Kaleidoscope

This is another quilt from the NQA quilt show. Did you notice that it has the circle kaleidoscope that I had been planning to make last year or maybe even earlier?

Detail shot. I think a quilt like this is way above my skill level, but I would like to try to make it to see how far I can stretch.

Another detail shot. It is turned the wrong way. I asked several vendors if they had a wedge ruler to make such a thing, and they said no.  I will have to look for one online.

I have been horrible about posting regularly lately, and am working on scheduling some posts to keep the postings more regular. And to share the so many pictures I took during the show.  I figure I can always add words to the pictures on days that I do get around to posting.

Wednesday

I took today and yesterday off work. Because people expected me to be at work, I didn't get any phone calls (except for the phone call from UPS telling me that the bank had sent me a check for $25,000 but had neglected to pay the $99 shipping and handling fee. That's a seriously heavy check.). I finally got a chance to do some cleaning. Everything isn't really spring-cleaning clean, but it does look much better than it did, and hopefully I can get into the closets and nooks and crannies a little at a time going forward.

The dryer is still under warranty. Making the appointment was incredibly easy. I might be able to get dry clothes this weekend!

I found out that the optical illusion quilt I was trying to design has already been designed in full force. Look here. It did seem strange that it hadn't been attempted before. I think I might still try to do it the way we designed it to see how we did. At least that way I can say it was inspired by the antique quilt, and not by something more modern. That ruler is mighty tempting though.

Spiderweb

Have you seen Helen's prayer flag challenge? It looks and sounds fabulous, and I am going to do it. After all, when you are working on 6 quilts, what's one more. It is small, and it will be 1/7th of what I'm working on. Each additional quilt is proportionately easier.

I made a sample of my optical illusion quilt. I made the rows the same size, because it would take up less fabric and I didn't want to take up valuable time figuring out what size to make each row. I probably should have practiced so I could figure out how I wanted to do it. I made the angles 60 degrees instead of 6 degrees, because I thought all of my rulers had that marking. Turns out that only one of them did, and it was a small one. I am pretty sure I have a bigger ruler with a 60 degree marking, but I decided I would rather not waste time looking for it, so I had to finagle the small ruler on the big ruler, and I kept having to relearn how to turn the ruler so that the angle mark was at the right place for me to cut the angle right. Hopefully that practice will make it easier on the real thing. I didn't add seam allowance, but I found out that I didn't have to.

I pressed all the rows at the end when I made the sample, and I think I will fingerpress first, or maybe I will press each row as I sew it, because it is hard to make everything turn the right way when they are such tiny pieces. Or maybe I should use a smaller iron. I didn't pin the pieces together and found out that I really didn't need to. I probably will pin once in a while just to keep the pieces straight, but I definitely won't be piecing each seam like I was originally planning.

Oh yeah, and it turns out that my sample illusion quilt looks exactly like a spider web quilt. I knew there was a word I was thinking off when I was trying to describe it, saying that it was like a bargello or trip around the world, only with trapezoids. I am going to finish off this sample and make a small wall hanging out of it. And when I am finished with it and the optical illusion quilt, I will be able to check off "make spiderweb quilt" off my to-do list, even though when I thought of a spiderweb quilt, I was thinking of making it scrappy.

Quilting Retreat

I decided to work on just in time inventory at work. I need to prepare packets for the supervisors, but if I work fast enough, I will be able to stay a step ahead of the supervisors, and have each packet ready when they are ready for it. This means I will be really busy tomorrow. It will be extra stress, because I am not used to cutting it that close. I hope my allergies give me a break.

But it also means that I can take the weekend off!

I didn't plan any of it, but it turned out to be a nice quilting retreat weekend. It rained, so I couldn't mow the lawn. And my mother has been providing regular meals, so I don't have to prepare lunches either!

