Unquilting

Sigh… Big sigh.

Last week I was all excited because I gave myself a day to quilt. It’s been a stressful few months and I needed a day to myself. I also needed a quilt finish or two in order to clear my brain. So I booked a day on the long arm, got a few quilts all prepped, and went in to My Sewing Room to hang out with Emily, who runs the long arm department there. She helped me load my first quilt and thread the machine - the two tasks I always forget how to do. Otherwise I feel pretty comfortable on the long arm. I started up and went along merrily.

Yes, I checked my tension - once - at the very beginning. Admittedly, it was hard to see as it was yellow thread on a yellow part of the backing, but it looked okay. And so I rambled on. Nothing fancy with my quilting, just loops and stars all over. I was listening to some upbeat dance music and in my groove. Emily was doing her thing and left me as I felt more than confident.

Overconfident.

About halfway through I noticed that the tension was off on the stitching. I saw the blue fabric of the background as it wound around the bars and I could see my tension was off. I made some adjustments on the computer of the long arm and continued. Folks, it did not get better. Finally, I conceded to my mistake and called Emily over. I should have stopped there but I decided to proceed, after she made more adjustments. Bad move. Long story medium, we never fixed the problem. I pulled the finished quilt off the frame and set it aside. Maybe it will get fixed with a wash? I foolishly thought to myself.

Emily tinkered with the machine - the bobbin casing was a bit off - and we loaded the second quilt. This time I pulled out an extra bit of fabric and tested the tension before I touched needle to my quilt. Much better! I proceeded to quilt the second quilt without any problem and in the course of those few hours accepted what I needed to do on the first quilt. While waiting for me to finish Emily graciously started the job of ripping stitches for me.

It’s been a long time since I made a mistake like this. I don’t blame Emily, even though I was renting and she was technically supervising me. I know enough, and made that clear when starting that I should have caught this myself. It would be easy to get really frustrated and beat myself up. Or I could get angry and blame Emily too. Neither action is going to help. The only thing to do is let out that big sigh, find your favourite seam ripper, and sit down to rip. It’s just a mistake on a quilt, it isn’t life threatening or even life changing.

Ripping stitches when the tension is loose on one side is actually quite easy, just very time consuming. This quilt measures over 60” square and I have a tendency to quilt things to death, so there was a lot of ripping to do. Thankfully, my son and I have been rewatching Ted Lasso so I sat with him and ripped, and ripped. He would fiddle with the pile of thread that grew with each episode. Therapeutic for both of us in many ways. It took me the entire third season and almost all of the Netflix series One Day to finish ripping. I only put one hole in the backing so that will be an easy fix.

It was all just a mistake, it happens. I know many of us would get ourselves quite worked up over this. Maybe call ourselves a few names? Cast blame and shame? Perfectionism is a nasty beast. Of course we want to improve, not feel like we are wasting time, and get things finished. That’s normal and understandable. But making ourselves feel bad over quilting? Totally uncalled for and unnecessary. Shit happens. Acknowledge it, clean it up, and move forward.

Time to rebook in to the longarm. This time I will remember to bring an extra piece of fabric for testing tension. I will also not be so cocky and use the resources there (Emily) to make sure I am doing things right.

Much Needed Play with Ravel by e bond

Before there was such a thing as an influencer we had celebrity endorsements. When real people started to become more popular through blogs we simply called them bloggers. As a quilt blogger it was quite common to receive or at least be offered fabric. The catch being, of course, that you would make something to promote the fabric. Ideally, you would do that to coincide with either fabric purchasing for stores or the launch itself in stores.

Many times I was offered fabric. The first few times you get super excited and jump at the chance. Free fabric and exposure?! Sign me up. Then we realized that we were giving away free labour and not really getting paid by the fabric companies to use us as promotion. Not really a fair deal for the time invested. On top of that I was positively AWFUL at actually making something with all the shared fabric in a reasonable time frame. I was, frankly, a crappy promotional partner. So working with me to promote a fabric line was a bad deal for both parties.

On top of all that, I always found it very difficult to work with a single fabric collection. It felt stifling, creatively, and was always a challenge because of one common issue with fabric collections: the majority of the fabrics are the same value. This means it is hard to get contrast in your designs. As a result, many designs made with a single fabric collection, without the addition of other fabrics or neutrals, can fall flat.

So, no matter how much I’ve loved a collection, I rarely buy a single line of fabric. Instead, I pick favourites or the most interesting or simply what I need at the time.

