Project Quilting 11.4 – Birds in the Air

Project Quilting kind of snuck up on me this week.  For some reason, I was thinking that I had another week.  But no, there it was, posted on Facebook on Sunday afternoon.  Actually, it was probably wishful thinking.  You see, I knew that this was going to be a really crazy busy week and I didn’t need one more thing to do!

We are having our kitchen remodeled, and the work starts this week.  I have mixed feelings about the whole project.  On one hand, I’m really excited that I am going to have a brand new kitchen where everything works, but I am definitely not looking forward to the chaos that is involved with not having a working kitchen for close to a month.  And even though we have known that the workmen (work people?) are coming on Thursday, there is only so much that you can do ahead of time when it comes to your kitchen.  I have been gradually emptying out the cupboards that contain rarely used items like the ice bucket and the big serving pieces. They have gone into boxes and bins which I then carted off to places where I hope that they won’t be underfoot.  The walls of the dining room and my son’s bedroom are lined with said boxes.  (My son doesn’t live here anymore, but still comes to visit.  I guess that I should start calling it the spare bedroom, but in my mind, it’s always going to be his room.)

We are getting new appliances along with the new cabinets and lighting.  They are going to take out the existing stove and dishwasher, but the new appliances won’t be installed for a couple of weeks. So I won't be able to do any cooking until the new ones are installed. The plumbing isn’t scheduled to be finished until the middle of March, so I'll be limited in the amount of dish washing that I can do.  Using disposable plates, cups and flatware seems so wasteful, but we won't have much choice. 

The old refrigerator will get moved around the corner into the dining room for the time being and we’ll put the microwave on the dining room table so we have a way to heat up meals.  I’ve been doing some cooking ahead so that we can have warm meals without having to order takeout or go out to eat all the time.  

I’m also going to have to make myself a chart to remind me where I put everything! It will say something like: Coffee pods for the Keurig - Third box from the left along the front wall of the dining room, on top of the box of mugs. And I will leave the chart out in plain sight so that I don’t have to answer the inevitable “Honey, where is the…” questions. ^.^

The last thing that I need to do is to pack up the rest of the kitchen.  The dishes and cookware that we use all the time couldn’t get packed away until the day before the work starts. Tomorrow is going to the busiest day yet, so I wanted to get my project done by today, in case I run out of time this week. 

So now that I have given you a glimpse into my week, I hope you will understand why my PQ 11.4 project is rather small and simple.  I really like the block and can think of so many ways to use it in a large quilt.  But I had to curb my enthusiasm and make something that could be finished quickly.

My overflowing bin of waste triangles

I saw those half square triangles in the Birds in the Air block and immediately thought of my bin of waste triangles.  Whenever I make a unit that requires you to cut off a triangle, I throw those triangles into a small bin.  Sometimes I will sew the extra seam before I cut them off, so that I have ready made little HST. A good example of this is when you make flying geese by starting with a rectangle and two squares. If you sew an extra diagonal seam ½ inch away from the first, you can cut between them and have a cute little half square triangle. I first saw the technique in a book called Nickel Quilts by Pat Speth and Charlene Thode. I was fascinated, and I have been saving the waste triangles ever since.  Someday, I will make a whole quilt out of them, but in the meantime, they come in handy for quick little projects.

There are several variations of the  Bird in the Air block, but the one that I chose requires 3 HST.   I found some red/white and some blue/white HST fairly close to the top of my bin, so that decided my color scheme. The waste triangle HST finish at 1¼ inches, so they are a bit tricky to use.  Instead of trying to do the math, I just used a 5-inch square cut in half diagonally for the large triangle, then trimmed it down to match the HST side of the block.  I made four BITA blocks and set them 2 x 2.  

A new potholder for a new kitchen

The resulting block ended up to be a little over 8 inches square.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this week’s project, but when I had the block done, I looked at it and it yelled “Potholder”!    I thought that it was appropriate for me to have a new potholder to go with my new kitchen!   

Because I wanted to finish it quickly, I tried a new technique for binding by machine.  You sew the binding to the back first, wrap it around to the front and stitch it down from the front.  I ended up with a few tucks, but not bad for a first attempt.  I'll use it again for things that will get a lot of use, since I think it results in a sturdier finish than binding by hand.   

