Designing Quilts

Last time, I showed some layout options for the Fourth Rail quilt.  Most of my readers and I liked the first option. That one required me to make additional blocks. So I played with the first option, turning all the blocks around so that what was out is in and what was in is out.

I had a hard time seeing it the whole pattern, even with a picture, and realize that I need to make sure there is lots of contrast in the blocks in the center and the corners so the design is easier to see. I might have placed some of the blocks incorrectly, I'm not sure. The center is supposed to be "light" with rings around it.

Then Tanya said something about a spiral, which sounded really interesting, so I laid out the blocks again, this time in a spiral pattern. It doesn't really look like a spiral (unless I make additional blocks which round out the corners).  I think this is the same layout as I showed before, except for the center, but I really like this better, and I will not have to make any more blocks. To me, it looks like a three rail fence with a dark sashing.  I was hoping to be able to join these blocks without a design wall, but I think I will need to plan it out more to make sure there is enough contrast and the colors are balanced.

What do you think? Are the corners okay as is, or do you think I should make "light" rails with dark corners so the turns show better? Then they would look like concentric circles.

I am going to try seeing what it looks like when the darks in the corners are oriented next to other darks. That will make the corners bolder, but may show the spiral. Stay tuned!

In other news, I sewed some ATC holder rows together, and I am so tickled at the secondary pattern that is created! I think this will make a striking quilt even without any ATCs in them. (The dark shadows make it look badly sewn, but I just haven't pressed it yet.)

Here it looks with some ATCs in them. Looks good to me! Most of these cards have a vertical layout, but I am planning horizontal for this quilt.

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Fourth Rail Fence Progress

I have been working on a rail fence quilt as a leader / ender project, and yesterday, I pressed the blocks I had made so far. The Fourth Rail is a dark one, hence its name, and the rest are scrappy. I haven't decided on the layout for this quilt, but the dark rail will help show off the layout.

I am really happy with this is how this is turning out, and I really like being able to feed these blocks through while I am making something else. It somehow motivates me to keep quilting because I don't get to that "good stopping place" as often when I am working on these as well.

Quilt Reveal: Mighty Matchstick Mansion

In order to use up my scraps, I decided to make a rail fence quilt.  This quilt is designed to use up the scraps that were too small to fit into the rail fence quilt. These are all one and a half inch strips that are too short for the rail fence quilt.  So they are more like matchsticks really.

It took a long time to cut up the scraps for this quilt, because it is supposed to use leftovers from the rail fence quilt, named Fourth Rail.  I had to cut the scraps for Fourth Rail, and then the leftovers were used for this quilt. Sometimes I cut up a scrap of fabric and Fourth Rail used them all and there wasn't anything left big enough for this quilt, so I had to move on to the next scrap.  Also since this quilt is one block, I sewed more of Fourth Rail as a leader/ender, which meant I was making two quilts at the same time.

Some of the more astute viewers may wonder whether it is a courthouse square or a log cabin because it has elements of both.  Well, it is both. No, I take that back. It is neither. It is a mansion.

And because little matchsticks are able to make something like a mansion, they are pretty mighty. So this is a Mighty Matchstick Mansion.

It finishes at 16" x 17 1/2" and since it is bigger than a breadbox and was made in the correct time frame, I am submitting it to the Bigger Than a Breadbox Project Quilting Challenge.

Once I figured out I was early for the challenge because the deadline is noon on Sunday, not Saturday, I quilted it some more and cleaned off some of the stray threads.

I really enjoyed making this quilt, and it is very tempting to change my original plan for Fourth Rail and make it improv rather than traditional, but I am going to keep going as I have been. That has always been my biggest issue with making a long term scrap project. There are so many great ideas, it is hard to stay committed to one until it is finished.

Decisions Decisions

There are some quilts which make decision-making easy.  The next step is pretty clear, and it is easy to tell which decision is right and which decision is wrong.  This quilt is not so easy.  It wasn't difficult for me to decide I would make a rail fence and triangles for the borders. I was doubting myself because I didn't think I had enough bright colored fabric for the border until Wanda said I could make black and white border.

