"Courtyard" Mystery Quilt, Clue 7

Now we’re going to rotate and place the blocks, and sew them into a top.  The seams should all be pressed so they “nest” up against the seam next to them.   I sew the rows together, and press the seams in the top row one direction, the seams in the next row the opposite direction, and keep alternating.  But you can do it the way you usually do.)

Paying careful attention to the orientation of each block, arrange and sew the blocks into 6 rows of 4 blocks each, as shown below.  (To keep from getting confused, or my eyeballs rotating around in my head, I follow the direction the Blue “arrow” is pointing in each block.)  Every 2 x 2 block section repeats.

When sewn together, it creates a secondary, interlocking pattern.

It's all over but the shouting.  Well, and the border.....  See you next week for the final clue.

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Previous clues/posts:

Clue 1

Clue 2

Clue 3
Clue 4

Clue 5
Clue 6

"Courtyard" Mystery Quilt: Clue 5

Clue 5:  Pink Strips

Now we’ll start to work with those Pink and Background2 strips that are still waiting for some action.

1. With RST, sew a Pink 6-1/2” x WOF strip to a 2-1/2” x WOF Background2 strip along the long side;  press toward the Pink strip.  Repeat with the remaining 2 Pink  and 2 Background2 strips.

 

2.  Subcut the strip sets from Step #1 into 2-1/2” segments.  You will get 16 segments per strip set, and from all the strip sets you’ll have a total of 48 segments.

3.  Divide the 48 Pink/Background2 segments into two stacks of 24 segments each.  Set one aside and use the other as your working stack.

4.  Using a segment from your Pink/Background2 working stack, sew it to a Purple 2-1/2” x 8-1/2” strip, making sure the strips are oriented as shown.    Press toward the purple strip.

 

Repeat with the remaining 23 Pink/Background2 segments from your working stack and 23 Purple strips, for a total of 24 units.

5.  Now retrieve your reserved stack of Pink/Background2 segments, and sew a Pink/Background2 segment to a Purple 2-1/2” x 8-1/2” strip, making sure the orientation is as shown below.  Note that this orientation is different from that of Step #4.

Repeat with the remaining Pink/Background2 segments and Purple strips, to make a total of 24 units with this orientation.

You will have 24 units of each orientation.

Next week we'll start putting subunits together.

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Previous clues/posts:

Clue 1

Clue 2

Clue 3

Clue 4

Fractured Fats

In anticipation of demonstrating the new Stripology ruler last weekend I wanted to design a quilt that was relatively easy to make, and uses the standard pre-cuts you can get from a fat quarter:  two 10" squares, four 5" squares, and one 2-1/2" x 20" strip.

Part of the demo was showing those cuts on fat quarters and, as I thought I might as well have a purpose in mind for those cuts, instead of just cutting random fat quarters, I wanted a design (or 2, or 3, or 4) in mind.   It would also be a chance to have the quilters watching the demo vote on which of several designs they liked.

As usual, the one they preferred that day is not the one I would have chosen/guessed.   :-)   I like to cast as wide an opinion net as possible, and see if the blog readers' choice matches that of the local quilters.  (It's fascinating to see what everyone is going to like most!)

So, here are four choices; the colors aren't important, they're just varied to make it easier to see the pattern.  The end quilt might be all blues or all reds, or a completely different color scheme than shown. So, picture your favorite color scheme or palette, and vote, at the link below, on your favorite.  You'll see the designs on the poll, also, but as a preview:

Cast your vote here, and thanks for your help in choosing a design!

If at first you don't succeed, design, design again!

Over the past couple of weeks I have been reviewing some of the knitting classes from Craftsy in which I am enrolled.  (I'm too embarrassed to tell you how many Craftsy classes, on all topics, have my name on the roster!)   My interest of late has been primarily in the design classes, specifically designing knitted lace shawls, cowls, and scarves; many design principles and ideas apply across all disciplines, after all.  One comment that I kept hearing over and over was, "And how do I do this?  I knit and rip, knit and rip......I knit swatches with different bead colors..."

