tangled threads

i've been living the slow stitch life, working away at the binding on "citrus season," but none too quickly. it could have been done in a day or two, if i hadn't kept taking internet breaks to tool around quilt blogs (still gathering info there) and check in on instagram.

last night we were heading into LA and i knew with the traffic we'd be in the car well over an hour, maybe two. since i wasn't driving, i brought along my handwork. i ran into some snags right off the bat! 

somehow, when i made my securing knot at the end, everything got tangled up. i worked on it for a minute, but i still had a little tiny knot in one side of the thread once i got the major tangles teased out. it seemed like it was tiny enough that it wouldn't hold me back. i didn't want to waste the thread or start over with the whole threading the needle and securing process, so i proceeded to try using the thread as is.

mistake.

i barely got it secured to the quilt before more problems arose involving worse tangles and i had to just scrap the whole thing anyway. when am i gonna learn an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? just fix problems up front when they occur. that would have saved me time if it didn't save me thread.

a stitch in time saves nine.

or a fix in time saves nine (minutes)?

 

palm trees and red lights, bumper-to-bumper

LA traffic is no joke! any time we have to go anywhere inland we are in for a slow crawl. doesn't matter the time of day. this trip wasn't too bad, actually. it wasn't always stop-and-go and there were occasionally spaces between cars. it was still over an hour, so i had plenty of time for more stitching despite losing some with the snarled, snagged threads.

further down the road, as i was tying off my thread length, i didn't leave enough room for myself. silly me. i always try to eek out as much of the thread as i can and sometimes that comes back to bite me. my thread snapped as i was trying to tie it off. i was then left with two little tails that needed to be tied together, which is not the most secure way to do things. and it was so fiddly! took me a couple of minutes of licking threads, squinting, and trying to get them to knot together.

traffic was looking better on our side than across the barricade by then. anytime we go anywhere, i usually add 30 minutes to the estimated travel time to give myself wiggle room. this time we didn't have any spare time(because traffic was bad when my husband returned home from surfing to get me). however, the maps app estimated our arrival time pretty accurately this trip, which was really lucky.

we made it on time and had a lovely evening with the two girls at the los angeles temple, followed by persian food for dinner.

i got maybe another quarter of the stitching done on the road. should be able to finish it up soon.

side note: here's another thought i've had about my blogging/quilting interface, an idea echoed in a comment juliann made to me about blogging because i quilt vs. quilting because i blog - i'm trying to document my quilt process in this space. to me, that means i capture and share small moments like this to talk about. taking photos to share along the way that i wouldn't take just for myself personally is different to me than making things for content. i saw this thread situation that occurred organically as a chance to share one of the small things that goes into quilting, to show that it's not all smooth sailing, that i make mistakes and have troubles, too. then i found myself taking photos of tangled or broken threads and traffic. this has to do with wanting to examine and share part of the process rather than focus solely on the finished project. (if you're a professional who needs to make for content, that's fine! i'm talking about my goals as a hobbyist who doens't want to get too lost in this space.)

thanks to those of you who have engaged the blog talk with me. it's nice to know i'm not alone in my musings.

fall paint lake, spring ocean

i didn't get to work sewing immediately apon arrival, but once i did get stitching, it went pretty quickly. it's amazing how much sewing can be done in a few uninterrupted hours. i would have finished this binding in an afternoon if i hadn't decided to hop on IG during a break. 

that's something like three-quarters done in a few hours.

i'm still not fully sure what i think of this quilt. i like it, i think. then i find myself asking, "do i really like it? does it really work? was i crazy to just make a quilt from a random pile of fabric? or was my gut right?" i mean, i lumped all the dark fabrics together when maybe I should have spread them out. and the palette is unusual. there are some deep colors and very light ones; not much midrange tones tying things together here. at the very least, it’s not clashy! 

yes, somehow i still think it works in its own unusual, quirky way.

i tried something on a whim and this is the result. not bad.

i put a few fun touches in here like subbing the sleeping beauty print for the rapunzel print once. both prints were part of the original fabric purchase this quilt came from, but i thought at the time sleeping beauty didn't fit the general color palette well. now i disagree - i mean, she's blue, orange, and yellow like the majority of the other fabrics. but i did put one piece in here because . . .

i kept this one rapunzel piece whole, replacing the two pieces that would have been here, in one spot so the full illustration could be seen together. i like this extra touch, too.

