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!

Country Progress

Here is the pony from Month 8 of Lynette Anderson's 2015 BOM for The Quilt Show, My Country House. Mine is pretty much the same as Lynette's design, I just made the legs a little thicker and the stomach a little fatter so she looks more like a pony than a horse. When you search for pony photos online, they all look extremely well fed!

(And if you somehow haven't seen those Scottish ponies in their cardigans, you should definitely have a look here.)

In addition to all the individual blocks that I've been showing, last month I also managed to sew the postage stamp border around the centre house block:

Those are 3/4" stamps, because my quilt is 3/4 scale! There still need to be hearts appliqued into the dark green squares, and the flowering vine appliqued onto the pale yellow border. And the blue bird is still missing from the right chimney.

Even with lots left to do, it was time to finalize the layout so I can finish all the details. So, here it is all pinned up on my design wall:

It's coming along! The squirrel and the owl applique blocks in the top row both have leaves that will overlap the adjacent blocks, so those are not finished yet. And the Month 4 strip across the bottom is completely missing.

But, I don't feel too far behind. Half the flags for the final Month 12 border are already done. Plus, wool applique really is a lot faster than needleturn. And, it makes a relaxing break from working on the machine. So, that is what I'm going to do today! My half square triangles for Week 1 of Allietare are now half done, and I feel comfortable taking a day off. I'll get back to them tomorrow.

So, it's more slow stitching this Sunday, and I'm linking up to Kathy's Quilts again this week. Plus, I'll link up to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times tomorrow. Happy stitching!

No Picnic

Last week I finished all the blocks for my Modern Utility Quilt. I was determined not to slow down on this one! For example, when I made a cutting mistake, I just added an extra strip to bring the block back up to size:

Extra strips are a classic improv device, I think, but this first one really was a corrected mistake. The second one, well... let's just say I was not averse to another mistake! But after that my orange strip was gone and I buckled down.

My plan was to just motor through. The quilt is too big for my design wall, and since it's already so busy I thought it would be best to just distribute the fabrics evenly and sew it up. First I sewed all the blocks into pairs, and then some of the pairs into rows of four.

Monday morning I awoke with the conviction that I was selling myself and the quilt short with just a random layout. I thought maybe there could be a few "crystallized" areas near the centre of the quilt. And, I realized that I could put just the centre of the quilt on the wall, and then fill in randomly around it while I sewed it together.

Out came the seam ripper, and I hunted through all my sewn pairs for four blocks with this same light citrus-themed background.

Then I thought it would be nice to carry the same background out into the spokes around the corner. There was a lot of hunting and seam ripping required to find the right fabric combinations. Plus, it's trickier when some of the blocks point left, and some point right.

Then I wanted a cross with all red sushi fabric backgrounds, in more or less that spot on the quilt. More hunting, shuffling, and seam ripping.

And finally, an all-green cross a little further down.

Then I just started filling in around those three points. I had to rearrange the sushi cross with the fat ends together, because that's how it fit into the pattern.

Even though I spent an hour or so with the seam ripper, all my prep work sewing the blocks into pairs did pay off at this point. The main layout came together quickly:

There's just a hint of a glow in the centre, and a few interesting repeats to catch the eye. There will still be a full row of crosses to add to the top and bottom, and along the right side.

After my experience with the blues in Collector, I knew the greens would be important here, so I was careful to keep them even. Once again though, contrast is king. I don't know why I am surprised, but I am! I thought the almost solid pin dot fabrics would be more important, but it turned out that the high-contrast large ginghams, and the red and white apple fabric, are by far the most demanding.

I am keen to see it all sewn together now! And then, there will be the question of a border. I know, how will I manage to put a border on this? We'll have to see, but, I do want to add about 4" around, and I don't have enough fabric for more blocks. A debate for next time!

But for now, I'm linking up with the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters again this month. Back in my first Improv post, I mentioned that I wasn't yet in danger of never going back to regular sewing. Now I can feel my whole point of view shifting! I still have traditional projects that I want to finish, and start, but I've already thought of at least five new projects for Improv as well. Maybe I will finally start to reduce my stash!

Country Beehive

Until now, I have been pretty much sticking to the script on Lynette Anderson's 2015 BOM, My Country House. But for Month 9, Lynette's design for the beehive has two flowers on the same stem, very close to the right edge of the block. Since I am using thick wool felt for those flowers, I would have had to sew them on after joining the block if I kept to the design.

So, I used the same elements in a different layout:

The beehive fabric is the same as the house fabric in the centre block. I thought it would be interesting to echo the same layout as the house block, using the flowers the same as the trees:

However, if you think about the perspective in the beehive block, with the stems behind the horizon, suddenly they look about twelve feet tall. Truthfully, they are reminding me of the Martians in the original War of the Worlds movie:

At around 0:36 you'll see the resemblance!

