Star Flower Tea Cozy - Done (but far from Perfect)

My first English Paper Piecing project is finished--a tea cozy made using Regina's Starflower templates.

As I was was stitching down the binding around the bottom, It struck me how much the shape looks like nothing so much as a quilty ski hat (I even slid it onto my head last night ... and no, I did not take a photo)   The shape was actually inspired by this little tea pot and it's upright bamboo handle.

I'm not especially happy with the free motion quilting in the blue background–I probably should have stopped and waiting until I was better rested, but I was motivated to finish it last night.  I'm hoping that after it has been washed and dried, the crinkles will hide some of those imperfections.  Here it is, covering the tea pot, from both sides

    

And one last look of the pot that inspired the project.   

The next time I feel like making a little pot of tea and heading up to the den for some TV and hand-stitching, I'm ready. 

I made one more flower.  I'm thinking of using some of the dark blue scraps with the flower for a mug rug.  

Hand Work for Slow Stitch Sunday

I mentioned on the Weekend Update blog post on the Block Lotto site that I was dangerously close to finishing a couple of things.  Now, I'm even closer :-)

I thought I'd be stitching down the binding of the checkerboard picnic quilt tonight, but with the moral support of the cats–first Johnny Be Good, pictured here, then Grace Hopper, then both of them at once on my lap–I finished last night.

I've added the rest of the diamond shapes needed to fill in the background for my English Paper Piecing project and have begun machine quilting the piece.   If I can finish today, my new plan for Slow Stitch Sunday will be to spend the evening binding the seams for a clean finish.

The timing is good–the weather has cooled off enough, that a hot pot of tea appeals this afternoon.

And then I need to decide on my next handwork project ... more EPP? Hand quilting? Maybe some needle-turn appliqué? Pick up some knitting? As usual, the possibilities are endless ...

Ready for a Picnic - My Lovely Finish for May

 

 I'm not sure that a picnic on a quilt spread on the ground makes as much sense around here, where the ground is covered with rocks and sand, pinon trees, cactus, chamisa and yucca, instead of soft green grass makes any sense, or why I started thinking of this checkerboard quilt as a picnic quilt, but with this Lovely Finish, I'm ready for a picnic.

The quilt is 66 inches square, made of twenty-five 12-inch 16-patch blocks, with a 3 inch triangle square border and a narrow binding.

The quilting design was quite simple: diagonal lines through the colored squares; flowers with echo quilting in the cream squares; and pointy leaves and echo quilting in the cream triangles in the border. I liked the look of alternately densely quilted/lightly quilted areas and after a wash, it's another soft, crinkly scrap quilt.

Despite the landscape, I intended to spread out the quilt under the pinon tree in my back "yard" ... but the high winds today just wouldn't cooperate.

It probably would have been a funny looking picnic on the sand and rocks, anyway ... 

Bloggers Quilt Festival :: Spring 2013 :: Group Quilt

Here's another quilt for Amy's Bloggers Quilt Festival, in the Group or Bee category. I call it Small Comfort.   

 

After my father died, just before Christmas some years ago, some members of an online group sent 6 inch snowball and 9-patch blocks.  Because of the holiday and a very short deadline set by the organizer, I didn't receive many blocks and thought that if I'd made a quilt only from the blocks I'd received, it wouldn't be large enough to provide any comfort to anyone.  

I added some large orphan blocks, and small 9-patches.  I made more snowball blocks and the scrappy flying geese border to make it large enough to curl up in ... and I do. 

The basics: 

• The quilt measures 66 inches square.
• While it was pieced soon after the blocks were received more than 10 years ago, I quilted and finished it in February, 2013.
• It is made from traditionally pieced blocks. 
• It is free motion quilted by me, on a little Bernina 153, using feathers, spirals, pebbles, and flower motifs. (Detail photos below). 
• As usual, both my cats helped in the making of this quilt–here, Grace Hopper perches on the work-in-progress on the sewing table and offers moral support while I am free motion quilting. 

