REWIND: Filling the elongated hexagons in the Anna H quilt and what the Turtle Girls got up to

Welcome back to REWIND! Every now and then I "rewind" and republish some of my older posts that you may have missed! Today I'm going to share a post from July 2013. It included a bit of information about the quilting of my Mom's Anna quilt and turtle yoga! If you can doodle it or write it with a little practice you can quilt it! I love drawing continuous figure 8s so I tried quilting them and they worked like a charm in the Anna quilt. Don't believe me? Try quilting your name in cursive. Bet it turns out pretty good! And as for turtle yoga.....well you'll just have to read to find out what it is all about!

Filling the elongated hexagons in the Anna H quilt and what the Turtle Girls got up to

There are some things I just don't like doing and filling bobbins is one of them!

One of the reasons I dislike filling bobbins is that I don't like having to take off my thread, load my bobbin thread, rethread the machine and then fill the bobbins. I do a bunch at once but eventually they need filling again!

My friend Barbara asked me about what I thought about bobbin winders. These are little machines that are used exclusively to fill bobbins. I'm starting to think that maybe I might just invest in one. I've read some reviews and they seem to do a good job and it is something I could do in the evening while I watch TV. Does anyone out there have any experience with these devices and if so would you recommend them to others? I would love to know.

I have gone through LOTS of bobbins quilting Mom's Anna quilt but the end is in sight! I now have a plan for the elongated hexagon inner border. Figure 8 is a comfortable shape for me to draw and stitch as are feathers. If you can doodle it you can likely quilt it with ease!


All of the elongated hexagons were previously stitched in the ditch. To quilt the design above I first stitched just inside the top and bottom edges of the middle strip of hexagons and then quilted the figure 8. The 8s don't have to be perfect or exact - the eye sees the whole, not the parts.

Next I quilted just inside the top edge of the top row of elongated hexagons, then the feathers were quilted and the feathers were echoed.

I repeated the same step with the bottom elongated hexagons. I did the same on the other three borders around the centre panel. Finito!

And this is the view from the back.

Tomorrow I move on to the outside edge of the swag! More thinking needed!
Yesterday I told you I caught those naughty Turtle Girls heading out to the garden with my little silk quilt. And what do you think they told me they were going to do? Yoga! 

Hurry up - run! I see a good spot for yoga!

They started with some gentle stretches

Downward turtle? Don't you mean downward dog?  And I can't do that!

Turtle Girl perseveres on her own and gives cobra a go. Stretch!!!! Inhale, exhale breathe. Ahhhh!

Happy baby, or happy turtle as she calls it,  is very good for the back - like a gentle massage! Oh - it feels very nice but I'm pooped! Best not overdo things first time!

Forget yoga! This is more like it - let's just hang out with the goldfish!

Until I post again, stretch, breathe and happy sewing!

I made the turtle girls myself and I had planned to add to the family this summer but somehow time just got away from me! They are on the "to do" list for sure! I hope that you've enjoyed this issue of Rewind. I reply to every comment by email so if you don't hear from me it means you are a no reply blogger and I have no way to contact you unless you provide me with your email address (or you email me)!

Happy sewing!

Karen H 

Butterscotch Ripple Quilt and Yoga in the Garden

I admit I am addicted to hexagons - just can't get enough of them. Every time I see a hexagon quilt I want to make it! Even the simplest of hexagon quilts is alluring! I read a post by Kath of Hillside House. She has a chair named Peggy and Peggy had a simple hexagon quilt on her back. I think it looks quite elegant and I want one just like it!  Or check out this sweet little Harriet cushion that is embellished with hexagons. It was made by Natalie of Sewing Room Secrets! I need one of those cushions too!

There was another hexagon quilt that I came across a couple of years ago while I was zipping around the internet and you guessed it! I wanted one! All I found was a picture of an unfinished quilt top. Large prints were framed with a diamond of hexagons. I loved the idea so I made myself a quilt top. After the top was finished I discovered that the original quilt was made by Brigitte Giblin and that she had just published a book titled Feathering the Nest with Vintage Inspired Quilts. There are loads of hexagon ideas in the book and the photography is so pretty that I couldn't resist....I bought the book!

This is the hexagon quilt I fell in love with!

The basic shape was a diamond of hexagons framing a large print and there were little diamond and triangle fillers. It was simply a matter of selecting the size of hexagon I wanted to use and then deconstruct the hexagon to create the diamonds and triangles. I wrote about how to do this here.

My version of the quilt

I chose to work with a hexagon that was just over 1". Each diamond is one third of the hexagon and each triangle is on half of the diamond. I used a light buttery-toffee colour for the diamonds and tiny triangles throughout the quilt.

