Project Progress: Liberated Alphabet Quilt

It was back in February 2010 that the Block Lotto (now here) had Liberated Patchwork Letters as that month's block.  I did a set of letters in pink to have a go here, but didn't do any more in the right colours at the time and didn't enter that month.  I added sashing then took a photo of them on my board, then put them in a box, waiting to be sewn together.  Another unfinished project....

Raw State

Then last month I finally bought myself a quarter inch foot with guide for my Bernina, not from Bernina themselves in Wales, because as it turns out the local sewing shop in Whitley Bay has cheaper postage (excellent! one day I need to go to Whitley Bay and visit their shop, it looks interesting, but it's about 30 miles and petrol costs are high so it'll have to wait until I've got other reasons to go too).

All Sewn Together!

And how amazing is a quarter inch foot? Oh yes, well worth the money.  So now the quilt is all sewn together, with two more crumb blocks, and a fairly narrow border strip having been added.  Not only that, but also with batting and a backing made up of various sized leftover pieces from the same set of self-dyed fabric, and all tacked together with huge stitches in the middle of my sashing.

With hindsight, I should have paid more attention and centred the letters within the white background BEFORE adding the sashing, getting rid of the excess fabric (or at least restashing it and now I can't find it again) and then having to accept it and just sew it all together.  It's particularly evident with the D which has no white on two sides and is a very wide letter, but it's an issue with lots of the letters.  Perhaps if I'd put the crumb blocks differently, it wouldn't have been so obvious.  Never mind, I've learnt a lot with that mistake! So I thought I'd move on, trim them all to the exact size (another thing I've learnt to do before sewing it all together) and get it quilted. By hand.

The Back

Then I got stuck.  I tried to handquilt 'in the ditch' thinking I'd do this along the bottom of each letter horizontally then vertically - just a simple hand quilted grid following the sashing.  But all those random seams, some of which are quite thick, make it really hard!

Handquilted along top of Z

It's not that hard to sew evenly along the main seam at the front (I've done a full horizontal from W to Z, and half from T to Z).  But there's something about my stitching angle and my needle can go HORRIBLY wrong through the layers, requiring quite a bit of ripping out & redoing, and even now it's not great....

What I'd like to achieve is even stitches in a straight line on both sides.  But despite never having had the problem before (albeit on plain cloth), I don't seem to be able to get it right (as clearly seen above).  Maybe I should have ironed the creases out of the backing too, but I'm going to wash it after it's made up, so hopefully it won't matter.

Any tips?  Should I be using a hoop? I do own some of that paper quilting tape that you pin down for even stitches, but it's smaller stitches than I want to use and won't help with the angles? 

Should I just give up & machine it with a meander or a straight stitch?  

HELP!!!!  All advice gratefully received!

This is why for the first time in ages, I'm posting my Design Wall on Judy Laquidara's blog, I KNOW you will know where I'm going wrong, and hopefully you'll tell me how to put it right....

Lois

TootHillMedley

Progress is being made...

In my defense, I've moved house and had an operation since my end of August shame at not pushing forwards my plans to sell my handmade textiles, paper and plastic products online.

However, progress is being made. 

What's on Your Desk Wednesday (WOYWW)

The lovely Linby has found a site which encourages you to post a pic of your workspace on a Wednesday. Which I find a strange but curiously amusing and attractive idea. Yesterday was Wednesday and Ivor was obviously feeling better as he leapt up into the space normally taken up by my Trusts & Estates Diploma files (normally there's no space at all in the shelving!)



There's no point in taking a pic of my actual workspace desk as it's my dining room table and so instead you get a pic of my textiles/ threads/ studying & tax technical/ card making supplies. As you can see (and that's only about 2/3rds of it), I've a lifetime's worth of supplies to get through!



One of my Unfinished Projects is to hem some cloth and velcro it to each of the three units to hide it all so that I can have friends round for dinner. I bought the velcro a couple of days ago (it's in the paper bag above Ivor's head), so now all I need to do is work out which fabric to use... I've found a blog called Block Lotto which is rather enticing, I could learn lots of different blocks, make some and whatever I don't submit for the lotto (or even win from the lotto, yeah right!) could be used to make up the unit hiding cloths. Especially if I used the leftover fabric from the pink/orange/purple curtain.

