straight and true

In the past week I have encountered a few occurrences of fabrics and seams that have deviated from the straight and narrow. This is always a frustration for me, since I like straight things to be straight. I'm just that way. Are you that way, too? If so, you might be interested in reading how I have learned to get things to go my way!

Here's a little quilt I put together--

It's called Jelly Jive by Pieced Tree Patterns. It is made from a "Jelly Roll", which is a pack of factory-cut strips that are 2 1/2" x 42", composed of the fabrics of a design group. In this case, it is Pure by Sweetwater for Moda. I alternated directions in sewing my long seams to try to minimize the problem of distortion, but that still didn't prevent me from ending up with a parallelogram instead of a rectangle! In order to get this back to somewhat near normal, I had to get down on my hands and knees.

Using my big square ruler, water spray bottle and pins, I staked it out on the carpet. I used the big square to help me make sure my seams were running straight and the corners would be square. I pinned it out as close to true as I could and sprayed the whole thing with water. After drying, I did some more adjustments andsprayed again, and came out with a much better result.

I used these little pins by Bohin, they worked well, but you might have others that you like.

Here's another example of a similar problem, this time it was a print that was a little skewed, but I wanted it straight for my purposes. I cut on the lines of the printed squares, then pinned it to the floor.

This time I had my laser level and square handy, so I made use of that. I put it at a corner and used the projected laser lines to establish where my fabric should be positioned. You can faintly see the little red line on the edge of the fabric and the spot on the black cabinet in the background where the line stopped. This little tool projects 2 lines at right angles, so I could do one corner and then move around to the other corners and adjust as needed. Spray with water, let dry, and voila! No more torqued corners! My tool comes from Stanley, I am sure there are other brands available.

In between all my squaring and shaping up, I have quilted this for a customer--

Not only do I love the colors and design of her blocks, but she supplied a dark brown plush fabric for the backing, which shows the quilting lines as very 3-dimensional and sculpted. She wanted a leafy vine spreading all over the quilt, so I had fun with that. The quilt pattern is Circle Dance, the same as I used for the quilt in the picture at the top of this page. No wonder I like it!

a bunch of misc.

Odds & ends to share with you--

Just found this video of a special thing going on at Mammoth Mt. (yes, they are STILL getting snow!). It was on their Facebook posting so I watched it, only to be very surprised at the end with a cameo by my guy Dan! Looked like he almost made that jump, too!

The fight over possession of our front porch has ended for now, and Mama Robin won! We have been through this before with robins that want to nest in a nice protected spot under our porch roof. I thought last year was the worst because the nest was used 3 times for 3 batches of baby birds, and we couldn't even think about making use of our porch swing without getting chased away. But this year, the nest was moved to the other end of the porch, right near the front door, and ole' Mama Robin is not happy with anyone in her space. So after the first batch of birdies flew out of the nest, I asked Bob to please knock down the nest so it wouldn't be used again. Which he did. 3 times. Very persistent nest builders.

Then he informed me that he couldn't take it any longer and it was my turn to rid the porch of the robins. So I have relented and decided I better not mess with Mother Nature any longer (since I can't get Bob to do my dirty work)! So we are expecting again!

My clematis is blooming, which is a cause for celebration because I don't have a good history with clematis. They never seem to like to grow where I plant them. This one was planted last summer and I was happy to see little shoots starting after the snow melted.

The garden is up and nothing has eaten it yet! Beans and squash, lettuce, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, asparagus. The asparagus hasn't shown up yet.

My hand quilting project is coming along, but I have reached the end of my thread for now. This is Winterberry Table Rug by Sue Spargo. The red background fabrics are flannels and most of the rest of it is felted wool

I am using Weeks hand dyed floss, 3 strands, and making a big "primitive" stitch (since that's what I can do!). I started out with outlining a row of stitching all around the shapes, and then thought about echo quilting out to the edges, since that seemed fitting for this style of quilt. But that was a real bugger to actually do, way too many twists and turns, so I am just doing a crosshatch grid over the background. 1 1/2" between lines, since that's how wide my masking tape is. So I used up my Lancaster Red floss, then Nancy had some the same color and gave that to me, and then my source dried up until last Friday. Weeks had a booth at the Quilt Market, and I found one remaining hank of this color on their display. I tried to buy it but the gentleman very kindly donated it to my cause. But these are small hanks, and I have used that all and still have a ways to go. I'm crossing my fingers that Maggie will come through with some for me after her trip to a stitchery shop out in Wayzata. There aren't many places left that sell supplies for cross stitch, crewel, hardanger, embroidery, etc. This was to be my May completion challenge project, so I'm hoping I don't get in trouble with the Posse if it's not complete in time!

Leisl's rather large (and heavy) flannel quilt is ready for delivery...

And Nora's quilt is ready to have the binding stitched down. The binding is the striped fabric you can see at the bottom. The pattern is BQ from Maple Island.

Nora is my niece and has recently moved into her own new home, so she needs a new quilty accent to complement her decor. Hope to have this done in about a week when I can take it down to Lake Park when we go for a visit.

That's it for today! Now I can load up another quilt!

I love it!

I am thrilled that I have finished the quilting on this piece, but a strange thing happened on the way to done. I love the fabrics, I love the design, I love the people it is going to. But turned out I literally struggled to get it done. I used different quilting designs in each of the squares and felt tapped out to keep finding new ways to do that. So I repeated some of the things here and there, but tried to add variations throughout. By the time I got to the last row of squares, I was unrolling back to the beginning to see what I did there that I could recycle! This is made using Elisa's Backporch circle templates to make 195 7" blocks, enough to fit a king-size comforter. I pondered quite awhile on how to accomplish turning this into a duvet. I had made one before from a pieced quilt but that was before my longarm was here. On that one I had just done straight line quilting through some of the seams to anchor it to a plain backing, then made the back of the duvet from some other pretty fabric. With this one, I wanted to be able to do some pretty quilting in the blocks so I put a thin batting and solid fabric with the top.

The batting helps the quilting show with a little depth but I didn't want this to be so hot and heavy that it was not practical. The batting I used was new for me, it was a Fairfield product that is cotton and bamboo. I was a little leery of using it because I have come across some Fairfield batts that were not so nice (uneven, weak, way too stretchy) but I liked this one. It had none of those problems, although it did have too many dark flecks to make it workable with a white fabric. So anyway, the gamble paid off and it looks and feels great. Now I have a king size flat sheet to attach for the back of the duvet, and before long it will be done done!