Reader Poll: The Better to See You With

Quilt designs are everywhere and, in my experience, waiting rooms and health care offices can be splendid places for design inspiration--if nothing else they take your mind off what it is you're waiting for.

My dentist's office, for example, yielded some inspiration.  I love the simple but interesting design of the light fixture over the sink in the ladies' rest room.  (There may be an equally interesting one in the men's room, but I didn't check that out.)

I had occasion, in short and illuminated bytes, to study the light focused on my mouth while getting my teeth cleaned.  The hygienist thought me a wee bit crazy at first when, as we waited word on whether I'd need a crown replaced (I do), I asked if I could take a photo of the light.  (It looks a little alien-like, doesn't it?)

Here are some design ideas that came out of, and evolved from, the photo; let me know in the comments which you like best.  I know, some of them look very much the same as the next, but there are a few differences, if quite subtle at times.  And the colors are probably not the final ones,though the relative size and placement on the quilt would be as shown.

Sigh.  I like each of them, for different reasons.  Help me to decide.

#1  

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

The hygienist wants to see the quilt when it's finished.  There may be more than one in it.  :-)

Let me know which you like best!

Five Arguments I've Had With Quilts (And Who Won Them)

We quilters are accustomed to quilts talking to us, telling us what to do:  this fabric needs to replace that one, that block needs to go here, etc., etc.   Sometimes I talk back.  Well, I argue.  (When you live alone, I guess you like to argue with someone other than yourself sometimes, especially when you don't always win the arguments with yourself.)

Mind you, most of the time I listen to the quilts because they are usually right, but sometimes I'm a contrarian and I really don't want to do what they tell me.   Here are five of the most vigorous discussions I've had with quilts.   You don't need to keep score; I'll track which of us won the arguments.

1. "The sashing needs to be narrower.  Narrower.  Narrower."

This was simply trying to avoid very narrow sashing, because I know many people don't like to cut and piece narrower strips; they're "fussier" and you have to be careful about accuracy, because 1/16" error across a 1" cut is more noticeable than across, say, 2-1/2"--which is the size of the sashing I started with on Underwater Basketweaving.   Truthfully, I knew that was much too wide but it's a handy, common size in quilting.

So I cut it down to 2", then 1-1/2", and finally, reluctantly, 1" (finishing at 1/2").   Really, it couldn't have been any wider; it just looked too clunky and detracted from the diagonal block design.

Students in the class complained about it and, to to this day, some are still cursing my name.   Sorry, but it had to be!

Quilt:  1
Karen:  0

  

2. " The quilting needs to be straight lines.  And 1/4" apart."

I have a longarm (Molly) and I love her dearly, but she is hand-guided so straight lines are no picnic.  If a quilt is small enough I will opt to do straight lines on my domestic machine, rather than loading up Molly.  However, I was determined to get better at custom quilting on the longarm and this is a fairly sizeable quilt, so....

I wanted the green shapes to be quilted to look like plowing. The "fields" are quilted with straight lines, 1/4" apart.  I tried 1" apart.  I wasn't having any more luck with that argument here than I did with Underwater Basketweaving and the sashing.  So, 1/2" apart.  Sigh.  All, right; 1/4" apart.

 MOST of the fields are straight lines, 1/4" apart.  (I DID learn a lot while doing it.)  I rebelled and did one of the fields with 1/2" lines, and one even has curved lines, as if it was contour plowed.

So, I'm going to score this one as:

Quilt:  1/2
Karen:  1/2

3.  "This Focus Fabric is Perfect Where It Is.  Keep it."

I love the colors in the floral fabric at the top,  which is why I chose it to be the focus for my color choices for the rest of the quilt.  (This was made in a "Quilter's Playtime" class with Dianne S. Hire.  If you think you might like to try improvisational quilting for a whimsical quilt, this is a terrific resource.  It's out of print, but track down a used copy.  It's tremendous fun.)

I've been putting off quilting this because I just can't make up my mind about that fabric in the quilt.  As inspiration for color it was top-notch but I'm just not sure....The quilt keeps saying, "Keep me, keep me!"  but I'm still arguing this one.  "OK, smarty; what would you put in its place?"  "Well, maybe a solid color, or more black and white."  "Blah, blah, blah...."  

Yep.  This could go on forever.  And it very well might!

How to score this one?   Argument called on account of....wishy-washiness??

Quilt?
Karen?

4.  "The cords need to extend into the binding."

