Taking the Process Pledge

On my last post about the aborted quilting on the Brrr! quilt, I took the time to do a little "process" blogging.  If you are not familiar what that is, if you read a lot of quilt blogs, I'm sure you've seen the buttons around and about.  Back in 2010, Rossie a modern quilter blogging at the "Rossie Blog" blog, did a post that talked about seeing more posts where crafters talk about how they moved along the path to creative quilting (along a lot of other things related to defining the modern quilting movement and the origins of "original" design) . 

I have to admit I'm often as intrigued by the route a finished project takes as I am about the finish!  I keep a very detailed quilt journal for my own purposes but have also always felt I should do a little of that on the blog too.  I won't talk as much about my projects as I do in my journal since my posts are already too long!  But I do now want to start posting in a little more detail about how a project gets from idea to a finish.  For me that might even hopefully make for shorter, more pithy posts!

So I am taking the "Process Pledge" and vow to talk more about how my projects progress from here on in.  If you'd like to do that too, link up on Rossie's blog here and download the button below to show your allegiance to all access project blogging.

Q1 FAL Fallout

So I posted the finish I did get done for the first quarter here so now it's time to turn to what I didn't get done and why (and a  chance to do a little process blogging).

My first quarter list had four projects, three "official" projects and a bonus project that I hoped could squeeze in if I made good progress.  Item #3 and the bonus were two mystery quilts from Planet Patchwork that I wanted to complete.  One was from this January's New Years mystery. 

It still needs some border work and then quilting. 








The other is the Thanksgiving mystery from 2007 and only needs to be quilted.

My plan is to try some "Modern Quilting" (ala Angela Walters) on both of these so I want to work on them together.  Didn't happen in the first quarter and since I've already kind of scheduled out what I want to get done this year, I am not sure now when, if or how I will squeeze these back in later.


At the top of my list for Q1 was my Brrr! Park quilt.  It was a quilt designed by Minik & Simpson that I purchased as a kit from Keepsake Quilting back in 2008 and finished the top, layered and pin basted in late 2009.  But it was not until this year, after finishing the #2 item on my list, I started on the quilting of this late in March and really thought I'd push it through right up to the end.  But I had chosen some rayon thread to quilt it with and that was ultimately my undoing.  Surprisingly right up to the Friday before the end of the month, I had this much done:

The quilting plan was to first quilt stabilizing outline stitching around the blocks and borders with a cotton thread in cream.  This quilt has a flannel back and had been lying round pin basted since 2009 and admittedly the back seemed a bit "puffy".  I thought the stabilizing stitching would smooth that all out but I was definitely wrong on that one!  I wound up ripping out all the three days (!) of stitching I had done, completely re-basting the quilt and then re-sewing all the stabilizing stitching (although this time I got it done in one day)!! Lesson: baste only when you are ready to sit down and quilt.  Next step was to quilt tree trunks with bare branches over the tree blocks. 

I was using a light aqua blue rayon thread in the top I had picked up at some point during the years while waiting to work on this.  Continuing with that thread (and with the cream cotton still in the bobbin), I had different "Winter Words"phrases planned for the setting triangles around the edges of the top's center.

Finishing up with the blue thread, I decided on doing continuous curve stitching through the HSTs in the first border and then would do the cream halves when I changed over to cream thread in the top for the remainder of the quilting.

The first stitching with the cream thread was to quilt snowflakes randomly through the center of the top and fill around it with free motion swirls (note: this is three of the four flakes I had finished and was supposed to finish the other four and the fill on the last Saturday in March).

The final stitching was to be some straight-line stitching in the second border and then more of the swirl fill in the final outer border.  I admit I was a bit nervous about doing all of it.  When I finally sat down to do the initial stitching on the trees, the bobbin thread (the cream) would pull to the top when I tried to stitch backwards (away from me).  Doing some testing on the sides I realized that the "auto" tension setting on my machine wouldn't work.  I tried taking it down and found that the "1" setting was the lowest I could go and not experience the pull and still have good balance on the back. 

