Storm at Sea Piecing is Complete

I finally finished piecing the top of our king-sized Storm at Sea bed quilt. I laid it over our bed to get an idea of the coverage. Each block was 12"x12". I put it together 6 blocks by 8 blocks, and pieced it randomly. I tried to keep the same fabrics away from each other, but couldn't avoid it in a couple of instances.

The hardest part was getting all the points and edges to meet while sewing it together. Because I pieced it over a period of about a year, it was hard to stay consistent with my seam allowances. If you don't cut each piece exactly like the other, and don't use the exact same seam allowance, there will be variations that result in points and edges not matching up.

The next step will be to assemble a backing and patch some batting together to make it wide and long enough to cover the dimensions of the quilt, and then sandwich it all together on my quilt rack.

I made sure that the quilt will hang well over the sides of our bed, because my husband and I tend to fight over the covers. This length will allow us each more than enough material to keep us warm.

48 Blocks Later

I finally finished the 48 Storm at Sea blocks I needed to put together a king-sized quilt. The stack is 7-inches thick.

Let me introduce you to one of my sewing machines: My old New Home. Now let me introduce you to my worst enemy:

The bobbin casing. For some reason I can never get the bobbin case to pop into its socket. I have to push and push while moving the needle up and down and maybe after five minutes of struggling it decides to go in. For that reason, I dislike it when I run out of bobbin thread.

I'm very unlucky in the sewing department. I'm surprised that I've worked in the field of fabric art for as long as I have, because Murphy's Law is in full effect when I am sewing. I got down to the last few stitches on the last block, and the bobbin thread ran out. Had that extra few inches of thread been there, I could have been done for the night. Instead I had to tack another half hour onto my sewing time while I prepared half a dozen bobbins with thread and then fussed to get that bobbin case to pop in.

Why do half a dozen bobbins need to be threaded? Because it saves me the trouble of having to unthread and then rethread the top thread each time I need to wind another bobbin. Once I get that tension set, I don't want to mess around with the threading.

Now all I've got to do is make a decision on how to join those blocks together. I was thinking of blending dark to light based upon the darkest hue in the block, but realized that some blocks might fit or match the seams better than whichever shade is next in line. I'm thinking I should join them up in a semi-random fashion, the only two deciding factors being if the seams match well and that the greens are spread out. The majority of the quilt is black, white, blue, and purple, but there is some green to make it pop. Since the green stands out, it has to be placed in a balanced manner.

Most Recent Storm at Sea Blocks

Yes, I'm still working on that king-sized Storm at Sea quilt. Here are some recent blocks I created. It will be a while yet before I piece all the blocks together. Winter is always a better season for quilting, since it is too cold and wet to be outside working with my horses.

Skull & Skeleton Fabrics

I know. I'm weird. Who in the world would buy fabrics with skulls and skeletons on them? Well, I have a brother who could probably use a quilt. I don't know what he's sleeping on now, but if it isn't a cardboard box or the floor, it's most likely a couch. He has very cold winters and can't afford to buy most things that a lot of us take for granted.

In his heyday, he was a Deadhead. That's a fan of the music band called "The Grateful Dead". I thought he might tolerate me making him a quilt if it reminded him of Jerry Garcia.

I have no idea how I am going to piece these fabrics yet. They don't exactly match. The orange batik fabric is a bit out of place, but so beautiful that I couldn't pass it up.

Teapot Potholders

On my other blog site, Nuzzling Muzzles, I held a contest to see who could guess the date that came closest to when my new hay tarp developed its first rip. The winner of the contest won quilted potholders made by me. I decided on potholders because they are small, and I thought I could make them quickly. However, I found this project to be quite difficult, as the piecing wasn't coming together as nicely as I would have liked. I used my seam ripper in equal proportion to how much time I actually spent sewing, so the fabric ended up being worn and ragged. I had to secure it by quilting cross-hatched lines close together, which resulted in the potholders being stiff.

I took this pattern from "Cups and Saucers Paper-Pieced Kitchen Designs" by Maaike Bakker. This book includes patterns for cups on saucers, dishes, mugs, pitchers, plates and bowls in addition to the tea kettle.

Fortunately, I did some research before making the potholders and discovered that you have to use cotton batting, because polyester absorbs heat and can catch fire. You also should use a layer of Insul-Bright needled insulated lining to protect the hands from being burned while using the potholders.

