The Quilting Geek

Curtains

2011-12-18T22:21:00.003-05:00

So the new curtains are up. Two of the three panels have to be hemmed, and we have to do a trip to Ikea to pick up one (1) curtain hook and about eight little roller-thingies that go in the special track.

But I didn't run out of fabric, I didn't sew any panels upside-down, the pattern is straight horizontally and the patterns line up vertically.

Whew!

I wish I had just a bit more fabric to make a deeper hem, but hey - at least they'll all be the same length!

I was trying to figure out where I learned about curtain tape - the one that makes the three gathers every so many inches. I can't remember actually doing them before, but I did know how the tape works. I'm thinking that perhaps I watched my Grandma or my Stepmom make them, because I there are no curtains like this in my memory banks.

This project took all my skill to match the patterns. If I hadn't learned to quilt I wouldn't have been able to line this stuff all up. It was a little scary only having three inches of fabric left over, but measuring and re-measuring helped keep panic at bay. It's a lot easier to make sure a pattern is straight over little five-inch squares than over 207 inches!

Now on to Christmas, and back to quilting in the new year. May yours be happy!

Just call me Betsy

2011-12-02T08:14:00.009-05:00

While we've been on strike (day job) a couple of interesting quilt opportunities have come my way.

The first was our guild's quilt show, which was well-attended and fun. This is the first year I wasn't racing in with my quilts at the last second, and I must say, it was a welcome change. I still had to take way too much time off from strike duty to finish in time, but at least I WAS in time for once!

Boyfriend and I have agreed that I should do more quilting between shows and less just before shows. Sound medical advice!

This year I stayed at the show both days. Till the last dog was hung, so to speak. I visited with members of the guild and visitors to the show. I ate way too many of the treats set out with the coffee and tea. I took the time to really look at the show itself.

Participation is fun. I felt relaxed for a change, not all strung out like when I would only drop by for my shift working this table or that one. So I've made a mental note, it's easier to be there for the entire show, beginning to end, than it is to run back and forth frantically trying to fit in a couple of hours here and there.

The other experience had to do with the strike. I kept musing how on earth I could create a quilt that would benefit the members of the union. I thought, what about a quilt with all 1700 of our names on it? Where would such a thing hang, and how would it benefit anyone? I thought of making a quilt that could be raffled off, proceeds going to the union. Of course, quilts are not made in a day, and nobody wanted the strike to go on that long...

I finally spoke up and asked around at strike HQ, and the captain asked me if I could make a flag. The only flags we owned were for the umbrella organization, PSAC (Public Service Alliance of Canada). There weren't any for our union. And 'bing!' I immediately set to work.

The project used every scrap (no pun intended) of knowledge I possessed, and not only with fabric. In my day job, I'm theoretically a graphic designer. I get to play with lovely high-end software like Illustrator and Photoshop on a daily basis. And to do this project required all my know-how.

The union logo is complex, full of curves, and unfortunately also full of areas that are less than 1/4 inch wide, even at maximum size for a flag that one person could conceivably carry.

This was problematic because I needed some way to align the pieces with each other once I had had cut out the pattern. So I devised an alignment grid which I superimposed on the logo, then subsequently painstakingly cut apart each of the grid's lines and grouped them with the pattern piece.

Here you see the pattern with the grid.

Then I moved all the pattern pieces around so I could print them out without having pieces split over separate sheets of paper. Which looked like this....

See all those teensy little lines? Yes, they very nearly DID drive me absolutely crazy!

(By the way, those of you with particularly sharp eyes will notice that there are pieces missing from the pattern, which I only noticed myself when I was trying to put it all together. Yes, I missed some.)

Once I'd accomplished the technical feat of getting the pattern printed complete with alignment grid, I began the process of adding the seam allowance, spray-basting the pattern to the fabric (polyester - it had to be lightweight and dry quickly), and adding stablilizer, in this case a tear-away paper, before finally cutting out the pieces. Yay!

That's when I realized some of the pieces didn't have 1/4 inch to tuck a seam allowance underneath. Oh. Okay, I guess it's raw-edge appliqué for those bits.

My raw-edge method is to use a 1mm stitch around the outer edges of the piece, and go around 2 or 3 times. Then I satin-stitch down afterwards, and hope for the best.

The raw-edge technique is also how I did the lettering, since none of the serifs had 1/4" for a seam allowance. (Serifs are the little ornamental bits of the letters, little feet that stick out from the edges.) Since we're dealing with a logo, it's sort of like a trademark, you have to make it look exactly like the printed version, no changing the letters to a simpler font without serifs.

Oh, and by the way, I couldn't make an exact match with said font while I was setting it up in Illustrator, so I had to trace the letters. This is pretty tedious, and in order to get smooth curves it took all my skill. The trick is to use as few points as possible along a curve, but that is a topic for a technical blog, not a quilting one!

Okay. I got the pieces cut, then removed pattern and seam allowance of the stabilizer in order to press the seam allowances of the fabric to the back. Then replace the pattern on the piece, because the pattern had all the little lines on it telling me where the piece went in relation to the other pieces.

Then hand-baste everything in place, because for sure I would need to see it all together and make adjustments so that the circles stayed circular, etc. We are talking about flimsy pieces of fabric here - no matter how much stabilizer you use, it's going to bend, curves will flatten out with handling, etc.

I had to reposition about five of the pieces before I was satisfied with the arrangement. Then I satin-stitched around everything.

It was while doing this satin stitching that I had my humorous thought. All through the week that I'd been working on this project I'd been saying things like "Just call me Betsy," after Betsy Ross, the lady who made the first American flag. I was muttering under my breath as I was slowly getting round the edges of the pattern, her famous line, "Shoot if you must this old, grey head, but spare your country's flag!" when my humorous thought hit me.

It was probably a lot more like this:

"Well, you're gonna have to shoot me, punk! Because the only way you're getting your filthy mitts on my flag is OVER MY DEAD BODY!"

I convulsed around my sewing room laughing out loud to myself for a while, then had to phone my friend L, who is an American and a quilter, and who would understand exactly how that was much more likely to have been the sentiment expressed by the old, grey head! Forget the noble-sounding line! Anyone who has put so much into a quilt would probably stand in the way of a musket ball to prevent damage to it!

We're a passionate lot!

Oh, and here's a pic from the picket line.

Getting Registered

2011-11-03T10:26:00.007-04:00

Yesterday I took the quilt I made for my daughter to the Quebec Quilt Registry. My Daughter gave me a funny look and asked "why do you do that?" I was dumbfounded.

Years ago, no one even knew that a woman had lived unless she made and signed a quilt. In an age when women were not taught mathematics, they were creating these incredibly complex geometric patterns out of used clothing and scraps of fabric gleaned from various sources. Creating art.

I answered my Daughter that it was like getting a piece of art catalogued.

I know that I would love to be able to find out who made the one quilt I have left to me from my grandparents' house in the country. The house burned down years ago, and I just happened to have brought this lovely quilt home with me. Nobody in my family knows who made it, and it's not signed. I like it because it reminds me of the country house where I spent my summers when I was growing up. But if there had been a quilt registry, I might be able to find out who had made the quilt, and what the inspiration was.

I was informed that the Registry's information is kept in a database at Concordia University, and that there are actually students using some of the information for their theses!

The registration was an incredibly detailed experience. They measured how many stitches to the inch my hand-stitching was! Apparently I sew a respectable eight stitches to the inch! I didn't know that. They listed all the details I had forgotten about. Quarter-inch border stitching, row stitching... They measured the size of the blocks, listed each color.

I told the story of the quilt to at least three different groups of ladies. When my Daughter was born, I received a congratulatory card with a picture of this lovely giraffe nibbling at the leaves on a tree. I made a crayon enlargement of the card, framed it, and it hung on her wall as decoration for years. When she asked me to make her a quilt, I immediately thought of the giraffe. So I found a pattern called "Tree of Life" for the tree and machine appliquéd the giraffe on top. I hand-quilted the Tree - it, with the giraffe, became the central medallion of the quilt.

I had asked Daughter what colors she wanted, and she said pink and purple. So around the central medallion it is a dark pink, and row by row the colors get lighter till it's white, then purple begins to appear in light tones, and it finally ends in dark purple at the borders.

I call the quilt "Transitions" because of the color transitions in the quilt, and because both Daughter and I were going through major life changes while I was making the quilt.

But there is now a new meaning for the name Transitions for me. While the quilt was being photographed, one of the most famous of the ladies came and had a good long look at it. Adair Schattler is one of Canada's "Who's Who!" of quilters. She's won so many awards, I wouldn't know where to begin.

She pronounced my quilt "lovely."

I was on cloud nine! This would be the equivalent of Steven Spielberg telling you you're a good actor, or Margaret Atwood telling you you're a good writer! Adair Schattler told me my quilt was lovely, and therein lies my new interpretation of "Transitions:" I feel I have arrived as a quilter, transitioned from inept struggler to actual quilter now.

A kind word really does go a long way!

A weekend Spent Quilting

2011-10-23T20:53:00.006-04:00

I have just completed a full weekend by myself, which I spent quilting. It was a make-or-break situation: I have to now decide whether to go ahead and try to finish this quilt top by November 10, or whether to let it drop till after then. November 11 and 12, you see, is my guild's show.

That leaves me 18 days. In that time, besides working, I need to do baking for the bake table and tea room, quilt a baby quilt, and make a sleeve for the king-size quilt that's finished.

The project I was working on has been hanging around (my neck) for some time now. Once upon a time, about 5 years ago, I taught the basics of quilting to three elementary school classes. One of the young boys in one of the classes experienced a trauma - his father passed away. He got his mother to ask me to make a quilt out of his father's clothes.

Gulp.

Not just one quilt, mind you, three. There's a little girl as well, and mommy.

