My First Quilt - Part 2

As this is the sequel to me previous post, there is no need to retell the backstory and therefore I'll just jump right back into it. I finished the center "HD" block and fixed the triangle blocks so all of my lines were straight. In order to finish the next ring of the quilt I was now forced to start sewing the t-shirts.

The Second Tier

As my design shows, scroll down or click here to see that, there are four shirts to cap of the corners in this ring. I planned it this way because there were some t-shirt designs that were too large to fit anywhere else (every other shirt I managed to make into 14 inch squares, but just a few refused to be subjected to such uniformity). Rather than cut off the designs, I just made them an exception and gave them their own rows.

With fear and trepidation I began to sew the shirts onto the triangle blocks. Two shirts on either side of the top and bottom triangle blocks, and then I sewed the left and right side triangle blocks onto the center piece. This gave me three rows to sew to finish the inner parts up. I like a good visual so here's further explanation:

Culminating in an extended center section, and with that ring done I could move on to the final tier.

The Final Tier

Now that I had sewn a few t-shirts, the fear had worn off significantly and I was ready to start the next section of the process. Twenty squares in four rows to go around the outside of my center section. By this point things were moving fairly quickly and I had found a groove that was working for me.

I sewed six blocks for the top and bottom rows and four blocks were sewn vertically for the left and right sides. I sewed these on to the center piece the same way I sewed on the second tier. This is where some of the older t-shirts showed their resistance as they didn't like to stay fused to the interfacing. I had to re-iron them a few times during the process, but eventually everything came together.

One thing I learned at this point is that the smaller sections are so much easier to get the seams lined up. When you are working with and 84 inch long section of block it's a lot more difficult to acquire precision. Honestly at the end of the day I was happy as long as I managed symmetry and straight lines. Working steadily I managed to finished stitching the top quilt (which for those of you who don't know quilting is the fancy pieced together part). Here's the finished top quilt:

Layering

So I'd finished the top quilt, but there was still plenty left to do. A traditional quilt is made of three layers: the top quilt (as mentioned above), batting (fluffy filler that gives the quilt it's warmth), and a piece of backing material to cover the batting on the reverse side.

As I've said, this is a large quilt and in order to get the layers put together I needed to lay it out and pin/baste it together. This might seem relatively simple, but I live in a small apartment where every room is doing double duty. Luckily for me a lovely friend of mine offered to open her home where she had plenty of space. With the help of this generous lady and my mother-in-law I managed to get all the parts lined up and pinned together.

Quilting

This next part baffled me for some time and I wasn't sure if I could even do it myself, but this is the part that makes a quilt a real quilt. 'Quilting' refers to sewing through the layers, locking them together and causing that 'pillowy' effect that we all love. In researching this I found that a lot of people will send their pieces to be machine quilted professionally by stores or individuals who own long-arm sewing machines. I contemplated doing things this way, but the prices were out of my range (they generally charge per square inch and... did I mention this is a big quilt?).

After more research, lots of blogs, and a few youtube videos I found a way that I could do it myself.  It wasn't going to be altogether easy, but doable. The trick is to roll your quilt so that you can sew the center and work outward. The fluffier your batting is the harder this will be to do. Lucky for me my batting isn't terribly lofty and I managed to get it through my machine.

I knew that I didn't want to just sew straight lines through all the designs on the shirts so from more research I found a tool called a darning foot. This goes on your sewing machine and allows you to sew free-hand designs. I used the normal foot on my machine first and did all the straight lines that I could first to minimize what I would have to do free-hand.

Now I know that a lot of quilters like to do the quilting by hand, and originally I thought I wanted to do this too. After doing a few of the blocks that way my hand starting cramping and honestly I didn't like the way it looked as much as when I machine quilted it. It might be my technique, but I found that what I did by hand didn't puff up the way I liked. Maybe my stitches aren't tight enough, I don't know, but I think I'll save the hand-quilting for another project. Like a potholder or other similarly small project.

At this time the quilting stage is not fully completed, so it seems this will be a three-parter to be completed when I'm fully done with the quilt. Then there will be plenty of pictures and information, and more importantly joy, celebration, and happy dancing.

My First Quilt - Part 1

In some ways my first quilt was a disaster, mostly because I didn't know what I was getting into when I took on the challenge. In case you didn't know this, quilting is kind of hard and time consuming. I know it's not exactly what all the cool kids are doing, so most people don't know the time and effort involved in a homemade quilt, but let me tell you it is quite a feat. That's part of why I want to blog about this experience, in the hopes that any other potential quilters can know what they're getting into and to explain to potential quilt buyers why they are so expensive.

First I'll give a little bit of back story. This quilt is for my brother in law, a 'gift' from his wife who is working with me to keep it a secret. I'm making it out of a boxful of old t-shirts of his that she snuck out of their house. These shirts have designs on front and back and most of the designs are huge (Harley Davidson shirts). Twelve shirts, front and back, totaling twenty-four squares ranging from 14 inches to 16 inches. This might not mean much to you, but if you do the math it adds up to a very big quilt. A very big quilt made of sacred t-shirts, but you know, no pressure.