I had such fun quilting this ... once I finally got started :-)

Here are some detail, showing blocks, fabrics, free motion quilting motifs and scrappy binding in this happy, scrappy, very comforting quilt.

Bloggers Quilt Festival :: Spring 2013 :: Wall Hanging

If you arrived at this post by way of Amy's Bloggers' Quilt Festival, welcome to my blog, Sophie Junction, and for considering my wall hanging, Cocka-Doodle-Tea Towel, for your vote. While you're here, be sure to click over to the Freebies tab and check out the free quilt block patterns, project ideas and tip sheets for quilters.

If you are a follower, you know that I blogged about this project exhaustively in March when I was putting it together for the Tea Towel Challenge. Thanks for putting up with me as I blog about it one more time :-)

I wasn't sure which quilts to share for the festival, but after a discussion about this morning in my kitchen with a fine artist who teaches color theory (also the owner of the company repairing the ceiling just out of view in this photo), and her praise, I knew it was the one.

Here's the basics: 

• The quilt measures 40 x 56 inches and is an original design.
• This quilt was begun and finished in March, 2013. 
• It is made from a tea towel, vintage damask tablecloth and fabrics from my stash, including some made fabrics, pieced from crumbs.
• The techniques I used include machine piecing--including improvisational pieced words, foundation pieced sun and traditional 4-patch and triangle squares–hand appliqué, and machine quilting. 

I challenged myself to use only fabrics from stash and to quilt it on my vintage singer 301. It's the first quilt I have tried to quilt quilted on this little workhorse.  I have since free motion quilted two more (larger) quilts on this machine.  I think I'm actually getting the hang of it and improving with each quilt ...  here are some detail photos of the quilt and the quilting. Click the links in the key below the photo mosaic to see the original photos on Flickr.

1. Detail - Cone Flowers, 2. Details - Checkerboard border and Sunflower section, 3. Detail - Sun and Checkerboard sky, 4. Detail - words and triangle sections, 5. Detail - Sunflowers, 6. Detail - Thread Painted Butterfly, 7. Detail - Fill patterns, 8. Detail - Quilted Rooster, 9. Ivan Bartlett design (tea towel)

Moving Furniture and English Paper Piecing

I didn't discover the leak in the upstairs bathroom last month until water came spilling through the downstairs ceiling and onto a piece of antique furniture, creating a lot of damage in its path.

This morning, I was up early and moving all the furniture in the dining/living area to the far end of the room before the repair people arrived to scrape and tape and screw and plaster and paint my "pregnant" ceiling back to normal.

When a test of the matching paint didn't match, the decision was made to repaint the entire ceiling.  Tomorrow morning, I'll be up early again and moving as much of the furniture as I can past the construction mess,  through the kitchen and into the studio to make it as quick and easy for the painter to finish.

While they worked today, I sat in the corner, watched and learned, and made some progress stitching blue diamonds on the star flower tea cozy project.

Eight more diamonds and I'll be ready to quilt it and turn it into a tea cozy.

I"m sharing my progress on Hexie Friday.

If I Had Done the Math ...

If I had thought about into just how many squares I would be quilting essentially the same little flower-fill ... maybe I would have opted for some nice overall design.  The answer  is that in my 25 checkerboard-style 16-patch blocks, half of the squares–200 of them–are cream. Surrounding them are 84 cream triangles in the triangle squares in which I also planned dense free-motion quilting.  What was I thinking :-)

If you find it a little boring to see what looks to be essentially the same in-progress photos ... imagine how I feel. No wonder I am so easily distracted by english paper piecing and my little star flower tea cozy project.

 I have resisted doing an actual count of how many completed/left to quilt until this morning: 151 cream squares quilted, 49 to go.  After all these flower shapes, I'm thinking about something leaf-inspired for the triangle border.

