little bits of progress

i've steadily worked away at "wensleydale," keeping the pace of a block a day (with a few skipped days), and i've also made the last of the geese i need for "grellow garden geese," but i took a small break to get some yellow hst pieces literally off the floor and made into blocks so i could put them away.

the extra hst pieces i made several weeks ago when i was playing around with a new block idea have been laying together with the block on a piece of batting, which has been laying on the floor just inside my sewing room doors. often when i'm actively working on a project, i'll have a batting scrap laid on the floor just outside my sewing room doors, which will be open when i'm working in there. the piece of batting serves as a mini design wall, albeit on the floor, and as a place to keep everything together. i don't usually let things stay in this state for long. but this project (and edna) got quickly pulled into the room and the door shut on them a few weeks ago when i was in a hurry to clean up and get them out of the way of general foot traffic in the house. so i've been stepping over them any time i enter the room for weeks now. not tidy or desirable at all!

thus, i decided to do some cleanup work to get those pieces out of the way and off the floor as a mini break from the projects i'm most focused on at the moment.

as i was putting the first block together, i realized the hsts weren't trimmed. yikes. i did not want to do all that trimming - 16 units per block - so i decided to skip the trim and see what happened. the block (left above) turned out fine enough, but when i compared it to the original block, it was a full 1/4" larger on all sides. when you cut units sized with the intention of trimming them, you can't get lazy later and decide not to trim. not unless you skipping trimming all of them from the beginning. 

so i broke down and trimmed the pieces for the 3rd block. it really wasn't too bad.

looking at these blocks together i can see how slight shifts in the value of the yellows in the star pieces vs. the corner pieces make a big difference in how the pattern appears in the blocks. how interesting. the lowest block has a clear star pattern to it whereas the other two blocks look different. using softer yellows in the innermost diamond and for the corners while using bolder yellows for the points really brings the star shape forward. note to self for future blocks!

now these blocks are safely put away in the project box recently vacated by the flying geese project and i can think about them in the spring when i feel like sewing with sunshine again.

photo of me taking a break on the piano room couch, surveying my geese and also contemplating the upcoming remodel of this room's trim. 

i called d1 to chat about some things and showed her some feature of the geese on video call. she said, "mom! that's not the quilt you've been posting about." shows how much she's been paying attention. for one, i have recently posted about this quilt on insta and she's been in the house since i put it out on the floor a few days ago. her three kiddos 3 and under must be taking all her attention. "how many quilts are you working on right now?," she says, as if she doesn't know me and my quilting adhd habits at all.  

"actively - two," was my response. and that's true despite the few side trips i took this weekend that are featured in this post.

saturday night, long after i'd shut the sewing room doors for the day, d5 came to me and asked to have a little sewing and listening session for about 30 minutes before she went out for the evening. i was thrilled. since school started up last month she hasn't had any time for sewing with me and i'm itching for her to finish those 16 patch blocks. she got 6 done while we worked together and took a short trip to PEI to visit jane.

i was mentally done with both "wensleydale" and the geese for the day, so i picked up my sweet little mini crossroads blocks for some mindless piecing. i do love these so much and look forward to getting them completed. they'll need to take center stage again when i have a few projects pushed to the flimsy & basting stage. those quirky stripes and dotted o's aren't my favorite fabric of this grouping, but they'll add character to the quilt. if only they were printed straighter! 

that's it for the side projects for now. i'll be back to work on wensleydale and geese come the work week.

wensleydale 6

i keep photographing these blocks vertically when in reality they sit horizontally in the quilt. i suppose they'll be viewed either way and every which other once in the quilt and it's in use.

i was really happy with block 6 all the way up to the last outer rectangle. i had trouble picking the last fabric because i liked the inside fabrics so much i didn't want to spoil the look. i really wanted to find a suitable blue for the last layer, but settled in this bold burnt orange andover print. i think i like it!

i introduced a new color that i've been planning to use in the palette - the dusty light purple color. it feels fall and adds to the contrast in the palette overall.

these are the first six blocks all together. still lots more to make! i think i've decided to reduce the size by one row and one column. the original quilt is a hearty 66" x 72", a little larger than my prefered lapsized quilt. that's a decision to make later on, but 45 blocks sounds nicer than 60.

there are going to be lots of fabrics in this quilt! i haven't repeated one yet, but i plan to repeat most of them.

geese are calling

the calendar says it's officially fall in the northern hemisphere, the september equinox has been breached. sure, we're still in 100f+ temperatures in this desert we call home, but we'll take the name and spirit of the season even if it's still like summer on the weather report.