Being relatively new to quilting at the time, I accepted the challenge.

That's because I had no idea how difficult it was going to be!

They were in no hurry - and just as well, because it's been five years and three moves since I started lugging around the bags and boxes of the deceased gentleman's clothing. In the meantime I've learned a fair bit more about quilting - enough to know I should have never agreed to do this project!

I have trouble making my seams line up in designer quilting cottons, where all the fabric is the same density and the same thickness.

This gentleman wore sweaters (thick ones) and tee-shirts. Jeans. He owned one pair of dress pants and one dress shirt. Everything else, absolutely everything, is stretch fabric.

Uh-oh. Time to shoot myself.

My friend D gave me two bottles of spray sizing to help with controlling the stretch. She advised me to sew a stretchy fabric next to a non-stretchy one. She also told me to cut ruthlessly, turning all those clothes into rectangles and throwing away everything else.

It was a formidable task. Not to mention depressing - every time I'd get started cutting away at the garments, I'd start thinking about the men in my life - father, husband, boyfriend, friends, cousins - and start to choke up thinking about how much I would miss them if they were gone.

So it took me a long time to get to the point of even starting to look for a pattern. At first, all I could think of was straight blocks - but it soon became apparent while I was cutting that I simply didn't have enough non-stretchy material to pair blocks up as per my friend's suggestion. At one quilt retreat, where all I brought to work on was the clothes to cut up, another pal, C, came over to look at it and said "Oh my, that is dreary!" She suggested I mix in some proper quilting fabrics with some color in them.

So that led to me thinking perhaps straight blocks with sashing all around them would work. But when I tried to picture it, it seemed still too plain, very un-quilt-like. Not artistic.

Off to the internet, then, where I finally found my pattern. It's by Janet Wickell and it's called "Turning Nines into Sevens." Well, that's what the pattern started out as - I altered it. What I liked about this pattern was the central "cross" - which I've made out of quilting cotton. This helps control the stretch. I quickly discovered I had to make the small square in the center of the cross out of quilting cotton as well, otherwise there was no way to get the seams to line up.

Instead of making small nine-patches, I cut strips the width of two squares and sewed them onto strips the width of a single square. I need eight of these for every block. I used two of the non-stretchy garment fabrics for the middle section of each nine-patch. This means that within each nine-patch I'm sewing the stretchy strip to the (relatively) non-stretch strip, then putting sashing in between each of the nine-patches.

Finally, I put sashing around all the sides: dark fabric on the top and left sides, and light fabric on the bottom and right sides. And then a second layer of sashing, in a contrasting color, with lights and darks opposite the first layer of sashing.

This is what the sashing is supposed to look like.

It takes between 40 minutes and an hour to complete one block. The thinner fabrics, like tee-shirt material, go together quickly. The thicker ones, like fabric from sweatshirts, take longer because I have to fight with them.

Every single seam I sew has to be trimmed, because even though I'm using a walking foot and have lowered the pressure, the seams distort at the beginnings and the ends. So a good deal of the time it takes to make a block is time spent trimming.

By now you're wondering how I can predict the size of the blocks, since I have to trim them constantly. Ah - it's that inner layer of sashing that saves me. I start out with strips 2 inches wide, but once they're attached to the block I trim to a standard size. This means my inner layer of sashing varies in width from block to block, even from side to side. But the finished size remains constant. After that, I add the second layer of sashing, usually without incident.

Well, I got eight blocks done this weekend. That may not sound like much, but in order to get those eight blocks I had to cut and sew hundreds of strips from the fabric, because I've got three quilts to plan for, not just the one I'm working on. I'd make three sets of strip sets, but only be able to use one. And I needed 35 blocks to make a decent-sized quilt.

Of course, it's not like when you go to a quilt store, pattern in hand, and say "I need twenty fat quarters to make this quilt." My strip sets vary in length, so I don't know how many pieces I'll get from each of them. And until I make a set, cut it, and try it in a block, I don't know how the fabric with react, how much it will stretch, or what problems it'll cause. Once I've used it in one block, I know how long it'll take me to do another from the same set, but that's about all I can predict.

I keep asking myself why I'm doing this project. I can't decide if it's karmic debt, an inability to say "no," or blatant stupidity. I'm pretty sure the young man who made the request has no idea how much work is involved, since I didn't even know myself till I got in the middle of it. His mom has no way of paying me - she's been on welfare since her husband died. And after I finally get the quilt top made, then I've got to figure out how the quilt the blessed thing!

The answer is, I don't have a clue why I'm doing it. But I do expect that, once I'm done, I'm so going to enjoy quilting with real, genuine quilting cottons - and I expect each and every seam to line up easily, by comparison with this behemoth!

Laying down tracks

2011-01-26T19:28:00.003-05:00

I'm machine quilting a king-size quilt for my daughter, and no, I don't mean on a longarm, or even a shortarm, machine. I'm using a regular home sewing machine, and boy, is it slow going! I'm finally beginning to understand why quilters have UFOs! Since I started out quilting on a shortarm machine, I could never figure out why quilters enjoyed piecing so much more than the actual quilting.

Well, now I understand. I also understand what the fascination with wall hangings is: they're small, and they fit easily through a home machine.

Well, the quilt I'm doing is in 5-inch blocks, and my fancy quilting pattern is - straight lines, 1/4" inch on either side of the seamlines. This has the appearance, to my eyes, of train tracks. Hence the title. I've been laying down tracks on my quilt.

As I mentioned, it is slow work. Discouraging, in fact. I've developed a mantra or two to help me stay, if not enthusiastic, at least engaged in what I'm doing long enough to actually accomplish something.

"It's not an infinite set." In the mathematical sense of the word "set." The set of tracks I have to lay down - it only seems infinite!

"Quit sitting and staring at it!" I might add, in blank despair. I keep having to shake myself awake in the middle of this tedious process.

This is supposed to be a hobby - something I do for fun. But I'm failing to find the fun in this! This is just plain old hard work!

Gang aft agley

2010-11-20T12:47:00.003-05:00

As in, the best-laid plans of mice and men. "Go oft astray," if you're not Scottish and want to know what the phrase says.

The best plans for a quilt often go astray as well, which is the subject of today's blog.

I'm making a king-size quilt for my Daughter. Against impossible odds, I managed to piece together a quilt made almost in it's entirety out of quarter-square triangles, despite never having successfully got the points to line up prior to this attempt.

They all fit as near-perfectly as any quilter could hope.

I discovered, however, to my dismay, that it's actually easier to get rows of 5-inch blocks to line up straight than it is to get three 103-inch strips to line up properly when I began to piece the back. Now I know why my friend D makes such complex backings for her quilts!

I very carefully oriented my one-way pattern so that it was in the middle of the back and would look correct from the point of view of someone lying under the quilt. It's got lots of little hearts in it, and they all point in one direction you see. This was the center strip, the sides being of a different fabric. I had intended the back to be all the one fabric, but made an error in my calculations, so I was obliged to find a complimentary fabric (the one with the hearts) since I could no longer obtain my original choice.

That was the first "gang aft agley" on this particular quilt.

Then I discovered, when I had all three strips sewn together, that the top edges were not even with each other. Big oops! In the end, I had to piece together several 5-inch widths of my one-way fabric to make a strip to go across the top.

Second "agley."

My friend D, bless her heart, came and helped me sandwich the beast. It was a labor-intensive process, since I did not have access to a king-sized table on which to perform the deed! I can describe the process, just don't ever ask me to do it by myself!

One finds and marks the center points on all 4 sides of the table. We used masking tape and a pen. Then we lay masking tape from point to point to get the cross in the middle of the table, and that found us the very center of the table. We then used a quantity of masking tape to hold a great big hatpin point-side UP at the center point.

D, being less afraid of the iron than I am, proceeded to iron a crease down the centers of the top, back, and batting. If I had attempted this, I'd still be doing it. She showed me how to hold the folded edges together and let the fabric find it's own center and fall freely, and that THAT'S the part you iron. She then marked each center with pins, forming a cross.

Then we proceeded to carefully put the center of the backing on the hatpin sticking up from the table. D, having done this before, was adept at this. We gently coaxed the backing to lie flat, making sure the creases lined up with the center points on the edges of the table.

Then we lay the batting down in the same manner, and pinned the two layers together, not just where the creases met at the table's edges, but also further away, aligning the creases.

Finally we handled the top in the same fashion, and so ended up with all three layers pinned and straight. I used my basting gun to then secure it, and one scant hour and a half after starting, we were done.

I'm still in shock. That part, at least, went without a hitch. Except for the two crossed pins I found embedded in the batting while quilting the center a couple of days ago. Since I wasn't about to take out the basting, I cut the back to get them free and darned it up again. So that would be the third "agley."

I finally began quilting this week, and got all the leaves of my "Tree of Life" pattern in the center done, and outlined the lovely giraffe that's nibbling on the leaves. This morning I went hunting for my bicycle clips so I could hold the quilt all nicely rolled up while I continued to work on the center. I was admiring it on my bed, the edges rolled up to the central medallion, the hand quilting in the leaves, when I saw the latest "agley."

To my horror, I saw the backing fabric, the one with the one-way hearts, going across the central medallion, not up and down. (For those of you who play bridge, that fabric was supposed to be going north-south, and it was in fact going east-west.

This means that a person lying under the quilt will not see the hearts lined up going down to their feet, but facing one way and going across their middle.

And the 5-inch strip at the "top" is now along one side.

For me, the project is way too far along to pull apart. I don't think I could face trying to sandwich it a second time. My poor Daughter will just have to live with an odd-looking backing fabric going the wrong way across the quilt.

Sigh.

On the Fly

2010-05-08T07:21:00.004-04:00

Unbelievable.