Project Quilting 11.3 - Put a Heart on It

I've always been attracted to quilt patterns that have hearts on them.  The first real quilt that I attempted to make was made with hearts.  (As an aside, I don’t count the patchwork comforter that I made for college as a real quilt.  I think that I have written about that experience in a prior blog post, so I won’t get into it here.)

That first 'real' quilt was a pattern that I saw on the HGTV website, so long ago now that I can’t recall exactly when it was.  It might have been a show called “Simply Quilts”, but I’m not even sure about that. The show wasn’t on TV in my area, but the website had information from each episode, and sometimes had patterns.  The episode that really captured my fancy featured a scrappy heart themed quilt.  The directions started with ‘grab scraps of all your reds and pinks’.  Well, I had never made a quilt before, so I didn’t have scraps.  Over the next several months, I gradually picked up cotton remnants from the local Minnesota Fabrics store, since that was the only place that I knew of where I could buy fabric. I finished all the blocks (with hardly any matching points or edges, LOL!), sewed them together, and put a backing on it.  Then I wrapped the backing around to the front to finish the edges.  Did you notice that I missed a step?  I didn’t quilt it before I bound it!  I was such a newbie that I didn’t realize that you were supposed to quilt it first, then bind it!  I started to hand quilt it, but got busy and never finished it.  It is actually hanging on a quilt rack in my room.  Maybe someday I will finish it. ^.^

The first quilt that I had the audacity to actually give to someone was a heart quilt that I designed and made for my sister’s wedding.  I really liked it, and hoped that other people would, too.  So I decided to write it up as a pattern. I had the crazy idea that I wanted to be a pattern designer when I retired, ha ha!  That was the first quilt pattern that I had published in a magazine.  It was published in the inaugural issue of The Quilt Pattern Magazine, January 2011.  Just in time to make a Valentine’s Day quilt!  Here is a link to the site with the pattern listings.   The Quilt Pattern Magazine - Valentine's patterns

That’s mine in the bottom right hand corner!

Anyway, my love affair with hearts continues!  For this challenge, I decided that I needed a Valentine’s pillow cover to help dress up my living room.  I went to my scrap bin and got some red scraps, sewed them together crazy quilt style.  I fused the patchwork to a piece of Wonder Under, then cut out a heart. I pressed it onto a white background and added a border of red 2 ½ inch squares.  I wasn't sure what I was going to use for the back of the pillow cover, so I went spelunking in my fat quarter drawer.  I found one that has red roses all over it and knew that was the one! Roses are very Valentine-y, right? 

About the same time that the challenge topic was posted, a local quilt store announced a charity promotion.  They have partnered with Meals on Wheels and have promised to provide quilted mug rugs for each recipient this month.  Since I was done with the challenge, but still in the mood to make hearts, I decided to make a few mug rugs to donate.  The pattern I decided to use was hearts, of course!

Recently, I saw a blog post by Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew that features a quilt called Simple Hearts.  You can read it here: Cluck Cluck Sew Simple Heart Pattern

The hearts in her quilt are similar to the ones that I made in that first quilt, and as a bonus, she gives a chart to make various sizes of hearts.  I often cut my scraps into 2½ inch strips, so I used some of them to make the hearts that finish at 4 inches. These hearts are like potato chips!  You simply can’t make just one! 

To make a simple 4 x 6 mug rug like these, you only need 3 matching 2½ x 4½ inch rectangles, 2 – 2½ inch background squares and 4 – 1-inch background squares.  Follow Allison’s directions to make the 4-inch heart using 2 of the rectangles and the background pieces, then sew the remaining rectangle to one side.  Use a 4 ½ x 6 ½ inch piece of batting and the same size backing.  You could quilt it then bind it, but I chose to sew mine together envelope style since I was short on time.  I had to get them to the quilt store by this past Wednesday, or I would have made a lot more. 

But I wasn’t still done with making hearts!  I had some fabric strips leftover from making a Valentine’s table runner, and I was able to make 12 more 4” hearts.  I set them 3 X 4 and am currently trying to decide if they will be another pillow cover or a placemat!    And I still may make that cute Simple Heart quilt, since my niece is expecting, and it makes a really great baby quilt!

