99% finished

Transformation is finished except for a trip through the washer and dryer. This is my disappearing four patch design made entirely with dragonfly fabrics. When I finished piecing the colored fabrics, the quilt was a little too small. I added more white all around, but unevenly so the D4Ps would "float" in the white.

This is my favorite block, with purple and black backgrounds for the dragonflies. 

I quilted it by doing stitch in the ditch along all the white/color junctions, which left the larger four patches of all white or all colors as a single, unquilted piece. That made a grid that sort of looked like a plaid background. Then I did a four-lobed design in each of the larger white squares.

I also quilted the lobed design into the white negative space borders, but only where solid white squares would have been had the colors continued. I think of these as "ghost blocks."

The backing fabric is this tone on tone green with tiny, subtle dragonflies and some pretty metallic accents. The blue, purple and green binding also has a bit of metallic sparkle.

I had some bad luck with this quilt. Can you see the dark spots in this photo? Those are sewing machine oil mixed with some sort of black crud. My walking foot was squeaking, so I oiled everything in the middle of quilting this. Unfortunately, it looks like I didn't get it all wiped up and it must have dripped along one quilting pass. I noticed the spots several days later. So far, they haven't responded very well to spot cleaning with Dawn dishwashing soap which is supposed to cut any kind of grease. I'll treat the spots with a heavy duty prewash stick before machine washing it. We're in water conservation mode right now on the boat, so it may be a week or so before I run the washing machine. I'll take more photos after that to show that the spots have (hopefully!) washed out, and to show the post-dryer crinkle. The lighting is lousy in these photos, so I'll try to shoot some glamour poses later.

Dragonflies are a symbol of transformation. This quilt is a gift for a friend who is certainly going through some big transformations in her life. She was diagnosed with the beginnings of dementia this year, and retired from her career.  I hope this quilt gives her comfort and a quilty hug from me. I know she will forgive the oil spots if they don't completely wash out, but cross your fingers that they will fly away!

Basting and quilting and cruising

Today I am working on quilting Transformation, my disappearing four patch quilt in dragonfly fabrics. The walking foot on the Juki is so much beefier than the one on the Kenmore. It tracks nicely in a straight line, too, although it does have a rather annoying squeak.

There's quite a bit of negative space along two sides of this quilt, thanks to a suggestion from Kat. I'm using blue painter's tape to guide the in-the-ditch stitching lines beyond the dragonflies.

The goal is to stitch NEXT to the tape, not ON the tape. Oops. I'll pick that out later.

I basted Transformation and Angular Jungle yesterday by laying each one out on our queen size bed. The backing fabric for the latter is yet another piece from Sue's gift: cute, tiny buttons in all the perfect bright colors. After smoothing the backing face down, I use pins to stretch the fabric tight. I poke the pins straight down into the mattress. Then I use 505 spray to stick all the layers together. I have basting pins, too, but typically only use them along the edges.

I also finished sewing the twelve blocks together for C's Canines. I thought about basting this puppy, too, but I really needed to tackle the pile of previous WIPs first. Angular Jungle and Transformation already had backings pieced and ready to go, and AJ even had its batting cut to size. I really don't like the basting process: it's hard on my back to lean over the bed, the basting spray is stinky and sticky, and wrangling batting is tricky in the small space. Fortunately, it goes fairly quickly and then I can get back to the jovial Juki!

We're seeing lots more fall color along the Tennessee River in just one short week. My camera can only capture the prettiness when we're quite close to shore, but my eyeballs are enjoying the view. In a boat that only goes 8mph, there's plenty of time to stare at the scenery and also indulge in 15 minute sewing sessions.

Back into a routine

We returned a couple days ago from a very long road trip from Alabama to Virginia and back to sell our motorhome. The gory details are up on our travel blog, but for the record, no quilting was done during that trip. I didn't even bring along some hand sewing, since my right shoulder has really been bothering me lately and I wanted to just let it rest and heal.

Today, though, I sat down in my little studio on the boat and got a few things done. I pieced two more blocks on the Scrappy Twist quilt. They are the top half in the photo above.

