Sunday, September 30, 2012

Design Wall Monday, 1 October 2012

See what I did! This is the first successful paper pieced thing I've ever made...and I like it. I finally bit the bullet and followed some instructions. Make the cut pieces 3/4" larger than needed. Follow Carol Doak's TSP and baste the pieced together first. I don't love paper piecing and I'll never make a whole quilt that's paper pieced, but for the special project I'll be willing.

It's not perfect but I did it. I'm going to make a tote for my Featherweight so I can take it to Austin in February. It's not quite finished. It needs the needle bit and the spool bits near the bobbin (the blue square above the R is thread). I got the pattern here. It's a free download and I like it a lot. The color of the block isn't right in this photo, but it's close. I was looking for a wallhanging to make, when I came across this pattern and decided to give it a whirl.

Since the retreat I've been pretty productive. I got the Peach Melba top pieced...still needs borders. According to the pattern, 8 borders, but I don't think I'm going to make that many :^). I think I'll settle for just 3 or 4. I'm thinking a thin  light border, then a thicker dark and maybe a final one...I don't know what color. It's currently about 60 x 72.
Then I finished this jelly roll top. I had this ready to go for the retreat but my machine was acting up so I didn't get it done. I sewed this Friday in between coughing, sleeping and drinking lots of water.(I have a nasty respiratory thing--a bit more than a cold because I have gunk in my lungs--so I stayed home on Friday.) I need to add some more to it to make it useful, but I did make a jelly roll calculator to figure how many and what width needed for any size top. I did that Monday before the cold hit. I blogged about it here.

To see more design walls, check out Judy's blog.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Jelly Roll Race Top

It didn't turn out as I planned, but I think it looks OK. The blob of light green on the left side toward the middle is not good.  I think I'm going to add to the length and the width by using a trick one of the local quilt shop owners uses. Probably add the horizontal band right in the middle of the light green, that should help.

Here is an example from another retreat attendee. I really like it. I don't think I'll use the flying geese, but I'll find something that will work.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Peach Melba

The blocks are all together, now I have to decide what I'm going to do about the borders. In typical Judy fashion she has 8 borders, one which is pieced. If I add all the borders it will finish at 92 x 104. Right now it's 60 x 72. I guess I need to decide what I'm going to do with it, then I can decide how many borders it needs to be the right size!

If I decide I want all the borders, I don't think I'm up for the 178 blocks at the moment. I feel lousy...cold or something. It must be a virus, because about 5:00 I started feeling much worse.

On to bed and if I'm feeling better tomorrow, more work on this one.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Peach Melba Layout

I think this is the layout I'm going with. There is only so much moving around I can do. There isn't anything that looks too much like a clump. Now to sew it all together.

Sandie suggested the name. I've never tasted or seen peach Melba, so I did a Google image search and found this photo. There are a lot of similar colors so peach Melba it is. Keep the peach in from Judy's title and add the twist.


Monday, September 24, 2012

Because I'm Me-Jelly Roll Quilt Math

Because I am who I am I figured out how to figure out how many strips and how wide to make the strips for a particular size quilt. This is an excel spreadsheet and if you want to make one  yourself  you could do this as well. The yellow boxes are the numbers you enter. You could set it up just as I have by entering the formulas in the cells I've pointed out. For example: in cell A3 type (without the quotes) "=(A2-0.5)*32". Because you sew and cut 5 times the length of the quilt is always 32 strips. You can vary the length by changing the width of the strip.

To figure out how wide the quilt will be, work backwards. Each time you sew and cut the width doubles, so if I want a quilt for a queen size bed, and I want it to be 80 x 100 I first entered 2 1/2 as the strip width but that only gave me a length of 64 (the finished width of a 2 1/2 inch strip is 2 inches). I then put in 3 inches and got 80 inches for my length.

For the length I decided I wanted 100 inches, when I enter that into the third yellow box, the number doubles to 3200 inches. When I divide that by the length of strips I have (44 inches) I get a result of 72.7 strips. I would make that 73 strips and cut off a bit.

If you want to use the spreadsheet I made to try it out, it's here.

The chart below is just for reference. Have fun.


Sunday, September 23, 2012

Design Wall Monday September 24, 2012

I went to a guild retreat this weekend and this is what I made. I actually have more bits done than this, but this is what I have on the design wall right now. It is based on a free pattern from Judy Laquidara. If you are interested it is here.

Her quilt is much softer than this, so I'll have to find a new name...peaches and dreams is her name I'll have to add in some kind of read fruit... strawberries? .... apples? ....berries???

It took quite a bit longer than I expected to get even this much done. There are 30 of the large rectangular portions and 90 of the smaller. Then in the border are 178 more. I'm not ready to work on those yet.

Here is the room we sewed in. There were 47 of us at the retreat and about 40 of us were in this room. The retreat was held at Christ Haven Lodge in Florrisant CO, a very nice facility.

It was fun, I will go again if we have another one (I think we will.)

If you want to see more design walls, check out Judy's blog.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Design Wall-September 17

I am working on a word quilt, my first. I don't know where I'm going from here...I don't know if there'll be more words or not, but I'm pretty pleased with the way this came out. The yellow isn't really that orange, but it is certainly high contrast! I may makes some log cabin blocks to go around, or I may do some low contrast words around this. It was fun. The A and the M were a bit hard to do, but by the time I got to the N I figured out how to do it, so that was good.

I bought "Ordinary Courage" by Brene Brown, that is where this quote comes from.

If you want to see what is on other design walls, check out Judy's blog.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

I'm A Little Weird

 I am going on a quilt retreat next weekend. We are going to do a modified jelly roll race. We will have the long strip of strips sewn together before we begin, and then will make the rest of the top. I bought a jelly roll from Connecting Threads of all solids. They are not all clear colors as I prefer so I was afraid that I would put it together and not like it, so....

I decided to see if I could figure out how it would turn out before I made it. The diagram to the left is my attempt at figuring  it out. I'm sure there is a mathematical way to do it, but this was easy for me.

It made a diagram in Paint with 40 rectangles in two rows. I numbered them, then cut them in half, moved them flipped them two ways and continued to that until I'd done it five times.

This diagram was a bit too messy so I did another one on graph paper that was easier to read . I then used this diagram to place the strips on the design wall to see how I could distribute the colors and make is something I think I would like.

Then of course I had to actually lay out the strips and then label them so I can put them together in the right order.

Here is what I came up with. The white sections are the design wall and the white squares on the strips are the numbers from the above diagram. :^)

 I'm glad I took this photo, because it will be interesting to see if I got this even a little bit right. If I follow the same pattern of cutting the strip in half and sewing it back together it should come out close at least. I think I am going to put squares between each strip. I bought gray, but I think white will probably be better

And then I had to take a picture of my view. It is just beautiful today. The aspens are changing color, the sky is beautifully clear and the air is just a bit crisp...almost Fall.

I haven't been quilting much lately. I don't know why I go through such ups and downs, but I am going to try to quilt a bit each day. We'll see if that works out.

I love it, so I should do it instead of sitting in front of the computer so much!

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