That done, I started back on the stitching and found that the thread kept shredding and breaking.  Now what?  Well the solution to that was to slow down my stitching.  There are two schools of thought about FMQ -- some people run the machine really fast while stitching and some run it slow to get good control of the length of their stitches.  I find I get better control running the machine fast.  But when I slowed it down, the thread breakage problems stopped.  So I moved ahead, albeit waaayyyy slower than I normally do.  It was agonizing to work that slowly but I got it done over another three days. 

On the last day, I also moved on to the "Winter Words".  I was expecting it to be a bit of a challenge too.  In the end, I decided to mark them to give me a guideline to work within for both the letter size and to keep it even.  This actually went easier than expected and when done they looked so beautiful!  I was so encouraged that I immediately started in on the continuous curve stitching that I had planned to do on the blue half of the HSTs in the first border .  This would be the last of the stitching with the blue thread (thank god!) and I could re-load the cream on top and (I thought) zoom through the rest of what I had to do at my normal full speed.

Next in the plan was snowflakes in the center and swirl fill around them.  The snowflakes were tricky:  do I mark them out completely or do them freehand?  I decided to do a combo of both.  I marked a circle of ray lines that represent the rays of the flake and a center circle for those designs where the rays terminated around a center circle.  Using this guide, I free-handed the designs, simplifying the elements of different snowflake pictures I had collected down to what I was doable for me.  The first day I managed to get four done.  They were not perfect but they looked good enough to my eye and if it put me closer to finishing, it was all good!  When I left off Friday evening, I was confident I could finish the remaining four and do the swirl fill the next day (even with shopping and errands that needed to be done) and then plan to do the continuous curve for the first border, the straight stitching for the second and the rest of the swirl and fill for the final border.  Then I could bind it up to just eke out the Q1 finish.  But Saturday morning I got a shock when I took the opportunity before we left for errands to get a good look at my work in the Saturday morning light:

 

Acck!  There is a mess of thread mess on the backs of the snowflakes!  I forget to put the thread tension back up for the cream stitching!!  And to a lesser extent, I had the same problem with the continuous curve and the "Words" stitching despite not having that problem with the trees.  Are there different loft issues when I go out towards the borders versus the center of the quilt?

Needless to say this took a lot of the wind out of my sails.  With time at a premium, I knew I could not rip everything and still get all I had to get done by deadline.  So sadly, I have to put this one aside for awhile.  In the end, I've decided to leave the blue thread stitching but will have to rip the snowflakes and re-do them. 

With the start of April, I had plans to take my machine in for servicing and move on to other things (with new deadlines) using my old machine.  So I will have to try to come back this when I've distanced myself from it a little and can approach it a little more objectively (a.k.a. with less lingering disappointment).  Time to re-group!!

A Finish for the Q1 Finish-A-Long

It's time to report on my First Quarter Finish-A-Long efforts (and finally get back to blogging after too long away).  Despite a hope for four finishes this quarter (well, three and a bonus as I talked about here), I only got one completed. 

My #2 project, the "Merrimac Dresdens" is quilted and bound. The top and binding is made in fabrics from the Marcus Brothers "Merrimac" line that was issued way back in 2008 and the top was finished in November 2011.  After putting it on my Q1 2013 FAL list, I started basting it in late January with hopes of completing the quilting by the end of February. But the stitching took a lot longer than expected when my initial stitch plans changed a couple of times during the process and at one point I took a break from it during the latter half of February before getting back in gear and finishing it up in early March.

For the quilting, I free-motion outline stitched the plates and stitched a decorative pattern on top of the blades (the plates were machine blanket stitched to the backgrounds during the piecing process).  I used two different stitch patterns to fill the backgrounds of the blocks and a vine design in the border with a fill around it. 

The floral fill was the original background fill stitch I chose (and was based on and supposed to look like Leah Day's "Swirling Petals"). After doing a few blocks and seeing just how long it took to complete, I tried the wavy line fill as a test of a faster alternative. While I found that I liked it, I didn't like it enough to want all the blocks done that way or to rip out the floral fill I had already done. So a compromise was reached and I scattered four wavy line fill blocks throughout the top and continued the rest with the floral fill.  There is also some of the border vine scattered between a few blocks (another attempt at minimizing the amount of fill to be done) but the fabrics are so busy and thread so well matched that you can't really see them.  Overall, I love the texture created across the quilt but wish I had chosen a simpler motif to get it. 

