SANTA SQUIRREL! I Need to Make a Christmas Throw Quilt, and I Need to Do It TODAY!

 

Today is the Drop-Everything-And-Make-It linky party at MMM Quilts, which is the perfect excuse (as if I needed one) to give in to the "squirrel" of an idea that's been chasing me around for the past few days!  I've seen so many cute Christmas quilts over the years, but have never had a strong urge to make a holiday-themed quilt before this year.  Maybe it's the pandemic, maybe it's the adorable snowflake E2E quilting designs that I'm dying to try out with R2D2, who knows -- but the squirrel won't leave me alone until I swap out the year-round throws that grace my sofa for something red, green, and scrappy, full of nostalgic and happy Christmas prints.

I didn't have as many Christmas novelty fabrics in my stash as I thought I did, so I had to trek out to two different quilt shops to come up with this assortment:

Assorted Squirrel Project Fabrics, With Neglected Sampler Blocks as a Backdrop

My mom just finished piecing another scrappy tumbler charity top for me to quilt, using my 4" AccuQuilt GO! Tumbler die.  It looks very similar to this one that I quilted a few weeks ago:

Charity Quilt Made With AccuQuilt 4" Tumbler Die

Isn't it cute?  I'm always surprised how quickly these come together.  It only took me an hour or two to cut out all of the tumblers for this, and my mom had the top sewn together in two days.  I need to make more projects like that, y'all, instead of only making quilts that take 6 months to 7 years to finish.  I went to the quilt shop planning to make a throw quilt just like this one, but with solid red fabric in place of the purple and Christmas prints instead of the juvenile novelty prints.

But when I got to the quilt shop, I was delighted to discover that they had a 6" AccuQuilt Tumbler die.  Bigger tumbler patches means fewer tumblers need to be cut out and fewer seams needed to sew them all together!  

57 x 72 Quilt Design Using 6 inch AccuQuilt Tumbler Die

Using the 6" tumbler die instead of the 4", I can get a 57" x 72" quilt top out of just 78 red tumblers and 78 prints.  Not sure if I'll match my seams as shown above or if I'll go with my mom's staggered layout, which gives a nifty chevron/ricrac effect.  This layout was fastest to draw up in my EQ8 quilt design software, and my primary objective was to quickly calculate how many tumblers I'd need to cut out.  (I won't be doing those partial tumbler slivers along the sides, either -- instead, I'll trim the edges to the narrow point on the final full tumbler).  

I haven't decided on the backing fabric yet, although I do have a couple of appropriately Christmasy fabrics in sufficient quantity in my stash.  I'd almost like to back it with a minky cuddle fleece to make it extra warm and snuggly, but that would mean another trip to the store...

Oh, and here's another DREAMI project that I stopped everything to make earlier this month, the one I MEANT to be sharing for today's linky:

My Notorious R.B.G. version of Preeti's International Sisters Block

Once I got the idea in my head to make a "Notorious R.B.G." version of Preeti's International Sisters block, I was helpless to resist!  First, I drafted a foundation paper piecing pattern in EQ8 to change the head wrap of the International Sisters block into Justice Ginsburg's no-nonsense, swept-back hairstyle and the crown that she wears in all of the memes.  The solid black, skin tone, brown hair, metallic gold crown, and floral background fabrics were all pulled from the stash, but I had to hunt down the perfect fabrics to appliqué for her glasses and her dissent collar on the Internet and then wait ever so (im)patiently for them to arrive.  It was a fun little diversion, for sure!  The glasses, collar and "jade" earrings are all hand stitched needle turn appliqué.  If you want to read more about that one, check out this post.  

And that's all you get from me today!  We started putting up Christmas decorations yesterday so there are boxes and debris from that strewn all over the house, and a few gifts that I've ordered have already started to arrived and are wrapped and ready to stick under the tree as soon as I locate the tree skirt.  This year more than ever, the song that's stuck on repeat in my brain is "We Need a Little Christmas" from Auntie Mame!

