Tree of Life 2013 finish

Somehow I skipped posting these photos of my completed Tree of Life quilt last year. It's obvious from all the photos that it was actually completed in late summer/early fall - when the grass was still green and the breezes still warm. These photos are a great cheer to me today in these early days of February when it is snowing (again!) and I'm seriously contemplating running away from home until May!

quilting decisions

My long term piecing project - The Tree of Life quilt top - has been sent off for some heavy-duty custom quilting. I dropped it off last week with my long-arm quilter, Carol. The top is about 83" square, so I wasn't about to tackle that by myself!

I knew that I wanted some dense custom quilting rather than an all-over background pattern. Carol suggested I choose a wool batting (which I have never used before) to make the quilting really stand out. I'll confess that while making this quilt, I decided that when it was finished I would enter it into a judged show - something I've never done before. Maybe the upcoming September show in Madison, WI will be the one. Wool batting is supposed to spring back from being folded better than cotton batting and also hang better, so wool it is.

Several quilting designs were churning around in my head, so I tried some out on graph paper (love that stuff!) to see what I really liked best. First I drew a grid of most of the entire top of the quilt to figure out the scale of blocks vs. sashing vs. borders. On this go-around I sketched out my top ideas for sashing quilting...

Then I made a larger diagram of a single tree block to see what filler patterns looked good in the backgrounds...

It seemed that adding a little color to the diagrams would help with choosing thread colors, and by this point I had also wised up to the fact that if I made copies of the diagram I wouldn't have to keep drawing them over and over to avoid erasing. Duh.

Design decisions for the tree blocks were made pretty quickly, but the border decision took much longer. I am not a fan of "feathers" in quilting designs. I know lots of people think they are beautiful and flowing and organic, but to me they just look like (and forgive me if this ruins your love of feather quilting) intestines. I know, gross, right? But that's what immediately comes to my mind every time I see them! So here I am doodling away trying to find something that is appropriately scaled and dense enough to stand up to the block quilting designs I've chosen and not be stuck with feathers. Leaves? Nope - not dense enough. Spirals? Nope - scale is all wrong...

And here is my attempt at a variation of feathers that includes swirls (you know I love swirls!) but this one just looks like intestines drawn by Dr. Seuss. Definitely not the right theme...

I ended up choosing a pattern from Carol's library of border designs that incorporates a little bit of leaf with some swirl action too. Whoops - I should have drawn it before leaving her house so I could show you here!

Carol will be using many colors of thread - magenta, turquoise, sea green, gray, purple, yellow, and a blue green to add lots of dimension to my already colorful quilt top. It won't be ready until early July, and already I can't wait to see it!

I pulled all of the sketched quilting designs from three different books, all great references to have in your quilt book library:

Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting by Natalia Bonner
Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters by Angela Walters and
In the Studio with Angela Walters by Angela Walters

And lastly, a funny story about this quilt that should have a photo accompaniment, but doesn't... I purchased a couple of different border fabrics that I really liked (at the time) about 2.5 years ago when I first had this tree quilt idea. But now they seem kind of ridiculous (and on the verge of [gasp!] ugly) so I pieced them into the backing. Said backing was hanging over my upstairs railing a couple of weeks ago when my husband spied it and (pointing to the ridiculous fabrics) said to me, "Did you buy that fabric? I mean, did you pay money for it?" Hilarious!

one down, three to go

Update: The Applique Project of the Decade

First border done! This project is taking me so long it feels like a big banner headline and shouts of "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" are appropriate to announce progress - haha!

I'm actually a bit ahead of schedule here since this border has taken me less than a year to finish ;-) I posted about finishing the center panel here on May 29, 2012. So if I keep up this pace I could be finished in 2017 - allowing one year for each of the three remaining borders, and one year to piece it together and send it out for quilting. (You can hear my sarcasm, can't you?) The great news is that I still love it and plan to keep going...

Obviously I'm not working on this project daily - I am a slow hand-sewer, but not that slow. I pick it up every now and then when the mood strikes and there is no other hand-sewing needing to be done. Sometimes I take it to group sewing get-togethers so I don't have to haul a machine around.

This bottom border is all Kaffe fabrics. To make the center wavy line easier to applique, I made bias-cut tubes of fabric that finished at 3/8" wide. A little washable tacky glue held them in place while I sewed to prevent stretching.

The two side borders will consist of lots of swirly branches much like those found in the center panel, with a few leaves and flowers tossed in. The top border is supposed to say "Live well and be happy", and while I completely agree with that philosophy I don't want it appliqued on my quilt. I'm considering some other phrases, but I've got a couple of years left before I need to commit!

You can find the pattern in this book from Piece O'Cake Designs if you find yourself in need of a long-term hand-sewing project commitment.

Happy stitching!

Tree of Life decisions

I've finally decided on sashing and setting triangle fabrics for my Tree of Life quilt!