One of the things that is being reinforced for me as I try to get better at design is that there isn't a straight path from idea to design/pattern.  (Well, seldom is there a straight path.)  At least, that is true for me, and it seems to be for some others, too--others who are much more gifted designers than I, so I don't feel so badly.  :-)

Sometimes I have something very specific in my head for a design, but it's also rather fun to start with just a vague idea for a quilt design:  "How about something around 2" squares?" and just start drawing lines and plugging in colors.  (Admittedly, this is much more fun when you have an easy way to draw those lines and change them, so a computer design program is nice.   For many of my quilt designs I use Electric Quilt, and for the rest I use Word or Illustrator.    Once you learn how to use them--and the learning curve for Illustrator is still on an upward slope for me, I admit--you can focus on design elements, rather than spending time erasing and re-drawing on paper.)

This morning I sat down with EQ, having nothing more in mind than the aforementioned "a quilt design/something around 2" squares.   I drew a 2" grid in EQ, with an odd number of squares.  There's no particular reason that it should be odd, other than I thought a central 'spine" of some sort might be interesting; often, odd numbers of things are more interesting to the eye.

Then I just started coloring in squares.  I usually start with just a couple of colors and a background, unless I have something specific in mind, because it gives me contrast (one of those design principles) without having to worry about how multiple colors are working with each other; getting a design I like is enough to focus on for the time being!   I chose red and blue because, frankly, they were the first two colors up in the EQ palette I was using.

I won't bore you with describing all the combinations I tried; suffice it to say that there were many, probably 50 or more.  And then some more.  I cut some of the squares in half, diagonally, then tried some more cut in half.  i cut them the other way, then deleted some of them.  I traded the colors in some squares, then traded them back again and changed others.  Each time I made a design change in the block,  I plugged the block into a quilt, rotating blocks and trying different configurations.   Placed in the quilt, I could see where I might want to change a color, or split a square, or un-split it.  Then, it was back to the block, then back to the quilt, then back to the block.

Did I mention that the path to a quilt design isn't very straight?

Along the way I created some designs I liked well enough, some that I didn't like at all, and some that made me wonder, 'What was the point of THAT change?"

You've probably found this to be true when you're looking at quilt designs, or choosing patterns, or looking through a catalog:  you know when a quilt is right, when it is something that you like.  And the same was true for this design process--and almost always, for me:  when you hit upon the right design, you know it.  After two or three hours of futzing with the block, I arrived at a design I like.   I changed the colors to a holiday vibe and, with any luck, I'll be able to show you the finished quilt design in late Fall or early winter.

The moral of today's designing quilts story is to just keep playing--the design road is seldom straight, or a quick trip, but it is always fun!  (If you're in the vicinity of Cut Up and Quilt, join me for an EQ class in October; you'll learn the basics of the software so you can play...er, design, too!)

A Modern Quilt Comes Together

My readers' choice from the first half of the 12-week Design Challenge was "Between Two Rivers," and it's coming together.  I confess that your choice surprised me, but it's been fun to put it together and I thought I'd share how I translated it from drawing to quilt.

The design evolved during Week 6 of the Challenge, starting out as one concept in the "different paths" challenge that my friend Ann proposed.  After the fact, I decided it reminded me of Iowa, which means 'Between Two Rivers."   The rivers run north and south, rather than east and west, as the design depicts, but what's the fun in creating art if you can't use artistic license?

Between Two Rivers quilt design

Translating a Design into a Quilt

The first step was to choose fabrics.   I didn't want any large scale prints for it (except for the background), but neither did I want solids; texture was important, especially if the greens were representing fields full of crops.  I played with the idea of representing fields in different seasons, and maybe that will happen someday, but for this quilt I stuck with high summer.  Not all of these fabrics made it into the quilt.

Then I set out to work on proportion.  I knew that I didn't want the fields to be all the same length and width.  This is more artistic license, as Iowa is laid out quite grid-like, for the most part.   The order and placement of the fabrics in the layout, as well as the relative sizes and proportion required some trial and error.   And it changed.  Many times.

Even as I pieced the fields, the sizes and proportion saw some adjustments.  I also added narrow brown strips between the fields, which was not part of the original drawing.  It felt like it needed a bit of "pop" between, to accent the change in the fields/crops and brown was logical; Iowa has rich soil.    I worked it until it looked as I thought I wanted it, then just sort of closed my eyes and sewed it together.   At some point, you just have to say, 'Enough with the tweaking," and do it.   That usually works for me, though I have been known to rip out an entire quilt top and re-do it.  I'll tell you the story of the Abacus/Soroban quilt some day.

The last of the layout decisions were the shade and curve of the rivers.  There were really only two possibilities for the shade of the blue, and the lighter fabric won.  The textural print of the blue was just what I wanted for the flowing rivers.

