Hearts Desire

Well, I couldn't resist another BOM, this one applique, so I joined Esther Aliu's "Heart's Desire". Here's a picture but please do not enlarge it or look too closely. I admit that I'm not very good at applique; my points are not pointy enough and my inner corners get a little frayed. But my intentions are good:I post it more for your information than for any intent to brag. Seriously, I need to get better at this. My technique stinks.

A small craft iron has been ordered and a bottle of Best Press procured, along with a small brush to apply starch to the turned under edges before pressing. Ms. Aliu illustrates this as the way she prepares freezer paper applique. Me, I just turned under the edges and basted them. Who knew? I'm admittedly low tech.

Since it's a mystery BOM I'm going the safe route and mostly using her colors; however, I had different hearts prepared but changed them for the ones with blue flowers because they just seemed to blend better with the blue center petals. And, by the way, that circle in the center is my addition because my points weren't going together as I wanted.

All in all, this is supposed to be a full-on applique quilt top, 74" square. This might not be a good thing, and I fully expect that it won't be finished by the end of the summer when the last installment is released. I just hope it doesn't turn into a WIP.

The dragonfly is flying!

Now that I have decided how to do the dragonfly applique, it's going fast. This is a large item, 30" x 40", and the pieces to be appliqued are large too. I sewed on six pieces last night and three today - had to stop for mundane things like laundry! I also worked on the binding for a baby quilt gift that I really must finish soon. But the key was doing it the usual way and trashing the reverse applique idea. That would have been a nightmare.

Brenda has been posting about taking an applique class. I have to admit that what her teacher told her about applique flies in the face of my experience. It would be interesting to have a teacher's input, but I usually just blunder along and figure out how I can best accomplish my goals. I have never taken any kind of quilting class. I have read a few books, but generally find my own way. The key, I think, is that I have been sewing since I was a little kid, and all my dressmaking and home dec sewing background helps. As a matter of fact, by the time I took Home Ec my freshman year in high school I was already sewing my own clothes and was bored to death the whole year. Maybe I'm not the class-taking type!

Here's a REAL applique project

I've had this kit for years, but never had the nerve to start it. The design is reverse applique, so the black fabric looks like leading on stained glass. It's 30" x 40" too, so it going to take a while. Even tracing the pattern onto freezer paper has taken the whole evening, and I'm not done yet.

Maybe I'm getting too cocky about my applique abilities. It would be simpler to applique the cut out colored shapes onto a solid piece of the black background, but I'm afraid that process would impact the resemblence to stained glass leading. My husband thinks it would ruin the effect. (Easy for him to say. He won't be sewing it!) Still, when you start cutting into the black fabric and turning it into swiss cheese while inserting the colors behind the cutouts, this thing is going to get stretchy and unstable real fast. I will have to work with very small sections, only cutting out the shape for a single area, basting the turned-back edges and reverse appliquing the single shape before proceeding. I might re-fuse new freezer paper on the back of the finished sections to stabilize them while I'm working.

I'm not sure my applique abilities are up to this, but we'll give it a try!

Neatness counts

I had a funny thought this evening, sitting here appliqueing teacups. I can't wait to receive my swap blocks because I am dying to see the reverse side of the applique! I've seen plenty of pictures of applique posted on blogs, most of it better than mine, and now I'm curious about how the reverse sides look. Do you hide your starting knots? Do you tuck in your thread tails and bury your end knots? These blocks can be done many ways, and I'm sure many will be machine appliqued, but I hope I see a few hand stitched blocks to compare.

I once knew a woman who belonged to a needlework guild. She did blackwork embroidery and, honest to goodness, the back side of the work was as neat as the front side! It was absolutely incredible. The fact that she made the back look that good was a sign of her dedication to her craft.

I've been a solitary quilter all my sewing life. I've not had the opportunity for much constructive criticism. I have given quilts to family and friends, but most of the recipients were not quilters themselves and, while they appreciated the gift and the work that went into it, they certainly did not have the technical knowledge to evaluate the quality of my piecing or quilting. (Now, when I gave a bed quilt and a lap quilt to Mom, it made me a little nervous because I knew that she knew what she was looking at!) Nonetheless, I don't get sloppy just because the people who will get the quilt wouldn't notice if the pieced corners met exactly or not.

The instructions for this block swap specify that the maker tag the blocks with name, email address, city and state. I don't know if those tags will stay with the blocks, but I hope that they do. This is an open invitation to anyone who receives my blocks to email me and give me an honest critique of my work.

One down, eleven to go

Here's block number one for the teacup block swap. I'm planning to do twelve of them, but as the deadline looms I may cut that number back. It took about three hours to do the freezer paper applique prep for the cup and plate stands (the plate circles were already prepared) and applique it all by hand. Optimist that I am, I really did not think how long these would take!

It's pretty, though. Hope someone likes it as much as I do.

One for the road

Planning for my participation in the tea cup block swap is well underway, and I have assembled a kit of fabrics, freezer paper patterns and thread to take with me next week. It's my sewing for the road. Now, when I am up alone in the evenings, I will have a project to occupy my time.