I could not resist, however, when I saw e bond’s Ravel collection. I love everything about it! The colour, the text, the graphic nature, the graffiti... and while I've never met e, her online presence is inspiring and real. I've had it for a couple of months and just started playing with it. Not only did I buy the whole collection, I'm using it all together. Who am I?

Yes, a good chunk of the fabric falls in the same value family, but there are enough contrasts with the lights and the darks as well as the texture of the prints that things seem to be working so far. I couldn’t resist though, I did add in a few solids for fun and respite.

I have no real plan for the quilt. I’m just playing. Life has been quite heavy of late and none of my current projects were giving me the joy I needed from my quilting. I’d sat with the fabrics and obsessed over coming up with something just right. That was taking all fun out of it so I decided to just grab some fabric and cut. I defaulted to my comfort of improv curves, primarily, but other things come up here and there and I let them happen.

Normally, when I make an improv quilt that is block based, I make all the blocks and then figure out a layout. This time around I am enjoying adding and subtracting and playing with composition as I go. Not so much planning each block as an individual unit, but seeing how a few blocks might talk to each other. A conversation. As it grows I am really embracing the chaos it brings. It’s a wild thing. In a way, it reminds me of a spot under a bridge with layers of graffiti marking the lives of people who’ve been there.

Wildfire Quilt

It’s scary to think that wildfire season started here in February. February, when it is supposed to be cold and dark and snowy. February, when we are cocooning and only dreaming of summer days and the dappled light of the forest. Not this year. Wildfire season already started and, indeed, zombies fires from last year still burning.

This quilt started life as a fun experiment and sample for a Cut, Sew, Repeat Playcation. I used it as a sample in the class then had fun continuing the play. The entire time I played and sewed I saw it vertically and just about the interactions of the colours. Then, the night I was basting it, I saw it horizontal and only saw the wildfire influence. Then I couldn’t unsee it. So I ran with it, adding quilting to accentuate that design aspect.

For the quilting I used a coordinating thread for each band of colour. It was a mix of Wonderfil and Aurifil 50 weight cotton threads - whatever colour I had around that worked well. In each section I changed my free motion design. The orange, obviously, had flames. The green was a triangle meander that I’ve used once before. I don’t know what you would call the blue section, it’s some kind of hatch but not really. The purple was a wavy meander for the sky/smoke. Breaking it down like this not only made it manageable from a working perspective, but really accentuated the overall design.

Binding the quilt was straightforward. My usual high contrast binding was not going to work here so I went with a charcoal grey. I want to say it is symbolic because of soot and ashes, but really it is about picking a neutral to frame but not take away from the quilt. Black was too dark, too sharp. The grey was perfect.

Most of us here are worried about what the coming months will bring for fires. We did not nearly have enough snow cover and cold temperatures to give our forests and grasslands a proper break. We can hope for a wet spring, but that brings its own challenges. With a kid with asthma that definitely gets triggered by poor air quality, wildfire season takes on another meaning too.

In my previous career I worked on the climate change file. I started there over 25 years ago, working to convince a lot of people that we needed to act, acting in industry where we caused a part of the problem. I had to leave because it got so disheartening, if I am being honest. While I am glad that I no longer have to define or explain climate change, if that had happened 25 years ago we might be in a different place.

Working Title for This Quilt: Happy Scraps

Barbie Pink became a trend right when I needed it. Hot pink is always a dopamine hit for me. I will seek out the colour on a down day, fixate on things in this delicious hue until I feel myself smile.

This particular quilt started as a mess on the flower. More than a decade ago my son was playing at my feet as I wrote. He pulled down the coloured scrap bins and had a grand time throwing fabric around. He was happy and I was sewing so it was a win win situation. When it was all over I had a mess of pink, orange, yellow, and a grey scraps all over the floor. Clean up got a lot more fun when I simply started sewing. That’s right, I grabbed two pieces from the floor, sewed them together, and repeat until all the pieces were picked up. A much more enjoyable way of cleaning up! A little while later I had a small quilt top.

Then it sat. And sat.

Last year, as I finally felt healthy after a years long depression, I embraced all the pink in the world. This quilt, then, came to mind. The top I made more than a decade ago was a small, awkward size. I generally don’t worry too much about size, but I wanted this joyous one to be big enough to snuggle with myself. Luckily, I never have a shortage of scraps. I simply sewed pieces together, making slabs to ‘border’ the original top. I assembled them log cabin style around the original in the hopes that it would blend more.

It gave me such joy to finish piecing her, to play with this colourful fabric. There are some treasures in here, some long time and recent favourites playing together. I will never not smile looking at this quilt top.