A weekend Spent Quilting

I have just completed a full weekend by myself, which I spent quilting. It was a make-or-break situation: I have to now decide whether to go ahead and try to finish this quilt top by November 10, or whether to let it drop till after then. November 11 and 12, you see, is my guild's show.

That leaves me 18 days. In that time, besides working, I need to do baking for the bake table and tea room, quilt a baby quilt, and make a sleeve for the king-size quilt that's finished.

The project I was working on has been hanging around (my neck) for some time now. Once upon a time, about 5 years ago, I taught the basics of quilting to three elementary school classes. One of the young boys in one of the classes experienced a trauma - his father passed away. He got his mother to ask me to make a quilt out of his father's clothes.

Gulp.

Not just one quilt, mind you, three. There's a little girl as well, and mommy.

Being relatively new to quilting at the time, I accepted the challenge.

That's because I had no idea how difficult it was going to be!

They were in no hurry - and just as well, because it's been five years and three moves since I started lugging around the bags and boxes of the deceased gentleman's clothing. In the meantime I've learned a fair bit more about quilting - enough to know I should have never agreed to do this project!

I have trouble making my seams line up in designer quilting cottons, where all the fabric is the same density and the same thickness.

This gentleman wore sweaters (thick ones) and tee-shirts. Jeans. He owned one pair of dress pants and one dress shirt. Everything else, absolutely everything, is stretch fabric.

Uh-oh. Time to shoot myself.

My friend D gave me two bottles of spray sizing to help with controlling the stretch. She advised me to sew a stretchy fabric next to a non-stretchy one. She also told me to cut ruthlessly, turning all those clothes into rectangles and throwing away everything else.

It was a formidable task. Not to mention depressing - every time I'd get started cutting away at the garments, I'd start thinking about the men in my life - father, husband, boyfriend, friends, cousins - and start to choke up thinking about how much I would miss them if they were gone.

So it took me a long time to get to the point of even starting to look for a pattern. At first, all I could think of was straight blocks - but it soon became apparent while I was cutting that I simply didn't have enough non-stretchy material to pair blocks up as per my friend's suggestion. At one quilt retreat, where all I brought to work on was the clothes to cut up, another pal, C, came over to look at it and said "Oh my, that is dreary!" She suggested I mix in some proper quilting fabrics with some color in them.

So that led to me thinking perhaps straight blocks with sashing all around them would work. But when I tried to picture it, it seemed still too plain, very un-quilt-like. Not artistic.

Off to the internet, then, where I finally found my pattern. It's by Janet Wickell and it's called "Turning Nines into Sevens." Well, that's what the pattern started out as - I altered it. What I liked about this pattern was the central "cross" - which I've made out of quilting cotton. This helps control the stretch. I quickly discovered I had to make the small square in the center of the cross out of quilting cotton as well, otherwise there was no way to get the seams to line up.

Instead of making small nine-patches, I cut strips the width of two squares and sewed them onto strips the width of a single square. I need eight of these for every block. I used two of the non-stretchy garment fabrics for the middle section of each nine-patch. This means that within each nine-patch I'm sewing the stretchy strip to the (relatively) non-stretch strip, then putting sashing in between each of the nine-patches.

Finally, I put sashing around all the sides: dark fabric on the top and left sides, and light fabric on the bottom and right sides. And then a second layer of sashing, in a contrasting color, with lights and darks opposite the first layer of sashing.

This is what the sashing is supposed to look like.

It takes between 40 minutes and an hour to complete one block. The thinner fabrics, like tee-shirt material, go together quickly. The thicker ones, like fabric from sweatshirts, take longer because I have to fight with them.

Every single seam I sew has to be trimmed, because even though I'm using a walking foot and have lowered the pressure, the seams distort at the beginnings and the ends. So a good deal of the time it takes to make a block is time spent trimming.

By now you're wondering how I can predict the size of the blocks, since I have to trim them constantly. Ah - it's that inner layer of sashing that saves me. I start out with strips 2 inches wide, but once they're attached to the block I trim to a standard size. This means my inner layer of sashing varies in width from block to block, even from side to side. But the finished size remains constant. After that, I add the second layer of sashing, usually without incident.

Well, I got eight blocks done this weekend. That may not sound like much, but in order to get those eight blocks I had to cut and sew hundreds of strips from the fabric, because I've got three quilts to plan for, not just the one I'm working on. I'd make three sets of strip sets, but only be able to use one. And I needed 35 blocks to make a decent-sized quilt.

