starry eyes for stripes and how jen kingwell uses basics

A photo posted by @hydeeannsews on Mar 4, 2016 at 11:52am PST

i've got a new fabric crush. sure, meadow dot in robin's egg/mint/aqua/whatever is still my favorite. that hasn't changed. but i've found a dreamy low-volume that makes for a perfect background or supporting fabric. every batman needs it's robin, and all those lovely feature fabrics in our stashes also need something to shine against, to help them stand out.

that's where this lovely woven stripe in natural from moda's pure simple line comes in. i stumbled across it at my lqs a week or two ago and got 1/2 yard because i knew it was going to be a brilliant supporting fabric. well, i've already used it a number of times in a few projects (here and here), so i'm thinking i need to go back and get about two yards more.

this fabric is a woven, which means two colors of thread were used to produce the stripe pattern rather than it being printed on the background fabric. this means no printing on the selvage since no printing was used in it's production, just like why solids have no printed selvage. also, i don't know if different thread was used in this line or if it's just because there's no printing on it, but the hand to these wovens is so lovely and soft.

this woven stripe fits right in with a type of fabric i've been collecting lately. i call them my "jen kingwell basics." while pouring over the quilts in jen kingwell's quilt lovely, i noticed she uses basics in a very interesting way. while she has a riot of color and fabrics going on, she balances them with basic prints in neutral colors. lots of these neutrals have an antique feel to them, sort of an aged look. they are prints you'd find in a more traditional quilter's stash (maybe even a civil war quilt stash) rather than in the hottest new designer lines. at least that's the feel of them to me. the selection i show above is a low-volume version of what i'm talking about. a look at her quilts will show that many of them are deeper in intensity - browns and grays rather than just whites. i think these fabrics produce the antique feel many of her quilts have.

take a look at some of the quilts from her book and maybe you can see what i'm talking about.

 the subtle stripes that run between the pinwheels in this quilt are one low-volume example of what i'm referring to. i just love the barely-there look of them between the columns of the pinwheels.

 a look at the pinwheels themselves will also show many of these neutrals in use.

 "glitter" is chock full of these neutrals, especially for the background piece in each block.

 i was really hoping her first fabric line, gardenvale, would have lots of these supporting prints in it, but it did not. maybe her next lines will include more.

so i just visited moda's website and it looks like "just a speck" will have some. and
"behind the scenes" is all about neutrals, too. yay! that makes it easy.

the low-volume neutrals are in the background here, while the darker neutrals are in the swirly portions of the blocks themselves in this quilt.

this is the kind of stuff i pick up over time as i study pictures of quilts i like. identifying such features helps me use fabrics and colors more effectively in my own quilts. thank you, jen kingwell for the lesson in neutrals and for helping me appreciate a family of fabrics i would have passed by before.

and thank you, moda, for that delicious woven stripe!

what the barn was missing

 this pile of fabric has been sitting on the end of my bawthroom sewing table since december 2013. that's over a year now. it was a pull for sarah schraw's barn door quilt along. it's a different color palette than i normally work in: brown, apple green, buttery yellow. the green and yellow aren't so different for me, so i guess it's mainly the brown that's a branch out. there are some dark espresso browns and some softer chocolate ones, too. i liked the idea, but the pull kept feeling a little muted somehow and i was worried it was going to be rather boring. if and when i ever worked it up.

 i did not start the quilt along when sarah got it going and it just fell to the bottom of the "wannabe wip" pile. but it was sitting there in my bawthroom, in plain view all this time.

a few months ago, at the end of last year, i was sitting at the bathtub, bathing a baby, but also thinking about the fabric pile when what was missing finally hit me. it needed just one little punch of something to liven it up and save it from boredom. the color intensive class and my personal experience with the penny patch quilt along i did with rachel hauser last year both really helped me develop my color sense a bit more. so as i was studying the pile of fabric, i saw the missing pop - teal!

three of the fabrics already had just the tiniest bit of a teal blue in them: the deep brown floral that is outlined in teal, the ditsy art gallery print, and the green and teal piece on top. i scoured my stash and found one teal polka dot fabric that is perfect. i like how it brightens up the mix without overpowering anything. it's still a calm palette, but now it's a little more awake.