   

Project Quilting 11.2 - Team Colors

When I saw the theme for the second Project Quilting challenge, there was no doubt in my mind as to what colors I was going to use.  

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, so I bleed black and gold! We are fortunate to have a long history with great major league sports teams here in the Burgh, and all of them use black and gold as their team colors. 

As an aside - A lot of people misspell Pittsburgh because there are not very many places that have maintained the Scottish spelling with the ‘h’ rather than the German spelling (without the ‘h’, as in burg).  There is a long and complicated history behind the name. I won’t bore you with all the details, but if the topic piques your interest, you can look up here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Pittsburgh 

OK, back to the main topic – Team Colors.  The NFL Pittsburgh Steelers, the NHL Pittsburgh Penguins, and the MLB Pittsburgh Pirates all use black and gold as their team color.  My high school’s colors were also black and gold.  The University of Pittsburgh’s colors are black and gold.  I’m not an alumnus, but two of my children have degrees from that institution, so I am going to count them as one of 'my' black and gold teams.   As far as I know, we are the only city whose major sports teams all use the same colors.  The reason is that black and gold are the colors of Pittsburgh's flag, which in turn, is based on the coat of arms of William Pitt, the 18th century British prime minister for whom the city is named.
   

So my project for this challenge had to be black and gold.  The real dilemma was what was I going to make, and what fabric was I going to use?  I have some fabric that features the major Pittsburgh landmarks, and I considered using that. It was commissioned the owner of a local quilt store.  The issue is that it was a limited run, and is no longer available.  If I run out, I won’t be able to get any more.  So it went back into the ‘save it for another project’ bin. 

Then I remembered that I had some Steelers fabric left over from a project that I made for someone. That's a long story that I won't go into here ^.^!  I’m not a big fan of the officially licensed NFL fabrics, because they tend to be kind of stiff.  But I hated to throw it away because you never know, someone might ask me to make something with it again. 

 

I dug in my bin of “not quilt quality’ fabrics and unearthed not only some of the black, but also a handful of 4 ½ inch squares of the white.

   

 That decided the issue.  I was going to make ‘something’ that used 4 ½ inch squares.

My husband suggested a table runner that we could put out during football season, and I thought that was a reasonable suggestion. 

After playing around with the squares on my design wall for a few days, I decided to use a “trip around the world’ layout, because I had exactly enough of the white 4 ½ inch squares for that.  The problem was that I didn’t have enough to fill in the sides to make it either a square or a rectangle.  So rather than filling in with other fabrics, I just kept the central motif and sewed it to some backing fabric, envelope style.  A little stitching around the center and around the edges and voila!  A Steeler table topper for my dining room table!

It's Year 11 for Project Quilting!

For those of you who aren't familiar with Project Quilting, it is a challenge that has been run by Kim Lapacek for the last 10 years.  The idea is to make a project that meets the given criteria in one week’s time. Yep, one week!  From inception to completion, you have 7 days.  Some people do whole quilts, some do wall hangings, pot holders, mug rugs, etc.  Size isn’t important; the finished project is.  The project needs to fit with the weekly theme and has to meet the guidelines given by Kim: “Your project does not need to be a traditional quilt, but must meet at least one of these requirements: include patchwork, include appliqué, have 3 layers stitched together by hand or machine.”

There are 6 separate weekly challenges, and each has a different theme.

I won’t go into all the details here, but if you want more information, follow this link: https://kimlapacek.com/project-quilting

The thing I like the most about Project Quilting (besides the prizes, of course ^.^) is the fact that it happens at the beginning of the year, after all the hustle and bustle of the holidays.  It helps to brighten up those dark cold days of winter. 

This is my second year of participating, and I only wish that I had found out about it earlier.  I really enjoy the creative challenge that it presents.  You can read about my participation in last years’ event by looking at my earlier blog posts.  Don’t worry, they will be easy to find, since I haven’t blogged since the last challenge of PQ 10.  Yeah, I know.  My bad….

