Monthly Archives: September 2019

OBW: Ocean (Complete!)

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One Block Wonders were defined by Maxine Rosenthal in her book, which details every step of assembly and tips and advice on choosing fabric and deciding on layouts. Below are a few other resources I used along the way:

OBWs are constructed using 6 identical pieces of fabric. This can be done using a fabric that repeats the same pattern over and over (usually every 24″) or with a panel (a single image that spans the width of the fabric). Rosenthal suggests using fabric with 2-3 colors, with big and bold design elements with more curves than straight lines. I used the Reef panel by Michael Searle for Timeless Treasures.

So you cut your 6 identical pieces, and they’re about 44″x24″. Then you stack them up and use pins to pierce the same design element through all 6 layers – so you know that they are aligned vertically (see below for pictures from the book). Rosenthal suggests you do this at 6 different points – each corner and then in the middle on the long sides. Then you shake your fabric by the pins so that the fabric between the pins is also aligned (watch Jackie’s video on this).

The kaleidoscope effect is created with 6 equilateral triangles arranged in a hexagon shape. Next, you cut your aligned fabric stack into strips, and then into triangles (using a ruler with a 60 ° line). Each triangle is exactly (or… close enough) identical since you aligned your fabric and cut it all at the same time.

Now here’s the genius part, and what makes the OBW so easy to assemble – all straight seams. Each hexagon takes 6 triangles, but you only sew 3 together at first so you have two halves of a hexagon. During the layout stage, you pin these together so they look like a hexagon, which makes it easier to move them around. So – you only sewed straight seams to put 3 equilateral triangles together.

The fun part begins with designing and choosing a layout. This is where my pinterest board (and Polywall from Home Depot) really came in handy. As I laid my hexagons out, I saw that I had: (a) many blue shades, (b) some green shades, (c) some super colorful ones, and (d) hexagons that just did not fit at all. My original idea was to do a blue vs. green type of layout, like a wave or swoosh, to bring in the water theme. I ended up not having enough good hexagons to pull this off, so I went with a gradient design that’s a bit more in line with conventional OBWs.

Now remember that we only sewed together halves of hexagons. Due to the grids hexagons create, each half can be sewn to the halves adjacent to it in rows (see below). Then, those rows are sewn together to create the whole grid. The hexagons on the end get cut off a bit so that the finished quilt top ends up rectangular. I used a blue blender from Joann for the border to bring together the ocean theme and give the eye some rest.

Sew into rows
Sew rows together
  • Individual rows on the left,
    joined rows on the right
  • All squared up and ready!

To embellish my OBW, I chose to cut out some of the animals and applique them onto the top. Applique is a technique to sew a patch onto a bigger piece of fabric, and can be done in a ton of ways. I chose to hand baste my animals on and then go over the hand stitches with the machine to clean up the edges. I liked the idea of including some non-kaleidoscope-d bits to help the eye, and plus I love sea creatures so I wanted to feature them, whole, on the front.

  • Hand basting in the embroidery hoop

I wanted the backing to be the original panel, so I could flip it over and show people the uncut panel. And I added some of hexagons I liked that didn’t fit in the top 🙂

  • Finished top
  • Finished backing

In total, making the half-hexagons took a couple days, deciding on the layout took a week, assembling the top took a couple days, applique-ing my animals took a couple weeks, the backing took a couple days, and then I let it sit… and sit…

And finally, I decided on a quilting design and quilted it up. 🙂 I added a little tube on the back to help me hang it up, bought a little dowel at Home Depot, and hung it up. I’m so happy to have this done and finally hanging up in my kitchen where I imagined it.

Click on any of the photos to enlarge 🙂

Project completed September 27, 2019.

Triangles Bed Runner

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I made this bed runner for my parents! It’s from the On Point pattern from Bluprint/Midnight Quilt Show. It’s another HST type of design, but with a twist. I used the Boundless Batiks Fireside jelly roll to bring in some autumnal/southwestern colors. I sewed pairs of strips together down the long end to create 20 strip pairs, which were then sewn to my background fabric. Now here’s the magical and efficient part: the strip pairs and background fabric is now a tube, right sides in. I used a square ruler to cut out triangles from the fabric, lining up the 5.5″ marks with the sew line. Then you iron them open and it’s a HST!

Actual diagram from the pattern about cutting the tubes to make HSTs

The pattern calls for matching the strips to create triangles inside of triangles, but my mom liked the mismatched strip layout, which I think brings a lot of movement and visual interest to the quilt. I assembled all my HSTs and paired them together to make the mismatched rectangular units. Then I laid them out on my new design wall (a piece of Polywall from Home Depot covered in an old flannel sheet) so that no fabric was touching the same fabric in any direction.

