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Start To Finish #3 -Assembly

In the last progress report, on the colours of India quilt, I had cut out what I’d hoped were enough 2″ strips to make a quilt top that measures approximately 80″x 80″. Those strips were set aside, waiting to be stitched together at my annual quilt retreat.

Retreat began last Monday afternoon. I spent the first afternoon and evening working on another project, wanting to be fresh for this one. Bright and early Tuesday I got the pile of strips out and sorted them by colour. Then I started stitching them together, end to end. There was no pattern; I just tried to keep them mixed up a bit. The next step was to take this very large strip of 2″ fabric and cut it into 60 x 80″ widths. So far so good, and it moved along quickly. Here’s the pile of strips joined end to end:

Then came the tedious part. I paired up the strips and sewed them together, creating 30 strip pairs. Then those pairs were joined together, creating 15 quad strips. This continued all afternoon and into the evening. Each 80″ seam needed to be pressed. Throughout this process I resisted the urge to see how it was looking. It was all random and I just crossed my fingers and hoped that I wouldn’t end up with 20 pieces the same in one place. Here are the 30 pairs of strips:

By mid-day on Wednesday the top was assembled and I folded it up and set it aside for that evening’s show and tell. Honestly, I was afraid to look at it. The colours are bright and bold and I thought it might be garish, tacky or just plain ugly. At show and tell I explained that I’d wanted to recreate the colours of India in a quilt. It was well received and the comments were positive. Two of the gals held it up so that I could have a good look and I was thrilled. It was just as I’d hoped, only better. Here’s the completed quilt top:

On my way home, after retreat, I stopped at The Cloth Castle in Langford to look for fabric for the back of the quilt and found three perfect pieces. Better still, they were in the markdown section! I’ve got them washed and pressed and am thinking about how to put them together in a way that will complement the top.

I’m really excited to see this one coming together. It’s joyful and brings back such fond memories of our special Indian adventure.

Thanks for following. Comments are always welcome.

Retreat 2016

Start To Finish #2 – Cut It Out

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I wanted to have my big project all cut out before heading to quilt retreat next week. There are two reasons for this: 1. I don’t want to take over the shared cutting table for an extended period and 2. I knew it would take some focus, and a room full of excited, chatting quilters might not be the best scenario for that. It turns out that this was a really good decision. It took more than three hours to get everything pressed, cut and organized.

In Start To Finish #1 I had said that I’d use a mix of 2″, 4″ and 6″ strips – something I’d been pleased with in a previous quilt. In the end I cut all of the strips 2″ wide and they will be finished at 1 1/2″. Why the change? Mainly because I wanted to make sure that I had enough fabric without having lots leftover. Most of the strips are the full width of the fabric, or about 40″ wide. The quilt will be 80″, so every two strips will make one row. I kept a running tally as I cut and fortunately I had enough fabric to make 60 rows or 90″. That’s pretty long, but it gives me flexibility to move things around and swap out rows that don’t work well. Here are the cut strips. At this point it looks like an odd jumble of random and unrelated colors, but I think it will come together nicely.

Right now I’m sitting in the ferry lineup at Horseshoe Bay, about to board the 8:30 sailing to Nanaimo. From there it’s a 45 minute drive to Chemainus, where I’ll hop onto the 12:15 sailing to Thetis Island. By 2pm I’ll have my car unpacked, my bed made up, my clothes stored and my sewing station organized for four days of sewing.

As a special bonus the torrential rain and strong winds have stopped. There is blue sky and fresh snow on the mountains-a gorgeous coastal morning. What a way to start a week!

Whatcha listenin’ to?

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Music, podcasts, books – all great options in the background while I’m sewing or running. I grew up surrounded by music, mostly classical. My parents both played the piano and my dad loved listening to opera. I tried the piano, several times, and even got my Royal Conservatory of Music Grade 7 certificate, but I was just never comfortable playing in front of people. I was definitely not a natural! When we moved from Ontario to British Columbia in 2007 I donated our piano to the Conservatory to be used as a practice instrument.

