Octagons -- finally done!

This quilt has been years in the making.  Literally.  It started with admiring MacQuilts' Paperweight quilt that she made from a kit of Kaffe shot cottons.  And then I got the pattern and hunted down the recommended kite ruler.  And I started cutting...and cutting. 

This pattern calls for width of fabric strips in 2.5" and 2.0" so as I bought fabric, I'd cut two strips and put them in a bin.  Since I'm a scrap quilter, I have no "palette" -- and you can see that as you look at all the different octagons.  Not all brights nor reproductions nor novelties nor prints nor.....

This is an Aardvark Quilt pattern and I do love it.  She gives good directions about using lights, darks, mediums in order to get a sense of depth in the quilt.  I didn't really achieve that as well as I'd like.  I used black on black fabrics for the kites -- as you look at various examples, this is easier said than done.  

The pattern calls for this to be assembled in rows with inset seams.  Not my preferred method of construction so I put mine together in blocks.  This requires laying out a lot more as you go and not being able to move the octagons around for balance.  That was ok with me.  I had my wedges done -- just not assembled and I previewed those.  I would absolutely put it together like that again.

AND, to that point -- there will be another quilt.  This uses a boatload of fabric because you are cutting 60 degree triangles and that results in an equivalent number of "opposite" triangles -- but rarely enough for a full hexagon.  I was able to use some of them for the half hexagons on the edges of the quilt.  When putting together "unmatched" triangles and maybe scrappy-pieced kites, it will be a lot more fun and layout will be a lot less important because it should be a happy bedlam of scraps.  How fun is that.  I hope to put that on next year's list -- I needed to walk away from these for a while.

But, it's done and I do like it a lot.  I quilted it last spring and finally finished the binding last nite.  It is going on the guest bed for Thanksgiving and is the washer right now!  Yea!!!!  It's a small queen and I couldn't get a picture of the entire thing so you'll get bits and pieces.

I've done a few other things in the meantime -- two more charity quilts delivered, started an occasional block for myniecetheathlete's batik quilt -- that is my "spring project" for sure.  Finished a baby quilt from a class I took -- more on that later.  My Hurricane Sandy quilt is on it's way to New Jersey Project Linus (see last week's post if you want to help out).  It is so cold and the coverage is heartbreaking. I hope it can keep someone a bit warmer during all this tragedy.

AND, I did manage to spend three days in Houston with mom22smartchix -- here's my loot before I packed it up to come home.  I bought two kits which is not like me at all and two goodie bags from Cherrywoods and a few other things.  More on that and the incredible quilts and great booths and trends.

I wish each of you a wonderful, healthy, family filled Thanksgiving....with plenty of good calories.

Jan

Windham Fabrics -- we need to talk!

Let me start by saying I love Windham Fabrics.  I have bought yards and yards of them.  And the fabrics used to make this quilt definitely taught me more lessons than I wanted to learn!

This is Waffles by Aardvark Quilts.  I love the simplicity of her designs and the clarity of instructions.  I made it about two years ago and finally quilted in when I went to see MacQuilts in the spring.  The fabrics are the hand-dyed Gees Bends solids that I paid a pretty penny for several years ago at the Chicago International Quilt Festival.  The fat quarter bundle had about 20 fabrics in them -- all neatly tied up.

I really liked the shading and coloration of many of the shades and they reminded me of Cherrywoods (YUM!).

BUT -- when I opened them up and started to think about what I wanted to do with them -- I was in for a not-so-great surprise.  The fold lines on about half the fat quarters had offset and had a faded look.  And not just a little bit -- a whole lot.  And when I say "fold lines" -- these were not at the edges where sun/light might have caused them -- they were in the bundle where the FQs had been folded and compressed against another. They actually mirrored the lines of the actual fold of the fabric.  I've never seen that before and I hope never to see it again.

Here are some leftover scraps and I've put pins in the discolorations in case you have trouble seeing them.  I was beyond not happy when I saw this and how many fabrics were effected.  Some to the point that I couldn't cut enough strips to make a block.  I know this was not the fault of the quilt shop and I believe they were not aware of the problem.  They are very reputable and were always my favorite booth at the quilt show each year.