The top is almost finished--just finishing the applique on the rivers--and will be loaded on Molly, my longarm, soon.  I'll let you know how the quilting goes!

If you're interested in updates on designs and quilts that I'm working on, please follow the Spinster on Facebook; I'd love to see you there!

Design Challenge Week #8 Results

My brother provided the challenge for this week:  Feynman Diagrams.  I had to do a bit of research because, while I'm familiar with Dr. Feynman, I wasn't as familiar with his diagrams.  Mike sent me a link to an  article about an exhibit at FermiLab of Feynman Diagram art rendered in steel tubing.  Quite cool.

The diagrams are, as near as I can make out, about diagramming atomic/subatomic particles' movements and interactions.   It was quite a different topic but a challenge isn't a challenge unless it's a challenge, and I spent quite some time with it this week.  I found that it would be easy to spend a great deal more time with it, but here are some ideas I played with.   I don't know if my brother will laugh, cry, shake his head, or bang his head against the desk when he sees them, but art is supposed to inspire emotion and discussion, right?

It wouldn't be difficult to do a quilt with pretty literal interpretation of the diagrams, and I might do one for Mike--if he sends me some of his favorites. (It occurs to me that it might be fun to do the diagrams in white, on a black background--chalk on slate blackboard.  Old school, I know, but surely Feynman used old-fashioned blackboards in the course of his career and his lectures.)

It could be sylized just a bit, and repeated:

The challenge is to create designs inspired by the topic, not necessarily literal representation, though, so as I was reading a post with "rules" for constructing the diagrams, I thought about the pieces   that seemed to go into them.  In the case of this particular post, there were squiggly lines and straight lines with arrows:  electrons and positrons going in, electrons and positrons going out, with the squiggly lines being where some sort of "magic happens" in the equation.  (Sorry, any physicists who are reading this; I'm going to claim artistic license, even in my understanding of the diagrams!)   Anyway, back to the pieces.  What if you had a toolbox of the pieces or components of the diagrams, sorted and lined up?  That would be more of a "block-y" kind of quilt.

To make something more traditionally "quilty" I used classic quilt piece shapes to construct squiggly lines (you CAN see that in the staggered bands, right?) and triangles for the arrowed lines.   Yes, you Feynman fans may notice that I have particles going in and never coming out.  I don't know for certain, but I suspect that's a serious problem in the physics world.

 I rather like vertical columns of design, so you could set it on its end, too.

Traditional quilts often feature repetition--repeated shapes or blocks--and several of these stylized diagrams make for a rather interesting composition.  It is probably way beyond "approximation" and unless you knew it was a stylized Feynman Diagram your brain wouldn't make that leap but, hey; it's an artistic interpretation inspired by the diagrams.

At some point in the series of posts about diagrams that I was reading, color was introduced.  Hurrah!  Something else to play with.  (The color was a quark thing, I think; different flavors of quarks can be represented with different colors?  Feynman is probably turning in his grave now, and physicists everywhere are developing serious headaches.)  At least I've corrected the problem with particles going in but not coming out.

Expanding my horizons on the shapes of diagrams I found a few more designs that I liked.   You could do a series of improvisationally pieced triangles, with some bias strips for the squiggly lines.  Or, you could stylize them and create more traditional triangles with squiggly lines.

Hexagons are a very popular shape for quilters, especially of late.  I like the hexagon with squiggly lines. It looks a bit like biology meets physics, doesn't it?  (Sorry, I can't tell you what this particular diagrams represents, in terms of particles.)  And goodness knows, I have enough rulers and tools for making hexagons.

 How about a Fractal Feynman?   Hexagon diagrams making up a hexagon?  (OK, it's stretching it to call that a fractal but I'm invoking artistic license and naming again.)

Thinking about the steel tubing art started me thinking about possibilities with more dimension.  I have, for some time, been planning a quilt (or series) that uses quilted strips that are twisted; an example is below.   I think that has potential for a more dimensional rendering of the squiggly lines.

The hexagons could even have more dimension, if I made them separately, using the Hickory Nut ruler. (See my post about Crazy Hexies.)   The center would be plain, rather than the crazy quilting.   Although.....now that I think about it, you could embroider some Feynman diagrams in the middle of each one.   Hmmm.

