adnohr blog

Possibilities?

Playing around with possible color layouts. Not sure if I’ll do this block or not.

Friendship Supernova

I don’t know, sounds like a good name for this block, right?  It’s like an exploded Friendship Star.

May is my month for the Seams Perfect -  A Modern Scrap Bee and it really snuck up on me.  I had been mulling around a bunch of different blocks when I saw this one on Saturday.  It was in a photo album on a Yahoo group and the woman who made the quilt said it was made out of jelly rolls.  I really liked the layout but a quick look told me it was a 7-grid block, and 7x jelly roll (2 inches finished) would make a 14 inch block.  So, I opened up EQ7 and drafted it out and they came out to 2-1/4 inch strips for this block.  That’s all fine and dandy, but that means all the other measurements are a little odd too.

But don’t panic, I’ve laid out the whole thing and if I can do it without making a mess, you can too. 

Here’s how you make it. 

You need three prints and one solid.

• Cut a WOF x 2-1/4 inch strip of Color A (Blue)
• Cut a WOF x 2-1/4 inch strip of Color B (Green)
• Cut a 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 inch square of Color C (Purple)
• Cut a 16 x 2-1/4 inch strip of solid (White)
• and an 18 x 2-5/8 inch strip of solid (White)

Cut the fabrics into these pieces:

• Sub-cut Color A into 4 strips 5-5/8 inches long, and 4 strips 3-7/8 inch long. 
• Sub cut the 2-1/4 inch solid strip into 4 strips 3-7/8 inch long. 
• Sub cut the  2-5/8 inch solid strip into 6 squares, 2-5/8 x 2-5/8. 

With Color B, you need to cut 45 degree angles, so use a ruler with a 45 degree angle line on it. 

Cut the strip in half, and stack both strips right side up on top of each other.  If you don’t do this, half of your pieces will be going the wrong way. 

Measure 4-1/4 inch from the right side and mark it on the bottom of the strip. 

Line up the 45 degree line along the bottom edge of the strip, and cut along the side of the ruler to the top of the strip. That makes 2 chisel shapes. 

Next, measure 4-1/8 from the bottom where you just cut, line up the 45 degree angle again, and cut. 

That makes 2 parallelograms.

Repeat with 2 more paralellograms, then measure 4-1/4 inches from the cut line along the top of the strip, and cut straight down to create 2 more chisel shapes. 

You can discard the remaining Color B. 

Sub-cut the 6 solid squares in half on the diagonal to create 12 Half-Square Triangles.

The remaining pieces are all rectangles as described above, so I didn’t photograph them.

Assembly

Lay the triangles on the chisels as shown.  You should have a dog ear on the short side of the chisel.

With the parallelograms, lay the triangles the same way – with the edge and hypotenuse aligned, and a dog ear on the opposite side. 

Sew with a 1/4 inch seam allowance.  If you start at the point, you should cross the dog ear.  Hopefully you should be able to see what I mean in the photo. 

Press toward the color on both the chisels and the parallelograms. 

Cut off your dog ears for easier sewing to the next pieces. 

Lay out your shapes to get your bearings.

 

Lay the solid on the chisel piece, and sew along the long side of the chisel. 

Press towards the darker color.  Keep building out, log cabin style, pressing towards the color. 

 

 

Sew each of the four corner quadrants and lay it all out again to get your bearings. 

Sew the horizontal parallelograms to the quadrants below them.  

Sew the center square to the parallelogram below it.

 

Sew the center/parallelogram to the corner quadrant on the right.

Press open and sew the left corner quadrant to the center/parallelogram. 

You can see above that my piecing wasn’t perfect. If you need to square up the corner quadrants, they should measure 5-5/8 inches square, which is the length of the longer Color A piece. 

That looks much better after I trimmed of that piece.

Join the top two corner quadrants to the remaining parallelogram piece in the center.

Join the top and bottom pieces together.

Ta da!

Pretty close to 12-1/2 inches square!

Don’t freak if yours doesn’t come out perfect, I’ll put sashing between the blocks so there’s room for error.  I’m actually amazed mine worked out so well!

Christmas making 2010 – Part 1 – La La

 

Since my layoff in October, I’ve been working on Christmas gifts for my daughter and her cousins.  This post is a roundup of what I made for La La. 

Since turning two this year, I’ve noticed, and her teachers at day care have also observed that she’s been enjoying being a little mommy to her baby dolls. Her teacher has sent photos of her giving her baby a bath with the other kids and here she is way back in March helping her baby to go to sleep. 