fall means geese and i've been hearing mine call as i work my way around wensleydale in the sewing room. i opened up the project box for "grellow garden geese" once again to see what's in there and what's going on with my geese. i found a few cut but unassembled, so i've worked those up between diamonds and rectangles in wensleydale fall colors.  

this morning i was looking over the blocks and feeling like this whole thing -an attempt to use stash and unloved fabrics rashly, unreasonable purchased - was the typical hot mess. some geese i really like; others are just plain flat and boring. what was i thinking pairing those fabrics?

in light of my enui, i was considering packing everything back up and hiding it away again. then d5 walked into the room and saw the blocks strewn around the floor and exclaimed, "oh, i love these colors!" huh. maybe it's not a completely unlovable project after all? as long as someone loves it, it's worth proceeding with. 

something needs to happen either way because my sewing space is more than normally crowded with the piles of fabrics pulled for wensleydale teetering all over the place and now the geese spread all over the place. decisions need to be made because this isn't a workable space as is.

i moved all the sets of blocks onto the piano room floor to layout in a possible setting for the quilt top, to see how they're looking together and how many i have/might yet need.

i have enough for a 56'' x 64'' quilt, minus four blocks. there are two sets of blocks, 12 each, that are slightly smaller than all the other blocks. what i did a few years ago to cause this discrepancy is a mystery. i decided to line up all the smaller blocks in the same row. it won't matter that it's less wide than the other rows. i'll add a small fabric strip to make up any difference in length. that will give the top a fun "make do" sort of vibe that i think will add some charm. i could have trimmed aaaallll the other blocks down to match the smaller ones, but why would i do that to myself?

i really don't know how i feel about all this now that it's laid out. that doesn't make me like it any better. but my girls are saying they like it even though "there's so much yellow!" yes there is. it just is what it is now and it needs to be done. i don't want to make it bigger by adding more colors/fabrics to change the look. so i think we're gonna go with what we've got and be done.
 

more wensleydale learning

wensleydale #3

 

these wensleydale blocks are becoming addictive! i made this number 3 block with no problems at all, including getting my directional prints to line up correctly. that was a mini triumph. 

i'm deriving a lot of pleasure from selecting the various prints for each block. i've realized that i really enjoy quilts that have blocks where each fabric pairing chance is like a little project all its own. that's one of the reasons i enjoy the crossroads quilt so much and why these blocks are so fun for me. quilts composed this way are like a series of mini projects that add up to one big project. 

i was a little hesitant to add that teal and orange DS floral fabric that's in the inner diamond. it felt a little bright for the direction this quilt is moving. but after considering how well the brights and moodier fabrics in the original wensleydale quilt from the book play together, i thought it would be a nice touch to use this brighter fabric, especially if i kept it to one of the smaller pieces where it would accent rather than stand out too much. i'm quite happy with it.

the way the center rectangle plaid turned out slightly wavy i'm less pleased with. wovens can be difficult and a little stretchy. i plan to use this particular one several times in the quilt, so i am going to have to be more careful with it in future. the woven stripe i used for the outer rectangle worked much better.

wensleydale #4

i've decided i want to use either a floral or a plaid in the center of each block. i've also decided that it will make my life a lot easier if i try to keep the directional prints to the diamond sections and not use them in the rectangle pieces. by the time i made this block a few days after i'd figured out the directional trick, i forgot what i'd done. at least i have all those stripes radiating in a similar manner this time. 

after using that teal DS floral in block 3, i knew i'd need to use some more teals in the quilt. unfortunately, i don't have many at all in my stash! i did find this joel dewberry daisy block print that i ordered from hawthorne earlier this year. 

i was really excited when i found hawthorne supply company had a lot of designers that you can order fabrics from on a print-to-order basis. i found some amazing colorways of some old favorite JD prints, like this daisy woodcut print. unfortunately, when they arrived, i was disappointed in the substrate it's printed on. it's stiff, which is good for cutting, but also feels coarse and doesn't have a very nice hand. i hope it washes up better.  anyway, it was a good color for this block and i'm at least pleased with how it looks.