on reflection, rapunzel is less of the colorway than sleeping beauty. i guess she ties in with the butterflies and flower prints that have the pinks and purples in them. but i did cut off all the pink banner tops from the towers because they definitely didn't fit the quilt's color palette. i used those pieces in a different quilt block . . .

they made it into a crossroads block for my low-volume crossroads quilt. i think they're so fun here on their own. it worked out nicely for both quilts!

i did decided as soon as i started binding this what the advantage to a diagonal binding join is - less lumpy and bulky at the seams! i'd forgotten that was a thing because i've only done straight joins on a binding once or twice before. the diagonal joins absolutely lay flatter. 

that's me rounding the last corner of the quilt there. it's done. just needs a nice finish photo shoot. where am i going to photograph a fall quilt in spring by the ocean? i've seen so many nice quilt finish shots by the sea, but i don't feel like any of the quilts i brought with me fit the setting. 

i thought maybe it would look good in the doorway next to our beach access with a view back along the house and our little landscape area with the agaves and flowers. not really. i'm going to have to scope around. there's lots of scenery here. something has to fit.

in the meantime, we're snuggling under the finished quilt when temperatures drop, which they do throughout the day. cold, warm, sunny, cloudy, open door, shut. it's never constant. thank goodness i brought quilts! i was only expecting to stitch on them, not to be using them. living in the desert i forget spring is cool or cold other places.

clementine appeal

i find myself with a few more days before departure than expected. so i decided to see what else i could get ready for handwork to take with me. "citrus season" was partway through quilting when i last set it aside. this is my march "stella grande" and i decided i wanted to complete it this march, finally, if possible.

every citrus season that comes and goes, i wish i had this quilt done. the blossoms are out right now, perfuming the night air and looking so pretty by day. i always hope to get a finish photo at this time of year. but, no. not this year.

what i can do this march is get it quilted and ready to handbind.

which is what i did. there was a lot more quilting to complete than i anticipated. i thought i was in for an hour of quilting and an hour to trim & bind. it was more like 3 hours quilting. thank goodness it's done.

i still have a ton of threads to bury, but that's handwork and can wait. i stopped all the diagonal lines at the border rather than running them through the piano key strips on the ends. maybe this was a bad choice. it's done, regardless.

i have lots of orange solids to choose from for the binding. i didn't want to use any already in the quilt so i could add an extra layer of citrus color. i thought about green for the leaves, but that didn't seem right. the top is supposed to be bright, but not too bold, with some softness to it, so the orange needed to be right. i had one that was on the salmon spectrum, but there wasn't enough of it. there were one or two other bright oranges that i didn't have enough of for binding either. the deep orange i tried looked red next to the other colors. drat. i even looked at some monotone orange prints, but none were the right shade.

i was getting a little desperate to have the project complete or i wouldn't be able to take it with me and binding would have to wait til next spring. but i also didn't want to just make-do with a mediocre selection i wasn't happy with. this quilt had to be right or there was no use doing it.

finally i pulled out the whole orange stack and went through it one by one. i settled on this mid-tone moda bella solid called "clementine," in part because it had a citrus name. 

it works. photographing it has been tricky. if i bump up the lighting, the orange comes through more intense than in person, so it's hard to see accurately here. if the orange is right, the other colors aren't. but it's done and i think is a good pick. or at least good enough. i know, i know. i wasn't going to just settle. but i kind of did. if i really don't like it once i get working on it, i can always take it off. let's hope it grows on me and looks good in the end.

the binding is all machine attached to the quilt sandwich now. i was looking at our citrus trees out the window and wishing the handbinding was done, too. i couldn't resist taking the quilt out for a few photos with the blossoms even though it's not complete.

next year, when these blossoms are fruit, this quilt will have it's finish photos with the new fruit and blossoms.

maybe the companion quilt will be, too. i still have all the hsts i didn't use in the border for "citrus season" and the leftovers from the backing that i want to make into a different quilt. i was a good girl and separated the backing cutoffs immediately after trimming the sandwich and added them to the project box. all i need to do now is make a new top. i love that it's ready and waiting for me here in one spot.

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. grandkids can get away with a lot.