This year’s first challenge (a.k.a. PQ 11.1) is Notably Numeric.  The project has to 'feature numbers, counting, or mathematics in its theme or implementation.'

I only had a couple of days to get this first challenge done because the normal weekly activities are starting up now that the holidays are over. I also had to get the Christmas decorations down and put away, since we have some work being done on the house today (Wednesday) and the tree was in the way. So yesterday was spent getting everything Christmas-y back in the boxes and putting them back in the attic. On top of that, it just so happened that last weekend and this coming one are work trips for my husband, and I am traveling with him.  We left Thursday and came back Sunday evening last week, and the same schedule holds for this week.  That basically left one day for me to figure out what I wanted to do and to get it done. 

Because of those time constraints, I decided that I was going to have to make a small project.  I wanted something that would be useful, so I settled on a potholder.  My potholders are getting kind of grungy and worn. Washing them didn’t do much to change that, so a potholder it is!

What I really wanted to do was make a spidron quilt, but realized that 1.)  I would not have enough time to do it justice, and 2.) One with reasonably sized pieces would end up way to big to be a potholder!  I learned about spidrons from Cindy McCoy, who is the founder of The Quilt Pattern Magazine.  She used to have a website called Quilt Campus, and that is where I first learned about these complex mathematical shapes. She also published a pattern called Dragon Tails in the February 2013 issue of the Quilt Pattern Magazine which used the concept.

  

The word spidron was coined by Dániel Erdély, who was the first one to describe these unique flat geometric figures. There is an article in Wikipedia which gives a good overview of this fascinating subject.  It is also where I found this image.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidron

 As I said, I realized that I didn’t have enough time to make a spidron quilt, even though it fit the challenge perfectly, and I’ve had it on my bucket list for quite awhile.  So on to Plan B.

Another pattern that has been on my bucket list is a quilt pattern that has interlocking plus signs.  Plus signs = arithmetic = numbers!   I tried to draw them out on graph paper, but kept getting stuck after two rows.  I knew that it could be done, but just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.  Off to the treasure trove of all information – the internet! I found quite a few examples and quickly sketched out a couple of ideas. 

Some of the examples of plus sign quilts that I found were made with charm packs and were way too large for my purposes.  Some were made with 2 ½ inch strips, which was better, but I wanted something more complex than just one plus sign on a background. I decided that the 1 ½ inch scraps that I have been saving could be put to good use.  Also, I wanted to use up some of those ‘What was I thinking” pieces. And also make it colorful.  Notice the red lips print?  I have absolutely no idea why I had that one!

So here is my Project Quilting 11.1 project!    It worked out to be 9 ½ inches square. A bit too big to be a regular potholder, but I can use it as a hot pad or as an oversized potholder. 

Project Quilting 10.6 – Craving Chocolate

Yum! Chocolate!  Who doesn’t crave chocolate at one time or another? (or, ahem – ALL.THE.TIME!) But chocolate for a quilt project?  That takes some imagination!  The rules did say that it could be chocolate the candy or chocolate the color, as long as it is inspired by chocolate.

I was super busy during the week of the last challenge, but at least I was home.  This week, I will be leaving for a quilt retreat with my guild on Wednesday, and I won’t be home until after the deadline on Sunday.  I will have plenty of time to quilt, but the camp doesn’t have internet access, and I won’t have a computer with me anyway.  The project has to be done, blogged about and linked before 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, when my ride shows up. 

I remembered that I had a small piece of fabric that showed boxed chocolates, so I thought that I would be a great place to start.  I knew that it wasn’t a big piece, but this week’s project was going to have to be small anyway due to my time constraints.  So the search began…

You’ve all been there, I’m sure.  You know you have it, you know where you saw it last, but you just can’t find it!  The first hurdle was the fact that my sewing room moved from my son’s bedroom to our family room and nothing is where I remember it to be.  The second hurdle was the fact that I vaguely remembered that I might have used it.  I wasn’t sure, but since it was such a small piece, I thought that I might have thrown it in with my scraps and put it into a block.  Since I couldn’t find it in the scrap bin with the other similarly sized pieces, I started looking at my WIPs.  (Works in Progress).  Just f.y.i. – by my definition, they don’t become UFOs (Unfinished Objects) until I lose interest and set them aside.  

