emerald isle

A few summers ago I made this quilt for my brother [which still isn't done done] based on the pattern by Moda Bake shop called Sweet Menagerie.

And before I get too far, this is Harry, my brother's cat. Such a good helper.

For reasons I now don't remember, likely they were using precuts and I had stuff laying around I just wanted to use up, I didn't have a clear idea how much fabric to supplement the project with. I wanted it to be scrappy in the nine patch, calm and orderly over all. But still. No idea. My squares were bigger, so something, again. I have no idea. I kept the left overs in a box. This week I pulled the box and other accumulated bits that had been lost and whatnot and thought about seeing how far I could get with making a top just with what leftovers I had on hand.

This is a Double/Queen size blanket. I have a problem. Or maybe I don't.

Downsizing

 Current project. Just Improvising.

Mystery quilt a not so much

I tried. I really did. Sigh. Maybe I'm just not good at following directions. By the time the second set of directions for the mystery quilt 'Tranquility' came out I realized I had a big, big problem, made glaringly obvious by the photographs supplied by the director of the project.

This is what I should've had. This is not what I had. All the little squares I cut? I followed the directions and sewed them all together. This was not what you were supposed to do. I like to think that my first hiccough in referencing pictures against instructions was because the instructor used fabrics that were very, very dark and terribly close together on the color wheel... And the pictures weren't terribly well lit.

It wasn't until I got a look at the next set of pictures in the next set of directions that I realized exactly what it was I was supposed to be doing. This is not what I had sewn together either. There was much rending of seams and gnashing of teeth. At which point, I bagged it.

The whole project, by the way, is finished; all the instructions are posted on the website and the participants are voting now on their favorite finished project. Life kind of, you know, happened and I got busy. Which is just as well. Had I kept merrily sewing away I would've had a lot of seams to work out.

I think I need to go back to first grade or maybe even kindergarten and have a lesson in following directions. :P

Rather than try to make their project, I'm just going to come up with something else. 

travelversary

I can't remember when we left to go, but this June is the 6th year anniversary of a trip my friend and I took to  Britain. We booked a tour, so there was little thinking involved once we got started on the actual trip [except Oh my God, we're really in England!]. In any case, my friend and I started buying these patches of all the places we visited, when we could find one. For something to do. I think we wanted to buy sweatshirts that said "England" and then sew them on later, but for the life of us, could we find one? Nope. So my patches have collected dust for 6 years.

Until I discovered fabric that was Britain themed. 

AAAAAnd there is this pattern in the May/June 2012 McCall's Quilting magazine called Cobblestone Cottage. 

putting together a tee-shirt quilt; calling it done.

I have to be finished because it's going to explode if I go any further. It's a great throw size right now, and I think it can go live in my car when it's done.

What did I learn making a tee-shirt quilt? Several things.

1. for storing the tee-shirts, cut off the whole front/back of the shirt where the image that you want is - don't trim it up, leave a lot of extra room - and discard the rest. This cuts down the pile to about half or three quarters of the original size. It's also very liberating. 
2. mid-weight fusible interfacing seemed to work the best for stabilizing jersey. I had a variety of weights left over from several projects that I used up to make this project, so this is how I know - tried a bit of this one, tried a bit of that one. 
3.  Having a pressing cloth to cover the image when ironing the image and interfacing together was handy, because some of the screen printing reacted to the heat setting on the iron. Or ironing with the tee-shirt facing down worked, too. 
4. Pre-cutting the interfacing to the desired size, and then centering it over the back/wrong side of the design also seemed to work pretty well, rather than cutting out the tee shirt image to the finished size. The jersey would stretch out otherwise, but with the interfacing ironed to the image, it was very easy to cut out the design without the jersey knit material shifting and stretching out. Having about a half an inch extra of interfacing for margin of error was also a good idea. 
5. Making sure the shirts are presorted by image size, and the largest image is measured for square/rectangle size, and the other images in that size range are cut to match it is an excellent idea. Makes for a far easier sewing experience - see how squished looking Del-a-where? looks? That's because it came into the game late and I didn't measure because I forgot about it in relationship to the other skinny text shirts. The whole project will go together easier later if there are things of equivalent size to put together, instead of a bunch of random pieces making it a jigsaw puzzle. Which makes it a bit of a challenge, if you like that sort of thing. There are a few things missing from this quilt that I can't find, but I have. To. Stop. So no shirt from my elementary school or where I student taught or my other soccer team or the Louvre or... Stopping. 
6. For my own purposes, having templates might have been helpful, to give an idea of what the finished size looked like, once I had established what finished sizes I wanted, I could have cut squares or rectangles out of file folders or cereal boxes and laid them out over the design, and saved myself some trouble. 

