Quiltcommunity.com

Lily Kinross-Wright's Blog

Fri, May 30th - 12:39PM Moving the blog... Hello Dear Reader, I have become entirely discontent with this software, as has the company that pitched it to me, and they have discontinued support, so I'm moving my blog to http://lilykinrosswright.blogspot.com. See you there! You'll still be able to access it from ltquilts.com. (there will be a real post there). Comment (0)
Mon, May 26th - 2:38PM Completing the arcs. Okay, just for the record, I didn't get all sixteen of my arcs done, just the two shown here, but this way if you're following along, you can move onward if you want. Last time we pieced the BCDE and CDE arcs, now you move onto making the rest of the two arcs, and finally attaching them. The first step is to create the very outermost unit: the IHI unit. It involves sewing two pieces on one petal as shown below. This is the hardest part for me, so I'll try to give you as many tips as possible. First, sew the left I onto H. Again, I like to put H on the bottom. If your cutting was slightly inaccurate (the piece I have the most trouble with is I) now is the time when those dots you carefully marked can save you from having to try to fix an miscuts. So you can see that I was not perfect on my cutting on the top corner, but below you can see that since I lined up my dots (I sewed edge to edge, but made sure the dots were in line) it came out with a nice point and a quarter inch seam allowance beyond that. Remember that you want to press both your seam allowances towards H (the darker green here). The next step is to sew the IHI piece onto G. I have two different colored Hs and two different colored Gs, but I decided it didn't matter which went on which, as long as I was consistent. When sewing a pieced curve onto another curve (IHI has a seam along the curve) it's really important not to unintentionally compromise your seam when stretching it to fit the curve, particularly if it's the concave piece, as it is in this case. When I sew this part, I constantly hold the seam with one finger to ensure the seam doesn't come apart. Other than securing the seam, you sew this just like the other curved seams we've done so far. Again, you'll want to make sure that you line up your dots (throughout the seam, I always look to make sure they're close, I don't put a pin through like I do at the start, I just do a visual check). It's also worth pointing out at this time that while you're sewing along, if you aren't going to sew right through the dot with your quarter-inch seam, it's not worth diverging to hit that dot. If you try to hit the dots dead on with your seam, your curve will not be smooth. The main purpose of the dots is to line the pieces up and to help with Y-seams, not to be a quarter-inch seam allowance guide. The next step is to sew the G piece to the F piece. This is a slightly deeper, longer curve, so I sew it a little bit differently than the short curves we've done so far. You can see that I hold the top piece, only lining up short sections of the curve as I go along, and again, I use the dots as a visual reference to make sure that I'm not over or under stretching. And voila, I end up with two finished arcs (only 14 to go). I get easily bored with repetition, so I actually like doing a couple arcs at a time, rather than chaining because it keeps it a little more interesting. I'm trying to stay focused on this project for a couple reasons: the most obvious is you, dear reader, how annoying, should I stray wildly into other projects, but the second is that I would actually like to have this top done before my wedding so I can hang it in the shop while I'm on my honeymoon, quilt it when I get back, and amazingly have a quilt to put on my bed. :) My next blog project is going to be an "accidental landscape" a technique developed by Kathy Eckmeier that seems very therapeutic and as though it would a). be very hard to screw up and b). lend itself to all sorts of embellishments, including some fun new things I'm planning on doing with beads and Angelina. Until then, however... Happy quilting!!! Comment (0)