But, I'm not doing it again. I think once the block is sewn into the whole quilt, and not standing alone, it will be less obvious.

Plus, I'm really happy with how cute the bee is:

I have a few more bees cut out, to scatter around the rest of the quilt. So, on I go! The last three applique blocks are all nearly done, with a just a few embroidered details left. They will make a nice break from the heavy sewing with Allietare!

It is a long time since I linked up with Slow Sunday Stitching, so it will be fun to see what they are all up to over there. Check it out to see for yourself!

And, how do you like my changes to my blog layout? Now it's a little wider, the text is larger, and there's room for bigger photos. Of course, I changed the header photo too. If it's a problem for anyone, please let me know!

Ready for Allietare!

For several years now I've watched other quilters around the blogosphere sew one of Bonnie Hunter's yearly mystery quilts. I always say, "oh, that is too much sewing for me!" Plus, it is very, very, very hard for me to give up creative control like that.

But this fall I've been feeling like it's time to get over this idea that everything I make has to take forever. Many people finish one of Bonnie's detailed, bed-sized quilts in the allotted six weeks. It's time to break through my hang ups and finish something fast!

Bonnie's hotel room view in Italy

Plus, I was immediately inspired by the above photo from Bonnie's introduction to this year's mystery, "Allietare!" I love the yellow ochre walls! I remembered that Kaffe Fassett was also very inspired by those Mediterranean colours. In particular, I remembered this photo...

...from Kaffe's first book, Glorious Knitting. I've always wanted to make this sweater, but I look terrible in gold. So here's my chance to use the colour in a quilt instead! I have plenty of gold and ochre Kaffe fabrics.

Bonnie's mystery quilt colours will be gold, red, black, white and grey. All the colours can be made up from scraps except the grey, which she says should be a single 1.5 yard piece of fabric. I had everything except the grey in my stash.

So, if I'm going to make one change to personalize the project, the grey is the obvious place to make it. Since it's a mystery, I can only guess about the function of the grey in the quilt. If it's going to be a black/grey/white gradient, then I'm in trouble. I'm hoping that it's going to work something like the grout around tiles, a shadow to highlight the bright colours.

Thinking of the two photos above, and using a little colour theory, I thought that something between the blue sky and purple stars might work instead. I bought a blue/purple/grey batik, and a blue/purple print by Kaffe's partner Brandon Mably.

Now, which one is best?

Use your hand to cover one side at a time. Interesting, eh? To my eye, the batik on the left makes the reds and golds seem brighter, while the rings on the right seem to make them faded and dull.

In real life the batik is a little more green, and the rings are more purple. Before I laid them both out, I really thought the purple-y rings were going to be the right fabric, because shadows tend to be purple. But, if the purpose of this fabric is to lift the reds and golds, then the batik is definitely the winner!

I think there are two reasons. First, the rings have more contrast, so they catch the eye first and compete with the other fabrics. Second, the rings are flat, solid colours, so they seem on the same level as the red and gold prints. The mottled and shaded batik, on the other hand, looks much further away than the prints. So hopefully, more depth and contrast between the fabrics will create more drama in the finished piece!

Now I'm dying to see how it works out. One week to go!

Modern Utility Quilt

In her wrap of the second AHIQ link up, Ann said that "Modern utility quilts are an official movement."

Well, I thought, "my letters and words are not destined for a utility quilt."

But... I really could use a small quilt to cover my hand sewing chair, especially during the summer. And then, I was very inspired by the windmill quilts made by Ann and her quilting sister. Especially all the gorgeous Hawaiian fabrics her sister used. This seemed like a good way to use up some of those big prints in my stash!

My stash has a box called "Novelty," and I knew I had this fabric in there:

I bought it on a whim at a show, and I thought I'd probably never use it. But, now it is the inspiration for a whole quilt! I love the pink, red and white palette.

The Novelty box had other food-themed fabrics as well, including a couple yards of this sushi fabric:

I remember that I actually wanted more than two yards, but it sold out before I could buy it! I do love all the colours, especially the rich Chinese red. And that teapot is looking pretty good sewn up, too:

I found enough pink, white and red foodie fabrics for half the quilt, and then I filled it in with some ginghams (tablecloths!) and dots. With a hint of cucumber, citron, and lime:

Sounds tasty, doesn't it?

I think Ann's quilt is from Sujata Shah's book, Cultural Fusion Quilts. Ann's quilt blocks are square, but I thought they might look good as rectangles. A little more modern, a little more dynamic. The only catch with a rectangle is that you have to make half pointing left, and half pointing right.