This will be my mid-month check-in for a Lovely Year of Finishes and for Esther's WOW (WIPS on Wednesday) Link list and for WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced ...  I promise no more boringly similar photos of this project until I finish the squares and am, at least, quilting the triangle border :-)

Fill In the Blanks ___________

Sunday night is almost always TV night chez Sophie. Last night I started putting my starflowers into a scrappy dark blue background made of hexagon and diamond shapes.

Instead of adding partial star flowers, I decided to use more blue and diamond shapes instead.

I will continue adding scrappy blue diamonds until the pieces cover the paper pattern I created for a cozy for my tea pot.

Here's where I stopped last night–with quite a few blank spots to fill.

These small pieces–each is smaller than 14 inches square–make it easy to use any available space as a design wall.  Even so, last night, I found myself thinking it would be nice to have a small pin board in the den next to where I sit and stitch to put these small pieces on the wall while I was thinking about the orientation of the star flowers and which blues to add where.  I think working on a design wall spoils you ... or, at least, it has me.

Speaking of design walls (or the lack there of), I'm joining the linky list on Judy's Design Wall Monday.

I'm also joining the monthly linky for EPP, Sarah's Help for Hexie-aholics.

Picnic Quilt Update

Lot of quilting done ... still lots of quilting to go.

I'm pushing on and fighting my new found hexie fever. The new rule around here is no hexies before dark :-)

I'm glad I got an early start on this month's lovely project, because at times the number of safety pins in the yet unquilted squares seems infinite ... I'm motivated to finish because I really am looking forward to seeing the alternating minimally quilted and very quilted squares in this quilt after it's been washed and dried.

Do you choose quilting designs based on how they look in 2-dimensions or in their inevitable 3-D crinkled and cozy state?

My Plan for the Star Flowers

Here's my plan for a small project for the English paper pieced Star Flowers - a tea cozy for my everyday tea pot. 

If you're paying attention, you might notice that I put together three more little star flowers last night for the other side.  I wonder how long this Hexie Fever will last?  While I was stitching, I wondered how long it would take to make 500 flowers–my wild guess at how many I'd need for a large bed quilt. 

I also noticed how similar these sweet little blocks are to the little Daisy blocks I pieced on the machine in January, the only different being one was six points and the other eight.  Isn't it interesting how we are attracted to variations of the same shapes and motifs over and over again?

For the curious, the pattern for my tea cozy started with measuring the height and width of the pot, adding some allowance for batting, quilting, shrinking and cutting two squares of newsprint.

I added some curves at the top to follow the shape of the bamboo handle, then pinned the two sheets together for a quick fit check.

Next up: adding hexagons to fill and extend the background ... but first, I need to ignore the siren's call to sit and stitch hexies and make some progress on the free motion quilting in those checkerboard spaces.

Onward!

And Then There Were Three ...

OK.  I admit it.  I am beginning to understand the addictive quality of English Paper Piecing and all those hexie projects I see in blogland.

By the time I had finished stitching the third star flower, I was already thinking about how I was going to go through my scrap bins and cut up all the smaller pieces of fabric into petals and hexie shapes to make a much larger project ... I have wanted to find a project to use up the too-small-for-most-project scraps in there. Maybe this is it.

When I uploaded the photo of the first flower to Flickr yesterday, within minutes, Amy was asking for a peek at the back.  

I'm sure there are neater ways to do it, but here's a look at the insides of my blocks.   Please remember this is my FIRST adventure in English Paper Piecing and don't judge my sloppy first efforts too harshly ... I'm sure I'll get better/neater with practice ;-)  

I printed Regina's template sheets on card stock and used a rotary cutter and ruler to cut them out. I punched a pair of holes near the center. Using one of the paper templates as a guide and an add-a-quarter ruler, I stacked the fabrics and rotary cut them with a 1/4 inch allowance around the template.

As you might guess, I cut and prepared everything for only one star flower at a time–it's just the way my design mind works, focusing on the elements of one flower/block/section at a time. But, I think this isn't the way I've seen most hexie/EPP projects progress and I need to figure out if I can shift to a way of cutting everything (or at least hundreds) of units, preparing them and having them ready to assemble. It's that kind of preparatory step that often slows/stops progress for me.  I'm focusing on that personal challenge this month and I think the blogiverse sent me this prize of an EPP project as a way to overcome it ... or at least make some strides in that direction.