Pressing the large circles for the saucers is going swimmingly thanks to a new method I found in McCall's Quilting, April 2008. The instructions for the Fairy Rings quilt show an easier way to prep circles, and you don't have to sew a gathering thread around each one. This is one of those brilliant ideas that are so obvious when you see it. Check it out.

Teacup Block Swap and chitchat

Fat Cat Patterns has a new tea cup block swap starting that I found out about from Joan's blog. I decided to join in even though I'm mostly a solitary quilter and have been for, oh, thirty years. I don't belong to any guilds or groups, and have never done a block swap, a round robin or a mystery quilt (didn't even know what these things were until a few years ago. I just sewed!). And, it's applique, so I can keep practicing.

Slowly but surely, I'm getting happier about the concept of applique, but still wish that I could do needle turning like Mom. I have to cut out all the freezer paper patterns, fuse and baste before I am even ready to start the applique process. I'm still all about the speed! Mom just draws the shape on the fabric, snips it out, and away she goes. You don't want to know what my points and curves look like when I do that.

Synchronicity was in play again this week. I spent Sunday folding and sorting all my stash just in time to pillage through it to select fabrics for twelve teacup blocks, three pieces plus background for each. If I hadn't done all that sorting it would have been a chore, but now it was just pull down a box, pick, pick, pick, match, match, match, done. It would have been even easier if the fabric were folded on shelves like so many pictures I have seen in other blogs like Morah's and that to-die-for room from "Creating Your Perfect Quilting Space" that Joan has posted on her organizing blog. However, I have lots more small pieces than large cuts and the stacks don't stay neatly stacked. Tried it and discarded the idea. I'll stay with my big plastic boxes, although it's like weightlifting each time I rummage for a new project!

Limiting the selection to just twelve blocks is difficult. There are all those colorful pieces, fairly begging to be included! A good thing about the project is that the teacups will use up small pieces that I couldn't bring myself to throw out but weren't enough for more than a couple of pieces in a scrap quilt.

This is a good take-with-me-while-visiting project, because I can cut out three or four and pack them for my trip to Mom's next week (weather permitting - you just don't know anymore. I've driven I-75 over Jellico Mountain in the snow once too often). She turns in for the night early, really early, so I'm left sitting there alone until I can get to bed. Not criticism, she's in her 80's, she can sleep when she wants to. But she also gets up way earlier than I have been since I retired, and I can almost hear her in my sleep pacing around the kitchen waiting for me to get up. Having a sewing project will be just the ticket to fill the evenings. Turn on HGTV in the morning room and sit at the table and stitch. (FYI - I call it a morning room, but don't know what else to label it. It's a room that was a former porch off the kitchen with a dining table, couch, television and her desk. There's a real dining room, so this is like a breakfast room with extras. Thus, morning room.)

I also get to take my brother's quilt to him because they live in the same town. It's an early birthday present - very early, about 3 months, but I want to go ahead and deliver it. I'm kind of pumped about it. It's his favorite color and I haven't given them a quilt since Christmas 1992.

Oh, and, my brother-in-law seemed to be absolutely gobsmacked that I would make the red quilt for him. That's why I do this. The enjoyment of seeing someone examine a quilt I have made and marvel at all the fabrics and the patterns and the stitching. It's such a cool feeling to please a loved one so much!

Patience training through applique

I've talked about how applique is not my cup of tea. It's probably because it's not an instant gratification activity, and I am ALL about the speed. I tackle things at 90 mph, I'm stubborn and I can have an alarming lack of patience. I'm so bad about patience that during a personnel development seminar at my former employer one of the guidelines I wrote for myself was "motion does not equal progress"!

Thus, I am fully capable of careening through a project without thinking things through. It's this type of behavior that created that dog of a quilt I pictured yesterday. Luckily, it doesn't happen often. All these things were in my head when I was writing about that ugly duckling quilt. I decided I needed a project that would make me slow down.

That's when I stumbled across the "Hearts-A-Flutter" BOM from SUZGUZ Designs (http://www.suzguzdesigns.com/). The blog JulieKQuilts (juliekquilts.blogspot.com - nice work, by the way!) posted a picture of her progress on the first block, and it looked like something even the applique-averse might tackle. Aha - said I. I can't tear into this project like a house a-fire because I WON'T HAVE THE PATTERNS YET!

When I received the first email, I decided that it looked like a good design for 30's fabrics, and I already had a stack of them in my stash. I only have to buy a couple of pink fat quarters and the background fabric. This is really a trying situation for a control freak, because I don't know what the rest of the months will look like, how much fabric I need, what the final layout will be, what size it will be. Torture! But I'll just have to wait. It won't kill me.

Maybe it will.

The project I will take with me to the old age home.....

.....because it won't be done by then!!!!!!

Every traditional quilter has a Baltimore Album in some stage of completion stuck in the closet. Here's mine. I learned two things from this project: one, it will take for blessed EVER to finish, and two, I don't like applique much! You see those little gathered bluebell flowers on the heart block? I would rather eat dirt than do more of them.

Regardless, I will perservere. I may only get one block a year done, but at that rate I can use my social security money to quilt it when it's done.