Allietare Lights and Week 1

The first clue for Bonnie Hunter's 2015 Mystery Quilt, Allietare, was released on Friday. I spent the first day figuring out how to get reasonably accurate half square triangles cut using the Fons & Porter Half and Quarter Square ruler. This is basically the same as the Easy Angle ruler that Bonnie recommends, and I think my problems would have been the same with either ruler. One, it is hard to hold steady, and I solved that with some Omnigrid Invisigrip clingy plastic on the back. Two, I find it hard to line up the ruler with the edge of the fabric when the triangles are small. So, I lined up the strip with the lines on the cutting mat first, which helped to keep things square. And, I learned to tailor my seam allowance to each set of triangles. I know, I should have taken photos of all this! Anyway, at the end of Day 1, I had 15 acceptable 2" unfinished half square triangles:

And, all my practice paid off, because the remaining triangles were finished in two days. I know many people like to paper piece their triangles, and previously I would have done that too. But, paper piecing is definitely slower. Now, after one day of practice, I am set -- not just for this quilt, but for every other one too. I will probably also use this ruler for Stars for a New Day, instead of the paper templates provided in that pattern.

Another tool that turned out to be really helpful this weekend was my Steady Betty pin and press. It's a board covered in a heat resistant, clingy grey foam:

I didn't like it when I first bought it, because the iron doesn't glide over it. I guess that's the idea! But, I adapted, and it holds onto those triangles and keeps them square when you press open the bias seam. Plus, Bonnie's tip to keep the triangles chain pieced together until after you press them open was inspired!

I also really enjoyed working with all my fabrics. I talked about my choice of the blue batik last time. It has been so fun to work with -- every triangle is a little different. And, as you saw in the first photo, I have a big range of lights to work with:

I have a yard each of these two pretty, low volume florals. They'll do most of the work!

There are three light Kaffe Fassett prints, to go with the other red and gold Kaffe fabrics.

There are quite a few text fabrics, left over from my first Bonnie Hunter quilt.

Miscellaneous dots -- The dalmation spot on the right was the background in Collector, and I still have quite a bit of that. I'm also including a couple of very light blues with the other lights. They are another experiment, but I like how they look so far!

And more miscellaneous dots. These are all pretty small pieces, so it will be less boring than it looks here.

So far, I am happy with everything! I like my fabrics and how they are working together. I'm glad to finally be putting some of these tools I've accumulated to use. And I feel like my technique is improving. Bonnie has a link up for everyone's Week 1 results, so check that out here. On to Week 2!

DIY Mystery Quilt

The alternate title for this post is "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back," lol. But, I'm trying to stay positive!

It's been a month since I posted the first block of my "cherry tree of life" quilt, Hanami:

I mentioned then that I wanted to add an element of mystery to the quilt, but still keep some control over the design.  Once I figured out the layout of the entire quilt, I calculated how many HSTs I would need. I made them one dozen at a time using my homemade HST papers:

40 dozen in all! My hope with this project was that by doing all the boring work first, and saving the fun part until the end, it would have a better chance of a timely finish. The jury is still out on that!

The great thing about these papers is that they add to the randomness, because with a larger print, you cannot exactly anticipate how the fabric will be cut. Some triangles were quite light, some were dark, some were mostly pink, some were mostly green.

Once all the HSTs were made, the plan was to put them in a big bowl, and have a random draw for each tree. But, while I was making them, I started to think that if the draw is completely random, then all the trees will end up looking the same. If I wanted each tree to have it's own personality, then I would have to add some granularity to the mix. It's like the difference between baking sponge cake or muffins. Sponge cake batter is perfectly smooth, and muffin batter should be a little lumpy. To my taste, sponge cake is kind of bland.

So, I chose 13 fairly solid pink "feature fabrics" for my 13 blocks. Each block uses 22 pink HSTs in total, and I decided that 9 of them should be from the same feature fabric. "9" was a shot in the dark, really. I hoped it would be enough to make the trees distinct, but still allow for a fair degree of randomness.

I set up 13 plastic snack bags, as you can see in the first photo above, put in the 9 feature fabric HSTs, and then did a random draw for the rest of the pink ones. Then I had smaller pools for the brown trunk HSTs, and the light background squares as well.

Now I get to open one bag at a time and see what's in there! I iron open all the HSTs, and arrange them until they look their best:

I'm finding that it works best if most of the matching HSTs go around the outside of the tree to define it.

You can see that the brown trunk HSTs are divided into medium brown and dark brown. There are only six brown fabrics in total, so most of the tree trunks have some matching browns.

And, instead of a solid square in the middle of the trunk, I made 13 medium/dark HSTs to give the trunks the same level of "pieciness" as the rest of the tree. I didn't use the papers for those, I just made them two at a time with different fabric and a bigger variety of prints.

The assembly is straightforward from there. I join the squares into rows:

And then join the rows into blocks. Two more are done...

...but...

...I have realized that they are both distinctly rectangular rather than square. My seam allowance joining the rows is too wide. That is not too hard to fix, but it's still frustrating. And it does have to be fixed, or the final assembly won't work as planned.

So, that's slowed things down quite a bit. That's how UFOs happen, but, I'm going to try to get back on the horse soon...

...only, I did start something else this week...

Hanami

Hanami is the Japanese word for "flower viewing," and it is generally used specifically for viewing cherry blossoms. Right now the cherry trees are just starting to bloom in Japan, and, after a big push this week, I have managed to get a tree to bloom right here in Toronto too!

I started making half square triangles (HSTs) for this quilt in December, but then other projects took over and I thought that I'd missed the season. I'd actually banished it to the basement until Mary Ellen left me a comment about an HST exchange last week. After some online research I realized that I still had time, so here I am!

Today I'll talk about my inspiration for the quilt, and in future posts I'll discuss my method.

In 2011 The Quilt Show had Edyta Sitar as a guest for episode 802, to talk about quick, paper pieced HSTs and quilt designs for them. Some TQS members organized a big HST exchange, and TQS member Wilma Moss made a Tree of Life quilt with her triangles that really caught my eye:

Big Thicket by Wilma Moss, adapted from an Edyta Sitar design

Thanks to Wilma for letting me post the photo! You can read about Wilma's quilt in the TQS quilt gallery here, and she also has a website, Brick Cottage Quilts.  I loved the mix of fabrics and those flashes of bright colour in Wilma's quilt, and I started to think about using up some of my large scale floral fabrics in a similar way.

Then last fall Audrey at Quilty Folk created her own version of the Tree of Life block:

Tree of Life blocks by Audrey at Quilty Folk

Many thanks to Audrey as well! I really love the compact trunks on her trees, and the round shape of the crown. Her colour scheme was quite inspiring too! Once again I thought about flowering trees...

Then the Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt Grand Illusion started at the end of November, and many bloggers started sewing masses of HSTs. I am unlikely to ever do someone else's mystery quilt, because making and/or tweaking the design is half the fun for me. But I thought, how could I surprise myself?

The answer was to incorporate some random elements into the design, and a Tree of Life seemed like a perfect opportunity for that. I reworked Audrey's design, keeping the outline but changing the construction so I could make it entirely from HSTs:

For about ten minutes I even considered making the whole background from light/light HSTs as well! I dug into my stash looking for a mix of bright florals, but I soon realized that I had enough pink to make all the trees pink, and the cherry blossom orchard idea was born:

I thought, wouldn't it be cool to get it done by the start of the hanami season? Well, it IS cool, and I am pretty stoked.

And it will be even cooler if I can get the top finished by the end of the season in early May! One down, twelve to go. :D