Fri, May 23rd - 4:07PM Piecing the Dahlia Arcs... The next step in the Giant dahlia is to piece the arcs. You'll piece two sets of arcs, one that starts with B, and one that starts with C. Today I'm doing the B arcs, but the technique is exactly the same. The only thing I had to pay attention is to what color of each piece I was using, as my C and my E pieces are alternating colors. I laid them out below so I made sure to sew all of one color on the B arcs, and all of the other color on the C arcs. To begin piecing the arcs, I took a B piece and the C pieces and laid them how they would and then flipped them right sides together. I put a pin through the marking on each to line up the first corner. Then I squeeze the fabric together, carefully remove the pin and slide it under my sewing machine needle and lower the needle to hold it in place. Unlike some of the other pieces we've sewn, we'll sew edge to edge here, not dot to dot, as there won't be any Y-seams, or anything like that. Here I have the needle down in the fabric and I'm going to sew a scant quarter inch seam. When I sew curves, I generally like to have the convex side on the bottom, and the concave side on top, however, for such small, barely curved pieces as B and C, it doesn't matter. I'm actually stretching both pieces in the picture above, and sort of pushing the edges into alignment. This works especially well for subtle curves. We'll get into deep curves later in the process. Here you can see that I pressed toward the smaller piece, as I will do for this whole arc (the other arc we'll press the opposite way), but you can also see the difference between lining up those dots...and being too lazy to line them up. It's subtle, and fixable later on, but if you're a stickler for accuracy (I'm not, I'd rather fudge something later than do it right the first time :), make sure you line those dots up. Here I'm piecing D and E the same way I pieced B to C, except now I have D on the bottom (the convex) and E on top (concave) the way I like to. In order to keep them lined up all the way to the tip, if you look carefully in the picture above, I have my forefinger on the bottom piece and my others on the top, that keeps the bottom piece from sliding around as that curve feeds through your machine, it also keeps the stretch even in both pieces which is critical for sewing a smooth curve. Here is the finished DE unit which I will join to the CB unit the same way I did before. I laid the result on the center below to give you and idea how things will eventually go together. My other colored Es and Cs will be in the other arcs, but you can begin to see the Dahlia coming together. Next time we'll get into some deeper curves with the big outer pieces, and hopefully, time willing this weekend, some tips on piecing curves with seams on them. Until next time: Happy Quilting! Comment (0)
Mon, May 19th - 4:32PM Busy busy... Well, I'm back from the Spring International Quilt Market in Portland, and I wish I could have brought all the new fun stuff back with me, but unfortunately I have to wait for some of it to ship! Bleck! One of my favorite new things that I don't want to have to wait for is Eric Carle's Hungry Caterpillar fabric by Andover Fabrics. Here's a tantalizing tidbit: This is the panel (which I ordered, of course) but many of the coordinates are just as adorable. So keep your eye on www.ltquilts.com because it should be here in three weeks or so. My other favorite finds of market were patterns. Oh the wonderful new patterns!!! Bigfork Bay Cotton Company, Crabapple Hill Studios, and Botanical Art Quilts had amazing new stuff! I should have those up by tomorrow afternoon so you can see for yourself. I also broke down at Superior Threads, and will now be carrying the entire line of Carol Bryer Fallert's Brytes, which I will also get up as soon as possible on the main site. And here is me, the very last second we (my mom went with me) in the convention center. I was very tired. We'd had five days of business classes, meeting with reps, and walking around with 7000 lbs of papers, brochures, books, and catalogs on my shoulder, so I was very very tired by this point, but still sad to leave. It's just so much fun to see all the new stuff. And the last thing that I have show for now is my very favorite quilt (they have a couple of small contests/shows during market) that I saw while I was there: Yeah, just in case you can't tell, that's all THREAD, glorious THREAD. And, as you may have guessed by the label, this is the back of the quilt. The back. The front was applique with very dense quilting. And the back is just sooooo beautiful I had to share. Keep your eye on www.ltquilts.com until next time for all the new goodies as they come in. Happy quilting! Comment (0)
Sat, May 17th - 1:28AM Ah, computers. Well, I just wrote a post about my good finds at market, but when I went to post it, the computer whiffed, so this is just a very brief message to say that awesome, awesome new things will be coming home with me from market, so check here, check the site: www.ltquilts.com for the latest and greatest. I'm having a great time, but man, oh man am I pooped. Happy quilting everyone! And get ready, cause it's gonna get happier! Comment (0)