Some of these shirts were hard to accommodate - the Disney shirt in the center bottom and the ruby slipper shirt in the upper left are prime example. They were awkward all around just because of their huge size. I'm sure I've said all of this before about making everything the same size, but for images that were close to being the same size, it was very helpful to cut them to being the same finished size, such as 12 1/2" or 10 1/2" square. Because not all of the graphics are of equal size, I didn't want to have an image floating in a 10" square of blank space, while next to it, the image filled the area. This is why some of my images are huge and some are cut way down; my personal taste says that it would have looked strange to have a square with a ton of empty space. I'm also thinking I should have picked a sashing with some color texture to it, instead of a solid, but maybe the quilting will make up for that.

Here are previous blog posts about this quilt in all it's incarnations - from back in February this year, December last and way back in November of 2012. I can't even remember what I was doing back then, aside from slogging through grad school.

gypsie progress

In the last gypsy instalment, there was no purple in the quilt - here's the center medallion sashed in purple. No, this is not what I worked on yesterday. I worked on certification stuff yesterday

...And here it is with a little bit more. You're looking at the middle sideways, by the by. The various pieces of the two ends are pinned and need to be sewn.

And, here is the rest of it. Done and done, the two ends attached! It's not so much a throw anymore. 

the perils of printing

okay... so I've learned a lot about printing from Crayola images. And a lot about my printer. By all accounts according to industry standards, it should not still be working or communicating with any computer currently on the market. Also, Crayola colors are hard to reproduce off a printer, and just because you have an image that is 6 inches square does not mean that you will be able to get it to print off 6 inches square. It may be bigger, or smaller, than the original size, if you are working with scanned art. And good luck if you are trying to conserve paper; that requires fiddling with bitmaps in the paint application on Windows - this is if you are working with the most basic of software. I'm not a graphic designer, so if you are a GD, I'd appreciate free software suggestions or any other digital advice. For those of you doing this by the seat of your pants like me, do not lose heart: It. Can. Be. Done.

I did, finally in all the monkeying, figure out how to get the printer to just plain work - it involved paying attention to the printer status and a lot of restarting the computer at inopportune times. AND I have a whole bunch of test batch fabric squares in a moment-of-truth test wash. One of the squares did finally reproduce true-to-color - yes there are printer lines, but it's true to color, and if this works Bubble Jet set stuff works, and the colors don't bleed or wash out it will be color fast, which is what I want. It's not in the test batch wash. I'm going to hold off and see what happens.

So if everything washes, the next challenge is getting the rest of the squares to produce true to color. I have a new ink cartridge [super helpful] but one printer setting does not fit all images. Some of the images are done with more reds and oranges, and some are more green and blue, and telling the printer to print off the blue-and-green pictures on the red-and-orange setting doesn't quite work.

Sadly, some of the test images would have been just fine if I hadn't run them through the printer a second time. Live and learn. Stay tuned for a how to prepare fabric for printing tutorial, because that's coming up. Hopefully your printer is newer than mine and talks to your computer.

And now, for the Moment-of-Truth

Zigeunerleben - the gypsies

I can't hear the music anymore, so I'm thinking that the marathon is over... which means if I wanted to venture forth, I could probably do so unhindered by roadblocks.

Just pretend that there is purple in the gaping holes, k? Because now that the race is over I have to decide if I'm going to go get thread or not. Somehow I have run out of thread.

In case you missed the older posts from six months ago, this is a [now modified] project from Kaffe Fassett's V&A Quilts book, called Sarah's Gypsy Throw, after a quilt from the V&A collection by a woman named Sarah Wyatt, c. 1801. This is not a throw size anymore; I don't know what it's dimensions will come out to be when it's finished. Maybe a single?  

