Reckless and Unsupervised, Quilter Goes Rogue! Strippy Thousand Pyramids, Anyone?

I Made Cute Little Triangles Out of Scraps!

The past few days have been more chaotic than anticipated, and we have company coming in from out of town on Friday so there's lots to get done in preparation for houseguests.  Those are my excuses.  Anyway, I found that I wanted to do a little "decompression sewing" just to hear the rhythmic stitching of my sewing room and touch all the pretty fabrics while my mind was wandering off in multiple directions.  That is not a good mindset for figuring out how to adjust the bottom pieced border for my Jingle BOM, which ended up about 1/4" longer than the top border.  And I'm waiting to start joining pineapple log cabin blocks until Jingle is a complete top in line for quilting.  So I got this wild urge to just grab leftover 1 1/2" wide fabric strips that I'd cut for my log cabin blocks and start sewing them together, with no plan at all.  There was a very good possibility that I was wasting fabric, thread, and time on this fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants piecing.  It was exhilarating!

No Pins or Nothin'!

For my pineapple log cabin quilt, I chopped up lots and lots of fat quarters and fat eighths into 1 1/2" wide WOF (width of fabric) strips and draped them over a tall laundry drying rack to keep them wrinkle-free and ready to go for the FOUR YEARS that I have been working on those blocks(!).  I wanted a lot of variety for the pineapple blocks and I ended up with an awful lot of leftover strips, enough to use in several different scrappy string-type projects.

Lots and Lots of Leftover Strips

I came up with several different designs in EQ8 for using up the strips, such as the Pythagoras-Meets-Jane design I shared with you the other day, as well as this offset star design:

EQ8 Offset String Star Baby or Wall Quilt Design

Here's the other EQ8 design I came up with for my leftover strips:

Another Idea for Leftover Fabric Strips

I still like each of those designs, and I may (or may not) make BOTH of them at some point.  However, each of them would require more brain power than what I have available at the moment.  You know when your Internet is running really slow because one of your teenagers is downloading a movie, Brother the Other is streaming music, and your husband is downloading computer updates all at the same time?  That's how my brain is running right now.  I didn't want to muck around with templates or foundations or even rulers; I just wanted to sew little strips together into big pieces and then decide later what to do with them.  So I just started grabbing strips of fabric and sewing them together, with NO plan.  It felt so wicked!

This Is What Reckless Abandon Looks Like

And then, taking a break from my mindless, reckless strip piecing, I poked around on Pinterest for some ideas of what to do with my pieced-together strips.  Inspiration struck when I stumbled across this lovely quilt, "My Life Aquatic," that was made by my friend Julie of Pink Doxies in 2015:

Inspiration Quilt "My Life Aquatic" Made by Julie of Pink Doxies

Isn't that beautiful?  I don't have the dimensions of Julie's quilt, but I think her strips are wider than mine, like maybe from a jelly roll.  But  that's my plan, as much as I have one.  I pieced 8 of my 1 1/2" strips together, and that gave me a big enough piece of "made fabric" to cut out triangles using my Nifty Notions Good Measure Bias Triangle ruler, just lining it up and slicing around the perimeter of the ruler on all three sides with my rotary cutter.  

Nifty Notions Bias Triangle Ruler

That's the ruler I used to cut out those first two triangles at the top of this post.  Nifty Notions calls it a "Bias Triangle," but it's actually an isosceles triangle (two equal sides) because the length of the sides is longer than the length of the base.  This is the triangle that works for a triangle-in-a-square or "peaky and spike" block, like 54-40 Or Fight:

54-40 Or Fight Block Made With Bias Triangle Ruler

 I think I'm going to switch to my 60 degree equilateral triangle ruler.  An equilateral triangle has all three sides the same length and all three angles measure 60 degrees.  As I discovered with my Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties, it's MUCH easier to piece equilateral triangles together because you can just slap them together RST (right sides together) with all the edges even, no pins or nothin', and they'll come out perfectly.  Isosceles triangles need to be offset just so in order to open them up and have the seam look right:

Remember How "Jog the Ends Slightly" Made Me Crazy?

I'm not looking to give myself any more aggravation than absolutely necessary, if you know what I mean!  I'd like to give my seam ripper a few days off for good behavior!  

Meanwhile, I got all the foundation paper carefully torn away the first of 36 pineapple log cabin blocks last night.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, either -- just took time and patience.  

Well, I still need to prep some vegetables and do a last-minute dust-and-vacuum run through the house before it's time to pick my niece up from the bus station, so I'd better get off the computer and get on with it!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

I'm linking up with:

• ·       Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/ 
• ·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

When Pythagoras Met Jane: Ancient Math Magic Comes to the Rescue of a Damsel In Distress

NOPE, I haven't been working on my Jingle BOM, my Pineapple Log Cabin, or anything else that I promised the whole Internet I'd be working on this week.  Instead of sewing, I've been busy designing a NEW project, one that will use up leftover strips that had been cut for pineapple log cabin blocks.

