Ripped and restitched

Hello everyone!  I hope you've all had a great week.  There was a lot of sunshine this week, so it was a good one for me.  The ground is even starting to dry out, if you can believe it!  Pretty soon it will be time to plant some fun things, like two different kinds of tomatoes and some geraniums. Gosh, that sounds so great, doesn't it?

Today's post is subtitled "how I learned to stop stressing and love my walking foot."  My friend Bernie over at Needle and Foot is having an event where we celebrate our quilty blunders and mistakes.  Boy, is that me! I make mistakes all the time. Points get cut off or don't match, or seams are too wide, or I go wild with the rotary cutter and cut all my pieces the wrong size.  Let's not even talk about the color errors. This week, though, in honor of Bernie's event, I decided to erase a really big mistake I made with a cute little quilt.  Here it is:

Anyone recognize this?  I made the top in 2015 and then I finally quilted it up in 2017.  It looked really nice in photos, but I have to confess that the quilting was atrocious.  I mean really bad.  Take a look:

That's just one part.  Look at this:

Tucks on the front!  I didn't even notice these at first, and only saw them after I had washed it.

I don't really know what happened here.  I can do some simple free motion stuff and have it look good, but this time the quilt kept dragging and the machine hated the thread and I hurried too much.  Also, I used the white thread on the red areas, which made everything look worse.  I really like it when the thread all blends with the fabric. I did see that the quilting didn't look too great when I was doing it, but then I thought that it would look better after I washed it.

It did not look better.  If anything, it looked worse. It got to the point where just looking at it made me sad, so I left it in the closet and did nothing with it. This is even sadder! Bernie's event was just the kick in the pants I needed to do something to fix this little quilt.

Restitched!

How do you fix quilting that bad? There's only one way-- you rip it out.  Really.  So that's what I did!

It took forever to take the stitches out (and made a crazy mess) but it was absolutely the right call.  I gave the top a new backing and batting (because the others just were not usable after all that ripping) and then pulled out the walking foot.

So much better!

It worked so great, and I feel so much better about this little quilt. There are still plenty of mistakes this time around, but I'm not going to point them out.  Instead, I'm going to enjoy the fact that I have saved this quilt and can be happy to use it again.

New backing, reused binding

I did reuse the binding, which is that fun green that I think gives the quilt a little zip.  For anyone who's curious, I did reopen the seam that finished the binding to make it easier to put on, and then I sewed the new seam at the end.  It was just a bit too long for the restitched quilt, so that was a good choice.  I meant to do a machine binding, but I stitched it to the front by mistake, so it got hand stitched to the back.

Crosshatching in the border

Some of you may be wondering why I put so much effort into a small quilt that's just going to get used on my table and isn't really very important.  All I can say is that it made me sad and I sort of felt sorry for it, plus I was really embarrassed by the poor quilting.  I should have stopped when I was quilting it the first time, but I didn't, and that was a failing on my part.  In its new form, this quilt no longer feels like failure, and isn't that the worst part about the mistakes we make?

So, that's the last chapter in the story of this little quilt! I hope the story was encouraging to some of you, or at least amusing. It's a happy ending, both for this little quilt and for me, and I could not be more pleased. Hurray for that walking foot, right?

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.  I'll be working outside until the rain comes, erasing some gardening errors out there.  There are things to be torn out and dirt to be shoveled.  This is a good thing!

Sharing at Bernie's linkup, and also at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday.

From fail to finish

Hi everyone!  Are you ready for the new and improved polar vortex?  I hear that it's coming and there is no escape.  The temps were dropping Thursday afternoon, and several people I saw were already shivery.  It would probably help if they wore coats, but hey, that's not my business.  I finally did pull out my winter coat, too.  I didn't think it had been cold enough for a "real" coat, but that wind will just go right through you.

This week I have an actual finish, one that I've salvaged from a failed attempt a few weeks ago:

This is the little quilt that I had almost given up on because of a wrinkle on the backing.  When I posted about it earlier, the general consensus in the comments was along the lines of "suck it up."  So I did, and you all were right.  I was upset over nothing, really.

One commenter, who is no-reply so I couldn't thank her personally, suggested that I make the circles gradually larger in order to finish it up and avoid more wrinkles on the back.  Genius!  That's exactly what I did.  I free-motioned the remaining circles instead of using the walking foot, and they came out a little wobbly but good enough. 