In spite of, or maybe because of, my lack of musical skill, I love listening to all kinds of music. I have several playlists on my MacBook and I’m constantly updating my library with iTunes purchases. My choices include: gospel, country, oldies, movie tunes, rock and classical. Some of my current faves are: Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, The National, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. On the iPod are custom playlists with tempos for LSD – (Long, Slow, Distance) – runs and for faster runs. Truckin‘ by The Grateful Dead and Bat Out Of Hell by Meatloaf can really help the legs turn over faster, as can Lose Yourself my Eminem. Nothing like a little angry rap music to speed things up!

So, here’s one of those questions that I both love and hate. (love because it makes me stop and think, but hate because it’s so hard) If you could choose only 10 songs to listen to, what would they be? Here’s my list, in no particular order:

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel
We Shall Overcome by Pete Seeger
Lose Yourself by Eminem
You Can’t Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones
Sacrifice by Elton John
Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
This Love by Taylor Swift
Will You Be There by Michael Jackson
Messiah by Handel

Like I said, my choices are mixed! What would you have on your top ten list? Care/dare to share?

Thanks for reading.

Start To Finish #1-The Idea

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My slate is almost clean and I feel that I can comfortably start a new project. The timing is perfect as it’s just three weeks until our guild has its annual quilt retreat. I’ll post more on the retreat later, but basically, it’s four days where all we do is quilt, eat and sleep.

I like to go to retreat with my project planned and my cutting done. With 40 women, you can imagine that there’s lots of distraction; not always conducive for concentrated thinking. We will have shared cutting tables set up, but I wouldn’t want to hog one of these by cutting a whole quilt.

This post is the first in a series that will follow a quilt from idea to completion. Each post will be titled ‘Start To Finish’ and will be numbered. You will be able to go back to previous posts via the Archives.

Since visiting India in 2013, I’ve wanted to make something that reflects the colour and chaos that surrounded us. Here’s a link to the blog that I kept during that trip: Samosa Sojourn . I’ve been collecting fabrics and tossing ideas around. Yesterday I laid out the pieces that I’ve found, then I culled the ones that didn’t work. It’s a good collection that includes brights from saris and markets, greens from tea plantations and rice fields, rusts and greys from the soil and the buildings.

I’ve been having trouble deciding how to put all these fabrics together. I want there to be confusion and busyness, as that’s how India is. But, there’s also such calm and beauty – how to represent that? I thought back to an own-design quilt that I made last year. (You can see it if you click ‘Finished Projects’ on the right side of the blog, it’s called Read Between the Lines.) It uses three different strip widths – 2″, 4″ and 6″. My mix of fabrics includes several muted solids and I hope that these will add a touch of calm to the riot of colour. To spice things up a bit I’ll add some random, narrow vertical inserts. With the amount of fabric that I’ve collected I should be able to make a king-sized quilt.

What a relief to finally have a plan. Now it’s time to get the fabric washed and the strips cut out. Can I wait 21 days to get started???

Thanks for following.

Adages

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Getting back into sewing, after a long absence, has been a real joy for me. I love the opportunity to create something unique – whether it’s to wear, to use, to sell or to gift. In my past sewing life I took on many challenges. There were Halloween costumes, drapes, cushions, kids’ clothes, ski jackets, skating costumes, stuffed sheep and my wedding dress.

Quilting is a whole new ballgame for me and my limited experience has brought to mind some well-known adages. The first is “slow and steady wins the race”. I think the quilt can sense if I’m in a rush or not focussed. Bad things happen; pieces get sewn together upside down or inside out, thread breaks, pieces don’t match like they should. Of course, the more frustrated I get, the more bad things happen. This is when it’s time to simply step away from the machine and put down any sharp tools.

Another way to express the above is “haste makes waste”. A recent project is a perfect example. I thought that there was a deadline to complete a certain something. So, I wasn’t paying attention and used a product that is not meant to be sewn. Why not, you ask? Well, this product has an adhesive on it and when you try to sew through it your needle gets all gummy and the stitches skip and break and look awful. I had to restart the whole project from scratch, and the original fabric is pretty much (s)crap!

