FINISHED Object Alert

Yes! You saw it right here: The snowflake quilt, Winter Wonderland, is DONE.

The quilt as you go was not easy, because I really wanted it perfect.  It isn't perfect, but I think it looks great.  I did the binding by machine, but incredibly carefully- I pinned and pressed each step of the way, and I took 8 attempts to get the 'seamless' (diagonal seam) finish to the binding so you don't know where I started applying it (I usually just go straight across and it isn't very pretty.)  My corners look pretty good, if I do say so myself.   I took all this care because I really want to try to send this quilt to the state fair, and possibly other shows.  I know the quilt isn't good enough to win shows, but after the AQS judge came to our guild meeting I have a thought that maybe it is good enough to get into a show? (And of course, the state fair is open).

Anyhow- want to see a beautiful quilt?  AAAAGHHH!  So excited!

Where is the quilt right now?  In the bathtub....  There is A LOT of starch in this thing, plus I think some water soluble thread is still hanging out from the initial step, and I don't want buggies eating it.   You can see here how bright the pink fabric I used was. The organza really pales it out, not to mention the mounds of white thread.

And of course, label your quilts.  I put a little message on this quilt to remember the stage of quilting I was in when I made it. Really, I was a beginner.  I took my very first free motion stitch just a year before I made this quilt, and I certainly didn't spend the entire year quilting!  This quilt was me saying "you know what, I'm going to get good at this!"  And doing all these designs and all this quilting- I think I can say pretty firmly now: "I'm good at this."

I want to thank Leah for the fabulous pattern, and the 365 project which inspired me to do this (and where I got a good number of the designs from.)


Posts about this quilt:
Starting the quilt
First steps

Snowflake 1, 2, and 3
Snowflake 4 and 5
Snowflake 6
Snowflake 7
Snowflake 8
Snowflake 9
Snowflake 10 and 11
Snowflake 12
Large Snowflake
Beginning Assembly

The end is near!

Today I spent pretty much the entire day quilting.  I finished stippling the outside of the center (large) square.  I did some pebbling, some spirals, and some lines to fill the rest of the middle of the snowflake.  And magically- all the quilting was done!

Up next was assembly, after a few false starts (sewing the strips to the wrong sides) I had the blocks all assembled.  Um, this quilt is big.  I've laid it all out before, but for some reason I kept thinking it would shrink once it was put together.  Nope- big, big quilt.  I'm not sure where it will go in the house, maybe it will have to go into my office.

I started putting the sashing on the front.  I tried to do the wavy sashing, but I couldn't figure out how to make it curve- I even made sure to cut bias binding, but I kept getting ugly wrinkles, so mine is just going to be square.  I need to sew together the LONG strips now- they will have to be seamed, although, since I'm not doing waves, maybe I can cut on the cross grain and do a 55 inch long strip?  I don't know if that is the best use of fabric, the seams aren't generally that visible.

I'm also trying to decide if I want to do some decorative stitching down the middle of the strips- I think it will give them a bit more weight and prevent the quilt from folding along the strips.  I could do it in white and it would be pretty much invisible, only seen by someone who admires it really closely, or I could do it in pink and pull the color out from the blocks (but then my stitching needs to be perfectly straight...)   I only have a 5 mm machine, this is something that would be really great with a 9 mm.

Before I can do the binding, I need to make a label on my embroidery machine and get it onto the back of the quilt.  I also need to decide if I think corner triangles will support the weight or if I have to do a proper hanging sleeve. The problem is- those require hand sewing, and I can't do that!

But OMG! the quilting is done!  I took this project on with just about a year of experience under my belt, to prove to myself that I could quilt.  And you know what- I can quilt!  (I'm thinking about entering it in the state fair this summer.  It isn't show quilt perfect, but I think it is pretty darn awesome (though once I get the binding on, that may not be true anymore, I suck at binding...)

Quilting update

Sunday is dedicated to finishing up long lasting projects. I did a bunch of this:

Which means I got a good chunk of the large snowflake done.

I also prewashed the white fabric that will be the sashing!

MLK Day I finished sewing all the Mario Squares and all week long I've been pressing them.  Today, Kevin layed them out how he wants the quilt.  I need to cut sashing and assemble now.  I'm pretty excited about this one!

 

 (Sorry, no idea why that loads sideways.  It looks right until I submit.)

The end is near!

Today I decided to really make a focus on my snowflake quilt.  It isn't snowy at all this winter, and at the pace I'm going it will be summer before this is display ready.

But I did get the 12th and final small snowflake done.  The design I did is inspired by Leah Day's Circuit Board, but I'm not sure whether or not it is that.  The organza is very shiny in the photo, so I'm not sure how well you can see it.  To me, it is like a medatative labrythith that you walk for reflection- not a maze, but a single line that has a start and end point (although since I trimmed the sides, it doesn't really work.)  If you knew where I started, you could trace your finger over the entire design.   You should be able to click and enlarge the design.