Rosalind Russell as Auntie Mame

In addition to Sandra's DREAMI linky, I'm also linking up with the following weekly linky parties:

SATURDAY

UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

IntelliQuilter Learning Continues: Exploring Digital Pantographs for E2E + Background Fills, with No Sew Zones

 Good morning, lovelies!  After my little R.B.G. block detour, I returned to the cheater cloth panel that I'd loaded on my long arm frame for IntelliQuilter practice.  Feeling comfortable with resizing and distorting block designs to fit less-than-perfectly-square quilt blocks, I decided to practice laying out and sequencing some E2E (Edge-to-Edge) designs.  Oh my gosh, you guys -- I LOVE how my APQS machine stitches these designs out with R2D2 (yes, that's what I've named my IQ) doing the driving instead of me!  Smooth feather curves, crisp points, and perfect circle bubbles with beautiful stitches on the top and bottom of the quilt, no matter which direction the machine is moving.

Aphrodite Grande E2E on Practice Panel

This particular E2E design is called Aphrodite Grande from Urban Elementz.  It's an E2E because this type of design is intended to cover the quilt from edge to edge, irrespective of the piecing lines, borders, etc.  It's a lot faster way to finish a quilt than treating individual blocks, sashings and borders separately, but it also has the advantage of being very evenly distributed quilting method that retains the loft (and therefore, retains the warmth) of the batting better than heavy custom quilting.  E2E quilting generally results in a soft, drapable finished quilt, too, even if the quilt top is heavily pieced to begin with.  So there are lots of reasons to choose an E2E design for a quilt besides just the wallet-friendly price point.  E2E quilting is great for bed quilts, baby quilts, charity quilts, etc., and there are literally thousands of designs to choose from. 

Aphrodite Grande E2E Design

Now, this E2E design and most others like it are available as paper pantographs for use with non-computerized long arm machines.  With lots (and lots!) of practice, some quilters become quite good at following the quilting design on paper from the back of their machines using a laser pointer to guide their machine along the stitching path.  After a few years of trying that, I've discovered that following paper pantographs is not my superpower -- especially not designs like this one with lots of circle details and tightly nested rows of quilting.  I'm excited about being able to vastly expand the number of allover designs that I can quilt out reliably.  

Setting Up a Computerized E2E Pattern on IQ

But there are more advantages to computerized E2E quilting designs compared to following a paper pantograph pattern by hand.  If purchasing a paper pantograph pattern for Aphrodite Grande, it comes in one size/pattern density only -- with a 12" row height.  With a digitized design in IQ, I can stretch any design bigger or smaller, changing the density of the quilting to make the scale of the quilting design more appropriate to the scale of the pieced blocks, or to adapt the design to my (or my customer's) preferences for lighter or heavier quilting overall.  

Stitching Out My Aphrodite Grande E2E Design

Yet another thing I am loving about quilting computerized E2E designs is that, instead of having to keep my eyes on the laser light to follow a paper pattern at the BACK of the machine, I get to be right at the front of the machine where I can see and supervise the actual stitching when the computer is involved.  My hands are free to work in any fullness or "personality" that a particular quilt top may have, as well, whereas if I was quilting a pantograph from the back of a quilt that had "C-cup blocks," a pleat or two might get quilted in those areas of excess fullness.

Other cool things about the IQ screen in the photo above: When I set up an E2E design, or any kind of computerized quilting design in IQ, it tells me how much thread the design is going to use in yards ("Remaining Length: 16.1 yd" in the above photo means 16 yards of top thread and 16 yards of bottom thread are required to stitch the remainder of this practice quilt).  It also tells me how long the whole thing will take to stitch out (excluding the time it takes to stop, advance the quilt on the frame, and baste the edges).  I have two speed settings that I can adjust, the regular Speed that is set to 2.0 inches per second for this pantograph, as well as a Details speed that I've got at 1.6 inches per second for this design.  I can also program IQ to pause or "Dwell" at the sharp points and other intricate details ("dwell points") of a design, and fine-tuning Speed, Details speed, and Dwell enables IQ to sew even the most intricate, complex designs with accuracy and precision.  So very cool! 

Speed and Details Slowed down for Intricate Block Design

In this photo, you can see that I've got IQ slowed down to 1.3" per second regular speed and slowing to .9" per second for this Willow block design.  I also have Dwell on the highest setting (3), which I learned NOT to do because it caused too many stitches to land in the points, creating knots where the machine was pausing too long.  I got better results with Dwell set to 1.  