now that i unlocked the secret to this pull, i'm fully motivated to get cutting on this quilt. but first there are a few things i need to move forward.  i haven't done a wip wednesday report for a long time, so here goes.

my current state of the union for the past week:

finished

bandwidth - complete but not photographed

auntie charming - see friday's post

in progress

indian summer blanket - four rows down, more to go

s1's wonky stacked coins quilt - 9 blocks complete; completely redesigned this week

valentine's pinwheel quilt - 4 blocks complete

easy dreaming - 40+ blocks complete, needs less than 20 more

penny patch 2.0 - still in corner of shame needing to be enlarged

bloom where you are planted - needs basting

sugar block club - still lost in feb 2014

hst diamond quilt - untouched

gypsy wife - um, in progress

epp - 21 wheels complete

trips to the store

none

internet activity

purchased half yards of "folk song" and several moda bella solids charm packs

linking up with lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced

helping low-volumes stand out in a pattern

 i've had a few chances to get around to my arrow check blocks. i love how quickly they come together! that pile just grows in minutes. i have made all the blocks from the charm squares of "dream on" and have completed about half of my supplementary fabrics now. it might seem this is taking me a while to finish for such an easy block but the fact is i have only spent a few minutes here and there spread out over the few weeks i've been making this. anyone else with a good chunk of hours could have knocked this top out by now. for myself, i'm just pleased it's so quick relative to how slow i usually move.

 after i made my initial fabric pull, i noticed several of the fabrics were low volumes on white backgrounds and i was afraid they weren't going to be distinguishable from the background arrows once worked up. my first idea was to use other light-colored background squares in addition to the moda bella solid charms i was using. i even picked up yardage of two colors. but on reflection, i realized this was going to complicate my process a whole lot; that it would require me laying out all the squares before sewing anything so i could make the solid-colored arrows one color each and not just have a mottled background. that was more than i was willing to do so i just started working up the low-volume fabrics to see how they looked. i was pleasantly surprised to see that they were holding their own!

a few of the charms i cut still seemed like there was too much white in them after i cut them. this heather bailey "church flowers" print from "nicey jane" collection, for example. but i really wanted to use this print because it has the feel i'm going for and i just love it, too. on examination, i noticed there were large areas of color the right size, so i decided to fussy cut my charm squares out of those places. hey, presto! it worked.

 yeah, there was some definite bias cutting going on, but that didn't give me any problems when sewing. i explained to d1 my brilliant solution to the problem and she responded, "well, that looks really wasteful!" then i showed her how i was cutting the leftovers into triangle and rectangle scraps to be used in future scrap projects. she decided maybe i knew what i was doing a little more than she thought.

now i wouldn't normally be so free with a treasured fabric, but i have more yardage of this and i was only working with a 1/2 yard cut here so there was plenty of that left over once i cut enough charms. and now i have all these cute scraps to work with, too. all this fussy stuff has taken a little more time than just straight cutting-and-sewing did, but it's worth it every now and then to get it right. i'm all about moving fast when i'm able, but the end product has to be considered, too. i feel like i've found the right balance with this project so far. a few more short sewing sessions and i should have a top to show! if i'd stop starting new projects, that is.

paris daydreams: a finish

this quilt is far more traditional than what i normally make. however, i have somewhat eclectic taste and this satisfies the shabby chic francophile in me. like most of my finishes, this one is long overdue. but it's done and the timing is actually pretty good. d5 is just the right size for it now, so all's well that ends well. the photo shoot, however, did not go so well. i tried photographing it indoors in the lovely light of my bedroom, but that only worked so far as i could crop out all the unwanted bedroom clutter. in addition, i had a lot of interested "help." so enjoy the story of this quilt and some crazy outtake photos, too, if you feel so inclined.

this quilt was born in my brain whilst i was pregnant with baby #7, over three years ago. i admired elizabeth hartman's "modern charm squares baby quilt" and was looking for something to make for baby. also, i have a weakness for dreamy french fabrics, like toile and the vintage stuff produced by french general. when the pom pom de paris line came out, with its pretty, soft spring palette, i wanted it for baby. although it's not a modern line, i thought it would go well with ms. hartman's pattern.