The original quilt doesn't have a border but I usually add a couple of borders to my quilts and had done so with my quilt before I found the book. The inner border is a repeat of the buttery-toffee fabric I used for the diamonds and triangles and the outer border is a butterscotch stripe fabric with curvy ribbons; I knew it would be perfect and I just had enough fabric to border the quilt. Directional prints such as stripes can add pizzazz to a quilt. I wrote about the use of these prints here.

I call my quilt Butterscotch Ripple for two reasons: the colour of the outer border reminds me of butterscotch but more importantly when I pin basted the quilt I realized that the border was not laying flat and there were ripples!!!!  I had to do some reverse sewing to correct the problem!  Normally I would hand applique the quilt top to the border but I had read so much about machine applique that I thought I would give it a go. I had machine appliqued the quilt top to the border with invisible thread and a tiny blanket stitch. It worked very well and was invisible BUT it had to be unpicked because of the ripples. It was a huge pain to remove those invisible stitches! In future I will hand applique because it works just fine for me! And if any reverse sewing is required, it will be easy to do! So I reverse sewed the problem areas but left the basting pins in the quilt. I then made the necessary adjustments to the border and hand stitched it to the quilt top. It is much better now!

The border is separated from the quilt

So here is my quilt Butterscotch Ripple! I took the picture under the arbor this morning and had not yet repinned the border.

I really love the backing fabric which is magnolias on a robin's egg blue. Too pretty for words!

So with the border correction complete, I can now pin baste it. I can't wait to start quilting this one! First step will be to stitch in the ditch in every single seam and then the fun will begin although as usual I have no idea as to how I am going to quilt it......yet!

When I was out in the garden photographing this quilt I thought I would take a stroll to see if there was anything interesting. Aren't these colours glorious - yellow sunflower, orange trumpet vine, lilac balsam and little purple something or others! The bees are absolutely delirious with the abundance!

 

This bee kept bumping into me as he went from flower to flower! 

 

This looks like something from the milkweed family

I was enjoying myself with the bees in the balsam when I first heard the unmistakable voices of Turtle Girls. I had forgotten that they were holding a yoga class in the garden today. I wonder if anyone showed up!

 Not a bad turn out from the looks of it - six doing yoga plus Turtle Girls!

And three observers!

They started with some gentle stretches (as always)!

 

And then it was right into downward turtle. But wait, who is that in the background stretching? Do you see him? I don't recognize him but it looks like he is interested in yoga! He does look rather shy so I won't bother him because he seems to be enjoying himself.

 Immediately after downward turtle they started dropping like flies! They were all worn own except for Zebra Fellow!

Looks like everyone took off and left Turtle Girls on their own.

And with that their noses were out of joint so Turtle Girls got up and wandered off into the garden!

I turn back and can't believe my eyes! What do I see?

My quilts!!!! They were using MY quilts as yoga mats! And they had my silk quilt that I told them was not to go out to the garden! Those Girls are going to need a talking to, that's for sure!

Until I post again, be sure to hide your quilts if there are Turtle Girls around and happy sewing!

Faux Trapunto My Way!

My friend Babs dropped by to visit my Mom and she asked to see the Anna quilt. She particularly liked the dragonflies in the border and asked if they are trapunto. They are not but the stippling flattens the background so they puff a little to look like trapunto. But if I wanted I could still make them look even more like trapunto in a non-traditional way. I know this because I've done it in the past! And you've heard me say this before, I can be lazy so I look for easy, quick ways of doing things and faux trapunto is one of them!

This method is best suited to simple shapes or little details. I wouldn't do a huge medallion this way (although I supposed there's no reason why you couldn't) but little details like the dragonflies would be ideal. Faux trapunto is done after the quilting is completed. I developed this method many years for a quilt I made for my daughter.

Hopollo 1: Frogs in Space, Karen H, 1995

This quilt is titled Hopollo 1: Frogs in Space.  It is a mishmash of star blocks made of bright colours and a black background. Some of the prints have frogs, some were space prints and some of the blocks had appliqued or pieced frogs hence the name. In each corner of the border there is a poison dart frog. The frogs looked flat and I wanted more dimension. The solution? Faux trapunto!

 

Faux trapunto frog close-up

 

This frog fits inside a 4" square. Its arms, legs and body are trapunto but not the hands or feet. So how did I do this? You will need acrylic yarn and a larger needle. The first step is to do the quilting. This works with hand quilting as with the frog or machine quilting as with the dragonfly. Use a colour of yarn to match the fabric but for demonstration purposes I've used a darker colour. If you have a largish space to fill, the frog's body for example use a double strand of yarn.

 

On the wrong side of the quilt insert the needle where the trapunto is to begin and slide the needle in between the fabric and the batting.

 

 

Continue sliding the needle along between the fabric and the batting until you reach the point where the trapunto is to end. Exit the needle.

