Monday, January 6, 2014

Recycling


Back in October I rescued this shirt and another from my Dad's charity donation pile. I never saw him wear it. I think he really doesn't like plaid, but I love it! It's pure cotton with a textured weave in the solid red squares. "I'm sure I can do something with this," I thought. I put it in my washing pile and waited for inspiration to strike.

Less than two days later lightning struck and I thought it would make some super cute houses. Didn't I see something like that somewhere? Yes! Over at Paulette Doyle's Sweet P Quilting and Creations blog:

Wee Schoolhouses by Paulette Doyle

You can still see it in Paulette's sidebar, and she tells me it hangs with pride over her fireplace at home. Paulette's is wonderful with all the different reproduction fabrics, but I thought it would also look good in just two fabrics -- the red plaid and solid white.

I got out my trusty 1/4" graph paper and drafted it out. It is based on a 9 x 9 grid, so if each square is 1/2", the block will finish at 4 1/2". I added a door and an attic window to my design:


There was no way I was going to piece 1/2" strips from templates the way Paulette did, so I knew foundation paper piecing would be the best plan for me. A while ago I showed you my low tech method for drafting foundations with 1/4" graph paper. A few months later I read how Sue Garman uses the draw function in Microsoft Word to make her foundations. I have Microsoft PowerPoint, and I thought that would be even easier. It was!


You can set PowerPoint to "snap to grid" at 1/8" intervals, so it was easy to draw all the lines exactly where they needed to go. I printed out 9 copies on my Carol Doak Foundation Papers (which I quite like), and set them aside for the next day. "I bet I can finish the whole thing in one day," I said to myself. (Yes, I really said that.)

The next morning I cut apart the three units to get ready to start piecing, and I thought, wow, these are really small! Out came my ruler and sure enough, they were quite a bit smaller than they should be. It turns out that PowerPoint doesn't print to scale. Argh!

I saved the file in .pdf format and printed it again using Adobe Acrobat. It's still a little off, but close enough for this project. But it wouldn't work if you are combining paper piecing with traditional piecing. Acrobat usually prints perfectly, the problem lies with PowerPoint. So, NO, PowerPoint is not a good solution! I'm not sure how Word will behave for me, but I am going back to my tried and true graph paper.

(Update Feb. 2014 -- Actually I think PowerPoint does work. The trick is to save the pdf in Standard Publishing Format, not Online Publishing Format. I'll post a correction to my method soon!)

With that problem out of the way, I merrily started to sew. I had watched the Carol Doak video when it was available on The Quilt Show and I learned a couple of useful tricks. She production sews the same piece on several blocks at once, so I decided to do four in the first batch, and five in the second. I know I could have done all nine at once, but I wanted to give myself some leeway in case something went wrong.

Sharp paper piecers out there may have already caught it:


When you paper piece on a foundation, the finished block is the mirror image of the printed side. Everything I'd paper pieced before had been symmetrical, so I forgot to "flip" the image. My houses were going to face the wrong way! Noooo...

It's a cliffhanger! Read the next instalment right here.

15 comments:

  1. Oh the frustrations of having a good idea! Good luck getting your houses together. It really is a wonderful idea for using that red shirt.:)

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    1. LOL, thanks very much, Audrey! I really liked the idea of making a whole quilt from just the one shirt. And actually, God willing, I may have a reasonable amount of fabric left over!

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  2. I love the idea of the red shirt fabric!! You are so clever to try to make your own pattern!! If you remember my pattern was terrible...and here you are making your pattern!! So smart!!
    P

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    1. Thank you very much, Paulette, and thanks again for the photo too. I think you practically had to make your own pattern too, at the end!

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  3. I was captivated by this post. It's great to hear your thoughts on using the computer to draft paper pieces.. but now there's a cliff hanger , oh no what will happen? I can't see why it would be a problem if the houses are reversed, but now you've mentioned it all house blocks go the same way, I wonder why? I say Be a rebel and start a new trend of houses going the other way!!

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    1. Yes, you will see, we think alike, Rachael. But it still wasn't quite smooth sailing... Thanks for hanging in there!

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  4. You really are embracing the new year with vim and vigour. Way to go Monica! Looking forward to the next installment. "Will she flip her lid?...oops...house?"

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    1. Thanks! But so far, this is all last year's work. I have been working on it today, though -- first day back at the sewing machine since the break. I enjoyed every minute!

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  5. what a good idea to use the shirt this way, completely over my head about the computer though afraid I cannot understand what you did but I do not think I have power point or if I have where it is!

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    1. Thanks very much, Margaret, but don't worry -- the upshot of the whole computer story is that I would have been better off with just graph paper and a photocopier!

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  6. I'm not much of a paper piecer, having only done it two or three times and with terrible results. So I don't see what you did, but I'm waiting on the edge of the cliff to see what happens next!

    I have an idea for your photo - why not show us the winter version?

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    1. LOL, thanks, Cynthia! Right now, the winter version of those Black Eyed Susans would just be plain snow, because they are cut down to the ground every fall and regrow in the spring. I am planning a real photo for the spring, but even then I will probably keep the flower as my thumbnail, because I think it is quite recognizable.

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  7. I'm with Audrey - the challenge of a good idea! I'd have made the same PowerPoint leap and mistake. There must, of course, be a simple program (or- app) that does the job but you'd think common tools would be sewing friendly! Love the shirt recycling and wouldn't mind the houses mirrored. Interested in your solutions.

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    1. Oh yes, Electric Quilter or EQ7 is available with databases full of blocks. But, I have deliberately avoided it, because I need to slow down my ideas, not have more! Thanks for the support, Jillian!

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  8. Its going to look fantastic! Great idea for a shirt.

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I'm told Blogger has been bouncing some comments, so if it happens to you I'm sorry! But the settings look right so I can't explain it. In any case, thanks for reading!

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