Quilt Along 1 - Needles and Irons

Okay, now where we? Oh that's right, we were making a quilt together.

At this point you've hopefully picked your fabric and cut it in to strips. Finally, we can start sewing.  And really, how hard can it be to sew strips together?  It isn't hard, but there are some things we need to pay attention to as we sew.

Get Ready to Sew

Pick a neutral thread.  Usually, I piece with a grey thread if I am using colours or medium and dark toned fabric. 

Separate your strips with the background pieces in one pile and your accent pieces in another.

Take one strip each of all your background pieces and set aside. 

Turn on your iron and get it hot.

Start Sewing

The first step is to sew all your strips (minus the ones set aside) together in pairs, right sides together. Match up the tops of the strips. Don't worry about the bottoms because all your strips will vary slightly in length.

Grab randomly! Sew together different background strips and sew background strips to accent strips. Do not sew accent strips to accent strips. Do not put an accent strip on the bottom of your pairs as you sew.

I find it easy to just sit and chain piece all these strips, one after the other. That means you sew one set together and without lifting your needle or cutting your threads you start sewing the next set of strips. And so on and so on.

Pressing

I am a firm believer in pressing and pressing well. Really, you can't make this design work well without pressing. But keep in mind that pressing is not ironing the life out of your fabric and stretching it out.

One of my quilt mentors taught me that you should be able to press with one hand.  We have a tendency to pull on fabric when we use two hands.  The hand we are supposedly using to hold the fabric often pulls on it without us even thinking about it. Try taking your iron and pressing while holding your other hand behind your back. It will feel awkward, but it is a good exercise to see if you have a tendency to pull.

You will also see that this method really only works when you press to one side, not when pressing your seams open.  I'm not a fan of pressing seams open, so this works for me.

To press your strip sets I recommend pressing the seam flat, right out of the sewing machine. Then nose your iron in between the fabrics, on the right side of the bottom strip. Slowly nudge the iron forward and to the side, pressing the top fabric to the side and down. When you've reached the end of the strip give it another full press.  Set aside and repeat for the other strips.

When you were sewing you matched up the top of your strips, right? So all your pressing should be to the strip on the right.  For the first set of strips (the pairs) this will mean you will always press towards the accent.  If you have darker accents then this is what you want.  If you have a darker background then you will press to the background pieces.

As you progress through sewing sets together keep trying to press to the right, unless you have a dark accent/background combo.  Then always press to the dark.  This conscientious pressing will ensure that your accent pieces will really pop.

Continue Sewing

Now that you have your first pairs of strip sets, you need to sew the pairs together.  Again, grab randomly.  And again, match up the tops of the sets.  Depending on how you sewed your first sets together some typical examples of the order of fabrics when you sew pairs together might be:

background - background - background - accent

background - accent - background - background

background - accent - background - accent

Press.

Depending on the final size you want your block, at this point you may be adding a single strip or another strip set as you progress. The final size of your strip set should be at least an inch and a half  to two inches larger than the desired block size. Keeping sewing strip sets together until you get the desired width.

The one thing to keep in mind when it comes to sewing your strip sets together is that you do not want an accent piece on the ends.  In other words, do not have your strip set start or finish with an accent piece.

This is the part of the process that might seem pretty boring at first, but as your strips sets come together you will get the first true glimpse of how your fabrics will look together.  Note whether fabrics are standing out in a good or bad way.  Your accents should really pop from the backgrounds.

And remember to refer to week 1 instructions to know how many strips sets you will need if you have a specific quilt size in mind.

We'll see you next week, to create our blocks and create the layout that makes the design pop!

Slowly Emerging

Thank-you so much for all your kind words over the past week.  With everything that was going on it was wonderful to get your support. I am slowly coming out of the fog that was mere survival. And, in case you were wondering, the girls are now healthy and Hubby has started to feel some relief in his pain.  He's got a ways to go in healing, but he is no longer glued to the couch.  Hell, he even turned off the TV the other day he was finally so bored.

I did get some good quilting in on the weekend.  Some friends offered to take the girls for a playdate so between that and naptime I had nearly a full day of quilting.  It did wonders for my to-do list and my emotional health. First on the list was the samples for my class.  It starts on Friday and there are one or two spots left if you are in town. Once that was done I managed to get ahead on the Quilt Along project.  I will be coming back to that next week. I am quite excited by how it is coming together!

