Holiday Sewing

A few years ago I made a quilt using holiday prints. It challenged me when it came to assembly, quilting and ultimately even the washing.

Somehow, I still have more holiday prints than I know what to do with. It was time to put together another holiday quilt in the hope of using up some of this fabric. I decided it was time to play with the Quick Curve Ruler from Sew Kind of Wonderful again. This time with the Metro Rings pattern. Everyone that has tried it says it is the quickest way to get to a double wedding ring without templates or tears.

I played with placement of colors and prints. More as an experiment than as real planning. This is generally how I make quilts. I rarely plan something from start to finish with every detail defined. It just isn't how my creative process works. Besides, in the end it is just fabric.

Slowly blocks came together. When I would run out of a component I would pull more from the stack and cut.

Before long I had the center, or what I thought was the center.

I played with placement and reached the point where I had enough blocks to make a good-sized throw quilt. (This is somewhere in the 60" by 70" range.)

So much movement!

All that movement, and an abundance of green fabric with candy canes, made me go for a 3" wide border. I think this one needed a frame. Partly to frame the work and partly to add the stability a border can add.

I took advantage of a sale at a local quilt shop for the (not holiday) backing fabric so I hope to have this one quilted, washed and on the couch well in advance of mid-winter. The bin of holiday prints still has fabric in it, but not enough for another throw quilt, so I will consider this a win. And no tears!

Odds and Ends

I participated in some totally unwarranted retail therapy over the weekend. I picked up some fabrics that I don't need but I couldn't walk away from. I see some holiday gifts in this pile of fun fabrics.

I came across this buck during one of my afternoon walks. It took him two tries to find a comfortable place to lie down.

 I pulled out my stack of holiday prints and decided it was time to make something with them. I swear, I do not buy these so I have no idea how some of them came to be in my house.

I'm using a pattern and ruler from Sew Kind of Wonderful. This is Metro Rings made with the Quick Curve Ruler. I figure I have enough holiday fabric to make a good-sized quilt with these. This is my first try at this pattern and some of my blocks are less than perfect. I'm getting better trimming and getting blocks close enough to the right size. So much to learn!

I've been making slow progress on my Time Traveler shawl. Pattern is Virus Shawl, yarn from Knit Picks.

Tool Tip: Ruler Storage

I am a ruler addict. This means that I will buy specialty rulers just because it does something new. This doesn't mean that I don't already have a ruler that does the trick, just that it is another new ruler.

This means I have many rulers. I've been storing my rulers on the lower shelf of my cutting table. It wasn't elegant and it didn't make it easy to find the ruler I was looking for.

I thought a file folder holder might be the right way to go. I picked up this simple one at the local office supply store. I picked this one because I was sure it would fit on the shelf and the price-point was pretty low. I also picked the metal one instead of one of the plastic holders because it just seemed more suited to the task.

I tested it out and it seemed to fit the bill. I wonder how I ended up with two of those large Tucker Trimmers?

Then I put it on the shelf, only to learn that the large Tucker Trimmers didn't fit on the holder on the shelf. Not a big deal since all the others fit fine. I just fit them in between the holder and the shelf. This will make it so much easier to find the ruler I'm looking for.

Have you found any good organizational tools for your sewing room?

Merry - A Curvy Quilt with Color Problems

Last week I showed you the quilting on my curvy quilt I named Merry.  As I've said before, I no longer pre-wash my quilting cottons.  I do pre-wash flannel, but that is to ensure the top and batting do as much or more shrinking than the flannel that I'm using as a backing.  I usually wash quilts after they are finished to make sure anything that has been picked up by the fabrics during the construction and quilting processes is removed before gifting.  I occasionally use spray starch.  Sometimes sewing machine oil gets onto the quilt from the long arm.  I handle all those pieces, blocks, fabrics and batting during construction, they are all pressed several times.  This is after the manufacturing process puts a myriad of chemicals onto the fabric.  I think washing isn't just a nice thing to do, I think it is something that makes the quilt complete.

Today we're going to talk about how I had some of the fabrics in this quilt pick up some of the residual dye from other fabrics.  I say some because it is only some.  This is the first time I've had anything quite like this happen and I thought it would be good info to share.  This photo is of the finished quilt after washing.  The square of fabric is a leftover that was not washed.  As you can see, the color of the fabric hasn't changed much with washing.  The light isn't perfect, I was using indirect daylight through my window.  Winter in the northern hemisphere does not make for great indoor photos.

Next, we have another piece of fabric before and after washing.  This fabric has been in my stash for a long time.  It was pre-washed.  Again, not much difference between the washed and unwashed fabrics.

This is another older piece that was pre-washed.  The block on the left is the fabric we're looking at for this comparison.  Again, not much difference between the pre-washed and the finished quilt.  The fabric on the right is what's interesting.

This is where things get interesting.  This fabric picked up some of the red in the quilt after washing.  This fabric came from either pre-cuts or a piece of coordinating print I had on-hand.

This fabric picked up even more of the red after washing.  This fabric was from either pre-cuts or a coordinating piece of fabric.  Only the fabrics from this line from this maker picked up the residual dye from some other fabric (my best guess is that it came from a solid red of unknown origin meaning it could be from one of several different manufacturers).  No other white fabric in the quilt, pre-washed or not, picked up any of this dye.  My conclusion is that the quality of the fabric is to blame.  I'm not blaming the red, though it is suspect.  I'm blaming this line of fabric as it is the only fabric that picked up any excess dye.

Overall I don't think it detracts that much from the overall design of the quilt.  If you're thinking maybe that fabric was something cheap from a chain store you should rethink that.  Two of the white-on-white prints were from chain stores and likely from ten years ago or more.  Two of those fabrics did not pick up any of the red.  The fabric that did pick up the red was quality quilting cotton that you can get at hundreds of quilt shops and pay top dollar for, too.

After it was finished and washed and stained and everything else, I had to capture the quilting from the back side.  I love how all the different quilting motifs show up in their own graceful way.  I used four thread colors for the quilting on this quilt.  You can really only see the red and white from the back.  The green and gold is much harder to see from this distance.

Not such a close-up lets you see the color a little better.

What am I going to do about the discoloration?  Not one damn thing.  It is still a very striking quilt that I put numerous hours into.  It is a beautiful piece of usable art that will function just fine as a quilt.  I will not let the fault of a piece of fabric defeat me.  I will not bemoan my hours of time and talent on something less than perfect.  I wasn't aiming for perfect.  I was aiming for a quilt.  In my book that makes this one a success.

I'm not going to ask about pre-washing or not pre-washing.  That discussion has been had until I would rather not talk about it.  Ever.  No, really.  Not.  Ever.  Again.  

My question for today is have about label placement.  When you label a quilt do you put the quilt near the top or the bottom edge of the quilt or somewhere else? (This is all relative since what the maker thinks is the top edge may not be the same as everyone else's.)

Linking up with Quiltville's very merry linky party.