a little help

my daughter and grandkids came over just as i was pinning the binding to "paint lake." little man was very interested in my project and wanted to help. i was thrilled! of course you can help me. granna loves little quilt helpers. we had to keep sister out of the pins, but that wasn't too hard.

 he kept asking me, "do you want it here? can i use this one?" at first i had him help me push each pin through, but when we reached the corner and i was working on mitering it, he just started pushing pins in where ever by himself. after that we worked in tandem doing our own pins. his pinning skills weren't the best, but i worked around him and it was good enough. there were a few ballheaded pins in the pincushion and i kept telling him to use the flat ones, but he reeeaaally wanted to use the round ones. so i let him put a few of those in.

the real fun began when we sewed the binding on together. he didn't know what i meant when i said, "let's go sew it on with the machine." usually when we "sew" together we're playing with a wooden cheese block that you push a string through. he likes to "sew the cheese" with granna all the time so he was confused about sewing on the machine. he learned real quick!

he pulled pins and ran the pedal for me. it was so cute!

when we first started out, i forgot to put the sewing speed on turtle and he laid his foot down on the pedal, giving me a start when it roared to life. he stopped immediately when i said to and we reset everything.

i mostly kept everything lined up, told him when to stop and start, and did the corners. 

sometimes he would tell me to do the pins. he pushed the needle up/down button, scissor button, or held down the reverse lever for me when i asked. sewing on the turtle speed, which is best for the walking foot anyway, was nice and slow, easy to manage with a two year old on board.

he stuck with me right up until about a foot from the end, which is when i needed to join the tails anyway.

what a fun time we had and how good he was at helping! granna will sew with this little man any day.

trimming success(es)

one of my quilt room wishes is that i have a large cutting table covered in mats, large enough to trim my quilts on the table rather than on the floor like i do now. doing it on the floor at least allows me to be over the top of it when i'm cutting. 

but there's all the sliding around of the mat for each cut, the crawling along on my hands and knees, and worst of all, when i overshoot the mat and hit the tile with my rotary cutter. it ruins the blade every time.

not today! this time i was very careful with cutting on the mat and managed not to ruin my blade.

as i was lining up the rulers for cutting, i found the ease of lining up the rulers along the piece edges within the quilt refreshing. squaring up on a top that's already pretty square and has pieces that line up with your ruler nicely make the whole job faster and easier.

 

 i pulled out the binding options to make a final decision. originally, from the beginning, i planned to use the blue print with strings of lights as the binding. i hunted down another half yard of it after a lot of looking. when it arrived, i realized the print runs parallel to the selvage instead of perpendicular to it - the opposite of how i wanted it to make nice long cuts for binding. i started to worry i wouldn't have enough, too.

i auditioned a few other prints from my stash and decided i liked this birch tree on a goldenrod background. it wasn't part of the original pull the fabrics originally came from, but it worked well with them.

so when i pulled it out again, i intended to use it. but then i took another look at the blue lights print. i think it calms the quilt down where as the goldenrod energizes it. i like the calmer vibe with this quilt, so i opted for the original blue print after all.

once i had the quilt trimmed, i immediately processed and put away the trimmings from the backing. i was able to cut most of it into 1" and 1.5" strings. these are sizes i can use for various projects i have going.

i put them in the drawers designated for their sizes in my new scrap drawer tower. it felt so good to have everything dealt with and put away rather than lingering, languishing in some spot in the sewing room for ages as has previously happened with such pieces.

knowing what size scraps are useful to me and cutting for them is also so helpful. it makes putting pieces away for storage simple and more likely to happen, and it will make using the pieces more likely to happen, as well. win/win!

next up was making the binding. i made my first cut the wrong direction and winced. i did check first, but i thought it out wrong before i made the first cut. when i saw the piece and how the lights were lining up along it rather than across it, my brain immediately righted itself and i knew i'd done it incorrectly. ouch. i was already worried i wasn't going to have enough because of all the extra joining up (fabric loss) that would occur when using shorter pieces. i shrugged it off, telling myself i'd either work in the piece i cut wrong if i needed to, or i would add a strip of something else entirely. no use crying over spilt milk/cut fabric or worrying until i had it all complete and measured up on the quilt.

since i was short on fabric and because i wanted the design to be continuous without interrupting diagonal lines, i opted to join the binding strips end-to-end rather than with the diagonal joins i usually use. the design looked really good this way once sewn together. 

i got to wondering why it is i use the diagonal joins anyway? i never cut my binding on the bias. bias binding is where those diagonal joins come from, i think. the diagonal joins are probably more secure, but with the way my binding is double folded and then folded over again on the quilt edge, it seems unlikely there will be much stress on those little joining seams. maybe that's overdoing it? it certainly produces more waste with all those leftover triangles and requires more fabric to start with. i save my triangles for a scrap project, but are they even necessary?