One thing I did want to announce at this point is that there will be a give-away for those participating in the quilt along.  At the end of the posts I will ask you to share with me the progress you've made  - whether it's just picking fabric or a completed quilt.  I will draw a name of participants to receive some inspiring treats. And no, there will be no hints as to the prize.

We'll see you back here next week.

On Pause

This was supposed to the post for week three of the Quilt Along.  Supposed to be. I'm sorry to say that I need to put the quilt along and my blogging on pause for a week or two. I hate to do this to you and please know that I had no plans to do it when I started the quilt along. But we've had 3 trips to the ER this past week, for three different family members. The little one had croup, possibly caused by the flu.  I developed an infection that thankfully turned out to be minor but has rendered my right index finger quite tender. And on Sunday night Hubby broke his collarbone playing hockey.

So, I am full-time caregiver for three people now, on top of working, preparing for my first class teaching, and other commitments.  Something had to give.  For now that has to be quilting. And blogging.  I'm falling down drunk with exhaustion these days.  Not drunk AND exhausted. Although...

I'll be back in a week or two, I promise. Thanks for your support.

Costumes

Have I mentioned before that I am not that big a fan of Halloween?  It isn't about the sugar or the mayhem.  Personally, I've never enjoyed dressing up.  As a kid I went for the laziest costume ever more years.  My favourite was "Fat Jogger". Inevitably there would be snow for Halloween so I would wear my snow suit with a pair of my Dad's sweats on top. No make-up, no mask, no wig. My kind of Halloween.

This year, however, The Monster was ALL about Halloween.  She changed the words to 'Happy Birthday' to be 'Happy Spook Night All Trick or Treaters!' (Try it, it works.) And we had to count down to trick or treating.  Thankfully she had a good long nap and felt well enough.  Both girls have been sick this week so we were worried we wouldn't get out. I had their costumes together.  I can't decided if I'm awesome for putting them together or if my laziness towards Halloween shows?  No answer required.

Go out we did and my little Pink Unicorn and Leprechaun were in fine form tearing around the neighbourhood. And the costumes?  Well, we thought they looked damn cute.

Quilt Along Week 2 - Attack of the Rotary Cutter

This week is all about cutting your fabrics. It seems straight forward, it's just cutting fabric, right? This design is not dependent on evenly cut strips, but they do need to be cut straight. Check out my handy videos for my tips and technique on doing this. As always, email or comment if you have any questions.

Cut all of your fabric in lengthwise strips (from selvage to selvage).  Ensure that all your ends are straight. There is no prescribed width to the strips, they are all random widths. Mine ranged from about 1.5 inches to 3 inches, but I didn't measure at all. From each 1/2 meter (yard) of fabric I would aim for 8-10 strips.

Once your fabric is cut you will get a better idea of how the fabrics work together. If any are jumping out at you as not playing nice with the others now is the time to replace them.  For example, I'm not so sure about the one for mine that is second from the left in the top photo. It might be too light.  But I haven't decided yet. It isn't a light, light one. In the photo below you can see the one third from the right that is lighter.  I doubted that one and kept it in to great effect.

Next week will be sewing the strips and pressing.  Yes, pressing. In the meantime, put a fresh blade in your rotary cutter and cut away.

If you are quilting along with me please let me know.  I would love to be able to share your work with everyone else. I'm going to add a blogroll of participants on the site.  If you don't have a blog then you can also link to a Flickr photostream.  And speaking of Flickr, is there an interest setting up a group for the Quilt Along?  

We are fighting the flu in this house.  That means I will get lots of quilting done or none at all!

Progress, lots of it

The end of a crazy week is coming.  A few more things to do, like find some time to kiss a brand new baby, make some caramel apples for a TV appearance tomorrow morning on Breakfast Television, and visit with an old friend from Toronto.  Somewhere in there I've also got to make Halloween costumes.

I have, however, been surprisingly productive this past week. I finally got my scraps cut for the Values Quilt Along.  I launched my own Quilt Along.  I made my way through about half the ovals I need for this baby quilt.  Oh, and I went out of town for the drive-through visits with family.  So, all in all, a pretty normal week.

Quilt Along Week 1 - Launch Party

This is it, week 1 of the Gratitude Quilt Along. Thanks for joining me, it's going to be a lot of fun. Let's jump right in.

This quilt is made, quite simply, by cutting fabric into strips, sewing the strips into sets, cutting out blocks, and sewing those block together. It's pretty straightforward. The bold design is realized through good fabric selection and cutting the blocks on random angles. This week is all about fabric selection.