 

At home too, I’ve observed her putting her babies in my shoes like little cradles, putting her babies to sleep on pillows and patting them to sleep, and leaving the room with the white noise machine on and some music so they will fall asleep easily.  (This is her routine, white noise and nature sounds, although recently she switched to music instead). 

 

She then tells daddy and me to be quiet so her babies can sleep. Yia Yia gave her a bottle for the baby she gave her last Christmas, and she plays with that a lot too. 

Since she has been such the little mommy, I thought I’d give her some tools to help in her play. 

I found this great tutorial for making all kinds of pretend-play toys and this set was perfect:  a diaper bag, wipes, and diapers, sized for the baby doll she got for Christmas last year from Yia Yia.  I actually didn’t make the diapers exactly the same, but used her pattern as a guide for cutting the fabric.  I also didn’t make her doll bassinet and changing pad, because I already had a bassinet of my own in the works and I also made a quilt for the doll, and I didn’t want to go crazy with all the other stuff I was making. 

So, here’s the diaper bag.

And the wipes.  So clever, you can fold them so they pop up!  I used blue felt because all of our wipes come from Costco and come in blue packages, so it’s more realistic.

Here’s the quilt.  It looks like I pieced the whole thing, but it was actually a cheater with space between the 2.5" squares.  I had bought the fabric thinking it would be perfect for 1" hexagons, but I used a little bit for this quilt.  I used the method described here, but of course without the interfacing. 

Here’s the bassinet.  I started this back in July.  It’s all hand stitched and hand quilted.  I had to figure out how to make it curve at the ends, which I did by using hexagons, pentagons and diamonds.  It’s lined with white cotton over a piece of batting I got in a sampler at the quilt festival over the summer. 

I really learned a lot while doing the hand quilting – though mainly I learned that it’s a slow process and you really can make better progress when you have the right tools.  I broke one embroidery hoop before I ended up buying a quilting hoop, and tried several different needles before settling on the smallest ones I could find, size 12. 

In addition to that stuff, the mom of one of her cousins asked for new clothes for the dolls I made them last Christmas because they really enjoy playing with the dolls.  So I made clothes for all the dolls, including La La’s. 

I made this top and skirt with fabric that has all these "T" words, describing two year olds.  I only have a year to use the fabric, so now’s the time. 

 

I also used that fabric to bind her quilt, since it matched the purple nicely.

I made this t-shirt, and a jumper out of corduroy.  I haven’t really sewn with knits before, and discovered that the right tools make all the difference again – mainly the right needle for knits really helped. 

Next up is a pair of pajamas made of flannel, with coordinating cuffs.

 

Also, I forgot to photograph them, but I made her baby some new shoes out of vinyl, so they look like brown leather shoes. 

Over all, I think La La really liked everything, but the things I see her playing with most are the wipes and the bassinet, which she seems to think is a changing pad.  That’s ok, as long as she has fun playing with it, that’s all that matters to me. 

She got the same baby this year from her Grammy, and was very excited to have two of the same baby – "Sisters!" she said.  So now she has two diapers to change whenever one of them ‘poops’ as she likes to tell me. 

More on the hexies

So, I mentioned that I got sucked into the hexagon thing.

Really, I’m loving it so far, and have just started hand quilting the hexies in the doll bed I’m making for my daughter with the .75 in hexagons.  Figuring out the hand quilting has been a trip though.

They (hand quilters) have this magic rocking thing they do to make perfect stitches.  Me, not so perfect.

I tried it, and realized quick that I needed a thimble so went back to the store for a couple of different types and settled on a nice clover coin thimble.  It’s mostly working well, except that first stitch in a set is a doozy.

I did a search on youtube to find some examples of hand quilting in action, just so I could get the rhythm.  What I found was so much fun!  At first there were just a few videos of old women chatting and not very closeup videos of their hands.  Few more clicks, and a little better, then I found this woman’s vlog.  From what I can tell, she’s an 80ish year old woman who is just finishing up a quilt that she started with the leftovers from her 6 previous quilts, something that she has done 3 times before.  And not a little throw either, but a huge at least queen size.  And she set it up on her frame and hand quilted the whole thing.   All the while videoing herself, editing them quite nicely and adding music etc.  (She probably has a mac!)  And what an interesting woman!  I’ve subscribed to her stream and plan to go back and find out more about her.  I hope I’m as witty and insightful when I’m her age.

Anyway, I’ve backed my hexie quilt with some white Kona muslin and am working my way around the thing and maybe it will be done for Christmas.  La La has seen it, so its not a surprise, but she doesn’t know what it is.

