Quilt kits redux

Ever wonder what happened to the quilt kits that I made as gifts for people about a year and a half ago?

(Refresh your memory here by viewing kits 1-5, kits 6-9, and kit 10)

The following kits are done:
- Kit 1 (Tabitha's)
- Kit 2 (Heather's) << updated!
- Kit 5 (Karmen's). I've misplaced the photo of the finished quilt, but here is a photo of it in progress so you can see the border/backing she chose.)
- Kit 8 (closeup of Becca's) (and another showing the backing fabric) (Completed Sept 2009)


The following kits are in progress
- Kit 3 (Deserae's)


What a good job they're doing!

Some progress

I ended up having second thoughts about that last one, so reverted back to a previous version of the kit. That troublesome yellow!



Once finished with the kits, I made us a version of one of the kit quilts, as it looked so good in my living room. We have a sage colored couch, so I chose a green border and green ties. The couch is very pleased with its new friend.

And then there were 10

The focus fabric for this one was a real challenge, a yellow with a greyish green cast to it.

I put together a quilt that had a lot of promise - to the extent that DH said I should make a copy of it myself, "but without the doggie fabric." And that was the crux of the problem: it looked okay, but it looked better without the fabric I was supposed to be highlighting!

I went back to the drawing board, pulled out the blue, and put in the green that the yellow "wanted". I'd been resisting it because I'd already made a kit that had these sorts of colors in it. But that was a silly mental block.

So, here is #10, with its green and with the only pale colors in the corner that didn't make the dog fabric look wretched and wan. (Note to fabric designers: just don't use that yellow. Please.)

Quilt kits 6-9

I am pretty stuck on the 10th (and final!!!!!) kit, as the fabric is a yellow that has a greenish grey cast, which makes it pretty hard to match. But, in the meantime, here are #6-9.

Quilt kits 1-5

Since there were leftovers from the fabric pieces we ordered, I offered to put together quilt 'kits' for people so they could sew their own quilts. (I like the designing better than the sewing, so this was pretty fun!)

I ended up making 10 of them. Each had to contain the fabric the individual had chosen for the Sub Rosa quilt; beyond that, I either matched colors in that "focus" fabric, or took suggestions on what else they'd like to see in their kit.

Here are the first five. (Click on the photos to see larger versions; mouse over for identification of the focus fabric.)

That's a wrap

Click for the full size version

Unframed

After more equipment issues than I care to enumerate, the quilting on the Sub Rosa quilt is finally done. We took the quilt off of the frame tonight and it looks nice - which means (oh joy!) I don't have to pick out 27 rows of quilting. Whew!

We took some photos tonight right after we got it off the frame, but I'd rather wait and show you a shot after the excess batting and backing are gone and the borders are squared up.

In the meantime, these are some in-progress photos from this last week, for your viewing pleasure.





And here is the backing (which I snapped while lying on my back on the floor looking up at the quilt in the frame. Yes, I spent a lot of time under the quilting frame for various reasons. Good thing I am fairly flexible.)



I should mention, also, that the scrapbook (with letters, photos, and fabric swatches) was essentially finished this last week, so we are definitely making progress here!

The quilting machine

No, I'm not stalled out on the project quilt. I am learning a new skill so that I can move forward with confidence.

We picked up a Pfaff Grand Quilter and Inspira quilting frame (You may have seen the metal legs of the frame in some of the other pictures taken in my studio) and I've been learning how to use it.

What is it? It's a sewing machine that's been altered to be optimized for the process of quilting (stitching through the three layers of top, batting, and backing). Instead of trying to smush a quilt under the arm of your regular machine, you roll out the layers of your quilt and you steer the sewing machine (sitting on a rolling bed) so it glides over it while stitching.

The machine was a real nightmare to set up (we were at it for multiple hours, puzzling our way through some completely inadequate instructions). And there was very little in the way of information on how actually to use it once it was set up, although the internet helped with that. But all of that is behind us now.

Here is the machine loaded with a test quilt top, batting, and backing, all ready to go. The black frame you see in front of the machine is part of the steering mechanism:



The top, batting, and backing are all on their own separate rolls, and getting them on correctly so they roll evenly is key. The inherently stretchy quality of batting does not help!

Here you can see these rolls:



I made about 13 passes over this small quilt top, and ended up with a pretty good result! Here is a close-up of the quilting (the white thread designs over top of the fabric). Please click to see the details.



My wrists are aching today but I know if I were wrestling a quilt under the regular machine, it would be much worse, and the results wouldn't be as satisfactory either.