Of course, it's not like when you go to a quilt store, pattern in hand, and say "I need twenty fat quarters to make this quilt." My strip sets vary in length, so I don't know how many pieces I'll get from each of them. And until I make a set, cut it, and try it in a block, I don't know how the fabric with react, how much it will stretch, or what problems it'll cause. Once I've used it in one block, I know how long it'll take me to do another from the same set, but that's about all I can predict.

I keep asking myself why I'm doing this project. I can't decide if it's karmic debt, an inability to say "no," or blatant stupidity. I'm pretty sure the young man who made the request has no idea how much work is involved, since I didn't even know myself till I got in the middle of it. His mom has no way of paying me - she's been on welfare since her husband died. And after I finally get the quilt top made, then I've got to figure out how the quilt the blessed thing!

The answer is, I don't have a clue why I'm doing it. But I do expect that, once I'm done, I'm so going to enjoy quilting with real, genuine quilting cottons - and I expect each and every seam to line up easily, by comparison with this behemoth!

Laying down tracks

I'm machine quilting a king-size quilt for my daughter, and no, I don't mean on a longarm, or even a shortarm, machine. I'm using a regular home sewing machine, and boy, is it slow going! I'm finally beginning to understand why quilters have UFOs! Since I started out quilting on a shortarm machine, I could never figure out why quilters enjoyed piecing so much more than the actual quilting.

Well, now I understand. I also understand what the fascination with wall hangings is: they're small, and they fit easily through a home machine.

Well, the quilt I'm doing is in 5-inch blocks, and my fancy quilting pattern is - straight lines, 1/4" inch on either side of the seamlines. This has the appearance, to my eyes, of train tracks. Hence the title. I've been laying down tracks on my quilt.

As I mentioned, it is slow work. Discouraging, in fact. I've developed a mantra or two to help me stay, if not enthusiastic, at least engaged in what I'm doing long enough to actually accomplish something.

"It's not an infinite set." In the mathematical sense of the word "set." The set of tracks I have to lay down - it only seems infinite!

"Quit sitting and staring at it!" I might add, in blank despair. I keep having to shake myself awake in the middle of this tedious process.

This is supposed to be a hobby - something I do for fun. But I'm failing to find the fun in this! This is just plain old hard work!

Gang aft agley

As in, the best-laid plans of mice and men. "Go oft astray," if you're not Scottish and want to know what the phrase says.

The best plans for a quilt often go astray as well, which is the subject of today's blog.

I'm making a king-size quilt for my Daughter. Against impossible odds, I managed to piece together a quilt made almost in it's entirety out of quarter-square triangles, despite never having successfully got the points to line up prior to this attempt.

They all fit as near-perfectly as any quilter could hope.

I discovered, however, to my dismay, that it's actually easier to get rows of 5-inch blocks to line up straight than it is to get three 103-inch strips to line up properly when I began to piece the back. Now I know why my friend D makes such complex backings for her quilts!

I very carefully oriented my one-way pattern so that it was in the middle of the back and would look correct from the point of view of someone lying under the quilt. It's got lots of little hearts in it, and they all point in one direction you see. This was the center strip, the sides being of a different fabric. I had intended the back to be all the one fabric, but made an error in my calculations, so I was obliged to find a complimentary fabric (the one with the hearts) since I could no longer obtain my original choice.

That was the first "gang aft agley" on this particular quilt.

Then I discovered, when I had all three strips sewn together, that the top edges were not even with each other. Big oops! In the end, I had to piece together several 5-inch widths of my one-way fabric to make a strip to go across the top.

Second "agley."

My friend D, bless her heart, came and helped me sandwich the beast. It was a labor-intensive process, since I did not have access to a king-sized table on which to perform the deed! I can describe the process, just don't ever ask me to do it by myself!

One finds and marks the center points on all 4 sides of the table. We used masking tape and a pen. Then we lay masking tape from point to point to get the cross in the middle of the table, and that found us the very center of the table. We then used a quantity of masking tape to hold a great big hatpin point-side UP at the center point.

D, being less afraid of the iron than I am, proceeded to iron a crease down the centers of the top, back, and batting. If I had attempted this, I'd still be doing it. She showed me how to hold the folded edges together and let the fabric find it's own center and fall freely, and that THAT'S the part you iron. She then marked each center with pins, forming a cross.

