Tag: QUILTMAKER

Turkey Tracks: Spinner

Turkey Tracks:  March 13, 2011

Spinner

I’ve been on a mission to use up more of my stash fabrics.  After all, I loved them when I bought them.  And, it’s true that I still love most of them now.

Whenever I finish a quilt, I cut small leftover pieces of fabric into the largest useable square I can, beginning with 6 inches and going down to 2 inches and 1 1/2 inch strips for log cabins.  Lately, though, especially after making this quilt, I’ve been cutting pieces into useable strips and not cutting further since this quilt needed a rectangle, not a square, so I had to cut those extra. 

The 8-inch “Spinner” block was designed by Bonnie Hunter and appeared in the March April 2010 (#132) issue of QUILTMAKER magazine.  Her idea is as you cut and sew other projects, you make a few of these blocks here and there, and soon, you’ll have enough for a quilt.  I found myself putting aside other projects and making all of these blocks uninterrupted.  They’re fairly addictive.     

What is helping control the quilt is the repeating red square within each block and across the quilt–a tactic Hunter recommends.  Here is a rather fuzzy picture since somehow very often I can’t seem to hold the camera still reliably.  But, note, also, the little quilt to the left, which was made from the small triangles that are cut off of Spinner’s large rectangle’s flip and sew method.  That small quilt is called “Essence,” since a friend who saw it on the design board said that it was the essence of the large quilt.  Essence is almost finished now, so will appear here soon no doubt.   

 

I quilted Spinner on Lucy the Long Arm, and I think it came out rather well.  I learned to use a round template on the outside borders.  I think I had old thread, however, and struggled with thread breaking a lot.  I got an additional thread spike that sits close to the take-up arm on the machine, so maybe that will help with the Mettler cottons I use for machine quilting on the domestic machine.   

 The pink pig backing, seen below, came when I realized Marge of Mainely Sewing in Nobleboro had some of this fabric left.  Remember that Karen Johnson,  The Community School student who learned to make a quilt with me last year, used it to back her quilt?  In fact, this quilt is very like Karen’s quilt, which probably shows how much I liked what she did.   You can see Karen’s quilt in the May 17, 2010, post called “Two Quilts.”  

 

Don’t know who it’s going to yet.

Turkey Tracks: Surprise Big and Little Quilts

Turkey Tracks:  September 30, 2010

Surprise Big and Little Quilts

When fall arrives, I often mark the season, it seems, with some reorganization project.  This year, it has been reorganizing my quilting room.  I’m trying to see if I can get a Handi Quilter Long Arm Machine in there without losing too much functionality.  It will mean replacing some long work tables with the machine, but I won’t need those long tables if I don’t have to hand layer and pin large quilts. 

Getting a long-arm is a long-held dream.  And, it’s a bit scary.  There’s a whole new learning curve for one thing.  Will I be able to master it to my levels of perfection, which are huge?  Will I be able to assemble the thing?  Will I be able to do the classes, which are 3 hours away?  Will I be able to use my existing threads?  It’s a process I’ve been inching toward for about 5 years now.  Getting a long-arm will significantly increase my productivity.  And I have about a dozen quilt projects lined up to do, and I love to piece.  And, I don’t ever want to give up learning something demanding and new.  Especially not something that brings so much pleasure to so many people. 

My younger son Bryan and his wife Corinne are expecting their first child, a girl, in early December, and we are so excited.  When they were here this summer, Corinne and I picked out fabrics for a diaper bag, two sets of fabrics for receiving blankets, and fabrics for a lively, colorful quilt.  I also have fabric for a baby quilt for my niece, who is expecting her first child, a boy, about this time.  And, my older son’s wife, Tami, went home this summer with my placemat loom, her own loom which my husband John made for her, and all her fabric already cut into strips.  She left me with the napkins, which I can hem in short order.  (We’re going to work on the placemats together at Thanksgiving.  I think she has a picture of a finished one on her blog:  http://6enrights.blogspot.com ).  And, I have a new purse cut out for me.  My current purse is in shreds.   

So why aren’t I working on any of these planned projects?  I’ve gotten badly side0tracked, it seems.  What’s going on?

Ok, whenever I finish a quilt, I take all the smallish bits of leftover fabric and cut it into useable sizes:  1 1/2-in strips for log cabins, squares from 2 to 6 inches,and rectangles in two sizes that I use.  I have bags of them now, and I keep telling myself that I need to start using them–though, as I said, I have at least a dozen other quilts to be made.  I’m always cutting out articles about interesting blocks to use “someday” for these scrappy leftovers.  This spring I saw an article in QUILTMAKER (March/April 2010) by Bonnie Hunter about a “Spinner” block that’s nice for scrappy quilts made with leftovers.  Hunter just keeps 4 squares in the block in one color as a unifying strategy.  Hunter says as she works she cuts leftover fabrics into sizes for the Spinner block and sews a block up when she has enough pieces.  Eventually she has a quilt.

I took out my sack of 2 1/2-inch squares and pulled out all the brights.  The unifying block would be red, though I added a few pinks and oranges to shake things up a bit.  Here’s what happened almost immediately:

 

Yes, there are two quilts.  I made the little one from the tiny triangles leftover from trimming out part of the Spinner block.  I think “possessed” would be the right descriptive word.   It took about a week!  Here’s a better look at the little guy,with which I’ve absolutely fallen in love.  I have no idea how I’m going to quilt it, but it seems to want some beading fringe at the bottom.   And, it will stay in my quilt room.

 

The big quilt–which is perfectly square despite the camera’s distortion of it–will go to someone.  There are bits of a black fabric with pink pigs in it.  I found more of it to use as the backing.  And, I think what’s going on with this whole surprise quilt thing is that the big quilt is meant to be my first quilt on the long-arm.  It’s made from scraps.  Well, ok, I did have to cut more fabrics in my stash to get all the colors, especially the red unifyling squares.  And I don’t have any emotional investment in it in terms of planning something special for a particular person.  I will be able to work on it without added stress.   

I promise, Bryan and Corinne and Tami, I’m going to get right onto our joint projects now that I’ve worked out this whole “use up the cut scraps” thing and have made the decision to call the long-arm people for prices.