In the beginning of 2005, I started quilting.

I joined a guild. I read books. I started a business.

And quilted.

I quickly discovered how difficult it is to line up all the little seamlines that are formed when piecing a quilt top.

Especially triangles. Triangles are a bitch.

So now it's about 5.5 years later, with many, many mistakes under my belt, that I have now mastered the art of the f**g triangle, getting my squares that are formed from 4 triangles to go together nicely, evenly, with seamlines neatly lined up,...

... and effortlessly.

You see, there's a TRICK to it.

Now I've seen entire tv shows devoted to the art of triangles and getting the seamlines lined up.

I've read books describing how to plan ahead and press the seamlines in opposite directions.

I've attended no fewer than three hour-long workshops devoted entirely to the art of getting the stupid seamlines on your triangles to line up when you sew them.

Imagine my astonishment this morning then, when I figured out the trick. THE trick. The one that actually works. The one that, when you take all these squares you've put together with triangles and try to sew the edges together, makes all the seamlines lie flat, with all the points meeting properly.

And why am I not surprised nobody has thought to tell this particular little secret?

Okay - picture this. You start with a square bigger than you need. Four squares, actually. I want my squares to finish at 5 inches. I cut the squares at a whopping SEVEN inches.

(No that's not the trick.)

You mark the diagonal, you sew two squares right-sides together, sewing on either side of the line, in a 1/4-inch seamline. Then you cut the squares apart and do the same for the other two squares.

This gives you four half-square triangles sewn into 2 squares.

Seasoned quilters are yawning at this point. Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don't know.

You press the seams on each square to the darker side. Nothing new here. You flip the two squares right sides together and mark the other diagonal and sew two seams, 1/4 of an inch to each side of the line. You cut them apart on the line, you press 'em open, bingo, you have two squares, each made up of 4 triangles. And then you trim them to the size you want.

Everybody who has ever attended a triangle workshop now has their eyes rolling to the back of their heads. *S N O R E .

Here comes the fun part, the part they don't tell you about. Now you have to sew these two squares together, matching those diagonal seamlines. You have two seams to traverse, four thicknesses of material in each one. If you're very, very lucky, one of these sets of seams will have been pressed in opposite directions, meaning the two halves of the fabric are lying opposite to each other, and you can sew a very flat seam indeed.

Never, ever have I heard of a trick to get both sets with their seamlines pressed in opposite directions.

Well, you heard it first here, folks.

Guess what - even if none of the seams have been pressed in opposite directions, you can still do it.

You do it there, at the machine. You physically push either the top or the bottom seam to one side.

You fudge it.

You say "f**k it - I'm sick of all this geometry - I'm just gonna sew you together and pretend I had pressed you in opposite directions. Take that!"

And you open up the side you've just sewn, and both points line up perfectly.

Want me to run you through that again?

No, you don't have to know which seamlines will be up and which seamlines will be down 60 steps in advance of putting them together. You take your two squares, and if the seams have been pressed in opposite directions, well and good, go ahead and sew.

But if they haven't been pressed in opposite directions, you pick one, you finger-press it into place, and you sew it down.

"But," you'll complain, "won't that leave the seamline of one side sewn facing one way at one end and facing the other way at the other end?"

Yes. It will.

And so what? You press it with a crick in it and get on with your quilt. We've all seen plenty of turned seams on the backs of quilts. There a small bump? Quilt it down.

By the time you've added batting and backing, it won't matter one whit which way any seam was facing.

Because your points all line up.

So there you have it. You fake it. You fudge it. You grab one end or the other and make it lie flat.

You don't tell a soul, you don't write a book, and you certainly never let on to other quilters what you did to get all those little points to line up.

Believe me, this is a professional tip!

Unbelievable!

Darning It

2010-05-02T05:06:00.003-04:00

Not exactly about quilting this time, but about another nearly-disappeared art: darning.

Holes, snags, seams coming apart, fraying - these are all things that happen in everyday wear and tear on our garments. Sometimes the "wear and tear" is "wash and tear" - putting, say, a flimsy open-weave cotton blouse in the wash, along with jeans or some other zippered garment. In the wash, and during the spin cycle, rubbing happens, quite vigorous at times; and one's open-weave cotton blouse suddenly has developed a spot where the weave is more open than usual. Missing, in fact, several of it's cross-threads.

Darning is the fine art of replacing these cross-threads, and strengthening the area while you're at it.

Since I couldn't sleep all the way through the night tonight, I decided to get up and get darning my open-weave cotton blouse.

You're supposed to darn an area larger than the tear or hole, and you're supposed to start from one end and go to the other, but, being me, I didn't do that. I started in the middle.

See, this is basically a verticle slit in the fabric. The warp threads are all there, but no weft threads are left intact in this 1/2-inch long torn area. And, looking at it, I decided to start from the middle of the tear and stabilize it crosswise before going back to the verticles. So, I started from the middle and went to one end, then started at the top and went down to the middle.

And for now I'm quitting there. This is a very open-weave fabric. I've given a few gentle tugs in each direction, and it sure looks and feels just as stable as the rest of the fabric. So I'm experimenting with only stabilizing the cross-threads.

Another difficulty I have with darning is the notion that you're supposed to weave in and out of every single thread. So like, if you have a tear in your 300-count sheets, that means in one inch of darning you'll weave your thread in and out 300 times?! Not this darned stitcher! I have a life to live.

No, I go in and out a clump at a time. And I've learned to do this work on the back of the piece. See, the darning doesn't actually become part of the fabric, it kinda sits on one side of it - the side you work on. It shows plenty from that side. It's when you turn it over you see - or rather, don't see - your darning &/or the former hole.

Maybe if you really go in and out every single thread, it would meld more with the fabric, become this wonderful thing called "invisible weaving". But for me, close is good enough.

But I noticed something else this morning while darning my blouse. My hands kept tingling and going to sleep. I kept having to stop what I was doing to stretch out my arms till they stopped tingling. Frustrating - as this process is already time-consuming. Especially frustrating when I think of all the hand-quilting I have to do in the near future. "What's gonna happen to me," I wondered, "if I can't quilt because my hands keep losing circulation?"

And that's when I realized I am now in the age-group - demographic - market - for a propped-up magnifier.

That's right - one of those large magnifying glasses you wear on a string around your neck with little legs that prop it up perpendicular to your chest, so you can use both hands to sew at a decent distance from your face, and your arms don't have to be scrunched as tight as they can to bring the work 4 inches from your eyes.

The propped-up magnifier has always been something I thought of as belonging to a different class of sewers than me. Specifically, much older sewers.

But now, apparently, I are one.

Having been raised by my grandparents, I used to think that I'd make a great old lady, since I learned how to be one long before I learned how to be young. But now that I've got being young down pat, my body is giving up before it's time, stranding me in a world of limited mobility where there haven't been many improvements since, basically, the middle ages. Hah! No pun intended!

Maybe that will change soon, as the baby-boomers suddenly get to tingling, too. Maybe a host of technological aides will suddenly appear to help us along with our preferred pastimes. Maybe they'll invent an i-sew.

But till then, unfortunately, I will be the fat old broad with the huge magnifier on her chest, darning blouses and socks, and quilting as fast as my tingling fingers will let me.

The Quilting Geek: Those Frenchies

2010-04-22T09:46:00.000-04:00

The Quilting Geek: Those Frenchies

Those Frenchies

2010-04-21T23:39:00.003-04:00

French Knots, that is!

I've always been fascinated by fancy stitches. A few years ago I wandered - quite by accident - into a real live embroidery museum/store/classroom. I picked up a beautifully-colored, laminated card with about 100 embroidery stitches detailed on it. I began practising as soon as I got home. I can't remember what stitches I did succeed at right away, but I can tell you the one stitch that eluded me - the French Knot.

I was soon to find I'm not alone in being unable to master this "petit rien." Almost everyone I asked for help from rolled their eyes and said "I know - it's AWFUL! I've been trying for years and never got it yet!"

A few souls actually knew how to do them. One of my quilting Pals knew how, and she showed he how once when we were both at a quilting retreat together. I must have sewn half a dozen of them. It was thrilling, seeing those beautiful, tight little dots appear one after the other. Of course, I needed more practise, but now I knew I had licked this thing, and I'd be able to practise at home.

Mais non. That didn't happen. One single day after coming home, I found myself unable to do a French Knot. I couldn't remember how my Pal had told me to do it. The diagrams all looked alike, and none of them produced a knot. Mostly they produced tangled threads or perfect plain stitches, and after another hour or two of struggling, they produced fury in me, and I packed it up.

Every so often when I was doing some fancy quilting I'd try again to do the French Knot. I'd drag out my card of embroidery stitches, or one of the many books I own on stitching, and have a go at it for an hour or so before giving up. The French Knot had, for me, a certain "je ne sais quoi" that simply refused to cooperate with my inept attempts to (groan) tie it down.

This evening, however, I succeeded in sewing French Knots. Two rows of about 20 each - I took no chances this time that I'd forget. And when I get home from work tomorrow I'm going to do two more rows. They were uneven at first. I did five winds of the thread, instead of just three, around the needle, because they did seem small… But eventually I got the hang of it, went back to the requisite three windings and voilà! There were at least 25 perfect French Knots, the right size, lying the correct way against the quilt, looking as lovely as I had ever imagined. Formidable!

Got to hand it to those Frenchies - they can sure do some lovely things with thread. If you want to know what did the trick, here it is, written out, but it'll sound like gobbledegook, because there really is no way to communicate this skill in written or drawn form. It is a skill that must be physically seen to be learned.

So, you have your thread coming through to the front of the piece. What the diagrams don't show you, and what my quilting Pal told me, was that now you take a very tiny stitch - just two threads wide - and don't even go through to the back of the work if you're doing a quilt. Don't pull the needle all the way through - pull it till the eye of the needle is about to go through the work. So, you have all the thread on the top of the work (from the first stitch) and your needle stuck through two threads, almost pulled all the way through but not quite.