(oh, goodness. looking at this photo above, i can see that despite my best efforts to get a bit of randomness to the layout of this quilt, or at least some asymmetry, i pieced it in a pattern after all! how funny and rather pathetic.)

i just love the bird toiles from this line

somehow i got sidetracked and ended up making "expecting blossoms" for baby and not the pom pom de paris charm quilt. about the time baby was a year and a half old, in the early summer of 2013, i decided i still wanted to make the french quilt for her. so i got started. it should have been an easy project, but i started thinking too much and turned it into a french nightmare that got put on the back burner until i tried completing a quilt for each kid for christmas 2013. eventually i got the top done and began the straightline quilting. but it wasn't completed by christmas.

two of my favorite prints are these ditsy florals

 the straightline quilting went ok, but not perfectly. my juki is a fmq champ, but straightline is not so much her thing. i've found out the biggest help with the straightlining is to spray baste. the closed eyelet i chose for sashing wasn't a problem at all, either with piecing or quilting. i love the textured effect it gives.

once i removed all the red prints from this line, i was left with totally dreamy baby girl colors in oyster, pink, butter yellow, and bisque

after i had finished quilting by echo-quilting the long horizontal seams 1/4" on each side, i began thinking how very pretty it would look if i also did vertical straight lines, too. but i'd already taken it off the machine, changed feet, and moved on before that occurred to me. so it didn't happen. when i pulled the quilt out for binding, i thought i'd just knock out that cool quilting. on consideration, however, i realized there were lots of vertical lines in all the piecing that wouldn't be matching up with the quilting and it wouldn't look very good on the front of the quilt after all if i called notice to that. so i just stayed with the horizontal straight lines.

 one of my favorite parts of this quilt is the back. normally, i piece a backing with a variety of prints. on this one, i used only one print but threw in a special feature: the selvage.

 i'm a selvage lover and this one was mighty pretty. by piecing the backing with the selvages meeting up, i was able to include them as a feature strip across the quilt. fortunately for me, this worked out beautifully. the printing was perfectly placed on this fabric so that the 1/4" seam allowance left it showing nicely. i tried this on my penny patch backing and the freespirit selvages did not have the same spacing. pity, because i really adore this effect.

 i also love, love, love this ditsy pink floral print i used for the back. so overall, i adore the back of this quilt. the very last thing to do was bind this baby.

and that's where i got held up again.

there was no perfect print in this line for binding. all the prints, except the reds, were too light for a binding that was going to be drug around by a little girl. i had pulled all the overtly red charm squares to preserve the soft, pastel look in the quilt so adding a red binding on wasn't in keeping with my vision. i was wishing hard the mushroom brown color had been included as a print somewhere. but it wasn't.

by the time i was ready to bind, i had talked myself into just using the red ditsy floral print that was the same as the backing print. although i had purposefully removed the reds from the quilt top, i was pretty desperate to be done and thought it would be fine. not ideal, but fine. i justified to myself, "a binding is so thin and maybe it will be a nice pop of color on the edges."

fortunately i have a quilting buddy who is wiser than i am. when i showed becky the red binding and the quilt, without trashing my idea, she nonchalantly told me, "my thinking is if you've already waited a year to finish this quilt, you might as well wait a little longer and get a binding you like rather than settling for something you don't like so much just to get it done." smart, smart girl.

i was loathe to try finding a binding but i gave it a shot at my local store later in the day.

and came home with something i absolutely love!

this white dot on a mushroom brown crossweave goes so well with the colors and prints in the line. i do think it's probably not very french, but it definitely suits the overall feel of the quilt and it's color palette. i machine bound this one for durability. fortunately, i bound it right after two other machine bound quilts so it turned out pretty well because i was fully practiced by the time i did this one.

 and now little miss has a quilt that fits her bed nicely and is bigger than her baby quilt. she's been dragging her bunny and new quilt around the house everywhere.

when i gave it to her, she said in awe, "it finish?! oh, thank you, Mama!!! it's so bigger!" it's one of the best reactions i've gotten from a kid yet.