Or, I could piece together some hexies with plainer backgrounds, and then sew some dimensional twisted pieces over the top of them, for yet another dimensional quilt, albeit it one that is quite far from the original design inspiration.   Hmmm, again...

Feynman is probably laughing in his physics lab in the sky, Mike is probably laughing in a hysterical sort of way, and I am smiling because this was quite fun.   There are many more ideas floating around in my head than I've had time to play with this week and that's the whole point of the Challenge.   Who knows what next week will hold!

This challenge just reminded me of a quilt made for Mike years ago.  The family was talking about Penrose tiling at Christmas one year and we thought it might make an interesting quilt.  My brothers headed off to the library to get some articles about it, Mary Kay headed in to Dad's computer to write the code for a program that would generate diagrams, and Rita and I talked about color, fabric, etc. (Poor Mom was trying to get us to sit down to dinner.  I think her children were quite a strain on her, some days!)  Penrose tiling uses just two shapes, and you have to place them correctly to get them to all fit together.  If you  mess up with one, it throws off every other piece placement from that point out. (You build from the center--or, at least I did.)  I made plenty of mistakes as I was laying it out on the design wall, and I must have reset pieces at least 50 times.   I cut each piece by hand, around templates (this was pre-rotary cutter and rulers),  pieced it by hand, and hand quilted it.  I also used some beads, though you can't see them very well in this photo.    Nowaways, we have many more color options in fabrics and I could probably do more gradation in the darks, but I still rather like this quilt.

Design Challenge: The votes are in!

The votes are in on your choice for the challenge design that I should make first.   I'm often surprised by which designs others like most. I first discovered it when designing quilts for patterns; once in awhile I can guess which will be most popular, but often I can't.  in fact, a couple of my favorite patterns are not the most popular ones.  Isn't it grand that there are so many different ideas and tastes in the quilting world?  There are always new things to discover and learn.

Back to the design.  For awhile it looked as if the voting wouldn't be much help, as it was evenly divided but, in the end (you did vote, didn't you??) the design with the most votes was "Different Paths."

I'm starting to work through my stash to select the fabrics.   As this design turned out to be about Iowa, with its green fields and its two boundary rivers, I'm giving some consideration to adding some deep, rich brown to the "fields."   Iowa has rich soil underneath all those green crops, so I might insert a few narrow strips of brown into the greens, for the soil (admittedly, at this point, it is mostly mud) peeking out between the rows.  The background fabric is still in question; originally, I had thought it would be a creamy white but perhaps it should be a little more beige or light gray, for those gravel roads cutting through the fields.  So many choices!

There is also a possibility that the fields will move through the seasons, with some different colorings.  We'll see.  It may turn out that the simpler design is the better design.

Construction won't be too much of a problem; I'll have to work through sizes and proportions, but the primary technique on my mind is the introduction of the river strips.  They'll be bias, but this morning I was pondering the quilting and it occurred to me that I might want to do the quilting BEFORE I applique the river strips.   I suppose the quilt will tell me what it wants as I get closer to that point.

So, though I wouldn't have predicted that this would be your choice, you have spoken and it's on its way!

This week's challenge, btw, is to design a quilt around your favorite dessert.  I fear that it is going to make me hungry for all my favorites.  The sacrifices we make for our art, right?

Design Challenge, Week 2 Results

It was fun to play with designs for this week's challenge; I could probably do more with the ideas, but I was able to come up with at least one that I would be happy to actually make.

The challenge was to design a quilt about what I had for breakfast:  Cheerios.   Here are the ideas from my sketch book:

The first is just a rough representation of the cereal pouring out of the box, and I could probably work with it more and like it better, but it isn't my favorite. 

   I also played with the idea of the Os floating around in a bowl of milk (almond milk, in my case) but it was too regular to suit my mood that day.  It might be interesting, though, to do a quilting pattern on the white in a sort of "splash" or "splat" design.

The idea that I labeled "Rebel" gave me a bit of a giggle, and I still like rather like it.  Perhaps someday I'll do a small Rebel, but I didn't give it more attention at the moment.

Next, I turned to some narrow, vertical bars nestled among (semi)randomly placed Os.  (I seem to have a bit of an obsession with strips right now, don't I?)   I like it quite a bit and, now that I type "vertical" I'm thinking that it might be interesting to place a few horizontal bars, too.   Hmmm.  Maybe I'll give that a try some day.   It's always good to have lots of ideas tucked away for the future and any creative dry spells.