Sure enough, I found it, already incorporated into a block.  ARRRGGHH!!  That’s the danger of using fabric.  You never know if you are going to need it for something else.  But that's the chance you take.  It you never use any of your fabric, someday someone will pitch it, which would be true waste.  So use it to create something beautiful!  Or something useful. Or both.  Just use it.  Lecture over, back to the topic at hand.

There it is, in the lower left corner of a scrap block.

Here is a closer view, so you can see just how perfect it would have been for this challenge:

See those lovely boxed chocolates?

Well, I wasn’t about to tear the block apart so that I could use it in my Craving Chocolate challenge, so I went back to the drawing board.  

I decided that my inspiration was going to be neither chocolate the candy nor chocolate the color.   I actually chose something slightly different – chocolate the beverage! 

If you look into the history of chocolate, you’ll discover that the original use of chocolate was as a beverage.  The ancient Aztecs used the cocoa beans to make a bitter drink that was used for ceremonial occasions. 

The hot chocolate or hot cocoa that we drink today is not very similar to what those ancient people drank, but it is one of my favorite beverages on a cold day. The commercially available packets that come 10 to a box are fine in a pinch, but I like the real thing! Start with unsweetened cocoa powder and some sugar and just a smidgen of salt.  Then you heat milk to almost boiling and stir it into the dry ingredients with a little bit of vanilla extract.  Topping it with whipped cream is optional, but highly recommended! 

My project this week is a mug rug for my favorite hot chocolate mug.

Notice the whipped cream dripping down the sides.  That was unintentional, but that’s what always happens to my whipped cream, so I left it that way. ^.^

Project Quilting 10.5 – Abecedarian

Unlike the last few challenges, this week I knew almost immediately what I wanted to do for the Project Quilting challenge.  For about 15 minutes, I wasn’t too thrilled about the topic because all I could think of was appliqued letters on something.  Sure, some kind of cute saying would be nice to hang in my sewing room, but I just didn’t have any enthusiasm about that. 

Then it hit me!  I have been saving novelty fabrics in order to make an I-Spy quilt for my grandson.  I figured that I could make the quilt with a block for each letter of the alphabet.  There wouldn’t be any actual letters on the quilt, but since each block would represent a letter, it would be suitable for the challenge.

I could have completed an I-Spy quilt quite a while ago, but I was unhappy with the letter J.   Honestly, there are not too many fabrics out there that show something that starts with J.  I thought that I might be able to find jelly beans, jets or jacks, but after looking for over a year, I gave up.  The only ‘J’ fabric that I found featured jalapeno peppers.  I wasn’t sure that a four-year-old who is just learning to read would get the connection or if it would confuse him   So, the fabrics have been sitting there patiently waiting for me to find a better J fabric. But when this challenge was posted, I decided that the jalapeno pepper fabric would be a learning experience for him!

I browsed around the web and Pinterest looking for ideas.  I found a pattern that had been published in Quiltmaker Magazine several years ago which looked promising.   It called for 49 charm squares bordered with solids and set 7 x 7.   I immediately decided that I could use two of each of my alphabet fabrics and make it not only an I-Spy quilt, but a ‘find the match’ quilt.  Since 2 of each alphabet fabric makes 52 blocks, I added four blank squares. Setting them 7 x 8 made a nice 42" x 48" quilt.  Voila, pattern decided on and all the fabrics were already in my stash and it was only Monday!

I wasn’t sure that I could finish a quilt in a  week, especially this week, but decided to  give it a try.  Some weeks, there is  nothing extra going on, but this week is one of those that are extra challenging, time-wise.  I belong to a concert chorale and this coming weekend is concert weekend.  We have a concert Saturday night and one on Sunday afternoon. We also have 2 extra rehearsals during the week in addition to the regular Tuesday evening rehearsal.  Lent starts this week, and with it the Fish Fry fundraisers that our church holds on Ash Wednesday and every Friday in Lent.  I’ve been volunteering there for the last few years, so I didn’t want to tell them no.  My rowing club’s quarterly member meeting falls this week.  The quilt guild has small groups that meet on the second Saturday of the month – yep, this week! Oh, and we lose an hour on Sunday morning due to daylight savings time starting. 

