#47 Geometrics

#47: Geometrics
Finished: 11/25/12
Techniques: Partial Seams, Circular Quilting
Size: 28 x21"

Description: My stash of fabrics is sorted by types: florals, nature, solids, batiks and mottled, novelty, and geometrics, to name a few. What I call 'geometrics' are those fabrics containing stripes, plaids, ginghams, polka dots, diamonds and anything else with repeated geometric patterns.

At times during this year when I've been stuck for an idea, I've often just started looking at my stash hoping for some inspiration from the fabrics themselves. That's what I did in this case. My eye landed on my geometrics and I knew I wanted to do something with them. I plotted out a design of interwoven strips and added a few squares of others to round things out. Although it may look like some of the fabrics weave in and out, this mini-quilt was entirely pieced. To avoid breaking up the strips and to avoid sewing Y-seams, most of the piecing was done with partial seams. Considering the intricacy of all the design, I feared I might become confused as to what seam to sew next. And when I tried to plan it out in advance, it was confusing. But when I actually started sewing, I didn't get confused at all. It went very smoothly, much to my own amazement. The only difficult parts were the couple of places where there were very small pieces to piece.

Although there are some fabrics with tiny dots, there aren't any fabrics I would consider to be polka dots. None of my polka dot fabrics fit in with the color scheme. So when it came time to quilt, I decided to quilt with circles. I used different thread colors for each circle, but in hindsight it might have been better to have used only one color, green. Oh well. I drew out externally tangent circles with a pen that disappears when ironed. I used plates, glasses, lids, and other round kitchen objects to draw the circles. Then I quilted using a triple straight stitch. The circles drawn from plates left too much area un-quilted, so I added internally tangent circles to fill in. I think the quilting looks like bubbles.

#46 Bountiful Basket

#46: Bountiful Basket
Finished: 11/18/12
Technique: Tiled Piecing, Mosaic, Free-motion quilting
Size: 13" x 18 1/2"

Description: This mini-quilt combines the theme of Thanksgiving and trying to make the design look like a tiled mosaic. I am thankful for many things this year, but right now I am thankful that this mini-quilt is finished! This has proven to be the most time-consuming project to date, and one of the most difficult. I vastly underestimated the time it would take to finish this project, and in an effort to get it done in time, the work is sloppy at best and not up to my usual standards. Having said that, however, I am still very much intrigued with this technique and think it holds great potential for spectacular designs. I'll need to experiment with how to deal with the myriad of problems I encountered during the process.

My original thought was to portray a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables, a typical Thanksgiving composition.  I picked out the fabrics to represent the corn, cabbage, apples, cucumber, squash, grapes, basket, sky, and grout. That was the fun and easy part. I then sketched a basic design and overlaid a grid, hoping to follow it for placement of individual pieces.

The pieces of fabric had to be small by necessity. I cut the "tile" pieces 1" square (for a finished 1/2") and I cut the "grout" lines 5/8" ( for roughly 1/8" finished width). I didn't worry too much about the evenness of the sewing, figuring the slight variances in widths would make it appear more like an actual mosaic. I sewed the pieces in columns then used long strips of the grout fabric to connect the columns.

One of the first problems I encountered was that my sketch was too small. The fruits and vegetables were just colored blobs; they needed to be bigger in order for the observer to recognized them as fruits and vegetables. At this point I should have re-done the sketch, but I thought I could get by without doing so. That was a mistake.

Another problem was that my round fruits were coming out square. I thought about replacing certain pieces with half-square triangles to round off the corners, but that would have involved a great deal more time. I decided to "fix" it in the end with circular free-motion quilting.

Because the pieces are small, there is quite a lot of bulk in the seam. As I was sewing the columns together, the mini-quilt kept rolling in on itself, making it difficult to work with. This also led to an "accordion" effect, making the piece very stretchy (and it had a great deal of rebound). This later gave me grief when I was quilting. You will notice that parts of the sky are far too wavy.

I soon realized I wasn't going to be able to finish the cornucopia design; it was going to take far too long. So I lopped off the tail and made it into a basket lying on its side.