Then I had to decide which would be the inner border and which would be the outer border. Rails and triangles or triangles and rails?  I decided to do the rails first because the triangles looked really busy against the body of the quilt.

I doubted myself throughout the process, and the first two rails didn't inspire much confidence. It wasn't until the last border was put on that it looked like using a rail border was a good idea.

One of the decisions I had made was that I liked the black triangles against the black rails.  I like the way they merge, but this means that the white triangles, which is probably what people will see when they look at the quilt, point inwards. Which could be good because they draw attention into the quilt.

But don't most people expect the points to go outward, radiating like a star?

And will the triangles add to the quilt and make it better or is the quilt better off without the triangles?

What do you think? I was going to put the triangles all the way around so it would be easier to see the whole impact but it was windy and these pieces are not stitched together. I was worried they would blow away.

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I've Been Working On the Railroad

All the livelong day!

Okay, maybe not railroad, as much as rail fence.  There are three rail fence projects currently in progress. Yes there were two the last time I talked to you, but numbers tend to be pretty flexible here on the High Road.
 

First up is the four rails quilt which is my current scrap quilt project that I started earlier this year. I think the official name for this quilt will be Fourth Rail, sort of a play on third rail.  For the rails I am cutting 4 1/2" rails.  If the fabric is too short to cut that long, I cut them however long I can, and sew them together. The plan is to piece the short rails until they are long enough to fit, and add them into the quilt.

Next is the rail fence border I am making for the improv rail fence quilt. Here I am trying to see whether I want the rail fence as the inner or the outer border. I've decided inner border and have already started sewing. This one is actually the first priority, but I didn't want the fuzzy picture to be first on the blog.

Then, since I finished up my small quilt of the month, I have been thinking about my next small quilt of the month.  I've been thinking about making all of the quilts in this quilt pattern. The one on the right reminded me of a quilt I've been wanting to make for a while. Instead of courthouse, the idea s to make it log cabin style, and to use pieced rails instead of whole ones like this pattern does.

Turns out I have a start to this quilt already in the Fourth Rail quilt box.  So I am re-purposing some of those short rails to become my small quilt of the month.  I'm sure I will still have plenty of short rails to add to the Fourth Rail quilt, but for this month, they are diverted to this quilt. So this is my third rail fence quilt, although technically it would be called a log cabin quilt.  Like the Fourth Rail quilt, I am using whatever scraps I pick up without discrimination and letting serendipity have its way. Hopefully it will turn up some nice delights in this small quilt. This one probably won't have the wow factor the other quilt had, but maybe if I am quick enough, I can think of and make another quilt to also make that does have a wow factor.

Introducing Butterfly Wreaths and Four Rails

As you know, I have planned to work on a lot of new quilts this year - not just trying to finish WIPS and UFOs but to start as many quilts as I want.  I am not going to give myself any limits and see if I can manage to stay in control without limits. The plan is to start what I want, and when I am starting to get tired of it, turn it into a quilt and call it done, no matter how small it turns out to be. The process is more important than the product.

In order to make this new process work, though, I need to make sure I document and keep track of the quilts I have started. So here are the new quilts I have started this month.

Butterfly Wreaths is a quilt that Gayle, Cathy, and Julie are making.  They each have come up with their own name and I am hoping that the name and this picture will help me remember the layout I am choosing. It will be a scrap quilt.  I really want to use scraps and make the wreath rings really stand out, but I am really not sure how to make that work.

I enjoyed making eight HSTs at one time for Sunlight in Winter, and realized I could make these HSTs the same way. Sunlight in Winter is cut 1/8th less than a whole square, so there is no trimming needed to make it fit the squares that it goes with.  Butterfly Wreaths only uses triangles so I am cutting three 5 inch squares at a time - two of the main fabric, one light and one dark.  The main fabric is paired with each of the others (one main with the light and one main with the dark) to make 8 HSTS each and then they are put together to make the blocks. I need to remember to press to the main fabric to make the seams nest. I think those butterflies can be either dark or light, but for now, I think I am going to see how I like it with just dark butterflies.