I also didn't exactly follow the directions in the book. There was a lot of "cut out these many triangles..." which made me a bit twitchy. I cut out squares, and put the right sides of the fabric together, marked the hypotenuse of the two right triangles on the back of the fabric square, which told me where my cutting line was, and used that mark as my seam allowance guide when I sewed [as if it was the raw edge and not in the middle of a square]. Triangles tend to not pull apart or stretch if sewn as a part of a square and are then cut rather than the individual pieces cut and then sewn together. Trust me, I'm a semi-professional. 

banning caterpillars

if you were inside today, and there was no A/C, I am so sorry... although, it probably could have been worse.

My patio was in full shade, reminding me that I really need to get the clippers and start hacking back the suckers on the verge, but I still managed to get this picture of the almost finished quilt. Almost finished because I think it needs a border, but I haven't decided what yet. It is long and narrow, and the colors really do remind me of Eric Carle.

 ... Lyd, photo bomber

and sewed some more...

no, I didn't start this today, from scratch. I had the squares already cut out and sewn, they've just been sitting in a box for ever, waiting to be put together. And I'd forgotten about the box [shocker]. The prints are a variety of fruits and veggies, the pale blue is stylized water. The pattern came from the book  101 Nine Patch Quilts by Marti Michell, pattern #42.

The colors remind me of The Very Hungry Caterpillar - on On Monday, he ate through one... On Tuesday, he ate through two...

If I quit blogging, I could have it put together tonight, and at a sane hour.

and I sewed something else...

This was Friday night, before the pirate swag bag. I was going to make a strip and flip with this, but I realised that I didn't really have enough to make a strip and flip - for my non-quilter friends that's when you cut a bunch of strips, maybe 2 1/2 inches wide, usually the whole width of the yardage you've bought, from selvage to selvage [those are the sides, the sides that don't unravel]  and sew them together lengthwise, then you cut these into strips and you have what sort of look like piano keys, except when you sew these cut strips together, you flip every other row. Strip and flip. Clearly, not all the fabric I was cutting from was 45" wide. Some of it was 22 1/2".

Do you see how I might have a problem? Like a fabric shortage problem? So, I'm going to improvise. Haven't quite figured out how. 

the little school quilt that could.

This is what I was doing while the fabric squares weren't color setting - hunting down fabric for the class quilt. Not the best idea to start out at 4 in the afternoon, but I've lost my sense of time and didn't realize how late it had gotten - I should know better, I used to live out that way. The big box fabric store didn't have anything I was really looking for, but there's also a quilt shop in the North Hills that is very accommodating and has a great selection of fabrics. As requested by Miss Honey and in keeping with the theme of "favorite memory from school", I tried finding fabrics that had something to do with school or things we studied. I'm usually not one for kitsch, but some of the things I found aren't that bad. 

telling time, trees, a map for cardinal directions, butterflies

Seuss, Grammar, plants, math, coffee, cupcakes

[the colors are off but] south western fabric similar to the wool blankets we read about and I had example of that the Dine [Navajo] make. Owls, which were featured on bulletin boards in the room and on the door. And a [February] calendar for learning to read calendars. Also because, even though this calendar was from 2008 and is a leap year, all the days happen in the right places, which means this is what our February looked like. I'll just put something over the 29. 

What do cupcakes and coffee have to do with anything? The cupcakes were a no brainer; I made cupcakes at least twice and then Miss Honey surprised me with them on my last day. I saw the beans on the fabric and couldn't resist. I love coffee. I got to school and found out Miss Honey loves coffee. I loved that there was a coffee maker at school, and I could throw everything in there, walk away and poof, there would be hot coffee, unlike a French press, which requires constant attention. I can't remember what day I started making coffee, but she loved that I got to school before her and there was a hot, fresh pot brewed when she arrived - "You do all this [teach] AND you make coffee?!" I loved that she had creamer in the fridge and was kind enough to share. By the end of my tenure, the First Grade cohort also had Celebrate Friday with Starbucks because I easily passed one on my way to school. Sensing a theme? No coffee, no school; it's a truth universally acknowledged. That a Kurig was purchased as a gift for the teacher's lounge for Christmas I feel rather confirms this. 

all that's left now is to decide with what color I'm going to tie it all together. [and the back, but that can come later.] 

quilt-fail

how did I go wrong.

no, more importantly, where did I go wrong.