Meanwhile, I’ve been laid off from my job (outsourced, really) so I’ve been working on Christmas presents for the kids.  Y and M’s mom mentioned that the dolls I made for them last year are still very  much played with, and that the kids would love some more clothes.  So that’s what I’m making – lots of clothes.  A & B’s mom gave me some hints too, so they are also getting more clothes, but someone might be getting an American Girl doll from Santa, so really instead of 5 dolls’ worth of clothes, I’m making 6.  A’s clothes will be half for the new doll and half for the old.  Maybe a couple of matching outfits for both, if I can hack it.  So far, I’ve made some pretty adorable flannel jammies, a purple outfit for one doll, 2 pair of overalls for the boy dolls, and one pair of jeans.  Next up will be some t-shirts, which should be interesting, since I’ve not really sewn knits before, at least not successfully!  But since I knew that, I bought plenty of extra yardage of the knits, just in case.  I don’t think I’ll have to wait til after Christmas to post photos, but I haven’t taken any yet.  I don’t think the kids read my blog yet ;-/

When I have a few completed outfits, I’ll post.  Sadly, I don’t have an AG doll to try out those outfits, so I’ll only be able to have a model for the Wee Wonderfuls dolls.

Freezer Paper

I happened upon this yesterday and with perfect timing.

The Train To Crazy: Using Freezer Paper to cut out patterns {a tutorial}.

With Christmas coming, and my unemployment coming in less than 3 weeks, I’ve been thinking about what I can do to make a homemade xmas again this year.

Last year I made the wonderful Wee Wonderfuls dolls for my daughter and the cousins.  This year, the 5 yo girl cousin is in need of some clothes for that doll, and her Groovy Girls and maybe something coming from Santa that is about 18″ tall (wink), and I’ve got plenty of interesting fabric so I know I can make a nice good bunch of outfits.  Maybe matching for all three dolls?

Anyway, I’ve got one sewing pattern already, and was thinking about it over the weekend.  Last night I saw Andrea’s posting in my google reader and thought, “hmm, interesting idea, but I never use patterns”.  Um.  Yeah.

So, I had a good night’s sleep last night, La La didn’t wake up before the alarm, which is always a good thing, so I guess my brain was able to make the connection that I missed when reading it last night.

I got the little lamp out of La La’s room and took the shade off and placed it under the coffee table. I opened up the pattern and got out my roll of freezer paper and a pen that I like and started tracing.

And quickly realized this was not going to work for me.   I was not comfortable all hunched over, there was too much detail on the pattern piece and I haven’t used a commercial pattern in so long, I wasn’t sure what was important.   But then I had an idea!

I’m a gadget girl, so I’ll use my gadgets!  I cut up my freezer paper into 8-1/2 x 11″ sheets, took the curl out with an iron, and then photocopied the pattern pieces onto the freezer paper.

Genius!

Don’t you love the internet??

A crafty day

Do you watch Top Chef?  If you do, you know that they always get busted on deserts, and use the excuse “but I’m not a pastry chef”.

I am like some of the contestants, in that I cook, but I don’t bake.  For one, I’d probably be 100 lbs. heavier if I baked, but really, it’s because there is a precision in the chemistry of baking.  You have to measure, there are ratios of things (see, I don’t even know what things), and you have to know the chemistry of baking.  The way I cook, I might read through a recipe, but I rarely follow it, even the first time through.  I might not have all the ingredients, or it might call for cumin, which I don’t like, or there might not be enough garlic, so I improvise based on the idea of the original.

And sometimes, there isn’t even a recipe.  I might see something on TV and say, that sounds good, and then I’ll make my own version that might taste nothing like the TV version.  The problem with that, of course, is that nothing is measured or recorded, so if you come up with something really good, you can’t reproduce it.  :(

In knitting, I pretty much do the same thing, although I do follow patterns for the most part, but once I’ve made something, I don’t follow the pattern much if I make it again.  Or even the first time, sometimes!  And if I am counting stitches and come up short, I’ll just M1 and get it balanced and move on.

I’m starting to think sewing is more like a pastry chef than a sous chef -type pursuit, and I really need to work on that.  Not necessarily in following a pattern, but in measuring, balancing, etc.

But anyway, here’s a case of the saw it on TV but didn’t write anything down, didn’t buy the pattern, didn’t measure, just winged it.   I’m new to quilting, but I can work my DVR, so I have been recording shows like Quilt in a Day and Fons and Porter.  On the latter, there was an episode where they made a bag out of pre-quilted fabric.  I looked on their web site to see if the pattern was available, but it wasn’t.  So, I just watched the episode again, and then I winged it.