I didn't argue this one for very long before I succumbed, because I really did agree with it.  But I almost rebelled while I was doing it.  The black was tricky enough--getting it to be in just the right spot, and EXACTLY the same width as the pieced cord was at the edge point where it met the binding.  But he floral?  Ay, yi, yi.  That angle was a hair-tearer.   A mathematician or a finish carpenter would have been able to do it in a flash, I'm sure, but I am neither of those.   There was some colorful language in that argument but the quilt fought back.

BTW, the name of the quilt is "Unplugged."  You don't need to be an electrician to know that ALL of these cords are unplugged.  It's a metaphor.  And the quilt told me that all the plugs wanted prongs. (And grounds, of course.)

Quilt: 1
Karen: 0

5.  "I want pink."

I like pink, I really do.  I can even wear it pretty well.  It just isn't really my thing.   When I first designed 'Boxed In" as a bonus pattern for my Frivolity group it was all black and white and grays, and I liked it that way.  But I wanted a punch of color in there.   I tried purple.  "I want pink."  Nope, not doing pink.  I tried teal.  "I want pink."  Nope, not doing pink.  I tried bright green.  "I want pink."   Sigh.

But I really didn't want to give in on this one so, in the end:

Quilt:  1/2
Karen:  1/2

The scoring (such as it is, incomplete as it is) puts the quilts a bit ahead but, of course, they were all a win for me, too; the quilts are better for it and it didn't hurt me to work through other options.

  I just like to win an argument now and then.

Quilt Design Comes to Fruition!

Sometimes quilt designs actually become quilts!  :-)  This is probably more true for other quilters than for me, but I'm happy to say that "Between Two Rivers" is finished, and I promised that I would share some of how it came to be, the decisions I made, and the steps along the way.

A few months ago I embarked on a 12 week challenge to design quilts based on....well, whatever.  One of the challenges was issued by my friend Ann, who presented me with the theme of "different paths."   Here are some of the designs I produced:

And here's the final design.  In the end I decided to call it "Between Two Rivers," which is the meaning of 'Iowa."   Yes, the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, which bound Iowa on two sides, run north and south, rather than east and west.  I'm chalking it up to artistic license.

I began by auditioning fabrics for the "fields."  Some of the greens made it, some didn't.   Iowa has two primary field crops: corn and beans, so two greens would probably have been sufficient, but other crops ARE grown, and where's the fun of just two fabrics?

Then it was a question of deciding on lengths, widths and proportions of the fields.  That was just a lot of trial and error, and deciding what I liked.

It seemed to me that the fields/quilt needed some "pop" and a deep rich brown--for the rich Iowa soil--would be just the ticket.  Narrow strips were all it needed, on just one side of each field.

Laying out the curves of the rivers was next.  That was not as easy as you might think; lots of trial and error, again. 

I hand-appliqued the rivers, because I like hand applique and I thought it would be better.   I think, were I to do this quilt again, I would machine applique the rivers; there's a bit of a wave--literal--where the rivers cross the quilt and some of that may be due to extra 'give' in the curves as I appliqued.   (Bless those quilters at a recent trunk show who looked at me, all innocence, and said, "Rivers SHOULD have some wave to them.")

Next was the quilting, and the quilt was set aside for awhile as I worked out how I wanted to quilt it.   Decision time. 

The river quilting was easy, and fun; with blue thread I just moved along in curves across the width of the rivers, sometimes crossing, sometimes running (sort of) parallel.   I did the rivers first, to stabilize the quilt before doing the rest of the quilting.

The fields are quilted in lines,as if plow lines.  Most of them are 1/4" apart (talk about a challenge), though a couple are 1/2" apart.  Some are vertical, some are horizontal, some are diagonal, and one has curved lines.  The thread is the same color of green, on all the fields.

Straight lines are much easier on a domestic machine (at least, for me) but the quilt is quite large and I'm just not good at managing bulk when quilting on a domestic machine.  The biggest challenge in quilting on Molly, the longarm, is getting long, straight lines, because she doesn't have a channel lock, or means to do circles or diagonals.  That means using rulers.

Using rulers means using a platform extended, so there's enough support for a ruler as you press on it to hold it in place.

I tried a few different rulers.  I thought the ruler to which I'd attached some non-slip dots would be best, but it turned out that those were a hindrance, as sliding the ruler as I quilted the lines was crucial.   The ruler I used didn't have a 1/4" line on it, so blue painter's tape acted as the guide for the 1/2" lines.  (The edge of Molly's hopper foot is 1/4" from the needle, so running the foot along a ruler automatically makes a line 1/4" from the ruler's edge.)  Note the seam ripper.  It got good use.

It took some time to get the hang of the best method for me.  I had to slide the ruler as I moved along, and I slid it when I was only about halfway along the length; any more than that and I lost control of the ruler.  Once I found the rhythm it worked pretty well.

