Pineapple Borders (Finally!) and More Flying Geese

I'll bet you thought you hadn't heard from me because I was sewing up a storm over Lars's graduation quilt, didn't you?  Well, progress has been made on that front, but we'll get to that in a minute.  For today, we're taking a little detour and revisiting the long-overdue borders for my pineapple log cabin quilt.

Look Who's Getting Borders Today!

First, I'm adding a 3/4" finished border (same size as the pineapple strips) in Kona Solids 196 Blue Jay, and after that I'm adding a wider border in a floral Kaffe Fassett print.

Why has it taken me so long to add these borders?  Well, first of all, I had to prewash the uncut border yardage, and I loathe the washing and the ironing and the folding and the cutting of the borders.  Then, I was trying to figure out where I could lay this gigantic quilt top flat to measure for the borders and pin them on.  I finally decided to use the rails of my longarm frame for this.

Using the Longarm Frame to Measure for Border Length

As you can see, I've draped the quilt top over the quilt top roller of my frame with the center seamline centered on the rail and smoothed it out nice and flat, but not stretched.  Then I smoothed one of my 1 1/2" (cut width) blue border strips all the way down that center seam, keeping one cut edge right on the seamline down the whole width of the quilt.  I marked the border strip with tailor's chalk on both ends right at the raw edge of the quilt top and then took the border strip to my cutting table to make clean perpendicular cuts with my rotary cutter and ruler.  (For those of you who are not quilters, the reason I'm measuring through the center of the quilt for the border length rather than measuring at the outer edges is to prevent Wavy Border Syndrome in the event that any of those raw bias edges misbehave and stretch on me.  We want a flat, square quilt when we're finished!)

Pinning Border at the Longarm Frame

Then I hung the quilt top off the longarm frame with the edge of the quilt along the quilt top roller and the bulk of the quilt top hanging off the back.  (The canvas wrapped around the roller bar grips the back of the quilt top to hold it in place the same way that a napped design wall will hold up quilting cottons without pinning).

Pinning for the 97D Seam Guide: Perpendicular Pins With Pin Heads to the Left

I'm inserting my pins perpendicular to the raw fabric edges with the pin heads facing to the left, so nothing will stick out and get in the way of my beloved seam guide at the sewing machine.  I thought about sewing with the borders on the bottom so I could "babysit" all the seam allowances and ensure none got flipped in the wrong direction as I was sewing, but decided against it.  As I mentioned earlier, although the neutral strips of fabric have straight grain at the outside of each pineapple block, the diagonal blue and green strips of fabric have stretchy bias edges at the outer edges of the blocks.  I've pressed and starched those seam allowances as flat as can be, so I'm just being really careful as I'm pinning them and checking frequently as I'm sewing.  I just felt like it was important to have the seam allowances and naughty bias edges in direct contact with my feed dogs and the stable, lengthwise grain of my border strips on top.  I've got two of the four blue border strips sewn on so far without having to reach for my seam ripper, so that's how I'll do the other two sides as well.

Oh How I Love Me Some 97D Foot!

It's been over a month since I proclaimed my love for the Bernina #97D Patchwork foot and Seam Guide all over the Internet, y'all, so it's time.  And no, Bernina doesn't pay me to say these things (unfortunately).  Why am I so smitten with this patchwork foot when there are so many other options to choose from?  For one thing, the wider left toe on this foot gives better contact with the widely spaced feed dogs on my 9 mm B 750QE, plus it has a cutout at the back of the foot so I can engage the Dual Feed Footsie for even smoother, more consistent fabric feeding as I sew these borders.  And the seam guide -- Ah, how I love thee! -- It screws right down to the bed of the machine in an instant, no measuring required, just slide it right up to the edge of the presser foot.  The seam guide remains FIRMLY in place until I remove it.  Zero wiggle, zero "play," impervious to vibration.  Unlike the patchwork feet that have a little barrier guide attached directly to the edge of the presser foot, the Seam Guide extends significantly in FRONT of the presser foot.  This is what makes it so awesome.  I'm not looking at the needle or at the edge of my presser foot when I'm piecing.  Instead, I'm watching in front of the foot to make sure that my raw fabric edges are right up against that seam guide.  I'm guiding the fabric through the machine with my left hand just as you see in the photo: my pointer finger is making sure that the fabric edges touch the seam guide in front of the foot, and the rest of the fingers of my left hand are behind the foot to ensure that the bulk of this ginormous quilt top doesn't drag it sideways as it feeds through the machine.  My right hand was holding the phone to snap the picture, but when I'm actually sewing I'm using my right hand to fluff and position the project in my lap so it feeds smoothly to the machine, check the seam allowances underneath, etc.  But the secret of the 97D foot + seam guide success is that, if the fabric is lined up precisely 1/4" seam allowance in front of the foot and it's feeding straight as you sew, the fabric edge will be precisely 1/4" away when it reaches the needle.  I find that I'm able to sew a bit faster with the 97D + Seam Guide combo, without losing accuracy.  And getting things done faster is a good thing!  That's why, when I bought the B 475QE "Goldilocks" machine for portable piecing, I purchased another Seam Guide separately to use with the #37 Patchwork foot that came with the 475QE.