that's a wrap.
it's complete and in her hands, all hers to use and love now.
enjoy the last few outtake photos below.

too short to help hold

hey, no peeking! and the bookshelf looks ugly

i'm glad they like being involved with me and the quilt making process. who knows how long it will last?

dreaming easy: the genesis

i have 8 wips in various stages of completion. it's about time i finished rather than started something. and i most definitely didn't need any more patterns or ideas because if i did start something new, it should be one of the dozens of patterns or "to do" pulls i have sitting around my bawthroom sewing space, waiting their turn to come to life.

yeah, but i have a real problem with all those concepts. and self control. i recently picked up the quilty mag special edition of beginner friendly quilts despite my decision to not indulge in magazines anymore. and most of the quilts in it were even simple enough i could probably figure them out without instructions on my own. but i bought it anyway. (coupon was my enabling excuse.) i especially liked the cover quilt. they call it a chevron pattern, but to me it looks more like a scrappy houndstooth, a pow wow modification, or even a feline head silhouette. whatever unidentified pattern it is, i like it. i did not plan on making it for a while, though.

arrow shape? i think i'm calling it an arrow block. i don't know! any better ideas out there?

and the pattern looks like a checkerboard of arrows - an arrow check. best i can do. no wait - checkered arrow. this is a checkered arrow pattern.

enter enabling factor #2 - i was stuck in my bawthroom sewing space for a while as the littlest one played in the tub. my dining room is my main working sewing spot these days. the bawthroom is mostly about storage of the hoard. i was sitting there, looking at all the fabric, remembering how i used to sew while the girls splished and splashed in the tub (hence the blog name) and thinking surely there was something i could do while she played even though there is no longer a machine or any cutting implements up there. creating a fabric pull was all i could come up with. (organizing or destashing just wouldn't have been any fun.) i had the chevron/arrow/kitty pattern on the brain and began wondering if i could further simplify the pattern with precuts; either use a layer cake or charm squares.

turns out i could and i selected "dream on" by urban chicks for moda on the spot. i adore this fabric line so much i may have severely over-purchased it when it clearanced out a while back. the layer cakes are already spoken for by another pattern but there were two charm packs up for grabs. that's perfect anyway because i can use white charm packs for the neutral space in the quilt pattern.

i do love "dream on" so much. it reminds me of 60s/70s bedsheets from my earliest childhood. and i'm a sucker for precuts like many a quilter/fabric junkie. lately, however, i find i like working with just one line of fabric less than i used to. mixing things up is more to my taste these days. but i have all these precuts. my solution - add coordinating fabrics from my stash to round out the precut line! i picked several more stash fabrics (yay for shopping my stash!) that go well with "dream on". only problem was once i started making blocks i noticed many of my fabric selections are low volumes on white backgrounds, hence they won't be very distinctive in this pattern formation. i think my solution for this is to get a couple of barely-there tints of the colors in the fabrics (yellow, blue, green, pink) like the two kona samples (ice and maize) i pulled from my modular color card, to use as the background for the super white prints. the hint of color should help the prints to stand out without overpowering or altering the design. it won't be quite as crisp as the quilt in the magazine, but it will be pretty.

***actually, i decided to use one single color for the background because it would be too much thinking to get the background laid out with cohesively colored solid arrows. i didn't want to lay the whole top out and then assemble, i wanted to chain piece the individual blocks and then assemble. so  instead of multiple solid colors, i used some fussy cutting to make the patterns stand out more. also, you can refer to this post to see how i dealt with directional prints when making the arrows.

the inspiration quilt from quilty, "chevron and on", is composed of squares and half square triangles (hsts) that produced 8.5" finished blocks, with precise cutting directions from fat quarters. it was also a square 68" x 68" size. i prefer rectangle quilts. something about the symmetry suits my taste preference better than a square. thus i decided to enlarge the quilt and alter the dimensions by adding two rows of blocks.

also, i wanted to use charm squares, which would require some trimming since i would be making squares and hsts, which do not start out cut the same size but charm squares obviously do. i don't prefer wasteful trimming when i can avoid it. but this is why i'm in favor of it here: i want to use precuts from my stash. the upside to this is i don't have to cut tons of squares out, just trim up blocks after they are assembled, which i do anyway. the negligible amount of waste simply can't be avoided with this method but at least it's small.

