Christmas Quilts - Part 9

I finished the second Christmas quilt this past weekend but wasn't able to post pictures of the completed quilt until now because I was without a computer. I finally got a new computer and my friend Dave was helping set it all up and need my old computer to transfer all the files over. So I have spend the last week minus a computer at home. My new computer came home last night and now I have a learning curve with the new Windows 7 system. So far it's not too bad, other than trying to find out where everything is or what they call things in the new system.

So here are the pictures of the second quilt.

I thought I was really lucky when on the first quilt the doves lined up beside the pine cone vertical sections on the back of the quilt. I wasn't expecting this to happen on the second quilt with the poinsettia sections because the spacing was somewhat different, but to my amazement, the doves still managed to line up along side the poinsettias.

Here is a closeup of the back.

The quilt is packaged up and on it's way to Plymouth MA and should arrive in about a week to it's new home. I'm looking forward to hearing what Cindy and William have to say about their belated Christmas present.

Christmas Quilts - Part 8

The Christmas quilt wedding present got completed for yesterday and my friends came over for brunch and just loved it. I was sewing on the label first thing in the morning so pretty much done in the nick of time. Here is a picture of the finished quilt and I'm very pleased with it.

What was even more amazing was the back. This was not planned in terms of how the quilting would look like on the back but when I was finished quilting the doves and looked at the back I was so pleased to see that the doves were lined up so nicely between the two rows of pine cones.

Here is a closer view of the doves on the back.

I got a couple of better shots of the snow flake quilting.

In the four patch blocks I quilted bells in the red blocks and doves in the cream coloured blocks and here are some close ups.

I also got a better shot of the trapunto cardinals. Still the dimensional effect is hard to capture with my camera.

Well now to go and work on the second Christmas quilt which unfortunately won't be finished in time for Christmas so it will be shipped between Christmas and New Years but I'm sure my friends will love it despite it being late.

If I don't get a chance to write another entry before Christmas may everyone have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Christmas Quilts - Part 7

Yes it's been awhile since I have posted something. I'm still busy with the Christmas quilts but things are taking longer than I expected. In part it is as a result of having a bad reaction to the H1N1 flu shot. I had a rare reaction to the shot and ended up with what is called extreme exhaustion that lasts on average 4 - 6 weeks. I'm on week 5 and still am feeling pretty tired. I have made an appointment to go back and see my family doctor next week to discuss if there is anything that can be done because this is getting most annoying.

Any way, I have finished the trapunto bird border and I tried to take a picture but unfortunately the days have been rather dreary here, and today was quite stormy and my camera couldn't capture the extra dimension of the birds. I will try on the weekend since we are suppose to have a sunny day, so perhaps I will have better luck.

I am now working through the snowflakes on the main squares of the quilt and I do have to say they are turning out very nice. I an using a speciality thread by Sulky called Holoshimmer. It has a very nice iridescent quality to it. It is part of their metallic threads so it's a bit finicky to work with. I'm finding that after each block I have to re-thread the machine because the thread has a funny twist to it and it develops these wonderful kinks as it unravels. Still it is worth it. Below are three samples of my snowflakes. The colour of thread that I selected has a light green cast to it and then it changes to various colours depending on how the light hits it. It sort of reminds me of some of the colours you see inside of seashells. Unfortunately my camera can't capture those colours.

I also spent about a week on and off decorating my Chirstmas tree. Normally it only takes me the weekend to do it, but with this exhuasion I could only do so much so it dragged out for a week.

Here is a close up of some of the ornaments that are on the tree. I have been collecting ornaments for many years including trying to find some from places when I go on vacations. The tree has everything on it from animals, birds, flowers, fruit, vegetables, objects and people.

Christmas Quilts - Part 6

I got the first part of the trapunto completed on the bird border and all the excess batting has been trimmed. I finished making the backing for the two Christmas quilts. The first one with the pine cone rows will be used with the cardinal border quilt. The second one with the poinsettia rows will be used with the other quilt. The red fabrics are different. The one with the pine cones is Robert Kaufman's Fusion 5573 in Lipstick while the other red is the red fabric that was part of the border fabric on the second quilt. That border ran along each selvage and the red was the remainder of the fabric.