   

My Abecedarian-I-Spy-Find-The-Match Quilt 42"X48"

But in spite of all the other commitments,  I actually finished it early! I worked on it every spare minute and am posting this on Friday afternoon. Which means that I have time to go over the concert music and work on those rough spots before tonight’s dress rehearsal.  Win, win!

Project Quilting 10.4 – Pixel Play

One thing I really like about Project Quilting is that it really gets my creative juices flowing. That's great, but in a way, it is also a bad thing.  When the project theme is first announced, I get all these ideas running through my head.  And they don’t stop when it is time to go to bed.  So, my mind races all night long, and I don’t get very restful sleep!  The first few ideas are always very big and grandiose.  Then the timeline smacks me on the nose and I have to get realistic. Could I do a whole quilt in a week? Maybe, but not very likely.

This week, the theme is Pixel Play.  I immediately thought that I would simply take one of the photos that I had taken and blow it up until I could see the individual pixels, then use a portion of it to make this week’s challenge. 

That was really naive.  I had absolutely no idea how many pixels are actually in a photograph! I used Microsoft Paint to pixelate this photo that I had taken of a sunflower in my back yard.  After I saw how many pixels were in an inch, I realized that my original idea to use 1 inch squares was out of the question. If I had used even a ¼ inch square for each pixel, this project would have COVERED my back yard and spilled over to the neighbor’s!  My sunflower idea wasn’t feasible for this challenge, but I just might put some form of it on my bucket list.

On to plan B.  I reread the guidelines for this week, and the phrase ‘8-bit graphics’ jumped out at me.  I remembered that I had seen a website that had a bunch of quilt block patterns inspired by video games.  The site is called “Fandom in Stitches” and it has patterns for all sorts of images from pop culture. The subtitle is “Multi-fandom quilt patterns, designed by fans, for fans".  I can’t begin to describe the scope of the available patterns!  If you are at all interested in making a quilt based on any popular show, movie or book (think Harry Potter, Dr. Who, Star Trek, Game of Thrones, Disney, etc.) go take a look.  Even if you just want to admire the artistry involved, definitely check it out. http://www.fandominstitches.com/  The patterns are for personal use only. Before making or saving any of the patterns, please read the FAQs, which specify what may and may not be done with the patterns. 

Not all of the available patterns would be suitable for this challenge, but I knew that I had seen blocks for 8-bit games like Minecraft, Super Mario Brothers and Space Invaders.  My grandson is currently nuts about Super Mario Brothers, so I chose a pattern from that game.  I decided to keep with my original ‘flower’ idea and chose the Fire Flower pattern by Angela Pingel.

The next hurdle was size.  Many of the comments that have been posted about this challenge concern the question of size.  As I discovered with my sunflower picture, even if you use a 1 inch square for each pixel, the end product gets very large, quickly.

The pattern I chose was designed for 1-inch finished squares, and the grid is 18x18.  If you’re a math whiz like I am (yeah, right, LOL!) you can easily figure out that the finished block is 18 inches square.  I didn’t want anything quite that big so I decided to make the squares finish at ½ inch.  I started with 1-inch squares and used a ¼ inch seam throughout.  I modified the pattern slightly by using ½ inch finished strips in place of the individual squares on the outer edge of the block.  I felt that would stabilize all those tiny seams.  It also removed 68 squares from the design, but I still had to cut and sew 256 individual squares. I can't imagine how many I would have needed for my original idea!

Here are some of the cut squares and pieced rows for my flower.  I pressed the seams open to reduce bulk, but since I was using ¼ inch seams, the seam allowances met on the back.  That basically meant that I was using double thickness fabric when sewing the rows together.  For that reason, if I was going to make this pattern for any reason other than this challenge, I would use strips wherever the same color is repeated. But since the challenge was all about pixels, I decided to go with the individual squares for the center portion. 

Here is my finished Fire Flower.  It is about 10 inches square. Not all the seams match up and some of the squares are a little wonky, but all in all, I like it!