The Back?

So this afternoon I was working on layout ideas for the back of the Patisserie Quilt.  I have to hand it to people who regularly have not only enough fabric to make a back (without having bought extra in anticipation) but who are able to take those oddly sized random extra pieces and put it together to make a beautifully planned and executed back.  Currently I do indeed have a layout that does just those things.  It will require me to make a total of 6 - 12" blocks.  Four of which will be Ohio Stars made from the leftover HST's that I had from the Snowball blocks on the front.  I'm thinking the other two will be another two Tennessee Waltz Stars aka the Fight Block that figure so dominantly on the front.

Of course what I didn't bother to remove the binding allowances from my leftover fabric calculations...  Oh yes, I was so busy matching that I forgot the BINDING!  So now I'm going to go back over my numbers to see if I can find a fabric that has enough yardage to be the binding without sacrificing the plans for the back.  I know what a way to pick the binding!  And after all your kind recommendations too...  Okay, alright, I demo the binding and then I'll refigure my measurements for the back.  Shoot, I think keeping all that has to be done in my head while keeping my on hand yardage in mind asks a lot of any quilter.

Ribbon Border Part 2 * Added *

Today I worked on the ribbon border for the Patisserie Waltz Quilt.  The entire time I kept feeling like I needed to hurry and hold my breath par chance something happen aka go wrong.  This fabric has been wonderful to work with and the entire quilt has gone together much easier than I'd even dared to hope for.  So I felt like the Meerkats in the Lion King Movies.  "Scurry... Sniff...Flinch!"

I'm planning on checking the measurements on this Twin Sized top just to see where it's at as I'm trying to figure out if it needs another border or not.

What do you think of the teal in the ribbon border?  I look at it and my eyes say "okay you're there...  now what?"  I don't know if the correct answer is the use it in the binding or if that will be to much at the edges.  I considered for a micro-second using teal thread to quilt it, but I rejected the idea quickly over quilting with white thread because as you know I really love that Patisserie Fabric aka the white patterned one.  LOL.

Ribbon Border Part 1

Between my ankle and some illness that made me want to sleep 24-7 it's taken a bit of time for me to get back to my sewing machine.  Yesterday I did that Jean's repair you saw in my tutorial as well as a pair of shorts for my daughter.  The shorts I fixed by doing a little satin stitch and covering the satin repair with a patch so the stitches will be fine even if she plays with the patch.  I'm glad I took it easy my first day back to the machine because today I made 74 of the blocks you see above.  They are the blocks I will be needing for the Patisserie Quilt's Ribbon Border.

Of course after I made all 74 of them I discovered I only needed 66, but it's always better to have a couple of extra's just in case or at least that's what I'm telling myself.  This block is a real pain in the rear.  I thought I could sew the squares of teal and Patisserie together and then cut them apart and do the same adding the purple but doing so yielded half my blocks with the green on the wrong side so I had to go back and cut them apart.  Working with tiny triangles is not my idea of perfect, but laying them out together and then pedal to the metal sewing really helped speed things through.  Then I pressed all of my little lovelies open.  They await another day to be trimmed to 4.5".

Oh trust me I would have done that already, but lifting my iron 148 times first to iron down the small two triangles and then to iron down the larger purple triangle later had my hand a bit unhappy.  What sort of iron do you have?  I have dreams of finding an elusive stainless steel sole plate on a lightweight iron.  Oh now that would be the ticket wouldn't it?

Don't Throw Those Away!

Darn, you know you did it, and now you're sorry.  You hitched up your favorite pair of perfectly broken in jeans and now they're not so perfect.  In the past you had two choices one be rid of them (oh no!) or wear them with that belt loop flapping (or hidden none to carefully under a belt) all the while you're hoping no one will notice.  Be embarrassed no more; as this is my very own tutorial that will help anyone with basic sewing machine skills fix those jeans in such a way that no one will notice your repairs.  I promise! 

The Problem:  

A loose or ripped belt loop.

The Solution:

Note in the above photo that the belt loop is still firmly attached to the top of your favorite jeans.  Please note the top of the belt loop will remain attached through this entire tutorial.  That's great, now all you need to do (read further down for dealing with belt loops that are merely a bit loose) is to clip the threads of the jeans that are still attached to the bottom part of the belt loop.  Do not use a seam ripper.  For those of you with more than rudimentary sewing abilities I'm certain you're shocked to read that, but trust me leaving those threads on the top now will allow your repairs to blend more seamlessly later.