Now you slide your thumbnail along the bottom of the needle till you are holding the eye of the needle firmly with your thumbnail. With you other hand, you take the thread - the main one - and wrap it three times around the front part of the needle. Still holding the eye in place with your thumb, carefully slide the three loops down the needle till they reach the eye.

Now gently grab the loops with the thumbnail that was holding the eye and carefully slide them down till your thumb rests firmly against the eye and the work. Using the other hand, pull the needle completely through and continue pulling all the thread through till it stops. At that point you can lift your thumb and see the lovely loops all lying against the work. All you do now is put the point of the needle really close to the knot and take a stitch to 1/4 inch away.

That is how you sew a French Knot.

Bonne chance.

So Many Quilts…So Little Time

2010-02-15T10:56:00.002-05:00

I came to a realization around the ending of 2009, namely, that I don't have enough time left to finish all the quilts I want to make.

I've been working up to closing my "business" - boy, saying it was the biggest mistake I'd ever made to open a business is the understatement of a lifetime. I have to get the ball rolling down it's last hill by the end of this month. And while I was doing all my thinking about how I'm going to close it, I realized that the quilts I currently have started will take me about six years to complete.

That was an eye-opener. I'm 52 years old. I figure I've got about 20 years of useful quilting time left to me, after which I'll simply be lucky to get anything done, quilting or otherwise.

I was supposed to make a quilt for my brother and his wife - two years ago, for their 40th birthdays. I finally bought some of the fabric and picked a design. Yay.

At long last, I've settled on a design for a quilt for my Daughter. In fact, when I get up from this computer, I'm going to start CUTTING! And I only got around to that because my Boyfriend had me over to his place for my entire four-day weekend - see, here at his place, I have no other obligations. That's why I can work on one project at a time when I'm here!

I don't want to make the mistake I fear my sweet Auntie made, and the one my darling Dad is making.

See, Auntie love to make miniatures. Not miniature chocolates, but miniature scenes. Dollhouses are one example of a miniature scene. But other miniatures include scenes inside a (cleaned-out) egg, half boxes with scenes in them. They're usually rooms, often with a theme, Christmas, for example.

I learned many helpful hints from Auntie about crafts. For example, you use the sticks they put in "Pogos" to lay a miniature hardwood floor. Popsicle sticks are too fat for their length, it doesn't give the same illusion as the thinner ones in Pogos.

But Auntie was in a terrible car accident, and it basically knocked the stuffing out of her. She "recovered" according to the doctors, but she never had the energy to really get back into her crafting again.

But that didn't stop her from collecting stuff for her crafts! (Yes, I fear Auntie had the Hoarding Gene.) When my cousin described the whole family attempting to clear out her home, apparently they discovered huge boxes full of cleaned eggs. I'm talking in the thousands! My cousin said to her mother, "What? You're never going to eat another egg?" when Auntie protested the throwing-out of all those eggs she had so carefully saved.

And my Dad, well this year he'll turn 80. And he still hasn't figured out that he's retired. He's still busy starting one (failing) business after another.

Well, that's not how I intend to go out. I've got a 20-year goal: finish every quilt I can.

So I'm no longer taking on other people's quilts - no time!

Gotta go!

Using a Basting Gun

2009-12-19T10:14:00.003-05:00

Recently I purchased a basting gun. A woman from my guild had demonstrated its use, and said the magic words "it takes so much less time..."

I have a terrible time basting my quilts together! It once took me three hours to baste a 4' x 4' quilt! Every time we baste stuff together at the guild, I seem to keep up well enough, yet everyone is surprised to hear how long it takes me when I'm alone.

The basting gun fires tiny plastic tags through the layers of the quilt. They look like the tags that hold the prices onto garments you buy in the store, except they are only 1/4 of an inch long.

Some of the women in the guild still prefer to baste by hand, since they can stretch the backing tight and tape it to a table. With the gun, you can't do that, since you have to put a grid under the area being basted, so the basting is perhaps a little looser than most of them are accustomed to.

Well, it went together like a dream. Twenty minutes from start to finish, just over 100 darts went in and my quilt was basted and ready for action.

But taking it out - that was quite a different matter!

One hundred darts went in, but it seemed like thousands when it came to taking them out! And to add insult to injury, my backing fabric was a molleton, and about twenty of the darts had simply slipped inside the quilt, so I was only able to remove half the dart! I'm sure the other halves will eventually work themselves loose, and the recipients of this particular quilt will simply find it odd that I hadn't thought to remove these things...

Next time, I'll be more precise in my placement. Go in straight lines instead of going "pow! pow! pow!" willy-nilly!

And there still remains the problem of finding the removal tool: Nobody seems to stock it! It looks like a seam ripper with two long sides, or a cuticle pusher with a slot in the middle. I came uncomfortably close to snipping my fabric when removing the darts and am now looking high and low to find this remover tool. Funny that the quilt supply shops will sell the gun, the barbs, the grid, and replacement needles, but not the tool to remove the darts!

The Remains of the Quilting Classes

2009-12-07T13:35:00.003-05:00

About four years ago, I was away from my job due to a severe depression. While I was recovering, I started quilting. One day I decided it would be a good idea to try and interest teenagers or pre-teens in quilting.

A girlfriend of mine happened to be a teacher in an elementary school around the corner from me. Budgets for the arts had of course been slashed, but for most of one year I got to take my friend's class once a week for an hour and try to get them interested in quilting. I had time, I had a friend to help me, I was chock full of ideas and enthusiasm.

Here in Quebec the curriculum is what they call "integrated" - has nothing to do with the color of the students... It means that in English class you learn your science vocabulary, in social studies you do mathematical trends, basically you try to integrate every subject into every other subject. The way life is.

We decided the quilts the children would make would be related to their social studies curriculum. That year the children were learning about the Inuit, so they made little 8x8 quilts with scenes depicting Inuit life.

I showed overheads and slides and movies to them, going back to the earliest know examples of quilting (ancient Egypt). I taught them "guy" stuff - like quilted armor. They learned to convert centimeters to inches, because the biggest quilt suppliers are in the States and you have to work in inches or at least know what they are - that meant they learned about market size. Once, when I was handing out small frames they needed to assemble, one girl asked me how did you know which part of the frame went into which part, and we even had a quick discussion of "male" and "female" adaptors. Half the class giggled, half the class shrieked "EEEEEW!" So I shook my head in amazement that one could even integrate sex education into the quilting class!

I had a friend come in and show off neat stuff. I brought samples in for them to see. I made them kits... oh, those kits nearly killed me!

Every student received a personalized bag with:

a piece of cloth with pre-marked half-inch lines for them to practise basting on
a piece of cloth with pre-marked quarter-inch lines for them to practise their actual quilting stitiches on
pre-cut backing, batting, and top pieces
a piece of paper with a basting needle, a quilting needle, and ten pins inserted
enough binding to finish the piece
a needle threader and cutter
floss holders wound with basting thread and quilting thread

They'd come up and select which appliqués they wanted to put in their scene. While they struggled to thread their needles, I'd hand around samples for them to look at, I'd talk about the different types of quilts and show pictures. Some of the children were faster at picking it up, because they had more developed motor skills. So we talked about how people develop at different rates, and those who finished early turned and helped the ones who were having difficulty - that's called "peer teaching."

At the end of each class they would receive a vocabulary sheet with the words they had heard in that particular session, and would give the definition in their own words. "Resolution, knit, abstract, mosaic, optical illusion, tessellation, fibre, sinew, stippling, half-square triangles... These are just a few of the terms we got through, and you can see we drew on science, photography, and math, among other subjects, to help them understand quilting.

One boy was a holy terror most of the time because he was mildly autistic, for which reason my teacher friend had a class helper. Another friend used to come with me some days, so were were usually 4 adults amongst these 30 children. But I could have kissed that annoying autistic boy the day I showed pictures of Sashiko work on Japanese Fishermen's coats. I talked about the utilitarian practicality of sewing layers of cloth together, how it came from having to spin and weave every piece of cloth you owned. And this young boy put up his hand and asked "Did they know it would come out so beautiful?" I could have cried.

Some of the funny things we adults noticed over the course of this year, and the next when I took on two classes, was that the boys seemed more interested than the girls! It also helped that one class was doing the Vikings - so there were lots of swords and armor in those scenes!

It was fun. It was exhausting! I'd walk out of each class totally drained, shaking my head and proclaiming teachers are worth every penny of their salaries, and then some!

All this comes to mind today because I'm cleaning out my "extra" bedroom, and the children's pieces and the remnants of their kits were there, waiting for me to take the pins and needles out of the papers and put their 8x8 squares together on a background so the school can hang them up for other children to see. Yes, I'm a little late! I had to return to work, then I left my husband and moved twice... I'm just getting around to it now.

But I still had a few laughs as I took the kits apart and salvaged what I could. You'd be amazed how bent a tiny quilting needle can get in the hands of an eleven-year-old! And they were always losing their needles - it averaged out to five per child. Yet I came across one paper with nine needles in it! Whatever was that child doing, I wondered - just trying to be annoying by stealing the other kid's needles?!

I can't take up a task like that again, but I'm glad I did those three classes. I think my proudest moment came when a young boy showed me how he had repaired his torn jeans by himself. He had asked his mother to fix them, and she had replied that she didn't know how to sew. Then he realized he had learned how to sew - so he fixed them himself. It was atrocious, but he was pleased with the results, and I was so proud I could have popped!

I don't know if any of those children will grow up to be quilters, but they all seemed to have more or less a good time making their pieces, and I have wonderful memories.

