Monday, September 30, 2019

Seiring Family Genealogy Scrapbook

[picture heavy post - I made the photos smaller for easier loading. You can click to enlarge them.]


In May, I had shown you my progress on my Seiring family genealogy book, but just realized I had never shown you the completed book.  For such a book, "completed" is misleading because I always reserve the right to add some other embellishment, quote, or document.


The cover is the stitchery kit that I found at the thrift store and took as handwork during several out of state trips. I added a batting in the back and it makes for a nice soft cover. There is also cardboard in the layers, so it is also sturdy. I used a cardboard box as the base, so I didn't have to join the cardboard together.


This book features one ancestral couple, John and Anna Hahn Seiring. The name is also spelled Siering. Like the Priest family book, I took 12x12 sheets of scrapbook paper and folded them in fourths and sewed up sides to form pockets. There are four signatures, two scrapbook sheets per signature. It is very important to have a very big spine to accommodate all the bulk in the pockets.


Each of the pockets has documents about the couple - birth records, immigration record, census printouts, marriage records, plat map of the property, tombstone photos, etc. This way, the viewer can uncover the facts one at a time, just like the genealogist does.


In the Priest book, I added the year on the back of each record in the pocket.  This time, I added a tab that had the year of the record to make it easier to pull out of the pocket and keep track of the passage of time.  I really like these tabs and plan to do that on all the future books.

In the photo above, the back of the front cover has a fabric pocket embellished with trim at the opening. A tag with a bead dangle is inside the pocket.There is also an ancestor chart in that pocket so that the viewer can figure out their relationship to the couple.


For this book, I did not include a lot of genealogy information on the pages themselves, although there are maps and information about the town and their occupation. This makes the pages more flexible in what documents are put in each pocket. There is generally a pocket for each 10 year period, but they can be rearranged if there too many or too few documents in a particular 10 year period.


On the rest of the pages, I included pictures about the occupation (farmer), location of the couple  (Deerfield, Michigan), quotes about family or family history, and random bits of fabric and whatever else I felt would add some interest to the pages.


I did not worry about trying to make the decorations period specific.  Although that would be nice, since all of the couples are of the same generation (great-great grandparents), I wanted to have some variety in my choices of embellishments.


I started making the book before March of 2019. 
The tab on the left is made out of a scrap of jeans and trimmings of a latch-hook project.The butterfly on the bottom right is a dimensional sticker. I used a wooden button in the Priest book.


I didn't record the finish, but I stopped adding to it more than two months ago.


The map above is glued on three sides to make an additional pocket.


I put washi tape at the edge of each sheet where the pocket is. It helps reinforce the edge as well as give a clue about where the pocket is on that page.


I didn't have any family pictures. I have thought about adding period photographs to a future book, if there is one, so that the viewer would be better able to place the couple in the correct historical context.


The "frame" on the right side is fabric scraps.


I didn't add a lot of other pockets or folds to this book, but there are a few. That charm square on the right is a pocket. I sewed it on before putting the book together.



I glued the thing on the right on the left and bottom so it serves as a tuck spot for the quote. It came from some junk mail and I glued some fabric on part of it.


Most of the pictures came from the internet. The one on the left is cut with the special scissors. They are pretty inexpensive when you buy a pack or get them on a back-to school sale.



The back cover is plain green plaid, and the spine is the same as the Priest book. I think it is a nice way to preserve the history in an accessible format.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Weekly Recap


I spent this week combining quilting and cleaning.  I had a couple of containers of really small scraps of fabric that are good to make the collage quilts like I showed you, but they really are fabric trash. There is no point in me saving them for collage quilts because there's always more fabric trash that can be used. I cut out these little postage stamp pieces and threw away the rest. I could have used the rest in a pillow or whatever, but decided for cleaning purposes that the trash was the best place for it.

The bigger scraps will stay in their containers as they are for now, but I will be working on scrap quilts to reduce the size and number of containers that store scraps.

I am speeding things up a bit to finally put an end to the sewing room cleanup. It is motivating to see the progress I have already made and I want to check this room off my list. Work is going to be gearing up soon and the days are getting shorter.