The backing is a print from Andover Fabrics “From Lucinda’s Window” fabric line.  That line commemorated the "Reconciliation Quilt", an applique quilt made by  Lucinda Ward Honstain of Brooklyn NY completed in 1867 which depicted scenes from her life during and after the Civil War (you can download an IQSC article about that quilt here) .  I love to do contrasting backs and the applique cheater print against the dusty brown reproduction prints of the same time period really accomplished that. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Edited To Add:  I got to see the actual "Reconciliation Quilt" in April, 2014 when the New York Historical Society in NYC hosted the "Homefront & Battlefield" exhibit of Civil War quilts, clothing and artifacts.  I rounded out the day by also visiting the General Grant National Memorial (more commonly known as "Grant's Tomb") also here in NYC.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The good news is that this finish checks off things on a few lists:  a UFO done, a "bucket list" project (Dresden Plates) completed and the second of five quilts to be completed for a Civil War quilt display series I am trying to put together.   I also did get some work done on the #1 project on my Q1 list but that will be a story for another post!

To see what everyone else accomplished for the first quarter, head on over to Leanne's "She Can Quilt" blog and check out all the links to see all the projects that have been finished!  A note about the Finish-A-Long:  during the Q1 linky period (through April 8), Leanne has lined up other bloggers to post interesting tutorials.  There is already one from Jennie of "Jennie's Threads" for a block carrier.  So check that out too!

Do You Dare To Dresden?

Today is the start of Madame Samm's "Dare To Dresden" Blog Hop over at Sew We Quilt.

For six days, she and Christine from Quilt Monster In My Closet will organize a blog hop where quilters can show off their Dresden projects. I am looking forward to this for two reasons.  The first is that her first hop of the year, "In Your Own Words", was a very interesting hop to the blogs of quilters who showcased projects that featured their favorite words or words that said something about who they are.  If you missed it, check out the daily posts starting here and a Pinterest board of all the featured projects here.

The other reason that I am excited about this hop is that I hope it will entertain and inspire me as I work on the finish of my own Dresden adventure:  my Merrimac Dresdens top is on the table being prepped for layering and quilting.

Hopefully while the hop progresses, I can make some progress on this one.  It is the first of my 2013 Finish Along First Quarter projects.  I'd love to be finished with it by the time the hop ends.
 
So hop on over to Madame Samm's and maybe you'll find the Dresden project of your dreams!

First 2013 Finish

Happy dance, happy dance!  The Underground Railroad and Pioneer Sampler wall hanging is finally complete!  I put on the last of the binding on Wednesday and ran out and bought the rod to hang it as well.  Now heeerr's the samplers!
 
Pioneer Side

 UGRR Side

And yes, it is reversible!

So a little (o.k., a lot of) background:  these samplers are from the books of the same name published by Eleanor Burns of Quilt In A Day fame.  The Pioneer Sampler was the first QIAD TV series I ever saw back in 2003 (my second year of quilting).  I fell in love with Eleanor's techniques and loved the shaded colors of her quilt not realizing then that it was to be "my style".  That same year I heard mention that the UGRR book was also going to be released and vowed to eventually get it too. 

And the episodes can still be seen on QNNTV.com.

After seeing the UGRR series when it came on TV and once I had both books, I realized an important history lesson.  Although I had always known about both of these two movements in U.S. history, I had never really taken note of the specific time period they occurred in.  By the time I got the UGRR book in 2005, Civil War Reproduction fabrics were all the rage.  I was surprised to realize that all of these social movements were happening around the same time!  Needless to say I immediately decided that both of these samplers had to be made in the CW palette and began collecting stash. 

But I also felt that these two needed to be part of the same quilt since to me they represented two sides of the same coin:  a difficult and hazardous flight to a new place for a new and better life.  As intense as we feel our own time is, imagine living through an age where the political upheaval of the War was going on along side the fight over slavery and the migration of thousands across country to establish new homesteads, towns, cities and states.  The idea to make this a reversible quilt was furthered when I read an article in a back issue of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine.  In the November, 1996 issue (#287), Elizabeth Akana gave instructions in a "Quilters Workshop" article for making a rod pocket between the layers of a two-sided quilt (“Invisible Sleeve” with Kaye Jesse).

