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.

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.

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.

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!

Progress-and Design Wall

I made one more hexagon, so four full hexagons left, then half and quarter ones. They are supposed to have the middle hexagon appliqued on, but I decided to piece them. I sew the hexagon sides to the center all around, then sew the seams between the sides. Not hard, but a bit fussy.

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

Now the big project that's done...from this...

...to this!

I don't know if the cat is going to enjoy it right away, but I think she will eventually. She is still a little tentative, so it might take her a bit. We don't have it attached to the ceiling beam yet, and I don't know if we'll need to. She only weighs about 10 pounds so it probably won't wobble. It is 8 feet tall and 24 inches in diameter. the circles are 16 inches (pre-cut and available at Lowes). I still have to adjust the top "room". It's a bit too close to the one below so she can't quite get in there, but I only screwed it into the three poles, so it won't be a problem.

I ended up doing most of the work myself. Joe was gone all week at a retreat, so other than covering the poles, I did everything else. I got a couple of nicks and scratches, and my back hurts some, but I feel good about the whole thing.

Yay me!

Back to it

I'm finally back to getting stuff done, working on the cat tree and a new top (not that I need another top, but it's fun...we do need the cat tree though, new cat.)

We got Maggie a bit over a week ago. She is a very sweet cat. We've been without a cat for almost three years and we decided it was time. She is a talker, it is quite funny to me because Buddy almost never made noise. She plays around with the mouse we got, tossing, batting and chasing it and meows the whole time. She also chases her tail, I've never seen a cat do that before. I bought a scratching post, but she hasn't used it. I caught her scratching at the couch and one of the chairs, so a tree it is.  

It's based on this tree, but will have shelters at the top and bottom of the tree. It will also reach to the beams in our living room so if she wants she can walk across the beams. I have no idea if she'll use it, but I certainly hope so. Maybe I'll buy some catnip to get her interested. I have all the parts cut and ready to glue and cover, then screw together. I hope I get it done soon. 

I'm also working on Amy Butler's Sexy Hexy Love quilt. It' a free pattern if you're interested you can find it on this page (about the middle of the page). 

I chose all blues. I had them picked out for a different top that I decided not to make so they were waiting to be used for something. Instead of putting them away, I just decided to use them for this quilt. I've finished a couple of the hexagons. They're pretty big so the quilt only takes 7 full hexagons, 4 half hexagons and 6 quarter hexagons and then it's done. I cut out all the pieces then stacked the fabrics together that I thought might work.

Well got to get to work on the cat tree. I can never work on just one thing at a time

Seventy-Six

76 trombones, 76 days. A long time without blogging. I had some adventures in the mean time, and I hope to get back to quilting and blogging regularly.

Let's see...I stopped at the end of April. In May I started in earnest planning for the trip to Europe for our 25th anniversary. I made clothes, made itineraries, made reservations. At least I did some sewing. We went to Germany and Ireland. A week in Germany and two weeks in Ireland. Joe's mom is German, and we lived there for two years, so we wanted to see the relatives again and also see Berlin (which we had never seen). We had never been to Ireland and though neither of us has any Irish ancestors that we know of, wanted to see what it was like. We rented a car and drove...a lot. We figured about 3,000 kilometers, so .... a lot!

It rained every day was was beautiful nonetheless.We have loads of pictures...here are a few.

Grianan Aileach Ring Fort view

Fuchsia (they were everywhere)

Cliffs near Dun Aonghasa on Inis Mor Island

Joe on the Ceide Fields--the Centre in the background. 

Right now I'm working on cleaning the sewing room...first steps first. Then back to quilting and more regular blogging...and more pictures, soon.