When I saw the offsetting and started researching how to handle them before I did anything else -- there wasn't much out there.  There were lots of comments from other quilters who talked about bleeding and washing them with Retayne beforehand. I particularly remember one quilter saying that she was washing her red fabric when the water splashed on her white blouse and it looked like she had cut herself!  Really?

I ended up washing similar colors in small loads with Retayne and color catchers and watched the rinse water.  For those that had a lot of color in the final rinse, they got to go back through the same process one more time.  I also checked the FQ bundle that mom22smartchix bought and hers were equally bad so it wasn't just mine.  Small comfort in that.

I don't know anything about hand-dying, don't know the proper terms, don't know what may have gone wrong but I do know that this was not a good experience - nor typical of Windham Fabrics.  Interestingly, if you were to buy the fabrics today, they come with a suggestion that each color should be washed separately and line dried!  

Fingers crossed for the final washing now that the quilt is finished!

I hope your week has been full of good surprises.  Jan

F is for . . . .

Finished!  Finally!

This is a quilt that was started about two years ago and I've been cutting fabric off and on since.  As a "scrap quilter", I don't have a lot of "width of fabric" like many.  I'm happy with scraps, pieces, hunks and chunks rescued from friends' trash (you know who you are!).  So, because this does best when the strips are pieced from WOF, I've cut as I've gotten fabric and put it in bins.

Each octagon requires two strips at 2.5", 2 strips at 2", 1 strip at 2.5" and another strip at 2.5" (for pinwheel).  Obviously, that's a lot of fabric and because of the cutting requirements, there is enough for another quilt that is would be scrapier.  BUT NO TIME SOON.   I'm tired of octagons!

The pattern is "Paperweights" by Aardvark Quilts and octagon quilts are certainly popular right now and popping up on blogs everywhere.  Kudos to those of you who are making them.  There is bias everywhere.  The only straight of grain on the outside edge is where the kites come together.  Everything else is off grain.

While the pictures were taken on a windy day, some of the "play" you see in the black-on-black kites is where there is excess fabric.   Let's just say there are some "A cups" and one "B cup" in the kites.  I'm going to have to quilt the heck out of it to get it to lay flat.  Prior to quilting, it measures 86" x 102".

Suggestions by the designer were to make sure you had a good mix of dark, mediums, and lights in the fabrics so that different elements would "pop" -- the outer border in some, the middle strip in others, and the pinwheels in some.  I thought I had a good selection of darks for the outer strip but they aren't showing up in these pictures.  There's not the depth I had hoped for but I'm pretty much over it!

No border -- just 49 full octagons and maybe 11 half blocks.  I have stay stitched the outside as I'm pretty sure this could fall apart if pulled very much.  It will be going to Chicago in two weeks for some quilting.  I have no idea what to do with it but have some time to decide.

The designer recommended putting all the octagons together and all four kite pieces together and then assembling with way too many angles to me.  I put this together in blocks -- as noted above.  It's hard without a huge design wall but the quality control for me was much better.  I nested the strips and then pressed all the joined seams open so there would be less bulk.

The pictures that follow are the requisite spring photos showing some of the flowering trees in our yard.  Since this is our first spring in this house, it's always a surprise to see what comes up.  We knew we had three dogwoods and a redbud, but we didn't know that the larger dogwood was a pink one (scrawny but pink).

The redbud is past prime and I was tickled to find a lilac -- although it's on the other side of our fence, it's on our property so I'm going to presume the neighbors think it's theirs and enjoy the color and fragrance.

We made a quick trip through Chicago on our way to Madison WI last week and were stunned to see that the same flowers were blooming in Chicago and Madison (tulips, for goodness sakes!) as in Kentucky.  My son's clematis is bigger than ours and has more blooms.  The earth is so out of orbit when it comes to this wacky spring!

I hope you're having a blooming good day!  Jan