Designing took a bit of fiddling, and my wall fell down at one point – this isn’t even close to the final layout, haha

I wanted to quilt it in a way that minimized the harsh geometry, and since I’d had previous success with wavy lines, I decided to go for it. I chose a tan-ish thread to quilt with that ended up having a bit of sheen to it which makes it look almost gold.

Ready to be basted
Maybe one day I’ll take pictures in a better place than my couch, but it works

Project completed July 16, 2019.

How Long Did That Take You?

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Or, the true answer to my most frequently asked question… 🙂

During the video, I’m working on the modified Anna Embroidery from Namaste Embroidery 🙂 it’s my first time doing 3D wired slips, which I’m super excited about. Plus it’s my first big project with the color blending long and short stitch – each leaf uses 4 colors to blend from light to dark. Towards the end you’ll see me tie off my floss on the back.

The real answer is I don’t know, but a garment is on the order of 10 hours or a week, a quilt is more like 20-30 hours or a month?? But here are some other time considerations:

  • I’m usually working on 2-3 projects at one time
  • My usual sewing night or session lasts 2-4 hours, and I usually sew 2-3 times a week
  • I consolidate fabric shopping for multiple projects at once, a fabric trip takes 1-2 hours
  • I take time to find patterns and research (inside the black hole of the internet)
  • In the beginning I spent a lot of time flipping through library books to learn about techniques and collect patterns
  • My time in the sewing room includes cutting fabric, sorting fabric, ironing / pressing, measuring, arranging layouts, exchanging equipment like bobbins and needles, winding bobbins, looking for my scissors and ruler, pinning fabric together, doing mathematical calculations, and… sewing.

Of Projects Past

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It’s impossible to buy exactly the amount of fabric you need for a project. There will always be scraps, unless you’re making a perfectly rectangular item that uses up all the fabric straight off the bolt. For every other project though, there are bits and pieces of various sizes that aren’t used in the item itself. Or just leftovers because I bought more fabric than necessary.

I decided to use some of these old scraps to make two different projects – the Skirt of Projects Past and the Shirt of Projects Past.

I liked (a) not buying new fabric and just recycling and (b) making something super colorful with weird, wonderful patterns. Most of this fabric I bought a year ago to make ties and neck warmers, and they generally have the same size print. And it was all cotton from Joann, so I wasn’t worried about weird shrinkage or anything.

The skirt is made with strips sewn together, alternating print and black (from the Trapper Keeper). Then I cut out approximate semicircles, which created a front and back. I sewed one side together and installed a zipper on the other side. The waistband isn’t as sturdy as I’d like, in projects after this I used elastic inside the waistband just to hold it closer to the body.

I used a modified Lekala #5446 Classical Blouse pattern for the top. I added a pocket using foundation piecing, adding layer after layer to get a pocket sized piece of fabric. I love the overall look of this top, but the collar opening leaves something to be desired, it’s a bit stiff and falls open strangely when buttoned.

Shirt completed March 30, 2019. Skirt completed Jan 10, 2019.

Trapper Keeper!

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I made this little Trapper Keeper / Portfolio for one of my friends for our Secret Santa exchange. I wanted something that could hold a notebook or tablet, pens, some papers, and business cards.

I based my design on Choly Knight’s free portfolio pattern, including using the hardcovers off an old textbook for the reinforced covers. And I used Choly Knight’s free journal pattern to do the pleats for the pens on the left panel, which was my first time doing pleats! I made the side panels separately, then sewed them to the inner fabric. Then I put the outer fabric and inner fabric together, right sides together, sewed around and flipped it right side out. All I had to do then was sew the opening together and it was done!

Project completed December 6, 2018.

Rainbow Bargello Quilt

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My second quilt! I loved making this quilt. It’s a kit from Bluprint that came with everything I needed to make the quilt top (and I bought yardage of one of the fabrics for the backing, and some 80% cotton/20% polyester batting). A bargello is a type of quilt that’s made using strip sets. This bargello needed 3 jelly rolls (6 strips of each of the 20 colors) and that made the entire 76″x92″ (technically a twin but fits on my queen bed) quilt top and I had some left over for a pillow.

The pattern tells you the order of the strip set, and in this bargello there’s only one set that you make 5 times (the 6th strip was cut up into baby rectangles to make a small portion of the quilt). Other bargellos can be made with more than one strip set to make ribbons that play together. So you sew all those strips together for five big striped rectangles. Then you cut your rectangles into strips of varying widths, each with all 20 colors in order.

