Grunt Work: SID Quilting on Deco + Appliqué Prep for Stonefields

Welcome to today's boring blog post.  I'm bored already and I am the one writing it -- not a good sign, but let's begin.

😂.  Clearly I was not in a good mood when I started writing this blog post yesterday!  Good thing I left it in Draft mode or I might have driven all of you away for good!  The blog post begun with a bad attitude yesterday and revised with a better attitude today is about not-so-glamorous prep work at the front end of a project that lays the foundation for smooth sailing and a successful finish.  It's like stretching in the morning or flossing your teeth before you go to bed -- you can skip this stuff if you want to, but you'll probably pay for it later if you do!  I'll be talking about the foundational stitch-in-the-ditch quilting on my Deco quilt as well as getting my appliqué templates ready for my next Stonefields quilt blocks.  

Quilting Begins on My Deco Quilt

I Loathe the Drudgery of Stitching In the Ditch Quilting!

Stitching in the ditch -- quilting along patchwork seamlines -- is utter and abysmal drudgery.  If you do it really well, you can't see the quilting at all and sometimes that results in quilting over a line you already stitched because you couldn't see it.  But if you wobble or some speck of thread or bit of gook on your carriage wheels creates a hiccup in your straight line of quilting, it will stick out at you like Pinnochio's nose or a lump on the noggin of the Wylie Coyote.  And right now I DO have something somewhere that is giving me grief.  I wish I'd done a thorough cleaning of my carriage wheels before I loaded this quilt because it's really hard to get to all of them with a quilt on the frame.  It could also be that one of the machine's cables is catching on something at the back of the frame and needs adjusting, but I can't see what's going on back there when I'm quilting manually from the front of the frame and Bernie has been too busy lately to help me troubleshoot.  

Here's a block in the top row before the ditch quilting:

Not Quilted Yet

Below, I have outlined all of the green squares with stitching in the ditch.  Do you see those couple of wobble bumps?  Those are happening when I feel my machine catching on something ever so slightly.  I am stitching very slowly and using a straight edge quilting ruler as a guide, but then suddenly the machine gets knocked away from my ruler edge by some microscopic obstruction and Bad Words come out of my mouth.  For now I am just ignoring it and soldiering on.  Every imperfection is glaring when the quilt is on the frame under the bright lights and I am hyperfocused on every stitch.  Much of what looks like a catastrophe in the moment ends up not being a big deal in the end, and anything that is STILL a catastrophe at the end can be ripped out and restitched if it still drives me crazy.

I'm using Aurifil monofilament thread in color Smoke (this post contains affiliate links) with Fil-Tec MagnaGlide Classic 60 wt navy bobbin thread, in case anyone is interested.  If you can't find MagnaGlide Classic, it doesn't come in the color you need, or your machine can't accept prewound bobbins, Superior's 60 wt Bottom Line or Microquilter would be good alternatives.  You can even wind monofilament on your bobbin but beware -- it's prone to stretching so slow your bobbin winding speed way down, only wind your bobbin half full, and recognize that with invisible thread top and bottom it will be much more difficult to monitor your tension throughout the quilting process.  Those are the reasons I prefer not to use monofilament thread in my bobbin even though it works beautifully in my Berninas.  Oh, and I'm also using Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 Black batting. I know that if/when I wash this quilt, the needle holes will close up and my imperfections will be less visible.  You don't see the monofilament thread against my green fabric, but you do see tiny specks of black batting in the needle holes if you put your nose right up to the quilt and you have your strongest reading glasses on your face.  Ask me how I know this.  👀

SID Finished (Sloppily) Around Green Squares

I deliberately did not SID the seams between navy patches within those blocks because I want to deemphasize those seams and do some other quilting in those areas to make the background recede and the green squares pop forward.  These are vague plans half formed in my mind; I won't decide for sure until after I see how my digital designs look stitched out.

My big, boring accomplishment for this week is that I have done this SID quilting to all of the green and navy blocks across the top row of the quilt.  I think I am going to rip off my ruler base tomorrow and start stitching the digital designs in the setting triangles between these blocks, because I am hoping that will cheer me up and distract me from my wobbly SID quilting.  Imaginary Judge's comments: "Straight lines should be straight."  Duh.  My dog thinks it looks awesome, so there!  ;-)

Bring On the King-Size Quilts: My Q-Matic is Finally Here!

Today's big news is that my Q-Matics computer robotics that has been backordered since May finally came in and was installed on my machine yesterday!