Here’s the result:

Now, those of you who are pastry chefs will be all itchy over the crazy wobbly looking pockets, but I just pinned the pockets on and started sewing.  I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s functional!

The inside has a divider, which is just a folded piece of fabric sewn into the side seams.  I thought that might help it be more stable when the ironing pad or mat is removed.  I have no idea if that will work, but I’ll get to test it out next weekend at the LAMQG weekend sew.

Since I used Amy Butler Love quilted fabric, I decided to link into the Sew & Tell and Amy Butler challenge on Amylouwho’s blog.  I guess I’ll have to wait for next week though, as I’m late for this week. I’m linked up now.  Go take a look and see what other Amy Butler goodness is being made. 

The other project is more of the ‘read the recipe, didn’t follow it’ type.

Over here, there’s a great tutorial on creating fabric baskets.   And I read it, but I wanted a longer basket for storing my large fabric scraps, and thought I might make a few and line them up all neat on my IKEA Billy bookcase, out of reach of my toddler.

So I decided to make my fabric 22 x 16, and cut out 5″ squares, so I’d have some charm squares out of the deal instead of wasting that fabric.  And I didn’t have the type of interfacing that she had, I had a much stiffer Pellon (70 maybe?).

So, with this wicked stiff pellon, it wasn’t that easy to sew around those really bulky corners.  I was wrestling and wrestling with it, and mumbling to myself that what the heck is free about a free arm when you can’t even wrangle the thing around the thing when I thought of the solution.  Hang the end of the machine off the table, and no more wrestling!

Here it is stuffed with the leftovers from La La’s quilt, plus the fabrics I’m planning to use for an Xmas tree quilt.

I wrapped the fabrics around my 4 1/2 inch square-up ruler, and they fit perfectly in the box.

I like the nice sharp corners.

It’s not as wobbly as it looks, it’s just full.

So that leads me to an ethical question.  When someone puts up a tutorial or a pattern and you use it for inspiration, I think it’s widely accepted that it’s OK to mention the inspiration and make your modifications and move on.  Sort of like open source software.  That’s what I plan to do with the green fabrics.  I plan to make a wall hanging inspired by the one posted on PurlBee last year.

But what if you are inspired by something that’s not a tutorial or free pattern, but is just a photo of a completed work or a pattern for sale?  Is that fair game in the same way?  What about software.  If you found a program online that does some cool stuff that you never thought of doing before, but instead of buying it, you write your own code to do the same thing.  Now that you have the idea, is that OK?   What if you don’t try to sell or give away the resulting software, but just use it yourself?

The cult of the hexagon

I’m done with the flat part of my hexagon doll bed fabric, and now I have to figure out how to get nice curves on the ends to make sort of a boat shape.

I’m going to try some pentagons joined to the hexagons.  I think it will be a gentle enough curve to be perfect for what I need.  I’m going to play in white for now to see how it goes and if it works, I’ll decide whether to just join the white to my fabric or to make more in the scrappy fabric I’m already using.  I’m having fun with this!

I’m already thinking about my next project.

I have a friend with a Cricut.  I have Adobe Illustrator (but Visio will also work).  I created an .svg file of hexagons and sent it to my friend, then I brought her a new pack of blades and a stack of cardstock.  About 30 pages, with 28 hexagons per page.  That’s over 800 hexagons, for the cost of a trip to JoAnn’s for some blades.

Hey Ya!

I got some charm squares to be a little less scrappy this go-around.   Cut in 4, they are perfect for 1″ hexies.

Some solids too.  Not sure if I’m going to use them for this project or not, but I have time to decide.

La La’s Birthday Quilt

So, a few months ago, I ordered this great stack of fabric from PurlSoho, which is local to me, even though the actual store is in NYC.  If you want to see more of the fabric, it’s page is here on the freespirit site.

I also ordered this pattern from Carolina Patchworks.  It only calls for five fabrics (for the piecing).  I had 16.

I also have EQ7.

So, I loaded up the fabric images from the FreeSpirit site and laid it out so I could get a good balance of color.  The scale is completely off and I didn’t bother to figure that out, I just wanted to get a harmonious layout, and I think I achieved that.

I chose a fun polka dot binding that went well with the other colors on the fabric.   I found a shot cotton for the sashing – I think it’s Kaffe Fassett’s ‘Sprout’ color, but I forgot to check the label on that one.  Finally when we went on our field trip to Michael Levine, I found the backing – a turquoise Minky Dot.

It took me a while to find the right thread for the top and back, but I finally did find a good variegated top thread that went from orange to yellow to green.  And the bobbin thread was a perfect match for the minky, and I was on my way!