Then we proceeded to carefully put the center of the backing on the hatpin sticking up from the table. D, having done this before, was adept at this. We gently coaxed the backing to lie flat, making sure the creases lined up with the center points on the edges of the table.

Then we lay the batting down in the same manner, and pinned the two layers together, not just where the creases met at the table's edges, but also further away, aligning the creases.

Finally we handled the top in the same fashion, and so ended up with all three layers pinned and straight. I used my basting gun to then secure it, and one scant hour and a half after starting, we were done.

I'm still in shock. That part, at least, went without a hitch. Except for the two crossed pins I found embedded in the batting while quilting the center a couple of days ago. Since I wasn't about to take out the basting, I cut the back to get them free and darned it up again. So that would be the third "agley."

I finally began quilting this week, and got all the leaves of my "Tree of Life" pattern in the center done, and outlined the lovely giraffe that's nibbling on the leaves. This morning I went hunting for my bicycle clips so I could hold the quilt all nicely rolled up while I continued to work on the center. I was admiring it on my bed, the edges rolled up to the central medallion, the hand quilting in the leaves, when I saw the latest "agley."

To my horror, I saw the backing fabric, the one with the one-way hearts, going across the central medallion, not up and down. (For those of you who play bridge, that fabric was supposed to be going north-south, and it was in fact going east-west.

This means that a person lying under the quilt will not see the hearts lined up going down to their feet, but facing one way and going across their middle.

And the 5-inch strip at the "top" is now along one side.

For me, the project is way too far along to pull apart. I don't think I could face trying to sandwich it a second time. My poor Daughter will just have to live with an odd-looking backing fabric going the wrong way across the quilt.

Sigh.

On the Fly

Unbelievable.

In the beginning of 2005, I started quilting.

I joined a guild. I read books. I started a business.

And quilted.

I quickly discovered how difficult it is to line up all the little seamlines that are formed when piecing a quilt top.

Especially triangles. Triangles are a bitch.

So now it's about 5.5 years later, with many, many mistakes under my belt, that I have now mastered the art of the f**g triangle, getting my squares that are formed from 4 triangles to go together nicely, evenly, with seamlines neatly lined up,...

... and effortlessly.

You see, there's a TRICK to it.

Now I've seen entire tv shows devoted to the art of triangles and getting the seamlines lined up.

I've read books describing how to plan ahead and press the seamlines in opposite directions.

I've attended no fewer than three hour-long workshops devoted entirely to the art of getting the stupid seamlines on your triangles to line up when you sew them.

Imagine my astonishment this morning then, when I figured out the trick. THE trick. The one that actually works. The one that, when you take all these squares you've put together with triangles and try to sew the edges together, makes all the seamlines lie flat, with all the points meeting properly.

And why am I not surprised nobody has thought to tell this particular little secret?

Okay - picture this. You start with a square bigger than you need. Four squares, actually. I want my squares to finish at 5 inches. I cut the squares at a whopping SEVEN inches.

(No that's not the trick.)

You mark the diagonal, you sew two squares right-sides together, sewing on either side of the line, in a 1/4-inch seamline. Then you cut the squares apart and do the same for the other two squares.

This gives you four half-square triangles sewn into 2 squares.

Seasoned quilters are yawning at this point. Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don't know.

You press the seams on each square to the darker side. Nothing new here. You flip the two squares right sides together and mark the other diagonal and sew two seams, 1/4 of an inch to each side of the line. You cut them apart on the line, you press 'em open, bingo, you have two squares, each made up of 4 triangles. And then you trim them to the size you want.

Everybody who has ever attended a triangle workshop now has their eyes rolling to the back of their heads. *S N O R E .

Here comes the fun part, the part they don't tell you about. Now you have to sew these two squares together, matching those diagonal seamlines. You have two seams to traverse, four thicknesses of material in each one. If you're very, very lucky, one of these sets of seams will have been pressed in opposite directions, meaning the two halves of the fabric are lying opposite to each other, and you can sew a very flat seam indeed.

Never, ever have I heard of a trick to get both sets with their seamlines pressed in opposite directions.

Well, you heard it first here, folks.

Guess what - even if none of the seams have been pressed in opposite directions, you can still do it.

You do it there, at the machine. You physically push either the top or the bottom seam to one side.

You fudge it.

You say "f**k it - I'm sick of all this geometry - I'm just gonna sew you together and pretend I had pressed you in opposite directions. Take that!"

And you open up the side you've just sewn, and both points line up perfectly.

Want me to run you through that again?