This little charity quilt for Project Linus is about 43" square, and the project quilt is about 54" x 72" (before it's trimmed), so it'll be more of an undertaking, but I am feeling a lot more confident about embarking on the endeavor now.

(Oops, just measured and I think we may have to extend the quilting frame out to full width before we can do this, as the half-width frame can't handle the larger quilt. Grr!)

...and with the borders

The inner border is a 1.25" strip of black fabric with a copper metallic pattern. (I think it's pinecones amongst long pine needles, but I found it described online as starbursts. You be the judge.)

Fabric companies make lots of fabrics that include gold metallic or silver metallic, but copper metallic is pretty unusual.

So why use something so rare on a quilt for someone who most likely won't ever know how special the fabric is? I love including little references and secrets in quilts. I think there should always be something else there waiting to be discovered.

Sneak peek at the Sub Rosa quilt

The layout is done and the sewing has begun!



It was an interesting challenge to try to coordinate the squares people chose.

There is extra fabric, of course, so I offered to put together kits of squares for the participants so they can make their own quilts. I've done four such kits so far, and I am so enjoying it that I am using kit making as a 'reward' for myself for having made progress on the project quilt ;)

Speaking of deadlines...

Yesterday I looked up from the project long enough to realize that, not only had I not paid my credit card bill, but it hadn't even occurred to me that there was any such thing sitting on the table as a credit card bill that needed to be paid.

I have had this card for about 20 years now (co-signed with my mother way back when because she wanted me to start building a credit history early on) and have only paid late once before.

This does makes me wonder a little...

The whooshing sound

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -- Douglas Adams

Project Sub Rosa is the third project I have led for this group of people. No, scratch that: it's the third project that involved exchange of money and resulted in a physical product at the end. There were at least two other coordinated activities beyond that.

It is human nature for people to wait until the last moment that something is due; and so you set specific deadlines, even when there's nothing special about the date, or nothing will ever get done. Still, you get stragglers. And having to remind people ahead of time (to minimize the number of stragglers) and then bugging the stragglers is absolutely my least favorite part of any project.

The trouble with having a two-part deadline, we discovered, was that the sense of enthusiasm that carries people through the first part of the task may not last to carry them through the second too. So our second deadline came and went, and eight people still had letters to turn in for the scrapbook. 8 of 20-odd makes a pretty loud whooshing sound.

Added later: As of Monday eve, we are down to: 1 missing contribution, 1 missing piece of fabric, and 2 missing photos (due Thursday). That's not so bad, is it? Especially for a project that doesn't actually have to be done by any particular time.

Project Sub Rosa

NB: I am speaking in general terms here as this project is still ongoing.

A group of us decided to make a quilt for a friend who was in a tough spot. After I put out the call for participants amongst our larger group of friends, 22 people responded. This was going to be a pretty ambitious project - not because of 23 quilt squares (including my own), but because of 23 personalities.

(At a loss for a name, I am referring to this project under the nickname I gave the place where we discussed it, Sub Rosa.)

We initially asked participants to provide several things: 1) a piece of fabric, 2) a bit of money to help out with costs, and 3) a note to the recipient that explained something about the fabric. The plan evolved as it went along; and the idea of writing notes expanded into making a scrapbook that would hold the notes, fabric swatches, and 4) photos. (The scrapbook was picked up by one of the other women in the group, who has made scrapbooks before. No names here, in case the recipient somehow stumbles across this page, but this is someone with whom I have worked before, and know to be extremely conscientious, an excellent project partner. I felt glad to know that the scrapbook was in her hands!)

I had set the general deadline 2 weeks from the day of the announcement of the project, knowing that people needed time to find fabric and mail it to me. It turned out, though, that most of the people in the group were not fabric store habitués; and in the end, everyone chose to have me order the fabric of their choice from a store online.

Knowing that it would take about a week for fabric to arrive here, I set an interrim fabric ordering deadline of Friday, a week after the start of the project. Much of that first week was spent conferring with people about their fabric choices. Trying to capture an idea or a personality in fabric can be tricky, especially if you are trying to stick to a certain color scheme. (One Barbie pink square, reflective of a personality though it might be, could be a color fiasco amidst the autumnal colors we wanted.) So there were negotiations and compromises, and a whole lot of searching, which ended up being more time consuming than I would have guessed. It came to occupy most of my waking thoughts. I would lie in bed at night brooding about fabric, and would shuffle out of bed in the morning, still thinking of fabric. By the end of the week, I was getting a little loopy. But in the end, we were able to come with a set of squares that reflected us, and looked good together.

(No photos here just in case!)

Once the fabrics were ordered, it was time to turn our attention to items 2-4: contributions, letters, and photos.