The Retro Star Quilt

A year ago today I started my first quilt. Before that, the closest I had come was a quilted laptop sleeve, about 30cm wide by 50cm around. But I did dressmaking, and I liked sewing bags. I was a sewer, but not a quilter.

A short while after I started quilting I decided that instead of spending all my time reading other people's blogs, I'd get my own. This is my 400th post, and since it's been less than a year, that means more than one post a day, and that's probably more than was really necessary. But oh well, my typing has gotten much better over the last 400 posts.

The design for what came to be known as the retro star quilt first showed up about 391 posts ago. It's completely different to what is shown, but since I draw stuff in mspaint and then make it up from there, that's not surprising.

The fabrics were 30s reproduction prints I bought from lincraft in bundles of eight. Usually there's only one or two nice prints per bundle, but when you used to work there and your Aunt's the manager, you can get away with (if you promise to do it neatly) rearranging the bundles so it's all nice stuff. And while it features eight fabrics and they come in bundles of eight, this doesn't mean I only bought one bundle. I'd have bought at least 20 over the last year, if not more. Fabrics were added, removed, swapped, compared, put back in, umm'd and ahh'd over. A white was bought for the background, and then an off-white, because I wanted it to look like it was 30 years old before I'd finished it.

I'm a bit ashamed to say it but this is probably the most undervalued of the quilts I use day to day. It's on my bed, on the side I don't sleep under, and although it was only made a month or so before the other bed quilt, because I wanted it to come off the machine looking old, it does. I feel like it's been around forever. It's just there, in much the same way that your Mum is, but unlike Mum, there isn't really a day to recognise how much an old (well, 10 month old) quilt means to you.

When I first started quilting, a lot of what I made was squares, quilted in the ditch. This design though, had clever angles that made shapes, and negative space, and a quilting line that followed the interesting shapes around and around. It was so different to a lot of the other stuff that I had that it was easy to forget that it was mine.

Nonetheless, I'm very proud of it. I've just made it again in different fabrics, and ended up with something totally different. I'll probably make it again. Why wouldn't I? It's nice.

For other nice quilts, with nice stories, or to tell a nice story about your nice quilt, the Spring Blogger's Quilt Festival* is still going.


*Damn weird name for it really, what with it being Autumn and all....

The quilts so far...

I just went through and re-tagged a heap of posts, since I stopped putting quilt numbers at around #6.

#1 is the big rainbow quilt.

#2 is Maddy's quilt.

#3 is Levi's (friend from work's baby) quilt.

#4 will be Mama Jan's quilt, which got a number when it was in planning stages - that's how long it's been on the gunna list.

#5 is the retro quilt

#6 is the BlueGreen quilt

#7 is the purple quilt (not yet completed)

#8 is Esther's quilt

#9 is Dad's quilt cover (quilted, but not assembled)

#10 is my wonky Mingle mini quilt.

#11 is what came to be known as the Bubble and Squeak mini quilt (which has also gone to live with Esther, not that it will ever get used because I tied a bow around it in matching fabric and Helen thinks it's too pretty to unwrap)

#12 is the Honeycomb quilt I finished today.

Now I need a way to put that somewhere I can remember it - on the sidewall or something.

I'm just taking a break... for sleeping...

Babycat is wandering (read:staggering adorably) around under my sewing pedal, since Honeycat has decided that home is now under the sewing cabinet, which has put a halt to my quilting.

All the easy stuff is done - the binding and the straight lines, as well as two of the paths around the stars. The ends for what I've done so far are all finished too, but I haven't sewn the corners yet, as they will have to be done by hand.

I gotta say that the actual quilting is much less enjoyable than the piecing of a top. Not that piecing a top is hugely enjoyable, but every bit you do seems to give you a big sense of achievement. Take this star design for instance. The quarter block has 3 pieces in it. So you sew once, iron, sew and iron again, and wehey... quarter block, sense of achievement. Then you just have to join your quarter blocks up, with the same amount of sew once, iron, sew and iron again that you had for the quarter blocks, and now the big blocks are done, sense of achievement. Then you just have to join them into 4 long strips (followed by some ironing and a sense of achievement) and it's only 3 bits of sewing till you have a quilt top. And a big-arse sense of achievement.