Or I could just use plain white sheeting then it will actually happen!

Finished Projects 5: Patchwork Curtain

This one's a bit embarrassing, I actually finished it last week, but when I was taking pics of the other recently finished projects, I forgot all about it! And it's my biggest finished project EVER!!!

Anyway, when I was doing my Embroidery City & Guilds (2000+ which I've still not quite finished...) I dyed a load of calico in candy reds/ yellows/ purples/ oranges to make a cover for a footstool (using large gauge canvas and strips of the calico in tent stitch. I did actually finish the footstool!) - but because I didn't know what colours would come out, nor how much fabric I needed, I ended up with huge amounts left over. I found a book in the local library in 2006 called Quick Colourful Quilts by Rosemary Wilkinson, and really liked her 'Glow Worms' quilt. A quick Google search produced THIS by Lenibayside, who has obviously followed the instructions to the letter as it looks exactly like the one in the book.



Anyway, for the last few years I've been making these blocks when I feel like it, in the vague hope I'd have enough to make a kingsize bedcover (which looking at the pile of fabric that's left, I would have...) But then the snow came, and the house was freezing and I got fed up with the draught from the Coal Hole door (which I can't block off as the Fuse Box is in there (with the spiders and the damp and the slugs) and I need to go in and reset it when a lightbulb blows and the electrics trip. So, I looked at all the fabrics I had and realised I had enough blocks to make a curtain, so that's what I used it for. There's 5 lengths of 14 blocks sewn together, then the side edges are bound with half of a sixth length. It's not quilted or batted or lined, it's just hemmed at the top with curtain tape and has a pretty deep hem at the bottom to keep it hanging nicely.



I didn't do the spiral 'glow worms' though, despite having lots of templates and suitable cloth. But as the curtain's unlined, I can always go back and put them on later.

It's on a dormer rail with a riser, so that when you open the door the curtain comes with it, and is raised up a little bit at the free end so it doesn't catch under the door. Hurrah for John Lewis!

I've got 10 made up blocks left over, and as this curtain's in what is now the dining cum work room, I could make up another couple of blocks and make cushion covers for my 4 chairs, as I've got 4 spare cushions sitting around.... But that's for another day entirely, especially as two of the chairs have solid seats which have split and I really need to get them mended before anyone can sit on them as they're in immanent danger of collapse.

Finished Projects 4: Rag Books

Quite a few years ago, mum took me to a factory somewhere near Manchester, where they print and make items such as teatowels and scarves etc. In the bargain bin, I pulled out a length of cloth that had 4 Dean's Rag Books images on it, although some of the images had blotches of printing ink where it had all gone a bit wrong, which is why it was in the bin...



Having spent all of about 50p on this length of cloth I vaguely thought that one day I'd make it up into books. But never did. Until yesterday when I pulled it out, and made up the two Rag Books that were perfectly printed, and made 4 little bags out of the remaining 12 'pages' for the other 2 books - leaving 4 pages unuseable as ruined by blotches.

I'm not convinced I worked out the openings for the pull ribbon particularly well, and one of the books couldn't be pinking sheared as it would have destroyed the title, but all in all, I'm quite pleased.

Not sure what I'm going to do with them though, maybe give to friends, or put into an Operation Christmas Child shoebox? I was thinking that maybe the little bags could be used as cases for chalks or wax crayons.... So they'll be put away until the Autumn when I decide what to do with them.

Finished Projects 3: Cat Towels

I think my friend Wendy gave me this metre or so of cream towelling (from her oddments bin, she used to have a childrenswear business and I've had a lot of good sized offcuts that weren't big enough for her to make a kids garment from, but I can use for my purposes). I know mum gave me the turquoise bias binding (a roll a good 10cm across). And as usual, I've had both for years.

The cat, as you all know is a fairly new addition, he arrived in May 2009, and much prefers being outside, in all weathers, so he can be quite grubby when he eventually deigns to come in. He's also a creature of habit and very slow to accept new things. And I only have one towel that I can use to rub him down and as a mat to catch muddy paws by the catflap.

