Quiltiliciousjourney.blogspot.com's blog

New Website and New "Store"

Well, I finally decided to put some quilts up for sale. To that end, I opened an Etsy Store and erected a website. The website links to this blog, so I thought I'd return the favor.

It's been a while since I've done any coding, so the site was a bit more challenging than I expected - however, I have finally, after a dozen years, figured out how to do forms! I'm probably going to have to redo them because I suspect that I'll be opening myself up to spammer hell the way it's done now, but we'll see.

One thing that may be of interest to you will be the quilt design instructions I plan to write up and post on the website. I guess my big debate is after I've written it, do I want to try to sell it to a quilting magazine or just post it online? I don't think I can do both, really.

After Esher, completed

I finished the "After Esher" lap quilt this weekend, because it's getting cold, and it's going to be a lap quilt for our living room for us to keep warm under while we watch TV. So it got bumped in the queue. Here are the design and construction and finished photos, in a series:

After Escher Lap Quilt Design

After Esher, beginning construction phase

I really like this design, consisting of the 4 center squares and one set of triangles. I think I might use this as a block pattern and make the block larger. It would certainly be a lot less work than the other design. I was laying out the pieces to make sure I had everything progressing in the correct order, so I wouldn't wind up with a mess like that baby quilt.

After Esher, construction phase

Laying out the finished blocks. A picture of the pieced blocks is in the previous blog post.

After Esher, finished 10/2008

Here is the finished quilt, with 3 borders, and the binding of fabric used in the quilt itself. The backing is flannel.

After Escher, back

And here are some closeups of the quilting. I am not thrilled with the job I did in the center of the quilt. I am hitting the limitations of my equipment. I have great difficulty regulating stitch length when I attempt free-motion quilting with this machine. I also really need a larger platform for the fabric to travel on (I just have the bed that is designed into the machine - which is really for home garment construction - it's a mid-price Singer, about 10 years old). I am happier with what I decided to do in the borders, since it was just straight-line stitching, which my machine can handle. There are also lines radiating out in the centers of each border side that match the corners. Even though the quilting is rather amateurish, I think it's an improvement over what I've been able to do on my own in the past.

Adventures with the Snail's Trails block

I've been working with the Snail's Trails block, or a variant thereof, since I found it in the EQ6 block library. I thought it would make a nice pattern for a baby quilt for my husband's best friend and his wife, who are expecting next month. So, this is what I designed:

BabyHarrelDesign

And this is how it turned out:

Baby Harrell Quilt

I'm OK with this, even though I did half of the blocks backwards from what they should have been. I guess I didn't pay close enough attention to how to piece a 4-color tessellated version. But I actually like the frog shapes and the swirls and the parti-color areas. I think for a baby quilt, it works.

But I had to prove to myself that I could actually construct the design I designed. At the same time, one of the throws we use in the living room to bundle up underneath when we watch TV is getting really worn. It's sad, really, because it's been a favorite blanket in the house for all of us. But it's really on its last legs. It used to look a lot like this when it was new. But now the sun's pretty much detached itself from the body of the blanket and it's looking like something the dog is sleeping on (if we had a dog).

So, I decided to do the same design again, but in a more "grownup" color pallette. I call this "After Escher" and I did it in a 6x6 grid:

After Escher Lap Quilt Design

Here is a photo of the pieced blocks.

After Escher Quilt Pieced

Quetzel's Cabin Top - finished

Well here is the finished quilt top. Now I have to quilt the thing. I am at a loss as to d

Quetzel's Cabin - finished prototype top

esigns for it, except for the blank corner blocks - I want to put Mayan hieroglyphs in them (I took a class in them many years ago, and I created a glyph for my name, and I also wanted to put the date in Mayan glyphs as well). As to the quilting for the rest - Clueless!

Do I stitch in the ditch? Some sort of pattern? Matching or contrasting threads? Hand quilt or machine quilt? (I've not done much in the way of hand-quilting, and my machine is a "standard" sewing machine, so it's difficult to get the quilt in there to work - I don't have a quilt frame. I do have lots of embroidery frames, however.

And, of course, the second I laid the top on my bed to photograph it, my cat had to check it out...

Panzi

I do think that the finished quilt really matched the final design. I am very happy with the piecing. I think it's the best I've ever done.

Quetzel's Cabin

Quetzel's Cabin

This is the final design. I have pieced all the flying geese and have the top/bottom rows attached to the body of the quilt. I have to do the sides and then the outer border and the top will be done.

Quetzel's Cabin

I am planning on quilting Mayan hieroglyphs into the "empty" corners in a contrasting thread. Other than that, I have no idea about what to do for quilting this thing.

Of course measurements were not carried out as accurately as they should have been and the quilt sans borders is about 1 inch larger than the plan. That means some adjustments to the geese border which has been problematic. Next time I need to have my block sizes work out so that I'm cutting shapes in dimensions that are marked on my tools. I have problems with sizes that end in 7/8 inch. I can NOT "round up" to the nearest inch. Gah. The initial design had the inside working out to exactly 40" with the first border, so that eight 5" x 5" flying geese blocks would work perfectly. The quilt measures between 40.5" and 41" on an edge (depending on which edge you are talking about).

I don't want to have to construct this again... But I may have to at some point...