  • It would be prudent to explain now that some people sew their rectangles into tubes, so the 1st color and 20th color are sewn together. While efficient (see next paragraph), this method didn’t work for me because my strip sets didn’t turn into perfect rectangles and were, in fact, wonky. Very wonky. Like not even close to parallel sides wonky. But! It still worked, I just didn’t sew my rectangles into tubes.
  • Also, this video about putting bargellos together may be easier to understand than the paragraph you’re about to read. 😉

Okay, so now you have your long strips and the colors are all in the same order. And you know that the 3″ strip goes first, then a 2″ strip, etc. etc. So let’s say the order of the strips is A, B, C, D (to you know, the width of your quilt or section) and the order of the colors is 1, 2, 3 (to 20). Strip A stays with the top color as 1 and the last color as 20. For Strip B, you cut the seam between fabrics 1 and 2, remove fabric 1, and add fabric 1 to the bottom – so your strip goes 2 to 20 and then 1. For Strip C, you seam rip between 2 and 3, and add the top to the bottom – and your strip goes 3 to 20, then 1, then 2. On an on until you get to Strip T (the 20th strip) that goes 20, then 1 to 19.

  • Strips in order per the pattern – 1 is at the bottom, 20 is the dark gray at the top
  • Partially constructed block – excuse the furry helper

Then you sew your strips together, and it makes the wonderful bargello effect. The key to making it look wavy is to have the strips be different widths – otherwise it would just be diagonal lines like a checkerboard. I really want to design my own bargello (perhaps on a smaller scale) to look like a river or something, with overlapping waves and stuff.

  • The two blocks at the bottom were made out of individual baby rectangles, the rest is strip sets
  • All pinned up in my family/dining room!
Approximately 400 safety pins later…. (a Kwik Klip helps close all the pins)

Then I basted and quilted it with my little “toothpaste” designs! Doesn’t it look like little squeezes of toothpaste? 🙂 I wanted a design that was flowy like the bargello itself, but possible to do in an all-over fashion. After doing the “custom” quilting on the Green Diamond Quilt, I wanted to see what would happen if I did the same thing on the entire quilt – and save myself some brain energy. I couldn’t decide what color thread to use, so I opted for variegated rainbow pastel thread that blends in pretty well to both the quilt top and the backing. Plus it’s another level of colorfulness that is fun.

Some free motion in real-time! Remember that the fabric is moving, not the needle 🙂

The toothpaste design is done in columns, so I started in the true middle, and worked up and down as I moved to the right (which gradually decreases how much sandwich is in the throat of your machine – between the needle and the case), then flipped it around and did the exact same thing to the other side. Since I’d practiced a lot on pen and paper and with scraps – more practice than last time! – the quilting came together pretty easily. Plus, each intersection is only 4 pieces of fabric coming together instead of 8, so it was significantly less bumpy than the Green Diamond Quilt.

But still, this quilt was a beast to wrangle with my machine. It has decent throat space but a bunch of cotton is heavy, and the quilt would fall into my lap as I moved up, which made it harder to control since I was working against gravity. I was only able to drape so much on myself before it would fall down, but I have a big enough table that the quilt could sit on the table in the other directions. I understood immediately why those set-in sewing machine tables are super popular, and why a longarm would change the game completely. But I’m not there yet – I still have many smaller scale projects I’m excited to work on, and twin-ish/queen-ish size quilts are still possible for me.

  • Glamour shot outside before washing – look at the cool shadows!
  • On my bed after washing

That said, I got the quilting done in three nights and am super pleased with the results. After washing my Green Diamond Quilt, I knew it would only look better after washing, and it does. 🙂 It’s crinkly and soft and puffy in all the right ways. Plus because it’s cotton, it feels cool to the touch. I have it on my bed right now, but because it’s primarily thin cotton batting, there isn’t as much warmth as I’d like – I’m naturally a 3 blanket person. So I bought this “dream puff” polyester batting for my next bed quilt that claims it’s twice as warm as down, so we’ll see 🙂

Project completed May 31, 2019.

Live Your Fucking Truth

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I made this for a friend who loves this saying 🙂 There’s a trend of doing embroidery and cross stitch type crafts with pretty designs and swearing, so I absolutely jumped on the train. This is done on a canvas, which was a bit tricky because the canvas doesn’t seal up the hole made by the needle in the same way that fabric does. But I did fishbone leaves with some lazy daisy embellishments and wagon wheel flowers based off Namaste Embroidery’s “Woven Rose Border” pattern.

Project completed April 22, 2018.