All of which led to today's finished project - cat towels, two thereof, approx 30"x20" (as that's the size of the halflanding area giving access to the back door), so it can be used as a washable door mat and/or a rubdown towel if Ivor's very grubby - and hopefully even a straightjacket if we continue having trouble with the tablets. And be easily identifiable by all as a cat towel and not for human use.

He is actually asleep in the headshot above, but his eye doesn't ever close properly on that side, so he looks a bit like he's giving the evils, but he's not!

He's got a bladder infection, was in the vet's overnight last week then came home with 2 different tablets and some powder to take at each meal, and is supposed to be moving onto prescription food.

Being slightly semi-feral he's not keen on being held, so he gets very stressed if you even try to hold him preparatory to manhandling his mouth open and pushing in tablets he doesn't like the taste of... I've tried slitting open chunks of cat food, surrounding them with cheese of various sorts and also the directly down the mouth route. The chunks of cat food and cheese attempts mostly result in him spitting half the tablets around the kitchen (I had a pony once who used to lick the brussel sprouts leaves in his bran mash and then spit them out, all nice & clean - Ivor's a bit like that with his tablets). The directly down the mouth route has resulted in him spitting half the tablets around the kitchen. Same result, but more distress all round, so we're not doing that again for a while, and anyway need any towel to smell of him to even be able to get hold of him.

The technique I've not tried is mashing the tablet up with butter and smearing it on his foot. It might work for clean cats, but Ivor doesn't always wash his feet immediately they are grubby and I'm not sure I can face cleaning up the mess if he doesn't...

Mum has suggested sild or sardines in oil, as these have a strong taste and are already slit to hide the tablets in - so that's what we'll be trying tonight, especially as I don't think he took any of this mornings tablets, just the powder...

So, the finished project:

I cut the towelling into 20"x30" blocks (for two towels) and laboriously pinned the bias binding over the edges of one - and utterly failed to reliably sew it together. So I cut all the sewn bits off, and straightened the edges (couldn't unpick as the binding is quite loosely woven as is the towelling) and starting again, instead pinned one open edge of the binding to the edge of the towelling, and sewed it down, then wrapped the rest over to the other side, and then sewed everything together from that other side. Which more or less worked on the first one, but was much neater on the second one.

So, the original cat towel is in the wash, and the only reason Ivor was prepared to tolerate the towel being gently laid over him for the pics was I suspect drug induced lethargy as a result of his post breakfast marauding outside for an hour or so before he came in and collapsed wearily on the floor. (The towel was actually laid over him to get it smelling of him, in the vain hope he'll accept me using it on him next time it rains/ need some tablet manhandling).

Finished Projects: 2

I've not posted for a while (again), as I was busy with snow and a sick cat and other stuff: like looking to see exactly how many unfinished projects I've got ...

To do this, I had to pull them out of various boxes etc, and then tidy up again - which has been great as in the process I completely reorganised my workroom, did a load of filing and I now have only a couple of boxes of stuff to sort out (keep, give or throw) and I can pretty much reach everything I want to fairly easily.

Turns out I've got about 21 unfinished projects (but I think there's a couple more lurking), some of which are nearly finished, some are halfway through and some are just not-started piles of materials with an idea pinned to them, and some are just intentions...

I bought 4 furnishing fabric offcuts years and years ago in a bargain bin outside an upholsterers in Buxton for a pound each, thinking I'd use them for cushion covers one day. They've got some sort of plasticised or rubberised backing to them.

I've also been intending to make some chunky doorstops (as I've got those selfclosing fire doors in my flat) and a couple of years ago bought some sand (and dried it out) as a filler.

And about a year ago I bought some quilting/filling because I thought I might want to make something that needed stuffing.

But never did any of these things until last week, when I made these two doorstops.