I decided to not make a small quilt this month so I can get the cleaning finished. I did sew the rows together on the charity quilt. Just need to do a press and add the borders to both the charity quilts.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 39

 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this week: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 234 out of 272 sessions
Success Rate: 86%




This was one of the scrap containers that got emptied. I got the idea a long time ago to put scraps in a glass jar as a decoration. It does add nice color to the room, but it is another way to collect dust and there is plenty of color with finished quilts, WIPs and supplies. I did throw away scraps once this container got full, but then recently started storing scraps again once I was making quilts that used small scraps. There were two shoe boxes of those. Now I have three empty containers and that makes me happy.

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch

Monday, September 23, 2019

Weekly Recap

 

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 38

I spent this week making the collage menagerie and writing a tutorial on how to make one. The plan was to just make a camel and have it be my small quilt of the month, but now that I have so many animals, it makes more sense for me to put them all in one quilt.


Because I have been cleaning the sewing room, I have been resisting the temptation to start any new quilts or to even pick up and work on any projects I find in there.  There are lots and lots of temptations and I am afraid if I resist even once, that will be it for the cleaning.


So we will have to see if I can eek out a small and simple quilt of the month or if I have to skip it this month.

I've still been cleaning my sewing room a bit at a time.  I am still looking at each item to decide whether it deserves a place in my home, and if it does, the proper size of the container that will best fit the things I want to keep, and the best place to put it.  It is slow but it is coming along well. Right now I am working on fabric scraps.

 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this week: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 227 out of 265 sessions - Only 100 days left before the end of the year
Success Rate: 86%

I thought I wasn't doing too well this year.  After all, even if I have a perfect record for the rest of the year, I still won't be able to get to 90%,.  But it looks like I was at about 83% last year, so there has been an improvement. I will be happy about the improvement.

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch

Thursday, September 19, 2019

How to Make a Fabric Collage Quilt




In my last post, I told you that I was making another fabric collage quilt, like the llama I had made a while back. Tanya asked for step by step directions, so I will happily show you the steps I followed. I think it will show you how flexible this process can be.

What you will need:
  • Some kind of small scraps. Since I need really small pieces, I like using the fabric that is in my fabric trash can.  I used strips I had created when I trimmed up some blocks.
  • Some kind of adhesive. I used a fusible steam-a-seam2 sheet, which then requires an iron, and a glue stick.
  • Needle and thread to sew things down. With so many little pieces, you will want to do a lot of sewing, so a sewing machine will make it much easier. If you want to hand stitch, you could add a layer of tulle to help hold all those little pieces down.

 

Step One: Choose the Design


 I decided I wanted a camel to go with my llama.  I drew the camel on the side of the side of the fusible that stays on the piece until it is ready to be fused down to the base.  When you are drawing on that side, make sure that you reverse the position so that the piece will be facing the right way. The camel drawing is facing the left, and as you will see later on the post, the camel will face right on the quilt.

This photo is obviously a recreation. The actual fusible sheet is bigger than a sheet of copier paper. If you want to save fusible, you may want to place the shape in a corner of the sheet instead of the middle.

 

Step Two: Place the Fabric Scraps on the Fusible



I didn't take a picture of the whole sheet, but I think it will be easy enough to figure out with the words. Take the paper off from one side of the fusible and set it aside. This is the paper that does not have the drawing on it. Lay the paper on a table fusible side up as you want the fabric to stick to the glue side. If possible, working on the ironing board would be best since you won't then have to move it to the ironing board.   You may want to tape the fusible sheet down to keep it secure, but I did not do that.

Place the fabric strips face up on the fusible. It is better to slightly overlap the fabric strips. If you have a piece that does not stick to the fusible where you want it, like places where there is too much of an overlap, you can a glue stick to add glue to the back of the fabric to stick it down. I just placed the strips down randomly, but of course, if you wanted a particular color in a particular part of the shape, you can do that as well.

Make sure there is fabric that covers the entire perimeter of the drawn area.  It is better to go slightly over so you can make a clean cut. Instead of just putting fabric on the camel shape, I covered the entire sheet of fusible.  The picture above shows the pieces I had left after the camel was cut out.