Now that your belt loop is dangling shamefully by the top of your pants make one of these (as seen on the right).  This is a piece of corduroy about 3" long and just right about 2" wide before I sewed it in half long ways.  Note I have flipped the seam into the inside.  You can use any soft heavier weighted material such as a scrap of denim.  Just be certain it's soft as it will be settled on your waist for the lifetime of your favorite jeans.  You can make the tube longer if you want to repair multiple pairs of jeans at once or a bit shorter, but it is important to make the tube nice and long.

That is because now you're going to pin the tube into your pants.  The tube should snug up right under the waistband.  Make certain the entire hole is covered and allow most of the excess to run off to one side.  Pin the tube from the outside of the pants.  By doing this you will be able to work on the outside of the pants.  I found that the seam of my tube has more layers of fabric and thereby gives more strength so I shove it to the top as you can see thus.

Check your sewing machine - is it ready to sew?  Be sure you have at least a 90/14 needle in your sewing machine to deal with the thickness of the fabrics involved - you wont need a denim needle but you may use it if you'd like, I personally used a Universal for this job.  Select your zigzag stitch.  This is also sometimes referred to a satin stitch.  Make your stitches as wide as your machine will allow and make certain it's going to make lots of stitches per inch.  On mechanical machines just look for the stitches that look like they're intended to sew button holes.  Practice a bit on a scrap to be sure the stitches are wide and dense.  Select a thread that matches the color of the jeans.  An exact match isn't required but the bigger the hole the closer you'll want to match.  Don't worry:  Most satin stitch repairs done in this manner will not show after you have tack stitched your belt loop back down.

Slowly and carefully straddle the hole with the sewing machine needle.  Do not pull the sides together or otherwise try to chinch the hole closed as this will only cause unsightly puckers and besides with that little tube you made all your stitches will sink into nice anchoring fabric even if they do slide into the hole on one side.  Some holes can be sewn over and completely covered in one strip of sewing, but even with the dense stitches I still like to back the machine back up over all the stitches it made creating two rows of nice solid stitches. That way I can take the thread ends and tie a tiny knot in them just to be certain.  Perhaps it's silly but my repairs hold.  The above jeans were able to be fixed with that single row forward and back satin stitch, but these below required more work.  

These jeans had a bigger hole and I needed to satin stitch over it in three distinctive rows, that's perfectly okay and as long as you have a tube behind your stitches the repair will hold nicely.  Don't spend much time thinking about what they will look like when they're done because as I mentioned previously the belt loop itself covers most all of even this larger repair.

Now that you have fixed the actual hole we can move on to making everything usable and attractive again.  Select a thread that this time that matches the stitches on your jeans.  Most of the time a yellowish orange or a tan thread will work just fine.  Now you might think you need a heavy thread and a mat finish to achieve an exact match but I assure you I myself have used shiny Rayon in the top and a nice strong polyester in the bobbin with a nice rate of success.

The goal now is to stick with that zigzag stitch but make it much more narrow, something like 2.0 mm comes to mind, but just practice on your scrap fabric and look at the other loops.  The key to matching is to keep everything uniform.  Notice here that I kept that line of stitches that the belt loop had used previously to tack to the pants.  As that is still there the eye is allowed to travel over that area without thinking about it.

Before sewing smooth out  your belt loop down over the flat waist band.  Check to be certain there aren't any puckers and that the belt loop isn't going to far down or not far enough.  Keep in mind that belt loops should lay flat without pulling so that if you ever want to wear a belt it will fit properly.

When you have finished tack stitching down check the other belt loops.  Often when there is trouble with one side the other will be a little bit loose but with no actual hole to fix you can simply run a row of stitches to re-tack down the second belt loop.  For the most part if the back ones match that's fine but if you do anything to a front loop be sure to do a similar detail to the other front loop. 

The first pair of pants I fixed had a different style of belt loop in the middle so a bit of extra stitching on the second side was all these jeans needed to look wonderful again.  The second pair of jeans I tack stitched on the middle one as well.  See how well that odd shiny yellow-orange thread blended right into the jeans?

While I was at this repair I noticed the leather label had lost some of it's threads so I took that same thread from my tack stitches and adjusted my machine for a straight stitch nice an big to match.  

Now just cut that little tube back say within 1/2" of your stitches and your jeans are as good as perfect again!

Spiral... Woven

Sketch of the Striking Snake

Yesterday I worked some on the Quilt Challenge: If you were a Quilt What Would You Look Like? I think it's coming along nicely.  I drew out my plans for quilting and embellishment onto the top.  I don't think you'll be able to make them out very well, but here's some pictures all the same.

My helper showing you how the snake is curling around the red paisley.

Tiny couldn't seem to resist the top as she was bound and determined attack it.