I wasn't planning on the whole thing feeling this "purple" but there you go. You just never quite know what's going to look best, and often (at least in my case) the whole project ends up much different than what you envisioned at the start.

All the fabrics are from Kaffe. My sashing is Paperweight in Purple, the cornerstones are Spots in Black, and the setting triangles are Jupiter in Purple. I particularly like how the Jupiter fabric looks a bit like tree bark :)

All the strips and cornerstones are cut and some are even sewn at this point. I haven't cut my triangles yet because I want to make sure I get the math absolutely correct on that the first time. I'll need to cut 2 large squares - around 24" - then cut those in half diagonally twice to yield four triangles per square. Getting that wrong would waste quite a bit of fabric, so I'm going to wait on that cutting until all the sashing and cornerstones are sewn.

It's been a productive week so far - the cold wind and snow have kept me from venturing out unless absolutely necessary. Yesterday I pieced the backs for two of my UFO quilts for delivery to the long-arm quilter on Thursday. Photos of those two quilt tops coming soon!

a few more trees

Progress! Trees 6-11 are completed...

Thank heavens for a long iPod playlist of Christmas favorites to sing along with while wearing a carpet path from the sewing machine to the ironing table and back!

Only four more to go...

the assembly line approach

I'm deeply entrenched in the part of any quilting project where I am most likely to lose focus and let my eyes and mind wander to other pretty fabrics and all the possibilities they hold... the assembly line.

You know, that part when you've made enough of the blocks to have worked out all the kinks and you know how they're going to look all put together? The part where you've just got to put your head down and crank out the rest of the blocks so you can move to the next step? That's where I often lose the battle to finish what I've started - not always, but often. Tell me I'm not the only one who struggles with this.

With five of my trees blocks completed, I went on a fabric cutting spree to get all of the remaining batches of leaves cut at once so when time allows I can keep my head down and sew, sew, sew. Here they are - 10 bunches of leaves-in-waiting...

And some spare parts just in case I have a change of heart about a certain color during the assembly process.

There are two more sets of leaf fabrics here than I'm going to need, but I decided making some extra blocks would be worth the extra work in the end. Those that don't make it to the quilt front will be pieced into the quilt back.

I've still got my joint project with Lorrie in the works, and I'm feeling the need for some Christmas cheer pillows for my family room, but I'm determined not to abandon these trees completely! They won't be finished this year, but they won't go back in the WIP pile either!

Tree of Life grows again!

Remember this lonely little tree from May, 2011?

She was rescued from the work-in-progress pile last week and now has four mates!

The majority of fabrics are from Sarah Fielke's line "From Little Things" released in early 2011. The dots on white are my favorite - I'm using the lavender, grey, yellow, and teal dots for my tree backgrounds.

The stripes are also from that line, but I've thrown in some Kaffe (of course!) and some Art Gallery Oval Elements to mix things up.

As always happens when you let projects sit for too long, it took me some extra time to get back in the groove of what size and quantity of fabrics I had to cut for each tree. While each 14.5" block is still more time-consuming than you'd think, I've cut it down to about 2 hours each by making 4 in a row uninterrupted by other projects.

The other thing that happens (to me, at least) is that after some time is allowed to pass, occasionally I'm not as excited about the borders and sashing fabrics that I originally chose. So those funny birds (I'm kinda done with that whole "put a bird on it" fad) and wacky vines that were slated for setting triangles and borders will now likely end up on the back. A wild new Kaffe print and some bright fuchsia stripes are taking over as setting triangles and sashing. The border choice is currently undecided - the two leaders are a new floral from Philip Jacobs and a oldie but goodie leaf print from Kaffe - the final choice will be made when the rest of the top is complete. I'll show you some photos of those beautiful fabrics next time. It's going to be a wild one, for sure!

Five down, three to go!

Or maybe seven to go - if eight trees are good, then twelve trees are better, right?

I'm back!

What a whirlwind of a month it's been! Two major household remodeling projects began at the very tail end of April and just finished on Friday, May 25 at 7:30pm. Then at noon on Saturday, May 26 (that's right, just about 18 hours later) Thing 1 graduated from high school and we had 50+ well-wishers here at the house for a celebration! Whew!

In the midst of all that activity and party preparation I did manage to get a little sewing done. The middle panel of my Tree of Life applique quilt is complete!

It's all needle-turned, so progress is slow; this center panel measures about 36" x 43" and took me 27 months to complete. Notice I stated that time frame the same way you do when you've had a baby and people ask you her age? You get so used to replying, "two months, eleven months, fifteen months" that by the time two years rolls around, you're still stating her age in months. What does that say about this quilt? No idea. I just think it's an interesting observation...

It obviously needs to be pressed and the blue wash-out marker lines need to be washed out, but I'm just so gosh-darn happy to say this section is complete! Four borders to go - hopefully that won't take another 27 months!

Here are a few close-ups of the individual branch segments...