I basted the heck out of it because I’d heard that the Minky stretches a lot. I didn’t actually have trouble with it stretching, but it sort of gripped my quilting table and it was hard to work with. Luckilly for me, I was at the LAMQG weekend sew and the Quilt Engineer was there with all of her tools and gadgets.  She loaned me her SewSlip II, which is a silicon pad that you put around the plate and over the quilt table to make a continuous slick surface.  This particular one has a rectangular hole so that the feed dogs can stay up for using the walking foot.   It was like night and day!  She also let me try her June Tailor Shape Cut ruler, and clued me into this binding foot.

When I got home that night, I ordered the SewSlip II, a binding foot, a teflon foot, and a pintuck foot, because I hope I can finally make those last doll dresses where I got stuck on the pintucks.  Maybe.  I will probably buy the Shape Cut, because it took me about 3 minutes to cut my binding strips and they came out perfect.

I spent just over two days on the piecing and quilting, and a few hours on the basting and I am really happy with the result.

More importantly, La La loves it, and calls it her Muno blanket, because she has a Muno made of Minky Dot.  I think it looks more like Toodee though.

I put a label on the back that reads “For [La La] on her second birthday made with love by Mommy 2010″. I used printable fabric and my inkjet to print on the corner of a page, then sewed it into a corner of the binding. I even remembered to put it on before I sewed the binding! I did forget to attach it before I quilted it though.

I’ve been sucked into the cult of the hexagon and have been working away on a 3/4″ hexagon project that I hope will become a doll bed for La La.  When I started it was with some scraps that I got from a Japanese fabric shop, momen+. (They are on facebook, but don’t have their own website yet.)  I wanted to see how I like it, and I do, so next up will be a 1″ hexagon something, plus an 8″ hexagon throw.  I’ve used all the hexagons in the pack of 100 3/4″, and am still working out the geometry of making the flat surface into a moses-basket-shaped doll bed.  I think I might need some pentagons, so I might create those this weekend and try that out.

I give up

I’ve been using movable type for many years, but I give up. It’s so hard to manage when something goes wrong, and I’ve just decided to go with wordpress instead. I give up a few things that I wasn’t really using much anyway, so whatever. I did the upgrade while watching the 10 o’clock news, before sports started. Slightly easier, no?

So anyway, things might look less complete over the next while, as I make sure everything is migrated properly.  And until I find a theme I like or make myself one.

Purplicious Present

It was Ms. A’s fifth birthday this week, and we celebrated a week ago down in San Diego at a great park that had an amazing view of the area.

The theme of the party was Purplicious, which is a book that Ms. A is fond of. 

 

At least, that’s what it said on the invite.  When we got there it was more princess-y in theme, but still all purple. 

So, for a few weeks, I thought of what to make.  Since I knew purple was a must, I asked what Ms. A’s other favorite color was so that I could have another color to work with.  That was pink, which I had for the sashing, so that worked out well. 

Every few weeks, La La and I would go to the fabric store and pick out some purple fabric. La La would ask to pick out a purple each time we went, and I let her.  

I think she’ll be confused when she figures out that fabric is not called purple, but is called fabric. 

I found out that Ms. A still loves her doll that I made her for xmas, and had given the doll her own name.  I decided a quilt would be a fun gift for the doll, and felt Ms. A out with questions about whether her doll had a bed or not, or a pillow. 

 

I had a lot of fun coming up with the pattern for this.  Each square is 2″x2″, with a 1.5″ x 2″ purple piece in the center of each block.  It took me a while to figure out the dimensions with some graph paper.

 

I used a premade binding for the edge, and one of La La’s flannel receiving blankets for the batting.  (They shrink so much after the first washing that they aren’t much use after a couple of months anyway.)

 

 

Then I made the pillow and pillow case too.  I just love how cute they are!

 

Here’s the top.

 

 

And the bottom.  Ms. A likes guitars, so it worked for me. 

The label says:  For Ms. A on her purplicious fifth birthday (with a doodle of a cupcake) From me 2010.

Best news is, I got an MMS the next day from Ms. A’s dad showing the quilt under 2 of Ms. A’s new Barbies.  Pretty good deal, if she trusts her new Barbies with her new quilt. 

My next projects are a siggy quilt swap, which is 101 squares with my name and city on them, to be exchanged with 100 other people, to make a cool quilt and maybe some new friends in the world. 

The second is a quilt for La La, from a pattern I bought from Carolina Patchworks.  But, as I do, the pattern calls for five fabrics, but I’m going to use sixteen – at least one each from this fabric line. 

I’m really excited for both projects.