Munchkin projects

Last week I spent a lot of time sewing for and with my son. He's working on a Women's History Month research project for his 5th grade class. Each kid was assigned a notable historical figure to learn about. The final output of the project is a "place setting" with all the items in the place setting -- the plate, cup, fork, etc. -- representing something about the famous woman. The objects are not literal representations of what you would find on a dinner table, but abstract artistic interpretations.

Munchkin's subject is Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady of the United States from 1933-1945, delegate to the United Nations, and architect of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For his "plate" Munchkin chose to sew a baby blanket to show that Eleanor was born with the courage of her convictions.

He searched for an appropriate symbol for courage, and chose the Tabono (oars), an Adinkra textile symbol from West Africa. The symbol represents confidence, strength and perseverance.

Munchkin has used a sewing machine in craft class, but this is the first time he's asked me to teach him. I put on the binding, but he did everything else, including selecting the fabrics, cutting and sewing, drawing and applying a fusible webbing template, basting the quilt sandwich, and quilting. It turned out great. I love that he chose a textile symbol, and the fact that it's from Africa reflects Eleanor Roosevelt's internationalist vision.

Last week's other project was a pillow for Munchkin to take to 5th grade science camp this week. He wanted the word "camp" and an Angry Birds pig. He loves those pigs.

I imitated one of Chawn's lettering styles.

The pig pattern is from Le Borse di Gaya via Fandom in Stitches. I enlarged the template 150% and added pieced pupils to the eyes.

And yesterday morning I sent him off to camp. I know he'll have an amazing time, and I can't wait to hear about his experience when I pick him up Friday afternoon.

Sunrise quilt

I  finished a small quilt with those improv-pieced drunkard's path units I wrote about a couple weeks ago. The arcs are set in solid white, symmetrical on one axis, and a bit off center on the other axis.

I quilted horizontal straight lines using 8 or so shades of orange, gold, and yellow. I quilted the first lines on a longarm machine, then filled in on my domestic sewing machine.

The quilting lines are darkest and densest through the center of the quilt -- about 1/8" apart. Further out the lines are spaced 1/4" to 3/8", and the thread color is paler.

The bias binding is a diagonal cross hatch print (with a snip of blue on one side of the quilt). I'm pleased with how it works with both the drunkard's path prints and the dense horizontal quilting.

The back is everyone's favorite Ikea number script print. Munchkin was a good sport taking photos all over town on this beautiful San Francisco day.

The finished size is 44" x 45". I love the play between the looseness of the improv piecing of the prints, and the precision of the circles and the horizontal quilting.

A Little Sunshine

This weekend I did some more work with improvisationally pieced curves. It's the same stack, cut and shuffle technique I used for last week's Nest blocks, except I did two iterations of cut and shuffle.

I started with a stack of yellow fat quarters, and a stack of orange. My goal was to sew some blocks of made fabric for use in upcoming projects. With about 10 gently curving seams top to bottom, the yellow blocks finished at about 17.5" x 17.5" usable fabric.

I cut the orange blocks more densely, resulting in more seams and less usable fabric. Also, I think, a busier and less pleasing effect.

I don't have plans for all of it yet, but my first projects will be some drunkards path blocks, cut on point. The inner and outer units will be paired with solid white, rather than yellow print to orange print, and I have a few layout ideas swimming around in my head. I'll let you know where it goes!

Nest

It was a pleasure to be able to sew this weekend after several weeks off. I started with a little curved improv piecing, inspired by a gorgeous quilt pieced and quilted by Sue Fox. Sue started teaching me the basics of long-arm quilting last week (more on that in a later post).

I pulled a bunch of gray prints and wovens. I was a little drab, and I decided I needed something with more punch. The technicolor Echino birds and berries fit the bill, and I added a coordinating Essex linen for good measure.

I cut and shuffled the fabrics, then sewed them together to make 10 blocks, roughly 10 inches each side.

I laid nine of the blocks out on two pieces of grey woven fabric (yarn dyed Essex linen in black, and Kaufman Carolina Chambray in black) until the arrangement pleased me.

I added some strips of light and dark gray solids and a vibrant blue Oakshott cotton that also coordinates with the bird print. The blue especially gives the composition a greater sense of movement.

Then I set the blocks using the two gray woven fabrics. The top measures approximately 48x64.

The back features one last curved improv block, set in the remaining scraps of linen and Carolina Chambray, and finished with several prints from my stash. I was going to use more of the Ikea bird print on  the right side but I think even that 8" strip is quite a lot. In the end I'll trim another 2 or 3 inches off that edge before I bind the quilt, and I hope that will be just enough.

Building Stars

Today I'm going to talk a little more about the Measuring Stars quilt -- this time about the piecing of the star and the background facets.

In my last post I mentioned that I started by making the 60-degree diamonds from mostly pink prints. I had cut a stack of 2 1/2" width-of-fabric strips almost two years ago for a project I later abandoned. But seeing that stack of fabric haunted me, and I decided to strip piece some diamonds, then follow where inspiration led. 