 

Step Three: Cut Out the Shape and Place it on the Background


I actually cut out the camel and placed it on the background next, but I don't have a picture of that, so I will move on to the other shapes because they show the process better. I looked at the shape of the leftover fabric and tried to imagine what animal would fit on that shape.



In this case, I placed the drawing on top of the fabric and cut out the perimeter. Since these drawings were on top of the fabric, I did not have to reverse the drawing. If I had wanted the animals to face the other way, I could have placed the drawing on the back of the fabric and then cut out the shape.




I used a pin to hold the drawing to the fabric and was able to pinch the shapes with my thumb and forefinger to hold them down and did not have any trouble. I was able to fix any fabric shifting before cutting.


 No actual cats were harmed in this process.


You can also combine pieces to make your shapes.  I made the fins with separate fabric because I wanted the fins to go in different directions.

Now it is time to bring out the iron. You now want to press the shape onto the background fabric.  Take the paper off of the fusible and position your object onto the background where you want it. You can move it if you aren't happy with the position. Once you are happy with the position, make a pressing sandwich.  Use that wax-like paper you set aside. Or if you have a pressing sheet, you can use that. Place it over the shape to protect your iron from getting any fusible glue on it. Your piece is sandwiched between the pressing sheet and the background. Press the shape with the iron according to the directions on the fusible to secure it to the background.

This tutorial is written by Shasta Matova and published at High Road Quilter on Blogspot.

Step Four: Stitch Down the Strips

 


At long last, I present a picture of the camel. It does exist!  The next step is to stitch it down. Some quilters would have insisted on pressing the background fabric until the folds were ironed out before adding and stitching the shape.

You can, of course, make a fabric collage as a background, but I decided to keep my backgrounds plain since I will be adding words.

You can add additional strips at this point if you see places where the fusible is peeking through and places where you prefer a different fabric. Also glue down any pieces that still seem loose. For the camel, there was a large piece of scrap that seemed to be too solid and I didn't think it went well with all the skinny pieces, so I added more strips on top of the original strips.  I glued them down with a glue stick to make sure they stayed in place. Make sure to maintain the integrity of the shape by keeping or trimming the new strips inside the perimeter.

I placed the batting underneath the background to do the stitching. I left off the backing which will later be secured with quilting. If you want to prevent lint, you can use felt instead of batting, or add another layer which you will cover with the backing, or if you don't mind a lot of stitching in the backing, you can just consider all the stitching to also be quilting.

I used wavy lines to stitch down the shapes because my free motion foot broke and I was too lazy to get the other one.  For my llama and elephant, I also used a combination of free motion and embroidery stitches to stitch down the fabric. If you are sewing them by hand, placing a piece of  tulle over the shape will help you secure all the pieces.

The key is to secure these little pieces so they don't fly away so the more stitching, the better.

I plan to quilt around the shape with dark thread to make them more prominent, but you can also use a zig zag or buttonhole stitch or otherwise show the outline of the shape onto the background.

 

Step Five: Add Words

 


Yes of course this step is required. Why were you expecting me to say it is optional?

The cornier the words, the better. I wrote the words on a sheet of typing paper and pinned it to the background fabric, and then sewed through the paper to trace the words using a short stitch length.  Then rip off the paper. Tweezers will help remove the rest of the paper.

You can also use a disappearing marking pen to mark the words you can stitch. If your free motion foot is not broken, it is easier to use that to trace the words instead of turning the fabric using a straight stitch.

 You can also avoid the stitching completely by using a permanent fabric pen to write the words on the fabric. Or if your machine has an alphabet, you can get the words on the quilt that way. Or embroider by hand.

I think I will hand stitch or quilt over these letters to make them more prominent.

 

Step Six: Add Other Embellishments

 


You probably figured out you can add the embellishments before the words. You can add the eyes and other details either with fused strips, quilting, embroidery, or fabric markers or fabric crayons.  You can also add other things like beads, ribbons, or other quilting scraps.






The original plan was to make a separate camel quilt, but now that I have so many figures, I am thinking about putting all of them on the same quilt. So for now, I will leave you here with "quilt as desired, finish your project your way."

