I had fun selecting fabrics and cutting, but I will not be cutting all, what was it, 1600 squares up front. I will cut as I go, for each block separately.

I will also need to get some tools before I go on… I had trouble aligning the squares (as you may see), so I need either a 1/4 inch foot or a seam guide. I don’t really want to order online, so I have to see if any of the stores carry those (I know that the local JoAnne does not).

I am looking forward to making more of those…

Yep! Finished. The idea came from one of the kaffe fasset’s books – a little all-blue quilt made of shirting fabrics. I did not have as many blue striped fabrics, but I had plenty of striped fabrics in variety of colors.

This one took longer than I expected. First of all – it took longer to piece the squares. These were made from strips of white fabric sewn together with strips of striped fabrics. The stripes were then cut into triangles – 8 triangles for each combined, to make 2 squares – one with the white square in the middle, one with a white stripe on the outside, around the square. Since there was a lot of sewing on the bias, and the fabrics were really all different, some stretchier than other. This resulted in squares of all different sizes, so I had to trip them all dowm to 8in sq.

Arranging the squares was really quite fun and I really liked the result.

Quilting, ahhh quilting. That took longer than expected too. I quilted diagonally, both sides of seams. And then, since the squares were large, I quilted squares inside the squares made by quilting lines. And the fabric was stretching. And stretching. But I could do nothing. Or I did not know what to do. Anyway, quilting is done and is it as it is. I like it.

This is the first time I patched the back of the quilt, too. Here I used up some of the left over squares. Well, they were not really left over. They were a mistake. And that’s also why making these blocks took so long. After I planned the quilt, picked all the fabrics, I started cutting. And sewing the strips together. And cutting the triangles. And then when I put the triangles together to see what they looked like I realized I  made a mistake. A mistake cutting the striped fabric. It seems that stripes always run along the length of the fabric, not across the width. I needed to cut lengthwise, but I was just cutting as I always do. So I ended up with these scraps that I used for the back (if you look closely, you can see that stripes do not run paralel to the sides of the squares, like on the front). I think I was watching Rescue Me while I did this. Distracted much?

I don’t know what to call this quilt – but it’s done. I started working on it early August, and it did take some time to have it quilted – mostly because the blocks were hanging on the wall while I was trying to figure out whether the whole thing will work or not. Then it grew on me so I decided to finish it. And then…. after I quilted it, it sat some time waiting to be bound. That hapened yesterday, and here it is. All done, photographed, washed, photographed again. Now it will be a matter of minutes before the dog figures out where it is. This quilt is for our sofa (otherwise the dog would not be able to get to it).

The design (my own) called for 8 blocks per row. The idea is to use 16 different fabrics – 8 for the main fabric (the outer strips of each block) and 8 for the middle strip. That’s the first row. For the second row, I switched the main with the middle strip fabric for each block. Third row is same as the first row, except that I switched the middle fabric around – combined with different main fabric. In fourth row I switched main and middle fabric of each block from third row. And so on… That way I didn’t have 2 blocks with the same fabric combination.

All that said, I do have a little correction…. I did not really have 16 different fabrics. That was the idea, but I just could not find matching fabrics in my stash. However, some of the fabrics I used were floral prints or striped fabrics that if I cut a certail way, I woud basically have different fabrics, or patterns. That’s why some of the blocks look like they have more strips – that’s just an illusion – it’s just striped fabrics, cut differently for each block.

As I mentioned, it took a while for me to figure out whether this will work or not. There is no solid white fabric, anywhere in this quilt. Colors are really bright and somewhat dark… definitely out of my comfort zone. So, it took more time to arrange the block, rearrange them and then learn to live with them, than actual cutting. Even though, some of the fabrics were a pain, since I had to find cut around the prints to get the colors I wanted.

I wanted it to be thick but light and I had some pink fleece lying around so I used that for batting. As for the quilting – I quilted diagonally thrugh each square, and then around the border. Pretty uneventfull.

All in all I am pretty satisfied with it. It will go perfectly with our sofa. It is super soft (and wrinkly like it should be after the wash – see below) and I am afraid that the dog might claim it…

For this one I had no design in mind. I just started to create these hour glass blocks, basically to practice working with triangles. And it was also a little excersize in color matching. When all the blocks were finished, I arranged them on my table once, twice, and I think the third variation was this design. I have to say I do like it. A few more pics:

A few notes about the quilt:

1. Never, ever again do calculation while watching Arrested Development or any other similar show.My ‘geese’ were supposed to fly North, but instead, now are flying West. I like it that way.

2. I will probably not attempt to do flying geese again with such small triangles – they are only 1 in high (when finished). There are so many seems back there that it was hard to keep the top flat – I kept needing to iron it, over and over again.

3. Next time I do flying geese I will not cut out triangles – I will try to do the fast method … with squares … (cannot find the link just now)… The triangles were all over the place – and the matching was far, far from perfect. I originally wanted to quilt diagonally, along the short sides of the triangles, but they were aligned so poorly, that it would not look so nice. That bothered me fo awhile. But then we went to dinner to our friends house, and they had an antique quilt out. It was beautiful but all sorts of wonky. And then I felt mush better. And finished the quilt. Quilted with straight lines. Note to self: learn to get over yourself.

4. It was fun selecting fabrics – I belive there are over 30 different prints in this quilt.

I also washed it today. And I like it now even better. It is so soft and wrinkly, I wish it were bigger (it is about 31 x 32 in). And, I realized that I don’t have a good spot in the back yard for taking pictures. And do I have time to go around trying to find a good spot, borrow somebody’s fence or run to the beach. No. Note to self: find a good taking pictures spot.

