Rulers Rule

About 25 years ago, when my civil engineer father visited my apartment, he came out of my bedroom/quilt studio and asked if I would like some help with measuring.  When I asked why, he said that I seemed to have a great many rulers, and did I really need all those?    One scale and he was good but I, as a quilter, COULD get by with just one or two rulers but....why?  (Thanks, though, Dad.)

I have succumbed to buying many specialty rulers that I thought would make my quilting life faster and easier, but to this day are languishing in various nooks and crannies of my studio.  I probably couldn't find all of them at this point.  I have no doubt that there are quilters who would love to have them because they would work for them but they just aren't my thing.  (If you're looking for a ruler, there's a fair chance that I own it.)

So, for a long time I worked with just 3 or 4 rulers:  the must-have 6" x 24" (if  I could have just one this would be it), a 6" x 12", a 6" square, and a 12-1/2" square.  I also bought a 15-1/2" square recently but for most squaring up of any size I still use the 12-1/2" square--and it has the worn edges to prove it. (I'm too embarrassed to show in a photo!)   I suppose I'm something like Alton Brown and his kitchen tools--the only single-purpose tool he allows is a fire extinguisher. 

However, I have found a few specialty rulers that have changed my tune about specialties.   They are all for making pieced units that could be made by one of my standards rulers but the units they make are so perfect, it makes piecing much more fun and precise.
(Disclaimer:  I do not work for, nor receive any sort of compensation from, these companies; I just love these rulers!)

First--my new favorite--is the Bloc-Loc half square triangle ruler.  There are SO many half-square triangles in traditional patchwork and, when I told a knitting friend that I would make a reproduction Civil War quilt that has around 1200 small half square triangles (yeah, who thought THAT was a good idea??)  I was in need of a tool that would make that job easier.  After many years, and trying many methods for these units, I found the best method for me is to make the units slightly larger and cut them to size. So, I fell in love with the Bloc-Loc, which has a channel cut through the ruler so that it locks over the seam.    So, there's no wobbling over the seam that results in slipping or wonky corners.  I can use a ruler that's larger than the unit because you can turn and slide the ruler without picking up the ruler or the unit.  It is, hands-down, the best, most accurate way to make half-square triangles that I have found.    Even making 1200+ units that finish at 1-1/2" doesn't seem so daunting any longer.

Next, I discovered the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star Ruler.   I have always loved Lemoyne Stars but absolutely hated making them; I was never happy with how they turned out.  With this ruler, I can't stop making Lemoynes. Love it, love it, love it.  (I'm working on my fourth quilted piece with it and that isn't going to be the last.  Have I mentioned that I love it?)

Finally, the most recent find is again from Bloc-Loc: their flying geese ruler.  It also has a channel that locks over the seams.  In this case, you have to have a ruler for the specific size of unit you're making but it makes units so accuratethat  I was willing to invest in that.  (The incentive is making dozens of Sawtooth Stars for signature blocks that will take the place of a guest book at my retirement reception in a few months.)

To get the units to the point you see in the photo I use the method that Eleanor Burns demonstrates when using her ruler.  (I used her ruler, and loved it, until I found the Bloc-Loc; that channel makes all the difference to me.  Thanks, Eleanor, for this method and for your ruler, which I used for many, many flying geese.)

And here are the blocks I'm making.

 

What are YOUR favorite rulers?

Designing Design

One of the things I love about teaching (and learning--I ALWAYS learn things when I teach) is giving people a chance to expand their notion of what they can do, especially in creating a quilt that is theirs, and not a recreation of someone else's.    As beginner quilters we, quite logically, do a lot of making quilts like others' as we learn the craft.  But it isn't long before most quilters start to put their own fingerprint on a quilt:  choosing fabrics themselves instead of using a kit, changing a little something about the block or the settings, adding or deleting borders--lots of things that may seem small and not "designer," but which really are the quilter doing her own thing--designing.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not opposed to kits and sometimes I see quilts that are just so "me" in color choices that I covet something just like it, but I also like to tweak things just a bit.  When quilters ask me exactly which fabrics I used to make a quilt I'm flattered that they like the quilt, but I'm also a little sad if they don't have the confidence yet to pull some fabrics out and find something uniquely "them."  That's one of the things I love to do--help them to find their own style, to develop confidence in making choices that will become something unique and expressive of their own style and taste and personality.