So this week I'll be making the quilt sandwiches and will be starting on the stitch in the ditch.

Christmas Quilts - Part 5

I got the borders on the second Christmas lap quilt. I wasn't too certain how this was going to look because I didn't really like the border print when it arrived. It seemed a bit on the dull side. Interestingly enough once it was sewn on and I got the quilt up on my design wall it actually looks quilt nice. It has a completely different look and feel from the one with the cardinal border which I have included below this one for comparison. So I like both of them, for different reasons.

So now I have to get my snowflake designs figured out for the quilting in the main blocks. I'm still not sure what I'm going to quilt in the 4 patch blocks nor the border of the second quilt. Also before I actually do any quilting I will stitch in the ditch to stabilize the quilt since many of the pieces have bias cuts.

Tips and Tricks - Modified Trapunto

I finally finished the test on the modified Trapunto and I have to say I'm pleased with the results and I'm going to use this technique for the birds in the border print. For those who are interested I've taken pictures of the steps I did in making the modified Trapunto birds and will provide an explanation underneath each photo. Note you can click on each photo for a larger version.

Here you take a piece of batting and place it underneath the birds (or what ever you want to create the Trapunto effect on) and free motion stitch the outline of the birds sewing together the fabric and batting. I initially using a fine bobbin weight tread on top so it wouldn't show too much and a regular cotton thread on the bottom. The second time I did this I used an invisible thread, YLI's Wonder Invisible thread in smoke colour on top for this colour of fabric.

Here is what it looks like on the back. I pulled the top thread to the back, tied them off and trimmed them.

Next you need a good pair of embroidery scissors and you trim away the batting close to your stitching lines.

This is what it will look like when you have finished trimming. You will have to be careful when trimming that you don't cut your quilt top. It's probably best to lay the fabric on a table top and trim away the batting that way so to quilt top doesn't get in the way of the scissors.

Then you cut another piece of batting to fit the whole piece of fabric and your backing fabric, make the sandwich and then free motion quilt around the birds. Here I used a Sulky rayon is a dark red and a Superior thread Bottom Line bobbin thread in dark red for the bobbin on the cardinal, but when I first did the chickadee I still had basic cotton thread in the bobbin. On the cardinal I quilted the wing with too much detail so my next trial is to only do the outline like I did with the chickadee.

Here is what the back looks like.

Here's the details of the chickadee.

This is the second trial where I only did the outline of the cardinal's wing.

I did a third on on a light coloured fabric so that you could better see the Trapunto effect because I couldn't get a good picture to show you that it really does work. So I would say it's a success and now to start cutting pieces of batting for all my birds.

Christmas Quilts - Part 4

I finally got the border sewn on the Christmas quilt. It took much longer than I expected because of the type of border fabric I selected. It is a directional print that had a small gold border on the left hand side and a small red border with gold filigree on the right hand side. So I had to make the cardinals go around the quilt instead of having them be upright on both the right and left hand borders. With the birds going around the quilt the right hand side is the only one where the birds are upright.

In addition I barely bought enough fabric so instead of cutting all my borders to size, I just cut out the borders from the full length of the fabric and started working with them that way. The fabric had 3 rows of the cardinals, and then there were 2 rows of pine cones and 2 rows of poinsettias. Parts of those may end up being used for the back. So the two sides and the top were sewn from the full lengths of the fabric. Then the left over pieces were pieced together to make the bottom border. Amazingly I lucked out and was able to piece it in such a way that the flow of the birds was in tact.

After everything was put together the picture below is all that was left of the cardinal borders. Hardly any waste what so ever, or what a close call.

I was trying to figure out if there was a way to miter the corners so that I didn't end up with half birds, but I think the only way that could happen is if the inner quilt is sized specifically to the border and the placement of the birds or what ever other image you might have. The upper right hand corner is the only one where I succeeded in not having a part bird.