I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to quick-and-easy, down-and-dirty string pieced projects that would be oh-so-sensible for this purpose.  But alas, I am not a sensible girl.  I'm an impractical, wish-upon-a-star, dream-up-something-different-to-drive-myself-crazy kind of girl.

And so I have camped out in my office with EQ8 quilt design software, brainstorming, browsing the block and layout libraries for inspiration, exploring all of the cool design tools like Merge Blocks, Clip and Flip, Add Frame...  Finding photos on the Internet that simulate what my string-pieced fabric sections will look like so I can treat those areas as if they were a single fabric...  Trying out different layout and color schemes and oodles of different colors and fabrics...  

And after all of those hours of design labor bliss, I ended up with three quilts that I might (or might not) make with my leftover 1 1/2" strips of fabric.  In an effort to get away from the computer and up to my studio sooner rather than later, I'm going to share one of the designs with you today and will share the others over the next few days.  This one is my current favorite:

Option One, Great-Grandbaby Jane, 52 x 52

This design began with one of the 4" applique blocks from the historic "Dear Jane" sampler quilt.  I blew up the scale of the applique and will be using strip pieced fabric for the petals.  Then I added a Storm At Sea frame around the giant applique  (I will be strip piecing the large diamonds as well), and set that block on point in the middle of my quilt.  There are smaller versions of the Dear Jane applique block in the four corners of the quilt, with different pieced frames around them, and the borders of the quilt are from my strip-pieced pineapple scraps as well.  In real life, my scraps will be more mixed up than they are in the design picture, using my leftover blue and green pineapple strips as well as some bright solids, and I think I'm going to chop up some pink and orange strips out of stash fabric as well.  I don't want to be working off the exact same color palette as the pineapple quilt -- enough is enough, if you know what I mean.  I'm so excited about this one that I have already printed off cardstock templates for the center applique and foundation paper patterns for the Storm At Sea border.

Some people will tell you that design software takes the math out of quilting, and that's true to a certain degree...  I mean, for most users it's probably true.  It depends on what you want to design.  But my personal experience is that math skills + fab design software  = QUILTING SUPERPOWERS!  When I tried to print foundation paper patterns for my Storm at Sea border directly from my quilt design in EQ8, this is the wretched print layout the computer came up with:

EQ8 "Doing the Math For Me"

Yuck, right?  Because the block for which I'm trying to print foundations is on point in my quilt, EQ8 plops my foundation sections down on the paper oriented exactly how they are in the quilt -- in this case diagonally, rather than aligning them so their straight edges are parallel to the edges of he sheets of paper.  Normally, quilters are not trying to paper piece gigantic blocks that do not fit on sheets of paper like what I'm trying to do, but I love the accuracy of paper piecing and I have my heart set on doing it that way, so there you go.

I have already adjusted this whacked layout the best that I can using the Rotate option to turn my sections in the screenshot above, but EQ8 only lets me turn the pieces in preset "chunks" -- it's not an infinitely adjustable rotation, and there's no "snap to grid" or "fit the bleepin' page" option.  Sometimes we are grateful to our computers for doing the thinking for us, and other times we need to put on our thinking caps and figure out how to outsmart the computer!

I went back into my project file for this quilt, called the Sketchbook, and opened up the center block I'd created all by itself in the Block worktable, to see if EQ8 would print the foundation sections straight if it didn't know I was secretly planning to set the block on point in my quilt.  YES!!  However -- (don't you HATE when there has to be a "however"?!) -- since I was no longer printing the block from my beautiful quilt design where everything is the right size to fit together nicely, in the Block worktable EQ8 is looking at that center medallion as if it's any old ordinary block, and the default size was something like 6".  And of course, I can easily change that -- but only if I know the actual finished size my block needs to be to fit into my quilt design.  Helpfully "doing the math for me," EQ8 tells me (when I'm looking at the Quilt Worktable) that this block measures 48" x 48".  Unfortunately, however, that is a corner-to-corner measurement, NOT the length of the block sides.  I need to manually enter the length of the SIDES of my block, not just the diagonal measurement, in order for these foundation patterns to print out at the correct size.  It's time to put on my Big Girl Panties and do the math myself.

The Pythagorean Theorem Saves the Day!

When I was sitting in a high school geometry class so many years ago, bored out of my mind, I had NO IDEA how useful all those formulas would be for art and design.  They should offer a course called Math for Design Majors that would cover all of the same content as the regular algebra, geometry and precalculus, except all of the problems would use examples from art, architecture and design instead of those dumb word problems about calculating batting averages, trains traveling in opposite directions at different speeds, and the likelihood of winning at dice games.  My math class would be team taught by the Art Department and the Math Department, would have twice as much class time as the regular math class because students would be actually applying the math they were learning to hands-on art projects for reinforcement, and the class would satisfy both the math requirement as well as an elective fine arts credit...