Once that's all done and it's basted, there's only one possible pitstop at which you can feel good about what you've done so far, and that's only if you're doing the binding after you've done the quilting. I'm not, so even though I'm less than an hour from finishing (2 more curly bits at 10-15 mins each, and hand sewing the corners down), I'm feeling disillusioned about how far I've come, and I'm going to go to bed.

Also, I only bought 100m cotton spools, because 2 bobbins was enough to do the baby quilt, which I find myself forgetting (except when I'm trying to manhandle the new one in the machine) was a row and a half smaller, and as a result, I'm fairly sure it's going to run out before the end.

Bummer.

Semi-completed...

Stayed up till 3.30 getting the top of the retro quilt finished and basted - I changed my mind about the backing and went for the back of a quilt cover I bought to chop up the front of, so the back (and borders, since I'm feeling lazy) are a bright white, at least compared to the front which is ivory, and really bought out as such by the bamboo batting.

This quilt is a departure for me in a few ways. It's the first time I've used a neutral - over half of the top is one colour - and not even a colour, just an old-looking white. And also, so many of the prints are from the one range. The more solid coloured green and the yellow with the little spots are the only ones not from the range.


Usually, I'm very opposed to just making a quilt with fabrics from one range. It's too easy. It's only one step away from a pattern, and that's one step away from a kit. Kits are for people who really should just buy a readymade blanket, because kits get you out of the most important (and to my mind, hardest) part of making a quilt.

Quilt Maths.

I'm fairly sure there are other quilts similar to mine out there. The 4 pointed star design is both simple and obvious. But, because I worked it out myself, with a calculator, a piece of paper and a paint document (actually, 4 paint documents - this one took a while to sort the colours), I'm fairly sure that the similarities wont get closer than that they share coloured and white star blocks. I picked my size, my layout, my angles. If I had used a pattern, there would be others with the same shapes, and even though the layout would be in different colours, if I ever saw one, it would be the same in my mind as showing up at a party in the same outfit as someone else. Worse. It would be like I had told everyone I was making my own dress, but someone showed up in the same thing. Making a quilt from a kit, and saying it's all you're own work, it's like being caught in a lie.

Quilting a top, to my mind, takes very little skill. Patience, yes. accurate cutting is important, and so is the ability to consistently sew a straight line a certain width from the edge of your fabric. Finally, there is ironing. So very much ironing in fact, that I'm getting a little callus under my pinkie finger.

But once the fabric and the design are sorted, you're just churning though it - it's no different to fixing a hem and ironing your clothes. Sure, more hard stuff comes when it gets to the quilting point, but it seems the thing to do is send it off to someone with a machine that takes up half a room, and pay them to do it for you.

The most difficult part of a quilt is working out the pattern, and choosing the fabrics. And I'm not gunna hand that task over to someone else, when it's also the part that has the most to do with my pride in the final result.

Sense of Achievement...

I've been cramming through and have almost finished the retro quilt - not bad considering I bought half the fabric this afternoon, and washed it, dried it, cut it and sewed it, around having tea, facebooking and playing with the cats.

Currently, it's at 4 long pieces that need to be ironed, pinned and sewed, and then a little bit more ironing and I will have a quilt top.

But I cant quite decide on my backing fabrics just yet. They'll have to be sewn, because I'll be using one of two end of bolt purchases - either a fabric quite similar to some on the front, in a dark green print with pink and yellow flowers, or a 60s mod style fabric in white with rainbow flowerburst patterns that I've been holding onto for about a year after buying the whole bolt for $2 a metre. I seem to recall I made a sleveless tunic from some of it, that was quite cute but I never got around to doing the armholes, because I got distracted by a sleeved version in a green paisley. I wonder where it is. I could finish it for Jess' thingie.

