Diamond Economy

Somehow, a diamond economy sounds better than economy diamonds! Either way, I think it's better than square-in-a-square-in-a-square-in-a-square, lol.

Anyway, I finished these up this morning, and yesterday I finished the last eleven four patch diamonds. As I did the final trim, I found a little bit of serendipity:

An orange flower was centred perfectly in the block, completely by accident, not once, but twice!

So, I'm on a roll, and next time I plan to show you what it's all for.

Oh, and by the way, that extra pin in the seam that I mentioned last time made all the difference! The last batch was much more consistent. And, isn't it interesting how the blue sky outside made these photos bluer than the last post? The colours were more accurate last time.

Four Patch Diamonds

Here's another Monday preview! I need 28 of these 4" blocks, and I have 17 done. One more day should do it.

There are probably many ways to make this block, but to avoid higher mathematics I've been foundation paper piecing them. I started with some raggedy oversized four patch blocks, and home made paper foundations printed on translucent vellum:

Then I just lined up the seams with the centre cross, pinned it, trimmed it, and sewed through the paper to add the dark green corners.

It worked reasonably well, but I did find that the block tended to shift a bit when I sewed. You can see that with the blue one above. I loosened up the presser foot, which helped a lot. With the last batch I will also put an extra pin right in the cross seam and see if that helps too. In any case, they will do.

I've really enjoyed getting back into the rhythm of paper piecing. I find it very relaxing to not always be worrying about a perfect 1/4" seam, and my high speed machine makes quick work of the short stitches. I even like tearing off the paper! The crisp vellum comes off easily and doesn't leave any little bits in the seam. Hopefully nothing will come up tomorrow and I can get the rest done. Fingers crossed!

Highlands Houses Finished

I've been debating whether I should put a question mark after "finished," but I think my little Highlands Houses quilt is done:

Highlands Houses, 19" x 19"

I started this quilt just under a year ago, when I rescued a plaid shirt that my Dad never wore from the donation pile:

It was one wrong turn after another with this quilt, and the challenges continued with the quilting! As a beginner free motion quilter, I decided to do a loose stipple with fine thread, and let the quilting fall into the background. My practice pieces looked reasonable, but it all went out the window once the real quilt was under the needle!

I learned that:

1. Shirting is stretchier than regular quilting cotton.
2. Paper pieced blocks are stretchier than traditionally pieced blocks, because the grains are not usually lined up.

So, there are a few bumps in the middle, and a few tucks under the binding, but at this point I'm going to call it a day and move on to the next project! 

The whole time I was quilting I had this song from Cathy Miller, The Singing Quilter, going through my head:

Three quilts done, a gazillion to go!

Bad Behaviour and a New Approach

Well, I'm back. I've had more than my fill of doctor's waiting rooms, and I have no intention of going back any time soon!

I have not been able to do a lot of sewing, but I've definitely had lots of time to think! Back at the beginning of the year you may recall that I had bold plans to shelve all my old UFOs and start anew with a clean slate. After just four months it's clear that was a complete failure. All my UFOs have crept back onto the to do list.

Plus, I started one...

...two...

...new projects over the break! And, I've noticed that I compensate for not sewing by buying more fabric, but I better not go into detail about that, lol. Both the new projects are foundation paper pieced. The maple leaves are batiks that have been waiting for their moment for a long time, and the winter star is new fabric, the Jack Frost 10" square collection from Keepsake Quilting. Beware -- most of these fabrics are home dec weight, and not the best for detailed piecing!

Anyway, I've forgiven myself for the new starts. It's been a stressful time, so a temporary distraction was helpful.

But I also still think I need fewer current projects. I've decided to cut them down to five categories and choose just one from each:

1. Machine Pieced
2. Hand Applique
3. Stitchery/Embroidery
4. English Paper Piecing
5. Cross Stitch

I've realized that I am much more productive when I have fewer decisions to make. So, I made lists of all started or ready-to-start projects in each area and used a random number generator to choose which ones to work on now. I was worried that I wouldn't like the results, but actually I love them. Each time the random number came up, I felt a big sense of relief when I checked it against the list. I think any result would have been a relief -- sometimes it's just helpful to make a decision. 