Q-Matic Computer is Here, Up and Running on My 13' Long Arm

Now I can finally get to the Queen size quilts in my queue whose makers have been waiting so patiently.  I can now quilt anything up to 120" on my 13' Big Girl frame (Bernina calls it the Large frame, but I am calling it my Big Girl Frame after being restricted to the dinky little 8' frame at the Bernina store that couldn't handle anything bigger than a Twin).  Not only can I get caught up with larger customer quilts now, but I'm finally going to quilt my enormous 120" x 120" California King pineapple log cabin quilt -- if I can only make up my mind about how to quilt it!

It took my dealer about 5 hours to install my Q-Matic, and I managed to piece two more blocks for my Retro '80s Building Blocks sampler quilt while he was working in my studio.

Progress on my Sampler Quilt Project

Since my Featherweight was still set up from the LeMoyne star blocks I made last week, I chose two more blocks containing Y-seams (in the original Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt, these were made with flying geese units, but I redrafted them to have fewer seams).

Getting My Ducks In a Row, Or My Geese Lined Up In Circles

Hello there, and happy Saturday morning!  I'm pleased to report that I've actually STARTED on my son's graduation quilt.  I haven't sewn a stitch yet -- just prep work so far, but I have a feeling the upfront prep work on this project will pay off with an accelerated pace once I do start piecing.

Precut Geese Patches, Bagged and Labeled

First things first: After the Disastrous Dye Bleed Detour of 2018, my first step had to be checking each of these fabrics to make sure there was no loose dye from the dark fabrics waiting to bleed all over my yellows!

Once Bitten, Twice As Likely to Check for Colorfastness!

I just snipped off about a 2" square from each fabric and stuck it in a glass of boiling water.  The white paper towel beneath the glasses makes it easy to see whether any of the fabrics is turning its water into Easter egg dye.  Happily, there were no issues with any of my fabrics this time.  I was able to skip the step of preaching/preshrinking my fabrics because they are all Kona Solids.  Since they're all from the same line, I predict that they are all going to have the same rate of shrinkage.  I am totally cool with that shrinkage happening AFTER I quilt this, because I like that puckery texture and I'm short on time.

Bigger IS Better When it Comes to Light Boxes!

Since I designed this quilt in EQ8, I was able to print my foundation paper piecing patterns for the arced flying geese directly from the software onto newsprint.  However, these are 12" blocks and the foundation pattern is too big to fit onto a single sheet of newsprint.  I used my giant lightbox to precisely match up the registration marks on the two pattern sheets and then taped them together with Scotch Magic Tape (unlike cellophane tape, Scotch Magic Tape won't melt when ironed).

Foundation Patterns Taped and Ready to Go!

I printed and taped together six of the 48 arced geese foundations and then set them aside to start cutting into my fabric.

When paper piecing, I have best results if I roughly cut out each patch the correct shape but with an oversize seam allowance.  That makes it easier for me to tell if I'm positioning the piece correctly when I sew it to the foundation, which translates into less ripping out stitches and redoing!  Going back to my EQ8 design, I printed templates for all of the flying geese triangles directly onto card stock, but set the seam allowance to 1/2" rather than the default 1/4" that I'd use for traditional piecing.

Precutting Fabric for Paper Piecing with Oversize Template

Each triangle in the arc of flying geese is a different shape and size, and I have 14 different shades of blue, yellow and green in each one so I know I need to be organized to piece these accurately.  Since there are 48 blocks, I'm cutting out 48 patches from each template. As you see above, I use my rotary cutter and ruler to cut strips, and then I use the ruler to cut the straight edges of each triangle from the strips and freehand the rotary cutter around the curves.  This is actually going pretty quickly since the patches don't need to be exact, just roughly cut with room to spare, cutting four at a time.  I did mark my grainline on each template, though -- I want a straight grain on the bottom of every little goose unit.

All of Unit T4 in Kona Solids Oasis Have Been Cut and Bagged

All of the patches for a given template get bagged in a ziplock baggie, labeled with the template letter (generated by my EQ8 quilt design software), a number indicating the order in which the patches get sewn to the foundation, and the Kona Solid color of that fabric, in case of an oops requiring more fabric.  I am also cutting extras of everything -- it's so much faster to cut a few extra pieces up front than to have to go back and cut a replacement patch later on, interrupting your piecing groove!