I sat at the sewing machine, and sewed the rows together for the last Quilts for Kids. Since the iron is upstairs, I decided to set it aside, and figure out what else needed sewn. I added the two inner border sides on the other Quilts for Kids quilt. And then the same thing to the next one. Set those aside for pressing.

Then I started sewing strips for the sample of the optical illusion quilt. Maybe if I work it in, in between all the other quilts, the Quilt Police won't notice that I started yet another quilt. Set that aside for pressing.

I then worked on adding the revised borders for the Moldy Cheese and Crackers quilt. It isn't easy to do that one, since I already have that one sandwiched and part of it quilted, but I had already done the unsewing, so I just needed to add the borders. Each quilt wound up being a leader and ender. Is it possible to just sew assembly line? Yes it is, if you work on five quilts at a time.

I thought about making a Dear Jane block, but I thought you would have thought I have really gone off the deep end. That, and the fabric needs to be washed, and if I wash that, I would have to do the laundry!

It was good timing for the Cheese and Crackers quilt though, because it turns out that Lori is starting another quilt.

As I was pressing my parts and pieces, I also pressed the fabric for the Optical Illusion quilt. That makes 6 quilts I was working on, but I won't tell anyone if you won't.

Quilting Update

It's Friday, so I am supposed to be showing you what I've sewed this week for Sew and Tell. Stay awhile, and when you're done reading my blog, be sure to go to Amy's blog to see what other, more productive, people have been sewing.

Sorry there isn't anything finished to show you. Progress has been slow here on the High Road. I am making four Quilts for Kids. The first one is a completed top, pressed and ready for sandwiching and quilting. Two of them have the blocks all together, and are waiting for pressing and borders. The last one has the blocks done, and is waiting to be put together into a top.


Plans and ideas have been completed for the optical illusion quilt. I am going to draw this out on a large sheet of paper so I can properly determine the size of all of the rows. I could try to do it math-wise, but I am a more visual person. Then I was thinking of making a small sample, using 60 degree angles, and just a few rows, to see if there is anything else I am supposed to be thinking of that I haven't.

Waiting

Back when I was making slide shows (not that I don't make slide shows anymore, it is just that I get my best ideas when I am in the middle of a project), I imagined making a slide show showing the progress for a quilt. All the way from the inspiration stage, the fabric selection, the cutting, etc. I imagined also including the part where the quilt was resting. The calendar pages would flip while the photo of the resting quilt would appear and reappear.

I am afraid that my kaleidoscope quilt is going to be sitting in this limbo state while I go through the peak season at work. We have finished the reading project, at least my part. I had a wonderful team. We finished third grade (we were the first ones done!), then our group helped another group finish fourth grade, and then I moved to seventh grade for a couple of hours. This weekend, I will try to help another group finish yet another reading project. Then next, I move on to another project, working on fourth grade math, the same one I worked on last year.

This is not a good type of quilt, and is not in a good state to be left waiting. It is a challenging quilt, and those types of quilts are best started while the excitement is at its peak, without thinking through the pros and cons, and the difficulties that are yet to be encountered. Hopefully that same excitement will be back when I finally get a chance to really work on it.

In the meantime, I asked my mother whether she would be willing to make some frozen dinners for me. I told her she could just freeze up a portion of whatever she was eating that day. She has a key to my house, and when she brought food (yes, it comes delivered!), she even washed the dishes (by hand) and cleaned my kitchen!

Maybe I will get to press the fabric and make small progress. Then I can show the quilt with time lapse photography. The photos are going to have to go really really fast to show any progress!