Broken Threads

2009-10-01T21:39:00.003-04:00

My guild, this year, is going to have an event, just for our members, where we bring in our first quilts to show and talk about.

I have several "first" quilts. I have the first quilt I ever started, which was for my Mother, and thereby hangs a tale...

I have a small wallhanging I made, while I was also making my Mom's quilt, which was the first project I ever completed. It only took me about two days, I was proud of it because it's a Celtic Knot and I didn't have a pattern... Plus, I did machine stippling all over and it's perfect, and it was the first time I'd ever dropped a feed dog...

And I have another wallhanging I did, for my Father, again, done during the period I was also making my Mom's quilt. This wallhanging was a very sentimental and poignant project for me, because the subject was my grandparents' country home, where I spent every summer of my childhood, and then some.

I knew nothing about quilts when I designed any of these items, I simply forged ahead. The wallhanging for my dad, entitled "Glengar Cottage" had me sobbing almost every time I worked on it - not because of the work, but because of the memories.

It's not a particularly beautiful wallhanging, and it's not even clear what all the items are that are on it. To go with it, I made a booklet, describing each section and what it meant.

There is a representation of the house, as I knew it. When I was busy talking to my dad, he told me how the place used to look, when he was younger, because he grew up there. But I did it as I remembered it. You saw the outside of the house from the west side. There was a kitchen off the main section, a porch behind that, and grandpa's workshop behind that. To the right was the 100 year-old maple tree, which I thought of as "my" tree, because my swing was in it. It was two fat bristly ropes and a plank of wood, and I spent hours of every day in that swing, imagining all sorts of things.

Then I made what I now know are called "thread paintings" of all the particular little things I remembered or loved about that house.

There was the doorstep - a piece of cement, with the Canadian Air Force logo carefully etched into it, and the latin phrase, "Per Ardua ad Astra" - "Through adversity to the stars" - the motto of the Air Force, at least back when my grandpa and father made that particular front step.

My hammock. It had a metal frame, and it swung. It was made of bright red canvas with white rope fringe, and the pillow was attached to it. It smelled so musty - years and years of being pulled into the house because of rain, or being left out in the rain, rolled up in a ball and put in a corner or behind the couch... Nowadays nobody would let a kid near anything like that! Eew! Mold!

Well, I loved that hammock. I napped it in every sunny day. From the swing to the hammock...

Then out to pick wild strawberries, or draw water from the well...

I made thread paintings of those strawberries, the well and bucket, the pot-bellied stove, the mice that were rampant, the groundhogs that lived nearby, whip-or-wills, jigsaw puzzles, the waist-high grasses, the old piano, the hen house...

All the thread paintings circled the depiction of the house. I did a family tree, right along the top edge of the quilt. And in the corners I put log-cabin sections of the Dewar tartan.

Well, it isn't a particularly organized quilt, but I put my soul into it. And spent a ton of money getting it down to my dad and stepmom - they live in Louisiana - by special delivery on a Christmas Eve. And they both wept, looking at it. My Stepmom said how many memories it was bringing back, what a treasure I had given them. I had made a sleeve for the back, so all they had to do was get a dowel through it and put two nails in the wall to hang it up.

I approached the topic of borrowing it back very gingerly, because I knew it gave my ailing stepmom so much joy to see it. Nevertheless, I did take a deep breath and ask my dad if he would lend it back to me for this particular event, and he said,

"Oh sure. If I can find it."

Gulp.

And today, two weeks after I first made the request, he said, "I still haven't found your quilt. I know I put it somewhere, I remember doing something specific with it, I just don't remember what..."

My stomach did a few flips. It's still doing them, if I think about it at all.

I want to say, "How could you? How could you lose it?" But I think I know.

Because I've inherited my father's short temper. I know, when I want to clean up, I don't always put things which I find in my way at the time where I should put them. I shove them somewhere. I'm pretty sure this is what's happened to my quilt. He wanted to move furniture around, which meant the wallhanging was being obscured by a piece of furniture, and he took it down and rolled or folded it up and put it away somewhere "safe", till he could "get around to" putting it back up...

Now, I'm only 52, and I know that "somewhere safe" means you'll never find it again, and I also know that people almost NEVER "get around to it." Dad is nearing 80 years of age, and he's more disorganized that I am. We'll be very lucky if it hasn't been put in the bottom of a plastic bag to go to Goodwill, or some such fate.

I love my dad very much, but I don't get along with him. He's never been a patient man, and he's gotten a lot worse since leaving his sixties behind him. We don't see eye-to-eye about politics, religion, television, children, movies, books... Actually, about the only thing we have still in common is our shared experience of that house in the country!

His memory is going - not of things long ago, but his short-term memory. Like threads breaking, worn out with use, exposure to sunlight, chemicals... I can see him failing, as I see myself failing.

I made that quilt to hold together the memories of three generations of people who lived in that country home. I hope it isn't lost.

You Rip What You Sew...

2009-09-08T14:17:00.005-04:00

I am taking a break from quilting to write this blog, even though I've only been quilting for about fifteen minutes. That was long enough to complete a pattern on the quilt I'm doing for a customer.

A near-perfect pattern.

Most of you quilters have heard why no quilt can be perfect: It's an Amish saying. "Only God is perfect." That's why the Amish (in theory) deliberately put a mistake in each quilt they make.

I've never had to try to put in a mistake... Is there anybody out there who has had to? Please answer!

Anyway, this was a near-perfect rendition of the pattern I've been doing on this current quilt. It's an "L" shape on each of the corners of the blocks. I've often forgotten to turn right or left as I've been sewing and gone on to sew parallel lines, and then had to stop and rip them out.

I've started too far away from the blocks' edges, and had to stop and rip out the sewing.

I've put the lines too close together, or too far apart, or both in the same "L" shape...

I've crossed previous stitching lines, when they're supposed to be concentric...

I MADE myself sit down to quilt today, even though there's laundry to do, shopping to do, cleaning to do... But this quilt is due at the end of September, and that's simply not far enough away for my liking, permanent procrastinator that I am.

I took my time, I lined everything up. I sewed the first line and saw it was too far away from the edge, and I ripped it out, repositioned and sewed again...

And everything worked "like clockwork", as the saying goes. I kept up my "personal tension" (held my breath) while working on it. It went quickly, smoothly. It went without surprises.

By the last line, I was experiencing something I rarely get these days - the simple pleasure of quilting, enjoying the process, relaxing.

Feeling like I'd finally "gotten the hang of it."

I heaved a deep, contented sigh, and allowed myself a brief moment to admire the work just before moving on to the next corner...

... and saw the mistake.

I'd done it in the wrong color thread.

Like, the SERIOUSLY wrong color. Blues and greens and yellows, when the thread I was supposed to be using was in reds and oranges.

I've re-threaded now with the CORRECT color thread... but I keep wondering, WHY???!!!

Why did I take up this blasted hobby? Why did I turn it into a business? Why do I keep making these stupid mistakes? Why do I make mistakes, different ones, at each step of every single process? I solve one problem and create three more!

This was supposed to be something I enjoy!

Well, if it was MY quilt, I'd just leave the wrong thread in. But it's not, so now I'm going to go and do some more "Frog-Stitch."

Rip-it. Rip-it. Rip-it.

Geometrically Challenged

2009-04-19T20:16:00.003-04:00

Hello, I'm Geometrically Challenged. Pleased to meet you.

Today's latest blooper: Loading the quilting stand

I have what's officially known as a "short-arm" quilting stand. It's twelve feet wide - that's not the short part. The "short" part is the throat depth of my sewing machine.

Say what?

The distance between the needle and the back of the machine's arm - where it goes "bump" against the quilt. Not being a lottery winner, independently wealthy, or an heiress, I didn't have $25K to fork out for an APQS Millennium machine, which has a 25-inch throat depth.

That means a Millennium owner can quilt 12 feet wide by 25 inches forward & back, before having to roll the quilt into a new position.

I, on the other hand, have a scant six inches.

No snickering.

A "short-arm" quilting machine works the same way a "long-arm" quilting machine works. It's just that you have to roll your quilt forward every six inches, less by the time you're at the end of the quilt, because the roll has by then gotten quite thick.

Almost, you could say, as thick as me.

Tonight I began by carefully laying out the backing and top against each other to make sure of what the borders would be. Then I carefully pinned the backing to the lead fabric which is attached to the rollers. I was so please with myself that I was finally able to do this on my bed, meaning it would be much easier to make sure the fabric was straight and not pulled.

I got the backing all rolled up, put the roll on the stand, pinned the leading edge to the take-up roll, and began to pin and roll the quilt top in the same manner. Remembering that I had to put the batting in the middle, I left the rolled top on the bed and carefully pinned the the leading edge of the batting over my backing.

But it struck me that something just wasn't right.

I looked, and thought, while I sucked on my pins and kept on pinning.

Then it hit me.

I'd put the backing on right side UP. This meant that, had I begun quilting, the seamy underside of the backing would have been the side that showed, while the nice colors would have been on the inside.

Oops.

Moving past the expletives, tears, and phone calls to Great Quilting Friend... (who once again accused me of being in a rush... Sorry to disappoint, I did this calmly, slowly, and very very carefully. I just did it WRONG.)

I eventually found myself back on the bed, pinning and rolling the backing up, this time with the RIGHT SIDE DOWN.

Sigh.

Geometry. It was always the most difficult branch of math for me.

With 20/20 hindsight, becoming a quilter is possibly the stupidest move I've ever made. Had I taken up architecture or civil engineering, there would have been computers to check the geometry for me, spit my calculations back in my face, stop me from putting the aluminum siding on the inside of the house, the hardwood flooring on the roof, the garage on the side of the house opposite the driveway...

