#30 Pole Bending

#30: Pole Bending
Finished: 7/29/12
Techniques: Needle-turn appliqué, decorative machine stitches
Size: 34 1/2" x 11"

Description: This week I learned about Pole Bending. My cousin* Robbin was competing in the National Little Britches Rodeo this past week in Pueblo, and I got to meet up with her and her family on Wednesday. Robbin's event is Pole Bending, which I knew very little about.  Six poles, evenly spaced, are set up in the arena. From the starting gate you run your horse to the end and then weave in and out of the poles down and then back again, and then finish by racing back to the starting gate as fast as you can. All without touching or knocking over the poles.

I had this horse fabric in my stash and added a black border on top and bottom. In Pole Bending, only one horse rides at a time, of course, but that would have been boring for a mini-quilt. I like how the geometric diamond design of the print lends to the idea that this is happening in an arena. For the poles I used a decorative machine stitch on solid green fabric which coordinated with the print, then cut out the pole shapes and hand appliquéd them on using the needle-turn appliqué technique. This was the first time I'd ever use needle-turn appliqué and I think I did it badly. I wanted the poles to be straight, but as you can see, they are very crooked. I had basted them on to the background, and I had applied interfacing, but apparently it wasn't enough to hold them perfectly in place. So my poles bend, which wasn't what I intended, but perhaps is appropriate for a mini-quilt called "Pole Bending".

I didn't have enough of the horse fabric for the backing of the mini-quilt, but I did have some cowgirl boot fabric. Here's a sample.

This was a simple quilt to put together; the most time-consuming part was the hand appliqué.


* Just a side note here about cousins, if anyone is interested. Robbin is actually my first cousin, once removed. Her mother Kathy is my first cousin because Kathy's dad and my mom are brother and sister. If I had any children, they and Robbin would be second cousins. I know this because I have many, many cousins on that side of the family. But we all just refer to each other as "cousin," wouldn't you?

Congratulations, Robbin, on making the nationals! I dedicate this mini-quilt to you.

#29 Tumbling Blocks

#29: Tumbling Blocks
Finished: 7/22/12
Techniques: Y-seams, Metallic thread, Invisible thread, Stitch in the ditch
Size: 26" x 25 1/2"

Description: I like the tumbling block design because of its three dimensional illusion, but I've never tried to create them before now. Traditionally they are pieced using what's known as a Y-seam. Where the three colors meet, you see a "Y". I found the Y-seams to be a little tricky but not too bad. Some of them came out really well - perfectly pointed! - but others were off a bit.  There is a way to create the design using straight seams, but this creates a line through some of the diamond shapes which I find distracting. However, if I had used a busier pattern for the fabrics, it may have gone unnoticed.

The outer border was actually my inspiration for this mini-quilt. It was fabric I picked up, I believe, at an ARC thrift store some time ago. I used fabric from my stash to correspond to the blue, yellow, and reddish orange in the border print to create the large tumbling blocks. The solid blue inner border was added because I felt the eye needed a resting place before adding the outer border. When sewing on the outer border, I oriented the fabric to correspond to the larger tumbling blocks. This meant that I had to cut some of the fabric cross-wise and some lengthwise, but I'm glad I did it that way.

I haven't used metallic thread much in the past, because I found it difficult to work with. But here was a perfect opportunity to try it again. In the border fabric, the little tumbling blocks are surrounded by metallic gold lines. When I tried simulating those gold lines with metallic thread, I was using old metallic thread that jammed up right away. Then I switched to an unused spool of gold metallic thread that I had bought years ago but never used. It worked very well, so the lesson I learned is to use good new metallic thread in the future.

It doesn't look too bad in the picture, but some of my stitching in the ditch was not evenly applied.

Using a multi-colored print fabric as your focus fabric and then choosing other fabrics that match and blend with it is a good way of designing and choosing fabrics for a quilt. I've used this technique in the past for full-sized quilts.

I put the picture in extra large, because this is the largest mini-quilt I've done to date.

#28 Celtic Knot

#28: Celtic Knot
Finished: 7/15/12
Techniques: Celtic Knot design, Bias Tape, Echo Quilting.
Size: 13 x13"

I was intrigued by the celtic knots I was reading about in the "Great Book of Celtic Patterns" by Lora Irish. The intricate weaving of lines in and out of other lines forming continuous loops holds great appeal for me, and I wondered if I could convert something like that into a quilt design.

I started out by finding a pattern that wasn't too easy, but wasn't too difficult either. It is a design I got from the book, but I modified it slightly when sketching it out to allow more space to work with. Once it was sketched, I stitched the design out onto the fabric as a guide. I could have made bias tape for the design, but just decided to use store bought bias tape that I had around. I have other colors but only had a sufficient amount of black and white for this particular design. I could have used a more colorful background, but doing so only seemed to detract from the celtic knot design, so I went with a mottled gray fabric. I ironed the bias tape in half so it was more like a cording. It really stands out! I used a simple zigzag stitch to attach it to the background.

Transferring the pattern to the fabric proved a little difficult. As a result, the design is not perfectly symmetrical. In the future, I think I will sketch out the entire design on paper, overlay it on the fabric and stitch through the paper for guidelines. Stitching the bias tape onto the fabric presented some problems as well. Pinning didn't work well because pulling out the pins as I was stitching caused the tape to shift. Working without pins meant that I had to keep lifting the tape to make sure I was centered on the guidelines. Using a glue stick was messy and didn't hold well. I could have tried cutting strips of Steam-A-Seam and attaching the bias tape before stitching, but that seemed like too much work. And no matter which method I used, I still had to deal with making sure that the bias tape went over or under the correct way, which is more difficult than you might think.