Speaking of things that need to get done faster...  Yes, I've been working on the graduation quilt!  12 of the 48 curved flying geese arcs have been paper pieced.  That's 25% of them done at the end of the first week in March, so I'm on track to finish all of them by the end of the month, sort of.  I haven't touched them since Saturday and today is Tuesday...   

See Those Green Tag Board Templates On the Purple Fabric?

Meanwhile, I've ordered an 18" x 18" sheet of 1/4" thick acrylic from Amazon and informed my husband that he has been drafted as my Custom Template Maker for this quilt.  See those green tag board templates on top of the folded purple fabric in the photo above?  I need to cut 48 of each of those two shapes out of the purple fabric, and even if I had the time and patience to trace around the tag board and cut each piece individually, I'm concerned that the skinny ends of that one template will bend as I'm tracing around it.  I found an article on the Internet from Bob Vila about how to cut acrylic sheets with a saw and told my husband that if Bob Vila can do it, so can he!  Let's make it a family project, right?  All of my store bought acrylic rulers and templates for rotary cutting are only 1/8" thick, but Bernie says that's too thin for him to cut with a saw; it would shatter.  Hopefully I can still rotary cut around the thicker templates, and an added bonus will be that I can also use the thicker templates for ruler work on the longarm machine when it comes time to quilt this bad boy!  I'll let you know how that works out when the acrylic sheet shows up.  Fingers crossed!

 

In other grad quilt related news, look what showed up in today's mail:

This is the custom-printed backing fabric from Spoonflower, designed by C. Wren Leyland:

Kona Solid Backing Fabric, Custom Printed with Psalm 28:7

SO EXCITING!!  Now I need to decide whether or not to disregard the Spoonflower instructions to prewash this fabric.  It's printed onto Kona Solid fabric, the same as the (unwashed) quilt top fabrics, so leaving the backing unwashed until after quilting should ensure comparable shrinkage in all of the quilt fabrics.  However, I didn't think to check my sample swatch for colorfastness before I washed it and I have no idea whether there might be residual dye in this Spoonflower fabric.  I'm sure the dyes they use for their digital printing are totally different from what Kona uses to dye their solids at the mill.  Hmmm...  I think I'll snip off a sample to check for dye bleed and if I have to, I'll give it a COLD water wash to rinse loose dye with as little shrinkage as I possibly can.  It will be fine, right?

But first -- Gotta get these borders on the pineapple quilt, though, so I can store the finished quilt top safely out of harm's way (and free up the longarm frame for quilting the vintage quilt top that's mid-repair).

And so, without further ado, here are my To-Dos for Tuesday:

• Complete solid blue and print borders for the Pineapple Log Cabin quilt
• Piece 12 more geese arcs for Lars's Geese In Circles graduation quilt

That is PLENTY ambitious for me, since each of those geese arcs is taking roughly an hour and a half to an hour and forty-five minutes to piece!  Time to get back to work!

I'm linking up with:

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

Stepping Off the Roller Coaster, Trying Not to Puke: The Saga of Why Spring Quilt Week in Paducah for 2019 is a No-Go

So I got this email on Tuesday  announcing that class registration for Spring Quilt Week in Paducah was open for AQS members.  I've never attended any of the major quilt shows before, but I'd love to go -- and thought it might be a great opportunity to take some longarm quilting classes, if I could only get into the classes before they were full.  I clicked the link to the class descriptions and was EUPHORIC when I saw that both Judi Madsen and Lisa Calle will be teaching at this year's show!  With butterflies in my stomach, I filled my little shopping cart with every single longarm class offered at the show, 9 blissful hours per day of of quilting tutelage with two of my favorite quilt artists on the planet, expecting at every moment to get an error message telling me that my class selections were not available after all.  It reminded me of standing in line for the Corkscrew roller coaster at Valleyfair soon after the ride opened in 1980, with my dad and my older sister Susan: watching the cars spinning through the inversions, listening to the happy screams of the riders, wondering if I would ever make it to the front of the line before the ride closed for the day, and hoping that if I DID get to ride the roller coaster, I wouldn't puke all over myself.

The Corkscrew at Valleyfair, My First Big Roller Coaster Ride circa 1980

You guys -- I got ALL THE CLASSES!!!  I was dancing and prancing and compiling lists in my head of all of the questions I wanted to be sure to ask over the course of this longarm quilting intensive I'd planned for myself.  I was making an itinerary of when I'd visit the exhibit floor and merchant mall, which day I'd go to the National Quilt Museum...  And then, with these visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, I went to bed because it was midnight and apparently it's difficult for my family members to sleep when I'm dancing and skipping around the house.