So how much left until the snowflake quilt is done?  I need to put in the giant middle block!  I am not entirely sure whether I want to stipple or do McTavishing.  I am leaning towards stipple.  My McTavishing isn't bad, but I always think it looks better in matching thread colors, rather than this big contrast of the white and pink.  But after all the hard work of this quilt- will people look at the big block being stippling as a cop-out, using an easy stitch?  At this point, do I care?

Snowflake quilt

So the snowflake quilt is nearing completion.  I have a small block and the big block left to go.  I plan to stipple the large block and do circuit board (square) stippling on the small block.  I had planned to McTavish, but in the end decided against it because while my McTavishing is good, I think it looks best in a complementary color to the fabric.

This quilt really got stalled for awhile because I ran out of designs and motivation.  And then a bunch of projects came along, but in the end, it is going to get there.

So here are the two squares I finished over Christmas.  The triangles have been in progress for months.  Not sure why I didn't get them done before. They weren't really that hard.  (You should be able to click to see bigger.  This one is hard to see the design.)

The loops were a design I didn't want to do, but I just wanted to have it done.  I wish I could quilt paisley- I pull it out to practice all the time, but it just doesn't look right, no matter what variation I do. 

Sadly, this loop design will always be a sad one for me.  I was interupted while stitching it by my husband yelling down the stairs- he needed to go to the ER.  He sliced his finger on the router while making a bedside table.  For a woodworking injury, it is probably best case scenario, just a few stitches to reattach the skin flap to his finger and a badly torn nail (but not nailbed, they don't think) that will have to grow back.  I'm so thankful he still has the whole finger, though I don't want to minimize the amount of pain he is in.  This block is always going to be tied to that.  Not the most fun Christmas Eve.

So, like I said two more and then the challenge of putting on the border.  I am not sure if I will do wavy joining of the blocks, but I decided not to do scallops on the edge of the quilt.  I am also really confused how to add a hanging sleeve to it (I usually use triangle corners) because quite honestly, I'd really like to show the quilt (the websites for the shows I'm looking at all say you can use someone else's design, though I plan to email the designer for permission)- we had a speaker at the guild really talk about how show quilts are NOT perfect quilts, so I figured I can try, but everything I read about attaching the hanging sleeve talks about how it shouldn't go through to the front, which makes sense, but this is quilted so tightly there is no room to just get the backing. Maybe if I put my loosest blocks in the top corners?

Next post- about dyeing!

Snowflake #9

UFO Sunday

OMG!  This is a UFO I am SO happy to be done with.  Now, it isn't a long standing UFO- it is just another piece of the snowflake quilt I've been steadily making progress on... I started this three weeks ago, took it off the machine and set it aside to do the charity quilts, and have been steady working on it ever since.  A three week snowflake!  (To be fair, I spent a few hours with it on the weekends, then about 15 minutes a day the other days, if at all)  Yesterday I finally sat down and really tackled it.

Pebbling is a design I hoped not to use.  Not because I don't like it- I actually think it looks great, but because it takes FOREVER.  There is just nothing that can be done to pebble quickly, and because, unlike some designs it doesn't create really interesting designs that make you want to keep going- I get bored and stop quilting and leave, and that just makes it take even longer...

But snowflake #9 is finished and I have 3 more left to go.

Unfortunately, one of them is this one.  (Note: This is a cell phone picture, not one Kevin took. He would be appalled if anyone thought he took it, as he usually does my quilt photos.)

 I had sketched out an awesome idea based on Bubble Path (but filling in the in between space more densely), but when I sewed it, it didn't work.  I used water soluble thread to try out some ideas that might work to fill the spaces that existed, but none of them looked good.  The only solution left is to rip.  (Normally, I'd just go buy more fabric -I'm out of pink- and make a new one, it would take a ton less time.  But because of the new house, my anything budget is $0, so it isn't possible. I do have an extra piece of organza if this one doesn't make it. But it is slightly different from the organza I used for most of the project, and I was hoping if it is just in the corners for the two squares I needed it for it won't stand out too much. Using it for 3 might ruin everything... already I'm sad this quilt has been such a success, because if I knew I'd rock at it, I would have used better materials - LOL)

Last night I ripped for 3.5 hours, and the picture is how far I've gotten- you can barely see progress.  I did get to watch a disc of Better of Ted though, and I love that show.

Today, no sewing- I have a lot of homework to do.  7 weeks until I'm done with my Master's!  And this morning we stained the deck getting the house ready to rent, and this afternoon I'm going rowing.  It is a busy day, and I have a really busy week ahead.