The border is quilted with a big meander that simply circles around some of the flowers in the print.  It adds just enough texture to finish it off nicely.  I also had just enough (literally one inch left over) of the blue binding in the pre-made scrap binding basket.  Sometimes those come in handy!  The binding was done on the machine in no time at all.

I was worried about this being too stiff, but after I took the photos, I tossed this in the wash and it softened up really well.  And the wrinkle that I was so worried about can barely be seen on the back!

Another little quilt in the archives!  Perhaps "suck it up" will be my motto for next year.

Hope everyone has a great weekend as we race towards Christmas.  We are going shopping for a new dining room table.  Somehow ours isn't big enough for the whole family any more.  Odd how that happens, isn't it?

Finally, an update on the Gratitude Sale--donations have raised nearly $400 for the three charities I listed!  Thanks to everyone!  There are still many nice things left, and Priority Mail means you could still have something for yourself before Christmas, so check out the tabs at the top of the page.

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Friday, and crazymom quilts.

Failed finish

Hi everyone!  Is it getting colder where you are?  It certainly was chilly here this week.  I shouldn't be surprised, though, because it's November, right?  Winter is coming, whether we want it to or not.  I'm actually looking forward to some cold and some other things about winter, but I know there will be white stuff falling from the sky soon, and I'm not looking forward to that.  I have seen how badly they clear the roads here, and it's just not pretty.

Also not pretty?  The little quilt that I wanted to be my finish for this week:

This little quilt is cute, but it counts as a fail for me, at least for now. I finished this a long time ago and chose the backing and everything. It's time for it to be completely finished! I tried two new things on this quilt and messed up both of them.  I should stick to just one new thing at a time.

It all started with this:

Yikes!  What can that possibly be?  That, my friends, is all the quilting work I've been putting off for at least the last year.  Okay, maybe a little longer.  Some of these were tops from before we moved that I never got around to, so I just folded them up and packed them away, but most are from the last year at the condo, when I had no space to actually quilt them up.  Now that there's room, I have both of my machines set up *plus* a table just to quilt on, so I thought I would spend much of the next few weeks quilting these up.  I thought I would start with the smallest ones and work my way up from there.  Great plan, right?

Here's where I went wrong--I almost always thread baste the old fashioned way.  I only use pins on tiny things where it doesn't matter that much, like mug rugs or very small wall hangings. Thread basting goes so much faster for me and works really, really well. It holds everything together nice and secure and I haven't had wrinkles in the back. But I thought I'd use pins here and just try it.  Yeah, here's what happened:

A big wrinkle!  Stitched in! There are a couple of smaller ones too. Before you ask, yes, I used a walking foot,  I smoothed everything, I checked the back all the time, and I used lots of pins.  I should not have wrinkles! What to do now?  Ripping it out seems to be the only solution, but the very thought makes me tired.

Here's my other mistake-- the spiral quilting.  It turn out looking pretty nice here, but I think I made it too close together.  It took forever and the top is very stiff. How far apart would you make your spirals?  These are about a half-inch apart, which seemed to be right for a small quilt. I was wrong about that. Again, ripping seems to be the only solution.

So, I was going to admit defeat and start on another one, doing something completely different (and more fun), but then this happened:

Siiiggghhh.  How does this even happen?  It's just completely unspooling. Time to pack it in for now.

So, that was my big fail for the week!  I did mean what I said earlier, though--I have to work my way through those tops.  Seems like a good project for the holiday period, doesn't it? We'll see how it goes!  I'm going to spend the weekend piecing together some batting and cutting some backings.  Hope you have something fun lined up!  If you have any good suggestions for my failed little quilt, let me know!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday.

Quilty experiment

Hi folks! How was your week? Hope you got tons of things done, with time left over for some stitching, and that you had lots of sunshine. We had a cold and gray week, but I did get many things done, including a really exciting thing for work. It feels great to have that done, though I'm probably going to keep on tweaking it for a little while longer. I also had some time to sew.

The big thing I accomplished this week was to quilt up the Birds in the Air quilt:

Back on the fence!

All quilted, but no binding yet.  This was quilted on the 1966 Pfaff 362, using the embroidery unit. I don't think the embroidery functions had ever really been used. Maybe tested, but not used for any length of time. Pretty sure that my mother-in-law only used it for hemming and mending, and not at all for a good 15 years. I followed the directions in the manual--and thank goodness I had that!--and oiled the heck out of it and it sewed like a dream. It took some work to get all the settings right, but I really love this machine, even if it is cast iron and a real workout to lift and move around. A cabinet would be useful, but even if I could find one I don't know where I'd put it.