Willow Block 4 Design

That's the block I was working on in the photo above.  I have a collection of coordinating blocks and border designs in this Willow set and I really love it.  It's what I'd consider a "transitional" feather style because it can work equally well with traditional or more contemporary quilts.  

Willow Block 1

Willow Block 1, Stitched on Practice Panel

Isn't that pretty?  But back to those E2E pantograph designs.  Remember that I said I can change the scale of the designs to make them more or less dense?  I can also use that feature to shrink a pantograph design way down and use it as a background fill for custom quilting, like "behind" an appliquéd or embroidered area in a quilt top.

Shrinking an E2E Design Down as a Background Filler

That's what I've done in the photo above.  This is an E2E digital design called Dewdrops that, in the paper pantograph version, has a row height of 12" just like the Aphrodite Grande pattern I showed you a few moments ago.  But here, I've shrunk Dewdrops all the way down to a row height of 1.75" with a pattern density of 5.73.  The triangular boundary that I've filled with the design is a partial on-point quilt "block" from my practice panel that I mapped out with my machine needle so that IQ knows exactly where the edges of the block lie on my quilt.

No Sew Zone Created so Filler Doesn't Stitch Over Star

Next, I used the same technique of moving my machine along the edge of the area where I didn't want stitching to map out a No Sew Zone for IQ.  

Ruler Work Sashing + SID, Computerized Block + Background Filler

I'm not 100% pleased with the background filler yet to where I'd put that on a real quilt, but I found some additional educational resources that will help me to get better results with it next time.  Same thing with my first attempt at programming the computer to quilt circles in the sashing -- I found that it was faster and easier to just grab my 1/2" Pro Pebbles acrylic template (available from Lisa Calle here) and quilt them by hand with the ruler.  For now, as far as custom quilting is concerned, I feel pretty comfortable delegating some of the block and border stitching to R2D2 in conjunction with hand-guided ruler work and free motion quilting.

But meanwhile, I have a few real quilt tops patiently waiting for E2E quilting and I'm looking forward to picking out the perfect design for each of them.  And then, don't hold your breath, but maybe I can get my Ginormous Pineapple Log Cabin quilt top turned into an actual finished quilt on my bed soon, after all these years!  Remember this one?

Computer Rendering of 120 x 120 Pineapple Log Cabin Top Waiting to be Quilted

That's actually an EQ8 rendering I created by tiling a photo of the first block I finished piecing, repeated and manipulated in the software to "preview" the way the finished quilt would look with borders and everything before I invested the work of actually making all of the blocks.  Here's what the actual finished quilt top looks like, draped over my 12' quilting frame, so you're actually just seeing half of the quilt top in this photo:

Actual 120 x 120 Pineapple Log Cabin Top, Draped Over 12' Frame

Each of those pineapple log cabin blocks has 97 pieces and the strips finish at just 3/4" wide, so this is a VERY heavily pieced top.  It weighs a ton.  In fact, that's why I don't have a photo of the entire finished quilt top to show you.  I was afraid that if I had my husband and son hold it up by the top border, the weight of the quilt top might cause the center to rip away from the border!

At first I was leaning towards a very traditional Baptist Fan quilting design for this 120" x 120" monster, but I really liked the way that Aphrodite Grande E2E design looked when I stitched it out on my practice panel:

Aphrodite Grande E2E on Practice Panel

An allover, updated feather design sprinkled with pearls like this one might be just the thing for my pineapple log cabin quilt, preserving the loft and warmth of my wool batting, without any thready buildup or stiffness from backtracking.  Hmmm...  Decisions, decisions!  Too many choices is a good problem to have!  To all of you in the United States, have a wonderful (and safe!) Thanksgiving this week!

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.

Tuesday's To-Do List for the Week of Thanksgiving:

1. Finish getting another tumbler charity top kitted for my mom to piece
2. Quilt at least two pediatric outreach tops for donation through my guild
3. Bake pumpkin pies, cook Thanksgiving for our small gathering (just immediate family)
4. Christmas decorating on Black Friday!

That should be MORE than enough to keep me busy for the next week or so, don't you agree?  I'll be linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

WEDNESDAY

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

Free Motion Mavericks with Muv and Andree