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.

handbinding, upstairs and down

 

although i took a break for a bit to work on some sunny and citrusy march projects, i have not been neglecting all those quilts i prepped for handbinding in january. i work on the sunday lap quilts on sundays, naturally, and have two others also in process in two strategic locations.

if i'm downstairs in the family room, i might find some time to work on my original crossroads quilt. i have it draped on the arm of a comfy chair so i can snuggle and stitch when time permits. the last bit should be completed today. i'm waiting for the golden hour when light pours in on this spot and turns it to magic.

this is going to be so good to have around when it's washed, crinkled, and ready to go. the navy binding works really well with the navy couches in this room, a happy coincidence. i did think maybe i should not have used the touches of navy blue once the quilt top was complete, but they've grown on me and do make this quilt more at home in this particular room, where it will be housed and used.

but sometimes i'm upstairs and have a minute or need to bargain myself into doing housework, so i've recently started work on "aunt bet's mother's day" quilt in my bedroom. (as for the bargaining - if i complete a short, designated project i don't want to do, i give myself permission to sew one thread length of binding in place. it helps keep me balanced between life and sewing.)

today, oldest daughter and her two littles ended up sitting in the window and hanging out with me while i put some stitches in. that window is a lovely place to be this time of year as the weather is so perfect and the tree just outside it is beginning to bud.

the last few nights i've slept under this quilt, making sure to safely tuck the needle in first. i'm enjoying that, but it does have a bit of stiffness to it since the spray basting hasn't been washed out yet. i'm definitely anticipating the softening and crinkling of a wash.

a few stitches a session, a session or two a day, and it all adds up. that's how quilts get made.

i'm on a bit of a roll, so look for a finish or two coming up!

epic binding party weekend

recently i was reading a substack email i subscribe to and the author said something like, “the fun thing about having your own email is you can talk as much as you like about your topic in a way no editor would let you.” it immediately made me think of how i prattle on and on in my blog posts about any details i want because no one is there to check me or make me clean it up. this is my space to speak to myself about what i’ve been sewing, no outside editing involved. which i’ll admit, makes for sloppy writing. 

but here we are, and that’s what you get. sometimes I do think I could make more of an effort to be presentable in this space, more succinct, more reader friendly. but what i'm really doing is having a conversation with myself and allowing others to listen in, so rambling on and on in an ineffective writing style it is.

now on to quilts.

there's going to be a lot of talking, but you can also just scroll for the pictures.

there has been a pile of quilted-but-not-trimmed-or-bound quilts in a corner of my bedroom since last spring. there are SIX quilts in this pile; SIX quilts that got around the final lap and never made it to the finish line. (i elaborated on why in my last post.)

they are not entirely unused as my grandson does like to plop down on them when he comes in to play with my collection of toy animals i keep especially in this room. he will say, “sit!,” and then squat down and back up to the pile before dropping down. it’s cute. 

but these quilts were intended for more.

two weeks ago, my youngest daughter decided it was time to get the binding on her quilt completed. she proposed that we have daily "stitch and listen" sessions together so we can both get some quilts bound. of course i said yes.

we have started with listening to the narnia series on audible and stitching for about 30 minutes. it hasn't exactly been daily, but we do get around to it several times a week. (for the record, kenneth branagh is the reader for the magician's nephew and is quite fabulous. i wish he narrated the whole series.)

after a few sessions of stitching, i have nearly completed "liberty holly hobby."

 i quickly realized if we were going to keep these sessions going, we'd need more handstitching projects. that pile of nearly-ready-to-bind quilts in the corner came to mind.

we were having a girls weekend at home as my husband was going to be away for a few days, so i decided to put aside the all-important house reno project for a bit and do some quilt work with d5.

our goal was to trim up the quilted projects, make bindings for them, and get them machine attached.

we pulled everything out to have a look, then picked out our binding fabrics. for most of the quilts, i already generally knew what i wanted to use.

have you ever tried to work in a sewing room that hasn't been used in months and months? it's very frustrating! i felt like i spent the majority of the first hour of work just shifting things around and trying to locate supplies. i sure wish everything was shipshape in there and easily accessible, but it is not.

eventually i was able to get started on the actual project.

i pulled the cutting mat off the cutting table (always a pain to do as it's always covered with stuff) and put it on the floor of our central hallway so we could trim up the quilts there. i'm still able to crawl around on the floor pretty well, so this is the best place for me to trim the quilts because i can lay them out completely flat here.