Here is what my hexie center looked like after I attached the fabric. I deviated from Regina's directions a bit, but using the heavier card stock and not stitching through the paper.

I simply tacked the fabric at the corners and skipped to the next corner.

You can see how I pinned the fabric in place by going through my two punched holes.  It distorts the shape less and the pin is just going through fabric, not paper/card stock.

And here is the finished star flower, from the  back.

In theory it seems that once the surrounding pieces are sewn in place, I should be able to clip the basting/tacking stitches, remove the paper templates, and reuse them. 

This weekend on the Block Lotto's Weekend Update, I asked quilters to share their process.  I have found when I share mine here, I learn so much from the comments and discussions that follow.  Since I am just beginning my adventure in EPP, I know I have a lot to learn and would love to read your comments, suggestions and tips.   And if you'd like to share a blog post about YOUR process, please jump over to the Block Lotto and join me at the Linky party.

I'm also joining Billie Bee's Hexie Friday.

Something New - English Paper Piecing

Last night, I decided to give my prize from BillieBee's Blog a spin.

I printed out the English Paper Piecing templates for Regina Grewe's Star Flower quilt pattern and decided to make just one ... to see how it would go.

My technique varied a bit from the directions–I printed the templates on card stock and didn't sew through the paper when I basted the fabrics onto the shapes. I punched a pair of holes near the center to make it easy to pin them to the fabric

Here's a direct link to the English page where Regina sells the Star Flower pattern and an acrylic template to use to rotary cut fabrics for the petals: Regina's Star Flower

I have a small project in mind which I'll share after I prove to myself that I can actually make enough of the Star Flowers.  It's an interesting bit of serendipity that after I declare my intention to learn to love the necessary preparations for the quilting journey that the blogiverse hands me an opportunity to practice, with a technique that seems to be all about the preparation.

Thanks again, to Bille in Texas and Regina in Germany.

Bringing Flowers to the Picnic (Quilt)

Last night I finished quilting the X's in the colored squares and started the fun part–free motion quilting doodle-y flowers in the cream squares of the checkerboard picnic quilt.

Although the quilted straight lines stabilized the quilt sandwich and I could have removed the pins, I am leaving them in until I quilt the square to give me a visual indication of how much of the FMQ is done/left to go ... it might also keep me from missing a square as I work my way around the quilt.

My flowers have spiral centers, 5-to-7 petals and echo quilting to fill the square.

If you missed my question yesterday asking for color suggestions for the piping I plan to insert in the binding, I'd still love your input.  I've had a couple ideas: a light blue to match the thread I used for the straight quilting and/or a tan, like the tan squares that are sprinkled across the quilt (I included one tan square in each of the 16-patch blocks). 

I'm joining Lee's WIP Wednesday list on Freshly Pieced ... or in my case, today, freshly quilted ;-)

Quilting Begins on the Picnic Quilt

Yesterday I finished the last quilt for the Cotton Robin.  It feels good that I've done all the work and now I just have to wait for my own quilt to come home to me.

I have a couple small projects that I want to work on this month, but first, I want to finish the checkerboard picnic quilt which is my choice for a lovely finish in May.

I decided today to use the Instagram account I set up over a year ago to capture my progress.  If you'd like to follow along, you can find me here or by searching for the hashtag #aLYoF for all the images tagged for a Lovely Year of Finishes.

I thought it would be a fun way for me to get into the Instagram habit.

You might have noticed in my photos of basting this quilt, that I placed the pins in the light squares ... to make it easy to quilt simple X's in the colored ones. I used the walking foot for this part. I didn't mark the diagonal line and it's not perfect ... but it is mostly close enough.  It was interesting as I stitched to observe how the light blue thread seems to change color against the different colored squares–to my eye, the closer the fabric is to blue's complement orange, the grayer the thread color seems to me.