In quilters I see people who are just itching to express their creativity and when they have developed just a bare minimum of skills it's time to give them a place to explore new ideas and techniques, to develop some of their own, and to just feel the sheer joy of creating something new and so personal that it expresses you, at that moment in your life, and how you feel.    I can't tell you how many times quilters in my classes, when asked about the first quilt they made, say they did a king-size Double Wedding Ring or some very complex pattern because "nobody told me I wouldn't be able to do that one when I was first starting out."   I did my best custom quilting on my longarm before I knew that I shouldn't be able to do all that right off the bat.

In an ideal world I'd have quilters feel, from the beginning, that quilting is here for them to explore and enjoy, a sandbox in which to experiment and do something "wrong" that turns out to be so right.    Everyone is creative; there are few things in this life about which I'm certain, but that's one of them.   The world tends to try to "teach" the creativity out of us but, trust me, we are ALL creative.  For some of us, that creativity expresses itself in fiber and fabric, and you owe it to yourself to explore your own creative spirit--the expression will be one of joy. 

Making Your Longarm Quilter Happy

All right, so bringing her your quilts goes a long way toward making your longarm quilter happy but there are things you can do to make her even happier with the quilting you bring her way.

Before I owned a longarm I heard the requirements for the quilts I took to a longarmer and I followed them, but it wasn't until I started quilting on a longarm myself that I really understood why they were asking me to do certain things when I was preparing a quilt for quilting.  One of those was providing a backing that was 2"-3" larger all around than the quilt top.  It isn't just to make you buy more fabric or to sometimes seam the backing.

Recently I was given a top, backing, and batting to quilt for Project Linus.   I think the pattern must have been designed with the assumption that the backing would be 44" wide, but it was not and there was, at most, 1/2" around.   I could have basted some extra strips of fabrics to the sides and sacrificed a bit of the outside border of the top but I thought it might be a good chance to illustrate the reason for the extra 2"-3" around on the backing.  (And the baby quilt was small enough that it would be less time-consuming to correct what the 1/2" wrought!)   I hope that the photos and description will help to illustrate.

If you've seen a quilt loaded on a longarm frame/table you've probably noticed the clips that run, on straps, from the sides of the frame to the edges of the quilt.  The purpose of these is to stabilize the edges of the quilt so they aren't "flapping in the wind."  The  clips need room along the edges to clip to the quilt.  They don't have to take a large "bite" into the quilt, so why more than a half inch or so?

The longarm machine has a base, or bed, that is several inches wide on either side of the needle and anything that is in the path of that part of the machine has the potential to stop or impede the flow of the machine and, therefore, the quilting.  Even a small bump can cause a blip in the quilting.   If there are a couple of inches there is room for the machine to navigate around the clip. (Below you can see how the edge of the machine bed is going to hit the pony clip underneath.)

When the margin is as small as the 1/4" - 1/2" that I was working with, the edge of the clip was right at the edge of the quilt top so I couldn't quilt in that area if the pattern called for it be quilting there.   My longarm is hand-guided, so I if I'm watching I can try to manually account for that and adjust and hopefully, being at the edge it wouldn't be TOO noticeable. (I can guess that it would be more of an issue on a computerized machine, as the computer can't see the problem coming up and make a correction for it.)  Here I've cut away the batting to the edge of the backing, so you can see where the edge of the top and backing are, in relation to the clip.  The hopping foot is bumping up right against the clip, which means I couldn't quilt to the edge--and the clip is barely holding the edge, which isn't as stable as I'd like, and puts extra strain on the edge there.