No, you don't have to know which seamlines will be up and which seamlines will be down 60 steps in advance of putting them together. You take your two squares, and if the seams have been pressed in opposite directions, well and good, go ahead and sew.

But if they haven't been pressed in opposite directions, you pick one, you finger-press it into place, and you sew it down.

"But," you'll complain, "won't that leave the seamline of one side sewn facing one way at one end and facing the other way at the other end?"

Yes. It will.

And so what? You press it with a crick in it and get on with your quilt. We've all seen plenty of turned seams on the backs of quilts. There a small bump? Quilt it down.

By the time you've added batting and backing, it won't matter one whit which way any seam was facing.

Because your points all line up.

So there you have it. You fake it. You fudge it. You grab one end or the other and make it lie flat.

You don't tell a soul, you don't write a book, and you certainly never let on to other quilters what you did to get all those little points to line up.

Believe me, this is a professional tip!

Unbelievable!

Darning It

Not exactly about quilting this time, but about another nearly-disappeared art: darning.

Holes, snags, seams coming apart, fraying - these are all things that happen in everyday wear and tear on our garments. Sometimes the "wear and tear" is "wash and tear" - putting, say, a flimsy open-weave cotton blouse in the wash, along with jeans or some other zippered garment. In the wash, and during the spin cycle, rubbing happens, quite vigorous at times; and one's open-weave cotton blouse suddenly has developed a spot where the weave is more open than usual. Missing, in fact, several of it's cross-threads.

Darning is the fine art of replacing these cross-threads, and strengthening the area while you're at it.

Since I couldn't sleep all the way through the night tonight, I decided to get up and get darning my open-weave cotton blouse.

You're supposed to darn an area larger than the tear or hole, and you're supposed to start from one end and go to the other, but, being me, I didn't do that. I started in the middle.

See, this is basically a verticle slit in the fabric. The warp threads are all there, but no weft threads are left intact in this 1/2-inch long torn area. And, looking at it, I decided to start from the middle of the tear and stabilize it crosswise before going back to the verticles. So, I started from the middle and went to one end, then started at the top and went down to the middle.

And for now I'm quitting there. This is a very open-weave fabric. I've given a few gentle tugs in each direction, and it sure looks and feels just as stable as the rest of the fabric. So I'm experimenting with only stabilizing the cross-threads.

Another difficulty I have with darning is the notion that you're supposed to weave in and out of every single thread. So like, if you have a tear in your 300-count sheets, that means in one inch of darning you'll weave your thread in and out 300 times?! Not this darned stitcher! I have a life to live.

No, I go in and out a clump at a time. And I've learned to do this work on the back of the piece. See, the darning doesn't actually become part of the fabric, it kinda sits on one side of it - the side you work on. It shows plenty from that side. It's when you turn it over you see - or rather, don't see - your darning &/or the former hole.

Maybe if you really go in and out every single thread, it would meld more with the fabric, become this wonderful thing called "invisible weaving". But for me, close is good enough.

But I noticed something else this morning while darning my blouse. My hands kept tingling and going to sleep. I kept having to stop what I was doing to stretch out my arms till they stopped tingling. Frustrating - as this process is already time-consuming. Especially frustrating when I think of all the hand-quilting I have to do in the near future. "What's gonna happen to me," I wondered, "if I can't quilt because my hands keep losing circulation?"

And that's when I realized I am now in the age-group - demographic - market - for a propped-up magnifier.

That's right - one of those large magnifying glasses you wear on a string around your neck with little legs that prop it up perpendicular to your chest, so you can use both hands to sew at a decent distance from your face, and your arms don't have to be scrunched as tight as they can to bring the work 4 inches from your eyes.

The propped-up magnifier has always been something I thought of as belonging to a different class of sewers than me. Specifically, much older sewers.

But now, apparently, I are one.

Having been raised by my grandparents, I used to think that I'd make a great old lady, since I learned how to be one long before I learned how to be young. But now that I've got being young down pat, my body is giving up before it's time, stranding me in a world of limited mobility where there haven't been many improvements since, basically, the middle ages. Hah! No pun intended!

Maybe that will change soon, as the baby-boomers suddenly get to tingling, too. Maybe a host of technological aides will suddenly appear to help us along with our preferred pastimes. Maybe they'll invent an i-sew.

But till then, unfortunately, I will be the fat old broad with the huge magnifier on her chest, darning blouses and socks, and quilting as fast as my tingling fingers will let me.