well, all my worry about having enough fabric for the binding was for naught. even without that strip i cut wrong i had a whole extra strip leftover in length. i probably could have even done the diagonal joins and been fine. but i like the way it looks on this print better, so i'm glad i didn't.

all-in-all, it was a successful set of trimmings all the way around.

wilthshire-ing along

yesterday i got to be a quilter again for a day.

there's so much going on in our family life at the moment, some big developments and changes included. next week the mr and i were heading out of the country to iceland and amsterdam to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. instead, we are now heading to california for at least a month with our youngest daughter while our older son has medical treatments there. we're uprooting and relocating temporarily while we try to get him fixed up after four long years of increasingly problematic gastro-intestinal issues. as difficult as it's all been and as crazy as relocation will be, we are so grateful to finally have him on an upward path rather than wasting away while his system shuts down, which is where we've been for the last year. there is still no absolute solution, but we have support and help, and a direction to move in for the first time since this began. it's a good thing.

so i've been busy with the multiple home renos we're working on for our family, with a spring break trip for the kids with their cousins while my husband was with our son, with getting ready to move for a while. it's a lot.

for the day i took a break and was a quilter.

this morning i cleaned up my liberty fabric shelf, bringing more order to my sewing room, and worked on projects to take with me on our stay in california. i made and put on the binding of "wiltshire rows" by machine. i started gathering a tin of sewing supplies for the other projects i'm going to take. and i caught up on blogging, including a couple of retro-published posts for the last few weeks because i like to keep things in place and in order.

while we're gone, i've decided to handquilt "improv in an afternoon" if it turns out i have time there. i might be able to trim "fall paint" and prep it's binding, too. i have a few more days. it would be so nice if i could get my liberty courthouse steps quilts sandwiched so i could handquilt those, too, or my liberty christmas log cabin quilt. but that seems a bit much to hope for the time i have left and the list of other things to do.

while i was putting this binding on today, i happened apon a very useful tip to tuck away for future use. most of the time, i can make and put on a binding without looking at a graphic or tutorial anymore. the very last part where you join the two ends is always the trickiest bit. i'm still a little hit and miss on that one. but today i was using a piece that was leftover from a previous liberty + chambray quilt binding, so the end of the strip was already cut on the diagonal. this helped me know exactly how to put it on the other end piece because i already know right sides go together and which direction the diagonal should run. 

it worked like a charm! i think i'll always diagonally cut the one end piece before i put it on the quilt from now on.

doing the machine attachment of the binding is always so dull and tedious. i have to sew on the turtle speed because i'm using the walking foot. the corners are troublesome. mine have been a little wonky lately and i don't know why (too much fabric? not enough? something else?) so i tried to be extra careful with them. finally it was all done and now it's ready for the part i really like - the handbinding.

d3 (away at college) and i were texting back and forth the whole time because i sent her teaser photos. wiltshire is her favorite liberty print and this quilt is for her, which she still hasn't guessed. she keeps threatening to steal it.

 i showed her the stack of wiltshire i still have left and assured her there's plenty for a few more quilts. really, i'm not sure what i'm going to do with all this! 

i also need to figure out where to put it as i neglected to make room for it on the liberty shelf when i was arranging it this morning.

i'm sure it will all work out somehow, just like the rest of what we're working through, too.

a liberty sweep

this could have been a post with lots of pretty fabric pictures if the light in my sewing room was nice. but it's not. so these aren't very pretty even tough the fabrics are. sigh. someday! someday when i have my new house built and a sewing room with glorious natural light everything will photograph much more prettily. until then, on with the discussion.

i've been organizing and cleaning in my sewing room (which i'm so grateful for regardless of the current light quality). most recently i tackled my shelf of liberty of london tana lawns (top shelf in photo above). i have lots and lots of liberty bits which needed some more stringent order than existed. folding was sloppy and the quasi system i had in place wasn't functioning.

so i pulled everything off and began sorting by print. one of liberty's nicest qualities is that their classic collection prints are continuously reprinted in new colorways. i love this approach to fabric production

poppy and daisy print variations and the mini version

i ordered several small plastic boxes that i had previously used in my kitchen pantry to use for fabric organization, sized 3 x 6 x 10. i wanted to use them for all my fabrics, but they turned out too small for fat quarters or folding for file storage, so i decided to see how they did for the liberty pieces.