My plan is to lightly quilt the colored squares and to add a more dense free motion fill pattern in the cream-colored squares.

The piped binding I added to the cotton robin quilt is still in my head.  I may add piping to the picnic quilt.  If I add a dark binding (like the outside triangles), what color do you think the piping should be?

Here's the photo of the whole quilt for reference:

As soon as I typed the question, MY answer popped into my head ... can't wait to see if anyone suggests the same color.

Since it's already Wednesday in Australia, I'm linking to Esther's WOW link list. (WOW = WIPS on Wednesday)

Learning to Love ... Basting a Quilt

A few days ago, I posted that I was going to focus on learning to love the preparation phases of quilting that tend to slow me down or, when I resist them completely, stop working on one project and picking up something easier/more fun.  One of those potentially project-stopping preparation processes is layering and basting a quilt.

I think, for me, there are two aspects to consider: attitude and technique.

Attitude

In terms of attitude, this weekend I was reminded of one of my favorite little books, Peace is Every Step, by Thich Nhat Hanh. It is about cultivating a mindfulness in everything we do ... and thinking about it made me consider being more mindful in my quilt making and remember that the care we take in each step makes the following one go more smoothly.   Or, at least, that's what I was telling myself as I carefully pressed the checkerboard picnic quilt top and backing before layering and basting the quilt :-)

Technique

When it comes to technique, of course, practice makes perfect ... but technique can also be improved, made more efficient and/or faster, by learning from others.

Basting a quilt is something where I know that I have miles to go to perfect my technique ... and learn to love the process.  I'd love your comments on how I could do it better/faster.

Bad knees and a lack of space make layering and basting on the floor impractical for me, so I use a table like this one, which is approximately 35 by 60 inches. Mine is covered with cutting mat. (Both acquired long ago either on sale or with coupons at JoAnn.)

 My tools of the trade (above) for securing the quilt sandwich are painters tape for smaller quilts and clamps,  used at the edge of the table, for larger quilts that hang over the edge.

For quilts that are larger than the table top, I center the backing, batting and top on the center of the table.



 Once the layers are perfectly smooth and clamped to the table to keep it that way, I dump the pins (from their extra large Rx container and start pinning. once the quilt on the surface of the table is basted, I release the clamps, slide the quilt so that another section is on the table, check to make sure everything is flat and smooth and rinse and repeat ... until the entire quilt is basted and ready to be quilted.


Sometimes I have help. Johnny–who I wasn't fast enough to capture with the camera–tries to remove the pins, but Grace just wants to roll around on the quilt and play (she also loves to help make the bed, pretty much in the same way.)

How do you baste quilts?

Do you have any suggestions for me?

This isn't a design wall post–the Cotton Robin quilt that I'm finishing is on the wall, but cannot be shared for another month or so–but I'm joining Judy's link list for Design Wall Monday because ... with your help, I hope to design a better, more enjoyable process.

Thinking about Slow Stitch Sunday

I finished the quilting on the Cotton Robin quilt at my house yesterday.  I can't share a photo until it's finished and received by the owner.  This photo shows some of the thread I auditioned and the back of quilt #3.  I ended up using 4 of the 6 thread colors.

Today I plan to add a piped binding and hanging sleeve and stitch it down later, so that it will be ready to be sent home tomorrow.  So, it's a secret project for me for slow stitch Sunday.

 Earlier this week, on BillieBee's Blog, I won a Star Flower pattern.  I don't know why I haven't yet jumped on the hexie bandwagon ... but this variation appeals to me A LOT.  These are Billie's star flowers in progress.   I see a similarly scrappy version as my future slow sunday project.  Thanks, Billie!

But first, I'll be on the hunt for a protractor so I can draw the pattern and make templates for the last of the hand pieced quilt-along blocks.  Hmmm ...  Sunday evening may turn out to be more about pencil and paper and drawing than stitching today, but I hope to wrap up both tasks tonight.

How do you spend your Sunday evenings?