So, the first round of projects will be:

1. It's Warm Inside -- a log cabin lap quilt to be made with this cute snowglobes flannel fabric I bought from Connecting Threads last fall. A brand new project!
2. Trick or Treat Baskets, designed by Barb Adams and Alma Allen of Blackbird Designs, in their book When the Cold Wind Blows. I saw this quilt recently on Supergoof's blog (it's the second basket quilt in that post), and I had to add it to the list. I've seen others working on it too. I like the Supergoof's pink and white blocks, and I bought a little of Connecting Threads' new Hampton Hues collection to add to fabrics from my stash. Another brand new project! And a big one...
3. L'Herbier -- Two of the 16 embroidered blocks are done. I'm hoping this will move along easily, now that all the kinks are worked out.
4. Texas Star -- There were only two choices in the category, this one or the setting for BFF. I guess BFF will be on hold for a while!
5. A Kiss for Snowman -- I had an absolute craving for cross stitch over the break, and this is the project I've been working on. I did not choose a random number on this, I'm determined to get it done soon!

It will be interesting to see how this new approach works out. Two winter projects, just as summer is starting! Right now I'm feeling pretty motivated, so, fingers crossed!

Houses Flimsy

Today I was finally able to get back to my sewing machine and finish up the flimsy for my plaid houses. I've named it "Highlands Houses" in honour of the plaid.

The roofs turned out to be quite challenging when it came to matching the angled corners, even with the paper pieced units. They are not all up to our strict Ontario Building Code! The words "close enough" could be heard frequently around here last week.

I also want to show you how I paper pieced the chimney units. Since they are just a narrow strip, I decided to strip piece them on a paper foundation.

I drafted a foundation with solid sewing lines, and dotted cutting lines,

Sewed on my strips,

Trimmed up the block,

Cut along the dotted lines,

And voilà! Nine skinny units. Click any of the photos to see them larger.

After considerable debate about how to quilt it, I have decided that just a simple machine stipple will be best. There are already plenty of lines with the plaid going this way and that, so I think just a few subtle curves will be the best way to keep it balanced. I'm not sure when that's going to happen, though! I really need to get my machine serviced again.

Regular readers may have noticed that I am off to a terrible start with my New Year's resolution. This quilt was both a UFO and entirely machine sewn! My resolution was not at all intended to be reverse psychology, but it has proven to be much harder to decide to let my UFOs go than I expected. So I will still tie up a few more loose ends this month. But, I did manage to start a new hand embroidery project as well last week, so you'll see that soon too.

Here's a final photo to see you on your way!

Wrong Way

Previously on Lakeview Stitching....

Click here to catch up on the story so far.

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So, I had mistakenly drafted the patterns for my houses backwards! Argh!

"Well, does it really matter?" I thought.

"Finish it in one day," I thought.

"Just keep going," I thought, and I made a start on the roof pieces:

I had decided right away that I wasn't going to worry if the grain was straight in the pieces, because that way insanity lies, but I did want the plaid in the roofs to follow the angle. I made myself a cutting template for the roof pieces to get the angle right, and I was rather amazed at how well it worked.

But, while I was sewing the roofs, doubt crept in. I was hoping to hang the finished quilt in my bedroom, and I didn't want to look at it every morning and think, "that's wrong." That wouldn't be a good way to start the day. I packed it up.

Then I started to see other quilts made from shirts around the blogosphere. Isn't it funny how that happens? Diane at Butterfly Threads made a lovely keepsake quilt for her mother from her father's shirts. I met a new quilter in The Great Canadian Blogathon, Ilene, who showed a wonderful quilt made from blue shirtings and red hearts.

So, I decided to start over with a correct pattern. There was enough fabric left if I went with a straight binding rather than the bias binding that I had originally planned. I labelled all the roof pieces above as "wrong," but saved them just in case I needed the fabric. The four front pieces went in the bin, because there was no way to reuse them.