While I was working on this border an idea came to me for the quilting. I'm going to do some experiments with a modified trapunto technique that I saw and if it works I just might go for it. I'll keep you posted on the experiment and whether it works or not.

Christmas Quilts - Part 3

I was playing with the layout the blocks for the Christmas lap quilt on Tuesday and thought I had it. So I took a picture of if yesterday evening so I could make a post here and when I looked at the picture I realized that I didn't have the red and cream coloured 4 patch blocks right. Can you see what's wrong with the placement of them in this picture? (click on it for a larger version)

Did you figure it out. Well all the red blocks with gold metallic are on the left hand side of the 4 patch placement and all the non metallic red blocks are on the right hand side of the 4 patch block placement. They should have been placed so that they were alternating as in the picture below.

I've had this happen to me a couple of times when I've looked at the design wall and thought everything was good only to take a picture, look at it and see that something wasn't quite right with the placement of my blocks. I'm really glad that I take pictures of all my quilts in various stages of completeness and study them to see how things look before I start sewing. Last thing I want to be doing is sitting down to an evening with the seam ripper.

Christmas Quilts - Part 2

I've started work on the Christmas lap quilt that is a wedding present for a friend of mine who got married back in June. The wedding was announced quite quickly so there wasn't time to make a quilt then, so it became an IOU quilt and I let the bride and groom pick colour &/or theme and they decided on a Christmas quilt.

So yesterday I spent a good part of the day ironing fabric. I really wonder sometimes why I decided to take up quilting as a hobby when I really hate ironing as much as I do. I guess I'm a masochist of sorts.

Today I was cutting my fabric and I learned something new. The design of this quilt is on point which is fine when the design of the fabric is such that there is no specific direction to the prints as in the two blocks shown below.

But when you have directional prints as in the next two below, it becomes a whole other ball of wax when you go to cut the fabric, or you would end up with sideways trees and birds. I basically had to turn my fabrics on a 45 degree angle and cut the squares so that the trees and birds would be upright. So this will put a bias into the squares when I go to sew them. Fortunately all the fabric that I purchased was good quality quilting cotton and with all the weeks of practice on the Friday Block Party blocks I'm pretty confident that they will sew up without too much problem.

Christmas Quilts

A friend of mine got married in June and for their wedding present I said I'd make them a lap quilt and just to let me know if there was a colour preference and if they wanted any particular theme. Well it looks like I'm going to be making them a Christmas quilt.

I found the pattern shown below on the Hoffman site (http://www.hoffmanfabrics.com/content/content-folder.asp?FolderID=7). I like the overall design but I am going to make a few modifications to it. When I looked at the instructions I wasn't too thrilled since the person who designed it is cutting most everything into triangles and then sewing all the blocks together on the bias. This is a recipe for disaster.

My first modification is to the green and black HSTs. I'm changing them to plain square blocks but I'm going to do some fussy cutting of the four fabrics below to get a good visual composition for the blocks. Also I'm changing the size of the blocks to 6 1/2" since that is more in line with the image sizes of my fabrics. If my blocks remained at 10 1/2", which is the original size, then I would get things like part of a birds head in with a whole bird.

These are the fabrics for the 4 patch blocks, which is not the way that the blocks are made in the pattern. In the pattern the cream coloured sections are made up of 2 different cream triangles. Personally I didn't think it makes a lot of difference to the overall quilt and who wants to cut a bunch of triangles when a 4 patch block will do.

Since I had to buy a minimum of a 1/2 yard of all of these different fabrics I realized that I would have enough left over Christmas fabric to make a second Christmas quilt if I pick up some additional fabric for the border and now I have a Christmas present that will be ready for someone on my list. So here are the two fabrics that I will be using for the borders.

For the back of the wedding quilt I'm going to use a red fabric and for the second one I will see what left over Christmas bits I have and make up a scrappy back augmented with fabric from my stash. I won't likely be starting these until September given what I have on my quilting plate at the moment but I thought I'd share the wonderful fabrics that came in the mail this week.