But here in the quiet privacy of my apartment, I'm free to make loads of mistakes, with no witness save my kitty, Bijou.
And while she enjoyed her little romp over the backing - twice! - she's just a kitty, and couldn't possibly know what a mistake I was making.

The scary part is...

I've done it before. And didn't learn my lesson.

My Great Quilting Friend assured me I'd learn my lesson this time.

I only hope she's right. I wish I could have told her I'd been in a frantic rush - that, at least, could have hidden a bit of my shame. No, it took me over an hour to do this completely inside out, and I very nearly quilted it that way, too! Slowly, methodically, carefully...

Quilting just doesn't get any scarier than this!

Business as usual

2009-03-16T09:28:00.003-04:00

Well, I moved. Hubby faithfully took my quilting machine apart and put it back together for me. In my one-room basement apartment, oddly enough it doesn't look like such a monster. (It's a big one-room!) My first quilt is up on the stand, I've already had to take stitches out - it seems to be business as usual.

My "business" has been on my mind lately. I used to give an accountant all my papers (in a pattern box) and let her figure out how much money I made or lost, but now that I've moved out on my own again, I can no longer afford that luxury.

I've been spending several weeks whining about how I'm a lousy bookkeeper - which is true - and saying I'll just have to close the business, it doesn't make any money, I have no time to build a website and HAVE an online store. yada yada yada...

But this morning I decided I'm going to Revenu Quebec and asking THEM what tax forms actually need to be filled out, in my specific case, and I'm going to give it the old college try. If I can file my 2007 taxes myself, I'm gonna keep the business open and work on the web site and try once again to make a go of this thing.

And hope like hell to get some quilting done in the meantime.

A Machine-Quilter's Guide to Hand-Piecing

2009-01-27T16:22:00.006-05:00

So... I was commissioned to do a baby quilt, and baby is expected by the end of February, so a couple of weeks ago I started making the pattern and cutting the fabric.

And piecing. Stars.

Not just any stars, mind you: hand-drawn, asymmetrical stars!

This is noteworthy for two reasons: One, I've never pieced stars before, and two, they're asymmetrical.

The most complex figures I'd ever pieced before this were triangles. And, let me tell you, I had PLENTY of problems with them! Needless to say, the stars did, in fact, produce their share of headaches, details to follow in a moment.

The fact that they're asymmetrical gave Hubby a mild heart attack, because he was doing his usual peering-at-me-from-around-the-corner, trying hard not to tell me what i was doing wrong... Unsuccessfully, I might add. He really can't help himself...

These stars aren't just mildly asymmetrical - they're WILDLY asymmetrical! Well, poor Hubby was thinking to himself, "Can't she SEE that they're the wrong shape?" and quaking in his boots, fearful of confronting me when he had plainly been told to BUTT OUT... So we had a good laugh afterwards, once he realized it was deliberate, and I realized just how stupid he really thinks I am...

Back to the piecing problems of the stars, then.

I'd seen how to do them on an episode of Fons 'n Porter, for once, paying attention. And good thing, too, since I accidentally erased the program and had to wing it! Even though they don't line up in traditional straight lines, it is possible to sew sections together which produce straight lines to connect the sections with. It took me a few tries, but I did figure out which sections would join properly.

All that was left was the actual sewing. Okay, quarter-inch foot on the machine, spider at the ready, careful now, go slow...

Okay, that didn't work...

On I progressed to pinning, which made matters worse. By the time I'd finished the first star, I'd undone it about seventeen times. I sat and stared at the sewing machine in blank despair, heaved a heavy sigh and tried the second star. I put in a call to my Quilting Pal, who did have a supply of freezer paper. I tried that, it stabilized the shapes beautifully, but it isn't meant to be sewn into the seams! And since the seams cross frequently, it defeats the purpose of stabilizing them if you're busy ripping out the stabilizer before sewing the next seam...

Out, freezer paper. In, Golden Threads Tracing Paper. Hmm. The seams are still inaccurate, for all that extra work.

More staring at the sewing machine.

Now an event happened which gave me the insight I was looking for. There was a quilting bee day for my guild - we put together six quilts for the community in one day. But during this day I had opportunity to watch other, more experienced quilters sew their quarter-inch seamlines - and got the surprise of my life.

My friend's machine had FOUR FEED DOGS touching the quarter-inch seam. Four!

I mentally pictured my machine. I had two feed dogs, and when sewing a quarter-inch seam, only the left-hand one touches the material! The right-hand one is outside the seam line!

Very quickly, two-and-two went together. In an earlier blog I mentioned that I have to hold my fabric an astonishing 13 degrees off-center in order to get a straight seam, and now I realize that on some other people's machines, the feed dogs stay in contact with the material at all times, even for a quarter-inch seam!

Woot woot, as they say!

So, FYI, the rest of my stars were hand-pieced, and everything lined up beautifully. I'm going back to my machine to figure out if I can change the fabric placement by moving the needle so both feed dogs can contact the fabric. But in the meantime?

In the meantime, all my fiddly-bits will be hand-sewn!

A Fundamental Tool

2009-01-14T22:50:00.004-05:00

I never in a million years thought I'd ever say these words: "I'm so glad I have a working iron and ironing board."

I have a tenuous relationship with irons. Without exception, after only a short time with me, I snag myself on the wires and they crash to the floor. A few falls like that, the steam stops coming out, or the temperature becomes uncontrollable, or it just won't work at all.

On average, I go through two to three irons a year. The rate of falling slowed briefly a couple of years ago when I bought an oversized and more sturdy ironing board. For a brief time thereafter my irons experienced fewer falls, since it was more difficult to topple the board.

But alas, not impossible.

I did enjoy a longer relationship with a Sunbeam cordless iron. By this time, I'd had Hubby remove the legs from the ironing board, so that it could only be used when placed on a table-top. Much less likely to fall. When I got the iron, I also insisted that a shelf be erected at the exact height of the ironing board/tabletop. This shelf was firmly attached in a shelving unit, and on that shelf I placed the charger for the iron. The power supply is screwed into the shelving unit, and the charger was plugged into the power supply. I even wrapped the power cord around the legs of the shelving unit so there was absolutely NO GIVE - not a single chance - that I'd somehow be able to drag the charger off the shelf. If and when I wanted to use the iron, I'd move the tabletop/ironing board over beside the charger and carefully rest the iron on it and turn it on.

For nearly a year I enjoyed a happy relationship with my Sunbeam cordless iron. Sure, it was heavy, since the charger heated up the soleplate, which held its heat by mass alone - no batteries inside the iron itself. It sprayed steam enthusiastically out the soleplate and kept me happily ironing away.

Well, almost. I do enjoy all the ironing I do, when I'm ironing clothing, which I do faithfully about twice a year, and I enjoy every minute of it.

Ironing for quilting though, can get a little tedious. The brain tends to balk at six meters of fabric to be ironed at one shot. And the day came when I didn't watch what I was doing just that little bit, and the iron did not land securely on the charger, but made a small dent in the hardwood floor. It was, alas, the beginning of the end for the little Sunbeam iron. It was never the same again. First, the steam didn't come out properly. Then it didn't get hot enough. Hubby took it apart and twiddled some bits, and then it scorched everything, including the ironing board cover, and gave one of my fingers a nasty burn, leading directly to me dropping it again, and the little Sunbeam was no more.

By this point, I was furious with myself for all the money I'd spent on irons. Hubby went out grocery shopping and came home with a little gift for me - an $8 iron.

Yes, you saw that right. Eight dollars, Canadian currency, for an electric steam iron.

It was the lightest iron I'd ever held. It heated up quicker than any iron I'd ever plugged in. It positively threw steam along its path, the most powerful jet of steam I'd even encountered.

Eight bucks. Hubby said we should just go back and buy a dozen!

Well, we didn't, of course. And, of course, something happened to my new, wonderful friend. But this time, it came in the form of a chemical attack.

I had occasion to be using a temporary spray adhesive to hold some pieces of a quilt together, some appliqué it was, I believe. And unnoticed by me, a teensy bit of overspray landed on my ironing board. The next time I attempted to iron a piece, it seemed to shrink as I was holding it, and when I lifted the iron, it was covered - COVERED - in some kind of sticky, fibrous mess.

Well, off I went to Fabricville the same day for a can of Hot Iron Cleaner. They didn't have any. This necessitated me ordering the stuff from my supplier. I had to wait.

In the meantime, I washed the ironing board cover and replaced it on the board.

Hubby in the meantime, tried alcohol, turpentine, acetone, non-acetone nail polish remover, and I think a small amount of muriatic acid, to no avail. Oh, and soap and water didn't work, either - at least, not after all that! He gave it a go with a razor. He tried it cold, heated at lot, heated a bit, and did succeed in getting the fibers to condense to a rather hard mass. But they remained firmly welded to the soleplate of the iron.

The grand day came at last when my can of goo remover arrived, and slowly but surely the hardened mass yielded up the ghost. Once more, my eight dollar iron was functional. Good thing too, because I had pieces to iron!

In the frantic rush to make Christmas gifts I was grabbing bits of fabric hither and thither, the iron steaming happily away. I reached at last for a bright bit of yellow, put the iron down on it securely, and watched in horror as it shrank before my startled eyes. "Noooooooooooooo......" I cried. Not again! I would have been thrilled to use the goo remover and proceed calmly, but in my pre-holiday rush, I'd managed to misplace it. I still can't find it. That's also why I can't give you the name, by the way...

This was the final straw. The iron was put away, the ironing board stripped of both cloth cover and pad. The yellow fabric was scrunched into a ball and pinned securely to a board so I would never again be tempted to iron it, just in case it was in fact the culprit all along.