The craft room is getting packed up, so all I have left are snowflakes, white thread, my machine, and a ruler/cutter for the snowflakes.  No other projects this month! (If I have much time to sew.)  I still hope to do 1 snowflake a week.  The one I'm doing right now is Trippy Triangles.  After that I plan to do some McTavishing, and some Stippling (for the large one).  I need one more design- any suggestions?

Snowflake #8

Seriously?  #8? I can't believe it. I'm making actual progress on this quilt.  I need to start thinking about how I am going to do the wavy binding strips.  I'd like to do the waves, but I'm not sure I'm good enough at binding to do wave edges.  Will definetly need to practice on something else.

I got a little bit of bearding on this one, not as bad as the first two squares, so I clearly need to make sure I'm changing my needle more often.

This design is Leah Day's Brain Coral, but I think it looks like oil slicks.  Maybe because I echoed more than she did.
I'm happy with this one.

I have #9 in progress- pebbling, and not sure what to do with #10- I had a great idea for it, but it didn't really work out.  I don't know if I should keep trying to adapt what I have, rip out what I have, or see if I can find the backing fabric so I can just start over from scratch on this one.  #10 is the first one I've been disappointed with...  I'm of a mind to just finish it, and then decide if it needs to be done from scratch.  It seems like ripping it out (it's about 1/3 done) is not a viable option.

Snowflake #7

This is the first snowflake I breezed through.  This design worked up SO quickly.

I like to think it is my own invention, I call it "tire tracks".  I designed this when thinking about how the C curves fill the space on McTavishing, and decided to see how they might travel along the quilt.  Originally I thought it looked like a snake, folding up upon itself, but now all finished, I think it looks like someone might have had a wild time mudding.

I know the design isn't really original though, as it looks a lot like Bananas which I've seen Diane Gaudynski (Bouncing Bananas) do, and are a design suggestiong in the pattern by Leah Day (Swirling Bananas), but I designed this idenpendently, and I think it moves along the quilt a little differently.  My tire tracks are always a continuous line.  Looking at the picture, I think Leah's Bananas sometimes start again in a new direction (maybe not).  I don't know how Diane quilts hers.  Actually, now that I look at the picture, the proportion isn't really like bananas, so maybe this is my design.

And this marks over the halfway mark for small snowflakes!  I also got organza on top of the two I ran short on, and the giant snowflake, and uh-oh, despite it looking nearly the same, the shine is totally different.  I either hope a) the huge amount of thread piled on top of it makes it indistinguishable, or b) if I place them both in corners you can't really tell it wasn't intentional. 

We looked at more houses today and found one I really like.  I dream of a larger quilt room, even though I know I am lucky to have one at all.  Kevin also got me some foamboard insulation and we upholstered it with batting so I have a tiny design wall now.  When we move, I plan to make an entire wall a design wall.

Snowflake #6

This particular snowflake has been a pain to quilt.

I call this design coffeee beans and it is one I came up doodling during a meeting.  It is surely inspired by something I saw at the Free Motion Quilting Project previously, but I didn't look it up there.

Well, it was just slow going.  I started this square 3 weeks ago, and got about 30% done the first day I quilted it, and then left it.  Then, last weekend I did maybe 10% of it.  (The Olympics have taken all my sewing time these past two weeks.)  Friday I have half days at work during the summer, and that is usually when I do a square- well 3 Fridays, and this one didn't get done.  This Friday, I took a nap instead.  Today, I decided to finally finish it up.

Whew!  Overall, I really liked the look of it.  I cut it square and damn it-
I turned it over and I had caught the extra backing in the stitching.  I had to rip out about 3 square inches, and redo it.  I don't THINK you can tell where the fix is, so that's okay.

But I made stupid ruler mistake AGAIN.  See, I have a 12.5" ruler, which is used to make finished 12" squares.  And surely the ruler makers know it is for that purpose.  But the center of the ruler is NOT the center of the square.  No, rather than a quarter inch being added to either side- the extra half inch is on one side (like a proper ruler should be, to be fair).  So half the time I use it to square up, I'm off centered.

URGH!

In the end though, it's done, and I like it well enough to go into the quilt.

(If you see black lines in the picture it is because I hadn't ironed them off yet.  I use the Frixion pens to mark my boundaries quilting, going just outside them.  But of course, if I don't pay attention to where I am cutting, then they stay on the quilt...)

Snowflake Quilt: Blocks 4 and 5

I'm making a bit more progress on my snowflake quilt.  I've run into a problem: there just aren't 12+ quilting designs that I've mastered...  I want this to be a sampler quilt, but I also don't want it to be a beginner one.  So once I did the scallops, the spirals, and the checkboard, I was kind of stuck.  I planned on stippling the large center block, so I can't use that.  So it sat for awhile, and I worked on my Dresden plate quilt.