Yes this means there will be repeat blocks, but hopefully this quilt will be big enough that it won't matter. Repeat blocks might be good to add some cohesion to the quilt. And if it gets on my nerves, I might try to combine the subunits in different combinations to have more variety.

Four Rails is a rail fence quilt designed to use up my scraps.  Like my other rail fence, it will include all fabrics with no discrimination.  I will just cut and sew when the whim strikes me to make these.  It will be a kind of leader/ender project. I am hoping it takes over like the other rail fence did. This quilt will use four rails instead of three rails like my other rail fence quilt, hence the name Four Rails.  The pieces are cut 1.5 x 4.5 so they will be squares.

My plan is to use all my fabric scraps without any regard to color.  I will take a scrap, and cut as many five inch squares out of it as I can. Once it gets too small, then I will cut as many one and a half inch strips out of it as I can, and subcut them into rail fences. Once that is done, they go into the trash.

For my trash and snippet quilts, silly. You didn't think I will actually throw them away, did you?

 Today, I appreciate snow that makes everything pretty but isn't slippery.

Improv triangles

I have been cutting and sewing improv triangles for a border of the rail fence quilt. I am thoroughly enjoying the process.

Today, I am appreciating the sun and the rainbow, and my sister for telling me to go outside to see it.

Yesterday, I appreciated my coworkers for their helpful advice and for showing that they have the same concerns I do.

Rail Fence Happenings

Yesterday, I promised to talk about rail fences today, so here I am!

The reason that the Cultural Fusion rail fence became sidetracked was because it needed more blocks to make the layout.  And I have misplaced the book, and because I had forgotten the size I had cut the strips to make the block.  Even if I looked for and found the book, it might not have matter, because I'm pretty sure I had altered the size.

It turns out that it was a simple matter of measuring the parts of a block that was already made and I was good to go!

The purple fabric was already out, so I must have chosen it for this quilt, and the B&W fabric was in my scrap box and in just the right amount. It was used in my improv quilt using one of Sherri Lynn's scores.

I have been sewing together all of the leftover rails end to end and I added the leftover rails of these blocks to the chain. I kept the values the same throughout the chain - all the darks in one row the lights in the other.  Since the leftovers were done, I considered different options.  It is a little hard to show since the rails were in one long chain.

 Alternating light and dark.

Alternating two rows of lights and two rows of darks. I like this better because it better emphasizes the darks and lights.

Courthouse square or log cabin  While this method intrigues me, I had already used it for the Elephant improv so I decided not to make another one of those.

I cut the pieces to one size and sewed them together. While I did reject some combinations because I didn't want big blobs of one color or fabric in any one section of the quilt, for the most part, I just combined them as I picked them up.  I think this is how the Mile a Minute quilt is created.

Here's the finished top.

The whole time I was making it, I expected it to be horizontal. But the seam allowances took quite a bit of the length, and now it is wider than it is long when you look at it this way.

I like the little raindrop or teardrop that wound up in this piece.

This is the same picture turned vertically so you don't have to turn your head.

2015 Calendar

Last year, I received a coupon to get a free calendar from Shutterfly.  I gathered a bunch of photos of my quilts and threw them together into a calendar and got it printed.

This year, I received another coupon to get a free calendar from Shutterfly.  I still haven't gotten things planned enough to make a decent planned calendar, but I thought that last year's strategy worked well, so I copied it.  I grabbed some images of quilts I have made - both finished and unfinished.

I didn't want to use the same template I used last year, because I didn't want it to look the same.  Last year's template had quotes on it, and I really liked that idea. Since the template I chose this year didn't have any quotes, I needed to find my own quotes to add to the calendar.  I chose story quote as the word to search. I was planning on finding different topics for inspirational quotes, but I liked so many that I kept with the same theme for the whole year.

Some of these story quotes are about living life, and some of them are about telling a story. I felt that both kinds are applicable to me.