 

 

Pull the yarn through until the ends are just inside the starting point (in this case the tail) and then trim the yarn close to the exit point, the head. It may be necessary to insert your needle perpendicular to the exit point to sweep in any loose ends.

 

 

In the example above this is the first insert of yarn in the body. I will repeat it once more to add a little more volume . I'll repeat the same process to fill the wings.

Had I used a colour of yarn to match the fabric it would have been invisible. I have found that a light colour works best for most fabrics, regardless of the colour.

 

 

 

Trapunto from the back where I worked - you can see a hint of the colour of the yarn (Note: if you selected carefully the hint of colour could be a "special" effect for your quilt)

Trapunto from the front

 

And there you have it - faux trapunto my lazy way! In the dragonfly above there is faux trapunto in the wings on the left side as well as the body and no trapunto in the wings on the right side. I might just do this on the Anna quilt now that I've done it on the test patch!

 

And now for one little surprise about the poison dart frogs in Hopollo 1: Frogs in Space. If you are familiar with these little frogs you will know that they are very colourful! So what did I do? I painted the frogs before quilting and trapunto! I used plain old ordinary folk art craft paint. And they look as good today as they did when I did them 18 years ago! This is what they look like! I didn't want to damage my lovely paint job so I did the trapunto from the back and it worked just fine!

 

 

I just looked out the front window and what did I see? Hmm, it is starting to look like those Turtle Girls are serious about their yoga! At least it won't be in my livingroom! I wonder if they'll get any takers. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

 

 

 

Until I post again, happy sewing!

The last stitches in the Anna quilt and ten thousand page views!

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog! I've reached a milestone - well I think it is a milestone! Ten thousand, that's 10,000 page views! As a beginner blogger I don't know how that ranks but I'm pretty excited about it and I appreciate that you make time during your day to read my blog! And the gang is also happy you follow along!

It's time to quilt the part of the border that goes from the swag to the binding. I decided to go with straight(ish) lines! I was tired of stippling/meander quilting and didn't want to repeat it outside border. But more importantly changing the quilting pattern will create more interest and depth and that is something I did want to incorporate in this quilt. I started by marking lines with my blue fabric marker and they were 1 1/2" apart. I stitched several lines freehand using the blue lines as a rough guide. This is the first part of the quilting.

It looks good from a distance (there's a lesson here) but up close it wasn't very straight. Can I live with what I've done or is some reverse sewing (ripping out) in order. I can live with it but I wanted to make sure that the balance of the border was a little more uniform. So I marked blue lines 3/4" apart. I would quilt on the blue line and eyeball one line between the two. This is the swag border marked with the new markings.

The corners could be quilted in a number of ways. It could be a sunray design like I did with my quilt Orange Crush.

Close-up of sun ray quilting on the back of Orange Crush

In the end I decided to resolve the corner lines by drawing a diagonal line from the outer corner to the inner corner of the panel. This would be the point where the lines intersect. The diagonal line would not be quilted - it would just be used to help me match up the lines coming in from either side of the border.

 
And this is the corner quilted. I'm happy with the effect although I do see one line that I missed. I'll have to go back in and quilt it!

And here is more of the border. I like the effect of the two quilting designs - it almost looks like two different fabrics! I did this all with my free motion foot so it made the quilting of the border fast and easy! And lovely if I do say so myself!

I've been debating quilting the border triangles but I've decided to leave them unquilted. They have a little puff to them which I think frames the quilt very nicely. So I'll baste the edge with a needle and thread about 1/8" away from the outside edge. I do this because I find that the binding goes on much smoother when the layers are basted together. Then the quilt will be trimmed up, bound and photographed for you to see!

Now I want to go back to my comment "there's a lesson here". Quilts are not looked at through a magnifying glass (unless maybe they are going in a juried show). Let me give you a practical example. Take a look at this! I was out in the garden taking pictures of flowers and look what was there! I didn't notice it until I looked at the pictures on the computer.

This is the picture that I took - I didn't even notice the spider!

Just as I didn't notice the spider because I was looking at the flower, I don't see the little wobbles in my quilting because I look at the quilt. We make quilts for the joy of the making and the comfort we get from their use. Like the flower we look at our quilts from a distance. So before you critique the "spiders in your quilt", take five big steps back and look at the flower. I'll bet you won't even notice the spider! Perspective is our friend!

This morning I was roused from a lovely sleep by a commotion in the livingroom. What the heck was all the racket? Oh brother! It's the Turtle Girls at it again!

Apparently they wanted to greet the dawn with some yoga and friends! Right - everybody O-U-T!  After their little buddies left I told Turtle Girls that in future should they wish to "greet the dawn" they should do it where dawn is which is outside! I think they got the message!

After that early rising this morning and lots of quilting I think I'll go have a nap! So until I post again, happy sewing!