Here's my quilt design again, in case you missed my previous post:

My EQ8 Design for Lars's Graduation Quilt

It's an extra-long Twin size for a college dorm.  Forty-eight blocks, each block finishes at 12" so the quilt should end up around 72" x 96" or slightly smaller, depending on how closely I quilt it and how much shrinking happens in the first wash.  I love, love, LOVE that I can design any quilt I want in my EQ8 software, color every single patch with actual fabric so I know exactly what it's going to look like from the very beginning, and then print out my own personal foundation patterns and templates to turn that idea into reality.  Seriously, my quilting software is probably my favorite quilting tool second only to my sewing machine!  

Introducing Goldilocks, my new Bernina 475QE Travel Machine!

...But, speaking of sewing machines, look who followed me home from the Bernina store last week:

Meet Goldilocks, My New Bernina 475QE!

This is the newly-introduced Bernina 475QE and she's my Goldilocks machine -- not too big, not too small; not too pricey but still fully featured, with all of the Bernina features that I use on a regular basis and nothing extra that I don't need (or want to pay for) on a travel machine.  I'm totally smitten.  I'll post a full review of the machine within the next week or so.  Meanwhile, there are more flying geese triangles to be cut out for Lars's quilt!

Have a great weekend, everyone!  I'm linking up with:

·      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/

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·      Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

I Cut It Twice and it's Still Too Short: Let's Pretend I Meant to Do That

I should not have set foot in my sewing room at all yesterday.  If there was such a thing as a Quilter's Horoscope, mine for yesterday would have said "Avoid rotary cutters and scissors at all costs!  Spend the day looking at other people's quilts on Pinterest and Instagram!"

New Emergency Plan for Outer Borders: Pieced Corner Squares

So you may remember that I had my outer striped border print strips already seamed together along the stripe line, ready to be cut to size and attached to my quilt top with mitered corners.  I sat down to do the math after church yesterday, using the same instructions from the same book I used to do the mitered corners on the borders around the medallion for this quilt, but when I got to the part where I was supposed to pin the first border strip to the quilt I discovered that I'd cut the strip too short to do a miter.  I went back to check my calculations, and this is what I saw -- in my own handwriting:

63 1/2" minus 1/2" equals 62"??!

I swear, you guys -- I wasn't even drinking!!  Ugh...  It took me SO LONG to cut those border stripes single layer along the stripes and piece them together to get the borders the way I wanted them, and I cut ALL FOUR of them too short.  I didn't have enough of that border print to start over, and I'm pretty sure I can't get any more of it, either.  And of course I don't want to order fabric and then wait for it -- I want this project DONE already!!

Well, there's no use crying over spilled milk or butchered borders, is there?  A bunch of different ideas occurred to me and were abandoned for whatever reason, and I decided to make pieced corner blocks from the scraps I'd trimmed away from my pieced border lengths.  And here's where my EQ8 software came in handy yet again: My pieced border stripe finishes at 3 3/8" wide, so I needed my corner blocks to finish at 3 3/8" square.  My quarter square triangle ruler has lines printed in quarter inch increments, not eighths, and I wasn't going to be able to cross-cut an oversize square like you'd do in regular rotary cutting.  I also wanted to fussy cut those stripes to create the effect I wanted, so I decided to make myself a see-through template and cut these odd-size triangles out the old school way.

One of the cool things about EQ8 software, and why I recommend it for EVERY quilter even if you have no desire to ever design a quilt in your life, is that the software allows you to print out any of over 6,700 different blocks in any size your heart desires, either as foundation paper piecing patterns, traditional piecing templates, applique templates, or rotary cutting charts.  If you add the additional Blockbase (which works as a standalone piece if you just want to print patterns and don't want to invest in the full software package), that gives you an additional 4,300+ block patterns to choose from.  All copyright free, just about every block you can imagine, and you can easily make it whatever weird size you need in order to fix the border you cut too small... 

I located the 4-X block I wanted from the EQ8 Block Library.  This is one of those basic blocks that is already included as a default option in the Project Sketchbook when you create a new project:

I selected the block I wanted and clicked the Edit button, which brought up the Block Worktable screen:

Then all I needed to do was change the finished width and height of the block from 6.000" x 6.000" to 3.875" x 3.875" for my 3 3/8" corner block.  I clicked the Print & Export tab at the top of the screen next and printed a paper template for this resized block, and then I traced the paper template onto gridded template plastic since I wanted to fussy-cut my pieced stripe.  If I didn't need to see through my template, I would have just printed directly onto cardstock and saved the step of tracing.  Ta-da!