How do I pick my fabric?

Your fabric selection on this quilt will really make the design pop, so take some time this week to play with your fabrics. The final design of the quilt is based on a high contrast between your accent strips and your background strips. This contrast can come purely from colour, but value matters more.

Value - this is the distinction between light, medium, and dark in a colour.
Colour - this is the visual perception of where you see your fabric compared to the spectrum of red, yellow, and blue. (But did you really need a definition?)


This quilt design works best with a light or medium background and a dark accent. I would also recommend that your dark accent be a different colour, but with good fabric choices you could do this in a single colour way, as long as your values are high contrast. My recommendation is that your background fabrics be in only one or two colours and that they relate to each other well by having a few fabrics with both colours in them.


Alternatively, I think it might work if you used a dark background with a light accent. That could make a really interesting quilt.


If you are having a hard time picking your fabrics and determining value, pull out a digital camera, if you have one, and take a picture of your fabrics together on the black and white setting. Even viewing it on the camera's tiny monitor should allow you to see differences in value, without colour being a part of the equation.


One last note about fabric selection, go for a variety of textures in your fabric. I strongly encourage you to make your fabrics a selection of large, medium, and small prints. In other words, don't pick a whole bunch of small dots for your background pieces, try some dots, weaves, florals, hand dyes, stripes, or even large scale prints in a single colour. Having texture in your quilt will provide a lot of movement without it being too busy.


Let's go through my fabric selections to help you see how I work through this process.



This was my initial fabric pull. When I start a project I simply grab everything that looks interesting. About half of these were in my stash and then I spent some cash in the LQS to augment the selection. The inspiration for the colour scheme actually came on the street one day. Out for a lunchtime walk I spotted a girl wearing a grey pinstriped suit with with a navy polka dot blouse and yellow shoes. That was months ago and the colour scheme stuck with me.


I love all these fabrics together, but for this design I'm pretty sure the lights won't work.



In this grouping I pulled out all the lights. I also pulled out the Amy Butler with the pink dots. Hmm, but then that Kaffe looked too peachy instead of golden, so out it came.



But I kept returning to that Denyse Schmidt Katie Jumpr Rope Yellow Dot and the Amy Butler Midwest Modern Floating Buds. I love those fabrics. I so wanted them to work. This will happen sometimes, but my choices were lose those fabrics or change all my background fabrics to work with these lighter values. I went with losing the lighter ones (and hanging on to them for the back of the quilt).



This is my final selection. I'm prepared to be flexible and change some these after I cut. For now, though, I really like the way this is looking.


How much fabric do you need?


That really depends on how large you want to make your quilt. I've put together a small table to help you determine fabric requirements. These are only estimates based on what I used to make Gratitude. You may want to have some extra fabric on hand if you are really stuck on a certain sized quilt.


SIZE BLOCK SIZE # of BLOCKS
                                (inches unfinished)

Crib
(42 by 48)         6.5        42
(45 by 54)          9.5        30

Lap
(63 by 63)         9.5        49
(60 by 60)       12.5        25
(72 by 72)        12.5        36

Double
(81 by 90)        9.5         90
(84 by 96)       12.5        56


To make Gratitude I used 8 different fabrics in 1/2 metre pieces This gave me a finished quilt of 63 inches square. I think it is a good idea to pick at least 6-8 different fabrics for teh design to pop. If you want a bigger quilt than you can either use more of each fabric or use more fabrics.

I realize that I haven't given you specific fabric yardage. This is because this is about process, not pattern. I want you to play with your fabrics - new or from stash - to come up witha combination that works for you. Just take some fabric and start cutting and sewing. Because this quilt is about process you may start with one size on mind and change it partway through to make a larger or smaller block size, or a larger quilt. If you are looking to other sized quilts let me know and we'll work our fabric requirements together.


I prefer to use yardage as opposed to fat quarters for this. You will be sewing your fabrics into full length strips and then cutting them into blocks, so having a selvage to selvage strip will make your life easier. It is possible to use fat quarters for this too, but it will require some piecing into longer strips, or sewing more strip sets.

Did that all make sense? I hope so. But if it didn't, email me or post a comment and I will answer it as best I can. If you are going to post your progress on your blog, please let me know so I can create a blog roll. I've had some people express interest in following along with all the participants.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's efforts and creations! Thanks for joining me.