Final pic: all washed and ready to be used…

Some of the fabrics are from a charm pack I bought some time ago, others are from my stash – cut to 5in squares.

After some thinking I decided to try a flying geese design – something rather simple (not to say easy). I really liked this quilt from Red Pepper Quilts – so I thought, I can do this! After consulting several books and web sites, I decided to cut my fabric into triangles and piece them in rows. The other method – the fast method for piecing flying geese blocks – seems to be better suited for designs where triangles (the ‘geese’) and arranged in columns. But instead of piecing triangles one by one, I first made pairs of one white and one printed triangle. There were a lot of these…

And then I pieced these together into long strips (I randomly pick a pair from the bucket – the only rule I have is that there are no repeats of fabric in a row), or the rows, that will make up the quit top, eventually…

However, last night, around 1 am, while watching Californication (for the first time – right after I finished watching the last season of Arrested Development) I realized I made a slight error in numbers ( I think I did the numbers during Arrested Development!). Soooo… the design of this quilt will be slightly altered and it will be smaller than planned. Oh, well….

OK, back to my triangles.

Yes, it is finished. I actually finished it the night before we headed for our Seattle/Vancouver trip but since we left early in the morning – there was no time for pictures. Today, the light is again pretty bad, so I ad really hard time photgraphing it. These are the best pictures of the lot…

I used 9 different print fabrics in shades of blue, plus the solid white and blue for sashing. I had a really hard time quilting at first – I gues I did not do such a good job making the sandwich. The backing fabric was pulling every which way. I had to re-pin the sandwich a few times… I think this happened because, for the first time, I was working on the table not the floor. I am not sure.  I quilted on both sides of seam lines, in both dirctions. The quilt is about 28×28 in. Maybe the next quilt will be bigger…

A few more pictures…

This time I chose blue – I took out all blue fabrics I have (a lot!) and then narrowed it down to 9. That was hard, but I just wanted a monochromatic look. This time I had a sketch of a design I wanted (inspired by a walkway to a house I saw last week – no picture though), even though some things changed as I was piecing the squares together. Most of the squares turned out good, with good to decent alignment but I did have to trim the finished squares because they came out a little wonky.

but you won;t be able to tell. I just finished it a few minutes ago and scheduled the photo session for tomorrow. This is a picture from earlier today. I decided to do straight line quilting – it’s a little questionable whether they are straight or not – about an inch apart. When I took the picture half of it was done, you can still see the pins. Oh, the pins. My fingers are hurting – they are so thick that they would not go through the layers in some places. I really did not like doing the pins. I will try to find thinner ones, or try basting with thread. Even removing these as I was quilting wasn’t easy. I am really happy with this quilt.  Oh yes, and I finished the umbrella pillow. Pictures tomorrow.

Initially I made a template for the trianges out of cartboard, but soon realized I would not be able to really use it. Even though it was pretty tough cardboard, it was not easy to hold, and it was still easy to cut into with the rotary cutter. So I thought of something else. I had one of those half square triangle templates (plastic) and so I used the 45 degree angle to cut these. I also used the cardboard template under the triangle template to make sure I got the height of the triangle right… This is hard to explain with words only, so I’ll get back to you when I get some pictures. Anyway… I cut enough triangles for 8 “umbrellas” for my quilt design, but then I realized I might want to do something smaller first, just to see how it goes, especially I decided to use linen as the “background” and I have really never used linen in a project like this before. So, instead of a quilt, there will be a pillow:

It is not finished yet, I still have to make the envelope back and bind it, but I actually did more than this picture shows (I appliqued these by hand). I added some embroidery and I quilted the thing, so it looks much more exciting that this. Finished photo to come when I finish the other project I started in the meantime.

For this project I cut out many, many squares. About 50 3.5 x 3.5 in, about 50 1.5 x 1.5 in and a lot of1.5 in wide strips of white cotton (I used an old white sheet). I started with one pink fabric with a Japanese design, and picked other pink/yellow fabrics from there (I realized I had quite a stash of pink fabrics). Cutting was actually not too bad – this was the first time I cut so many squares at one time. It was actually relaxing. When it was time to start assembling the squares, I got a little bit intimidated with the size (it was supposed to be a larger baby quilt, that’s all), so I decided, again, to scale down the project (”to see how it goes”) and do a doll or a mini quilt. (some commitment issues?) I chose 15 large and 15 small squares and a lot of strips and this is what I had yesterday evening:

And this:

Design is pretty simple: rows of alternating “big” and “small” squares with a 1 in strip of white separating the rows. Instead of sewing strips between rows (I wanted to avoid aligning squares between rows) I added a strip of white to each square (as you can see above). So I ended up simply sewing the (now) rectangles together into rows, and then rows into the finished top (actually it’s not quite finished. I decided to put a border around the whole thing – 4 in maybe?):

Just noticed the picture is not so good. Sorry about that. I had a problem: as you can see, some of the squares do not align so well. I can sew straight and cut perfect squares and strips, but the problem is the templates I have include 1/4 in seam allowance, whereas my sewing machine (Singer) has metric seam lines (5, 10, 15 and 20mm). So, I have to eyeball the 1/4 in seam which does not work so well. I would hate to draw on the machine, maybe I should get metric templates. Seen any? Maybe on our trip to Canada next week?

Going back to the machine. I want to finish this if I can…