Today's EQ8 Tech Support Solution is Brought to You by Pythagoras, c. 570 - c. 495 BCE

Anyway, did you see that crazy number my magic math came up with?  My center block needs to measure 33.941" x 33.941" in order to fit in my quilt.  Not exactly ruler-friendly, is it?  And that's where it's such a godsend to be able to type a weird measurement into EQ8 and print out foundation paper piecing patterns of the exact size needed, with no rounding or fudging required.  Here's what the print layout for my Storm at Sea block frame looked like when I printed it from the Block Worktable, setting the block size to 33.941":

THAT's More Like It!

MUCH better!  Now each of the Square-In-Square corner blocks fits on a single page, and each of the diamond sections will be taped together from only two sheets of paper.

What Paper Does Rebecca Use for Paper Piecing?

Carol Doak's Foundation Paper on the Left; Saxs Newsprint on the Right. EXACTLY the Same Stuff.

When I write about paper piecing, I often get emails from readers asking what kind of paper I use.  I have tried LOTS of different papers, and my favorite is newsprint.  Some people recommend vellum because you can see through it, but my paper piecing method doesn't require see-through foundation paper and I find that vellum is awfully stiff.  The thicker weights can actually crack along the stitching line as you're sewing the seam.   Plus vellum has a slippery coating that encourages your fabric bits to scoot around without your permission.  Newsprint paper is ideal -- like the kind of paper that cheap children's coloring books are printed on, and that's what kind of paper that paper piecing superstar Carol Doak's recommends as well.  Newsprint is strong enough to hold up throughout the paper piecing process without tearing easily, yet thin enough to tear away once stitching is complete.  Newsprint also has a slight rough texture that helps to "grab" your fabric and reduces slipping -- that's a huge help since you are "sewing blind" when you paper piece, with your fabric completely covered by a sheet of paper under the presser foot of our sewing machine!  

The only challenge with newsprint is that our modern printers are spoiled by printing on fancy copy paper all the time, and sometimes they throw a little tantrum when we ask them to print on lowly newsprint.  For instance, the printer may beep at you and complain that the paper is jammed when you can see with your eyes that there is NO jam, or sometimes multiple sheets will feed through instead of just one piece at a time -- it's that slightly rough texture of the newsprint that "grabs" the fabric and holds it still, so we LIKE that quality in our foundation paper!  Check your printer's paper type settings.  My moderately priced Epson WorkForce inkjet printer/scanner has a Recycled Paper setting that seems to feed newsprint more smoothly than the Plain Paper setting does.  And if an extra sheet or two of newsprint gets stuck in the printer occasionally and gets wasted, I don't worry about it anymore because I found a SUPER cheap source for my newsprint foundation paper. 

At first I was using Carol Doak's Foundation Paper, and it's great stuff.  Although it doesn't say so on the package, it is definitely newsprint and it comes in a pack of 100 8 1/2" x 11" sheets that retails for $12.95 (but Amazon usually has it discounted).  You can probably find that at your local quilt shop or even at JoAnn's.  But then I found the exact same paper at a fraction of the cost -- instead of getting a dinky pack of 100 sheets of Carol Doak's newsprint paper for $12.95, you can get a whole ream of 500 sheets of Sax Plain White newsprint for only $9, with free shipping.  

Now, I love Carol's design aesthetic, I have purchased several of her books, and I would be thrilled if I ever get to take a class with her, but I am not going to pay seven times as much for my foundation paper just so it can have her name on the package.  Newsprint paper isn't fancy stuff, y'all -- it's the stuff your newspaper is printed on, it's the cheap scrap paper they used to pass out for standardized tests in elementary school, for goodness' sake.  It should not cost more than regular copy paper!  I bought my 500-sheet ream of Sax newsprint two years ago, and I still haven't even made a dent in it.



This is the book by Carol Doak that taught me how to paper piece, by the way.  Unlike her newsprint paper, her book was worth every single penny.  She has a paper piecing class on Craftsy that has stellar reviews, too.  So, buy Carol's books and sign up for her classes, but get your newsprint from Sax!

Okay, kiddos (of all ages, including ME!) -- somehow it is now after midnight and my "quick little blog update" has spiraled out of control once again. I actually have a red owie on the edge of my wrist where it has been rubbing against the edge of my laptop keyboard as I type!