My favorite, and the one I chose to work with for the challenge, featured Os in boxes.  Cereal boxes, in fact.  :-)  It started out with just single boxes, but doubling the size of some of them made it more interesting. 

I like the scattered look, and it's fine this way but I'm looking for something more intriguing than "fine."   I tried changing the size of the boxes and the Os, using different colors, and just generally fussing around with them.  In the end, the design combined all of those.    I'm not certain yet if I might like to scatter the boxes all over the surface of the quilt, or just in a vertical bar--there's that bar obsession again; that will require some more futzing around.

I try not to think about how I'd actually put a quilt together when I'm designing, for fear it will limit the creative flow.  But today I've been thinking about how I might actually put the quilt together.  I know how I'll do the Os in the boxes, but there are several options for putting the boxes on the surface.  I could piece them, but that would mean a great many background strips and I think that would be distracting, even when quilted.  I could hand applique them, which might result in corners that are not perfectly crisp--and we like cereal to be crispy in the box, don't we?  I do like applique, so that's a possibility; I would just have to be very careful and precise at the corners.   I could do a machine/raw edge applique, which would be less crisp but might add some interesting texture to it.   That's a consideration for another day, when I sit down to make the quilt.

What do you think?  Do you think some of the other ideas are worth pursuing?  What ideas do you have for any of them?

Design Challenge, Week #2

One week down, second one starting--we're on a roll, eh?

This week's challenge:  Make a quilt about what you had for breakfast this morning--eggs, toast, bagel, cereal, green smoothie, whatever it may have been.

I had cereal, and I'm sketching a few ideas in my sketchbook, to expand later.  I'll expand some--there are a couple that seemed better in my head than they do on paper!

What will your breakfast quilt feature?

Check back for my design ideas, and share yours.

Design Challenge, Week 1 Results

Week 1 challenge was to design a quilt representing the first sound I heard when I woke up that morning and, for me, that was a train whistle.  Remember, the challenge was to try to capture something about the sound, not the object making the sound.

First step was my sketchbook, which normally resides on my bedside table so when I'm unable to sleep I can think about design ideas and sketch them without getting out of bed.  (Admittedly, some of the designs, when I look at them the next morning, look as if I were having a nightmare when I sketched them!)

When I think of sound I think of a wave, or perhaps the Doppler Effect.  It might be sin wave-like, but after years of doing podcasts with Audacity I'm accustomed to those visualizations of sound patterns.  They seemed a little spiky for the lonely, mournful train whistle in the distance so I decided to represent them with narrow bars.  It did not escape my notice that they would also be vastly easier to piece, should I actually make a quilt.  (The physics of it all is not even close to correct, I'm sure.  Sorry, Mike!)   Here are the preliminary sketches in my sketchbook.

 I like one or two better than others, and those I decided to play with in Word.  Yep, Word.  I have Illustrator and I use it for some of my pattern diagrams, and I have Electric Quilt which I use for some types of designs, but since I compose my patterns primarily in Word I have become fairly proficient in using it for diagrams and "sketches" such as these.

Here's the first try at a design.  I like it, especially the ebb and flow of the "sound" and the introduction of a second whistle as the sound of the first is fading.  I played around with wider bars but I like these narrower ones better.   I also like the choice of doing bars because they are a hint of railroad tracks, which relates back to the source of the sound.

I wanted to try some other options, re-arranging and re-spacing the bars.  I liked them closer together, rather than spaced far apart but what if they were grouped, with each group starting on a new whistle?

Not horrible but still not what I was looking for.   So, what would it would be like if they were close together at the beginning of the whistle--stronger, louder--and then further apart as the sound faded?  I tried it first in groups, with each new whistle starting close together.

It was OK and with some more rearranging it might have been better,  but I still liked the first design better.  Then I tried it with increasing the spacing from the beginning to the end.  I was running out of room, even after increasing the width of the design and it wasn't my favorite, so I didn't finish with the spacing.  This was enough to tell me that I didn't like it as well as any of the previous designs.

The other option was some fading on the color or shading of the bars.  I briefly visited the idea of color in the bars,  maybe a rainbow effect, but since I heard the train in the pre-dawn hour it seemed more appropriate to stay with black and gray tones.    So, I shaded from black to lighter grays, again starting back at black when a new whistle blew.

In the end, that is the one I like most.  (And who knows?  I might actually make it one day!)  What do YOU think? Which do you like most?