The Plan

Well the first couple of weeks I was scared to cut anything, terrified that I would screw up the entire thing. I planned and planned and re-planned what I wanted to do, going so far as to make the whole quilt in graph paper before I touched a single t-shirt with anything sharp. I cut out separate squares for each t-shirt so I could shuffle them around until I got a placement I liked.  Here's the plan:

I added a little bit of 'fancy' stuff in the center because I thought it would make the whole thing look more 'quilt-y'. And yes this is done very primitively with colored pencils and even some crayon, but the idea was to get a feeling for the colors and the placement of each shirt. A lot of the squares have colored bars along the edges to square up designs that couldn't be cut square due to the neck of the t-shirt or other variables.

 It took me a few more weeks to get all of the pieces cut out and I had a list next to me at all times to keep track of the shirts. I'd assigned each shirt a number (with F or B to denote Front/Back) so that I knew their correct placement in the plan. My list kept me straight on all of the measurements for each block. Now this is where I made my first mistake.

If you ever make a t-shirt quilt the first thing you need to know is that you must, must, must buy fusible interfacing to stabilize the shirts. T-shirt material is horribly stretchy, bendy, and in all other ways unruly, which is very bad when you are trying to cut neat, straight lines that are supposed to be very exact in length and dimension. I did in fact have interfacing, but I worried that I hadn't bought enough so I cut the shirts down and then added the interfacing so I wouldn't waste interfacing cutting it down to size. Big mistake. As mentioned the jersey knit that t-shirts are made out of doesn't like to cooperate and this caused me some problems later. Lesson learned, buy extra interfacing and do that first.

Eventually I managed to get everything cut out, fused, and in neat piles around my work space. I had my sewing machine, thread, pins, and material all set up and ready to go. So of course the fear set in that I would again screw everything up if I started sewing. This quilt was filled with instances of stalling, mostly due to worry, and partially due to a busy schedule.

Getting Started (Finally)

 After a small kick in the butt from my sister in law, I finally got sewing. To avoid the shirts for as long as possible I started in the middle with the fancy little design I planned. This turned out to be a really good starting point as I built outward from here sewing concentric squares.

 

If you didn't already guess, this quilt was on a tight budget so the non-t-shirt parts were all done with scrap fabric I had from past projects and such. From this I learned why most quilters use very basic 100% cotton fabrics, because those tend not to slide or stretch. T-shirt material has stretch problems and silky material moves far too easily making precise measurements difficult. Quilting cotton materials start out nicely stiff, it's almost like working with paper, and doesn't stretch without a good amount of effort. Another lesson learned, they keep this kind of material in the quilting section of the fabric store for good reason.

But I managed to fight through all these issues and the middle design came together through some trial and error. The tiny triangles for the 'H' and 'D' were actually pretty fun to do and as long as I watched carefully that my lines stayed straight they turned out looking pretty good too.

I added an orange and a black border and then moved on to the nightmare of the big triangles that border this part. Another lesson I learned through this is that if you are going to work with triangles, unless you have a pattern to follow, get yourself a protractor. Yes you will feel like you are in Geometry, but believe me, when you make triangle that are supposed to come together at a 90 degree angle and they don't you will wish you had used one.


That's basically what happened to me and rather  than rip apart all the seams I ended up adding some new triangles that weren't part of the original design to fix the angles. The end result was actually better than what I had planned in my opinion, but having to troubleshoot in the middle of the process is not fun, so I'll avoid it where I can in the future.

I'm going to hang this up for now and come back for "My First Quilt - The Sequel" and maybe even "The Sequel Part 2" depending on how long winded I get next time. For now this is plenty I think.

A Lonely Little Blog

First posts always depress me. There is nothing here yet and no guarantee that there will ever be anything worth reading, but you have to start somewhere right? I suppose this post is best suited to expressing my intent, what I hope to make out of this blog. Clearly, as the title more than suggests, this blog will center around my art and I hope there will be plenty of material for me to talk about.

I work in all sorts of areas and I'm never sure what medium I might try out next. My current love affair revolves around polymer clay, using it to make art dolls in a mostly realistic fashion. I've played with polymer clay for a few years, trying everything from cartoony animals to making canes, and what I've found is that it's a great sculpting medium for me. It doesn't dry out, which is great because I have a tendency to get bored with a project at times and put it up until I get the urge to work on it again.

I'll have to go into more detail about polymer clay later, as I said this should be a post about intent and I will try to stay on topic. I have dabbled in many things, sewing, quilting, painting, scrapbooking, candle-making, jewelry, paper mache, and lots of other crafty odds and ends. I love to make things out of found objects and I have quite a collection of bits and baubles (which is growing all the time). I have a bad habit of not throwing things out because you never know when you could use it, but I'm trying desperately not to become a hoarder.

One thing that I've not been good about is recording the results of my various experiments. I know I take pictures occasionally, but then I change cameras or SD cards, or I get a new computer and forget to transfer all of my files over. Many things have been lost to the void and other things might still exist somewhere in the "archive". I will try to find what I can to evidence my past successes, but I hope that this blog will help me to keep a running tab of the new things I accomplish. At least I can access everything I put up here no matter what computer I might be on in the future.

Hopefully this blog won't be lonely for long, I plan to post again soon and I'm hoping that "if you write it they will come". Who 'they' refers to I'm not completely certain of, but I suppose you, gentle reader, would be part of that collective.