You might think with all this complaining that I didn't enjoy making this mini-quilt. But actually I did enjoy it. I had to use my problem-solving skills a lot, and it was a challenge, but I generally like the way it turned out.

#27 Pinwheel Fireworks

#27: Pinwheel Fireworks
Finished: 7/8/12
Techniques: Paper-piecing, Mitered borders, Invisible thread, Pinwheel design
Size: 16 1/2 x 16 1/2"

I'm pleased to say I'm back on track with the mini-quilts! This one was finished on time in its entirety.

I wanted to do something in red, white, and blue to commemorate the fourth of July celebration. This is a design modified slightly from Carol Doak's "365 Foundation Quilt Blocks," which I own. In the book, the design for July 4th was too simple. This is actually the design for July 26; a little more intricate, but one that I could enlarge and sketch out easily onto foundation paper. I liked it because the pinwheel design reminded me of fireworks.

Fireworks have been banned in the city for a number of years now, but in years previously, one would always hear the occasional one go off. I am proud and impressed that I heard NO fireworks go off this year! The recent wildfire must have made a big impression on people who would normally ignore the rules.

I had a variety of star fabrics in blue and red and the red striped fabric all seemed appropriate for the design. The white is a tone-on tone leaf design because I didn't have any white with stars. With the stripe, I felt that a mitered border would be better than overlapping borders. I am really pleased with the way the miter came out. I find that mitered borders are pretty easy to do. The paper-piecing was easy too, although I had some trouble when adding the border. The point at the top of the pinwheel is sharp, but, even though I was trying to be careful, the other points were blunted when I added the border. I think it might have happened when I was squaring up the paper-pieced portion before adding the border. I may not have left the proper amount of seam allowance. A quarter inch can be very small at time.

Quilting was done with invisible thread, which I've never enjoyed working with. It seems to me that when one used invisible thread, it always appears that the fabric has holes in it. However, with the thinness of the quilt batting, I was able to use a small enough needle so that the hole effect was minimized.

The red stripe fabric gives the optical illusion of movement if you stare at it too long. How appropriate for this spinning pinwheel fireworks display. I hope you enjoy this.

#26 Ribbon Weaving

#26: Ribbon Weaving
Almost finished: 7/1/12
Techniques: Weaving
Size: 16 x 15"

Description: OK, this is another late posting, and another quilt that wasn't quite done on time. But the only thing left was the binding and sleeve, so I don't feel too bad.

I've wanted to try a weaving technique, but didn't know how to best go about that with fabric. Should I use raw edged fabric, or make tubes of fabric so there would be no raw edges? But then I looked at my collection of ribbons that I've had forever, and decided to try it with those. I have a collection of ribbons in many widths - some are very wide as you can see. Some are satin ribbons, some are antique ribbons that my grandmother gave me, some are grosgrain ribbons, acetate, etc. I chose colors that I thought worked together and then just wove them in and out to create the design. Quilting was minimal by using a fancy machine stitch on a couple of the wider ribbons.

I worried that the ribbons wouldn't hold up to the stitching, fearing that they would snag or pucker, but that was not the case; the ribbons did very well when I used a ball point needle. I will say that the slipperiness of the ribbons was difficult to work with and the rows and columns are not even as a result, especially with the narrower ribbons. I would have to figure out a way to better anchor ribbons if I do another project like this one. Originally I was going to trying a different quilting method, possibly free motion or quilting some design, but when I was how slippery the ribbons were, I knew that wouldn't work.

Binding was done with ribbon too, but I didn't get a picture of that. I'll remedy that soon, as I get back on track.

On another note... this is #26 for the year! I'm half way through my year of mini-quilts! Where does the time go? I originally had thought I would run out of ideas for mini-quilts, and sometimes I did run low on inspiration, but always managed to rally! I still have a lot of fun doing this, so stay tuned!

#25 Vertical Aquarium

#25: Vertical Aquarium
Almost Finished: 6/24/12
Techniques: Raw-edge appliqué, Wobble stitch
Size: 14 1/2" x 28"

Description: I apologize for the lateness of this posting. I didn't quite get this mini-quilt done by last Sunday's deadline, but all that was left to do was to add the binding and sleeve. So the important part was done on time. This will be the first time during this project that I haven't made the deadline. I'm disappointed in that, but considering what's been going on, I'm not beating myself up about not finishing a mini-quilt.

It's been quite the week here in Colorado Springs. A major fire started last Saturday and erupted on Tuesday destroying over 300 homes, and evacuating 32,000+ people. Two people have lost their lives. My home was not in the danger zone, but my friend Mary Beth was evacuated from hers. She stayed with me until she was allowed to go back. I'm happy to report that there was no damage to her place. She and I both know at least one person whose home was destroyed and our hearts go out to her and her family, and to all those who have lost so much. This mini-quilt is dedicated to them.

The mini-quilt was made from a batik scarf that I had bought at a garage sale and wasn't using. It was large enough to use as the background for the design as well as the backing material. The scarf was very thin and a little difficult to work with because it kept shifting. The quilting was done prior to the appliqué process using a wobble stitch - a very narrow zigzag stitch - and although the front came out OK, the backing did have some puckering in places.

Of course the design on the batik is flower-like, but it also reminded me of bubbles in a fish tank. My friends Sean and Karen have a vertical aquarium - taller than it is wide - and that's where I got the idea to create this vertically. As I've mentioned before, I have a lot of fish fabric. I applied Steam-a-Seam to the reverse side of several fish motifs and cut them out and appliquéd to the batik. The greenish blue sea weed pieces at the bottom were what's left after cutting out the fish. I simply trimmed them up and appliquéd them as well.

I hope to have my next posting soon, but will admit to being a little behind again this week. We'll see how it goes.