This one is my favorite. I love the little purple worm and the dotted pot - both Kaffe fabrics. In fact, there are quite a few Kaffe fabrics in these little bits of applique. One of the reasons I love it so much and I've stuck with it for over two years!

In closing, here's a photo of my family with the new grad, Thing 1, in the center. It was a marvelous day with fabulous weather enjoyed in the company of many great friends and almost all our loving family members. It simply could not have been better :)

growing trees

In one of my posts last week I showed a graphed diagram of a Tree of Life block. Over the weekend I got the three "leaf" sections put together in some scrap fabrics, and while I was happy with the layout and the colors, the size of the thing was huge! I knew that it would be big because I did all the calculations, but 17.5" square on graph paper doesn't look or sound nearly as big as it actually is in real life. So I skipped cutting and assembling the trunk section altogether and went to plan B.

I decided to revert to the original size called for in the pattern (Edyta Sitar - Friendship Triangles book) which is 14.5" square. Much better! And these are the real fabrics. After I finished this one yesterday, I kept stopping in and admiring it every time I passed by the sewing room :)

In the quilt I am planning, all the tree blocks will be set on point like this, and surrounded by a striped sashing. The leaf fabrics will be different in every block, and the setting triangles will be the fuschia funny birds from this line (Sarah Fielke - From Little Things for Lecien). It should be a fun, bright, funny quilt when completed!

I'd love to just keep making these tree blocks - I think there will be eight total. But there are at least ten other things that need to be finished (or started and finished) before this project can see any more work time. New babies this summer, remember? :-) No, not ten babies, but those two little guys are at the top of the list!

Which brings me to another topic. Just how many works-in-progress is too many? How many until you are classified as having "a problem"?

my favorite quilting tools

Some people doodle. I graph.

Graph paper is a beautiful thing. So symmetrical, so orderly, so organized.

I ♥ graph paper.

I draft most of my pillow ideas on graph paper. I know my finished dimension - say 20" square - so I can just put my trusty pencil to paper, count out 20 little squares to the right, then down, then back left, and up to the starting point. And there's my empty pillow canvas just waiting to be filled with squares, triangles, or whatever geometric goodies I desire!

I get a weird kick out of doing math in my head, and the graph paper provides a visual representation of all my quilting math. But what's a graphed quilt design without some color? Color combinations do not come easily to me, so my trusty colored pencils let me try out options before cutting into my fabrics.

Once I've got a layout and color combo that I'm happy with, I add cutting instructions and other notes.

Here's what I've been graphing and coloring this week.

I want to make a "Tree of Life" quilt using Sarah Fielke's new line "From Little Things", but the free pattern with the fabric line involved lots of templates and not very clear directions. So I decided to use the pattern in Edyta Sitar's book Friendship Triangles but wanted the blocks to be larger than 14" to show bigger pieces of her large prints.

No problem for my trusty graph paper! Using her diagrams in the book, I broke down the block into a 7 x 7 grid, made each grid section 2.5", and ta-da... a 17.5" finished block. Yay! I've got most of the three leaf sections sewn, so only the trunk and backgrounds remain. Those look to be the most difficult parts, but the graph paper has helped me break it down into manageable pieces and document all the things I've cut and assembled correctly, and to fix the parts where I've made mistakes. Yes - the graph paper limits my mistakes, but doesn't eliminate them ;-)

If you don't have any graph paper handy, you can print some directly from Moda's website under "Fun Stuff" and "Downloads" here. Let me know what tools you use when drafting projects.

applique project of the decade

My standard mode of operation is to have several projects going at once. But lately it feels like there are too many irons in the fire, even for me! Christmas gifts, pillows, new winter quilting classes... yikes! And then there is this big monster lurking in my sewing room:


I started this project earlier in the year knowing full well that it would take me YEARS to complete. The overall size is something like 50" x 60" made up of the center panel and four borders ALL needle-turn applique. But I do love those Piece o'Cake girls and their applique patterns :) This Tree of Life pattern is from their book Applique Outside the Lines.

I decided to go with a loopy floral white on white for the background - the idea of gathering fabric and piecing that background completely overwhelmed me (while hours and hours and hours of hand-sewing did not... go figure!) The most difficult part so far was enlarging the patterns. My only complaint about their patterns is that they don't print them already full size... are you listening, Piece o'Cake girls?

Here's a peek at my progress so far... red tulips, green leaves, and blue branches (see the little worm-to-be in there too?)...

Orange daisies and more blue branches...

It's a tortoise sort of project... slow and steady. But it makes me smile everytime I sit and pull it out of the bag because the bright colors and patterned fabrics are so cheerful :) So while I hope to pull off some project finishes here in the next few weeks, I know that this will not be one of them. And that's okay since it's sort of like reading a book you really enjoy - you want to keep going and find out how everything turns out, but at the same time you don't want it to end.


So Cathy, this is what I meant when I told you earlier that I was already up to my elbows in an applique project!

If you all would like to see some truly spectacular applique work, head over to the Glorious Applique website... now that's some dedication and amazing work :)