I made all nine side pieces in one batch:

I could have used the old foundations for these, because the sides are the same either way. "Hold on," I thought. "the sides are the same either way! I could use these with both the right houses and the wrong houses. Five right, four wrong, the quilt is done, and I won't even have to cut any more fabric!"

I fished the first set of fronts out of the bin, which fortunately had nothing else too bad in it. I still had to pack it up again for the Christmas break, but for the past three days now I've been sewing steadily. I can't believe I thought I could do it in one day! Smaller isn't necessarily faster, I'm realizing. But, it's like it was meant to be this way all along -- not one wasted stitch.

The wrong way...

...and the right way...

...soon (hopefully) to be joined as one. :)

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.

Flying Geese

I am trying something new for me this month. I've decided to just work on one thing at a time! LOL. My quilt guild will have their next show in April, and I've decided that Riviera Star, which is based on Judy Niemeyer's Prairie Star foundations, will be my main entry. So I made a plan, and if I stick to it I'll have the top done by August.

Today I finished the eight Flying Geese units. Here they are laid out with the Melon Spike units I made previously:

I think it's looking promising. It certainly meets my dad's requirement to be "lively!" It's fun to play around with the pieces, too:

I've given myself two and a half weeks to sew the next group, which will combine with these units into square blocks. I've also changed my colourway a bit, which I'll tell you about tomorrow. Onwards!

Appreciating Simplicity

Today I have been revisiting my Collector quilt project, and appreciating how such simple blocks can still be so beautiful. This quilt is all about the fabrics, of course. The first four are all Kaffe.

I have been using translucent vellum to foundation paper piece these blocks, which makes centering all the motifs a breeze! Normally I hate fussy cutting, but this way it's fun.

I'm not sure why this quilt has been languishing so long, but I think it is just "out of sight, out of mind." Anyway, now the last 10 square-in-a-square blocks are done, and it's on to the sawtooth stars.

Melon Spikes

Here are the next pieces of the puzzle for my Riviera Star, using the foundations from Judy Neimeyer's Prairie Star. She calls them the "melon spike" units. There are eight in all, but I thought just the six made a nice arrangement too!

One really great thing about Judy's design is that none of the points go all the way out to the seams, so there will be no danger of cutting them off when I sew the pieces together. What an excellent idea!

So far this project has been surprisingly easy and fun, considering how dramatic it looks. Next up will be the "circling geese" units.

Compass Centre

Look what happens when I manage to avoid turning on the computer in the morning!

I managed the whole thing today. Didn't get the laundry done though!

I haven't shown this project since last May, when I bought all the fabrics. The pattern is Judy Niemeyer's Prairie Star, which is the same pattern as her Hawaiian Star, only a different colourway. I have decided to call it Riviera Star, since many of the fabrics are from the Riviera II collection from Connecting Threads. It's almost sold out now.

Here's my colourway again:

The background cream fabric with the red flowers is darker overall than I expected, but I think it still looks ok.

The foundations are printed on newsprint. This worried me when I first opened the box, because it feels very fragile and easy to tear. So far, though, working with the smaller centre sections at least, it has been pretty good. It's easy to fold accurately, and it does tear away easily. I suspect, though, that those large outer sections are going to be a challenge!

But anyway, it was a fun day today. I love paper piecing, and it's always interesting to try out a new pattern!

Paper Piecing Sedona Star Month 2, Part 2

A TQS member has asked me for more detail on my paper piecing method for Sedona Star, Month 2. Maybe it is lucky that I still haven't finished all those blocks! I went back and enhanced the original photo of the template with my newer photo software. Hopefully it is now clearer. You can find that on the original post here.

I also took a photo of some partially completed blocks which I think will help too:

Click the photo to see it larger in the photo viewer.