The curves were a whole other story.  I started them out by using a circle ruler, with lines scribed on perpendicular diameters to make it easy to place the circles so they are concentric.   That works fabulously well--for circle sizes for which you have a ruler.  :-)   I didn't have very many sizes. I don't think anyone makes circles in that many sizes.

So, I tried several methods to do nice, even curves.  I never did find anything that worked as well I would have liked.  I tried drawing the curves and following them 'free-hand" but I'm not very good at doing that, even when following panto patterns with a laser light.  Then I tried using a straight ruler to keep me from slipping, curving the ruler along the previous quilting line.  That worked better, but still not as well as I wished.   Consequently, I'm pretty sure that no self-respecting farmer would plow his fields/contours this unevenly.   Maybe next time.

The background was done much the same as the rivers.  It was quilted as I rolled the quilt, using white thread, so you see the texture, not the thread.

In the end, I really like the quilt.  I think it will probably be washed, so it will have that charming "crinkled" look.  For now, I'm enjoying it on the wall behind Molly.

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?

A Quilting Design Challenge

Monday is Design Day at the Spinster and, having finished my self-challenge to design 10 quilts using 10" squares, I'm ready for a new design challenge. (If you'd like to see the 10 quilts, visit my Warped Spinster website, particularly the Patterns page.  There are two more waiting to be quilted, so there will be 12, in the end. )  Those designs were primarily for patterns to make available commercially, those in this new challenge may well be just designs for my own fun, in the end--they may or may not result in actual quilts, and they may or may not end up being patterns.  The design is the purpose in itself, to get the juices flowing!

I've been thinking about doing this particular challenge for awhile now, and it's time to get it started.  I invite you to visit each week to see what my weekly challenge is, join me in creating designs, if you wish, or just watch what happens.  If nothing else, it could give you a laugh or two.  And we could all use some more laughter in our lives, right?  

If you're doing some designing with me in the coming weeks, please share what you're doing.  And if you have an idea for a weekly challenge, please let me know--I'm always looking for ideas.

These challenges will be based on things that pop into my head, and I expect some of them to be more of a challenge than others!  The end designs may end up being quite different from the first sketch or idea.  The original challenge topic isn't really important, it's a prompt to get the creative part of the brain working--if the final design has evolved into something that bears little or no resemblance to the original idea.  That's OK.  (It's a good "out," isn't it?)  I'll try to trace the evolution of the designs I do.  You may be interested in that (and please share YOUR processes, too), but I'm doing it as a sort of design journaling exercise for myself.

Week 1
What was the first thing you heard when you woke up this morning?  (If you're joining me in the challenge, you may need to wait until tomorrow morning, unless you remember from this morning.)  The quilt should represent the sound in some way, not the object making the sound.

I woke up to the sound of a train whistle in the distance, and I have an idea or two in my head.  They have evolved a bit already this morning.  Check back in the next day or two (or Follow the blog, under "About Me" on the right-hand sidebar-- to receive an e-mail when there's a new post ) for some sketches and design layouts.


I hope you'll join me for the challenge, as a fellow traveler in design, or as a spectator or commentator.

Designing: Autograph Quilt Block

There is probably an autograph quilt class, and perhaps a presentation, in my future and, while I will likely want to do some traditional autograph blocks, I'd also like to try my hand at some new designs.   Working through it will (hopefully) illustrate one of the processes I use for designing--so those quilters who tell me they aren't creative or designers can see that it's not a mysterious process, or one that requires a Rembrandt sort of brain. If I can do it, anyone can--it's a matter of confidence, a bit of quilting experience in order to know what might be easier to piece and, frankly, a whole lot of luck and trial-and-error!

So, let's see what we can do about designing an autograph quilt block.  In a previous post I shared what I look for in a signature/autograph block, but to review (because we'll keep referring to it
1) Bounded area for people to sign; we don't want them to have to know about leaving us a quarter-inch seam; even quilters forget.  :-)
2) As close to a rectangular shape for signing as possible.  Diamonds seem to be difficult, for example.
3) Large enough area to sign, so people don't feel intimidated, or worry about making a mistake because they aren't sure they'll be able to fit it in the space.
4) Symmetrical enough (at least unilaterally) that there isn't a "right side up" and "wrong side up. (All right, I added this one after I wrote the previous post.)
5) Easy enough to piece that the quilter won't lose her mind making many of them. (Yes, I added this one, too, after I started thinking about making 120 of the things.)
6) Stabilized signing area, so the fabric doesn't "squirrel" around on them when they're trying to sign.

