Get over it....

"Get over it
Get over it
All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it"

The Eagles

We already hung my blue abstract quilt called "Midwinter's Night." I have now gotten over the imperfections in it and have moved on.

I think when we work on a quilt we are up close and personal with it for so long we see everything that is "wrong" with it. Sometimes when I finish a quilt I am not even sure I like it. I usually need to step back from it before I find I like it.

I remember that's how I felt about "Between the Shadows" (line abstract quilt) that I made in my EB master class in 2014. Once I hung it I decided I did like it after all. It was the perfect compliment to my "Midwinter Visitor" cardinal quilt. They hang together in my entryway.

So now what do I work on? I am ready to get started on my red and white schoolhouse quilt.

I found the quilt on this blog. It was made by someone called Judy. I have not had much luck tracking down Judy to give her credit for the pattern. Initially I saw it on pinterest, but that is usually not much help. So, Judy, if you see this please contact me so I an give you credit for the beautiful pattern. What I love about it is how the houses are arranged to create the illusion of a hillside with houses on it.

My fabrics are a bit less pink. I am thinking about adding a few fabrics that are a bit more pink. I have my bleached muslin ready to go.










Since I am going to hand quilt this I am looking for batting suggestions. The last time I really did much hand quilting was back in the 90's and had to use Fairfield poly batting because that was the only batt that came in king size back then. For machine quilting I use either Warm and Natural or Quilter's dream cotton. I did try needling both of those and they seem alright. However, I was tempted to use a wool batting because I hear they are really easy to hand quilt. I am considering Quilter's dream wool since it can be washed and machine dried under cool temps. It is supposed to be easy to hand quilt. This quilt will be a wall hanging so I need to be sure that the wool will work under those circumstances.

Any suggestions for batting?

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

"Midwinter's Night'" done and lessons learned (edited)

Sometimes I feel like I have been working on this quilt for a long time.

LESSON 1:  DON'T APPLIQUE WITH KONA COTTON.

• This quilt was designed last spring in a class taught by Elizabeth Barton at AOQ. 
• Then last fall I bought the Cherrywood fabrics for it. 
• Then it turned out the black Cherrywood fabric was not black enough for contrast with the blues so I switched to Kona cotton black.
• Then I decided to hand applique the overlay shapes. Kona cotton is not easy to applique.

LESSON 2:  IT WOULD BE HELPFUL TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO QUILT A QUILT BEFORE CONSTRUCTION.

• Of course this is easier said than done.
• I had no idea how to quilt it so asked the advise of Jacquie Gering at Craftsy. She suggested crosshatching.
• Had I known that was how I was going to quilt it during construction I would have quilted it first and then added the shapes. Would have made the quilting a lot easier. Or maybe not since I have never done that before. 

LESSON 3:  I AM TOO OLD TO BLOCK A QUILT ON THE FLOOR.

• I used muscles that I had not used in a long time and was sore for days so this might be the biggest lesson I learned!
• Plus it was hard to work on getting it square while squatting, kneeling, and leaning over it on the floor.
•  I am still not sure it is!

LESSON 4: FOR A QUILT THIS LARGE THAT SEEMS REASONABLY FLAT BEFORE BLOCKING SKIP THE BLOCKING.   

• This quilt was reasonably flat. I debated about blocking it. I should have squared it up and sewed on the binding and then washed it to get glue and marking out. 
• This would not only have been easier, but probably just as accurate as what I did.

LESSON 5: IT IS NOT EASY TO FIGURE OUT IF THIS QUILT IS SQUARE OR NOT

• Yes, no, yes, no....I kept going back and forth on this.
• It was not easy to trim this quilt after blocking to make sure it was square. I hung it on the wall and at times it looks square and other times it does not. 
• The optical illusion that is created by the black shapes near the ends of sections can make it look out of square. 
• I have measured and remeasured and it is reasonably square. Maybe off by an 1/4 inch in some of the longer measurements. Surely that is not bad. It is less than 1% error! Plus sewing on binding always results in some wiggles and distortion at the corners.
• I even measured along the diagonals and they came out good so it should be square.
• Almost pulled my hair out when I saw it on the wall yesterday and it did not look straight and square! 
• Although when I photographed it and cropped it in Photoshop, it seemed pretty square.

LESSON 6: IT IS VERY HARD SQUARING UP A LARGE QUILT.