Insul-Bright lining can be used for hot pads, oven mitts, tea cozies, casserole warmers, beverage holders, baby warmers, lunch bags, place mats, table runners, picnic baskets, shades, draperies, door draft stoppers, fire place covers, water heater covers, comforters, quilts, sleeping bags, water bed covers, coats and jackets, vests, ski apparel, gloves and mittens, hats, slippers, ironing board covers, and outdoor stadium cushions.

It took me about two weeks in the month of May, 2008 to complete these. My quilted items ended up being big enough (9x9") that they can be used as hot pads as well as potholders. Hopefully, the winner of my contest will get some good use out them.

Storm at Sea Progress

Because there is such a long blog pause between completing each of my quilts, I thought I'd post on my progress. Here are some Storm at Sea blocks that I recently completed. I'm making a quilt big enough to cover the top and sides of a California King mattress, so I have to make A LOT of these.




To help me out, my daughter gave these fabrics to me as a gift for Mother's Day:



She has shopped fabric stores with me often enough that she understands that I am not just looking for blue, teal, and green fabrics, but I am looking for fabrics that have movement that either mimics water or could be construed as water in an abstract sense. She did a good job in picking these out.

Sunburst

"Sunburst" was my thirteenth project, a lap quilt with an irregular shaped border. I once again used the stack-n-whack (Bethany S. Reynolds) / kaleidoscope (Paula Nadelstern) method of rotary cutting and piecing. Each flower is stuffed to give it a 3-D effect of blooming or bursting forth. The entire quilt was machine sewn, though I don't recommend that puff quilts be quilted by machine. It was very difficult to quilt stitches around each puff on the rack, because the bulk and irregularity did not roll up evenly, causing different tensions on the material. Despite readjusting the thread tension repeatedly, the top thread still broke often and the bobbin thread got tangled beneath the sandwich.

I think this quilt was started some time in early 2007 and completed April 17, 2008. Though it is not a large quilt, it was a thorn in my side, which is why it took so long to complete. Even when I was sewing on the thin yellow border to cover the raw edges, I ran out of bobbin thread just inches before completion. I have knack for getting down the the last inch or last few seconds of a project only to have some complication fly out of left field at me. My celebratory mood gets deflated, and the process of reaching completion always take longer than anticipated.

This quilt has a yellow background and flower puffs of pink, purple, orange, yellow, and green. I grouped similar colors together to bring out a gradual blending effect. The irregular border blends from color to color as well. I did not position all the flowers before sewing, so I ended up with one row that looks straight, and as each flower was added, I discovered that I could not fit them in rows due to the irregular border. Therefore, the flowers start in a row and end up random. People have commented that it looks like a mistake. I lie and tell them I did it on purpose.

Crazy Quilt Conundrum

"Crazy Quilt Conundrum" is a quilt that has no beginning and has no end. I've had it around the house for years and keep seeing some blank space where I can add more embellishments. It speaks for itself.

Stained Glass Sierra

"Stained Glass Sierra" is a wall hanging that was completed in June of 2006. I created a custom design using Electric Quilt 5 software and printed out portions of the template onto 8.5x11 sheets of paper. I then pieced the sheets of paper together like a puzzle with tape. The paper templates were pinned to the fabric and the fabric was cut out, then sewn together by machine. I then pinned and sewed black bias tape along the seams where different color fabrics were joined together, giving the illusion of stained glass. Most of the fabrics were specifically for stained glass quilts, but I took the liberty to adding in flower prints with thick outlines to echo the thick bias tape. The design includes two rows of flowers in front of a meadow and a pine tree, which are in front of Job's Peak, Lake Tahoe, and the setting sun. The sky displays variations of a sunset. We could not find a way to hang it due to its irregular shape, which is a rectangle with a rounded top -- like a church window, so I taped the edges to the wall with packing tape.

Jungle Luscious

"Jungle Luscious" is a lap quilt with an irregular shaped edge and zebra stripes for a border. The main colors are a plant leaf green and orange. A jungle fabric was used that contained animals, plants and flowers cut and pieced into a kaleidoscope (Paula Nadelstern) / stack-n-whack (Bethany S. Reynolds) pattern with six 60-degree triangles. Quilted with a long arm machine on a rack, which was challenging because the needle couldn't penetrate the center where six pieces met, so I had to swing around the centers. Since there was such a radical change in thickness of fabric based on how many pieces met at the seams, the sewing machine kept jumping and the stitches came out sloppy and uneven. There was one corner where the backing and the binding didn't meet. The quilt is interesting to look at from a distance, but the stitching is horrendous. It took one or two years to complete the quilt, because I was so busy. I finished it in August of 2005.