*note - apparently there are two quilting cotton options and the website says the quality was upgraded in april 2024. i'm not sure which substrate i got, but i did notice you can order samples of any digitally printed fabric line, which would be a good idea before ordering lots like i did.

wensleydale #5

maybe you noticed something else i started doing with block #3 - making a "victory lap" around each block's perimeter. since i'm not trimming the blocks or removing the papers until they're all completed, i thought it prudent to make a stabilizing stitch on the edges to keep the pieces in shape and from fraying.

this block 5 is a little brighter and more color dense than the other blocks. i didn't use a low-volume print except in the center piece, and calling the orange plaid print low-volume is pushing it. i also should have used at least one print that wasn't so saturated in color, one that was a little subdued or faded. i didn't balance the bright and subdued fabrics as well in this one as the previous blocks. i thought the outer grey was going to be less color dense because it's a neutral color, but it is also quite high-volume in tone. this was no deal breaker for the block, but just another lesson learned as i hone my fabric selection and matching skills. i'm banking on the block blending in with the others and playing nicely with the quilt as a whole. 

i'd also forgotten about my directional print trick, as seen in the middle navy stripe rectangle. this was getting frustrating. then i remembered something else i'd forgotten about - compensating for cutting changes. i was originally using the cutting sizes recommended by "the quilted chicken" in their cutting video, but i found them unnecessarily large and tweaked them a little. this required changing my cuts a little so the angles would stay the same, which i hadn't done, therefore producing the wrongly-angled triangles i was having difficulty making behave. once i figured this out, i got much better results in the outer grey rectangle. 

i'm looking forward to my next blocks but i'm also feeling like i may need to do some fabric shopping. i don't have enough of the woven fabrics or teal in my stash. i may make a trip to the more traditional shop in a neighboring town at some point to see what they've got. until then, i'll keep trying to get a block a day done when i can.

learning to wensleydale

once i'd made the first wensleydale block i wasn't sure if i'd gotten it out of my system for the moment or not. i calculated that if i did a block a day for two months i'd have a completed top before thanksgiving, but i wasn't committing to that. the first one took so long i couldn't see being able to spend that much time each day. i was definitely thinking i would not be doing much wensleydale-ing right away.

but the next day i found myself pulling out another template sheet and making my next block. i told myself i wanted to see how long a single block took when i wasn't having to teach myself to fpp in the process.

block two turned out pretty well, but it wasn't a quick make either because i had several home ec/learning moments along the way! 

the first round i forgot to fold back the pieces before i trimmed the seam allowance and chopped off two side triangles before looking at the front to see why i had such large trimmings. oh no! one of the leftover pieces was big enough to reuse, but i had to cut a whole new rectanlge cut into triangles to get the one piece i still needed because i didn't know how to just cut the one odd triangle. that was frustrating.

but i got if fixed and moved on, deciding that in the future i would trim each seam allowance after sewing the piece and then press the piece open.

if you've never done fpp before, you might be confused about the process and what i'm saying. here's the basics:

1. place the first piece down, right side up, on the back of the paper/opposite side of the printed template. you hold it up to a light or use a lightbox to make sure you have the piece in place.

2. lay the next piece right side down on top, flip the paper over, and sew down the line between the two pieces on the template, backstitching at the beginning and end.

3. flip over so the fabric is facing down, fold back the paper along the seam line, and trim a 1/4" seam allowance for that seam. unfold the paper.

4. turn back over so the fabric is facing up; press the piece open. lay the next piece on, right side down, and repeat.

so where i went wrong here was i forgot to move the sewn piece, which i had already pressed open, out of the way when i trimmed the seam allowance; hence the chopping off.

this is what it looks like when you do the seam allowance trimming correctly. i folded the paper back along the seam and measured the seam allowance 1/4" away from that.

i was playing with how to get my directional prints to line up better inside their shapes.  if you look at the grey plaid piece in the middle rectangle (either in the first photo or below) you'll see that after i put two triangles in place and they fan out from the triangle rather than look aligned as a rectangle, i tried to get the other two pieces straighter and succeeded. i was glad to get them straighter, but feel it would have been better to have them all angled consistently.

and this brings up one disadvantage of the fpp method over the alternate template construction method for this quilt: template pieces can be cut how they will appear in the quilt but fpp is more risky and requires a lot more thought and care if you want a certain orientation and outcome in your prints, especially the directional ones.

one idea i tried was marking the seam allowance on the back of the piece before i sewed it in place. this helped a little, but since i was putting the piece roughly in place then flipping everything over, there is often slight shifting or i didn't guess well where the piece should go.

