’s the reason for being stifled about finishing several tops that are pin basted.  I don’t know what I want to do and I am hesitant, because I am afraid of messing them up.

 I have always had a sandwiched smaller square handy on which to warm up, check tension and practice patterns.  Recently, I made up a bunch of them and have practiced at least 15 minutes every day.  What I notice is that even a jumble of different patterns has its certain charm – so maybe I shouldn’t be so gripped about what pattern to use, just letting my mood guide me.  Maybe there is such a thing as too much planning.  I love feathers and they take a lot of practice, so I always work on several every session.

Somehow this hodgepodge looks good to me.

Combing several patterns together

Paisley and feathers are similar and can be combined to good effect!

 What bothers me about these smaller pieces is that they get used up quickly and leave out the weight and friction issues that crop up with full quilts.  What I am able to pull off smoothly on a smaller piece doesn’t work so well on a larger one
 

So yesterday I dug out a bunch of really bad batik fat quarters I had bought a long time ago from Joann’s.  I had a left over chunk of batting from another project and I have a bunch of cotton polyester fabric I bought at an estate sale (I bought 21 yards of fabric for 4$!)  In the course of 2 hours I had created a simple 3’ by 4’ top and pin basted it.   I also found some inexpensive polyester embroidery thread that quilts quite well.  Now I have something large-ish to play with.  When it’s done, I think I’ll go ahead and bind it and throw it in the car – it can be used for back seat naps as well as padding for transporting delicate stuff.

My practice quilt.

Besides regularly visiting Leah Day’s and Dianne Gaudynski’s sites, I have been recently taking a Craftsy class from Angela Walters on quilting negative spaces.  Right now I am fooling around with outlining smaller areas to fill in.  Her example uses overlapping rectangular tiles, but I am experimenting with the same technique using circles as well as irregular shapes.  This definitely has some possibilities.  I am figuring out what needs marking and what doesn’t as well.  The outer circle and its echo look better if I mark them, for example.  The photo below is the quilting from the back, which shows up better.

Stacked circles from the back.

Yesterday I bought some Fine Line rulers and am playing with their use as well for doing both straight line and curved cross hatching.  I am having a lot of fun, feel more confident and now am looking forward to working on finishing those waiting tops…

Finally!

Leah Day has been doing UFO Sunday (see the button in the side bar) to encourage herself and her blog followers to get those UFO (unfinished objects) done.  UFO’s are common to most quilters (and other crafters, I suspect).  I know I have a bunch of them.  Everything from stacks of blocks yet to be assembled into tops to quilts that are pin basted.  Today I got one done that has been basted since last Christmas!  I got the middle row quilted and then got distracted.  In the meantime I have finished 2 baby quilts, four placemats, two notebook covers, a pillow and 2 art quilts.  But this quilt has been blocking me from making any progress on some larger projects.  So this week I decided, no more excuses, let’s get this sucker finished.  I just did.  YAY!  

It is now blocking – after it dries, it will need trimming/squaring and then binding.  

About blocking – I always do this to a completed top before I baste it, so I know that it is flat and square before I start quilting.  I also know what its dimensions.  After quilting, I block it again, trying to achieve something close to the beginning dimensions.  I use one or more tailor’s boards, which are made of corrugated cardboard and have grid lines on them.  That helps me pin the top square.  I dampen the top with water from a spray bottle.  This relaxes the fabric and makes smoothing it easier.  I pin the edges about every 2 to 4 inches with fairly heavy duty sewing pins.  I first roughly pin one edge, following a grid line.  Then I start smoothing the other sides.  I use the flat of my hand and stroke the quilt from the middle outwards – firmly but not too hard.  I don’t want to over stretch or distort the quilt more.  I use seam lines, sashing lines and the board lines to help me slowly work around the quilt until it lays flat and as square as possible.  I respray as needed.  I might have to go around the quilt several times, but it is totally worth the result.  I spray it one more time and let it dry – at least 6 hours, sometimes over night.  Ideally when I pull the pins, nothing moves.  Otherwise I do it again.

My finished quilt that is blocking.

This is the first larger project using my rubber finger tips.  I hate gloves and saw these recommended in a book by Nancy Zieman.  They are cheap, too.  However, I didn’t like that the fingertips weren’t free – so I cut them off.  I now have the grip I need, but my hands are able to do fine motor things like cutting and burying ends, threading the machine, filling a new bobbin, without having to take them off.  I find one on the thumb and one on the first finger of each hand enough.

Rubber fingertips I use to quilt.

Now to tackle the second quilt I have pin basted.  I am out of pins – so I really need to get these projects done before I can baste the other two tops that are ready.

How the heck do I quilt this?

I have been quilting just under 3 years.  I have learned a lot in that time, but I still have  so far to go.  Piecing and appliqué skills are coming along nicely.  Figuring out the best backing is fine as is pin basting.  My quilting stitches are improving to the point I am not embarrassed anymore.  But when it comes to figuring out what motifs and fillers to use, I usually stall.  Sometimes for months.  It's rare that by the time I get the top finished, I know how I want to quilt it.  I am thinking of the quilting the entire time I am creating the top.  Often with dread.