So, NO TYPING for me tomorrow!  Instead, I'll be either:

• Working on my Jingle BOM, tweaking the pieced block border, trimming the center medallion and adding inner borders
• Starting the new design I shared with you today using the foundation patterns I printed out before getting sidetracked by a neverending blog post
• Removing the foundation papers from my pineapple log cabin blocks and joining them into rows
• Breaking my no typing vow, and writing another post about the SECOND cool design I came up with today using my EQ8 software!  ;-)

Happy stitching, and have a great weekend!  I'm linking up with :

• Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com.  
• ·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com
• ·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com  
• ·       Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/
• ·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
• ·       Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/
• ·       BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com/blog/  
• To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com
• WIPs on Wednesday at Esther's Quilt Blog: https://estheraliu.blogspot.com
• Let’s Bee Social at www.sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/
• Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/
• WIPs With Friends at www.mamaspark.blogspot.com

Squealing Over Scalloped Borders for My $10,000 Pineapple Log Cabin Quilt!

First of all, thank you so much, all of you who have been weighing in with advice and opinions about my pineapple log cabin quilt.  I got a good night's sleep last night for a change, and woke up with some fresh new ideas buzzing around in my brain.  I think this is my final, FINAL design plan for this quilt, and I couldn't wait to share it with you because I'm SO STINKIN' EXCITED about it!

5 x 6 Layout Plus Half Block Border and Scalloped Edges.  LOVE!!

I'm so giddy; it's like I've just down a gallon of high-test espresso (I swear I've only had one latte today).

(I apologize for the poor quality of that picture, by the way.  There is probably a way to add half blocks and scallop the borders in EQ8, but I don't have time to learn how to do it right now so here's what I did instead.  I added an additional row and an additional column of pineapple log cabin blocks in EQ8 for an 8 x 7 layout.  Then I printed a photo of that design directly from EQ8 with my inkjet printer, cut the outer blocks down the middle with scalloped edges with a scissors, and drew my coral binding onto the edges with a red Sharpie marker.  I lost a lot of resolution when I scanned the printed photo back into my computer so I could share it with you).

Here's why I love this design:

• It's a really clean and simple layout visually, keeping all of the attention on the impactful pineapple log cabin blocks.  And what I loved about this 19th century quilt, what made me want to create my own version of it in the first place, is how utterly MODERN this design looks when I update the color palette.  I mean, do you look at that design and think, "Oh, it's another 19th century reproduction quilt?"
• Adding the half blocks further emphasizes the secondary pattern that emerges when multiple pineapple blocks are combined.  Now it looks like the blue and green "stars" are the blocks -- no more "half stars" all the way around the edges of the quilt like I had when I only had full pineapple blocks.
• What I most love about the pineapple log cabin block, especially when it's pieced with skinny little 3/4" finished strips like mine, is the strong illusion of curved lines.  I'm able to bring that out even more by scalloping the borders of the quilt.
• This design gets me to the size I need to fit my bed properly even if I have 10% shrinkage.
• The partial block, scalloped edge border is my own idea, not something I got from anyone else.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with following quilt patterns exactly, but I personally get a much bigger thrill out of seeing my own ideas come to life in fabric.  So this design also gets bonus points (yes, I am giving myself bonus points now) for being more original than just adding another row of blocks or slapping on some kind of border.
• I've never made a quilt with scalloped borders before and I'm looking forward to giving it a try!  I like to learn new things with every project.

So, here's the nitty-gritty about the sizing:

Doing My Quilt Math

The partial blocks in my border are a bit larger than half blocks, more like 5/8 blocks, because I wanted to grab all of the red center square from each block and then curve it out even more to get the neutrals in my scallops.  Each full block finishes at about 17 3/4", but my partial blocks will add 10" to each side at the SP (short point -- the edge of the red square) and 13" at the DP (deepest part of the scallop).  So my 5 x 6 layout with partial blocks added to all four sides should result in a quilt top of approximately: 

126.5"SP/132.5"DP wide x 108.75"SP/114.75"DP long BEFORE QUILTING

When I factor in 10% shrinkage from moderate to severe longarm quilting plus laundering, I estimate a finished quilt of approximately:

113.75"SP/119.25"DP wide x 97.75"SP/103.25"DP long AFTER QUILTING

In yesterday's post, I calculated my personal minimum dimensions for a finished quilt that would completely cover my extra deep pillow top mattress on all three sides.  Those dimensions were 104" wide x 100" long.  At first glance, you might be thinking that I'm cutting it too close with the lengthwise dimension, since my new plan would result in a quilt that ends up to be 2.25" shorter than my calculated minimum length.  However, when I put the quilt on the bed I'm going to be aligning the deep point of the scallops with the top edge of the mattress -- I'm not going to pull the red squares all the way up to the top mattress edge and then have the scallops extending off the cliff, so to speak.  (If you need a visual on that, scroll back up to my math photo and check out my little diagram in the lower left corner of my scrap paper).  The difference between the SP and the DP on each partial block is 3", so if I align the DP with the top edge of the mattress, I actually exceed my minimum length to cover my mattress by 3/4" at the short point, even factoring in 10% shrinkage.  The perfectionist interior design tyrant within me is adequately satisfied that this design will result in a beautiful custom fit for my bed.