Or Perhaps Tiny will just kill the Snake and then no one will have to worry about it.

As my center this is about 36" x 42" - okay it's really whatever the darned thing shrunk to after I washed it, as this is entirely flannel I didn't want things bleeding or shrinking unevenly.  Not to mention pre-washing flannel tightens up the weave of the cloth.


Is it dead yet?



If Tiny doesn't take it from me I'll be adding a 12" border around the outside.  The pattern I plan to used is called Entwined and can be seen here.  The center strip will be the royal blue and then the entwining fabric will be the red with the background fabric being the lightest of blue.  That will bring the quilt up to about 66"x60" which should be a nice lap size, or perhaps the quilt will want something more after the border.  For now I need more fabric.

Just for the record the snake is a metaphore for pain.

Scuffy

When I was in high school (and I'm not saying how long ago that was)....  I had an amazing teacher.  My graduating class nicknamed her Scuffy (and I'm not telling you why either).  She to this day, so I hear, teaching with a passion that one would hope to ignite even the most electronically inundated mind.  I adored her and in the history of all of my teachers she was by far my favorite. 

Today I am Scuffy, not because I inspire classrooms full of children (though hopefully I'll be doing a bit of that this November for the Great American Teach-In but more about my plans for that another day), but because I twisted my good foot so now even my normal limp is out of range and I have been sort of "scuffing" along since Tuesday. 

Let me see here, what have I been up to since blogging last?  Oh yes I made a wall hanging, it's a little thing barely bigger than 1' square, but I hope the person I made it for will like it.  All I have left to do with that is make and add the binding.  Who would have thought it would take so much work to talk myself into making a yard and a half of binding?  Good Grief.  Do you have times like that?  It seems like such a paint to get everything out for such a little thing.  Perhaps I'd be quicker if I commited myself to making the binding for something else too...  Hmmm, like maybe the Patisserie Quilt...

People that work all the time amaze me.  Sometimes I just want to curl up with a book, or something else quiet.  Like now, the only noise in the room is the slight hum of the computer and the click of the keys.  I love that peace and tranquility.  I'm certain a love of things quiet comes from parenthood as I didn't care one way or the other for it growing up.  Shoot in those days I could read through just about anything.  Hu, I guess I still can; as when I was sick over the weekend I was reading on the couch while my daughter watched Sponge-bob, what is it with that show anyway?  DH and I used to comment that simply having it on makes our IQs drop.  These days it must have plummeted low enough for us to stop mentioning it.  Perhaps it's like a big mess that you hope will go away if you ignore it. 

Does anyone know how to make a Giant Spiral?  I need one, something like 8"-10" out to about 30", well I'm off to go see what I can find on the Internet, wish me luck.

Christmas Quilt-A-Long Sick

Boohoo!  I missed the Christmas Quilt-A-Long Yesterday.  I had a terrible tension headache that kept me on the couch with my head nearly inverted as it was the only way to keep my head from giving me to much grief.  The good news of course is that I had things I'd planned to do, so now I'll be needing a rain-check day.  So be sure to look for that in the next week or so.

On a better note, while feeling depleted I am in fact feeling quite improved, so though I'll be taking it easy for now hopefully I'll be feeling like myself soon (good thing too as the floor is begging to be cleaned). 

No worries about my dd, she enjoyed going from sitting on me to playing all of her favorite games on the computer so my day of rest didn't bother her in the least.

Quilt Basting Day

Basting Day Quilt Pile

Today I had that Quilt Basting Day I was looking forward to.  First I basted the Practice Freemotion Quilt for the freemotion quilt along and then the Denim Patchwork - I decided this one wont be puffy patches, but I'm not entirely certain how I will quilt it perhaps a simple trace of some of the flannel butterflies on the backing - only time will tell, and then I used my last big piece of batting to baste the Christmas Hodgepodge Quilt.  No worries on batting though as I have enough to take care of that Christmas Wall Hanging I mentioned here as well as a second secret project that I'll be working on next Saturday as part of Sue's Christmas Quilt-a-Long and sadly even though that should be wrapped up quickly you wont be hearing another word about it until Christmas.

The Christmas Hodgepodge Quilt is a really pretty quilt, I ran out of basting spray so it is the only one that is pin basted.  I found myself a bit startled by it as I was basting it and again now that it's puffy with batting.  I have high hopes for the finished quilt on that one.  While I have every intention on filling it with freemotion quilting I think I will make some aspect marks for things like the large snowflakes and so on.