Next payday, Hubby was forthwith dispatched to find me another eight dollar iron. And he did - almost. The price was now $9.99, but I was overjoyed. Taking no chances with overspray, underspray, or polyester masquerading as cotton. I used four thicknesses of cotton batting and poplin cotton for the cover. I traced the outline of the board, sewed the layers of batting together, made a tube around the poplin, threaded twill tape through it.... Five hours it took, but at the end of it, I had a VIRGIN ironing board and a BRAND-NEW iron.

Which tonight I very carefully used to flatten the fat quarters for a baby quilt due the end of February, holding my breath till I was finished, and sighing with relief. And said the words I never thought I'd hear from my lips, "Thank goodness I have a working iron and ironing board!"

Now if I can just keep the cat off it...

The Physics of Quilting

2008-12-19T00:19:00.004-05:00

I used to be a math whiz in school. Not top of the class, just second. Ninety-eights, regularly. Used to yak with the teacher after class, discussing the 3-D images of these tangents and sin waves, etc. Used to have a blast with math. Used to love twisting all those strangely-shaped objects with even stranger names around in my head. If it could be calculated, I could do it, and have a ball at the same time.

Boy, has that ship sailed...

I love quilting. Both my hand and machine stitching are getting real good, something I'm quite proud of. But no matter how a project begins or progresses, there is an end.

The binding.

When I used to do flat, straight-on bindings with lapped corners, it wasn't a problem. But everybody knows you're not a REAL quilter till you do mitered corners on bias binding.

So, a few quilts ago, I cheerfully washed my binding fabric, dried and ironed it, looked at the instructions on my "Fons 'n Porter's Binding Basics" card, and cut my square of fabric. Then I cut it along the bias, flipped one piece a quarter-turn and over and sewed the seam that makes the two triangles hang like those little flags they string along car lots. I speedily drew my very straight lines along the long edge of the parallelogram that forms after you open up the shape. Then I read what you do to match these lines into a tube...

And came "bump" up against my new deficiencies in geometry and physics.

Which sides do I sew together?

I read and re-read the instructions. I tried several combinations of edges, each one more unlikely than the next. I sewed two of the edges together, looked at it. It didn't look anything like the picture. I ripped out the seam, ironed again, re-positioned and sewed, found that I had sewed the same two sides as last time...

In desperation I went to Hubby. Mr. Math. Mr. Computer. Mr Know-It-All. Mr. How Things Work.

Swallowing my pride, I asked him to read the instructions, look at the fabric, and see if it made any sense to him.

It made perfect sense to him. He was a bit uppity about his superior intellect in this matter, but he did get the thing sewn into a tube for me, and the lines were going round that tube in a lovely, even spiral. We cut something like 500 inches out of what looked to me like a fat quarter... I guess the square we started with was a little bigger than that, but the sheer length of the bias strip was daunting.

I suspected at the time that cutting a continuous bias strip in this manner actually CREATES matter. That you end up with more fabric than you started with. It feels like witchcraft. Magic. (And black magic, at that.)

Tonight I tried again, for a new project. Ironed, trimmed very carefully. Measured and measured. This time, though, Hubby was present in the room with me from the beginning. I wasn't taking any chances that boggarts or fairies were going to bugger me up this time! Oh no, with Mr. How Things Work in the room with me, I was sure no magical forces could come anywhere near me. It would be straight geometry, pardon the pun. It would be grindingly logical.

With only five or six arguments over how to cut off the selvages, how to get the fabric straight, how to mark straight lines, etc., we proceeded to the step where you have to offset the drawn lines by one, get the lines to line up with each other, and sew two edges together. Half way through pinning, we were deeply embroiled in another argument ("This looks NOTHING like the picture!", and "You must have drawn the lines along the wrong axis", followed by "You were HERE, in the room with me when I drew the lines! YOU must have put the wrong sides together!") etc. It appeared, after all, that the fairies had crept in unnoticed.

So I removed the pins, opened it out, and we compared what I'd done with the drawing and yes, I had drawn the lines along the correct axis. I watched as Hubby carefully pointed at the edges which needed to be put together. The same ones I'd been doing all along.

I pin-matched the lines one-quarter of an inch away from the edges of the fabric and proceeded to complete this part of the process. "And you're SURE," I demanded of him, "that I'm to sew THIS seam?"

Absolutely. I did it, carefully, with the quarter-inch foot on, just to make sure I didn't waver.

It did indeed form a tube, with lines spiraling from bottom to top, or top to bottom, depending on what you viewed as the starting point. And I carefully began to trim along these lines. Hubby stayed till I crossed the all-important seam, breathed a "Whew!" as it became apparent the process was working, that I was indeed cutting a spiral along a tube and we had in fact sewn the correct edges together. Hubby left, satisfied. But not before I noticed he'd been holding his breath along with me...

I continued to cut, and cut, and cut... I've got a couple of miles of bias strip now, whereas I started out with only a 42-inch square of fabric, and am once again convinced that magic has happened and fabric has been created out of thin air.

I, who used to float mental images of tetrahedrons in my mind for fun and entertainment, I cannot "see" how this works. I've been party to it several times, and it floors me every time. If Hubby had not been in the room with me, I would not have succeeded. I'd have ended up cutting straight strips along the length of the fabric and putting on a straight binding edge that overlapped at the corners.

I am mystified by this "tube". I cannot wrap my mind or my imagination around this system of getting an endless strip of fabric out of a square. I tell you this - it was an engineer who figured out how to do this. He, or She, might not hold the TITLE of engineer at any prestigious firm or university, but it is nevertheless a feat of engineering as surely as any bridge or tower.

Either that, or incredibly good magic.

Straight Stitching

2008-12-08T10:34:00.002-05:00

A couple of years ago, while at my guild meeting, I chanced to hear a tale of a quilter who is well-known in our area and her new machine. The machine was one of those high-end models, lots of bells & whistles, as they say, a top-of-the-line machine. The story involved our Famous Quilter sending it back to the store several times, and finally cancelling the order altogether...

Because the machine didn't sew straight.

The machine....

I laughed, at the time. I thought, boy has she ever got an ego! Everybody knows you have to make adjustments while the machine is sewing!

But this past week, I began to wonder - is that true?

See, I'm a bit of a screwball...so I naturally assume when a line has become a tangent, that it's my fault. That it's me that's "off", not the machine!

My recent foray into making thread scarves has caused me to be sewing a LOT of "straight" lines. The scarves are made entirely of thread, so there's a lot of straight lines to be sewn onto water-soluble stabilizer. That stitching forms a grid, and then you embellish the grid and end up with an astonishing work of wearable art.

But my point is, my lines aren't REALLY straight.

At first I was rushing - going at the machine's top speed. Going that fast, I had to quickly adjust the fabric as it was being pulled under the needle, left-right-more right- left left left... And after a while I could see clearly that the machine had a preference. I have to hold my fabric at a ten degree angle to the right in order to sew a straight line.

Maybe I'm pulling too hard, I thought. I dropped the speed right down, and quickly learned that no, speed wasn't doing it - the machine sews straight at a ten degree angle.

I began to re-think my opinion of Famous Quilter.

I had always assumed that if I put my 1/4-inch foot on and crawled carefully along at a snail's pace, that my seams would all end up straight and 1/4-inch wide. I'd often wondered, when looking at my seams later, how in the world they could be so inaccurate, swerving off to one side all the time.

Now, I believe firmly the adage that "It's a poor workman who blames the tools!" And I also remembered reading something out of my grandmother's antique Singer sewing book about "practicing" getting the seams straight. So I'd taken it for granted that some skill was in fact involved in getting a straight line produced. I've been making adjustments all my sewing life.

I wonder if this is why many people give up on trying to sew!

Web-Sighting

2008-11-20T11:09:00.002-05:00

I have a quilting business. But one would hardly know.

I used to have a website, and an email connected to it. I'm currently having a disagreement with my web service provider, so they disabled the site. Fair enough. Once we get settled, I'll go to a new service provider and I'll be, as they say, "back in business."

Well... maybe.

The problem with web sites is, one has to develop it and maintain it. This means content.

Sigh. Content.

That means, for example, I have to list, and possibly show pictures of, what I sell. Everything I sell.

Well, I sell anything that Quilt Source Canada sells, since they sell wholesale to me and I sell retail!

But they don't do something called "drop-shipping", which means you have to come to me to buy what I sell.

Which kind of defeats the purpose of having my own web site! I mean, whoever you are, reading this, you might live in Botswana for all I know! You're not going to fly here to pick up ten needles! And I'm not flying over to you anytime soon!

Sure, I can place your order. Then they ship it to me, and then I'd ship it to you. And of course, if I'm going to make any money at all doing this, I have to charge you shipping, on top of the suggested retail price. And tax.

Making your order twice as expensive. It's easier and cheaper for you to go to a quilt store. Which defeats the whole purpose of me having a web site! So there I've gone and done all that work for nothing!

You see the problem.

Now, companies that sell directly to customers, like Amazon, have some kind of deal with their suppliers. Their suppliers ship the stuff to you, but send their bill to Amazon. Amazon bills you, over the internet. Amazon charges you the shipping costs and the taxes and exchange, if stuff is coming from the States. You get to pay all this first. Amazon gets to sit on your money. They pay their supplier for the article and for the shipping. They don't pay the same price you pay. That's how they make money.

But QuiltSource doesn't drop-ship. So there we are.

I live in the Montreal area. I'll sell you anything you want, and I can even deliver it to you if you're not too far from me. But I don't have thousands of dollars, nay, tens-of-thousands - to buy a huge stock of stuff and pay shipping and tax and have sitting around waiting for people to buy from me!

It's really hard to bring the quilting hobby into the 21st century! I don't know enough about business to know how to fix this problem... but I suspect there is a solution!

Any suggestions?

A Challenge!

2008-11-09T19:07:00.002-05:00

What a great term, eh? "Challenge." If we were in high school, it'd be called homework, or assignment, or something equally uninteresting.

