From A - Plotting and Planning

I have been making a concerted effort to finish old projects and use up some stash since last Fall. Frankly, it has been going pretty well until just recently when I began spending most of my evenings filling the pages of my trusty quilt idea book with various doodles and measurements.

The two ideas that I keep coming back to are a Gypsy Wife quilt (still can't decide on colours for this one) and my obsession with making a peach and mint quilt.

Unable to resist any longer, I dug through my stash and came up with this lot.

It's not exactly a "pure" peach mint combo but close enough without completely abandoning my natural inclination towards tone and colour variation.

Not wanting to make something that was too involved so that I would be able to start working on a Gypsy Wife without feeling too overwhelmed, I opted for Johanna Masko's Donuts pattern. It's been on my list since seeing Amanda's version last year.

Although I love the pattern, I wanted something a little bigger for super cosy couch snuggling and I wanted to be able to add some more symmetry to the pattern with a four-sided border and another row of donuts. I spent some time with TouchDraw last weekend and ended up with a rough mock-up.

I'm pretty excited about this quilt and am hoping to get my fabrics washed this week so I can start playing with layout and start cutting.

How do you plan projects? Are there any colour schemes that are making you weak at the knees?

From K - Quilt Top Planning (Using TouchDraw)

I recently bought an iPad and I cannot say enough about how much I love it. It has made blogging a cinch while on the run, it takes relatively high quality images when my DSLR isn't close at hand, and most of all, it makes for one of the best quilt top planning tools. I have tried designing quilt tops using blank paper, grid paper, excel, pencil, and markers, but nothing comes close to the TouchDraw app. I won't go into a huge explanation of how it works, but I thought it might be helpful for you to see how it can help organize a quilt layout, using my current wax print quilt as an example.

In July I posted about my quilt top layout for the first of two wax print quilts. I decided to go the route of using magic numbers (2.5", 4.5" and 6.5" square blocks), however I was worried that it wouldn't look random enough given the consistent sizes. In order to minimize the effect of having large stretches of blocks butted together, I went to touch drawer to lay out some "random-ish" type areas.

In the above image, you can see that each quilt area is divided by colours, and then further divided by numbers within each colour group. I specifically numbered them so that I would remember which order to sew the blocks once they were all prepared.

Using that TouchDraw illustration as a template, I began laying out my previously prepared 2.5", 4.5" and 6.5" squares according to the grouping requirements. Even though I have yet to complete the entire quilt top layout, you can see that many of the numbered blocks from my TouchDraw illustration are quite easy to identify on my design wall already.

Once I had quite a few of my blocks complete, I thought I would sew a few blocks together to see how it came along. In this next image you can see that some of the numbered blocks on my drawing are now even easier to identify on the wall.

I've started using this tool on a couple of other future projects and I'm looking forward to seeing them come into fruition as well. I still have a lot to learn on this app, but so far I am pretty impressed with how easy it is to use, and how simple and quickly you can manipulate quilt top designs.

From A - Whirling

I'm pretty spoiled. Since my husband works only a 5 minute walk from our home and generally works much shorter hours than I do, he has taken it upon himself to be the food provider of the household. He does all of the groceries and cooking. Most nights I get to come home to a home-cooked meal that is ready as soon as I walk in the door. Unfortunately for me, my husband is away on a business trip again this week. I usually scrounge for leftovers in the fridge or eat take-out in his absence. However, after 2 weeks of husband absentia things are getting desperate in the fridge and I can't handle the prospect of another night of fast food.

Long story short. I cooked last night. It's probably one of the first times I've made dinner in the last 5 and a half years (which is funny since I used to work in a kitchen and am a prolific baker). One thing I can say for certain is that cooking is nothing like riding the proverbial bicycle. Skills get rusty. In addition to having no idea where to find various kitchen implements, your brain needs to really work to get things done. Like yesterday, I caught myself with a pot full of uncooked pasta and not a drop of water in sight. Embarrassing yes, but fortunately the dog was the only witness.

After a couple of hours of fumbling around the kitchen, I ended up with a delicious casserole of spicy and savoury pasta. Success!! More encouraging is the fact that I have a ton of leftovers which should help me make it through the week. I might have to try this cooking thing again sometime.

Last week I managed to stay focussed on Carnival and pick-up some white thread from the fabric store to get 'er done. Over the weekend, I got all of my individual blocks finished and now I just need to assemble them into larger blocks, sew them together to make the quilt top and attach the borders.

What can I say, it's been pretty smooth sailing. Julie's pattern is extremely well-written, clear and has lots of colour illustrations. The blocks all have bias seams in them so I would strongly recommend using a walking foot to piece everything together and to be very careful when pressing (ie. use a dry iron, lots of finger pressing, and pressing as opposed to dragging the iron across the pieces) in order to avoid misshapen blocks.

Those who know me know that I love having as many options as possible for as long as possible. This pattern was a challenge for me in that since the blocks alternately lean left and right, that you effectively have to decide on your layout before you even start cutting. Eeek! I am anxious to see how the layout I chose up-front will work for me in the end. It's always so hard to be pushed out of one's comfort zone. This is the layout I put together originally using TouchDraw. I don't think I'm going to end up sticking with it (I've definitely changed some of my blocks around) but I thought I would show you how I started planning this quilt.

The only other glitch was a personal beef the Lazy Angle Ruler. I love Creative Grids' rulers. I find the markings are easy to read and the "gripper dots" are very good at keeping things where you want them while you cut. That said, the Lazy Angle Ruler requires you to flip the ruler over to cut some of the pieces. There are even measurements printed on the wrong side of the ruler to facilitate this. Unfortunately, the Lazy Angle Ruler is slick and smooth on the non gripper dot side of the ruler. Putting this slippery side of the ruler on fabric to make a precision cut is like trying to use a dull knife to slice a tomato a.k.a. a frustrating mess.

While I was at the fabric store buying thread, I stumbled across some adhesive gripper dots that you can attach to a ruler to make it slip less (didn't even know there were such things). The dots were a big help in managing the slippage situation but unfortunately were thick enough that they made the ruler float above the fabric and prevented the blade (a brand new one) from cutting smoothly in a single pass. After a few minor adjustments in my ruler holding technique, I was able to get everything to work perfectly. Gotta love the gripper dots!

I can't bring myself to throw these "sail boat" scraps generated from making the Carnival blocks in the garbage. Any thoughts on what a girl might do with 80 of these?