I finally sat down today and ironed all 24 of the patches for the class quilt that my 1st graders started a few weeks ago. Then put them in the dryer. Followed the directions. Then did a spot test with an atomizer to double check that the colors had actually set and I could sit down and begin the grunt work of putting this together with the fabric that I bought while said patches were tumbling in the dryer. [4 PM - not a good time to head out of town. In any direction, really, but the closest fabric places are northward] I've ironed and tumbled twice now. Out of paranoia that it somehow didn't take. [Maybe because the day we did it wasn't standard procedure and I had a really bad feeling.]

And the colors are bleeding.  Except for one that was accidently left under the iron so long that it began to burn. So obviously that one set properly in the burned place, but the rest of them? There will be 23 bleeders.

Epic, epic fail. The worst part is, I'm not sure what part of the process went wrong from when I did the test swatch  - the colors on which will not budge - to when I went into the room and did it with the kids - I can pinpoint about ten different things that happened that day that might point to why this didn't work. I'm also finished with my placement, so there's no figuring out the kinks and doing it over.

I've found two options that could potentially save this project - both would involve scanning the squares and printing on fabric with an inkjet printer, and I'm insanely skeptical about both. Mostly because I've never tried either. But then I never tried medium and crayola, and it's got a 50/50 success rate, so there you go. The plus about scanning would be that I could potentially digitally clean up any of the test spots where bleeding occurred, and then print. I'm emailing the Thursday Quilting Graces for their expertise. The kids worked too hard and this is too stinkin' cute to lose to hydrogens and oxygen.

for that day when you're not busy making plans...

the swatch ruler says these flowers are 4" across... I think they'd go well with the other flowers in the gypsy throw.









I wonder if they swatch... these pictures aren't color true. Really, what I should be looking at is a red or plum to finish it off around the outside. I have all the floral I need.

Goodwill FTW

The Goodwill across the river has recently instated a student discount. Score one. So aside from the fact that I've been loosing weight [safely and intentionally] and I had no pants that fit, it was a huge score number two that I found four pairs of pants on Saturday - after thinking  okay, quietly freaking out, that my wallet had been stolen [my purse was half open, what can I say?], leaving my cart unattended, driving home, finding out that really I had left my wallet sitting next to my computer the whole time, and then driving back to the GW to find my cart *exactly* where I had left it, with nothing out of place. They were just that busy. Because honestly, I avoid thrift shops like the plague on weekends because getting there is a pain, parking is a pain, there's a million people there, someone inevitably muscles their way ahead of you into the dressing room even though you were there first waiting for it for 15 minutes ... I was spoiled by growing up in a low population area. But I found a bunch of nice clothes for student teaching, and a pair of gently worn Clarks. [I may be ready to squeeze into some sixes, but I still feel like a 14.] Will be saving a trip to Macy's for another day - did not realize that the birthday card stipulated that it included an outing :)

Also, while I was there, I found 4 Duquesne tee shirts! FOUR! This was the nicest of the bunch, so home it came. Had I been student teaching at WT, Brookline, B-W, Mt. L, a handful of Catholic schools in the metro area, or [really?] of all places, Hopewell, I could have scored a tee to round out my list of accomplishments, but no such luck.  Will just have to do a web search for a thrift shop out there towards my placement, or something. 

do cats count as photo-bombers?

been there, done that, bought the...

and we're back to the tee-shirt conundrum. Mostly because I shuffled some things around in the apartment in the last few days to accommodate some of Grandpa's things, and the tee-shirts resurfaced. I was looking at all of them [I needed a distraction - Grandpa has a MRSA infection now] and I realized that this thing spans more than ten years of my life; two marching bands, three theatre companies, one euro trip. But there's nothing in it representing Duquesne [I'm not buying a $10 shirt at the Duq B&N only to cut it up, but I haven't found any at Goodwill South Side] There used to be a Goodwill out towards my placement; I wonder if it's still there... if I found a tee-shirt from our school I could appliqué an apple on it.

