The Learning Quilt

I have a quilt finish!  Most of the items I've made over the last 18 months have been gifts, so I don't have much to enter into my guild's quilt show later this year.  I actually started this about six months before we moved to Japan.  I was able to take a flying geese class with Kimberly Einmo, on a day of pouring rain and cold temperatures - perfect weather for staying indoors and quilting.

FYI - Kimberly's a wonderful instructor.  She not only does well with describing her techniques, but she also makes the day fun with lots of stories and conversation.  With a class of around 25 people she makes sure to provide individual assistance and conversation with everyone.  It's an enjoyable day!  Her method of creating flying geese works well, but I think I still prefer to use paper piecing.

The Learning Quilt

For the quit top I use fabrics that have been sitting in my stash.  I want to use up some precuts I have, so I start with the cranberry-colored batiks (background to the pale yellow stars).  I also have some of the pink-purple hand-dyed that I want to get rid of (I didn't really like the fabric) but I didn't have quite enough, so that's why the corners inside the yellow border are a different fabric. (Or, you know, maybe it was a design decision.  Don't you ever wonder about some great masterpieces from the past that people debate over why the artist did something - could it just be they ran out of the pigment for that particular paint and had to make do?)

In the picture the yellow fabric looks all the same, but it's also a mix of different fat quarters.  I don't buy many precuts, but they work well for the material requirements of this project.  After picking the pink and yellow, I add the blue fabrics, since yellow-pink-blue form a triad on the color wheel.  The outer border fabric has some of the pink and light lemon colors of the quilt center, so I decide it's good enough to work.

I make a goof when I'm putting the top together.  I must have had mitered borders on my mind, because I decide I can sew the two outside borders together before sewing them (as one unit) to the quilt center (which is what you can do for mitered corners).  Um, yeah - that doesn't work so well for a continuous outer border.  I stare at it for awhile, then decide I can live with it as it is.  At the time I think I might donate the finished quilt, because it's not my favorite color scheme and it's a weird size (about 50" square).

The quilt center - see the pretty pointed arches?

Then I decide it'll be good to practice my quilting skills on it.  When I start on this quilt I've owned my Babylock Tiara (the exact same machine as an HQ Sweet Sixteen) less than six months.  I have some rulers for it that I've never used, and I love the idea of crosshatching in a pointed arch, so I start with that in the turquoise blue triangles.  I choose a pink Magnifico thread so it will be visible against the blue fabric, and continue the lines up to the yellow stars, on the cranberry batik. I'm happy with the way it looks, especially on the cranberry batik - the pink sparkles against it.

I find the hardest part of the process is having to apply pressure in different directions (in my head I'm seeing the diagrams we'd draw in physics class).  You have to hold the ruler down so it will not move, but also slide the quilt as you're doing the quilting.  I try some different methods to help me hold the ruler in place, and most of the time I spray the ruler with 505 basting spray.  It doesn't leave a residue on the quilt, but I have to spray both sides since I have to flip the ruler to do the cross hatching.  To clean the ruler I use rubbing alcohol, which could cause a problem if guiding lines or information is printed on the ruler - the ink could come off.  My lines are etched on the ruler, so it's not a problem for me.

Before I start the quilting process, I hang the quilt top where I can see it so I can glance at it every once and awhile.  I decide what I want to emphasize (or possibly hide) with the quilting.  I'm happy with the points on the piecing, so I decide to do a triple line 1/4" echo along the inside of both the yellow stars and dark blue stars. In the yellow stars I use a similar shade of  thread, and in the blue I use a bright Christmas red - both Magnifico brand.  The red shows just enough against the dark blue fabric.

The back side - I'm sure if you look close
you'll still see snarls in the red thread.

Then I'm left with the spaces inside the yellow stars and the rest of the dark blue areas.  I decide to alternate two different designs.  In one, I do a curved cross hatching in the same thread as the lines (though it doesn't have quite the same effect as in the pointed arches).  In the other, I decide on a small clam shell filler - I want to "push down" the fabric, so it will read as a background.  Because this is a smaller scale (lines are less than an 1/8" apart) and there's travel stitching (having to go back over a previous thread line) I switch to Bottom Line, a thinner, 60 weight thread.  Before I start on the actual quilt I work on the clam shell pattern on a practice quilt sandwich.  Once I'm happy with it I return to the quilt.  It works well on the yellow stars, but I have an incredibly difficult time when I switch to the red thread.  I have a narrower area to work with (some places are less than an inch wide), but I don't think that's what causes my thread issues.  I have constant snarls on the quilt back and many thread breaks - usually the bobbin.  I spend lots of time on Google and asking friends what could be causing the problem.  I never find out exactly what causes it - or at least nothing I do fixes it (The best consensus I find is that having Bottom Line as both the top and bottom threads is too slippery.  Or maybe that particular batik fabric is too tightly woven.)  I only have four places on the quilt where this goes, so I just push through it.  I estimate it takes me eight times (very frustrating times) longer than it should have to quilt it.

The "shadow block" is in the upper left corner.

I consider making a "shadow block" in the corners of the quilt center (where the purple batik is located - my substitute since I ran out of background fabric).  I outline a square on point, and fill it with the clam shell quilting.  I decide I don't actually like it (I feel like it takes away from the piecing design), but I don't want to spend hours pulling out all the thread.  I'm looking for ideas on what to do with it, and my friend Paula suggests turning it into a signature spot.  Great idea!  I borrow some 12 weight thread from her and hand embroider some information in the square outline.  Voila!  It's like I planned it that way. :)

After that, I'm looking for something simple to do...plus I want the rest of the quilt to recede to the background.  I decide to try matchstick quilting - lots of straight little lines close together.  I use a marking pen to mark a few registration lines so I don't accidentally start veering off at the wrong angle.  I go through and quilt a line about every 1/4" across each section, then go back and fill in a couple of lines between each one.  If I were to do each line side-by-side first, I could cause the fabric to shift a bit, so it's better to go across the whole area first and then fill in - it will distribute any excess fabric evenly.

The matchstick quilting is in the
pink-purple hand-dye, outside of the dark blue star. 

This is completely mindless quilting, which turns out to be a good thing!  It's now about a month before we move to Japan, so life is getting pretty crazy and hectic.  Then we have a rough week as we're no longer sure we're actually moving to Tokyo, or what will happen with Steve's job.  It's incredibly stressful, but it turns out throwing thread down on the quilt is very therapeutic!  I'm able to finish the quilt center while everything gets worked out.

Then it gets packed away for a year or so, as we move to Tokyo and get settled, and I focus on some quilt gifts.  When I do pull it out, I have to decide what to quilt in the borders.  In the narrow one, I decide to do a modification of the pointed arch (it looks like a bracket on its side).  It doesn't really matter what I put in the outer border, because the busy print will hide most of the quilting.  I still want to develop a good quilting design, so I decide I'll mimic the piecing design - the turquoise & cranberry fabrics look like a square on point with a square inside.  So I place those along the outer border, in line with the brackets.  I choose to stay with matchbook quilting to separate each square. 

If you look closely you can see the quilting in the outer border.

I had planned to leave the other side of the bracket empty, but I don't like the way it bubbles up (see picture above).  So I decide to do crosshatching in those sections.

Finishing up the narrow yellow border!

I have to do a little adjustment to get the brackets to exactly fit in the border space, but it's not a big issue.  I use my water erasable pen to help position everything in the right place.

Like baby bear's chair - it fits just right!

Here's a full shot of the back.  The backing is the only fabric I didn't already have in my stash when I started the quilt.

Backside of The Learning Quilt

Here's a close-up of the backside of the center of the quilt.  It's another busy print, so you can't see as much detail in the picture.

Look closely - you can see some of the quilting design.

So I learn a new piecing technique and some different styles of quilting - working with rulers, micro-quilting and matchstick quilting.  You can see where the quilt name comes from.  Now that the hanging sleeve has been sewn on, it's all ready to be entered in the quilt show!