Time 4 Tea (T4T)

I've spent some time over the last few weeks working on the design for a new quilt and it's coming together well. As mentioned in my introductory post (http://bertcollections.blogspot.com/2009/01/introductions.html), I'm working on a quilt inspired by a teapot I've inherited from my paternal grandparents, (although I've decided to change its working title to time for tea). So far what I'm working with is:
*a collection of blue and white print fabrics I collected on a trip to the USA in 2005
*a collection of photographs of teapots that I'm gradually turning into applique patterns on my computer.
I'd like to take the opportunity to thank my friends and family and casual acquaintences for the pictures of teapots that I have so far - each one has a story that goes withit, so maybe I should write a set of short stories to accompany the quilt.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about today is the creative process of getting started on a quilt. Time for Tea, has started with a blend of ideas and has become for me a collage of the story of 'time for a cuppa'. In my family, you're always offered a cup of tea when you visit someone, it's an easy way of asking "what's happening", a form of comfort from life's troubles (especially if someone else makes it), and a way of just getting "five minutes peace" from the bustle of daily life. I have many happy memories of sitting at the dining table with members of my family just spending good times together . I should also mention that tea is particularly part of 'the girls'' traditions in the family, and reminds me of my grand mothers so I'm making the quilt particularly with them in mind, but almost as a tribute to the women of my family. What I'm trying to do in the quilt is somehow combine all these ideas.

In addition to the ideas I want to convey, the broad style of the quilt (traditional, modern, square, rectangular, big, small etc.) is an important thing for me to clarify early, and then I develop some 'rules of thumb' that I use when deciding what to do next for the quilt to make sure the overall tone or theme of the quilt is consistent. In this case, I'm working with traditional style fabrics, on a symettrical design based on a clock in the centre with borders and features round the the outside (I'll post a picture of my scribbles to show what I mean). I want the fabrics and symmetry of the quilt to make it look traditional, but to use the applique and quilting to make the quilt more informal, to reflect homely origins of the ideas.

That's about where the ideas for T4T are at. For now I need to create some more applique patterns from photos I collected while on holidays and refne the design a bit further - oh, and finish the Life's Rich Tapestry quilt which I was going to start quilting 10 minutes ago, but decided I type a blog entry while I had my cup of tea first, so the tradition continues :-)

Happy holidays to one and all on Christmas day,
Bert

LRT7 – Structural/Stabilising Quilting and Wine?

This weekend I’ve done some structural or stabilizing quilting on Life’s Rich Tapestry. What’s amused me is the amount of concentration it takes to do long lines of ‘stitching in the ditch’. Most of the ‘ditch stitching’ that I’ve done before has been lots of short lines, so the fact that every time I day dreamed I caught the wrong piece of fabric was interesting. What’s more, I had a glass or two of wine at lunch time today, which seemed to make the first couple of rows easier, and the last couple harder (sleepiness setting in :-). On the whole, I’m quite pleased with the results anyway.

I’m trying to keep the pieces square with this stabilizing quilting, by starting with two horizontal lines on either side of the leaf border at the top of the quilt, then doing the vertical lines in the centre, which I’ll follow with stitching along the horizontal leaf border at the bottom (refer to the photo of the whole quilt below). While this appraoch has kept the squares and vertical lines of the centre section nice and straight, the horizontal border at the bottom seems to have stretched or moved, as had the outer border in the top right hand corner. The lead to the fabric puckering and the edge I was going to ditch stitch on the leaf border looking more like a scalloped one than a straight one (as shown in the photo above). So… I’ve repinned the bottom border and top right corner this afternoon and, as the photo to the leftshows, this seems to have smoothed out the issue enough and straightened the lines again.

Despite the slipping of the lower border of the quilt, last weekend’s approach to pins (refer LRT6 post) seemed to work – I had enough pins to keep the work stable, without getting in the way too much. I’m happy that the final result is both nice and even and straight. So any errors were from my trying to think about something else while I was quilting, not the pins :-D . And...here's the result.
Happy crafting until next time,
Bert

LRT 6 – Quilt Sandwich and Basting.

While the title here may suggest I’ve spent the day baking, this couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve spent today pin-basting the quilt sandwich (backing, batting and quilt-top) of my ‘Life’s Rich Tapestry’ creation. This is a slow, careful process that gave me some time for reflection and appreciation for the art of quilting. I’ll cover the sandwiching process in the techniques section of my website soon, I thought it would be more constructive to discuss the basting here today, as good information on this seems to be hard to find.

I’ve made nearly 20 quilts now, and while each one has taught me something different, and I’m always keen to experiment and learn something new. From previous projects I knew that sewing basting (by machine or hand) is more difficult than it looks with a large quilt, so the decision is not really whether to pin baste. Pin-basting is absolutely necessary for the end product to reflect the hard work you’ve put into it. Rather, the decision is whether to sew or tack as well as pin. For this project I’m going to try just pins, combined with a two-step process for quilting – structural quilting, then decorative quilting (which I’ll cover in next week’s post). The results of my pin-ing efforts today can be seen in the photo below.

You may notice from the photograph that I’ve flouted the ‘baste every 2inches’ principle and I’ve done this on purpose. In my experience, pin basting can work but only if the pins are in the right place. So I’ve adopted the approach of pin-around-the-quilting-line to see how that works. For the structural quilting, I’m aiming to just follow the vertical and horizontal lines in the piecing, so I’ve pinned through the centre of each piece leaving enough room for the foot of the sewing machine to fit around the pins. The reason I haven’t placed the pins in a 2inch grid is that I find it very frustrating to be constantly stopping to remove pins - it makes my sewing wonky and breaks my concentration. Who knew sewing could be that aggravating ? J