Like most projects this one progressed in dribs and drabs.  I started piecing the blocks in 2010.  Wanting a wall hanging, I planned to make both with  6" finished blocks.  Easy enough for the UGRR since that book provided instructions for both 6" and 12" blocks.  But the Pioneer book only provided 12" blocks so that meant I had to redraft them myself to the smaller size as I went along.  I got them done but didn't put the tops together until 2011.  

At that time, to even out the tops so they could be made back-to-back (the Pioneer sampler is only 12 blocks while the UGRR has 15) I added text blocks with information about each that I printed on muslin that I tea-dyed and prepped with Bubble Jet Set (the UGRR text was provided in the book and the Pioneer text was information I had collected from reading while making the project.  You can see close-ups of the text in this post).  They got layered because I hoped to push myself to finish the project by joining Myra's PHD Challenge that year.  I was disappointed when I didn't get them finished but appreciated that I managed to get them that far and was determined they would not languish forever. It also helped that Myra extended the Challenge into the new year!

By this time I decided that I wanted to hand quilt the two pieces.  But admittedly daunted by that prospect (well, that and I had a lot of other projects on my plate), I let it sit until December when I started on the hand quilting in the hopes of putting this one to bed as my last finish for 2012.  Didn't happen but once it was underway there was no chance of letting it flounder any longer.  After quilting in the ditch around the blocks, sashing and sashing squares (and finding that rather difficult to do with all the seams), I was not sure I wanted to quilt the blocks themselves.  I felt the power in the samplers were in the blocks and their story and since this was not a show quilt, it wouldn't suffer from the lack of extra quilting.  Not to mention it would save me about another two months of work! 

But once the centers were quilted, I felt the borders still needed something so I set out to find a stitch pattern -- nothing too complex -- to finish them off.  I found two great but simple cable designs in the book "Quilting With Style" by prolific hand quilters Gwen Marston and Joe Cunningham. 

You can see the stitching better from the back.

Since the borders had no seams, they were far easier to quilt (a note to myself for future hand quilting endeavors) and the stitching finished off the borders perfectly.  

By now I really wanted this up on the wall!  I was willing to bind it, live with it for a while and (heretical for me) be willing to go back and remove the binding and quilt them more at a later date if it really, really, REALLY bothered me. After tack stitching the wrong sides of the two quilts together, it was on to the binding.  And THAT almost didn't happen when I couldn't find the fabric I had planned to use for them, then found it but realized it wasn't going to work after all!  But scraps to the rescue!  Like many, I keep the leftover lengths of binding from my projects.  It just so happened that this plaid binding....

....leftover from making this quilt in 2008....

....turned out to have the perfect coloring to be a good finish for this project as well.  Bonus:  it was already cut!  This was a brushed cotton fabric and although I used the "fuzzy" side on the original quilt (which was made with brushed cottons and flannel), for this quilt I used the flat cotton side which is more in line with the fabrics used in these quilts. Although I usually add my bindings completely by machine, I finished this one by hand to insure that it was presentable on both sides.  It took a little finagling to cover the join where the two quilts form the sleeve but it got done and I even figured out how to add a label!

 

So the first finish for 2013 is in the can and I hope it won't be the last!

2013 Finish-A-Long Quarter 1

As has been my habit for the last few years, it's time for another finish challenge.  I am hoping this time my habit will also be to get all the things I pledge finished! 

The 2013 Finish-A-Long is a quarterly challenge which is being hosted by Leanne at the She Can Quilt blog.  The interesting thing about this one is that the hosting duties pass to another quilter each year.  Leanne is taking over from Rhonda at Quilter In the Gap who hosted in 2012.

The rules:  post a list for each quarter of what you'd like to finish and then post the results at the end of the quarter.  The other good thing is that you can commit for each quarter individually -- so for me that means no extra guilt going forward if I don't get anything done this quarter.  Seems simple enough.  Looking back, I realize that the key for me is to try to avoid getting too diverted by introducing too many other/new projects at the same time.  I have to fully commit to the project I want to complete if I am going to get it done.