Here are a few on the design wall, just to see:

I really, really wanted to do the whole thing fast and have a small flimsy finished in time for next Tuesday's link up. Unfortunately, I lost my head and ended up cutting way, way too much. So now it is queen-sized! Another big quilt! We'll see how far I am by Tuesday. Right now I'm only half way through the blocks:

And now I still won't have a suitable utility quilt for my chair. But, I bet the same block would look great in all my old Asian fabrics! And I think the box of Christmas fabric I have would benefit from some of this too. Maybe next year!

Design Wall Monday

Since I don't have a permanent design wall, this is the first time I've had something to share with the Design Wall Monday link up. My "design wall" is a white flannel sheet that I drape across the front of two Ikea wardrobes. It works quite well!

But, it is just 2 m (78") wide, so sometimes new solutions are required.

On the wall are the first few rows of Carrie Nelson's X-Rated quilt design from this book. I'm calling my version Aloha Kisses, with all its Hawaiian-themed fabrics. I originally planned to make it as a throw quilt. But since the weather has started to get colder, suddenly I feel the need for bed-sized quilts! I bought fat quarters of all these fabrics, so I have plenty left to make it larger.

This quilt has to be laid out and all the pieces carefully numbered, or it won't go together right. Rather than lay it out in sections, I realized that I could use one square to represent the whole cross:

Now I can fit all the fabrics on the wall at the same time!

It was still a challenge to fill in the missing pieces and pack it up in order. But, I feel optimistic that it will work.

I won't be sewing it, though, until the new year. I want to see if I can sort out some Leaders and Enders to use with the white thread I need for this project. Plus, this year, also for the first time, I've decided to do Bonnie Hunter's new mystery quilt, Allietare. So I'm clearing the decks to make room for that.

In the meantime, check out the other design walls at the link up here!

Feathered Star

I'm still not sure that I should have done it, but I did, and here it is!

This is Sue Garman's feathered star pattern, which is Month 1 of Stars for a New Day. It was the 2009 Block of the Month at The Quilt Show, and now you can buy the pattern on Sue's website. I've been holding onto the instructions since 2009, waiting for the right time to start it.

Almost three years ago I bought some of the Victorian Modern collection by Weeks Ringle for this same quilt. But that just never felt right.

This fabric is all from Connecting Threads, and most of it is their new Heirloom Manor collection. I loved it immediately, and I also thought it would work well for some fancy, fussy-cut English paper piecing. "But I'm not going to do that," I said to myself! "I'm still working on Texas Star, which is all EPP, and after that I have Best Friends Forever."

Then I remembered Stars for a New Day, and I bought it. While I was washing it all, I thought again how ideal it would be for fussy cutting. "But that would be stupid," I said to myself. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

Ironically, it was while I was doing some improv sewing that I decided to just go for it. Improv seems to foster a "why not?" attitude, I've found.

This freezer paper frame idea is adapted from Janet's idea at Quiltsalott. You position and lightly iron down the frame...

...then iron the template down in the middle, and peel off the frame. I reused the frame, but made separate templates for each piece, and scissors cut them all with a generous seam allowance.

I ended up fussy cutting almost every piece. The navy diamonds and small tan triangles were cut to avoid the pattern and make them more solid-coloured. In for a penny, in for a pound!

In the end, though, the fussy cutting was not the tricky part of the block. The tricky part is right here:

If you ever find yourself judging a feathered star, that is the place to look. But, you definitely shouldn't judge it unless you've tried it yourself! The first one took me five tries, and then I wised up and basted each seam first.

Until I got to that point, I was thinking that it is a surprisingly forgiving pattern! The blue feathers are foundation paper pieced, so it is easy to keep them all sharp, and Sue's pattern eliminates the Y seams.

Anyway, there it is, and now I will pack it away until the new year. While I was working on it yesterday, zoned out in the blue, white, blue, white, paper piecing, I had another idea for a new improv project! But, surely I have enough already...

My Country House Blocks

The last four pieced blocks for the TQS 2015 BOM, My Country House by Lynette Anderson, are finally done! Yes, I've been distracted by various new projects, but they were also a little picky to put together.

The original blocks finish at 9" square, but my 3/4 scale blocks finish at 6 3/4" square, and the math starts to get complicated. So I decided to foundation paper piece all the outside units.

I drafted my own foundations on graph paper at the original 3" finished size, and then used the photocopier to reduce them to 75%, which is 3/4 scale.

I don't know why my cutting mat always seems to be upside down!

Anyway, then I trimmed the units, removed the papers, and put the rest of the block together like a normal nine patch.

This block is called Garden Path. The white diamond is normally continuous around the block, but I deliberately broke it up. My hope is to balance these pieced blocks with the applique blocks, so I don't want the piecing to be too dominant.  We'll see soon if I was successful with that!