Other tutorials on this blog:
Scalloped Border Tips and Tricks
 Matchstick Mansion Quilt Tutorial
11Suggestions on How to Avoid Unfinished Quilts (UFOs)

Binding Fixes
How to Make Fold Over Binding

Linked with:
ScrapHappy Saturday
What I Made On Monday

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Fabric Trash Fabric





I had to trim the blocks for the batik charity quilt to make them all the same size so they would fit better.  When I saw those little sliver trimmings, I decided that rather than throwing them into the trash, I would make new fabric out of them.  I took a fusible sheet and laid all the trimmings on them. Yes, I did have to add some of my own fabric trimmings, but my fabric trash can is pretty generous like that.


The plan was to make another animal quilt, to go with the llama and the elephant.  There are lots of scraps left so I may have to make more shapes to with it them. 

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Flip Flop Quilt


It's been a flip flop kind of a week for me, so I thought it was appropriate that I make these flip flop blocks for Stitching Sisters. It is another one of the kits I picked up when I went last time. I had originally thought I should give them a finished top and return the other kits and tell them that I got carried away, but I decided to try to make another quilt top since it is taking me so long to get one back to them.

I was expecting strips of fabric that I could strip piece and subcut them to the proper size, but they were all cut as separate pieces. The vertical strips are cut longer than required by the pattern, but instead of trimming them to fit the pattern, I will use them as they are, and just put borders on the sides and not on the top and bottom. Less work for  me. I don't think the quilts are required to be a certain size.

I had searing pain on my jaw and got a root canal. I was really happy that the dentist was able to see me the next day and take care of it right away, but when they took an x-ray at the end, it looks like he didn't go deep enough so I will have to go back in to get it redone.

Another thing that made it a flip flop kind of a week was that I called the sewing place to see if Opal was back from the spa. He said no, it wasn't there, and they just had a delivery and it wasn't in there and there weren't any Opals there. But after I asked him questions about where it was in the process and how long it would take he said that it was there and I could pick it up. When I went to pick it up, I asked him when they had gotten it, and he admitted they should have called me to let me know it was ready.

Also, I was supposed to have work for a little bit this week, so I treated myself to lunch at a restaurant after the root canal.  I know taxes and insurance would take all/most of the money but I felt I deserved lunch after that dentist visit.  I came back to find out there was no work. At least I could rest and recover.

So yeah, it has been a flip flop kind of a week, but it worked out okay and there were good things in there with the bad.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 37

I spent this week sewing the flip flop blocks and have put them in rows. I need to join the rows and add the borders on this and the previous quilt. It's been super hot and I didn't feel like pressing a quilt top.

On the cleaning front, I have removed all non craft stuff out of the craft/sewing room.  Instead of tackling the craft supplies, I decided to process all the non craft stuff and take them to their final destination before working on the craft stuff.  I did most of it as I went along, but I saved the really time-consuming stuff to do downstairs. Zeus has arthritis and although he is doing better, he does not come up the stairs anymore, and I have a box of paperwork that I need to sort through and file/recycle that I can do downstairs.
 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this week: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 221 out of 258 sessions
Success Rate: 86%


Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch
Moving it Forward

Monday, September 9, 2019

Taking the Scenic Route to Declutter Sewing Room



My sewing machine, Opal, is at the spa this week. She deserves a rest after all the work I put her through - sewing practically every day. I was waiting to find a good time to let her go, until I realized there would never be a good time to let her go.


The original plan was to sew the binding on the drunkard's path quilt and then hand stitch the binding while she was away.  If I ran out of work (haha), I could prepare more applique blocks for 1857 or another quilt.  It turns out that I didn't even sew the binding on before I had to take her in.  I thought the repair person came on Tuesdays so getting her there on Monday made the most sense, but when I got there, they said they will ship her to Detroit.  There's nothing like a spa day in Detroit.


In the meantime, I haven't made much progress on the binding.  I did choose a fabric and cut the strips.  Instead of working on applique, I decided to do some extra decluttering and housework.  I had half a can of white exterior paint. I brought it out so I could repaint the wind chimes that had fallen down before I put them back up. The can was rusty and the paint was drying out but it was still usable so I decided to use it up, straight out of the can. I ran around the house and gave anything that was already painted white a patch job - mostly the garage door which was completely repainted, but there was still paint left so the side of the house and the porch also got touch ups here and there.