There are parts of this design that I particularly like. The yellow squash, the grapes, and the one vertical ear of corn turned out nicely. (The other ear of corn is rather wonky.) I also like the sky, which was cut from a large scale blue gingham.

As frustrating as this project was, I want to try this technique again. I've learned quite a lot, and have a lot of ideas of what to change for the next time.

#45 Fuzzy Fish

#45: Fuzzy Fish
Finished: 11/11/12
Techniques: Chenille Effect
Size: 16 1/2" x 13"

Description: The chenille effect is created by stacking several layers of fabric having the same design, then stitching on the diagonal and cutting on the bias. For this mini-quilt, I used five layers with the bottom-most layer cut a little longer and wider than the others. Because I needed five pieces of the same design, I relied on my ever-present fish fabric. Once I stitched on the diagonal, it was relatively easy to cut the fabric by having the lowest layer a little bigger than the other layers. It assured that I wouldn't accidentally cut through all the layers.

The sewing, then, was fast and the cutting was simple. The final stage is to wash the mini-quilt to make the chenille "bloom". This proved to be the most frustrating part. I have a front loading washer, which is designed to be gentler on clothes than a top loading machine. Hence, there wasn't enough agitation to  really make the chenille bloom. It did bloom somewhat, but even after several washings and dryings, it hasn't bloomed as much as I'd hoped. I even tried brushing the chenille and agitating it further by hand. I suppose if I keep trying, it may improve.  If it does, I'll re-post and let you know.

#44 Stained Glass Iris

#44: Stained Glass Iris
Finished: 11/4/12
Techniques: Stained Glass Effect, Satin Stitch, Machine Stitches, Appliqué, Bias Binding, Oval, Batiks
Size: 12" x 15"

A Stained Glass effect mini-quilt has been on my list of projects for a while now, so it was time to give it a try. Many years ago, I took a class and learned how to create stained glass designs. It was fun, but I don't think my sense of color or design was as developed as it is today. But I have seen quilts done in a stained glass style and thought they looked pretty good.

Batiks, hand-dyed, and mottled fabrics work very well, as they emulate the subtle differences and imperfections in stained glass. Originally, I was going to use bias binding tape to simulate the lead lines holding the pieces of "glass" together. I was going to make the bias tape myself, but found it too difficult to get the narrow size I needed for the mini-quilt. So I figured a good satin stitch would work just as well.

I created the design for this iris, chose the fabrics, starched them heavily, let them dry and ironed them flat. When they're starched like that, cutting with a rotary cutter is pretty easy. I could cut the pieces from my design without regard to seam allowances, since this was basically an appliqué process. I laid them onto the sky blue fabric and used a glue stick to keep them in place.

Before actually starting the satin stitching, I used my failed narrow bias binding to lay out where I wanted the lead lines. Thinking back to the stained glass class, I knew what curves and intersections would work with glass, so I tried several permutations until I found one that was pleasing to the eye (although I think I could have done better with a few more tries). I then marked the lines with a marker that disappears when ironed, and working with batting and a heavy stabilizer, proceeded with the satin stitching.

Quilting was simple. I used a straight stitch for the sky and some machine stitches for the grassy areas. But since I had already done the satin stitching, I had to "jump" over places in the sky part of the quilt. I have to remember that stopping and starting quilting stitches in the middle of a quilt doesn't work very well, unless you leave long enough tails to tie them off in the back. I also thought about adding stitches to the iris itself, but then thought it would detract from the stained glass effect. In hindsight, I don't think I should have used the machine stitches in the grassy area either; some straight stitching probably would have sufficed. Oh well.

I had also intended on making this a rectangular piece, just as all my other mini-quilts have been. But something about the stained glass design just cried out for an oval shape. But how could I make a perfect oval? I knew that eye-balling it wasn't going to work. So I used the poster function of Microsoft Publisher and inserted an oval shape with specified dimensions, printed it off and cut out the inside of the oval. I was left with a template to frame the mini-quilt, upon which I traced the cutting line. Then I cut the black fabric on the bias to make the binding. It wrapped around the piece very nicely.

I do like the way this one turned out.