I didn't include names of quilts this time. I probably should have recorded them, but I don't remember the names of all of them, and since many are unfinished, I wanted the flexibility to come up with new names.

I initially thought I had more images of finished quilts than unfinished quilts this year, but it is pretty much half and half.

I added the pictures to the month that it seemed to fit best in.  When I went to the actual page, I was pleased to see that the background color of the template worked well with all of the selected quilt images.

I especially like this purple one with this quilt, although I'm not sure why, since there is very little purple in the quilt.

If you haven't done this before, I highly recommend it.  Seeing the images of these quilts professionally printed makes me feel like a real quilter!

Most of these quilts have not been shown in last year's calendar. In fact, I think there is only one repeat. It is purely accidental; if I had remembered it was on last year's, I would have used a different image.

I had to take the pictures at an angle this year, so you can't see the calendar at its best.  Trust me that it is a high quality calendar and it makes my quilts look very good.

Improv Quilt Reveal

Sherri Lynn Wood's book The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Guide to Creating, Quilting, and Living Courageously is available for pre-order on Amazon.  It officially comes out March 17, 2015.  What this means is that I can now reveal the improv quilt I made earlier this year. Forgive the photo heavy post. I've had a lot of time to take pictures of this quilt!

As I said earlier, I was one of the testers of one of the patterns in this book.  My quilt didn't make it in the book unfortunately, but I appreciated the opportunity to participate. This quilt was all about rhythm.  The score of this quilt is rhythm. I kept my palette very simple with just black and white. I wanted an accent color. I was debating between red and green, but my daughter recommended purple, and so I went with that. I think it was the best choice.

We were to make striped fabric by cutting the fabric into strips free form and then make a quilt out of it.  I deliberately kept my strips from being too straight, not that I would have been able to cut straight lines without a ruler.

I cut the strips in half so I could get variety in mixing and matching.  Then, I sewed them together into stripes of five fabrics.  I made some deliberately dark, some deliberately light, and some medium. I think I had five or six rows.

 I cut them into squares.

 Then I cut them in half to make half square triangles.

I mixed and matched the HSTs so that the would meet at an angle and look like L's.  I sewed them together and stacked them up.

I tried to keep it improv, so I didn't do too much arranging, but I did put them on the design floor to see how it looked. Also since I used the floor in a room that did not have the sewing machine, I was able to keep it improv and free form. I sewed blocks together to make rows.  Sometimes I would have to add more fabric to get the blocks to fit together since they turned out to be different sizes.

After I had all the rows together, I had to try to make the rows fit.  This meant I added more fabric where there were empty spaces.  I wanted a bigger quilt, so I tried to add more than trim away to get them to become the right size.

Zeus helped make sure the quilt didn't escape while I was working on it.

After all the rows were joined, I had to add nips and tucks where the quilt was lumpy.  I did this several times, putting the quilt on the floor to make sure it was as flat as it could be.

Squaring up the quilt was the hardest part, since there wasn't a single line that was straight that I could use. But I folded the quilt and cut to the smallest space, but sometimes I added more fabric to help make the difference.  I quilted it with straight lines using a squiggly stitch my machine provided.

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Shasta Matova

As you can see, most of the quilt is composed of half square triangles that were joined at an angle to form a box shape.  There is one nine patch, and two blocks that were joined straight together instead of being made into a box shape.  I did this deliberately for an added improv touch.

I like almost everything about this quilt. It isn't conventionally pretty, but I like it.  The dark spot on the bottom right (second to bottom row) where the nine patch and the maverick block run together bothers me sometimes, but they do add to the improv look of it.

1 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

My sister and I took a couple of my quilts to photograph on some construction equipment.  Now I can finally show these to you. Which one is your favorite quilt walk photo?

2 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

3 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

4 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

5 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

6 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

7 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

8 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

9 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

10 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

11 Improv Quilt

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12 Improv Quilt

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Shasta Matova

I hope you enjoyed seeing this quilt reveal. I have waited anxiously to show it to you.