Posts tagged: Fabric: Linen

Mustang Summing

Two things burrowed their way into my subconscious during six months of not quilting this year: all the plus quilts floating around blogland / Pinterest and the new kids on the fabric block, Cotton+Steel. It shouldn’t surprise me that I brought home a fat quarter pack from the local quilt shop comprising prints from Cotton+Steel (and coordinating solids, a coordinating Cloud9 print), nor that my brain immediately thought “plus quilt”! Add in a yard of Olive Essex Yarn Dyed linen/cotton blend, et voilà: Mustang Summing.

“Mustang Summing”, Rachael Arnold, October 2014, 48″x56″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

I sketched out the layout in Illustrator, aiming for something in the 50″ range on each side, moving things around until I was happy. The arrangement that looked right used 4.5″ unfinished squares, making the quilt 48″x56″. In hindsight, I could have used 5″ squares with the fabric I had, but I have a serious problem about miscalculating the number of squares from fat quarters.

Mustang Summing front — “Mustang Summing”, Rachael Arnold, October 2014, 48″x56″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

In software engineering, we say that good programmers are lazy programmers—good code doesn’t have tedious, repetitive sections because we generalize things to save typing, and automate anything we can. In quilting, I often think the adage is inverse—a good quilter is masochistic and likes using as many small pieces as possible in repetitive ways. More often than not, the engineer in me wins out. I used two 4.5″ squares and a 12.5″ rectangle for each plus rather than make them entirely from squares (except for the three that I cut wrong, which are five squares). Less cutting and less seaming makes piecing more efficient. If only I could automate the cutting with technology I have at home.

I love the warm brown/olive tone in the Essex Yarn Dyed (and how it blends into a warm gray from a distance), and let that guide my choice of quilting threads—a heavyweight russet Gutermann poly thread. I kept the quilting simple, echoing the seams, with Nature’s Touch White batting in the middle.

Mustang Summing back — “Mustang Summing” (back), Rachael Arnold, October 2014, 48″x56″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

It took a while to solve the problem of backing and binding. The first backing yardage I purchased was too cool, the scraps from the top too few, and nothing in my stash inspired me. I finally settled on another yard dyed linen, mixed with a column of strips leftover from the top. I settled on a plain blue solid (Kona Nightfall) from the stash to bind it.

Mustang Summing label — “Mustang Summing” (back detail), Rachael Arnold, October 2014, 48″x56″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

With this finish, I’ve completed more quilts this year than I did in 2013, despite not quilting for six months. Things go so much more quickly when I actually complete everything I start! As of now, the only unfinished project I’ve started this year is a corset that I spent a few hours on back in May. Not too shabby.

“Mustang Sally” was stuck in my head the entire time I worked on this quilt. Thus the name, if you can make the same mental leap I seemed to do.

A Guild and a Potholder (or Three)

Posted in Crafting

A group of us are starting a Modern Quilt Guild here in Vermont. It’s very exciting, but also a bit drudging trying to get everything set up and official and to get the ball rolling with actual guild-type stuff rather than being all about business, business, business, and “do we want to be MQG-official?”, et cetera.

At our September meeting, we had our first demo, potholders based on the ones in Zakka Style—a great demo idea, since it shows all the steps of quilting in one small package. To encourage members to try out the skills and techniques, we’re charged with bringing a completed potholder of any type to the next meeting.

Bee Potholders #UrbanThreads — Bee Potholders, Rachael Arnold, October 2014.

I thought I should tackle two to-do items at once and get a head start on xmas gifts, so I made a matching set for a friend. I’ve been saving a charm pack of BasicGrey Origins for almost three years now, purchased with this friend in mind. I paired it with stashed ivory linen, a brown texture print from JoAnn Fabrics (I had nothing in my stash that matched the linen and charms. Amazing!), and an embroidery from Urban Threads.

After I finished, I remembered that we said we’d do a swap at the meeting, so I made a third for that (a great time to incorporate what I learned from earlier mistakes!).

That time around, I cut the binding as a 2.5″ strip instead of the 3″ that I used for the other two, since I wasn’t entirely happy with the width. Next time, I know to use 2.75″; 2.5″ is slightly too narrow for me to machine finish cleanly.

I pieced the 2.5″ hexies by machine (not perfect, but nothing a liberal amount of steam couldn’t handle), and turned them into a pouch for better gripping (making the pretty side the won’t-get-shoved-into-food-accidentally side, which makes the ivory far more practical). All three are 8.5″ square, with a layer of Insul-Bright and low-loft cotton batting between. I do wish I’d remembered to add a hanging loop to my friend’s, and am not entirely happy with the contrast quilting on the back (which makes the un-quilted, embroidered area even more obvious).

As for the guild, join us the last Sunday of every month, 10am-noon, at Nido in Burlington!

Reproduction Sky

Posted in Quilting

When I purchased a charm pack of Metropolitan Fair by Barbara Brackman this summer, I knew it needed to be paired with linen, but the proper pattern eluded me for months. Then, though I am not a trendy sort, I couldn’t help but being inspired by the recent flock of flying geese quilts showing up on Flickr, Pinterest, and in my RSS reader. Reproduction Sky was born.

“Reproduction Sky”, Rachael Arnold, finished December 2013, 60″×70″.

I turned 39 of the 42 charms into 168 flying geese (the remaining charms and a few unused geese are on the back), paired it with one light linen/rayon blend, a darker 100% linen, and just a bit of a FQ from Old Sturbridge Village that has been in my stash for a while.

Reproduction Sky (detail) — “Reproduction Sky” detail, Rachael Arnold, finished December 2013, 60″×70″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

I think it took longer to cut and trim those flying geese than it did to sew the entire quilt top together.

Among other imperfections, I didn’t baste the back on perfectly straight, so the piecing of it is a little skewed when compared to the vertical quilting from the front, but it’s not too bad. I had just shy of three yards of this Etchings print in stash, as well as the green vines, which made for quick piecing of the back.

Reproduction Sky (back) — “Reproduction Sky” (back), Rachael Arnold, finished December 2013, 60″×70″.

Nature’s Touch batting gives it a nice drape. The quilting is a mix of 40wt Gütermann thread and a 28wt hand-dyed white to beige variegated thread I picked up at a local quilt show. The latter was used to echo the seam lines of the geese columns and continue that grid to the edges, while the lighter-weight thread was perfect for a few more lines in between the others and stitching in some ditches.

This one isn’t staying around the house for long, as it’s intended as a Christmas present for some friends of ours. I do look forward to cuddling under it while I finish up the binding. I cheated in the photos by using Steam-a-Seam to fuse the binding to the back. Not only does it clean up the binding for photos, but it holds it in place perfectly when I hand sew it down. With 6″ of snow on the ground and more forecasted, sewing binding while sitting under a warm quilt sounds lovely!