• I found this to be really difficult due to the size of this quilt. 
• Not sure I was really successful. This goes back to Lesson 5 learned above.
• I wonder how much the wood slat running through the sleeve on the back of the quilt is contributing to the appearance that the quilt is not square....
• Note: I just adjusted the position of the sleeve on the back of the quilt a little and it looks much better. In fact now it hangs flat without a slat of wood in the bottom sleeve!

LESSON 7: YOU ARE STILL GOING TO NEED A SLEEVE ON THE BOTTOM EVEN AFTER BLOCKING A QUILT THIS WIDE.  

• Yes I thought by blocking it would be flat and not wavy. That has been the case with my smaller quilts.
• It still had some wiggle. Well now that I adjusted the top sleeve it does not have much wiggle.
• So blocking was a waste of time. All that pain for nothing.

LESSON 8: MAKE A QUILT WITHOUT A BORDER

• It is much harder to square a quilt with a border. I forgot about that since I have made so many quilts without borders lately.

LESSON 9:  LET IT GO AND MOVE ON.

• The quilt came out very, very, very good, but not the "masterpiece" I thought I was making.
• Maybe I am the only one that has hopes that are too high for each quilt I make and find myself a little disappointed when it doesn't come out as wonderful as I envisioned. The least little imperfection makes me crazy.
• Accept imperfections....stop being a perfectionist.
• Move onto the next project...

Some more close up photos of the quilt.

 Thanks for reading. What lessons have you learned when making a quilt?

Chris

And now for something completely different

A while ago I was asked by a new blogging friend, Alida, to join a challenge to make an art quilt inspired by a work of art.  You may have noticed that Nina-Marie was asked as well.

I have decided to use one of my favorite paintings as the starting point for this challenge. Finally in the 1000 page book that I am reading on Van Gogh he is painting Starry Night. I am almost 80% through the book!

I changed up the colors in the sky in Photoshop and decided to overlay a power plant along a river on top of the red-orange and turquoise sky Van Gogh sky. I still have to work on the power plant overlay to make it more interesting. I know that Van Gogh loved to use complimentary colors in his paintings so I wonder if this sky would please him. Or maybe he would think I was nuts.




Of course the next question is how to create the sky and the water. I am tempted to paint them rather than doing snippets of fabric. At least I might try that first. I guess I could paint and then overlay fabric where needed.  So the challenge begins.

Another project that I am going to start is a school house quilt in red and white. I am going to hand quilt it to have something to take to quilt meetings and visits with my dad and MIL.

 I threw in some white to see how white will look with the reds. I am looking forward to making a traditional quilt and doing some hand quilting.

 I am nearly done with the quilting of my abstract blue quilt. Now the decision will be whether to face or bind it. I am leaning toward binding it in the kona cotton black because I find binding so much easier.

Binding or facing???

A close up of the cross hatch quilting. I decided to mark the lines in the border with white pencil. Marks can still be seen. You do have to fudge (adjust a little) the spacing in some spots since it never works out perfect in terms of fit. I made the spacing of the cross hatch in the borders twice that of the inside of the quilt.

Our cat seemed to think that a quilt on the floor is an invitation to lay on it and take a bath. What's a little fur on a quilt covered in batting fuzz and thread?










Thanks for reading.
Chris

Is invisible thread a cop out?

I fully planned to not use invisible thread on the blue abstract quilt. I seem to use invisible thread a lot. I picked a light medium blue to do the cross hatching in the blue "windowpane" areas and after doing a few sections decided I did not like the look. I wanted the individual blue blocks to maintain their values for the overall look of the gradations. So I ripped out the quilting and decided to use invisible thread.

Why do I feel bad about using invisible thread? Seems it is frowned upon by many, many quilters. I think a lot of quilters have a hard time with it and do not like it for that reason. I have been using it for years and love using it. I do know not to use it in a baby quilt due to the dangers of it wrapping around a small finger or toe. I use YLI's nylon invisible thread. It is what is is used by the famous machine heirloom quilter Harriet Hargrave.

So I re-quilted the first section and this is how it looks. It looks so much better than the blue thread. It adds the texture without the thread changing the color values of the blocks which I did not want to do.  As you can see my quilting is not perfect! That will not really show once this quilt is washed and blocked.  The grid quilting really makes the black overlays pop. You can see all the batting fuzz on the black fabric. Sometimes a quilt seems to get uglier before it is done being quilted.

Of course to add insult to injury most of my marks rubbed off and now I have to use painters tape to mark the lines. Here is a section taped and ready to quilt. I have to tape 4 times to get all the lines.

