Yoko's House!

Those of you who have come to the shop have seen the 4 blocks I've completed from Quiltmania's Quilt Mystère 2012 designed by Yoko Saito. I have blogged about them here too. (check the labels list to the right of the blog and click on Yoko Saito) I love every block of this quilt but time and other circumstances have taken me away from this project! 

Preparation of the pieces is time-consuming and I wanted to show how I go about it.

For me, the longest part of recreating the block is choosing the fabric. That's my focus today! 

The first step is to trace the pattern on freezer paper and cut out each part. I like to keep each house, tree, church etc separate. 

Then I lay out the fabrics I want to use for each building starting with the background fabrics... here you see it as a finished whole with the building templates on top of each pile. 

This "playing with fabric" session may take as little as a few minutes for a house to hours of placing and replacing choices all the while looking at the finished blocks that join the one I'm creating. I frequently go to those finished blocks to see what fabrics were used as I have several fabrics that are close in color and pattern. 

The next step will be to iron the templates to the back of the fabrics and cut them out. I love seeing them take shape... I will spread out the choices again after they are cut out to reassess the color combinations and how they play with each other within the block.

Before the work of turning the edges begins, I will bring down the other blocks and lay them beside this one and reassess the fabric choices.

It takes me awhile, especially with interruptions to play war and go fish... when was the last time you played these games? So fun... but not much quilting getting done... :) I don't mind... the days will be long and lonesome without him! Best to enjoy these times while he's here...

Grand Papa brought him to the County Fair today... What a blast!

Toodles,

Lorette

Holiday Stitching Progress

It was a quiet Easter holiday weekend here at the farm. We spent Sunday morning at a brunch with family then came home and walked the shore. Beautiful and sunny but cool day without wind! Always a great day when the winds don't knock you down.

I finished block no 2 of  Une Annee Dans Les Etoiles. I'm loving this embroidery. Check out Un Atelier de la Montagne to view the slide show of everyone's work.

Once the star was done, it was time to return to Yoko Saito's Quilt Mystere block no 6, the last block in the quilt but only my fourth. If you remember, I skipped 4 & 5 to work on 6 just to be different!

It took me three days to add the church with the house behind it and the lower level houses. Before leaving Los Angeles, I had the top two houses done. There's an error here... the steps leading to the middle level should be going towards the right; I didn't notice until the strip had been sewn to the top level and I left it there until I could decide what to do. I debated long and hard about reversing them but decided to leave it as it is and move on. There are 3 embroidered dogs left to add but I'll wait until all the pieces are applique'ed. I may just add them in the space created by the steps going the wrong way.

I also debated whether to embroider the leaves on the bottom tree or applique them. There are 3 trees with embroidered leaves: top left behind the church and the two at opposing corners. A fourth would have been too many and this one really needed the applique'ed leaves. These leaves are even smaller than on Block no 1.

They are small:

The process for my applique preparation is simple : liquid starch and my stencil burner tip. Since these are so small, I used three layers of freezer paper and added an extra line of permanent marker in order to see the marks for cutting.

Start by painting the liquid starch around the applique: here you can see the top leaf is wet.

The tips are the first to be folded over: this is the stencil burner tip and it's HOT! I use an applique pressing sheet which is great as it keeps my ironing board free of starch and glue. Be aware it too gets HOT which is a bonus as it helps dry the starch.

With both ends done, it's time to turn the edges. This is where the stencil burner tip comes in handy: by running its edge along the seam allowance of the piece, it automatically turns the edges along the freezer paper even on these small pieces. In the following sequence, you will see how the leaf is prepared. 

One good pressing over the whole leaf

Turn the leaf over and press from the right side.

Voila!

That's 4 leaves per dime! Didn't I say they were small?

Our beach is devoid of ice cakes... 

The crows have the right idea... time to stop...

Have a great week! I am linking to The Needle And Thread Network and Let's Bee Social. Have a look at other Works In Progress (WIPs).

Toodles,

Lorette

Nervous reflex!

Definition of REFLEX:

noun:

1: an action that is performed as a response to a stimulus and without conscious thought

2: a thing that is determined by and reproduces the essential features or qualities of something else

Case in point:

Broker's Open House was on Friday December 13th from 11-2 pm. The house looked great, the sun was shining and it was warmer than it had been in about 1 month. All good signs!

So what was I suppose to do during those three hours?? My mind was definitely not on Christmas shopping. It's hard to concentrate on anything when your thoughts run through the images of your home wondering what a newcomer will see and think when they visit. 

My soul told me to go play with fabric. It's a nervous reflex. There's something calming about designing whether it's a garment or a quilt. Looking at a particular fabric can instigate the beginning of an idea which quickly blossoms into a doable project. Have I ever told you about my "fix" when I'm in a slump or designing drought? I visit my local JoAnns, grab a cart and head for the quilting cotton section. There I will browse until I find a fabric that speaks to me and drop it in my cart. Along with that one fabric, I will choose coordinating ones and put my mind through a pattern slideshow. Sometimes it doesn't take long and I have a dozen fabric bolts in my cart with a clear picture of what I want to make. 

Then comes the hard part: I visualize my own fabric supply and try to figure what, from the cart, can be substituted and I replace that bolt on the shelf. There are times when I've completely emptied the cart and left the store to rush home and get started pulling the fabrics from my shelves. Some days, I've found myself at the cutting table with the whole lot. Rarely have I left the store without feeling "refreshed" and no longer suffering from designer's block. I do love buying fabric but I've also been extremely happy on those days when I leave the store without buying knowing that I have something in my stash that will work just as well. Sometimes too, just exercising my brain this way is enough and no quilt ever comes of it.

Friday, my soul needed a good feed! I visited my favorite local quilt shop: Quilt Emporium. I've been curious to see the new Downton Abbey fabrics having seen them online which really doesn't do this fabric line justice. The fabrics are luscious. Do visit the link to Quilt Emporium to see the Downton Abbey display at Quilt Market Houston 2013! 

Sunday December 15th was a special day at QE: a Downton Abbey Tea where representatives from Andover Fabrics displayed garments, hats, totes, ornaments and quilts made with their line, gave a presentation on costume designs and even showed a video of their visit to HighClere Castle. Guests were treated to tea and cookies, a sold-out event I'm told. Congratulations Quilt Emporium! Unfortunately, I could not attend! :(

Fran showed me her quilt made using a pattern called Counterpoint as seen on QE's Quilt Market page. It is magnificent! Great job Fran! Love those colors in the pale violets. I wanted a different spin to the quilt so I set out to flip the colorway to dark sashings. We'll see if I can accomplish how my mind sees the quilt. I do love these colors. The ecru fabric at the bottom will be used as backing.

The following cuts aren't from the Downton Abbey line but I want to include them as they fit the color scheme I have in mind.

This is the pattern designed by Kari Nichols; it's an intermediate pieced quilt.

Added to the stash was this green which I depleted working on a Christmas project I will share with you when the recipient has opened the gift! The bottom fabric is a possible Yoko Saito Quilt Mystere background! Love those lines...

My love of plaids and patterns was soothed too. I find I don't have enough grey fabrics! I must start to fill a shelf with them soon!

Quilt Emporium has a wonderful tradition: In December, in celebration of 12 days of Christmas, they offer a new stocking stuffer at a reduced price each of the 12 days! This needle threader was featured on a day last week and I went to the video to see how it works. Turns out it's a fabulous tool to own. As I get older, the hole in the needle gets blurred and I find threading becomes a challenge. This should help with the task! And I love how you can store your needles in this case! It even has a little cutting blade so you don't need scissors to cut your thread and a magnet to pick up the needle. All in one versatility!

Saturday, one couple who happened to drop in during the Open House returned for a visit accompanied by their realtor and their adult son. They were here for almost 2 hours! Then silence!! Isn't waiting for news the hardest part of buying and/or selling? So yesterday, in order to keep calm, we joined our friends for a bike ride along Santa Monica beach... the weather was wonderfully warm and dry. Love those Santa Ana winds that clear the air of pollution and brighten the view of the mountains.

Today, we have an offer! Wish us luck in negotiating the next steps of this nerve-provoking process! I hope to be able to devote enough of my energy and concentration to get this new quilt top made in the next few days. I love sitting at the machine to just sew; it's when I am most successful at finding solutions to any problem that may arise! I think my reflex on Friday was a good one! Expensive but it felt great! Thanks for your help once again Fran!

Now series 4 of Downton Abbey can't come soon enough!

Toodles!

Lorette

Recent finishes

My handwork finishes have slowed recently as other projects took precedence. I was finally able to work on these last week:

Yoko Saito's Quilt Mystere Block no 3: embroidery:

This cute little snowman wool mat was suppose to be a project during our upcoming travel but I had nothing else ready to work on. It's from My Red Door Designs, a quilt kit I purchased at Cherry Berry Quilts last fall.

 Peppermint Place Block no 5 was quick to make. The top and bottom of the block will be sewn together later on in the process. The string in the bird's beak is to hold up a button star which will be added after the quilt has been quilted.

Now on to the last installment of the quilt: Block no 6 or what they call Pattern no 6 contains the rest of the quilt instructions and fabric. This is a lot of work to keep until the end! I wished they had spaced out the applique a little more but when I looked at the construction of the blocks, it makes a little more sense. It would have been hard and probably wasteful in fabric doing it any other way. So on with the prep. This will become my travel handwork once I piece the blocks for the applique.

The fabrics:

The instructions... many pages!

The freezer paper pieces:

Resulting garbage:

My fingers were quite sore from the scissors and all that cutting. Hope to get a few blocks ready for handwork today!

Toodles!

Lorette

Report on glue sticks

If you've been a reader of this blog, you know I use liquid starch and Roxanne's glue for my applique technique. A week ago, I decided to order glue sticks advertised on the videos demonstrating applique techniques in Yoko Saito's Quilt Mystere 2012. I suppose it wasn't so much the glue but the special method Beatrice Airaud demonstrates that captured my interest. She doesn't or hardly clips her seam allowances on curves... it seemed easy so in order to evaluate the process, I wanted some of the same tools she uses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p4f_A40lWQ watch this video starting at 4:30min and you'll see how she uses the glue stick and her seam ripper to fold over the seam allowances. She uses the same method on curves with a narrow 3mm seam allowance.

Well the glues and chalk pencil arrived on Saturday, a whole week ahead of expected date of delivery... perhaps that's why postage was so high! :(  Karisma is the brand name, clearly Japanese as you can see.

I found a local supplier right in my backyard... or close enough:
https://www.superbuzzy.com/shop/product/karisma-fabric-glue-stick-pen-blue/

So I set out to try it on the next block preparation. As I don't like to be predictable all the time, I decided to prepare block no 6 instead of no 4 in Yoko Saito's Quilt Mystere; the reason for this is that block no 6 is the widest of all the blocks therefore I wanted to pick out the fabrics for those long strips before I use up some yardage. I bought mainly fat quarters for this quilt with a few larger pieces I thought would make great backgrounds. Blocks 4, 5 and 6 are done in narrow strips or layers rather than one large background piece. Interesting way to build them in layers. 

The glue is the color of the cap, in this case neon yellow.

It dries clear: in the next photo, it's not quite dry but the amazing thing is it does remain supple just like Beatrice Airaud says in the Quiltmania video. That to me is fantastic. Furthermore, the needle and thread glide through the glue with no stiffness or residue left on the needle! It also washes out easily. 

Beatrice's technique is a great one if you draw or trace the pattern directly on the fabric. However after trying it on a few pieces for Block no 6, it's clear Beatrice has mastered this technique because it isn't as easy as it looks. I need more practice to be convinced enough to change from my trusted freezer paper method.

More testing will be needed too with glues and I intend to compare it with what is available on the market. I have tried regular glue sticks and the fabric ends up as stiff as a board with great difficulty pushing a needle through it. There's a product called Sewline that looks similar to the Karisma glue pen and I plan to test it as well.  Elmer's glue is also one touted by Sharon Schamber and must be the least expensive to use. It, like Roxanne's glue are set with a dry iron. But they leave the fabric stiff when dried.

In the meantime, I completed the sewing and embroidery on Block no 2 Friday evening while watching Perry Mason reruns. Did you know you can watch it online too? http://www.cbs.com/shows/perry_mason/
Don't you love the theme song?? We're having problems with our satellite reception so we're limited in the number of channels we can watch before we lose the signal. (Frustrating yet we are watching channels that we never considered before and have found some very interesting series.)

We thought our problem was because of a backyard tree that had grown too large and was blocking the satellite so we had it trimmed back but alas, it wasn't the cause. A call to our provider and a few system checks later told them our problem was with the equipment not getting a signal! DAH!!! Isn't that why I called in the first place?? A technician is coming on Tuesday.

Block no 2...

I do love that Karisma chalk pencil in pink. There's a new version just out on the market that has 3 colors in one pen. The "lead" is 0.9 which is quite thin and makes a beautiful mark.

Block No 3 is next to my rocker and is partly done! Big houses on that block so I expect it will go a little faster. However, I'm impressed with the number of windows and doors on this quilt... they're all reverse appliqued then embroidered!

Scrap, Quilt and Stitch has a new mystery quilt starting this week! It's called "De Deauville a Cape Cod"; I'm a sucker for a beach-themed quilt so I got on board. Her instructions are in French but perhaps you can ask her for an English version. Blogger will translate her blog too. I already have her Eastwood Village pattern  but have not started it yet. Love her Santas too. Head on over there and take a peek at her previews.

Toodles,

Lorette

Auditioning!

Yesterday I auditioned fabrics for the bottom border of Yoko Saito's Mystery Quilt block no 2; block no 2 in this picture is in the bottom right. It looks brown in this photo but in the closer pattern image, it definitely appears green.

Since my pieces are different from the original fabrics, I thought I'd play around with them to see which one I fancied. I tried so many versions that looked great so the decision was a hard one. Then I decided to photograph the block with the choices to see if seeing the block on the computer screen would help me out.

What do you think? Excuse the crooked photos!

This was my first choice... the rest are not in order of preference.

 And the winner...

To me, the dark grey allowed the other colors to shine rather than detract from them. The house on the left needs applique around the windows, the cat needs to be stitched down then the embroidery will begin. White around the windows this time! YEAH! I need not tell you how I dislike black outlining; there's still too much of it on this quilt! 

Here's a look at block no 3 ready for applique! I don't use pins; instead I use the starch and freezer paper method. I also add a few tiny dots of glue along the inside of the turned edge to apply to the backgound then I heat set the glue with a dry iron. Nothing will move during the stitching. The fabric stays somewhat supple with some firmness where there is glue.

                                     

I have ordered glue sticks from France demonstrated by Beatrice Airaud in the Quiltmania video tutorials (in French) as she says the glue will not harden! This puzzles me since I thought all glues would stiffen fabric. I'm anxious to try it. Stay tuned for a report on this subject. Previous orders from France have taken 2 weeks to reach me. Patience!

Next week, I'll work on getting block no 4 ready for handwork. 

Toodles,

Lorette