...And Now What, You Ask?

Well, I've already spent approximately 216 hours piecing 36 blocks for this quilt so far (that does not count any of the time prewashing or cutting cutting up fabric into strips, shopping for fabrics, or any of the considerable design time that I've invested in this project).  And now I have a design that calls for only 30 complete quilt blocks plus 4 quarter blocks and 22 half blocks.  Unfortunately, that means that 6 of my finished blocks are going to get cut apart and 3/8 of each of those blocks will be wasted.  Ah, the curse of mathematics -- naturally I had to calculate how much time I spent on the portion of the blocks that will now be cut off and scrapped.  I will be removing and discarding 3/8 of each block.  I spent 6 hours piecing each of these blocks, and 3/8 of 6 hours is 2 hours and 15 minutes wasted per block.  Multiplied by 6 blocks getting amputated into partial blocks, that means I have wasted a whopping 13 1/2 hours.  Please join me in a moment of silence while I mourn 13 1/2 hours of my life that I can never get back again.

Thank you.  Moving on!

So my corner quarter blocks are actually 3/8 blocks, and my half blocks are really 5/8 blocks.  If each full block took 6 hours to piece, then each 5/8 block should take me 3 hours and 45 minutes and each 3/8 corner block should take me 2 hours and 15 minutes to piece.  I have 6 full blocks that I am going to dismember into 5/8 blocks so that means I only need to make 16 more of those, plus 4 of the 3/8 corner blocks...

Okay, Math, I'm ready to be friends again.  Let's have some fun!

My estimated remaining piecing time for this quilt top is 69 hours for the partial blocks plus however long it takes me to lay out the blocks the way I want them and piece them together into a quilt top, carefully pinning and matching all of those seams along the edges of each block -- easily another 10 hours there. When all is said and done, I will have spent well over 300 hours piecing this quilt top, plus at least 5 hours cutting fabric and a good 10 hours or more (VERY conservative estimate) in design time.  Now, my hourly rate interior design services ranges from $95-150/hr depending on the project, but I know the commission quilt market doesn't support those rates.  The average Money Center Clerk at Walmart -- kind of like a Head Cashier, with additional responsibilities beyond a regular sales associate, is making $25 per hour here in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they even get benefits on top of that.  So I'm going to be generous and quote my labor at just $25/hr for this example, as if designing and creating a quilt like this was something any cashier at Walmart could do.  If I was making this quilt for hire and I charged $25 per hour for my skilled design and piecing labor, this quilt would cost $7,8750 in labor alone, not including any cost for materials.  But a pieced quilt top still has a long way to go before it's a finished quilt, doesn't it?  Once the blocks have all been made and pieced into a quilt top, there would be a labor charge for layering the quilt top with batting and backing fabric, quilting through all three layers, and for making and attaching the scalloped, hand stitched binding.  This quilt will be custom quilted for sure, and the going rate for custom quilting is around five cents per square inch and up.  My California King quilt top will be 13,680.625 square inches before quilting, so that works out to a minimum custom quilting labor charge of $684.  Most professional longarm quilters would probably have a surcharge for the scalloped borders as well, since they will require special handling throughout the loading and quilting process, but I'm not factoring that in right now.  A professional longarm quilter is also going to charge a flat fee of about $35 to cut and join enough bias binding strips for this enormous quilt, and the scalloped edge will increase the required amount of binding by about 50% (I know this from calculating material requirements for a bazillion window treatments with scalloped edges over the years -- just trust me).  So this quilt will require approximately 668" of binding.  Again, looking at published current rates charged by professional longarm quilters, a typical labor charge for machine stitching regular straight binding to the front of a quilt is 11 cents per inch, but binding a curved edge without puckers and pleats is MUCH more involved, so I'm going to double that and go with 22 cents per inch.  That would make it $147 to machine stitch bias binding to the front of this enormous quilt -- but the binding will need to be stitched down to the BACK of the quilt completely by hand, with tiny invisible applique stitches spaced about 1/16" apart.  As I discovered when I timed myself stitching the binding by hand on my Math Is Beautiful quilt, hand stitched binding takes a REALLY LONG TIME!  There is a reason why my professional drapery workroom charged in the neighborhood of $40 per yard or $40/hr for hand stitching trim!  Since it took me 6 hours to hand stitch 200" of binding on my Math Quilt, I can confidently estimate that the scalloped binding on THIS quilt will take me about 20 hours to hand stitch.  So that's another $760 in labor to finish the binding by hand.  Are you keeping track of these numbers as we go along?  We're up to $9,501 in labor alone for this quilt.

