Quilt Update!
I've been working away diligently on my quilt and I'm excited to say that I'm half-way done piecing the top now! What you see up there is the stack of finished blocks: That's 8 completed 20x25 blocks so far. Phew!
I'm having a really great time quilting and playing with fabric. Even though this is supposed to be a "wonky" quilt, I wanted to attempt to distribute the fabrics evenly for a pleasing final effect, so I first separated them into color groups.
In the "gray" group there are only two fabrics:
While the "pink" group has more than 10:
The "purple" group has about 6:
Then there's the "white" group, with 5:
And last but not least, the "neutral" group, with 4 fabrics (plus random scraps):
By the way, did you notice the sheep fabric in this shot? Here's a closeup:
It's sheep! Both fluffy sheep before shearing, and naked sheep after! This piece came from the scraps pile in the class and I'm totally in love with it. So cute! And no, I don't know what brand it is or anything, sorry =(
To make each block, I try to work from all the fabric stacks and alternate big prints with smaller ones and solid-ish fabrics to end up with a harmonious overall impression in each block.
After I made about 4 blocks, I realized that I was using way too much of the solid gray background and I was in danger of running out, so for the next 4 blocks I used much larger sections of the "fun" fabrics and smaller sections of the gray background. You can totally see the difference between the block on the right and the one on the left in the top picture!
I decided not to square up my blocks before the class because my cutting mat is just not that big. Instead I will do them at class on Sunday, with the help of the teacher and the giant cutting mat in the classroom. For you non-quilters, "squaring up" means making each block have right-angle edges instead of the random edges you see above. That's the last step in making blocks, so that they can be sewn together easily into the quilt top.
Oh and that reminds me of another major lesson I've learned with this first quilt: 20x25 blocks are much too big to be easily dealt with! I'm having trouble not only squaring them up, but even just storing them without creasing. And there's no way I can lay them all out to see how they look together next to eachother because I simply don't have enough room.
For example, here's just one block on my "design wall":
As you can see I can fit at most two blocks next to eachother at a time up there. Not great for visualizing how they all fit together!
But let me back up a second and talk about the "design wall" -- this thing is awesome! Just one of the quilting lessons that has already migrated its way over into my knitting brain. What's a "design wall" you ask? All it is, is a big piece of quilt batting put up on your wall. Fabric "sticks" to quilt batting without having to use pins, so you can easily pop stuff up on there and step back to take a look. It's super cheap (this piece cost me less than $10), easy to set up and take down, and a priceless tool for visualizing what you're working on. It's like a corkboard but better!
Do you see in the lower left hand corner that I have a knitted swatch up there now too? On a whim I checked to see if it would stick the way fabric does, and it totally did! Score! I'm never taking this design wall down, ever. Thank you quilting for teaching me so much new stuff in so little time!
Oh and speaking of new things, notice below the knitted swatch that there's something that looks like a color chart? That's from Spoonflower. And yes, that means I've already dipped my toes into fabric design! I'll show you what I made very, very soon.
Learning to Quilt
My main reason for signing up for a formal quilting class was to be able to learn the basics more quickly. Learning from tutorials and videos online is an awesome choice, but there's no comparing that to having an expert on hand to ask random questions in real time as they come up!
The first class session was yesterday, and I feel like what I learned during those five hours is already worth the cost of the class. These are basic, almost-silly things that I would never even have thought to ask!
Things like:
- When sewing small pieces of fabric together, there's no need to pin them first. What a huge time-saver! It literally never occurred to me that this would be not only an option but the standard way to do it. I've literally pinned every seam I've ever sewn until yesterday morning.
- The foot on the sewing machine is 1/4 inches wide, so if you line up the edge of the fabric to the edge of the foot, you've got a 1/4 inch seam. What the what?? This shocked me like you wouldn't believe. How have I been sewing for 20+ years without knowing this??? Note to my Grandma: This would have been handy to mention.
- For piecing quilt tops, the color of thread doesn't matter because it's not going to show up. Most quilts are sewn with either beige or pale gray thread. While I hadn't actually ever thought about this before, I was surprised by the answer!