since i have modified this quilt design and have created my own method for making these blocks, i'm making a tutorial for how to make this quilt my way.

these blocks are so quick and easy to make! i'm having a lot of fun whipping up a batch at a time each night.

linking up with wip wednesday at freshly pieced

plan c

 penny patch 2.0 is well underway. in fact, it's all on the board (and floor) awaiting piecing now. last week after i got the initial fabrics cut and started placing them up, i found myself feeling like there was something lacking. the colors just weren't balancing out the way i wanted. on examining rachel's original penny patch, one of the things i noticed about it that i like was the large amount of low-volume and white space in it with punches and sprinklings of her colors. even fabrics she was calling her "color" fabrics were mostly white with touches of the colors. this gave the quilt an overall light, airy feeling and helped the colors shine out.

my first penny patch quilt turned out with a much more earthy, autumnal feel than i was originally going for because many of my fabrics were color saturated and/or on a cream background. so this time i intentionally went for as much white in my fabrics as i could get. but once on the board, i found myself craving a little more variety in prints and even more white space. so i went shopping, of course! i went to my local store for the first time in 6 months (more on that later) and got some additional fabrics to round out penny patch 2.0. not all are on a white base, but it added what i wanted.

 and a little of what i didn't want. that very light blue scrolly print front-and-center in this photo was too baby blue for me. so out it came. some of the new fabrics actually never made it in at all because i found i didn't need as many as i got. in fact, when all was said and done, i had a nice little pile of leftover squares.

now while all this was going on, i was also supposed to be making a baby quilt for my sister-in-law's shower. i'd already been through plan A, but couldn't find the fabrics i'd pulled, and moved on to plan B. however, i was second guessing that plan B and wavering toward replacing the fabrics for plan A. then i got the best idea yet - plan C:

i simply used all the leftover squares from penny patch 2.0 and made a mini penny patch baby quilt. voila! it's a bit less white than my big penny patch will be because i left out the white eyelets in the smaller sizes since this is for a baby. now i just need to quilt and bind this little gal in the next two months before her owner arrives.

and get my own penny patch 2.0 pieced for myself.

linking up with lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced

big baby

 my sister-in-law's baby shower snuck up on me. its this weekend and i didn't even have a plan for the quilt. when i thought about it, i decided to make the mod colored chevron baby quilt i nixed for a friend in the spring, but i couldn't find the pull for that quilt anywhere at all. how a pile of fabric gets lost around here is beyond me. maybe it's the gazillion other little piles everywhere?

so after about 30 minutes of fruitless searching, i came across the above birdy print and decided to use that as an inspiration piece and backing. the other fabrics unceremoniously thrown on the sewing room floor are my other choices to go with it.

 i didn't stop to do any math, just figured i should make large chevrons so as to get done more quickly. i simply went off the largest square cut i could get out of my quarter yard of the first fabric i chose to cut, which was 9". well, i should have done a little math because this first block turned out so big i can only fit about 6 of them in a baby-sized quilt. it's a behemoth 16+ inches. bigger has not turned out to be faster or better at all.

for a little perspective, here it is on the design wall next to my penny patch 2.0. now i'm in a design pickle and i just need it done for saturday.

also, i noticed once again how short my extensive stash is on low-volume blender pieces. i did try to find some more at the store last week, but my local store doesn't cater to them any more than my stash does. i think it's time to search on-line. anyone have a great source shop for low-volume pieces?

penny patch 2.0 in progress

too excited about this for words

angling into triangles

 back in the spring, when i was still struggling with fabric fasting, i picked up this intriguing little half yard bundle off etsy while i was snatching up heather bailey prints. it seemed so vintage and bold in a color palette i wouldn't normally go for. but i have been looking at it and loving it ever since it arrived. after it came, i realized it was "the ladies' stitching club" from liesel gibson of oliver + s for moda fabrics. when that line came out, i thought i didn't like it but apparently i do. funny how that works - you see bits of a fabric range paired together in a unique setting and it actually does appeal to you.