And yet, not being Rumplestiltskin, I cannot spin gold out of straw or make a quilt without materials.  Based on the yardage requirements in the Fons & Porter pattern, this quilt uses approximately one yard of fabric per block for the top, binding, and backing.  My whole and partial blocks for this quilt design add up to 45 total complete blocks, so that would equate to roughly 45 yards of fabric required to make this quilt.  Although I did use some fabulous individually marbled hand dyed fabric that go for $42/yd, most of my fabrics were commercially dyed prints priced around $11.75/yd, so that's the number I'll use in my calculations.  45 Yards x $11.75/yd = $528.75 for fabric.  It cost me $118 to to print all fifty-six 18" x 18" foundation paper piecing patterns on the large format printer at the FedEx Office shop.  I'll need 5 yards of Quilter's Dream 120" wide batting for this quilt at $20 per yard plus shipping, so that's $120, and I may use a layer of Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Polyester batting as well for additional warms as well as to ensure that I get a nice "puff" between my quilting stitches.  At 5 yards of 120" wide 80/20 batting x $13/yd plus shipping, that would add another $75 to the cost of this quilt.  Finally, throughout the entire process of piecing, quilting, and binding, I'm going to add in $50 worth of needles and thread.  That's probably a very conservative figure, considering that there are 97 seams in every single block and I need different colors and weights of thread for piecing, quilting, and binding.  So my materials for this quilt come out to $773.75 plus 7.25% North Carolina Sales Tax -- and my grand total for materials for this quilt comes out to $829.85.  

$9,501 Labor + $829.85 Materials = $10,330.85

Wow.  Outlandish, you say?  Before doing all the math, if someone had asked me to make them a quilt just like this one I might have thought $5,000 was a fair price, and I would have felt uncomfortable asking for even that much compensation.  But with $829.85 of that eaten up by the cost of materials, that $5,000 figure means I would be working on someone else's project for 380 hours, and giving up 380 hours of MY precious free time -- nine and a half full, forty-hour work weeks -- for less than the $11/hr a fast food worker gets for taking your order at McDonald's.  And forget about making this quilt for someone else for free, just passing along the cost of materials.  Would you have the nerve to ask anyone, even one of your closest friends, to spend that much time working on something for you "as a favor," just because they know how to do it and you don't?  I wouldn't ask an accountant friend to do my taxes for free, and I wouldn't ask a plastic surgeon friend for a free tummy tuck, even though that would be only asking for a few hours of their time -- not 380 hours!  ;-)  Yes, $10,000 is the minimum commission I would accept to make this quilt as a commission for someone else.  When I finish making it, I think I'll get it appraised.  It will be interesting to see how close my estimate is to what an appraiser would come up with.  

But even if someone offered me $10,000 to make this quilt for them, I would still probably turn them down. 

That's right.  By accepting a commission at all, even one that pays me fairly for my time, I would still be giving up my stress-relieving hobby that keeps me sane, trading those restorative hours in my studio for endless boring and stressful hours spent making something for someone else, worrying over every little imperfection...  With a commission quilt, all of the design work would need to be completed and agreed upon up front, too.  I would lose creative control.  I couldn't completely change the setting midway through the project or do a completely different quilting plan on a whim.  I'd probably be working with colors and fabrics I didn't really love, either, and that's going to affect how much I enjoy or despise the time I spend on the project.  

So, how DOES anyone get Rebecca to make a quilt for them if she won't even do it for $10,000?

Remember Jeff Burmbeau and Gail De Marcken's wonderful 1999 picture book, The Quiltmaker's Gift?

That king wanted the quiltmaker to make him a quilt more than anything.  He was rich, so he offered her all kinds of money, and he was all-powerful, so he even threatened her with imprisonment and drowning, but she still said no.

I Love This Book.  :-)

Like the quiltmaker in the story, I'm am probably not going to make you a quilt for any amount of money.  BUT -- If you love me, if you are one of those special people who shine light into my darkness, who care for me when I need to be cared for, or who look out for my children when I can't be there to watch over them myself -- if you are one of those truly amazing people, I might just sneak up behind you one day and wrap one of my quilts around your shoulders for free.  

And now I'm off to Ardrey Kell High School to see my son perform in the first evening's competitions of the Improv Olympics!  Yippee!

I'm linking up with:

• ·       Finish It Up Friday at www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com
• ·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com
• ·       Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

Pineapple Log Cabin Block 36 FINISHED! Tweaking My Design in EQ8 For a Custom Fit to My Bed

You guys, I am ON FIRE!  Not only did I venture out in a monsoon to restock my home with groceries yesterday, but I also got caught up with all of the laundry, reviewed a couple of tricky passages in the Brahms, and stayed up past midnight to finish one more pineapple log cabin block.  BEHOLD:

Pineapple Log Cabin Block 36 (out of 42?)