 I could plan ahead and move the clips so they fall  where a part of the pattern doesn't.  However, that can cause problems of its own:  without anything to stabilize that edge, the tension is all over the map.  Here, on the back of the quilt, you can see a star at the edge from which I'd moved a clip, so I wouldn't run into it with the machine.

 

 In the end, it took me much longer to quilt this than it would have had there been more of a margin, because I had to make extra adjustments in the setup and then re-do the quilting at the edges that weren't stabilized.   Most importantly, it didn't make it easy to do the quality work that I strive to do.

Next time you prepare a backing and top to take to your quilter, be assured that she will appreciate that margin around the backing, and be able to do a better job for you.

Is there anything better than a Nine Patch?

Designing quilts and trying new ideas and patterns is a great deal of fun for me.   I often have quite a short attention span, however, and like to have several projects going at once so I can switch around. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)  After finally arriving at the proper width of a sashing for a new design---after four re-tries--I decided to just do some plain, old-fashioned piecing:  pedal to metal, straight-on, feed-it-through piecing.   As I'm working on scrap quilts for a presentation and/or book project I settled on an old scrap project.

There is nothing like a Nine-Patch, is there?  No matter how many quilts I do, no matter how many blocks I piece, no matter how many artsy quilts I design, it is always a delight to come back to the simple but perfect nine-patch.  Its basic design and configuration figure into so many traditional blocks, and many modern designs, as well.

It has been "improved" (debatable, I think), skewed, made uneven, curved....and while those are all perfectly lovely designs, to my mind the original is still the best.  I like any quilt with nine-patches in it.

There are several nine-patch quilts in my UFOs (have I mentioned that I have a short attention span?) but today I went back to the oldest nine-patch waiting for me.   I have been cutting and collecting 1-1/2" squares for, oh, probably 30 years now--and that doesn't count the 1-1/2" strips I collect to be, eventually, in this nine-patch.  When I cut for a quilt, I cut leftover pieces to 5", 2-1/2" strips or squares and, when I can't cut anything that size, the pieces are cut to 1-1/2" strips or squares. (I draw the line at pieces smaller than 1-1/2."  Yes, if I were a better woman I would keep smaller pieces, but there you have it; I'm not that woman!)  If there are at least four squares of the same fabric they go into the nine-patch box; if there are fewer than four they go into a separate box for a postage stamp quilt.  Someday.



I've had some children, over the years, settle in with the box to help me sort through them, gathering stacks of fours and fives, and it can be a settling exercise for me, too.  And having developed a method for piecing them easily, it's also a soothing activity for me to piece them.  I don't have to concentrate or work through the math, I can just feed the squares through the machine and have my favorite block emerge.

It's going to be awhile, I imagine, before this quilt is finished and when it is I expect that I will start another.   It's not going to be elegant or masterful, it is just going to be a wonderful amalgam of fabrics from other quilts I have made, stitched together in a block that I love.  It will be colorful, for certain!


What's your favorite block?  What do you keep going back to making?

They're cloning in the closet

I know, we quilters say it all the time (at least once  year, but most of us more often than that), "I'm going to finish projects that I have started before I start anything new."  I've been quilting for nearly 40 years so ... we can do that math.

But now I'm serious.  Really.   I won't pretend that I won't start new projects but I'm at least going to start doing something about all those scraps that are cloning in the closet.   I can say that with some confidence because I have actually started doing it, and I have made a commitment to myself to do a presentation/trunk show on making quilts from those scraps:  "They're Cloning in the Closet!"

I do like the look of scrap quilts, and the satisfaction of using some of those scraps--even with more tubs full of scraps staring me in the face.   I might even have to create some scraps, if I didn't already have sufficient scraps to keep every quilter in the world busy for the rest of our lives--and then some.