2 Days Gone

So I didn't have much to do on Sunday, so I opened EQ6 and designed a quilt. The really brightly colored, loud quarter log cabin pattern has been intriguing me for a while, so I was playing with that and a flying birds block, and came up with this:

Quetzel's Cabin2

Then I ran off to the local quilt store (the one I recently discovered that's about a mile from my house), and bought fabric to make this with. I don't have much in the way of orange or green in my stash since these aren't colors I usually work with. After making the blocks, I started to see other possibilities. And, since my ultimate plans for this quilt is to enter it in local shows (this will be my first "show quilt"), I decided that a square quilt would look better, and I could leave off some less-than-perfect blocks (I am not doing foundation piecing - these are all machine pieced), I came up with this presentation for the blocks:
 

Quetzel's Cabin variant

There are going to be 3 borders on this quilt - a solid purple border with red corners - the purple is the same fabric as the outer strip in the log cabin, so they "float" on the background now, with red corners. The middle border is going to be flying geese in the fabrics in the quilt on a black background, and the outer border will be more of the purple fabric. Here's the final design (with faux fabrics from EQ6):

Quetzel's CabinVariant

I don't know if I'm going to try to hand-quilt this thing or not. I haven't done much in the way of hand-quilting and maybe this isn't the best project to learn on. Maybe I can rent time on someone's long-arm machine. This deserves more than a stitch-in-the-ditch quilting job.

But I'm pleased with my piecing work on this. I finally figured out how to keep the points out of my seams, and can do that consistently.

Anyway, I'm pleased with the results.

Carried away with novelty fabrics

I think I learned a lesson here with this quilt - I need to limit myself to two or three novelty fabrics per quilt. I think I might have overdone this one. But bear with me for a second...

What ELSE would you give to expectant parents who are the Middle and High School band directors? The husband/father is in charge of the High School marching band - and when I saw these fabrics, I could NOT resist. The "R" in the center is my attempt at duplicating the High School "letter". This was supposed to be a baby quilt, but the small blocks were too big, and the thing took on a life of its own, and wound up being 5-ft square.

So, I will tell the expectant parents on Friday (at the baby shower the band kids are throwing for them) that it's a "lap quilt" for mom and baby to snuggle under while daddy marshals the marching band next fall (it gets COLD out on the football field!).

And if the front of the quilt is too scary and busy, they can just look at the faux tie-dye on the back...

Drunkard's Path for Shirley is finished!

I got the quilt back fr om Maison de Janice (Janice Jamieson - yes, she lives about 15 minutes from me) on Saturday and spent all day yesterday binding the thing. Yes it was slow going (hand work usually is), but it's the neatest binding I've ever done, with the best mitered corners I've ever done as well.

And Janice did an incredible job quilting it, too. Here are some (crappy) pictures:

Infinity v2.1

Here is the finished quilt, ready for the Philcon art show:

Infinity V2.1

I tried doing a "DNA" quilt pattern on top of the leminscate, but it looked really awful (machine quilting is not my strong point yet, and this machine is not really designed for it. So I spent all day Saturday ripping out the stitches, and starting over again.

I took some suggestions from the quilters at Livejournal, and put in some galactic spirals in the center, and did an organic looping pattern that's somewhat feather-based on the edges. The outer corners have Mandelbrot-esque shapes.

All I have left to do is make a label for the back and affix it. I'm going to use that printable fabric that goes in the ink jet printer, and make labels for a bunch of quilts at once (so I can use up the entire letter-sized piece). I'm going to put it up for auction starting at 150 and I hope it sells.

Now I need to make some really small pieces featuring hand-drawn SF/Fantasy themes (like dragons and fairies) using my Tsukenieko inks. It will be interesting to see if I can get 2 or 3 of them done in time for the convention, considering my daughter and I are performing in an opera in less than 2 weeks (and we have a grueling rehersal schedule).

Infinity 1 v1.0

I finished the first Infinity 1 quilt top about 2 AM today. This did not take me too long, but I had some issues putting it together. The points in the Garden Patch blocks are inconsistent in size (not surprising, since this is the first time I've done that block, or any block that required triangles other than half-square triangles). I would like to "blame" the fact that the 8-inch finished block size required pieces that are measured in 16ths of an inch, and my rulers only do 8ths, but it's probably pilot error.

Infinity1

I think I'm going to paper-piece those blocks on the next attempt. The only "sucky" thing is I've used up almost all of the Hoffman Celestial galaxy fabric I could locate (it's in the sashing), so I'm going to have to "fake" it with something else on the next top.  I also may adjust the color balance between the far background and the mid-ground (there is slightly more contrast in real life than in the photograph, but not as much as in the design, below), and use a brighter red.

I would like suggestions as to what kind of pattern to quilt the top with - that's where I fall down and my newbieness shines through - I have pieced about a dozen quilt tops by this point in my life, but I send out my king quilts for quilting (the Drunkard's Path is at Maison De Janice for quilting even now). This one, I want to complete myself, and I need to get it done soon, because I am putting it in a SF convention (Philcon) art show, and hopefully it (or it's sibling which I'll probably start on tomorrow) will sell for a handsome (or princely, if I'm lucky) sum. And maybe I'll get some commissions.

This is the original design I came up with using EQ6 (whilst fooling around after "lesson 1" in the tutorial):

Infinity