Sunny Asleep on Kitty Kamp Pattern

When I was in college I took more than a couple of art classes, the first of which had a through if overly cautious first year teacher, she gave so many high quality handouts and so much sketch work that to this day I have everything from her class in a binder that I keep near my sewing machine.  So last night when five year old dd wanted to read one of my sewing books I happily let her have her pick.  Surprisingly she grabbed that old binder and out slipped a pattern given to me by my friend Vicki, some of the pages got a little mixed up and it wasn't put away so here is Sunny taking a siesta right on top of it.

She was in Labor on Labor Day

My mother hates that joke.  I can just see her cringe as more than once I have said "my mother was in Labor on Labor Day".  Now over the years she's learned to pipe up with "and I never worked harder a day in my life".  Of course she and I know that's not true as I wasn't even a big baby, unlike another child she had... 

Butterfly near the Quiet Pool

So anyway Labor Day babies pay dearly for their birthdays all through early school years.  Why?  Because  if you celebrate early - you don't get to invite your friends from school as school isn't in session yet and if you celebrate Labor Day weekend only your family can come and if you hold it a week or two late, you still end up being best friends with the family that is trying desperately to have one last family getaway before settling into the grind.

But what is great about being a Labor Day Baby is that when you start dating you can tell everyone to remember your birthday is Labor Day weekend, and then they will hit your birthday about 50% of the time.   So that's better anyway. 

Did you know there is a Tron Monorail these days?  Not really a fan of the movie, but hey I've seen it.

But this year my sister took all those less than ideal celebrations and threw them out the window with a delightful trip to Walt Disney World.  Oh yes that's what I said.  DH and I rode all the rides in the Future World of Epcot before noon, no waiting - no joke.  It was awesome.  Then my sis and I enjoyed splendid shopping all over Epcot.  We had Cloud Creams in Norway (call them cream curls, cream horns or Cloud Creams I don't care they were wonderful).  Pizza in Italy, a boat ride in Mexico, fish and chips in the UK (okay my sister had Fish 'N Chips I had Bangers and Mash), and then capped off the evening buying perfume in Canada. 

This was being written in the sky while it was just DH and I,
how sweet!

We stayed at the Polynesian which was wonderful.  I think the humidity is lower there, as it felt so nice to feel the sun's warm rays. 

The morning sun filtering through the Kukui Nut Tree imported from it's native Hawaii

I do hope that you too enjoyed your Labor Day weekend.

No Fuss Snowball Blocks

I loved working on the Snowball Blocks in my Patisserie Waltz Quilt so much that I thought I'd put together a little tutorial for you, after all I haven't posted one in a while and they are so easy you'll be wanting to make them more and more.  Not to mention you'll wonder why you didn't go ahead and make this block sooner as opposed to waiting all this time.

We're going to make a 12" snowball it will be 12.5" while we worth with it of course and will then sew in at 12.5", as a bonus we'll end up with 4 half square triangles which can be used for just about anything else (hint hint - like the back!)

Diagonal lines on HSTriangles

First cut your base fabric.  Cut it at 12.5" square.  Next you will need your corner fabrics, mine are purple.  For those cut four squares of fabric at 4.5" each.  On each of the corner blocks draw a line diagonally across the fabric from corner to corner as seen above.  Please note my corner fabric is a batik with no set top/bottom, but if yours is a standard print you should draw your line on the backside (wrong side) of the fabric and sew the two pretty sides together.

Line the entire small corner square up over one corner of the large square of fabric pretty side kissing pretty side.  Now sew right on top of the line you drew.  Do that for each corner or chain stitch for as many as you like.

Now that you have your almost snowballs.  Some people would cut off the corners fold the print down and call it a snowball block, but just one more step and you will have your bonus half square triangles.

See the second line of stitching next to the first on the blocks to the left vs. the single row of stitching on the blocks to your right?

Now adjust your sewing machine needle over to the right as far as it will go line the edge of the presser foot.  Line the presser foot edge up with the line you stitched.  Does that look like it will leave enough of a seam allowance?  If not draw an offset line 1/2" from the first line you drew.  Now sew using your last row of stitches as a guide or the second line you have drawn. 

Once you have two lines of sewing simply cut between the two lines.  Be careful while you cut the corners off not to accidentally nick any of the other blocks or any other part of the block itself. 

These already look like snowballs!

After they have been cut apart simply press them open.  Now wasn't that easy?  I know for certain you'll be seeing more Snowball Blocks in my quilts in the future.

All done!

Are you wondering what to do with those leftover half square triangles?  Simply square them to 3.5" so they will sew in at 3".  Perhaps I might end up using mine to make some Ohio Stars...

As always feel free to click on any of my images to see them larger and if you still need to see them with more detail you can click on them again when the larger image appears.