Since this wasn't an heirloom quilt or anything like that, I kept playing with the settings and stitch length and such and got some really fun wavy lines:

They're all different, but I don't care. It was an experiment to play with those stitches. I think it came out fine. Lots of texture! It will get a scrappy binding, probably this weekend. That uses up all that fabric! There's a win for sure.

One side effect of working on this was that now I want to make a "real" Birds in the Air quilt. I have pictures of some floors in the Vatican that look like quilt blocks, and one of them looks like a Birds quiltin dark jewel tones. Time to break out the list again!

I only finished quilting up the one top, but I did baste three of them, including the elephant quilt and the baby quilt sampler, and started stitching the pink baby quilt. I forgot how much time the actual quilting takes! I love having a room where I can just leave it and come back to it later. The elephants also got eyes and other details:

 

Nobody wants blind elephants! I don't know how anyone else did it, but these are just satin stitches using the regular machine. I put two layers of tear-away stabilizer behind the eyes because the first attempt without it turned out really awful. I wonder if I've ever made a quilt where I didn't have to rip out something. Have you?

Finally, one of the best things to happen to me this week: 

Those are day lily shoots! (And a few really hardy weeds. What will ever get rid of those things?) They're only about an inch high, so I nearly stepped on these on my way to pin the quilt to the fence. I am so, so excited to see these, even if we will have temperatures in the teens again this weekend. There will be flowers at some point!

Hope everyone has a great weekend. I expect to have time to quilt up those other two small quilts because there will be basketball again. And more basketball. And I'm pretty sure more basketball after that. Ah, well! It's only a few weeks a year! (And, whew! Wisconsin won Thursday.) Sunday is Palm Sunday, which means Easter is right around the corner. Can the end of the tournament be far behind?

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and  Link a Finish Friday. Happy sewing!

Decisions, decisions

Well, hi there, folks! Hope you all had a great few days. I have hardly sewn a stitch! It was 70 degrees this weekend, so of course we finished up our work outside while dodging political phone calls. It was massive amounts of no fun, even though the weather was nice. Then I spent a long, long time in the library, which was productive in other ways. But I do have some sewing things planned for this week!

First, here is the Halloween hanging, all set up and ready to quilt:

Hey, if it's done by Halloween, it counts!

I laid out the blocks for RSC14, just to see how many more of each block I'll need. Here are the 9-patches:

Yes, that's the brown ruler print hanging off the edge there. Not to worry, I'm sure it will fit in just fine. I think I need 8 more blocks to finish this. I'd like to have the blocks be 5 across, with 4 in the alternate rows. I'm also thinking that I'll use the extra triangles I have to make 4 blocks that I'll put in the center. I'll probably use just a solid white for the sashing because there are so many scrap white-on-whites in here. I have a black and white print for the setting triangles, and I think I might want a multicolored polka dot fabric for the border. I could change my mind on that one, though.

And then here are the Odd Fellows:

Yeah, not the best picture, but it was so dark out when I was taking pictures at 5 pm. It just didn't work to hang them on the fence. Darned planetary tilt! And it's really hard to take pictures of big blocks!

Anyway, I seem to be missing a green. I'll have to look for that one. I decided not to make the brown block. Just not my thing. I could change my mind on that, too, though.  I think I need at least 5 more, because I want it to be at least 5 by 5. Odd Fellow's quilts are usually set without sashing for the secondary patterns to emerge, but I think I want a very small sashing to separate these blocks because the colors sometimes clash and don't really allow for those secondary patterns. It would also mean no matching, which is always good.

Thanks to everyone for their comments on the Drunkard's Path blocks. I think we all agree on the Wedding Ring layout, but I have to change the fabric. That green is just not working for me. Instead I have these:

This will be a much, much better green. The other was just too light. I essentially had two medium fabrics, which made for a really boring quilt. The only real goal I have for this week is to make some blocks and get this quilt going. If I have time, I'll also quilt up some of those projects I have basted.

Finally, because this post was full of boring pictures, enjoy this lovely fall picture from our front yard:

It was beautiful, but all those leaves are on the ground now. Ah, well.

Hope everyone gets some productive sewing time this week! Linking to Linky Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social, and also the awesome Angela at soscrappy for RSC14.

Goals are nice

Hi folks! Well, we put a lot of the garden to bed for the year this past weekend, so now it's time for me to put some quilty projects to bed too. Here is what I'll be working on for a little while this week amidst all the stress and general mayhem. I have a very hard deadline for something very important this Friday, so I may not get to everything, but its always good to have goals.