How about “you get what you pay for”. Fabric and sewing supplies are expensive. Sure, there are good deals at the big box stores, but the quality generally isn’t great. I do use these stores for some things, where I know the brand. However, for fabric, I frequent a number of small shops where the service and quality are excellent. I’ll link my faves below. I’ve discovered a wonderful thread and am gradually using up my old stock and replacing it with Superior Thread. This thread sews like a dream and the colour selection for all of their products is amazing. Yes, it costs a bit more, but it’s worth every penny. Let’s face it, making a quilt is a lot of work, you want it to stay together and look like new for a long time.

Some of my favourite haunts for fabric and thread:

Cloth Castle in Langford. Husqvarna dealer and lots of fabric, not just quilting. Second floor is clearance and mark-downs.

Snip and Stitch in Nanaimo. Husqvarna and Janome dealer with good selection of quilt fabric and helpful staff.

The Cloth Shop in Vancouver. Small shop on Granville Island. Lovely fabric, good book selection, interesting kits and friendly staff.

Fabricana in Coquitlam. A well-organized big box store with good quality fabric, great book selection and friendly staff.

Cindy’s Threadworks on Vancouver Island. Online shopping.

Thanks for reading. Now it’s time to ”make hay while the sun shines”.

Abbreviations

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Saturday is kind of a ‘wordy’ day for me as it’s the day that I tackle the cryptic crossword in the National Post. There are cryptic puzzles throughout the week, but I like the one constructed by Henry Rathvon and Emily Cox. Sometimes I can crack it in one sitting, usually I work at it throughout the week.

On the topic of words and language, I’ve been thinking about the abbreviations that have worked their way into my speech and writing. For example, in my sewing room right now I have two UFO’s, several WIP’s and I’m about to start some FMQ on one of the WIP’s! The UFO’s are UnFinished Objects. They differ from WIP’s (Works In Progress) in that they’re tucked away and haven’t seen action for several months. I really am working on the WIP’s. The FMQ,(Free Motion Quilting), will get me very close to finishing one of those projects. And, when I’m in need of supplies, I’ll check out my LQS, or Local Quilt Shop.

Abbreviations come into play in my sporty life too. Recently I signed up to race in the Ironman triathlon 70.3 race in Victoria in June. The distance is one-half of a full Ironman race, (140.6 miles), but instead of calling it a ‘half Ironman’, it is often referred to as a 70.3. Training has begun and that means it’s time to focus on my DPS, RPM and to throw in a weekly LSD run. DPS is Distance Per Stroke. Swimming is all about technique and greater DPS means fewer strokes, which equals less fatigue. RPM is for the bike and it is the number of Revolutions Per Minute the crank is turned. The LSD run has nothing to do with psychedelic drugs! Rather it’s a Long Slow Distance run, which is now 10 km, but will build to 20 km in the spring.

I love words and language. And right now I’m going to exchange today’s WIP for the cryptic crossword and a cold beer.

Bye for now.

A Grand Day

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Last night we had our final big meal of the holiday season – a beautiful standing rib roast with Yorkshire Puddings and all the trimmings. That meant today’s slate was free. I could do whatever I wanted, or I could choose to do nothing at all. The latter isn’t my style so I mixed it up a bit.

I went for a lovely run alongside the ocean, early enough that I saw only two cars. It was just 6km and maybe cancelled out 1/2 of a Yorkshire Pudding. I spent some time on the cryptic crossword and made good progress.

Then I hit my sewing room for an hour or two of stitching while our son hung a quilt rack on the wall. I’m working on a Postage Stamp Quilt, made entirely of 1 inch squares. The first 16 square inch block is now complete. It’s a perfect project to pick up whenever I feel like sewing, but don’t want to tackle something intricate or complicated.

Now it’s getting dark and it’s time to turn on the Christmas lights for the final time this season. Onwards to new adventures in 2016.