So I am going to make it easy for myself.  I'm limiting my commitments to four for each quarter in the hopes that I can designate one for each month and if I do really good, get an extra one completed as well.  Also with the quarterly deadline, I really have three months time to give to each project.  Should be doable right?

So for me the list is:

1.  Quilt Brrr!.

This one was on my list list for Judy's Patchwork Times UFO Challenge last year.  I took on too many new piecing projects and let all the quilting I needed to do fall by the wayside.  But I have long desired to have this for my winter bed quilt so there is no time like the present!  I am also encouraged to see that Vicky at the LA Quilter blog is starting on this one so watching her work on hers will further encourage me to get mine done.  Finally this also plays into my quilt word for this year -- PRACTICE.  I need to make it a priority to embrace the opportunities to "practice by doing" and banish the initimidation factor that the quilt stitching has on me once and for all.

2.  Quilt Merrimac Dresdens.

This was also on my UFO Challenge list last year  and is part of a Civil War series of quilts that I want to display in my house.  As I am also FINALLY in the process of finishing up another CW project (see this post) that was on my list for Myra's PHD (Projects Half Done) Challenge last year, I'd really like to also get this one done to continue to build up my display.

3. Finish the Modern Twist Mystery Quilt

Each year the Planet Patchwork website hosts a mystery quilt on either the Sunday after Thanksgiving or New Year's Day.  The projects are designed by Merry May (aka Merry Meyhem).  I've often read (most recently on Vicky's blog) that what you do on New Year's Day is what you'll do all year and I really wanted to start off 2013 just right so I took this one on.  The center of it is completed and I have an idea to tweak the borders beyond what the pattern called for so I have a little more work to do on this.  Also since it's my first new project of 2013, I'd also like to start a new trend -- start it this year, finish it this year!

4.  The bonus project: Quilt Check It Out.

This was the Planet Patchwork post-Thanksgiving mystery back in 2007.  At the time, I took it on because I wanted to make a neutral quilt and had just the right values and amounts of fabrics in stash to do the mystery.  But then I got stumpled on how to quilt it so its sat ever since.  I'm a little more confident in my quilting than I was then and have been thinking about ideas I want to try on it (not to mention I now have a neutral colored couch that it would look good displayed on).  And how great would it be to get both mystery quilts finished!

So that's my list.  Wish me luck and the same to you with yours!!

UGRR/Pioneer Update

Well 2013 is starting off promising!  After getting these sampler tops completed in 2011 , I fully expected to quilt them as part of Myra's PHD (Projects Half Done) Challenge in 2012. 
But I really wanted to hand quilt them and then was stumped about what to do for that.  I was admittedly disappointed when I let them remain undone as 2012 was coming to a close.

But I finally decided to step it down a notch.  Looking at the Quilt In A Day books that these projects were drawn from, I realized that many of them were quilted simply-- the blocks and borders just stitched in the ditch.  That seemed to me to be simple enough.  To me, the blocks themselves were powerful enough that they didn't necessarily need additional stitching which admittedly would be difficult for me to do by hand given the amount of piecing in them and the size (6") of the finished blocks.  Since getting these displayed was more important to me than how ornately they were quilted, the week before Christmas I decided to get started.

To date, I've completed the ditch quilting of the blocks on both tops and am now working on the borders.  I wasn't going to quilt the borders but decided they did need a little something more.  I found two cable designs in Gwen Marston and Joe Cunningham's Quilting With Style book that added just enough without being too much for my current hand quilting skills or patience. 

I am happy with the progress on them even if my quilt stitches are still far from proficient.  I learned a lot doing this one:  how important the thinness of the batting is in getting good stitches (need to test for that in the future) and why it may be better to do larger blocks and outline stitching or a wholecloth for my next hand quilting project if I want to get my stitches per inch down. I even came to the heretical (for me) decision that once they were up, If I wasn't satisfied with the level of quilting, I'd take them down, take off the binding and add more quilting.  We'll see if that happens though!

I am very happy that this is finally moving toward completion and hope to be able to display them in the coming weeks.