Truthfully, I was running out of ideas at this point, but I thought it might be interesting to have a block that is all background fabrics. It looks a bit like a swampy pond to me!

And, here are all four together. If you missed the first nine, you can find them here.

Why Improv?

Organic

"Organic" really is the word that sums up improv style to me. I like the way it looks -- every piece has its own character, just as in real life. I like the method, working with materials that are already on hand, just as Mother Nature does. Adapting to local conditions, and letting them determine some of the result.

But, that doesn't mean there isn't a plan. A seed intends to be a flower. It may not know exactly how it's going to be a flower, but that's the goal.

And if things don't exactly work out, that's ok too! Improv provides the opportunity to experiment and try new ideas in a low-risk environment. It's just old scraps.

For my quilt, though, I already have a general idea of the final layout, the colour scheme, what it's going to say, and what the individual elements are likely to be. I never have a shortage of ideas! And since I have the idea, I think it's best to honour it, while staying open to change as it develops.

Personally, I think there must be an idea before anything can come to life, and the timing of the idea -- before or during production -- is not important. Sometimes I think that improv is a little bit of smoke and mirrors. You're never really creating something out of nothing. Jazz musicians improvise on an existing tune. Improv theatre starts with an initial premise, and often follows a rough plot as well.

The challenge, and the benefit, is in figuring out how to get there. You're solving problems, you're developing new techniques, or using old ones in new ways. It's very much a "flow" experience. I'm feeling more confident and relaxed about all my projects, not just this one.

And, I can definitely say that it stimulates creativity! I've been working on several different projects this past week, including a completely new one that is not improv at all. I'm glad I was able to try out these flowers before the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters link up ends. Check out everyone else's posts here!

Letters, Leaders & Enders

Here's a shot of our maples in the late day sun last week. It was windy, which is why it's a little blurry. This week it's been either sunny and windy, or dark and rainy, so this is the best I've been able to do. This year their colour has been the best ever, which I think is partly due to the dry summer. But mainly I think it's because they are getting a lot more light since we cut down the ash trees that were damaged in the 2013 ice storm.

The moon was up early too:

Yesterday it was really dark all day, so I was happy to be inside and working on my next batch of improv letters:

I was going to put them together today, but here I am blogging instead, so it may not happen!

I also decided this week to see if I can add a leaders & enders project into the mix. Bonnie Hunter has a good description of the process here. I've avoided an L&E project up until now, because I didn't want to sacrifice the quality of my main piece by being distracted by a second project. But with all the short seams in this project (and also in My Country House), I've been using up a lot of thread anchors, so I thought I would try it.

For about an hour I wondered which new project I could start that would be appropriate, until I remembered my hourglass quilt! I ran out of steam on this project in early 2014, because it is super boring. But, boring is perfect for an L&E project, because I don't want to have to think about it at all.

I still need at least 300 more hourglasses, and all the fabrics are already cut and marked. I set up the rest of my lights and darks, right sides together, and piled them up:

I don't know how many are in there, but it is 4.5" tall!

So, can I improv and sew leaders and enders at the same time? Yes! In fact, with all the small fiddly seams on these letters, it was a relief to put in an hourglass set and just rip down the middle of that. Somehow it feels more balanced. At the end of the day I had the first two seams done...

...on 23 hourglass sets (which will be 46 hourglass blocks). It feels really good to get that project moving again. Hopefully this will be a painless way to eat up a lot of the preliminary work on this project.

I admit I've been having one of those "what was I thinking?" moments, about my decision to make this a queen-size quilt. Sure, the hourglasses are easy to make, but I really didn't think much about how long it would take to sew them all together as well. Now I'm starting to think about that too! Hopefully I can do at least some of that in L&E fashion as well. I'll keep you posted!

A Few Words

Following on from last time, I've managed to join up my first batch of letters into words:

The missing first word is "believe," which will be the next thing to sew. This is post #300 today, and the quote is from the Bob Ross Remix video that I shared in post #100. There is plenty of inspiration in that video, so yes, this is just the beginning!

Now that I'm starting to understand the strategies for making the letters and joining them up, it's moving along pretty quickly.

Last time I was worried about the legibility of the c's, u's and i's,

which came from these fabrics.

When I looked at them again I decided that there wasn't enough contrast in the two c's and one i, so I made new ones. Plus, I thought the c's should be bigger to go with those large a's:

The old c's are on the left there, and the new c is sewn in.

It was unplanned, but lucky, that I used the same background fabric for many of the letters that went together in the same word, like the h, a, and n. I think it is easier to read, so I'll remember it for the rest of the quilt. The first "happy accident" of many, hopefully!