There is still a lot of fussing and futzing ahead for me, but it will be a pleasure.  Because what's the point of quilting if it isn't fun?

Happy quilting!

Where do ideas come from?

As I was preparing my "Why Quilts Matter" presentation, and thinking about questions that quilters and non-quilters might ask, I remember a question that I heard with some frequency when I was working and teaching in a quilt shop:  "Where do your ideas for design come from?"  

The lazy, flip answer is "I don't know, they just come to me," but that's not very fair--to the person asking the question or to myself and the "creative process."  So I've spent some time thinking about an honorable answer.  I think I'm able to organize it into 3--maybe 4--categories.  Two of them are old standbys for me, as the sources and methods I've used for a long time.

One of them is newer, trying to design a visual representation of a concept.  (This one has grown out of my attempt to develop a creative habit, a la Twyla Tharp, in her "The Creative Habit.)  As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I awaken in the morning I come up with a design idea for a quilt.  (As you might expect, some are better than others.)  It may be something that came to me in a dream, or something I see in the room, but sometimes it's more about a concept or non-visual idea.  One morning, for example, the first thing I heard when I woke up was the train whistle that is there every morning, but which I too often don't really hear.    How could I visually represent that sound, and perhaps even the Doppler Effect of it.

I don't think I'm ready to talk about the fourth one yet--I'm just starting to explore it and its future as an inspiration for quilt design is uncertain.  But I'm excited to give it a try!

One thing I have observed, through all of this, is that I'm observing more.  :-)  Noticing the sounds of the train and then asking the simple question, "What would a quilt of that sound look like," are stretching my creative muscles, and there isn't anything much better than that--even chocolate!

What about you--where do YOUR creative ideas come from?

Irish Lace revisited

My passion for fiber arts plus my half-Irish heritage equals Irish crocheted lace for me, and I have recently taken up learning and practicing more on the lace.   I have crocheted for many year, though I can't claim any great proficiency, and that makes it easier to make a start.  Irish lace uses packing cord, or padding, and managing that cord as you crochet around it is, I'm finding, not as easy as it might seem.   In addition, the free-form nature of connecting motifs can be a challenge but these two characteristics are what make it Irish lace.

A padded ring, or "buttony" as Maire Treanor calls them, is made by winding thread around a knitting needle, crochet hook, or (as one of Ms. Treanor's students suggested) a drinking straw, and crocheting around the cord.  Easy, you might think, if you crochet.   Not so much, I discovered. (The straw suggestion is brilliant, however; I'm not sure I would have completed one yet without it!)  My second was definitely better than the first.   (Note that, in all the following photos, I am doing my practice crocheting with size 12 thread; in the end I'll be using 20-50, with packing cord in size 10 or 20.  I'm waiting for delivery of smaller crochet hooks.)

 The wild rose is a good motif to start with, as it uses most of the stitches and techniques used throughout Irish lace.  I'm working on my first wild rose here, and getting better with each petal. (I'm sure you're all too kind to count, but the first petal doesn't have enough loops--mistakes are important to learning right?)

The packing cord is used when you crochet around all the petals, giving more body to the edging.
Did I mention that this is going to take some practice?

There are so many beautiful Irish lace antique pieces out there, and new ones being designed now.  Check out the Sheelin Irish Lace Museum for a look at some antique pieces.  And a search on "Irish lace" on Pinterest yields some beautiful examples.

Traditionally Irish lace was used for dresses, and for lace curtains and linens.  Since I'm a quilter, first and foremost, I'm thinking about it for crazy quilting; I have been seeing some motifs that would be beautiful as lace embellishments.  Some of the collars and jackets and tops are tempting though; I wonder how long it would take me to crochet a jacket....?

The finer thread has arrived from Heirloom Crochet, and the finer hooks are on their way from Earth Faire.  Then we'll see how I do with finer work. Stay tuned.