I also added asymmetric borders to the Dragonfly quilt. The basic pieced top was only 42" square and I wanted something better sized for an adult lap or couch quilt. Kat suggested making the disappearing four patch blocks "float" in offset borders and I really liked that idea. This photo shows it laid out on our queen sized bed in our very, very dark bedroom, but you get the sense of how big the borders are.

I've decided that I will use the quilting to extend the four patches out into the negative space, using matching cream thread. The effect should be subtle but interesting, I hope!

Choctawhatchee Bay

I finished piecing the Disappearing Four Patch top using all dragonfly fabrics. I've only been able to sew while the air conditioning is running. It's just too hot in my little quilt room otherwise, and waaaaaay too hot if I'm using the iron!

The top is 42"x42", which is a great size for a baby quilt. Unfortunately, I had it in my mind to give it to an adult friend. Hmm. I'm going to set it aside for a while and think about whether I want to expand it or not. I could certainly add borders, which would keep it square. Or I could add top and bottom rows of something fun like pieced bird blocks. Or, I could go a completely different direction for my friend's quilt and donate this one to Project Linus.

Linking up with Oh, Scrap because every fabric is different. I bought them as a group of precut 4.5" squares, but it's clear they were never part of a single fabric line. They were carefully collected by someone with a love for dragonflies. That eclecticness gives the piece a nice, scrappy look.

Waiting for Colin

We are sitting in a marina in St. Marks, FL while Tropical Storm Colin creeps up on us. Meanwhile, I have a batch of dragonfly fabric squares that I'm sewing into Disappearing Four Patch blocks.

Start with a four patch:

Slice it into nine pieces:

Rotate every piece except the corners 180 degrees:

Sew them back together:

I bought these squares of dragonflies as a precut collection on eBay. The seller clearly had been gathering the fabrics for years. There were 72 squares in every color of the rainbow, each with at least one dragonfly showing. I'm thinking I'll probably assemble them in rainbow order to give the finished quilt some cohesion.

The Disappearing Four Patch block shows its structure best when there is some contrast between the two non-background squares. In this one, there is enough difference between the light blue and the medium blue to show how the squares sort of overlap in the center of the block:

However, in order to put the finished quilt in rainbow order, I need to have blocks where the two focal fabrics are close to each other on the color wheel. That way the finished block will have a clear place in the rainbow. Two green fabrics make a green block, but where would a purple/yellow block go?

I spent quite a bit of time going back and forth between wanting to punch up the contrast in each block and wanting to make sure the finished quilt wouldn't just muddle into color chaos. I'm not sure I made the right choice yet!

The tricky part of this block turns out to be how to iron the seams. There are lots of little junctions between the white background and the various colors of fabric. In order to keep those corners crisp, it's best to nest the seams at every stage of sewing. That includes the stage where each block is sewn to another block.

There are two layouts for joining the blocks together. Alternating the larger white and focal fabric squares looks like this:

Rotating two of those block so that all the focal corners (and then all the white corners) meet up looks like this:

I haven't decided which layout I want to use, and I want the seams to nest between blocks no matter what I choose. Hmm. Topologically, that doesn't really work out well! After a lot of head scratching, middle-of-the-night pondering, and failed sample blocks, I came up with a solution. Here's the back of a block:

It turns out that if all the outside seams are pressed so that they rotate in one direction, any block layout will have nested seams at all the intersections. Hooray! In the photo above, the seams on the side with the yellow pencil are all pressed upward. The ones on the side with the brown pencil all go left. Opposite the yellow pencil they go down, and opposite the brown pencil they go right. So the seams flow around the back of the block counter clockwise.

That sounds good, but as you can see it actually looks a bit ugly. I was able to open three of the intersections and "swirl" the seams into submission, but two places still just had to get squashed down strangely. Fortunately, the fronts of the blocks look okay and I've been pretty happy with my points.

It's all too easy to start sewing things in a slightly different order and end up with a block where the final seams flow clockwise instead. So I have to force myself to only assemble two blocks at a time, laying all the pieces out carefully in a particular order at each stage and not jumping ahead.

I'm about half way through making the blocks. Next time I should have some layout photos to share.