i generally buy liberty prints in fat quarter/quarter yard sizes or smaller. the way i've been using liberty, i don't need a lot of any one print. if i really like a print and think i'll use it more than that, i get more based on how much i like it. i also have several one yard cuts of prints i really love for use in backings. mostly i buy the same dozen or so prints that i really, really like. or so i thought! today i found i have a whole slew of one-off prints, far more than expected. but i do have plenty different versions of my favorite prints, too.

all boxed in for storage

once i had everything either in a pile with it's mates or in the one-off pile (except for a few color palette bundles), i began sorting the prints into boxes. some i had enough of the one print to make use of a whole box and others i grouped in a box with very similar prints. 

poppy and daisy got it's own box along with the mini version of the print, as seen in the photos above. so when you see the stack of boxes on my shelf, that's what's in them.

i did keep three color categories together regardless of print because i have plans to make quilts from these. they are: fall colors, pastel w/ neons, and red, white, and blue prints.

the fall bundle is sitting atop my pile of one-off prints that's nestled in between the boxes (for some structure). the one-offs were too big for a box of their own, but they're doing fine here between the boxes. the clear boxes make seeing which print family is inside easy. 

some of the other print collections were also too big for a box, like betsy (and betsy ann, the mini version). i have more betsy than any other print. it sits to the far right side of the shelf atop some cuts of chambray that will be used with the liberty for future liberty + chambray quilts.

moving left from the betsy pile past the boxes we come to the milk crate basket that used to hold all my liberty pieces in one place. it now holds my liberty quilting cottons and the other two color palette bundles for my future quilts. the neon pastels actually came together from, i believe, the alice caroline shop. nope, just looked and it's from duckadilly. both are great liberty sources. 

far left is a pile of my favorite prints also too big for a box but not as big as the betsy stack: june's meadow, capel, mitsi, katie & millie, flower tops. i try to keep each print in rainbow order to make locating one easier. it mostly works.

 aside from everything on the shelf, i moved all the scraps from my liberty + chambray quilts into a drawer in my new scrap tower. there are all the chambray 2.5" strip pieces, the flannel binding i've used on all the quilts, some random joined pieces scraps, and 2.5" strips from previous projects. this will come in super handy when i make more quilts in future. working with liberty in all the same size each time (well, two sizes, actually) really helps me make use of the scraps. it makes cutting a lot easier, too. i just cut 2.5" or 3.5" strips every time and i know they will always get used. 

i have also put all the pieces for my liberty christmas quilts in this basket.

that's my liberty swept up and sorted!

i think i accidentally put away the pile of prints i was using for my liberty courthouse steps quilts, which is a shame. i only have two more rounds to go on those and now i'll have to make new selections all over again. might not be too bad, but it was already done and i undid it. cleaning up does have it's consequences and casualties sometimes. if i'd put them together in a box or basket rather than just a pile before, this wouldn't have been an issue. but here we are. doing my best and moving on!

spring break stitches, year 4

for the fourth, i think, year in a row, we spent spring break in mexico with my husband's family. and for the fourth year in a row i brought "cheery (easter) quilt" with me for some handwork. this time it was the only handwork project i brought along, but i still didn't do much work on it. i did, however, complete the last of the lilac and melon colored boxes, so that's something to celebrate.

there's a pair of nail clippers in this photo because this year i accidentally left my snips behind. i started out packing my sewing things for the trip in my usual library bag, then switched it up to consolidate with my carry-on backpack. that's where the snips got left out. fortunately for me, the nail clippers worked. note to self for future travel where my snips might get snatched (like they did in sydney). 

other items of note from this quilt's spring break travels:

2022 - the handquilting gets started

2023 - i misplaced most of my colored threads, but i got the sunburst quilting done and did a photo shoot with the kinda completed quilt.

2024 - i found the missing quilting threads! yay! i didn't use them much, but they did make the trip. a lot of the handwork was done alongside my new little grandaughter.

granna at work, for once not making a horrible "quilter concentration face." this was because i was actually focused on someone cute nearby, not just the stitching. i'm smiling for fluffy.

i spent a lot of time with my grandkids this trip because their mama is pregnant again and needed the extra help. their dad was still doing schoolwork online while we were there, so i got a lot of time with the littles.

the aunties are really helpful, too.

 just look how cute her curls are getting! her hair is finally growing some and it's adorable.

we're home now and "cheery (easter) quilt" is actually getting more work done. i decided not to put it away quite yet, to see what i can do for it before next spring break. it's the main handwork project i have a the moment. sometimes i need a break from the other stuff in the photo - house design for the kitchen reno on our current home of 22 years, a house for our daughter's family, and our new home. whew. it's a lot. so i occasionally take a break to listen to a story with d5 and stitch.

since we are about to relocate to the LA area for a time as our older son receives medical treatment there, i just may have a lot of handstitching time on my hands and finish this off at a different beach than it's used to seeing.