I also gave my neighbor a couple of things that were in the garage. So although I am officially decluttering the sewing room, other things in the house are also getting decluttered.


15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 36

This week I selected the fabric and cut the binding for the drunkard's path quilt.  I also took photos of older quilts and showed them to you.  In addition, I have continued the declutter of the sewing room.  Although most of this time was spent on removing items that don't have to do with sewing or crafting,  I am going to take full credit for stitching this week. 

Having more space to move around and find the crafting things is preparing for stitching, and all that willpower it took to avoid working on any other project definitely deserves some credit.
 
15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 214 out of 251 sessions
Success Rate: 85%

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch


Friday, September 6, 2019

More Small Quilts


When I posted the Meet and Greet post on Tuesday, I took a sampling of my small quilts on my porch and photographed them to give a taste of the variety of quilts I make.


I store them in drawers, and I showed one drawer's worth of quilts.





The small quilts in the other drawer cried "foul!"so I have decided that they too deserve a chance to go on an outing to the porch floor and have their own blog post.


You can click on the small quilts category in the sidebar or the small quilts label at the bottom of this post to see the backstory of a lot of them.




Click on this link to see the first batch of quilts I showed  at the Meet and Greet.


 

 In other news, I went to the library the other day and found some quilting books for sale.


The sale had the perfect variety of quilt topics that interest me. The Beautiful Botanicals is my favorite.

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Drunkard Path Quilting Closeups

I am still figuring out what fabric to use for the binding of the Drunkard's Path quilt, but  Kyle and Cynthia have asked me to show the quilting of the Drunkard's Path quilt. I am happy to oblige since it will show why took me so long to do it all. 


 The quilt is composed of "rings" around a center circle, shown above. In this circle, I put ovals inside each quarter circle with a sort of ribbon candy design inside each oval.  There is a grid in the center. And outside the oval are fingers. have no idea what to call any of these quilting designs since I just doodled but hopefully the descriptions, along with the picture will make sense.


In this picture, the dark pink on the bottom is the center circle.  I put some zig zag quilting around the dark areas on both sides and surrounded the center circle with petal shapes. I continued the petal shapes all the way up the light areas.


Going out further from the center circle past the light ring is a ring of dark area.  There is a light semicircle that juts into the dark area.  I put a fan shapes in there.  In the dark area, I tried to make these S shape quilting. This was hard to do. It requires a lot of concentration as to which direction you are supposed to be going while figuring out which space needs to be filled.  It wasn't very successful in all the areas, but it is a dark area so I didn't worry too much about going the right way. This ring is the first ring I quilted, and I did each semicircle individually for the most part although I did add some overlap to blend them.

I tried to do all the dark blue areas first, then dark purple to avoid too many thread changes, but once I finished the purple, I decided to just do all the dark areas with the dark purple. Hopefully it adds some consistency to the rings.


This is the first light ring I quilted, and I decided to quilt them in one big section instead of individual blocks to treat it as a big ring. I outlined the dark areas on each side and made these big leaves. In hindsight, I should have treated each half separately - just do one side of the stem and come back to do the other side, but by the time I thought to do that, I had gone so far, I decided to keep doing it that way to be consistent.


Then there is another dark "ring".  It is only in the corners and doesn't go all the way around the quilt.  I quilted these chains on them. I enjoyed making these. I like the design and the area to quilt is much smaller and it is in the corner so it is easy to maneuver.


The final "ring" is the light corner.  I separated this into rows and doodled a design in each row. Each of the corners has these rows, but they don't have the same quilting in each row.  These rows don't go all the way up to the corner  The final quilting has more of those chains going to the corners.  I wanted to make sure I was sewing up towards the corners to keep the fabric smooth.

I trimmed the quilt to the block size for a tutorial I will prepare for you, but as you can see, it is coming up a little bit short and you can see the batting in the corner. The tutorial will show how to fix that.

I will show you the whole quilt after it is bound.