Here are the answers to the most common questions I've been getting about this project:

1. I am paper piecing the blocks using a free foundation pattern that I downloaded from Fons & Porter here, but after taping just one block together I took it to my local FedEx shop and printed single page copies on their large format printer.
2. The blocks finish at approximately 17 3/4".
3. The fabric strips are cut at 1 1/2" wide since I'm paper piecing, but the finished width of the strips is 3/4"
4. Each block contains 97 pieces, and each block is taking me roughly SIX hours to piece.
5. I'm making this for my California King bed that measures 72" wide by 84" long.  

If you google something like "standard quilt sizes" or "Cal King quilt dimensions," you can find a whole slew of handy little charts telling you exactly what size to make your quilt.  But as an interior designer who specializes in high end custom work, I am begging you to never, ever decide what size to make your quilt based on somebody else's chart or pattern instructions.  Whenever I design custom bedding for my clients, I always measure the client's actual bed to determine sizes.  Mattresses come in such a variety of depths these days, and if you're going to all of the trouble to pay for -- or spending all of the TIME to make -- why would you want to pay for custom without getting a custom fit?  

So the Fons & Porter pattern calls for 16 blocks in a 4 x 4 layout to recreate this antique quilt in the collection of the International Quilt Study Center  which measures approximately 74" x 76" (Imagine that -- antique quiltmakers weren't perfect, either!):  

Original Antique Quilt, 74" x 76", Sixteen Blocks Measuring 17 3/4"

Ah, sixteen blocks -- I could have been finished with this quilt SO LONG AGO!  But I want to put this on the California King bed in my master bedroom, so I knew I needed a lot more blocks than 16.

My original plan was to make 36 blocks for a 6 x 6 layout that would give me a quilt top measuring 106.5" x 106.5", and that would be perfect, right?  No sashing or borders required, and it would look pretty much like this EQ7 rendition that I made after completing the first block:

EQ7 Rendition of 36 Blocks, Set 6 x 6, with Coral 1/4" Binding

By the way, I made that rendition by importing a cropped photo of my first finished pineapple block into my EQ7 software, setting up a new quilt with a 6 x 6 horizontal layout, and just pasting copies of that same block into every square.  It only took me a few minutes, and it was a great way to make sure I liked what I was doing with my color and value placement early on in the piecing process.  Since this quilt is super scrappy and every block is unique, there will be a lot more variation in the finished quilt.  You can see that in this photo from the last time I had some of my actual completed quilt blocks up on my design wall:

Actual Completed Pineapple Blocks On My Design Wall

I love using EQ this way, as a "Virtual Design Wall."  See how well my computer rendering "predicted" what a bunch of these blocks would look like together?  I love, love, LOVE my EQ8 software (I updated to the newest version while this project was in progress) and it was worth every penny.  Seriously -- I have spent more on fabric to make one quilt than the cost of this design software, and has paid for itself many times over by preventing me from making a whole quilt and not realizing that it isn't working out the way I want until ALL of the blocks have been made.  The newest version, EQ8, is even more user friendly than previous versions, and my "sneak peak" technique is just the tip of the iceberg for what you can do with it.

Seriously, if you buy EQ8 and you can't figure out how to use it, please reach out to me and I would love to help you.  I'd consider it my way to "pay it forward" for all of the times that more experienced quilters have reached out to me when I needed help.   You can take all the design classes in the world and read every book out there about color theory, but the easiest and most foolproof way to ensure you're making a quilt that YOU will love is to try out different color combinations on your computer screen ahead of time and make sure what you see on your computer monitor matches the beautiful vision you have in your mind.

Okay, so back to my pineapple log cabin quilt.  Yes, I love how 36 blocks looks laid out in a straight 6 x 6 setting with no borders, but will it be big enough for my bed?

I found this chart at TheSewingLoft.com, and it's a great reference for anytime you're making a quilt that is NOT for one specific bed -- like a quilt for a raffle, a quilt for a show or craft fair, or a surprise gift for a faraway friend whose mattress cannot be measured ahead of time.  According to this chart, my quilt only needs to be 102" x 106" to fit a California King mattress.  36 blocks that finish at 17 3/4" in a 6 x 6 layout would give me a quilt top that measures 106.5" x 106.5", and that would be perfect, right?  

Measuring Mattress Depth is Crucial to a Good Fit

--But, no.  My mattress is 72" wide by 84" long, and those dimensions are pretty standard for a California King.  However, "standard" mattress depth is around 9-10", but I have an extra-deep pillow top mattress on my bed that is 16" thick.  I want the finished quilt to completely cover the mattress on all three sides of the bed, so I have to take my extra deep mattress into consideration.  

What's more, as anyone who has ever made a quilt knows, the quilt top is going to draw up and get smaller during the quilting process (by about 5-10%, depending on how densely I quilt it), and then I may get a little more shrinkage in the final wash as well, depending on what kind of batting I end up using.  Remember I told you that it takes me 6 hours to make just one of these blocks.  Imagine going to all of this work only to put the finished quilt on my bed and discover that it is too small?!