Here is a little more information on the stitching order:

1. The two halves are pieced separately as far as you see here, then joined before the final pieces are added. You can see one half in the photo on the right. Those sections are pieced starting with the light orange point in the middle, and working out, ending with the yellow point. The long blue piece beside the yellow point is the one I make a template for, because it is sewn first to the light orange fabric, and then flipped up so that the yellow piece can then be sewn to it.
2. When the two sides are done this far, they are sewn together. On the left you can see the block back with the seam right up the middle. On these blocks the excess fabric along the sides has already been trimmed away.
3. The next step will be to applique the pie piece at the bottom. On my block this is the white fabric.
4. Finally, I add the border pieces, which in my block are light green. 

Here again is my test block, all finished. 

I am still not completely decided on how to do the applique. I need to spend one more day experimenting, and then I will be ready to finalize it all. On the test block here I used Beth Ferrier's turned edge machine applique method. I will not be doing the final quilt that way, though. It will be fused instead, with the edges finished either by machine satin stitch or by hand. 

I hope that sheds more light on things! Please leave any additional questions in the comments. Happy sewing!

Related Posts

 Paper Piecing Sedona Star Month 2, Part 1

 More Month 2 information

Banner Corners and Borders

As I mentioned yesterday, I finally realized in April that I had to simplify the design for my banner, because I still wanted the stitcheries themselves to be the focal point.  These little 2" finished square-in-a-square blocks were an idea that I had rejected early on.  But when I looked at the stitcheries I realized that the designer Jim Shore had put different blocks in each corner of his borders, so I could make my blocks more interesting by varying the colours!  I went to my stash and pulled the fabrics to match the stitching.

I mentioned a few days ago that I planned right from the beginning to use Flying Geese around the sides of the stitcheries.  I also planned all along to do them in green and yellow, echoing the colours of the top border which are consistent on all three pieces:

But during my final design phase in April I worried that green and yellow would be too high contrast, too busy, and therefore distract from the stitcheries.  I went to my stash looking for two shades of green instead, and found these:

I really, really love this fabric combination!  The small print against the big one, the slightly warmer geese versus the cooler background, the geese are defined without being "in your face."  These sections will finish at 2" x 6" each. I am foundation paper piecing them, which I did for the corners as well, using my own home made foundations copied onto vellum.  They are quite slow to sew, but at least the points are perfect!  There will be 10 in all.  Here's a preview of how it will all look together:

Imagine if I had gone ahead with those stumpwork daisies!  This is so much better.

I took advantage of a break in the humidity last week to piece these side sections, but I still have six left, so I think it will still be a while before this is finished.  I have found, though, that I stay cooler working on something small like this, rather than trying to manage large pieces of fabric and long seams.

There will also be a little bit of needleturn applique in the triangle at the bottom.  Hopefully I'll be able to show you that soon!


Previous Posts:

Percy Pig

Sophie Sheep

Clarissa Cow

Easy, Accurate Paper Piecing Templates

The final piece in the design of my Hen Party quilt was to decide how to finish off the corners of the border.  I wanted the diamonds to flow continuously around the quilt.  Once I realized that I could make the corner diamonds bigger, it all fell into place:

The centre diamonds are the same 3" size as the Seminole-pieced diamonds, and the outer diamond is the full 6" width of the border.

I made my own foundation paper piecing templates for these blocks.  With 1/4" graph paper you don't even have to measure!  Just count out 4 squares to the inch.  I mark dots in all the corners, and then use a ruler to connect the dots.  Easy!

Then I put my original in the copier, set the quality to draft, and run off as many as I like.  The graph lines don't copy, just the darker pencil lines, so you get a very clean template.  Old copiers used to distort the image slightly, so check your copies to make sure they are still exactly to scale.  My Canon All-In-One prints them off perfectly.

I am also still using the Simple Foundations Translucent Vellum Paper, which is so convenient!  When I'm paper piecing triangles like this I start with oversized triangles rather than strips.  This saves fabric, and it also keeps everything on the grain.  The vellum paper makes it easy to be sure the triangles are in the right place before I sew them down.  Vellum is a little more expensive, but because so many of my paper piecing plans involve half square triangles like this, I will probably keep using it.

Hopefully it will not be much longer before I get this top finished.  I am sooo close!