(you get a good view of my radiating vs. straight plaid pieces in this photo above.)

the next idea i hit on for better fabric placement was to trim down the finished shape before moving on to the next round of pieces. in this case, that meant trimming the golden floral piece to the seam allowance size it would eventually be before adding the brown checkered print. the way i was doing it, the outer edges of a piece didn't get trimmed down until the next piece was added and then the seam allowance was cut. 

i hadn't seen this extra trimming step suggested in any of my fpp research, but i decided to try it. i folded the paper back along the seam i was about to sew, measured out 1/4", and trimmed. then i could line up the new piece with the seam allowance and everything would be much straighter. 

it worked great!

but then when i flipped over the piece to trim for the seam allowance on the third corner (above), i forgot to measure out 1/4" for the seam allowance and cut right along the seam instead. this was a big ouch. it required me unpicking not only that corner but i had to replace the golden triangle, first unpicking the other brown corner triangle already sewn on its other side, as well. i wasn't sure i would be able to salvage the block at this point.

getting that golden triangle out was no small project. seam ripping with fpp is the worst because the seam size is so small. i finally resorted to hacking the piece out and then removing the little leftover bits.

i did do one good thing here. i realized i didn't have to cut the whole rectangle again to replace the botched corner. i made a rectangle half the starting size and then cut the piece i needed from that so i didn't have 3 larger leftover pieces, but rather just two. i managed to save myself a little fabric there.

that was smart of me, but my next move wasn't. like i say, i can't make this stuff up. i seriously don't know how i manage to bungle things so badly. can you see what i did when adding the triangle? i flipped it completely the wrong way. i put it on the wrong side of the seam allowance. oh, me oh, my.

somehow i still make quilts.

there we go - the golden triangle is all fixed up and i put the adjacent brown corner back in place over it. then i trimmed it correctly, ready for the final corner piece to be added.

now i could place the corner triangle on, lined up with the seam allowance i pretrimmed.

in case you forgot - this is how it all ended. 

yes, half of the grey plaid is straight(ish) and there is still a small hole in the seam of one brown corner triangle where it's supposed to be seam to the golden part (no idea how/why that is, but i'm dealing with it later). all in all, though, i really like the look of this block and am grateful for the lessons it taught me.

i also decided with this block to wait to trim the outside edges until all blocks are done so i don't dull my blade prematurely by trimming through the paper each time. that will all be done in one go before i join the blocks into a top. whenever i do more blocks and get them all done, that is. obviously, i still don't know how long it takes to do a block because this one took way longer than should be necessary due to all my mistakes.

welcome to wensleydale

i made a test block. yes, i already have sooo many projects in various stages of making. but this quilt has been haunting me and i just wanted to try it out. one block, that's all.

it's all the fault of this book which has been sitting at the bottom of my stairs for several weeks. i walk past it many times a day and see the wensleydale quilt on the cover every time i go by. i'm a little obsessed. 

i resisted buying "quilt recipes" by jen kingwell for a few years now. i already have so many quilt books, i knew many of the patterns in this one were template quilts, her patterns are amazing but usually sparsely written, i wasn't likely to use the baking recipes that make up half the book, and it has been priced at over 50 USD since it was published.

but . . .

i've had my eye on the wensleydale and daylesford quilts, both in this book. so when i found the price dropped on amazon, i ordered the book finally. just perusing jen's  quilts is always inspirational. i'm not sorry i got it. the "winki stars" and "diamond exchange" quilts also appeal to me greatly, but my goodness, they are complicated quilts! one of the things that makes jen's quilts unique is that she does templates and handsewing for many of her quilts. this produces shapes and looks you don't get with machine piecing. but template cutting and all the handsewing of them is outside my comfort zone and developed skill set.

i saw foundation paper piecing templates available for wensleydale and figured that would make things a snap to sew together. they've been sitting in my sewing room for a while.

this morning i passed that darn book cover again and just couldn't take it any more. shouldn't be too hard to put together one block, right? so i went in the sewing room and hunted out the papers. i looked at the pattern in the book, which is only instructions for using templates. i thought i had done paper piecing before but i quikly realized i had absolutely no idea what i was doing. 

i googled "how to do wenselydale foundation paper piecing" and had a few videos come up. i thought certianly someone somewhere had done a video of themselves using these papers to make this quilt block. 

• i found a helpful video for how to cut fabrics for the project from "the quilted chicken" on youtube. it did help with that, but didn't show how to put the block together.
• i was able to access two videos from "klquilts" on tiktok (an app i don't use or have), but i could only find part 1 & part 4 of the videos, which left a gaping hole in my knowledge of the process.
• those were the only wensleydale-specific videos i found, but i did watch this fpp video from "a quilting life"" that rounded out my ideas for how to proceed.

this, of course, took a lot longer than i intended just to get ready to start. then i pulled so many fabrics. i love the look of the couple of blocks showing on the book cover. here are the elements i noticed that appeal to me:

• high contrast between between each layer of the block making them distinctive from each other
• lots of dark and moody fabrics mixed with the bold and punchy ones
• each block has at least one low-volume print
• variety in scale of prints between elements
• lots of stripes (particularly pinstripes), DS-type blenders, ginghams and plaids, dots, vintage-y florals

i really love the mix of the moody neutral colors with the reds, deep blues, and golden yellows i see in these few blocks on the cover. but when i looked around my sewing room, my eyes fell on a dark, moody fall-colored bundle i bought a few years ago. that seemed the way to go and i started pulling more fabrics from there. i started with the DS stash for some of the blenders (which is when i made the happy discovery of all that yellow "katie jumprope" print i needed for my "sunny yellow crossroads" backing). then i pulled out my fall colored liberty drawer for florals in the right tones and feel. i grabbed a few jen kingwell neutral blender prints and some low-volumes. it's a start. 

i kinda need a whole shelf to store this pull on. but there's no room for that here. i already have one in-progress jen kingwell quilt taking up two shelves and half the design wall. (really should get that finished.) but we won't talk about that right now. there's a wensleydale to start!

once i got started, the block went together pretty easily. i used the cutting dimensions from the quilted chicken video, which were pretty good. i did feel some might be a little too big, but they worked and were definitely helpful.

i made a mistake or two along the way. once i forgot to flip the sewn triangle out of the way when i trimmed the seam allowance and cut it off completely - oops! fortunately, there was enough fabric left to redo the piece without additional cutting. another time i sewed one on backwards. unpicking fpp is a lot harder because i'm using a tiny stitch length - about 1.5 on the juki - which is how you do so the paper is easy to tear and remove.

fpp does make a lot of trim waste and none of it salvageable for anything useful. you can see the pile of trimmings from one block above. i didn't know this about the method before.

one perk of fpp is it's supposed to have extremely accurate results. so far that's true for this block although my very last seam on the outer triangles appears to be wide. i didn't lose the point off it but there are a few threads of fabric above the point showing and i sewed right on the line. i guess we'll see if this happens again.

so that's how my afternoon was spent - making a wensleydale test block. conceivably i could make one a day for two months and have a quilt top. i don't know if i want to do that yet or not.

too late?

just found this mass of yardage of the absolute perfect print (from denyse schmidt's "katie jumprope" collection) for the backing to my “sunny yellow crossroads” quilt hiding in my stash! 

i have a step ladder folded up leaning against my fabric shelves. the seat of the ladder blocked my view of this gem hiding in my DS stash when i was searching for a backing the other day. i need to look more carefully in future. what a find. the orangey-red daisy centers perfectly mirror the center squares i chose for the blocks. 

i’ll be saving the bees i ordered for something else. maybe my “grellow garden geese?” that quilt is also subtly garden themed. looks like I can get to work on the backing now! 

what now?

i'm stalled on my building projects once again, so today, for the first time in forever i cracked open those blue sewing room doors to see what i could do with fabric. and i find myself a little stumped what to pick up.

i immediately rejected the two projects on the floor: "pinky stinky edna" and the yellow stars quilt. d5 hasn't finished the 16 patch blocks for "edna" and the yellow hst project was just a trial block i'm not ready to dive into yet.

i thought about making some binding for the liberty courthouse steps quilt when i realized i already had some ready and waiting. that felt promising until i thought about dragging out the cutting mats to trim the quilt. best to leave that until i have the other projects ready to trim also.

so then i looked at the two completed tops waiting for backs to see if i could easily get those done. 

i have been debating the options for my "groovy liberty" quilt for weeks. i desperately wanted to use that bright and bold colorway of the "fairy forest" print (not even positive on the name, but it's the one near the top with the red mushroom in it and at bottom left with the yellow flower), but after several hours of online research (really, ugh) i was unable to locate it anywhere at all and gave up on my hearts desire. i have a couple yards of "june's meadow" with a blue background that i got on clearance a few years ago. i've decided this is the easiest backing option. i didn't use it on the front of the quilt, but i did use another color of the print there and it has the right colors. it doesn't have the really bold, groovy look i wanted for the quilt, but it will do and it uses up stash.

the only reason i didn't jump right into basting this quilt together is that i want to batch baste this and the next one at the same time.

so i set my sights on the "sunny yellow crossroads" quilt to see what i could come up with for a backing. i have a few large cuts of golden yellow prints, including an especially large cut of this golden yellow gingham. i tried to make myself use it, but i just couldn't. i like this top a lot and i did not want to settle for a mediocre back that i wasn't chuffed about. so i went to etsy and found some more of one of the yellow bee prints which is now on it's way to me. which is great, but it again left me not making anything and sets me back from basting the liberty quilt.

this is beginning to feel like my building projects.

if i do find something to work on, i'll share it.