So, how DO I know how big to make my quilt?  Here's my Magic Math:

• Mattress Width = 72".  Mattress Length = 84".  Mattress DEPTH = 16".
• Mattress Width 72" + 2(Mattress Depth 16") = Minimum Finished Width 104"
• Mattress Length 84" + Mattress Depth 16" = Minimum Finished Length 100"

At this point, it seems like my original plan of 36 blocks will work just fine, right?  That would result in a quilt top measuring 106.5" x 106.5".  But I haven't factored in ANY shrinkage from quilting and laundering.  Even if I was using all prewashed fabrics, a polyester batting with minimal or no shrinkage, and I was planning to do minimal quilting such as a very loose all over meander, I'd still want to factor in at least 5% shrinkage.  Here's how to determine what size the quilt top needs to be PRIOR to quilting in order for the finished quilt to come out the desired size AFTER quilting if we estimate 5% shrinkage:

• Minimum Finished Width 104" ÷ .95 = 109.5" Minimum Width Before Quilting
• Minimum Finished Length 100" ÷ .95 = 105.25" Minimum Length Before Quilting

However, I am NOT planning to use an all polyester batting with zero shrinkage, and I am probably going to do a moderately heavy amount of quilting rather than a loose, open meander.  I consulted with veteran longarm quilters in a couple of quilters' groups that I belong to, and the consensus seems to be that 10% shrinkage is the safest margin to allow for most longarm quilted quilts.  So now, let's do that math again to see how big my quilt top should be before quilting in order to finish the size I want it to be on my bed:

• Minimum Finished Width 104" ÷ .90 = 115.5" Minimum Width Before Quilting
• Minimum Finished Length 100" ÷ .90 = 111" Minimum Length Before Quilting

With 10% shrinkage factored in, my 36 block quilt top can be expected to finish up at just 95 3/4" x 95 3/4" when all is said and done.  That means I have about 4 1/2" of mattress exposed beyond the edges of my quilt on all three sides of my bed.  Boo, hiss!

So then I thought I'd make another row of blocks to cover the width, and just scoot the quilt down a few inches at the top.  But that doesn't sit right with me, either, because why am I bothering to make a custom quilt that isn't a custom fit to my bed?  This is where the large size of the blocks complicates design options.  Really, adding another row of 17 3/4" blocks is adding too much width to the sides, and it does nothing to give me the few extra inches I'd like at the foot of the bed.  Back to EQ8 to explore my options!  

Playing With Borders In EQ8 Software

My first idea was to add three 3/4" borders and a 3/4" pieced sashing between the blocks that would blend into the adjacent neutral, blue, or green fabrics, but when I previewed that in my software I didn't love my quilt as much anymore.

First Idea: Pieced Sashing and Plain, Skinny Borders.  Yuck.  Rejected!

There are advantages to this setting.  For one thing, it eliminates the need burning, passionate desire I have to try to match up all of those seams where my blocks come together.  But I am a glutton for punishment, and I want to pin all those little seams and make myself crazy matching them up.  That's just who I am.  Also, the plain, skinny borders would be a quick and easy fix, but they just look so juvenile and plain, no matter which fabrics I "painted" them.  So I scrapped the sashing (so much easier to do in the computer by clicking "no sashing" rather than ripping out all of those stitches in real life!) and tried some other options.  I have not reached a firm decision, but here are the top contenders at this point:

OPTION ONE: 6" of Piano Key Border for a Quilt Top Measuring 119" x 119"

OPTION TWO: Same as Option One, But Without the Coral Inner Border

OPTION THREE: Same as One and Two, But More Light Neutrals in the Outer Border, Plus Corner Blocks

OPTION FOUR: Same Cute Corner Blocks, But Now With Flying Geese Border

When I started writing this post, I thought I had this narrowed down to either Option Three or Option Four.  I can print foundation paper piecing patterns for the flying geese border right from EQ8 so although it will take a lot of TIME to piece the geese, I won't have any problem piecing them accurately, even if they work out to crazy sizes that are not rotary-cutting-friendly.  I think the scale might be too large, though, and I'm not sure I want to introduce a new element (geese) in the border.  For Option Three, I'd just be piecing together a border from my leftover strips and they'd be the same size as the strips in the pineapple blocks.  But is that too boring? 

Now, though, looking at the design renderings again, I find myself drawn to Option Two again, for its simplicity.  Does that one do the best job of preserving the fresh, modern graphic appeal the blocks had without borders?  My brain hurts, and it's time to walk away from the computer!! 

Yeah, so much for another "quick" blog post after breakfast.  Hah!  If you have ideas or opinions about the borders for my pineapple log cabin quilt, please share in the comments.  Thanks!

I'm linking up with:

       Let’s Bee Social at www.sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/

·       Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

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

·       WIPs With Friends at www.mamaspark.blogspot.com

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