So, let's get started.  (I'm using EQ6 to do the designing; couldn't live without it; thanks, Electric Quilt!)

Here's the basic setup I'm going to use:  it's designed to get started with basic criteria:  bounded signing area, symmetrical enough that it doesn’t matter if they sign it one way or the other, large enough area to sign, rectangular, easy enough to piece so that I can make a lot of them without losing my mind…So far, so good.  On we go!. (BTW, this is an 8" square I'm working with here, but it could be adjusted, if 1" doesn't seem large enough for signing.)

Continuing with the strip sort of design that the setup lines create, here's a block (with the center left plain, for signature). 

 It's all right as a design, and put into a quilt it has a certain graphic quality to it:

But can you imagine matching all those seams?  Ugh.   You could press seams on the top row one direction, and those on the bottom the other direction, but how can you ensure that someone won’t sign it “upside down”?  (You could strip-piece the rows, but those seams…!)  Still, maybe.. if you could figure out a way to make them sign “right side up.”

Let's go back to our basic starting point to adapt the theme a bit, so we don’t have to worry about matching seams. 

Adding a long strip means fewer seams to worry about matching; it's still symmetrical enough that someone can sign one way or the other, and we could do some strip piecing so it would still be pretty easy to crank out a lot of them.

As a quilt it's OK, but let's keep playing with it a bit.

I think it might be better if alternate blocks are rotated—assuming you’re okay with some signatures running up and down; I think it’s all right, but others may not like it.  

There’s a bit of a pinwheel design where the block corners meet.  So, we might consider doing all the corners in the same fabric or color—distinct from others in the quilt—so those pinwheels stand out as a secondary design.

Here that is, with corner pieces in black, and a black border to help pull that all together.  I kind of like that.  This is a maybe. (Sometimes designs grow on me, especially after I see them in fabric, instead of just “on paper.”  There’s just something about fabric, isn't there?)

So, that’s a possibility.  But back to playing.   What if it were more of an alternating long and short—a log cabin sort of effect?

This really isn't what I had in mind.  It looks only vaguely log cabin-y doesn’t it??  Sort of,  if you squint just right.   But it’s not entirely bad.  It actually would give us three places for people to sign, but one is twice is “tall” as the others. Maybe with some changes in strip widths, and possibly changing to 9” block, this might work.

Doesn’t do much for me, laid out in quilt, but at least the signatures would be the stars of the quilt!

It's better with alternate blocks rotated but, again, only if you're okay with half the signatures running up and down.

Here, also, you could do the corner strips in the same fabric, to accentuate the secondary pinwheel effect.

Sigh.  I like that one enough that I’m going to have to go back and work on adjusting the proportions  so the signature areas are at least the same height, if not the same length.  Or, I may be okay with it this way.  Actually, I kind of like it just as a modern sort of quilt.  Hmmm. Stay tuned for a pattern, probably!

  But first, another stab at making it more log-cabiny, with the proportions of this original block.

Not much of a change here; We’ll see if it makes enough difference in the quilt to make it worth piecing that one extra little square. (And, there is now just one spot for signatures.)

And in a quilt layout:

All right, well, not a real “wow” here; maybe if we rotate alternate blocks…

Not bad, and it could be a way to use up some scraps, especially those pesky 1-1/2” strips I’ve been cutting when I’ve had strips left over from previous projects.  If I want to make this as a scrap quilt, I could increase the block size so that the strips are a bit wider;  if they were cut at 2”, finish at 1-1/2” this would be a 12” block.

This could work; I like it.

But I’m still thinking about a version with 3 strips for signing—it would give us a bigger bang for our buck, at least where a signature block is concerned. So, back to the drawing board to design that so the signature spaces are the same height.  Wish me luck!  Diving back in....

And here it is, this time a 14” block.  That seems large for a signature block but you get three signatures per block, so I think that’s reasonable.. 

  I like this better as a signature block, but I think that if I were planning just a quilt (not for signatures) I might like the uneven sizes of the light spaces in the previous blocks.

Let’s test it against the criteria for a signature/autograph block: 

1) Bounded area for signing?  Check.

2) Rectangular(ish) shape for signatures?  Check.

3) Large enough area to sign?  Check.

4) Symmetrical, so there is no "upside down" when signing the block?  I guess you'd want all three signing  a block to sign in the same direction; maybe 3/4 Check, because there's at least one in every crowd?

5) Easy to piece, so many blocks can be made without driving the quilter crazy?  Check.

Looks good to me!  Now, down to the studio for the real test.  I'll report on that later. Do yo have suggestions for changes to the block to make it even better?