Oh well. My Top Gear episodes have copied to my USB stick now, so I can go out and put them on while I iron. I'm so sick of the fucking Zoomba advert that goes for an hour.

Oooh, and there may be a new Psych episode floating around on the internet by now. Might have a lookies before I go out.

In spite of the fact that it's Tuesday and I have no money, I went and got another 8 bundle of retro fats from lincraft, and another metre and a half of the ivory for the background of the retro quilt. It's been washed and is part drying now, but I cant bet to the bench to do my ironing, because Casey was testing the running time of the chocolate fountain, and chocolate has gone everywhere. And the coil that makes it work has broken.

Sigh.

But Honeycat and Babycat seem to have gotten themselves sorted... Babycat wasn't happy with under the sewing cabinet so he's decided to move himself to back under the bed, and Honeycat seems okay with this. If I could just convince them to move back to under the dresser, where I can see them without getting down on the floor, that would be excellent.

Decisions, Decisions...

Debating whether or not to invite the lovely Simone to read this, making her my first official reader. Although really, if there's anyone else out there, let me know, and I will recognize your title. This little piece of the blogosphere may still not be much, but it's mine, and I'm not only proud of it, but of anyone with the stamina to put up with it.

Also having a bit of an internal debate about dresses. Two actually. I have a masquerade ball 18th birthday party to go to Saturday week that I need to sort out something for, as well as 3 B&S Balls in the next 3 months. With regards to the latter, I've found a very nice looking wedding dress from china for $60 which spreads out to $20 a ball, and that price seems great. But there are two problems, the first being that it is a white wedding dress, the second being that for the most part I'm opposed to cheap made in china stuff, because they lower people's expectations of the cost of goods to way below what any local manufacturer could match, though usually when I make this statement it's more in relation to toys than dresses. But still. Usually, when I want something on the cheap that I could have theoretically made myself, I go to the salvos, or buy secondhand on ebay. But am I silly for letting a moral debate get in the way of a dress that, on screen at least looks gorgeous, and which could be dyed without too much effort? Probably.

As for the masquerade ball dress, I'm not sure what I'll do. The ebay dress, if and when bought, still wont get here for a couple of weeks, so I'll either be going with something I already have or making something, which I'm not sure I can be bothered to do. The dress code just says to wear a mask, not anything about a ballgown, so I'll have to find out what the actual dress code is. It's at Flannigans, which is loosely speaking "our" pub, so I don't think its all-out, Cinderella style formal. Casey says its "formalish", but I'd best check.

Finally, there is Honeycat and Babycat. Honeycat keeps moving Babycat, because my little sister and the dog keep going in and looking at Babycat, picking him up (Maddy) sniffing and licking him (Graham(dog)) and for obvious reasons, Honeycat's not very partial to that. This morning when I woke up she had moved him from under the dresser to back under the bed, pretty much right where he was born, so I shifted the stuff back to the far side so we could look in there easier, but then I got home from work to find it had been shifted again, this time to under my sister's bed. This is a bad idea for two specific reasons. The first is that Casey is allergic to cats. She's gotten used to Honeycat (the internet says it happens eventually) but not to Babycat. Also, she shuts her door at night. I used to, but now I have cats, I understand that I cant.

The big problem is, she refused to move back to either previous spot. Even after I remodeled the under the dresser nest to have big wadding walls and curtains, every return would see Babycat picked up by the scruff of the neck, carried to Casey's closed door, and plopped there so Honeycat could mew indignantly. Eventually I gave up acting concerned and went and did my ironing. The retro quilt is in it's point blocks now, but I'm not sure where to go from here. The blocks I have are 8 red, 8 blue, 4 purple and 4 yellow, which makes out to around 115x150 cm, and I have 2 almost matching green fat quarters that I could use too, but I'm stalled until I work the layout.

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that the cats are under the sewing cabinet.

Damn.

Bugger...

