Logs of Life

I am most relieved that this quilt is off my machine. The last 3 days have been hard to sew. Probably because there has been as much picking out of stitches as there has been of actual quilting. I was calling it Fester because my soul was festering underneath the need to finish it. But now that it is done, the name should be aptly changed. The quilt is an Opportunity quilt for the Folsom Quilt and Fiber Quilt Guild in Folsom, CA. It will be raffled off sometime around the time of their quilt show in February of 2011. This was my first time handling and working with the Cherrywood hand-dyes. I love batiks and the subtle variations that they have. These are similar to those, except that the finish on them is a bit drabber. They are likened to suede-fabric. The blocks on the quilt are 7.5", with 0.5" logs. Unfortunately, I ran into issues with the construction of some of these blocks. They were made by many different guild members, and each one has a different interpretation of 0.25" seam allowance. A few too many of them were closer to 0.1" and had stitches on the verge of popping out. It really challenged my sanity some days.

The last straw was the day I found an area with absolutely no seam allowance...ie., a hole. I just cannot fix that so it is up to the owners to deal with. I hope now that it is completed that all issues can be quickly forgotten. I have learned a few things about working diagonally with quilts. Lessons learned the hard way.

The focal center of the quilt is not really at the center of the quilt so I wanted to accentuate it somehow. The quilting is a little more formal with the pebbling around the almond shapes. I should say that the theme of this quilt show is Back Home Again. The coordinator wanted the quilt to somehow incorporate the Valley Oak, which is indiginous to that area. I hope I have done this acceptably. It is subtle, but it is there in a way that cannot be missed.

I have double batted this quilt - it has a layer of Hobbs 80/20 and a layer of Polydown. The quilt is heavy, and shows the quilting nicely. I used 4 different Superior threads on this: one that matches the border exactly, a lighter beige for the light logs, a medium brown for the darker logs, and then a red was added for accents. I realized that the delineation between the dark and light logs was not laying down well, so I outline quilted each leaf and added swirls in the dark areas with the red too. This helped to make the red leaf squares lay flat. You can hardly see the color difference inthe photo.

The borders of this quilt kick ass. Large plain borders kinda scare me. These are 10", and they are sort of like going onstage naked (not that I'd really know this first-hand) because absolutely everything that you quilt shows. Not like a print or a darker fabric. I'm not sure I handled the space between the leaf swirls and the feather as gracefully as is possible, but then. I do love the narrow 0.5" piano keys.

Here is the back of the quilt. Though I waffled on my feelings yesterday, I am very glad that I convinced the owner to ditch the floral backing she'd sent originally and to go with a solid. This is a medium brown Cherrywood. I think they call the color ochre. It shows all the threads I used so I had to be extremely careful on all my feather back tracking. I think it will be really pretty hanging after it is bound.
It is a pretty texture.

So if you live in the Sacramento area, be sure to go to the Folsom show in February and buy yourself a chance to win this lovely quilt.

Fester

If you were here yesterday, then you know that I have encountered a wretched problem for a quilter: pleats on the back. One of the two offending sections is shown above. Yikes, is that ugly or what?! Now I can say that I have only seen one other pleat on a quilt that I quilted, and this particular one had a horribly pieced and sagging backing . This backing, however is a tightly woven hand-dye, and I pieced the back myself, so that is not it. I blame the pleats completely on having to quilt it down diagonals, and needing to leave areas unquilted, while other areas were stitched. I obviously did not have it stabilized appropriately. Shame on me. Live and learn. Never again (I hope).

I ended up with bunchy areas on both sides of this quilt, where 2 areas of diagonal stitching came together. As you can see, the excess in the backing is between 0.3-0.7". Luckily for me, the excess was within 8-10 inches of the pieced backing seam. Unluckily for me, however, there were heavily quilted areas of feathering to remove. UGH.

The entire fixit took me about 1 hour per side. I removed LOTS of stitches. Hopefully I can meld the new stitching into the original without seeing a ton of cut threads. Here, I have tucked in all the excess, in preparation for the hand stitching. Too bad it is three different threads that have to be restitched.

The row of hand stitching above is not very straight, but HELL, what am I supposed to do?? There, some of my pent-up frustration. I'm sure you can imagine the multitude of other foul-mouthed words I have uttered in the last couple days! The unstraight seam might have not shown so much if not for the nature of these nearly solid, yet clearly not solid fabrics. Boy, the backing that the owners originally sent for this quilt which was a hideous floral sure would have concealed this mishap better. Incidentally, I convinced her that a more solid fabric would show off the quilting so much better, so she ordered $100 of Cherrywoods for the quilt instead. Some decisions do come back to bite us in the arse eventually I have learned.

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Just so you don't think that this blog has become a bitch-fest, I will show you a couple shots of the front. The quilt will undoubtedly be lovely when finished (yes, once again, tomorrow is my target day for finishing this one:-))). It is an axisymmetrical log cabin quilt, so the florette below is not in the quilt's center. I accentuated the quilting, however, to draw one's eyes to that as the central motif. It looks pretty. Lighter logs are feathered, while darker logs are done with a combination of ruler arcs and swirls. The owner wanted oak leaves incorporated somehow, so they are placed in the red squares as well as along the border.

And the border...This is very pretty in a most coordinated tan thread. It's a 10" wide bordeer so I broke it up into the oak leaf swirls, feathering and 1-2" of 0.5" piano keys.

Stay tuned and you'll see the rest of the quilt, as well as the back. And with any luck, my need to curse uncontrollably is done. This evening I will reload the quilt onto the frame, and tomorrow I am finishing the quilt. Yes, I am, I tell ya. I am finishing Fester! It is nearly 8 hours over my budget and needs to be done!! Cheers :-))