I currently have a top that recently sort of happened and I have no clue how to quilt it.  My daughter brought me back some fabric from Rwanda.  It’s a gorgeous colorful swirly fabric with a 10 inch repeat that begged for me to make kaleidoscope style hexagons.  I have always wanted to try these.  The background is a gold that goes well with the fabric and brings it all together.  The rosettes themselves will be easy to quilt – the swirls themselves will establish where I stitch.  However, the gold area will be defined by the quilting.  I want something that continues the tribal flavor of the fabric, stands out but doesn’t compete.  ACK! 

Top made with fabric from Rwanda.  It's about 48"by 60"

Anyway, if anyone has some suggestions or can send me links to images of something to consider, I would be ever most grateful.  I’ll eventually figure something out, hopefully during this decade yet!

A Nasty Surpise

Today I was working on a block for a bee I am in.  The theme is “your neighborhood”, and so it’s like making a mini art quilt depicting where you live (or perhaps where you want to live).  I decided on a mountain scene with a tent, campfire, etc.  It’s the neighborhood I prefer.  Everything was going perfectly (rare).  I decided to use a decorative stitch and a green-brown variegated thread by Isacord to create a ragged tree line between some of my green pieces.  Even though I am using French fuse as a backing, there were a few very minor puckers that would iron out.  I have done this enough times to know this works well.  However, as soon as I touch the iron to the seams, imagine my horror as the thread disintegrates before my eyes!  I restitched the area and used a pressing cloth – and that was okay.  I was mystified and very upset, as I have used variegated thread on a number of projects, including things that have gone out on bees.  I certainly don’t want my work disintegrating because I used the wrong materials!

My block so far.

So I dug out all the synthetic threads I love to use for embellishing, thread sketching and quilting.  I use mostly Isacord but also quite a bit of Sulky and Mettler, especially the variegated threads.  I laid out several of each brand, both solid and variegated and touched the iron to them.  Whoa, Nellie!

Results of ironing various threads.

1) The 100% polyester variegated threads by Mettler and Isacord disintegrated immediately.  Mettler more quickly and more completely than Isacord. (top 2 threads in picture are Isacord, third one down is Mettler.  )

2) The Sulky variegated threads are made of rayon – the iron did not affect them.  These are threads 4 and 5 from the top in the picture.

3) All the polyester solids were affected a little – but you had to really iron the heck out of them to see any effect.  Threads 6 and 7 are Mettler and Isacord solids, respectively.

My iron was set its usual temperature: cotton, with steam.

I wonder why this difference?  Anyway, quilter beware!

Musings on Retirement

I just noticed it’s been almost 2 months since I last posted on my blog.  I have been busy quilting and doing other things, but nothing I felt needed blogging.  However, my life has changed and it will take time to digest the fact that I am no longer gainfully employed.

On June 22^nd, I retired from teaching forestry at a community college.  When I started my career, I had not ever thought I would teach, although some people early on thought I should.  I first worked as a forester: I fought fires, surveyed lines, cruised and marked timber, supervised logging sales.  All the normal stuff us foresters do.  However, the timber industry is a fickle one.  Recessions hit it harder than other professions and the growing anti-logging sentiment by the public didn’t help either.  (Just wait, however, when you run out of toilet paper…).  In 1979 I was working for a private company that was slowly circling the drain.  An adjunct teaching position came open and I took it to fill the gap until I could find something different.  However, I found that I loved teaching and the department liked me – so when the position came open as full time and tenured, I applied and got the job.  That was 33 years ago!  

But even the teaching environment has changed.  Students come less prepared for higher education, budgets have gotten continually tighter and decisions are made by administrators with no or extremely limited teaching experience, so that their decisions usually make the job harder without real benefits to students.  It was the growing feeling of frustration that told me it was time to go.  While I will miss the students and my colleagues, I will NOT miss the low morale and lousy atmosphere that has grown the past few years.

At 60, I am on the young side of retirement age, but there are some things I still want to do, that require a reasonably sound body.  My blog name is the Quilting Climber.  It’s the climbing part that I see as most perishable.  My hips and knees remind me of that every morning.  But it feeds my soul and provides the inspiration for my art quilts. My husband is 3 years older and we still have trips we want to take and climbs we want to complete. The weird part is that I have had summers off these past 33 years: our students are off doing their internships, so we do not offer summer courses.  It’s in the fall, when the teaching year starts again, that I will realize that I am truly gone. 

 However, I am already making adjustments.  I hope to finally not only get into shape, but I hope to quit the up and downs of it: I get into shape during summer, only to lose it slowly over the school year.  Even though we teach field classes that require a lot of bush travel, it’s just not the same.  I spent way too much time at my desk writing lesson plans, grading papers and dealing with the daily BS of administration.  I was a ski patroller and patrolling helped somewhat during winter, but I retired from that as well and have not skied nearly as much since (that will change, too!)  So now I am trying to build a regular workout schedule.  I also have a long list of things to do on the house and garden.  Of course, there’s all those quilts that need finishing or need to come out of my head and into fabric.

Where we camped last week - hope to have many more such mornings.  We climbed the mountain in the background.  Daughter of the Sun, Mission Mountains, Montana.  Photo by Fred Spicker July 26, 2012.

It is said that retirement is a stressful, life changing event akin to a death, marriage or similar.  While I am happy to finish that chapter in my life, I realize I am now much closer to the end than the beginning.  That’s the thing that has me pondering the most.  I intend to make the most of it!

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave  with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO what a ride!”

(Attributed to various people with various versions – I like this one best, apparently a Maxine cartoon.)