- When cutting full-width fabric into strips, it's faster and neater to keep the fabric folded in half and cut through both layers at once. I cut two yards of my background fabric into strips in under 10 minutes this way. Again, there's no way I would have come up with that method on my own, especially not on my first project.
This class is all about quilting non-perfect versions of traditional quilt blocks, so I thought that would be perfect for me because it would be less stressful that making my first quilt in a more traditional pattern. The class works off the book Block Party - The Modern Quilting Bee, which shows you how to make "wonky" versions of many traditional blocks.
In the first class our teacher, Andrea, had us work up four different blocks from the book to figure out which we wanted to use for our full quilt. Here are the blocks I made:
First up is a wonky nine patch, made with two contrasting-yet-coordinating fabrics to make inverse versions of the pattern. This block is really fun to cut but not very fun to assemble, because there's no creativity in picking which piece goes with which. I had a hard time sewing the more angled seam (the vertical one on the left in the picture) and had to mark the seam line on the first one . . . but on the second block I did a much better job. Seeing the difference between the two was very confidence-boosting! I'll be turning these blocks into potholders shortly, using some sushi fabric for the backs. Stay tuned on that one ;o)
Next up was this wonky log cabin, which was pretty fun to do. On the first blocks I used only my own fabric (two fat quarters), but for this one I raided the scraps pile that Andrea provided to find more options. I am pretty happy with the way it came out, but to me it still reads very "traditional" even though it has no right angles. Not really my taste. This one will also become a potholder I think.
For the next one, I needed a bunch of solid fabric and the only color I had was a dark forest green, so my palette changed drastically:
This is a "wonky stripes" block and was the one we actually had a finished quilt to reference. I'm surprised by how much I actually LIKE this block considering it's not at all my usual color palette. A few of the other students commented on this one, too, so I think somehow I ended up hitting the "sweet spot" of combining fabrics on this one. No idea how that happened, believe me! Again, will become a potholder.
Last but not least is a "wonky grecian square":
I definitely did NOT do as good a job on this one, mainly because the polka-dot fabric is way too wide. By this point I think I was a bit tired of making practice blocks and wanted to go out into the store to gather fabrics for my real project, so I think I rushed through this one . . . I may come back to this design in the future, because I love all the different ways you can put these blocks together to completely different effects.
So anyway, onto the main event: my quilt!
Like I mentioned in the last post, I was inspired to quilt mainly because I so love Minty's gray-and-pink quilt. When it came time to pick out fabrics, the first thing I asked Andrea was whether she had any fabric that had dachshunds on it, because I'd seen so many with cats that I thought there must be some. It turned out there was literally ONE print with dachshunds on it, and it looks like this:
Wow!
If I had custom-designed this print to go with my gray-and-pink quilt idea, I don't think I could have come up with a more perfect print. By the way, the print is "Best in Show" by Timeless Treasures. I knew I had to have it, and I started building the palette around it.
I am planning a queen-size quilt (I'm not one to start small!) done in the stacking coins block (which of course is none of the above practice blocks). Here's what the book's quilt looks like:
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="426" caption="Image by Alissa, book author"]
[/caption]
Minty's was a sort of blown-up version of stacking coins, but mine will be a more scrappy version with smaller panels of each fabric. Here's a sketch of what I have planned:
As you can see, there will be 4 columns of stacks, each with 4 blocks on it. So each block will be 20" x 25", to yield a finished quilt about 80" x 100". I may have bitten off too much for a first quilt, but only time will tell . . .
Oh and here's all the fabrics on my ironing board, ready for their debut:
This picture's a bit too yellow due to the light in my "kitchen" . . . imagine all of that being a cooler tone.
The solid charcoal is the background color, and I've bought 1/4 to 1/2 yards of 7 fabrics for the coins. I then also raided the scraps pile and grabbed extra pink and beige pieces to make the quilt scrappier. I got a ton of the doggie print and will use that both on the front in coins as well as the center of the back, putting leftovers of the other fabrics on either side to make it wide enough. I'll break down all the fabrics in a later post.
Right now I have to run to an appointment, so I'll leave you with the bit of the first block that I got finished last night:
I think I like it!
What do you think?