"melonaide brightside" was the first quilt i trimmed. then i started cutting the binding for it. d5 measured binding against the trimmed quilt for me. we worked out a system where i cut, she measured, i pinned and marked the strips, she sewed the bindings together, i trimmed the corners off, and she ironed and rolled the completed binding.

our "to do" pile just off the cutting floor in the piano room.

while i was moving stuff around i came across my oldest daughter's quilt she made in high school, but never bound. the binding fabric was with it. i have always wanted her to finish the quilt herself so it's completely her project and so she knows she can do the whole thing. she's asked a few times over the last few years to work on it, but never at a time that i could help her with it. 

i decided done was better than my ideals and asked d5 if she wanted to secretly bind it for her sister as a surprise. she agreed, and we made the binding. it was actually about a foot short of what we needed, so i found a coordinating red solid to add. i think it will be a cute touch in the binding.

we worked on these throughout the day and evening, then took a break for a "pride and prejudice" movie marathon. it was a fun girls day together.

in the morning, i got right back to it.

i now know it takes me about 30 minutes to make a binding.

we got all six made for my quilts, one for d1's quilt, and an extra one for another project i have in the quilting phase. i already had the binding picked out, so i just added it to the group while we were at it batch processing all of these.

my binding choices were pretty classic here: there are several stripes, a few solids, and a couple of basic neutral prints. i like a binding to set off a quilt and to be dark enough to not show use easily. i feel like light colored bindings can get grungy, so i go with something mid-tone to dark.

i started out the first morning intending to trim and bind each quilt in order, but after the first one, i decided to do all the bindings at once. this was because i had my little helper working with me and i needed to keep her constantly moving or she'd wander off.

on the second morning, i got to work trimming all the quilts.

i'm none too confident in my square trimming of these quilts, but they're done and look square enough to me. part of the problem is one of my long rulers got set down in the middle of the quilt pile in the piano room the night before and a certain daughter sat on it, snapping the ruler. so i was down to trimming and squaring with my large 10.5" square and one long 6"x24" ruler.

once all the trimming was done, i started machine attaching them to the quilts. i started with the quilt i most wanted to complete - "mildred and ethel." for durability's sake, i bound it with the green crossweave i used for the background of the quilt. liberty bindings are delicious, but i worry about their durability as a binding gets the brunt of wear-and-tear on a quilt. plus, i didn't have enough of any of these prints to use as a binding. so the sublte, blend-in crossweave it was.

next up was "aunt bet's mother's day quilt," and this is where my little helper gave out. she didn't want to help with the next phase of attaching the bindings, so i was on my own.

"aunt bet's mother's day quilt" got a black and white spotted binding. i would have liked a black with white swiss dot, but i didn't have any of that around, only white with black dots, and that's too light for a binding. this was acceptable enough.

after attaching six bindings in a row, i now know it takes me about an hour from the start (pinning the binding on the perimeter of the quilt) to finishing the last stitch.

"melonaide brightside" got a solid teal green binding of kona cotton color of the year 2020, enchanted.

i'm so happy to have my both my first two "crossroads" quilts nearing completion! they were such fun projects. i'm excited to put them in use and experience them as completed quilts.

i pulled down what i thought was a black and white stripe to possibly use for "aunt bet's" but it turned out it was navy, not black. i decided it was a good pick for the original "crossroads," which is mostly citrus colored, but has touches of blue throughout.

my new pile of attached bindings in the piano room was looking lovely in the late afternoon light. by now i had four bindings attached. two more to go, racing against the light.

"low-volume crossroads" was next in the queue. it got a nice grey stripe binding.

as i prepared the last quilt, i stopped to read some of the text on the heather ross snow white print i used as a backing. i hadn't read this line before and found it so wise. it sums up the usual balance of beauty and reality in this imperfect life quilte well, i thought. 

"she found the cottage full of charm and laundry."

that's life to the tee, if you ask me.

i was, admittedly, a little weary at this point, but i pushed through and got the last binding attached. i selected a neutral tan and white floral from amy sinibaldi. it's a little light, but it's a low-volume quilt, so it works.

 and here they are.

six bindings attached in one weekend and many hours of handstitching bliss coming up.

at some point, these will even be completed quilts.

but at the moment it's the handwork that i'm looking forward to.

the leftover binding strips, rolled into one.

the end