• Along the block diagonals one way
• Along the diagonals the other way
• In between the diagonals once way 
• In between the diagonal the other way

I decided rather than turning the quilt a billion times to hop over the black shapes and quilt along straight lines next to the tape. This is easier. Still a section takes a while to complete. At least my neck is not hurting today.

Of course I am having second thoughts about how I am quilting it and using invisible thread once again.  Although I try to tell myself that this is such a strong design that it does not matter how I quilt it as long as it does not distract from the design. But then I am the queen of second guessing....

I have been having this thread discussion with my friend Sheila aka Idaho Beauty. In fact she wrote about this in her blog today.

I used nothing but invisible thread in the quilt I made for my MIL for Christmas. I got a lot of compliments from friends in the development and no one noticed it was invisible thread.

What do you think about invisible thread? Is it a cop out?

So now the question is whether to quilt the black sections with black tread or smoke colored invisible thread...another decision... I am beginning to think my thread choice is based on my mood for the day.






Thanks for reading. Back to listening to Copland's Appalachian Spring while quilting.

Chris

Pinning and getting ready to quilt

I have to take plenty of breaks when pinning a quilt....my back, neck and shoulders protest if I do it for too long. I did not appreciate my younger body that never had aches and pains. I guess I took it for granted. I wish I had it back.

You can see the cross hatch marking on the blue blocks. I will quilt that with some shade of blue thread. The black borders will be cross hatched as well, but I will quilt that in black. The spacing of the cross hatch in the borders will be about twice the size of the spacing in the blue areas. I want to maintain the integrity of the black and the blue in the quilt. I do not want to darken the blue nor lighten the black with the quilting. If you have been following this quilt from the beginning you know how hard I worked to get the contrast between the blue and the black.


I am leaning toward the title "Midwinter's Night." Since this abstract quilt seems like you are looking through a window I thought that that might be a good title.  I thought about the blues of winter, the frost you see on a  window, and the long dark nights of winter.

Linking to Nina- Marie.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Backing fabric found

Went to the local quilt store and found the perfect backing fabric! It is one of those Cotton and Steel fabrics.

It has 2 shades of blue as well as black in it and goes really well with the fabrics in the quilt. What do you think?

The only thing I don't love is that it is directional which is more of a pain to work with when getting the quilt ready for quilting. Making sure those lines on the back run straight takes a bit more care.



Well back to doing some marking so I can start pinning.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

How did you come up with that design?

I just finished the top for my blue abstract quilt.  I have already decided how I am going to quilt it. Well at least I think I have. I need to get some backing fabric for it. Not sure if I should just go with a blue Cherrywood fabric or buy something unexpected like a print. What do you think?







I am often asked how I come up with the quilt designs that I come up with. I feel a lot of people think that you just pull these things out of your brain in a moment of artistic inspiration. The reality in most creative endeavors is that there is a lot of hard work involved.

Last year I took a class on making abstract quilts with Elizabeth Barton at Academy of Quilting. She gave us plenty of ideas of where to start in the creation of an abstract quilt from cutting out paper shapes and arranging them in a good composition to pixelating a photograph. You have to start somewhere. You can't just stare at a blank piece of paper or a blank design wall...well at least I can't. It is a lot like what I saw in the Eagles documentary. Their songs often started with a song title, an inspiring line, a guitar riff. With a lot of hard work this turned into one of their great songs.

So here is the saga of the blue abstract quilt. 

It started with an image of a forest scene. This is a photo I started with. It was already highly processed in Photoshop with several filters and  I had it printed on fabric at Spoonflower.

I used Photoshop to create a pixelated image. One of the things I really liked about the original above and this pixelated image was the gradation of values. I want to make a quilt with these colors some day.

Then I had this image from the arrangement of paper shapes that were cut out of black paper.

 For some reason I changed the colors to teal and purple in Photoshop.

Then I put the cut out shapes over the pixlated image. This is done with layers in Photoshop.

Then I chopped up this result into sections and added black strips in between the sections. Some of the sections I flipped. Then I added uneven borders. This was all done in Photoshop.

Then I changed the color scheme again and turned it blue. When I finally made it I did tweak the design a little.











So you can see this was planned from the beginning. I am not one for improvising a quilt. All my quilts are planned out with some kind of sketch before I even start making them.

Linking to Nina-Marie a day early.

Thanks for reading.

Chris