Which reminds me [don't ask how that reminds me - stream of conciousness] we'll be celebrating  Read Across America in March, and I've been tasked with decorating our door for the celebration. And I'm going with this, at least as a theme. I'm really hoping there's a bazillion other "Cat and the Hat" doors [that's really awful of me, isn't it?] I realize it's Dr. Seuse, and Cat in the Hat is his most well known thing next to Green Eggs and Ham. It's still in in the development stage, but I'm hoping to work recycled material into it - someone has a door with Styrofoam cups that looks like a snowman, I'm fairly confidant I can pull this off. 

a new chapter

Tomorrow is the beginning of my student teaching experience. It's 15 weeks long, and is going to require a lot of time and energy. It's the culmination of three semesters and a summer of hard work. I will not say I'm terrified, but I'm certainly apprehensive at this point. First day jitters - I never thought I'd be doing this.

I left the pieces of Sarah's gypsy throw at my parent's house, as well as five other finished tops. Mum said she'd bring Sarah with her at commencement, and I could resume work on her then - I only hope I remember where at my parent's house I stashed the fabric. The Flower Garden and Kaleidoscope are rolled up and tucked away in the top of a closet. Can't touch them until I'm done, either.

it's only 15 weeks. Time to channel my creative energy into other avenues.

the tee-shirts strike back.

just when you thought it was safe to open the closet... something jumps out at you. I found a wagamama* tee shirt at the Goodwill on the Southside - and I was going to trade the Ruby Slipper tee with wagamama, until I realized I had lost the whole quilt somewhere in my apartment. Alas. Somewhere in the madness of Christmas, I discovered the quilt again and what appears to be enough stabilized tee-shirts to accommodate another row for the quilt. Haven't figured out the particulars though. 

*wagamama is a Japanese/pan asian restaurant from Europe beginning to make inroads in America; there is a location in New York City, and there should be one now in Washington D.C. We ate at one in a London suburb our first night abroad. 

sarah's gypsy throw, deux

Not enough time over the holiday break to get anything accomplished, not nearly enough time. Ugh.

I was down in the Strip District buying a few last minute things before Christmas and I popped into Loom, having had a gander at their website. Lo and behold, this Phillip Jacobs material called "Summer Tree" was on sale for $4 a yard [!!!!] so I got half a yard of each in the teal and yellow colorways - and picked up half a hard of the orange and red poppy fabric as well.

Mom and I were going to hit up some of the fabric shops in Erie, Bradford and Cambridge Springs, but alas, they shut down for the entire week I was here, so I settled for spending my Christmas money at a big box store instead. LET IT BE KNOWN THAT I LOVE SUPPORTING SMALL BUSINESS, but I can't do it if they aren't open. The big box was excruciatingly disappointing in the way of batiks, which comes as no incredible surprise, but I was working with the time and materials I had, not really wanting to put this off for 15 weeks - it's is so close to being done!

Because of the extra yardage I bought at the big box, I ended up with a multitude extra squares. The instructions in the book indicate that the finished size of the throw should be 69" square, if the half triangle squares are cut to finish at 7" when sewn. My thought was that I could add an additional round of half blocks before the final border, just to finish off all the leftover blocks. This would take it out of the throw category and put it's diameter at 83" square, which is more fitting a double bed. If I widened the exterior border, I could make it 90" square, and it would qualify as a double.

If there aren't enough half squares to make it all the way around, I would just do one side, which wouldn't make it square, oh tragedy, and the left overs could be used in the backing.

None of this is not a bad thing.

grandpa's daisy

Got this from my Grandpa for Christmas… he made four different quilt blocks from scrap exotic wood, and I got to pick first this year. He started out making pictures of regional wild flowers; last year we brought home a Black-eyed Susan, a pink Lady Slipper and a White Trout Lily. They aren't marquetry, which is the process of cutting a recessed space for a thin layer of another wood to occupy; he lays the scrap on top of a base and glues them down.

Starting at the 1:30 position is a piece of Purple Heart, at 3 is Black Walnut, 4:30 is Red Heart, 7:30 is White Cedar, 9 is Eastern Red Cedar, 10:30 is Sumac. The center is a piece of maple from one of the wood projects I did as an undergraduate - probably my bedside table, which was unusually pink. The background is Red Oak; the frame is Black Birch.

Grandpa also made a Dresden Plate and a Log Cabin, and a five pointed star of his own design.  I picked this one to go with the daisy quilt I've been working on.