Optical Illusions Quilt

Are you ready? Do you have your scratch pad and pencils ready? How about your compass and your protractor? And your calculator? And if you work anything like me, your biggest eraser? Got your thinking cap? This quilt is hand pieced and hand appliqued around 1910. This means this person cut out those million trapezoids probably with templates, and sewed them together. By hand. My brain comes up with this idea while hopped up on pain killers. It says "you know, this is just a simple checkerboard. All you have to do is strip piece some checkerboards rows, and rotary cut them at an angle and machine sew them together to make a circle. It's simple, you know like a bargello, only circular." Yep Quilt In a Day, watch out! This quilt is 85 x 85, which is way too big for me. I want a wall quilt. I can imagine my family members asking me to put it away because it is making them dizzy! When I told my friends I was making it, one of them said "you have way too much time on your hands." I am hoping that with this quilt, at least one person will say, "wow, you made that?!" in a good way. If I can have just one person say that, it will all have been worth it. LOL Yep, I'm still loopy! Here are some decisions we have made. There are originally 54 pie slices here. A circle has 360 degrees. 360 is not evenly divisible by 54, and my protractor can't measure fractions, we will pick a number smaller than 54 that is evenly divisible by 360. That's 45. 360 divided by 45 means that each arc is 8 degrees. The rows look like they are proportionately increasing. I thought of starting with 1/4 and adding a 1/4 for every row but that makes way too big a quilt. Then I tried starting with 1/4 and adding 1/8. The size is more manageable, but still kinda big. Since there is no way I am doing anything less than 1/8, I decided to lop off a few rows. So instead of 20 there will be 17. I'm going to skip row 1 so there is a hole in the middle of the quilt for an appliqued circle. I don't want all the seams meeting in the center and causing a big hump. Unless I badly mess up on the tiny pieces at the top, in which case the applique circle will be bigger! I don't know how they did the ring around that center circle. If you have any ideas, please let me know. Right now the plan is to find someone to just draw in those scallops. My math teacher, Steve, drew a pie slice at 8 degrees, with a few of the rows in the sizes I mentioned, so I can use that as a template. I will tape it on my ruler to make sure I am slicing the rows at the right angle. It looks like the rows and columns aren't proportional. So the width is long and narrow and gets shorter as time goes on. He recommended that I duplicate the size of the rows at least at the outside rows. This will also help make the quilt smaller. He gave me some formulas that I could try so that the trapezoids in last row is reasonably proportional length and width-wise. I'm not sure what is giving this optical illusion effect, so I want to try to keep it as much to the original as possible. What do you think? Do you think that the optical illusion will still work if the rows are the same size from time to time? Like maybe two rows are the same size, and then we increase the next two rows. If I can make them the same size, I might be able to add the last three rows back in. If I cover up the last three rows with my fingers, I can still see the optical illusion. Do you think I need the last three rows to show that it is a checkerboard? Or give the eye a little space to rest, although is a small border for that as well. We are working with finished sizes, and I know I need to remember to add in the seam allowance once we are done with all this planning. I think I can just add a quarter inch to each side of the pie he drew and cut that angle from the strip sets I create. I also need to figure out how much fabric to get. I did figure out that since the rows are increasing, I can only make the triangle shapes one way. You know how when you cut equilateral triangles, you turn the ruler and cut the other triangle using the cut edge of the first triangle? I can't do the opposite triangle the other way to save fabric. This means I will have enough triangles to make two quilts. We'll have to see if I am loopy enough to make two quilts when that time comes! The people at work have recommended I choose purple for a color. I like purple, so I will look for a pretty solid(ish) purple. Is there anything else I need to think about?

Math for Quilt

One of the best things about my job is that it brings people from many different walks of life together. Yesterday, I had a physical therapist "prescribe" some exercises for me to do for my back.

I have also enlisted the help of a math teacher to figure out the math of a quilt. I saw a photo in a book of a quilt that was made in 1910. It is made out of lots and lots of trapezoids, and I had to bring out my compass and my protractor. I don't remember how to use these things - I'm not so sure I really understood how to use them the first go around in school! The original quilt is 84 x 84" and I am trying to make mine smaller, more of a wall size, but that means my trapezoids are going to be teeny tiny.

I think I'll make this a truly group project and ask you to check over my work before I start cutting fabric, in case I've missed thinking of something.