For those of you not familiar with Calles' and Madsens' work:

I signed up for Lisa Calle's class "Pebbles, Echoes, Crosshatches, Oh My: Fillers on the Longarm" to learn how Lisa quilts magnificent designs like these:

Lisa Calle's Longarm Fill Quilting

I also signed up for her 6-hour" Meet & Greet the Longarm" class to learn alternative methods of loading and setting up for quilting, and in hopes of building a better foundation of the basics to build upon.  I signed up for her ruler work class, too, as well as her free-motion feather class.  Can you imagine?!!

As for Judi Madsen, well, it's pretty much all her fault that I bought a longarm quilting machine in the first place.  I stumbled across her blog some years ago and her longarm quilting was just the most beautiful, joyful, playful and expressive quilting I'd seen ANYWHERE, including hand quilting as well as machine quilting.  I never had any desire to own a longarm quilting machine until I saw the cool stuff Judi was doing with hers:

Ticky Tack Pattern by Honest Fabric, Pieced and Quilted by Judi Madsen

Judi's style is difficult to classify and she is equally adept at custom quilting modern as well as traditional quilts.  To serious traditional applique, her quilting adds a playful whimsy that feels fresh and current.  To simply pieced modern quilt tops utilizing solids and vast negative spaces, the complexity of her ruler work and free motion fills brings the magnificence of the whole cloth quilting tradition into the 21st century.  

Luscious Quilting by Judi Madsen, See More of This Quilt on Judi's Flickr Page Here

Now, did I expect to emerge after a single week of workshops transformed into a master quilter on par with Lisa Calle and Judi Madsen?  Of course not -- but I was sure I'd come home from Quilt Week a more confident and capable quilter than I am today.

So the first thing I did on Wednesday morning was to sit down at my computer and book my flight to Paducah for the show.  No hiccups there.  And finally, now that my classes and dates and flights were all pinned down for the trip, I went back to that handy-dandy APQS Approved Accommodations list on their web site -- which EVEN TODAY is still showing 20+ well-known commercial hotels in Paducah as having availability -- and started calling them to try to book a room.  And this is the part of the roller coaster ride where they flip you upside down suddenly, the inversion that comes along out of nowhere when you're speeding down the track at over a hundred miles an hour and your entire stomach, along with its contents, is suddenly inside of your mouth instead of in your abdomen where it belongs.  Yes, this is that part -- including all of the screaming, the tears, and the desperate prayers that go along with it!  I literally begged the manager of the Hampton Inn to let me bring a sleeping bag and camp out in their lobby at their regular room rate, but he turned me down.  Someone must have warned him about my singing...

Not Me, But This Is What I FELT LIKE When I Started Calling Hotels in Paducah!

Those of you who have attended any of the major national and international quilt shows probably already knew where this story was headed, but I was completely blindsided to find that every decent hotel in Paducah, Kentucky was already booked solid AND had a WAITING LIST for Quilt Week, even before registration opened up for the event.  Show attendees book their hotel rooms a full year in advance.  I talked with a very kind and helpful woman named Lindsay at AQS who suggested that Airbnb website where you can book your stay in the guest room of someone's private home, kind of like the lodgings version of Uber or Lyft.  I looked into that, but the listings that still had availability were either too far away from the event venue and outside of where the shuttles were running (across the Ohio River in Metropolis!), or they were entire houses suitable for groups to stay in together, or the landlord/host of the property was advertising a "private entrance" and "having the whole place to yourself."  And I was really nervous about returning to a strange house in a strange neighborhood late at night, all by myself, especially having never been to this town before and having no idea where the safe neighborhoods and where the sketchy ones might be, whether the properties were well-lit at night, etc.  I had to face the reality that the stars were just not aligned for me to attend the show this year.  My roller coaster was in flames.

So I called Lindsay back and told her to go ahead and cancel all of my class registrations.  As sad as it is to miss out on riding the roller coaster, it is better to see the flames from a distance, before you're strapped into the ride!

I Don't Know This Girl, But I'm Pretty Sure She's Crying About Quilt Week

So...  Who wants to go to Quilt Week with me in 2020?

Friday, January 11th UPDATE:  OH MY GOSH, y'all -- my husband helped me find a hotel room, my flight was still available, and a computer glitch delayed my registration cancellation so I still have all of my classes!  I'M GOING TO QUILT WEEK IN PADUCAH IN APRIL AFTER ALL!!!  

Yeah, Baby!!!  This Is What JOY Feels Like!  (Photo Credit: Yuliya Evstratenko/Shutterstock)

I'm DEFINITELY whooping with Joy, so I'm linking up with: 

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com