I was yakking on the phone today with a quilting pal, and just before we had to hang up, she mentioned her guild had issued a challenge.

It was to be any size, in black and white, and had to incorporate the sample piece of material handed out at the meeting, which was white fabric with black on it.

The challenge could have one other color.

Immediately she said those words, my neurons went into overdrive. Hyperspace. Warp Nine.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" I said. "Make your top all in black and white, and quilt heavily in the third color, like, yellow!" I said excitedly.

"Oh," she said. "That's a good idea."

"Wait!" I cried. "Does it have to be only black and only white, or are shades of grey allowed?"

"I don't know," she began, "I could ask..."

But I was already in mid sentence.

"... because I have this variegated thread, black to white, and it has shades of grey in it. You could use your third color and quilt in this thread!"

"Huh," she said. "I didn't know they had..."

"Rail Fence," I said. "I've always wanted to do Rail Fence in three different tones of black."

"I though I might do stars" she slipped in edgewise. "With maybe a black star in the center."

"Oh, cool!" I replied. "I wonder, could you do it like stained glass?"

"Wow," she said, considering the idea. "Stained glass stars. Hmm..."

"Or how about Attic Windows, only this time, the windows are black, with white quilting, almost like redwork, in them, and the windowframes are in the white fabric!"

"Uh..."

"Of course, black and white is always suitable for crazy quilting. You can use the third color as well, and quilt in black on the white fabric, and in white on the colored fabric, and in the third color on the black fabric..."

"Uh..."

"Now, I've seen people doing a mosaic of real photos, been trying one out myself. That would work beautifully in black and white..."

"Uh ..."

"Candles would be a great theme! Black background, white candles, brilliant yellow flame - the flames could be done as thread paintings..."

"Uh..."

"Oh! What about taking something we always see in color, like a flower, and doing that in black and white? You know, there are a lot of ads on tv and in print where they use a black and white picture and just put one item in in color? Well, this would be unusual because the color simply isn't there. You'd need several shades of black and several shades of white...."

"Uh..."

"Ooh! A Landscape! Or Seascape - yeah, a seascape! Picture this: the land is black, with black quilting on it. The water is white, with white quilting! And the edge of the sun coming up, or the whole round disk, is brilliant yellow, with brilliant yellow quilting!"

"Uh..."

"Can you put sequins on it? Black sequins? White sequins? Oh! Did you know they have a black metallic thread?"

On and on, for as long as she'd let me.

No sir, no shortage of ideas here. Just not enough lifetime to get them all done!

!%&!!@$%! TENSION!!!!!

2008-10-23T23:26:00.000-04:00

grumble grumble grumble....

I bought a quilting machine several years ago, when I first hung up my shingle as a machine quilter...

From that time to this, the %#^$#&$%# thing has NEVER had proper tension.

First, I brought it into the shop to be adjusted. Didn't work. Then they sent me a new bobbin case. That was better than the OLD bobbin case, but it still didn't solve the tension problem. Then I took it in to be adjusted again.

Same old same old. Stitches look fine on the top, but turn the work over and it's an ugly mess. Enough to make me swear loudly and profusely. Enough to get me throwing things around the room. Enough for my poor hubby to slip me a sleeping pill, but that story is for another day!

So, yesterday, there I was in tears AGAIN over the #$*@##$! tension on this machine, and hubby decided to risk his life. He came into the room and politely tried to help me. He stood over the machine, I was sitting. He said "your tension is set at 2. Why don't you put it to 3 or 4?" I told him (loudly) that he was nuts, that the tension was at 3 already. I moved it in the "increase tension" direction according to the marker I could see. There followed a few more sharp exchanges between us before we both realized, at the same moment, that we were looking a two different parts of the tension dial. He grabbed the knob and spun it all the way around about five times in a row, whereupon I exploded, since I was sure he'd just BROKEN the knob....

And then I learned something. My machine has a tension adjustment that can go around in complete circles. Eight of them, to be specific.

Hitherto, every single machine I'd ever worked with had exactly 180 degrees of movement for the tension to go from "non at all" to "last stop". Or, in layman's terms, from 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock, end of story.

So, for three years, I'd been using about 1/32nd of the adjustment possible on this machine. Holy cripes! No WONDER none of my adjustments ever worked!

In no time at all, I had it working perfectly. And hubby looked at the other machine and exclaimed loudly "Holy Cripes! This one only moves 180 degrees!"

A few minutes later we were sitting together, me in his lap, sobbing about all those wasted years...

I mean, I'm the one who yells at HIM to read the manual! But I didn't need to read the manual about adjusting the tension on this machine, did I? I mean, who doesn't know how to adjust @^#@&#!! tension!?

All those awful quilts with loops on their undersides!

All the anger and frustration at a perfectly good machine!

All the wasted hours!

Geez, you'd think the manufacturers could have put a sticker on it, or something! "Hello! You can spin THIS tension dial 4-EVER!" Something to like, draw attention to the fact that it's different from EVERY OTHER MACHINE ON THE PLANET!

Hopefully, this time I've learned - there's is no simple operation that a machine performs that cannot be f***d-up by some geek who makes a new one. There is no such thing as "I don't need to read how this machine performs that function."

Not even to adjust tension.

I wish I could adjust MY tension...

Once more unto the BEACH...

2008-10-23T23:24:00.001-04:00

Four years ago, I had a dream... a "Mariner's Compass" quilt, with a big, bold, and beautiful Compass Rose AMIDSHIP, surrounded by an artist's simulation of the ocean, and around the edges...

Ah! Those beautiful quilt blocks! With the names "Ocean Waves", "Wild Waves", "Storm-at-Sea", "Beacon Light", and "North Star."

In the beginning, it was going to be a wall hanging. (It very nearly turned into a SCUTTLING... but I digress...)

In order to get all those border squares in the sequence I wanted them, they had to have a finished size of 4 inches. Four inches square. I did my first one by machine. It not only did not finish at 4 inches, it could by no means be called square, even by someone with severe astigmatism! At this point Hubby suggested a working title of THREE SHEETS TO THE WIND.

ALL AHEAD FULL, I did the next square by hand. Results - worse.

I enlarged the finished size to six inches and tried again. At which point my Quilting Pal and chief explainer-of-what-I'm-doing-wrong came over and said "HOW SMALL?! ARE YOU NUTS?!"

So I was persuaded to make 12" blocks... and the quilt would now be a bed cover. AYE-AYE!! I started my first block. It, too, was somewhat... dare I say WAVY...

So another Quilting Pal of mine reached a deal with me. In exchange for HER doing all my difficult patterned blocks, I'd quilt something for her, everybody wins.

In two weeks flat she handed me back the borders, all enthusiasm, ready to SET SAIL, as it were....

BUOYED by her optimism, I entered the quilt in the Salon 2008 and it was accepted. At my winter quilting retreat I made myself a deadline: make the ocean center, and get all 4 borders attached, or the Mariner's Compass quilt would be AWASH. I worked like a SEA-DOG. AHEAD FULL. Ripped strips, added here, pinched there... And by the end of that retreat, all 4 borders were indeed attached to the (mostly) square center.

As it hung from a frame at home, dutiful Hubby helped me get it to hang straight. Well, straighter...

I began to put the Compass itself together, and proceeded to satin-stitch it to the quilt. The center rose like a TSUNAMI. Three and one-half inches high, it was soon obvious that FULL ASTERN was required.

I made a second Compass, with better basting and heavy stabilizer LASHED to the back. This time, the Compass only rose two inches high. DROP ANCHOR. Hubby and I conferred (argued) for hours. Days. The ship was ADRIFT.

At this point we were also trying to come up with names for the project. "Full Seam Ahead" very nearly won! "Titanic - the Quilt", "The Quilt of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Anchors A-Weigh", "Wavy Navy", "Bismark", "The Good Ship Start 'n Stop", "Quilt Overboard", "The SS Minnow", "Leviathan's Net" ... and many others. Please feel free to add your own!

A third, and final version, a thread-painting of a Compass EMERGED from the DEPTHS, with only a slight LIST to STARBOARD. Once more UNDERWAY, I had my surgery, and took a week off because I could get it, needing the time to get the quilt top finished so I could put it on my machine and get it quilted. T minus 3 weeks. 21 days to delivery.

At T minus 15 days, I realized what dutiful FIRST MATE (Hubby) had been carefully not saying, in tender PRESERVATION of his life: namely, that the quilt did not sit flat, and if I didn't fix it, we may as well ABANDON SHIP.

I had the brilliant idea to stuff the extra bits, creating three-dimensional waves gently rolling over the surface of the quilt. This caused the entire project to twist like a vortex. We were LOST AT SEA. Working title now became "SOS."

So I took it all apart. Undid all the quilting, detached the borders, started over...

T minus 13 days, it's back in one piece, considerably improved, and I EMBARKED once more upon the quilting machine...

It was such a rough ride, I was SEASICK. This was the period wherein I discovered how I SHOULD have been adjusting the tension on the machine..(see blog of May 6.) T minus 3 days, FIRST MATE makes my continuous bias for me, because I'm terrible at geometry...

(Yes. I'm a quilter. And I'm terrible at geometry. "Why, you ask, did I pick this particular form of..." Shut up.)

T minus 2 days. I start to do the binding. And make the "sleeve" the thing has to hang from. And the labels, for this quilt and for the other one, which is also not finished...FIRST MATE attached the binding from one end, I from the other, approaching, dare I say, like TWO SHIPS IN THE NIGHT?

By the time I handed it in, I'd been up for 40 consecutive hours feeling like I'd been LASHED, and tottering in on not-quite SEA-WORTHY legs.

In the end, we called it "SAFE PASSAGE", because that's what we all needed.