I've cut the retro quilt (number 5), but I'm being held hostage in the lounge by the comfy couch, the Law and Order DVDs and the nice warm fireplace, and as a result I simply can't get to my sewing machine in the bedroom.

I keep telling myself "just one more episode," and then I tell myself to put more wood on the fire, but it's raining outside and I can't be bothered. The wood in the barrel is probably damp anyway.

And I'll be going to my room to sew my blocks after this episode, so there's not really any point, is there?

I'm getting good at this. Soon I'll be able to talk myself into never doing anything at all.

I have to go now, the next episode just started.

:)

The Sale Dilema...

Lincraft is having a 30% off sale for the next few days, meaning it's only going to be $16.10 for a pre-cut cot size bamboo cotton quilt batt. The thing is, do I go mental and buy up big, or do I think, maybe, or even probably, I will get bored with the whole quilting thing before I get around to using them, leaving them languishing in a tub for a few years, till the next cat to show up has a baby on them?

That sort of thing does tend to happen with me, because I think of myself as a "soft engineer" and I enjoy much more the process of figuring out the best way to make something, rather than the actual making. Once a design is worked out, sorted, easy to do, it becomes boring. Maybe that's why I wanted to do this blog, because I spend (waste) countless hours working out the best/easiest/quickest ways of making various things, then, once that is done, I make one or two to show people and move on. Usually leaving behind the dozen or so lots that I cut out to make, now that I had it sorted, as well as all the stuff I bought specially for them.

That said, I currently have 4 in progress projects that are about the right size...


The baby quilt (quilt#3) is now into its nine star-patterned blocks and will be made into one big bit tomorrow, and hopefully, basted and quilted immediately after.


Mama Jan's quilt (quilt#4) will be made that size, because my sister was quite blasè with regards to directions, and that is my biggest hate as a crafter, so she will be punished with a 120by150 quilt no matter what size she was expecting.


The retro quilt (quilt#5) is officially sized at 120x160cm, but I can shave a bit off of that without much hassle.


The PinkGreenBrown quilt has no number, because I'm still a bit nervous about it and its triangles... its official size according to the paint document I've been using to try and get my math sorted out is 136cm square, so I'll be holding off on that one.

The rainbow pastels quilt also has no number, but it might get bumped up and end up being a decimal placed number, because its one that's all squares, and totally for me. It's pretty much going to be a pastel coloured copy of quilt#1, which looks like this...


And which is way bigger than it looks in this picture - its actually big enough across for my queen sized bed, even if it is a little short on the up-down way, by about 3 rows. Each of those squares is a bit over 8cm, if you want some idea of scale. That one however was done completely randomly, and there are some fabrics only in there once, or only in there on the far right side (because it was originally going to be square, and made in 4 days for a competition - when I found out is was not that thursday but the next thursday, giving me an extra 7 days to do it in, it was increased.)

The pastel rainbow quilt though has been specially bought for, and as a result I have, for the most part, about 20 squares of each colour, so I could do it a bit more uniformly, although I cant help but think that that would kind of ruin it. So I'm gunna wait on that one for now. Also, since I already have about 350 squares for it, and the maximum number of squares for a cot sized precut is 270, I'd probably be doing it on off-the-bolt wadding.

Nonetheless, that's still 3 precuts that are pretty much definite, well, 2 that are definite and one that is highly likely, and since maddy's quilt (quilt#2) was done on a precut, and I really like that size for a casual couch blankie, I'm thinking I'll probably be aiming my sizing math at that it in the future too. But does that justify buying 9 or 10 or them? Should I just get 5 or 6 and maybe buy some meterage as well? It's the same price for a metre of the 2.2 wide stuff as it is for the precut, but for just one big bit, say, possible pastel quilt sized (1.8x2.2) its $30, and that seems so much more expensive, even though, by square metre, its about the same.

I've allowed myself $160 to stock up, which is either 10 precuts or 6 precuts and 1.8 meters off the bolt... I guess I'll decide when I get there.