First, I want to finish (and quilt up!) the Halloween paper-pieced project. I think it would be nice to have it actually finished in October, don't you? Here is it's current state:

It needs the remaining details and then quilting. By the way, if you're considering making this, the fabric amounts listed in the pattern are greatly exaggerated. For example, the pattern called for 3/8 yard of the green, but I only used a 3 inch strip, so plan accordingly. While I was piecing this, I had to tape some sections together because they were too big to print in one piece. I used a tip from Bonnie Hunter and used "paper bandaids"

These are just labels used instead of tape. They worked great! I sewed right through them and they were easy to rip when I removed the paper.

I've also been cutting out a bunch more Drunkard's Path blocks.

I decided to keep the original green. I want to start putting some blocks together this week so I can see what they look like together. While I'm thinking of it, does anyone have a good use for the leftover "bites" that get cut out of the squares? They seem like such a waste, but they're an odd shape. Maybe I'll just stitch some of them together into circles. I hate wasting fabric!

 I also have a small pile of things to be quilted, so it's time to get a move on!

Okay, it looks like a small pile, but believe me, that will take me a while.

I also have two quilts that are all quilted and sitting here waiting for binding.

Pretty backings, aren't they? Wait until you see the quilts!

That looks like a pretty ambitious list for me for the week, so we'll see how far I can get!  

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social. Happy sewing, everyone!

One final note: I had to disable anonymous comments on the blog because of a very persistent spammer. If you want to say something but don't want to register, go ahead and email me: academicquilter AT gmail DOT com. Thanks for understanding, friends!

Quilting practice

Hello all, and welcome to the weekend! Where did this week go?

I spent most of the week outside, cleaning up in the garden, planting some annuals, and trying to get ahead of the weeds. We went from bare earth to uncontrollable jungle in about two weeks, so right now I'm afraid the weeds are winning. Those suckers have amazing survival skills to have come up again after the winter we had.

When I wasn't outside, I was working on quilting up the small pieces I had piled up. It was fun, for the most part.  The first thing you should know is that I am a total and complete amateur at this. I am constantly amazed that anything that I attempt comes out of the machine looking acceptable at all. To make sure I get a decent result, I use stencils, quarter-inch tape, quilting paper, and anything else that can help me get a decent design stitched in.  Here is the first project to show you what I mean:

This is a little quilt made out of extra half-square triangles. To get ready to quilt it, I basted it and then traced a leaf pattern into very thin quilting paper, which I pinned to the center with straight pins. I also traced a stencil in the border, which doesn't show up in the picture too well. Here's a close-up of the quilting paper:

Then it's just a matter of stitching along the lines and tearing away the paper. Here is the result:

And here is a close-up of the quilting of the same corner shown above:

 Success! I even put the binding on it. This is my happy finish for the week.

Another piece that got quilted was the bright child's quilt that I showed earlier this week.

I don't mind telling you that I went to battle with this one. I just did channel quilting on it, and if I had tried anything else I would have given up completely. It was just too big for me to comfortably handle. We wrestled, but I won! It turned out pretty well. The lines here are about an inch apart and took forever. Plus a LOT of thread. This was done with a walking foot. I drew the first line so that it was straight, but the others were done with the little spacing bar that attaches to the foot.

This one is just outline quilted:

This is from a Kim Schaefer calendar quilts pattern and has been hanging around waiting since last year. Oops. As you can see, I started to draw in some feathers to practice quilting those, but I chickened out. I probably will find a design to trace for the feathers and then quilt those in. It looks pretty good with just outlines, but I could use the practice.

The last one is partially done:

This little banner is made of orphan blocks from a quilt I started but gave up on. It was a block of the month at a shop near here a couple of years ago. I hated the fabric, so I never made the rest of the blocks and eventually gave the rest of it away. If you look closely, you can see that I just did some meandering and put in a few details on the houses. My bobbin ran out partway through the right side, so I quit for a while and will go back and finish that.

That was my quilting week! It was fun, but I am ready to get back to piecing. I plan to finish the Fiesta pinwheels quilt next week so I am looking forward to that. One more picture to send everyone into the weekend:

The irises are blooming! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Linking up with Sarah and Amanda and Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday. By the way, while you are at Sarah's blog, scroll down and look for her posting of the Tennessee block for the AMB blog tour. It's awesome!