Well, I made some progress.  First- I bought two more sheets of felt and did the applique of the snowflake on the two squares I ran out for.  Then, I tried to figure out what to do about the center snowflake- it's huge, and I was going to have to join felt (would look bad) or use a different material.  After a few small scale tests, I decided to use fleece.  I got it appliqued and after 3 days of cutting and many blisters all cut out.  Now I'm just worried because there is a lot of excess fluff.  If me and the lint roller don't work really hard, it will show under the organza, still I think it will look better than joining felt.  Maybe I should have used batting, but I thought that would look too different from felt.

So, I was back to needing to quilt- but I still don't have mastery of new designs.  I've been sketching a lot of McTavishing, but I'm not good enough at it to want it on this quilt.  I've been drawing echo-arches, paisley, etc.  And I suck.

I am taking a class at the Des Moines quilt show with Diane Gaudynski so I researched her.  She has a design called "Diane-shiko" that I love.  Without reading the instructions on how to do it (I found them after I figured it out), I started sketching it.  Unlike Leah Day's designs, these require marking a grid on the quilt.  So I started on paper and marked a grid.  Then I circumscribed a circle along each- way too much travel stitching.  So I thought that must not be how she does it.  So then I drew the arcs inside the squares- less traveling, but still some.  Then, I figured out I got it- I drew half circles up a line, and then back down it.  YES! The drawing was perfect. So I quilted it.  No, the quilting was not- I got build up whenever I had to change direction at the vertex of the square.  Plus, the 3/4" grid I marked was too large scale for this quilt.  So I ripped it out.

And then, I figured it out- squiggle lines!  Rather than reversing direction at each vertex, cross to the other side of the line and make that arc, cross back and forth down the length of the line.  At the end of the piece- come back down the line making the other circle.  It worked perfectly.  Once you have all the vertical done, do the horizontal.  And this makes the overlapping circles, with no circles to do at all.

Here is mine:

It isn't perfect but I really like it.  If you do a marked design, you have to mark well.  I marked very poorly.  First, the 3/4" lines were done well, but the Frixion pen was very hard on the surface of the quilt, and stretched the organza, making it dificult to stay straight.  Then I eyeballed a line between them to make it 3/8" scale- and that was my downfall.  Don't eyeball things.

I'm happy to report the lines ironed out with no issue at all. 


So the second Diane Gaudynski design is apple core- a common quilting pieced design. 

This is a building block for the previous one- I squiggled up the lines, but didn't squiggle back down to form circles.  It is important on apple core to pay attention to if the block is an "in" or an "out" on the horizontal, and do the opposite on the vertical.  This one had a grid marked at 1/4" scale.  I used a Frixion highlighter and was much more accurate with my marking- the soft tip of the highlighter didn't stretch the fabric.  However, it left prominent white lines when the color was ironed out.  Except only prominent if you get really close to the fabric and look for them.  You can't see them at all at a distance, and even up close you have to look- so I'm going to just cross my fingers and hope they wash out when I wash the entire quilt, but all is well if they don't.

So now I have 7 more small blocks, plus the large block to go.  Uh-oh.  I don't know what 7 other designs I have enough mastery of to use!

Three down...

I am sitting here early morning waiting to go to learn to row- a new adventure for me.  I am constantly seeking some form of exercise I can be good at.  Kevin has his doubts this one will be it, but I'm going to give it a try.

I'd like to post my progress on my Snowflake quilt.  The first two squares were completed last week..  Both of them bearded, with the batting coming through the back.  It isn't visible to the naked eye, but I had Kevin take a very magnified picture of it.  You can definetly feel it. I blame the needle because the third one I did yesterday didn't have any problem at all.  These squares take 6-10 hours each to do!  The three of them took an entire 1,000 m spool of thread.

My first one: Scallops.  (My small quilt group asked me if this was a stitch on my machine! These ladies are amazing at quilting, so that was a huge compliment.

My second one: Swirls.  (I LOVE this one.  I played with different size swirls and this is really the first filler I've done in such a large space that doesn't have a preplanned placement -like how the scallops always go in the next spot- it was a challenge.)

See how the batting pokes through? It is more of an annoyance than a problem.

My third one: Basketweave.  (I set this up with a walking foot, to make the grid.  Then I freehanded the in between lines.  It was important to me that the numbers weren't all the same.  I wanted it to vary a bit.)

The quilt has 12 small squares like these and then a center square that is the size of 4 little squares.  I still haven't figured out how to do that, since my felt comes in paper size sheets- I wonder if I can just join the felt with invisible thread?  I might do a practice piece to try.  

You should be able to click on any of the pictures to see it larger.