well, that bundle has been sitting atop my bawthroom sewing table being admired for months. sometime during the summer i broke it open and began to pull other fabrics that had similar colors to the shades of plum, pink, gold, peach, ochre, and a touch of blue, that were found in the large floral. i had also acquired another pink and ochre floral print (from "miscellany" by julia rothman for cloud 9 fabrics) that had a vintage, hand drawn vibe to it, which i wanted to use with the stack if possible.

in the end, i got this pile together. it's rather unusual for me, a real departure from my normal palette. it feels like it's either going to be totally cool or a complete disaster. granted, the fabrics are not represented to the scale they will appear in the final quilt. i also think it needs a few more low-volumes and maybe another plum fabric or two to round everything out. but i do not want buy any fabric right now and since this is a longterm project, i can hold off on those for a while.

so what am i doing with this? and why have i started something new again? well, i'm currently taking the "angled" class with rachel hauser at stitched in color. the class has been going for several weeks and so far all i've done is read the material and drool over the photos. i want to make three of the quilts and am really excited to tackle triangles, diamonds, and flying geese! (not "dying geese", right deborah?) but i just don't have time to sew right now. and lately i've realized i mostly just want to finish off the projects i already have going, hopefully by the end of the year, and start fresh next year with new stuff. but, but, but i did want to participate in the class just a little and at least give the new skills and directions provided a try.

so yesterday i tackled triangles.

i'm starting with the "indian blanket" quilt using this radical palette i pulled. i already had one huge pile of fabric i'd amassed when i tried to participate in paula's triangle quilt along earlier this year, but i still want to do that quilt and didn't like that pull for "indian blanket," so i turned my attention to that pile on my sewing table which had yet to be assigned a pattern. i'm kind of excited and also very nervous about it. i'm taking a "well, we'll see how it goes!" approach to all of it. i'm just doing a row or two for some practice, then i'm going to set it aside and finish my boys' quilts. and that "bloom where you are planted" quilt i started on my birthday.

rachel provided directions for cutting using a standard 6" x 24" grid ruler. that was very helpful because it means you don't have to buy a special triangle ruler. but i already own one, so i opted to use that for my cutting. however, my ruler has a blunt tip and after doing all my cutting, i realized that blunt tip cut off 1/4" of the triangle so by following rachel's instructions, i had made my triangles 1/4" too high. darn it. trimming 1/4" off 28+ triangles seemed like too much work and too much room for error, so this particular row will have to just be 1/4" too high. now that i think of it, hopefully that doesn't throw off the placement of the triangles in the quilt too much. "well, we'll see how it goes!" right?

 the blunt tips also threw off the alignment directions rachel had given, so i had to do a bit of trial and error (sewing all three seams on the first triangle) before i got it right. but here's what i discovered in case anyone else wants to know. if you want your on-grain edge (which is opposite the blunt tip if you cut with the blunt tip on the grain edge of your fabric piece) to be at the top or bottom of your row, line the two triangles up with the tips alternating along the top and bottom.

i know this is a really loud and bold pairing of fabrics but i've already decided that if i don't like it, i can always use it on the back! with the sizing mistake i made, i may have to.

 then fold the right triangle over the left one, keeping that middle edge where you'll sew the seam aligned along the diagonal. you can't just pick it up and place on top, you have to fold it over diagonally, which feels like you're folding the triangle down rather than over.

 then align the triangles along the cut edges. the first/bottom triangle will still have it's blunt tip  pointing up and the right/top triangle will now have it's blunt tip in the lower right corner. (you can see a little of the blue peeking out there.)

 now sew down that seam. you'll be sewing the side opposite the two matched pointed tips, aka the side between the two blunt tips.

sew in pairs first, then start adjoining those, which is a whole different alignment issue! it took me no less than three tries to get this right the first time. not having all the dogears made it harder to follow rachel's instructions, but i got it in the end.

i have nearly a whole row complete now! i think i'll do one more so i can see how well my points turn out when i match everything up. wish me luck! then i'll be putting these triangles away and getting back to some straightline quilting.

linking up with lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced.