tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39158055958082286452024-03-19T05:20:43.054-07:00The Perfect SquareThe history of the Perfect Square quilt, and the experiences of a novice quilter attempting to bring it to lifeRob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-6424502109466673242014-05-21T18:56:00.000-07:002014-05-21T19:00:11.107-07:00My next quilt: Stars and SunsMy sister Cindy came to town, and I asked her how one goes about machine quilting for a show-quality quilt, which I want the Perfect Square quilt to be. After she showed me, I told her that I have been thinking about making a simpler quilt, since I'm still very intimidated by the thought of the Perfect Square. She agreed that that would probably be a good idea.<br />
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We will soon be visiting my second daughter, Elizabeth, spending three weeks at her house in Arizona to help her care for her soon-to-be-newborn son Matthew and her two older sons, Joshua and David. Liz's husband Eric is in the National Guard, and his annual two-week training is scheduled for right when Matthew is expected to arrive. I remembered a fabric I like, which features stars and swirling gas clouds on a deep blue background. I knew it was a popular fabric, and that the pattern was available in various colors. I came up with a design that features squares of this fabric, with one bright color in the shape of two diamonds, one on top of the other, with two darker colors for accents. The pieces will be as simple as can be: nothing but squares. The border will be right triangles, with the hypotenuse on the squares, and other triangles of the same size filling in. That's a horrible description, but the idea is simple. Then, there will be bright yellow circles in applique with batting inside to raise them, and the quilting will be circles in gold thread centered on the appliqued circles. The circles will be random sizes, probably ranging from three inches to eight inches, and in random locations. There will probably around eight of them.<br />
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I had planned on using eight-inch squares, and the border would be about 4 inches wide. But then I looked up quilt sizes. I found that if I went to 6-inch squares, I'd have the size of a baby quilt, and if I went to 9-inch squares I'd have the size of a twin quilt. David is now three, and Joshua is around five. David has been seeing Joshua's "grandfather blanket" most of his life. I will be working on this quilt in Arizona. If David sees me working on a quilt for Matthew, he would probably be jealous. So, I'll make this a twin quilt for David. Of course, that means that after this, I'll have to make a quilt for Matthew. By the time that one's finished, Matthew will be old enough to appreciate it.<br />
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I went to Joanne Fabric and bought the pattern I wanted in red, deep blue and black. The two diamonds will be done in red. The squares have been cut out. Here they are, laid out in the final arrangement:<br />
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Here is a closeup of the fabric:</div>
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And here (in an unfortunately dark snapshot) is the fabric for the appliqued circles: </div>
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<br />Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-73976941441611997832013-12-19T19:58:00.001-08:002013-12-19T20:00:06.791-08:00Progress!<div id="yui_3_7_2_1_1387069382088_17872" style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 16px;">
My last session in the sewing room was quite frustrating. I tried to sew the same seam five times. Pieces were in the wrong order or were sewn to the wrong edge of the fabric (not hard if the fabric is around 6 inches square and one side is 1/8 of an inch longer than the other), or the seam wasn't straight, or whatever.</div>
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Tonight was much different! First, I sewed that seam correctly. A while ago, I realized that I could make life easier if I planned my piecing to minimize the number of Y seams I needed. So, I sewed a second set of three patches together. That brought the only frustration of the evening, as the result was a 16th of an inch or so too short. I figured that my problem was the difference between a 1/4-inch seam and a scant 1/4-inch seam. So, I cut out a fresh set of those pieces and put them together, making sure that the edges of the fabric were just barely not touching the guide on the #57 foot. This time, the piece was just a shade too long, so I trimmed it down. Then I added a fourth piece to the top, just a plain straight seam. Finally, I was ready to try my first challenging assembly. The seam I needed ran fr</div>
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om the top down about three inches, and then left 1/2 inch, and then down the rest of the way (maybe two inches). I sewed the two vertical pieces first, being careful to leave the required seam allowance at the ends, and then I folded the fabric to the last little half-inch seam and sewed that. And it worked! Everything is aligned, the sizes are right, the edges are square, and there's no puckering in the corners. The only problem I saw was a little bit of puckering along one long seam. I'm not sure what causes that. Maybe I wasn't letting the fabric move freely enough for that seam. </div>
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So, now I have the top half of one medium-sized square finished!</div>
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I'm planning to make this a complete mini-quilt. I'll quilt it and bind it. The only problem is that it's not sized for binding, so the binding will take away from the squareness of the outer squares.</div>
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Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-53910513577526226502013-12-04T19:59:00.001-08:002013-12-04T19:59:07.132-08:00Seams<div id="yui_3_7_2_1_1386204334879_5368" style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 16px;">
I found that when I am using the #57 foot, the one with the little vertical quarter-inch guide, when I let go of the fabric as the last bit disappears under the foot, it was tending to get gathered to the left, and I lost as much as an eighth of an inch of seam width. That was bugging the heck out of me, because of course if a seam is 1/4 inch wide at one end and 1/8th of an inch wide at the other, the edges are not going to be square when the patch is opened. I posted questions to a few quilting E-groups, and got various replies, ranging from "don't use that foot, use a wider one" to "Bernina has had that problem for years and never done anything about it". The most common response was to use a tool called a Stiletto that can go under the foot with the fabric and guide it for that last little bit.</div>
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I went to my dealer tonight and asked what they thought. They said to just use a thin, pointed piece of wood or something, like a shish-kebab skewer. I think I am going to use that most useful of all sewing tools, the seam-ripper. If I need to. I'm not sure I do. A couple days ago, I bought two yards of fabric expressly to practice with. I cut out a few 2 1/2-inch squares and sewed them together, and didn't have any problem.</div>
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The women at the quilt store were suitably impressed with the deal Cindy got for me. They said they still had a few 640s in stock, and they were trying to get rid of them for $4,000. </div>
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My next challenge is sewing over seams. If I plan carefully, I can greatly reduce the number of Y seams I need. In their place, I will sew two blocks together, and then sew a long side of the patch to a larger block, so the new seam is perpendicular to the old seam. If the seam allowance has been pressed toward me, so that the fold goes under the foot before the edge of the fabric, then I don't have a problem. The pieces line up nicely. But if the allowance is pressed away from me, the top block seems to get pushed forward, and the fabric bunches up toward the last pin. Or, if the pin has already been removed, the top piece ends up being pushed out of alignment. I haven't found a reliable solution for that yet. The last time I tried, I stopped the new seam just before I got to the edge of the fabric of the old seam, took the pieces out of the machine, and checked alignment. It was good. Then, I put the pieces back in, started sewing where I left off, and the results were aligned perfectly. So maybe that's a solution. In earlier attempts, just stopping with the needle down, raising the foot, making sure the seam is flat, and continuing the seam did not work very well.</div>
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Oh, one other thing. When I took the machine out of the case, plugged the cords in, and turned it on, it made a very scary grinding sound. It wasn't like gears that weren't meshing, but it sounded as though something had gotten knocked way out of alignment. I turned the machine off, took out the thread in case it was getting somewhere it shouldn't be, and turned it back on. Same thing. I looked more closely to see if I could see anything at all that was wrong. I saw that the guide that holds the bobbin thread in place as a bobbin is being wound had accidentally been pushed, turning on the bobbin winding motor.</div>
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Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-15310164984827846182013-11-25T18:59:00.004-08:002013-11-25T18:59:51.824-08:00The New Sewing MachineI had a sewing machine pretty much fall into my lap!<br />
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Cindy, my quilting sister, has a quilting friend who is moving up in the world, and offered her previous machine for sale. It's a Bernina Artiste 640. She was asking $500 for it. The package includes several standard feet, a walking foot, a Bernina Stitch Regulator foot, and an extra-large table for working with quilts. I might expect to see a package like this on E-Bay for nearly $2,000.<br />
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After a bit of discussion, I decided to buy it.<br />
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We decided to drive to Pennsylvania to pick it up, and to see Cindy's newly remodeled kitchen. Mom wanted to see it too, so we invited her.<br />
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In the meantime, Cindy was familiarizing herself with the machine, and found that the stitch length adjustment knob was broken. The knob is connected to the machine by a thin plastic shaft, and it can easily be broken if the knob is pushed sideways somehow. So she drove to her Bernina dealer, an hour's drive each way. The dealer replaced the knob, then opened the machine, cleaned everything out, and made sure it was working perfectly. It took two hours. Cindy asked him how much she owed him. He said, "Nothing". She insisted on paying something, so he charged her $12.50, the price of the knob. <br />
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Lynn was concerned about possibly ugly snow when driving, but weather forecasts looked OK. We'd expect some snow, but it shouldn't be bad. Wrong. We stopped at a gas station maybe an hour away from her house. It wasn't snowing when we went in. When we came out, it was near whiteout. We proceeded anyway. The only way I could tell where I was supposed to be going was by following the taillights of the truck in front. We got to the Phillipsburg exit and called Cindy to ask if we should get off I-80 there or stay on. She said to get off. About that time, the snow tapered down to a reasonable amount, and the rest of the drive had no problem. We found out the next morning that there had been a multi-vehicle accident on I-80, about where and when we would have been if we had stayed on I-80.<br />
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We had a very pleasant stay with Cindy. She introduced me to the machine's main functions. At one point, she tried to show me how to use a buttonhole stitch to do applique. We set the machine for 4-mm stitch length. It gave us 0 stitch length. Other decorative stitches actually stitched backward. She couldn't figure it out. Finally, since Bernina calls the machine a sewing computer, she decided to do what you do when computers act up: turn it off and back on again. That cleared up the problem. <br />
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I asked Cindy about Y seams. Those are seams where three seams have to meet at a point. She said that you just locate exactly where the seams will begin and end, and make sure that's where they do begin and end. If you do that carefully, it works. <br />
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When we got home Sunday, Lynn worked to straighten up the office so I could have a place to sew. Tonight (Monday), I finished moving things around and got out the machine and tried to do a Y seam. It worked!Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-79356791928380107072012-12-30T09:02:00.001-08:002012-12-30T09:02:15.634-08:00The Stars and Squares Quilt is DONE!The Stars and Squares quilt is done! Finished! Quilted! Only one last thing remains: adding the pouches for a hanging bar. <br />
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<br />Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-73520428528674444362012-05-06T18:32:00.002-07:002012-05-06T18:37:33.222-07:00The Top is Done!The top of the Stars and Squares quilt is done!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8mT05Rdj12TTSW4OWGsJGcoGEQgY0avTn9y5vBvHYDBBneV7JopGgTrjGwVbFKSJoNaaM_kVx7kuo5MQX2mq15u2dIjipTrGoXH04ccNZrSA0jjIsxKhy9TAP0reIyE3LW3YfkemxohnO/s1600/top_complete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8mT05Rdj12TTSW4OWGsJGcoGEQgY0avTn9y5vBvHYDBBneV7JopGgTrjGwVbFKSJoNaaM_kVx7kuo5MQX2mq15u2dIjipTrGoXH04ccNZrSA0jjIsxKhy9TAP0reIyE3LW3YfkemxohnO/s320/top_complete.jpg" width="287" /> </a></div>
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The borders were more difficult than I had expected. I had finished a set of borders a few months ago, but when I went to attach them to the main part of the top, I found that each square of the border was 2 7/8 inches wide instead of 3 inches. The cumulative error was too much to work with. I had to remake the borders.</div>
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When I sewed the first new border to the main section, I found the edges did not line up. Some of the blocks were not exactly 9 inches wide. Fortunately, they were all smaller than that. So, I had to identify where the narrow blocks were, undo a seam in the border, slice off a bit of one square, and sew the border back together. Actually, it wasn't really that much of a pain.</div>
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Now all I have to is quilt it and bind it.</div>
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</div>Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-8347513697913284092012-04-28T18:52:00.000-07:002012-04-28T18:52:00.219-07:00Most of the Top is Done!Except for the borders, the top is done!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTyoQRlmQrvvWEMWjbofa5ewempGO6XF4mn0t0fMQqNY3gqFwkNjq0MO1DL1D1emQV45Z98EQ5UH36GVt2MXac3ephKVqZSPWXeDubO-A_XhhLdR55RyPc9hCTPnVWKwEhGmDMTwTuGmgv/s1600/top_no_borders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTyoQRlmQrvvWEMWjbofa5ewempGO6XF4mn0t0fMQqNY3gqFwkNjq0MO1DL1D1emQV45Z98EQ5UH36GVt2MXac3ephKVqZSPWXeDubO-A_XhhLdR55RyPc9hCTPnVWKwEhGmDMTwTuGmgv/s320/top_no_borders.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I may need to sew some yellow cloth behind the yellow pieces, since they are somewhat translucent. Or maybe just having the white batting behind them will be enough. For this picture, the top was draped over a dark brown couch.<br />
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Assembling the large 3-triangle blocks was unexpectedly difficult. I had planned to just cut the pieces out with a quarter-inch seam allowance and sew them together, but on the rare times when I actually sewed the correct pieces together, they refused to come out correctly. Either the top and bottom edges were not parallel, or the piece was the wrong size, or (more commonly) both. I hadn't paper-pieced them because the pattern would have been 9 1/2 inches wide, and I didn't have a printer that wide. So, after struggling with one block for three hours, I posted a message on a couple of quilting groups on Yahoo titled "Pulling My Hair Out". Several responses suggested paper piecing. I remembered that we have a nice big printer at work that handles 11 x 17-inch paper. I made patterns, and pieced them with no further problem.<br />
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The only remaining problem happened when trying to assemble the middle and bottom strips. The inner corners did not meet. It turned out the center block on the bottom (blue and red triangles) was 9 3/8 inches wide instead of 9 1/2 inches. I was able to stretch it out by ironing, and got the seams to match.<br />
<br />Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-53024308560745433312012-04-16T17:30:00.001-07:002012-04-16T17:44:51.309-07:00The First BlockBelieve it or not, I've actually been working on the Stars and Squares quilt! The borders have been completed, and I am working on the main portion. I have finished my first nine-patch block! It's the center block of the quilt. Here it is:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDwFLJeM43k0vWzXFbe0q4EJEghP-xRHz8iB2E_QYmhJBcXcG5JR7m-AXkBV6LeJnwoONzqn275M3J167uOWjKptJX1NhWy45Mij4BhQJzmli7YbZAW8XxErdeDVoVgJsU8KcWs9wLgY_X/s1600/first_block.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDwFLJeM43k0vWzXFbe0q4EJEghP-xRHz8iB2E_QYmhJBcXcG5JR7m-AXkBV6LeJnwoONzqn275M3J167uOWjKptJX1NhWy45Mij4BhQJzmli7YbZAW8XxErdeDVoVgJsU8KcWs9wLgY_X/s320/first_block.jpg" width="288" /></a></div>
<br />This was not done without tribulation. I had to sew the final seam four times. The first time, the three patches I added were offset by a quarter inch. The second time, I sewed the wrong edges together! The third time, the center point didn't match the center seam of the central square. The fourth time was the charm.Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-90662016258648948862011-03-25T18:35:00.000-07:002011-04-09T15:50:06.387-07:00Stars and Squares, or QuiltfiliaFor the last couple of days I've been suffering a severe attack of quiltfilia, a strong, unreasonable desire to quilt something. One possible reason could be a visit Lynn and I paid to a little art gallery in Peninsula. There were a few little quilts there, no more than about 2 by 3 feet, which were quite charming. Their appeal was not at all reduced by the fact that none of the seams were straight. So, I can probably do at least that well. <br />
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I wanted something easy, but with a strong geometrical appeal. I've thought about making a major quilt with a Star of David motif (no, I'm not Jewish, I just think it would be fun). But this will be a minor quilt, so I can use easy stars. I came up with a design I call "Stars and Squares":<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Becky, my oldest daughter, is expecting her first baby in July. Do you think this can be ready by then? Stay tuned!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div>Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-29971484889206526352011-03-25T18:29:00.000-07:002011-03-25T18:29:15.180-07:00The Baby Quilt FinishedI spent almost all my free time for a couple of months working on the baby quilt, and I finished it! My sister Barb came up with the idea of quilting letters and numbers in the blank squares of the bottom half. Here are a couple of photographs:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6990-QXJ_Ge7yMcAG7gjvPoZgBEzlpSBUWHKR15vTTQpCs58MHFqtUNXLwmQesAJPyEMCB2OOFVQPpZuYZS981Ug22UAUBX0X7_oVN5txllScktIYIe95CU6sZjLx8DfAP2n25hrjq-CY/s1600/P6140221.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" r6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6990-QXJ_Ge7yMcAG7gjvPoZgBEzlpSBUWHKR15vTTQpCs58MHFqtUNXLwmQesAJPyEMCB2OOFVQPpZuYZS981Ug22UAUBX0X7_oVN5txllScktIYIe95CU6sZjLx8DfAP2n25hrjq-CY/s320/P6140221.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-91487000093159380612010-03-13T15:54:00.000-08:002010-03-13T15:58:40.064-08:00The First SeamI have actually started sewing this quilt! I sewed one seam!<br /><br />It was tricky figuring out where I had left off. I had a set of pieces I cut out, but I didn't remember what square they were for! I looked through the design files until I found the correct one. Then I had the challenge of figuring out what square went where. I added numbers to the squares in the design, and then wrote the numbers on surgical tape and stuck the tape to the pieces. <br /><br />Finally, I sewed my first seam. It joined a couple of the smaller pieces just above the center line of the square and a bit to the right. The pieces were the right size, and I carefully sewed right on the quarter-inch line. But the combined pieces were too short! By about 1/8 inch. So I took the seam out and tried again. Finally, on the 4th try, I got the pieces to end up the correct length.Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-76242621173219418412010-03-13T15:38:00.000-08:002010-03-13T15:49:14.599-08:00The Baby QuiltIt's been a long time. My last post was in May of last year, and here it is March.<br /><br />I went to the Lake FarmPark quilt show again, and bought more fabric. Some nice solid reds, and a pack of nice reddish fat quarters. When Lynn saw them, she put her foot down. "You are stalling long enough! You are going to sew this quilt! And to practice, you are going to finish Joshua's quilt."<br /><br />Joshua, my grandson, is about a year and a half old. A year ago, we visited him and his mother in Yuma, AZ. (We live in Cleveland, OH.) While we were there, we went geocaching. I entered the coordinates into our GPS. Incorrectly. The coordinates I entered led us to a large flea market -- with a quilt store! Lynn and I both bought fabric. She bought a package meant to be made into a cloth book, with an accompanying wall hanging. Her plan was to make it into a quilt, with the wall hanging making the top half and the pages sewn together to make the bottom half. She bought some pale green fabric that went well with the pastel blues and other colors in the cloth book. She spent an afternoon at Liz's house beginning the quilt, but hadn't touched it since. She told me to figure out a way to finish it and finish it.<br /><br />So, I've arranged the ten pages of the book, along with ten rectangles cut from the green fabric, into a 4-row, 5-column grid that is about the same size as the wall hanging picture. They're all sewn together. Lynn bought some more fabric, including pale blue with polka dots and pale green with polka dots. I'm going to use the green polka dots as an inner border around this grid, and then sew it to the top half and put a full border around it in the original pale green.Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-72844168522702330632009-05-29T19:15:00.001-07:002009-05-29T19:28:28.110-07:00Square 14: Work begins<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqPpAN6daI69lMD_w1130cW6kBFhrMgO96CpvDVGCkvNpNdjJiw8UOlDu3DCsCW7u2QSqGp-nefvLPnmvKJ_bVSRUpmcCH5fHe9ckS-YxAU-Rl17UmraASYEH1Ct1QOT_Wt6OGp5W4a7WG/s1600-h/square14bitmap.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5341435058207759090" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 355px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 355px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqPpAN6daI69lMD_w1130cW6kBFhrMgO96CpvDVGCkvNpNdjJiw8UOlDu3DCsCW7u2QSqGp-nefvLPnmvKJ_bVSRUpmcCH5fHe9ckS-YxAU-Rl17UmraASYEH1Ct1QOT_Wt6OGp5W4a7WG/s400/square14bitmap.png" border="0" /></a><br />It's been a while since I've done anything on the quilt. I practiced a bit, as I talked about in previous posts. But I want to actually do something that might be used on the quilt itself. So, I have begun work on the first square that will actually get sewn. According to my original design, this is Square 14. It will be just under a foot on a side. It will be located just above and to the left of the center of the quilt.<br /><br />As you can see from the picture above, this square is made up of five smaller rectangles. There is one line that crosses the entire square from left to right, dividing it into two rectangles. The top rectangle can be subdivided into two, with the left piece by itself being one and the other pieces making the other subrectangle. The bottom main rectangle can be divided into three subrectangles. So, I will assemble the five subrectangles (well, four, since one consists of a single piece), and then assemble the final square.<br /><br />This will make this square easy to sew, but I think it sort of violates the spirit of the quilt. Therefore, this is the only square that is set up like this. None of the other squares (typing pauses while the blogger listens to a barred owl!) have lines that completely cross from one side of the square to the other.<br /><br />So, now the pieces are cut out, and all I have to is put them together!Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-31548055619483569242009-05-06T08:56:00.001-07:002009-05-06T08:56:50.638-07:00Gathering problem solved!This morning, before I left for work, I glanced at my dining room table, where my sewing machine and cloth have been sitting for a couple of days. I noticed a couple of pieces of cloth I had sewn together a few days ago. The seam did not show the gathering problem I've been wrestling with recently. So, it's not something wrong with the machine. It's something that changed recently. I took a closer look at how the machine was threaded. I noticed that the piece the thread is supposed to go around to change directions from the spool to go down to the needle had a fairly fancy shape. And I noticed that the thread wasn't going around any of the fancily shaped parts of that device. I looked closer and saw that the thread was going through a couple of pieces on that device that squeezed the thread a bit, causing the overtension problem. I read the directions, put the thread where it was supposed to be, and sewed another seam. No gathering!Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-53481971843288880532009-05-03T08:48:00.000-07:002009-05-03T08:53:40.272-07:00The gathering continuesI tried again last night with the little practice piece. First, I put a piece of masking tape on the sewing machine to mark 1/4-inch seam width. Then, I sewed together the two 3 1/2-inch squares. Marking the width helped; the seam was nice and straight. However, the width of the piece along the seam changed to 3 1/4 inches. The machine's tension setting is set to "auto". I'll try playing with that. If it can't be resolved, I may have to have the machine examined by a professional repair person.Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-39551987377672087892009-05-01T18:13:00.000-07:002009-05-01T18:48:09.958-07:00The history of the ideaI suppose a bit of background information might be good.<br /><br />When I was a teenager, I had a book titled "Martin Gardner's Second Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions". The only thing I remember from that book was an article that describe the efforts of a couple of mathematicians to find a square that can be constructed from smaller squares, no two of which are the same size, or to prove that such squares are impossible. Near the end of the article, it said that when one of them found a perfect square, he went into the other's office and said "I have a perfect square!" The other replied, "So do I!"<br /><br />Move forward a few decades. My sister became an avid and highly skilled quilter, and my wife has done a bit. Every year, there's a quilt show at a park near our house. My sister usually comes in to see them, and sometimes has a quilt in the show. I always enjoy going with her and my wife to see them. Two years ago, while looking at some of the more strictly geometrical quilts, I suddenly thought that it would be fun to do a quilt based on a perfect square. I started designing one, but didn't get very far. This year, I was inspired again. This time, I kept going. <br /><br />As much as possible, the quilt will be a perfect square of perfect squares. The main squares will be different colors, red, blue, green or yellow. Each main square will be made of four fabrics that are predominately shades of the main square's color, pale, not so pale, pretty dark, and dark. The main squares will be separated by black lines. I'll probably use half-inch bias tape for that, although I thought of using some kind of soft rope to add a bit of a third dimension.<br /><br />The main section of the quilt will be seven feet square, and the border will be solid black and four inches wide. <br /><br />Of course, it won't be possible for every main square to be a perfect square. The smallest main square will be two inches on a side. I decided that the smallest square I would work with would be 3/4 of an inch. As the main squares got smaller, I had to remove the unworkable subsquares and stretch some of the other subsquares into subrectangles to compensate.<br /><br />The largest subsquare will be about 17 inches on a side. I'm not sure what I will do for these big squares. I suppose I'll try to find printed fabric that will be interesting enough to be used in such a big piece, but I may try to make them traditional quilt squares. <br /><br />When I was in school, I would sometimes doodle by drawing shapes that were roughly similar to paisley shapes. They would have more points, usually two to four, connected by random curves. I'd draw one shape, and then another that roughly fit the curves of the first, and so on until the paper was covered. I'm envisioning doing that for the quilting of this quilt. The strict straight lines of the design would be counteracted by the freeform, random curves of the quilting.Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915805595808228645.post-63204728572624226162009-04-30T19:10:00.000-07:002009-04-30T19:15:47.099-07:00Practice session 1I tried piecing together three pieces, two 3 1/2-inch squares and a 3 1/2-inch by 6 1/2-inch rectangle. In my first effort a couple of weeks ago, I measured and drew both the cut lines and the sew lines in pencil. It wasn't too bad. The resulting square should have measured exactly 6 1/2 inches on a side. A couple of sides measured 6 3/8 and another measured 6 9/16. <br /><br />Tonight, I tried again. I found a quilting foot for the sewing machine that supposedly guaranteed the right side to be 1/4-inch away from the needle. I didn't mark my pieces of cloth, instead relying on that. I think I got 5/16th-inch seams. My sewn pieces were too short. Also, when I sewed the 6-inch seam, the fabric gathered together. I don't know why.<br /><br />Oh, well. That's what practice cloth is for.Rob Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16392051826623757851noreply@blogger.com0