The first one (top) is a bit saggy and the corners are dodgy. I decided to use a 7" square, and save time by having a single strip 7"x28" and then two 7" squares - don't all shout at once, but as I found out, and you probably know already, I should have deducted my 5/8" seam allowances x3 from the 28" length, as it didn't quite fit together. My solution was to put a pleat into each corner. Then it was hideous to fill with sand and once I'd filled it, I couldn't get it totally full AND manage to sew up the opening I'd left at the bottom. It's huge, it's saggy and it's really really heavy, so it works but could be better....

So, I went looking on the internet and from looking at a couple of tutorials on cube making (specifically soft baby blocks), I realised the single strip problem and how to do neat corners, and also an idea of half filling the doorstop with quilting/filling then using an inner bag to hold the sand. Whilst fretting about the cat and holding him up (the Valium's had some funny side effects, he kept falling over - tricky when he insists on being outside as much as possible), I realised if I did an inner bag with a long tube, I'd be able to pack it really full, and still reach the needle on my sewing machine to secure it, AND then sew up the opening of the outer shell by hand without cascades of sand all over me & the cat.

What I didn't quite manage was to put the inner sand liner against the bottom of the outer shell, and happily filled everything up, then sat back to admire it before I sewed up the outer, only to realise I'd got the sand liner against the side rather than the bottom. So, out poured the sand, the quilting/filler shuffled unwillingly and lumpily to one side, the liner readjusted against the bottom and the sand poured back in. Except it wasn't that quick... And I had to fiddle with the stuffing and add more to get it standing up properly. Still, the next one will be really easy now I know what I'm doing, oh, wasn't planning to do anymore. Oh well!

Anyway I'm really pleased with the second doorstop as it's heavy from the sandbag liner taking up the bottom half of it, but not too heavy, and truly cubelike due to the stuffing taking up the top half.

I may or may not unpick the first doorstop, make a sandbag liner and use stuffing and sandbag to make it stand up. Or even unpick the whole thing and do it properly. Or maybe I'll just leave it as it's in the kitchen. Although now I've finished it, the kitchen could do with a halfmoon shaped one, as it would fit better with my funky recyling bin...

Finished Projects 1: Rabbit Wool Rug

I started making this wool hooked rug in oh probably 2003, having bought the rug canvas in about 2000 and the wool itself, well back when I was a student in Wolverhampton in 1990.

The rabbit/ hare motif is taken from a cross-stitch book - The Art of William Morris in CrossStitch by Barbara Hammett (David&Charles 1996). Where it's used on a picture as a pair of Brer Rabbit's with a scottish thistle rising between them with the suggestion you could use it to do a family tree. In the book, the finished size (including the thistle) is 14"x20". But by using rug canvas instead of on 14 count Aida, the rabbit itself is about a foot square-ish.

You can see the rabbit more clearly from the back, but I rather like the slightly formless shape given by the texture of the rug wool. I was originally going to do two rabbits facing each other, but then I liked the empty space without the second rabbit. When I started the rug, it didn't take long to do the rabbit, but I didn't fancy the slog of hooking the plain area, which is what I've been doing in the last few weeks and now it is complete!

Most of the wool is 80% wool/ 20% nylon quite coarse weaving wool which I bought for the princely sum of £1.54 for 11ozs at a crafts hall in Shrewsbury in the spring of 1990. I used most of two 11oz hanks of the blue and maybe half a red hank of a similar size plus some of the dark red, so it probably comes to about 26/27 ozs wool in all.

The Shrewsbury wool is : the background a Royal Air Force blue, the main Pillar Box red and the dark blood red shadows. The highlights wool is a fancy yarn I got from Texere Yarns mill on an huge cop, a mohair/ nylon mix with bits of shiny filament in it - it's a sort of golden and red mix. I used two strands of Shrewsbury wool and 6 strands of fancy yarn per stitch. The colour values aren't great, but I wasn't going the sweep the yard just to photograph the rug with decent values!

The rug is 14" wide by 40" long (count 46 wide by 130 long) and it took about an hour to do a block of 10x10 stitches of background. I made it as a runner for beside a bed. But am undecided as to whether I will keep & use it myself, give it as a present or try and sell it. So at the moment it's safely encased in plastic so it doesn't get motheaten - I think I've sorted the moth problem here, but in case I haven't....