Odd Sized Quarter Square Triangle Template Printed from EQ8, Traced Onto Gridded Template Plastic

Next I just traced my template onto the pieced border stripe and cut each one out with a scissors, like the quilters used to do in Ye Olden Days...

Fussy Cutting Quarter Square Triangles From Pieced Border Stripe

And of course, I was cutting these triangles out of the SCRAP pieces I'd cut off when I cut my borders down to the (wrong) size, right?  RIGHT?!!!

-- WRONG!!!  AAARRRGH!!!  In yesterday's brain fog, it wasn't enough that I cut all four border strips too short to be mitered.  I grabbed one of my actual borders and started cutting triangles out of it, thinking it was a scrap.  I cut three triangles out of my border before I noticed that it was an AWFULLY long scrap...

Okay, so this was a really upsetting discovery to make, but I dug around in the studio and found that I did have a long, skinny scrap of the border print left, enough to make one more replacement pieced border.  There is not enough fabric left for any more mistakes!!  So today I've got some interior design work to catch up on in my office, and then I'll be heading up to the studio this afternoon to hopefully get these borders done and this quilt top finished once and for all!

Four Pieced Corner Blocks, Ready To Go

I have to admit, though -- I think I like my accidental corner blocks better than I would have liked the mitered corners I had originally planned for this border.  Aren't they cute?  They remind me of carved millwork rosettes like these:

Rosette Ornament for Woodworking from Decorator's Supply

One more photo, to give you an idea of how the scale of my corner blocks relates to the rest of the quilt top:

My Happy Accidents

Love, love, love!  All's well that end's well -- and this quilt top DOES need to come to an end today!!  

Meanwhile, back to work!  I'm linking up with:

• ·       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/  

Revised Plans for Tabby Road Quilt: Giant Clam Shells!

So I'm still mulling those Tula Pink Tabby Road fabrics and what to do with them.  I posted several options that I was kicking around here about a week ago, but I wasn't 100% in love with any of them.  My newest plan is to forget my Accuquilt GO! dies and go old school, cutting REALLY BIG 9 1/2" clam shells with a rotary cutter and an acrylic template. 

57" x 57" Quilt Using 9 1/2" Clam Shells

See how much better the larger patch size showcases the large scale prints in this collection?  Here's what the quilt would look like if I did 8" clam shells, the size of the larger Accuquilt die that doesn't work with my GO! Baby cutter anyway:

48" x 72 1/2" Quilt Using 8" Accuquilt Die

It's a good size for the prints, but it doesn't make sense to buy another, more expensive die cutter just for this project.  This is what it would look like (eventually, if I lived long enough to finish it!) if I made a throw-sized quilt with the 4" clam shell Accuquilt die that I already own:

48 1/2" x 60" Quilt Using 4" Accuquilt Die

Not only do we lose the effect of the large scale prints with 4" clam shells, but it also takes over 300 of them to make just a throw sized quilt.  That is a LOT of futzy curved piecing, people!!  Not that I'm averse to time-consuming projects.  I just have too many of those projects in my current rotation.  I want the Tabby Road Kitties quilt to piece fairly quickly so I can get it onto my longarm quilt frame and quilt it with a fun, allover pantograph design.  Mama needs a FINISH!

This is the acrylic template I ordered from Australian Etsy seller Sunset Seams:

9 1/2" Finished Acrylic Clam Shell Template from Sunset Seams

What I really like about this template is that it's transparent, so I can fussy cut my clam shells (precisely centering the portion of each quilt that I want to showcase) and there are little holes along the seam line of all three curved seams, so I can mark with a Chacopel pen to align my convex and concave curves precisely for hand or machine piecing.  (Probably machine piecing, since I'm still working on my needle turned applique project and am nowhere near finished with that!)  And see that little hole in the center of the template?  Using the center markings at the top, middle, and bottom point of the clamshell, I'll be able to add 1/4" with my see-through ruler and easily trim some of my clam shells into half units for the side edges of my quilt.  That same hole will let me draw a straight seam line from the left to right edges of the clam shells that need to be cut down for the partial shells at the top and bottom edges of the quilt.  You can't just cut the clamshells right in half and use both pieces, since you still need seam allowances beyond the stitching line.