I strip pieced sets of 8 width-or-fabric prints in a manner similar to how you would strip piece diamonds for a lone star quilt. But here I used random strips and 60-degree angles, where a lone star requires 45-degree angles and usually a careful progression of prints.

As I pieced the strips together I offset the edges by about an inch. I trued the first angle edge by pressing and straightening the the panel as much as possible (some waviness is inevitable), aligning the ruler's 60-degree line with the center seam, and slicing off the edge.

 I sliced the diamond rows by aligning the ruler's 2 1/2" line with the cut edge, and the 60-degree line with the central seam.

To account for the waviness, I re-flattened and trued the cut edge after every two diamond strips. (I found that distortions multiplied quickly if I wasn't careful to keep the edge true.)

I ended up with a whole lot of diamonds -- far more than I used in this quilt -- and considered using more in the quilt top, with more stars in various sizes. As it turned out a little bit of pink goes a long way for me, so I opted for one star and the rest of the pink strips are waiting for another project (or two or three).

It took a little practice and a lot of careful pinning to get the diamond points to match. Once I got in the rhythm the six star sections came together pretty quickly.

The blue background made use of a very different process. For each hexagon ring I started with about sixteen somewhat wedge-shaped width-of-fabric strips, varying in width from 5" to 8" or so.

Also, for each ring, one of the strips was the light green (Kona Asparagus), and one or two of the strips were reserved from the first cut of the previous ring, and therefore contained smaller pieces of darker fabrics.

Next I sewed the strips into two panels, each approximately 44" square. In the above picture you can see a "reserved" strip in the top panel, second strip from the top.

Then it was time to press the seams, rotate the panels, and cut a new set of slightly wedge-shaped strips, about the same width as before. I pulled out two of the strips to add to the panels for the next ring, mixed with slightly lighter blues.

I finished the panel by sewing, cutting and sewing one more time, yielding a panel approximately 40" x 60", if memory serves.

I drafted large paper templates to cut triangles (for the innermost background) and wedges (for the three outer rings), using the same software I use to do architectural drafting. It would have been a much trickier puzzle to figure out without those tools.

I mentioned in the last post that I miscut the panels for the third ring, aligning the wrong edge of the paper template with the fabric grain (in fact, it's probably the panel-in-progress photographed above). It took a while to get started again and make a new panel. Most of those mis-cut pieces found a home on the back of the quilt.

Measuring Stars

The title for the quilt I finished for my guild's Stitch Modern show this month is a mouthful: Measuring Stars With a Calculator and a Ruler. The name is a reference to a song by Au Revoir Simone. I must have been in a romantic mood.

I started this quilt without a plan, making the 60-degree diamonds from a variety of mostly pink and lavender prints, then experimenting with several arrangements. The six pointed star was my favorite.

In contrast to the regularity of the diamonds, the star is set in a series of improvisationally pieced wedges that form hexagon rings around the star.

To highlight the pinwheel movement of the asymmetric star, I rotated each successive hexagon ring by 10 degrees, always keeping the dominant grain of the improvised piecing perpendicular to the outer edge of the hexagon. One of my biggest errors in making this quilt happened when I cut the wedges for the second or third ring with the grain in the wrong direction. After that, I set the quilt aside for weeks until I was ready to recreate the pieced fabric.

I was inspired to use the green bits by the light green tones in a couple of the diamond prints. I used approximately 20 different blue solids, adding lighter solids as the rings got larger. The star is set of center, also to reinforce the sense of movement.

I used three pasterns for quilting. On the central star I used an Angela Walters inspired paisley swirl in white thread. For the inermost hexagon I pebbled in midnight blue thread, leaving the green flecks unquilted. The outer hexagons are quilted in a back-and-forth curve in various shades of blue. I must confess that quilting took a long time, as more than once my quilting caught ugly puckers on the back, and the quilt sat again for weeks waiting for me to motivate myself to unpick large sections of dense quilting.

I am happy with how the quilting turned out, especially in the bit in the above photo where the three quilting patterns come together.

I'll have some more photos and descriptions soon detailing how I constructed the diamond star and the blue fields.

Geese Trails

A while back I posted photos and templates for the Trail of Geese block I designed for Monica's quilt in the Traveling Quilts round robin.

I hadn't noticed anybody using the template all these months. In fact I wondered from time to time if there was an error in the template or something. Then I saw two great examples within a couple hours and it made my day.

The first is this lyrical quilt top by Catherine Mosely. The setting is graceful, and the movement is both peaceful and compelling.

Quilt top and photo by Catherine Mosely

The second comes from the other side of the world from Kelly (blogging at jeli quilts and flickring at chunky09). The rainbow geese look so cool in the grey background. And the quilting really sings.

Cushion and photo by Kelly