The other part of my plan that has evolved is that my newest iteration of the quilt design incorporates other fabrics along with those from the Tabby Road collection.  I snuck some solid gray patches and a couple of rogue prints and batiks into the most recent EQ7 version of this quilt (that first picture at the top of my post), and then I took a quick poke through my stash and found several fabrics that would be lovely with the Disco Kitties:

Tabby Road Fabrics Plus A Few Other Prints and Kona Solids

I've got my Kona Cotton Solids color chart out, too, because it's going to need to be the EXACTLY RIGHT shade of gray.  Maybe even a solid blue and/or magenta pink as well.  I've got this independent streak that prevents me from making a quilt entirely with someone else's palette of color-coordinated prints.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  :-)  But the design process is my favorite part of any quilt and it's not something I'm willing to completely delegate to anyone else, not even to someone as fabulous as Tula Pink!  Also, there's something spiritually satisfying about incorporating at least a couple fabrics from previous quilts into each new quilt.  That way every quilt is connected to all of the others.

And another thing I'm not sure about is whether to include ALL of the fabrics from the collection in this quilt.  I know that the friend for whom I'm planning to make this quilt is a fan of pinks, blues, and purples, but I'm not so sure the bright, nearly fluorescent orange is a good fit for her.  Although it looks great with these little orphan blocks that I pulled out of a scrap bin:

Orange Tabby Road Fabrics Plus Leftovers From My Amish Baby Quilt

See?  How much fun is THAT?!  Those are leftover units from the Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight quilt that I gifted to my cousin Allison two years ago.  Maybe the orange Tabby Road fabrics will go into an entirely different quilt.  And so nothing comes completely out of nowhere, and everything has some connection to something that came before.  Just like history, art, genealogy, science, and everything else in this marvelous Universe -- Everything is connected to everything else.

Happy stitching, everyone!  Today I'm linking up with:

·       Let’s Bee Social at http://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/

·       Midweek Makers at http://quiltfabrication.blogspot.com/

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

... and with Design Wall Monday, newly hosted over at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Quilters Using Windows 10: Read This Before Printing PDF Files!

Do you have Windows 10 on your computer, and have you been having trouble getting your PDF quilting patterns to print out at the correct size?  If so, read on!

On my new Windows 10 laptop, I discovered that my Farmer's Wife 1930s foundation paper piecing pattern files (the ones that came on the CD with the book) were all printing out too small, so that my resulting blocks finished about almost a quarter inch too small.  I faulted my piecing precision, I accused myself of going nuts with the steam iron and shrinking paper AND fabric, and I even wondered whether the pattern files themselves were too small.  I checked my printer settings, both on the printer itself and through the computer's printer settings, and verified that both were set to print at 100% actual size with NO SCALING.

Finished Edge Should Measure 6" but Printed at 5 13/16"

And yet, when I printed my own templates or foundation piecing patterns directly from my EQ7 software, THEY printed out at exactly the right size.

Finished Edge of Block Exactly 6", Printed from EQ7 and Not a PDF File

Then I tried printing the PDF templates for one of Esther Aliu's beautiful BOM quilt projects and -- you guessed it -- it ALSO printed out slightly too small, just like the Farmer's Wife PDFs.  All of my PDF patterns, regardless of where I got the files, were all printing out at only about 96% of the correct size ever since I "upgraded" to Windows 10.  So I figured that something was telling my computer to scale all of my PDF documents specifically.  And that's exactly what the problem turned out to be.  I found the solution here on superuser, where someone else had posted about their multi-page poster PDFs automatically shrinking down to fit on one page in Windows 10.

Windows 10 has its own built-in PDF viewer "app" that opens PDF files by default, and that program automatically scales all of your PDF documents (shrinking them slightly) when it prints them.  This handy-dandy Win 10 PDF reader does not show you anywhere that it is doing this, and there is no way to print a PDF document at actual size through the Win 10 PDF viewing app.  How stupid is that?! 

Fortunately, the solution is an easy one.  Just go to Adobe's web site and download their free Adobe Acrobat Reader DC here, and then set Adobe Acrobat as your default program for opening PDF files.  When you open the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat, you will see your options for scaling or printing at actual size.  That way your 6" block patterns will result in actual 6" blocks, not 5 3/4" blocks. 

My 6" Sampler Blocks

Please share this with other quilters you know.  It is such heartache to spend two days precisely piecing an intricate block, only to have it finish too small due to unforeseen technical difficulties.  Now that I have wasted half a ream of newsprint working this out, I deserve to go back to my studio to make a block as a reward -- a CORRECTLY SIZED block this time!

I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts and Esther's WIPs on Wednesday.