Sunday, November 30, 2014

Cyclocentric Cylinder Bolster Quilt

I know it looks allot like the last post, but this is the template that works for this project. It only took all night and a couple of hours to finally get it headed the right direction. I haven't gotten very far since, but once I decided that the grain direction of the grid was what needed changing it moved more quickly. First try I lost a row in the diameter and picked one up in the length. Then I got the diameter better but now it's too long.

Actually it's taller than I'd planned but it looks about right. I' m defiantly pushing on to the full sized patterns before I fool around with it any more. If you've noticed all the colored lines, yes I screwed up a couple of times. I just changed colors and kept going. both cylinders are made from printer copies of my first try on the rotated template.

The other end of the couch shouldn't be naked, so here's the template for the 4-fold network. Dam, you have no idea what a rare critter this is! I searched for more than an hour for even a small section of this net and never found it.

  All I found was a mention of a section on a Tau cross in a 1921 work by John Sebastian Ward on Freemasonry. No pictures I found of the mentioned crosses had an example. This work sheet is a cleaned out, squared up, pasted up, copy of zindra's figure 5b on page 8 (of 12) from her earthlink post of 4/7/2006, that can be found reproduced in it's entirety at pillowhedra.blogspot.com
As she said,"It employs the use of the Vesica Piscis coordinates arranged in a 4-fold cyclosemmytric aray..." Explorations within this net can reveal both a single and a double wiggle hexahedron (square), both of which will tile (fill an entire surface). Sharpen yer colored pencils. This may be a long night.  

Double Wiggle Triangle, Cylinder Quilt

This is a patched together network of the compass flower refer in the Wikipedia article I got my clip art from as "The Flower Of Life". At 18 3/8 inches tall it makes a cylinder 8 3/4 inches in diameter. It's centered on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet to print as a work sheet. By referring to http://pillowhedra.blogspot.com/ it's not too tough to figure the placement to fill it with single, double, or even triple wiggle triangles or rhombus s. I like to use colored pencils. That way if I screw up, I just change colors and try again till I've got a grip on the symmetry, and then start a fresh sheet. This is planned to be a bolster pillow, of green and black rose brocade satin. The arithmetic wasn't hard but it still took a ridiculously long time so I thought I'd share. This network isn't really hard to generate with a compass and ruler, and seems like it would be somewhat idiot proof. But no! Beyond generating small sections to make polygon templates, all my attempts so far stated to go to pieces before I got a very big section going. It saves a lot of time to have a printable section to play around with.

I'm just getting started so there's not much to show but a painted cardboard sono-tube (concrete form from home depot). I'll be back with more as I get-er-done.

Friday, November 28, 2014

Double Wiggle Black Rose minus Dark heart


Ok, it's a real quilt now! Not a huge one though. It's 6 3/8 x 7 3/4 inches, and plans for a bias tape are on hold. After sewing and ripping out 6 or 7 wobbly circles, I went with running a black line of stitches right over all the catch-stitches. Even these lines look a bit wobbly, but  only on the back (hot side). The way the catch-stitch sucks down deep into the quilt lines makes it much less visible especially since there's nothing to keep them on top since the pieces don't overlap. I like this well enough to do a scarf or a seamless bolster (couch pillow) out of it. I'd really like to see one with black stitches (also outlines only). That said, I'd rather see a section of a harlequin net (all rhombus s) in the same fabric but with black ones and green ones. With the severe stagger produced by the double wiggle I'll definitely model one in Photoshop and look at a while first, but I've gotta feeling it'll end up single-wiggled.



The next thing I'd like to test is adding a second layer of batting during the assembly process (or third if it's a potholder). I don't know but I suspect I'd catch less of the foilboard and if I'm right, the catch-stitch will secure it between the joins atop the other layer of batting. I wouldn't mind sewing a harlequin Potholder to find out, but maybe not next.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Dark Heart, Double Wiggle Triangle, Black Rose Jacquard Quilt


Ok, it's a potholder, and though it looks a bit like a
quilt, it's really just a bunch of wiggly, trapped, triangles of black rose brocade satin. The triangle to the right, is the first to be forced into cuts in a piece of foil covered foam half an inch thick. If you look carefully you can see the segmented edges of all the concave turnings. Without these the stitching tabs wouldn't fit, and instead wanted to pull tight on top of the board. Notice also, the relief cuts stop short of the line so they won't show on the surface.





The plan referenced with a couple of pieces of tape was transferred onto the foam-board with the compass point tilted over sideways. It still punched through some.









This was much better than the cardboard rubber cemented to foamcore. It also was a lot easier to force down into the grooves. The cardboard on foamcore board will work in a pinch, but pulling it out it is a bit scary. I've probably sewed some foil to the back of the quilt-top, but not much.







 Still a long ways from ready to pull from the board
at least my catch-stitch is getting fairly consistent. This is still slow and not all that smooth, but I'm totally ready to get back at it. What I really want to see are the black quilting circles, with a throby looking red (maybe black) heart on top.







I printed several different sizes and I'm not sure which one this one is. The heart was thumb nail quality barely changed (it's a doodle). My triangle template was 4 inches, point to point. After I cut one out , I  took a flexible french curve and added a 3/8 inch tab for stitching (or in this case, stuffing in the cut in the foamboard). To drive it in I used a key chain sized rewards card (plastic like a credit card) because my spline roller was too fat.

Friday, November 21, 2014

How To Make A Simple Potholder In Only 18 hours

To tell the truth, It's taken more than 18 hours and I still haven't added the bias tape. I still haven't picked a bias tape. Still 18 hours would get most of it done. I did stumble down a few blind alleys first. I must say I'd rather be stumbling through the next one than trying to make sense in print, but I've been lucky and I'm tickled to have something to share. So while trying to be brief here goes.




 This is where the most hours were concentrated. Even though my herringbone (catch stitch) wasn't that neat or smooth, quilting falls right on top of most of it (all if I was neater). I feel like this would be a lot easier about four times as big.






 After the wiggly pieces were stitched, the whole group was peeled from the form, stacked with the Insulbrite, cotton batt, and a worn-OD-looking working side, the stack was edge sewed to keep it flat.  I used the template to position the circle template and mark the quilt pattern a circle at a time (so's not to smudge them or get lost in all the lines). Each circle generated two free ends to be dragged under and disappeared before they got grabbed by another circle.


The scrap from the circle marking template fitted against the needle, trapped by the pressure foot, kept me pretty much on my chalk circles which didn't show up allot of places.








Once the pattern of circles was established, the fill in moved more quickly as every circle was supposed to be the same. So as soon as I could find two places it had to be I could use any circle from the plan as a guide to fill each circle with the piscus flower (six fishes surrounded by six fishes). Even this small I really like this pattern. With Fishes at least 2 1/2 times larger (about finger size) I think it would be more flexible and easier to sew. I didn't make much headway toward error canceling in the pattern, but I think it will lend it'self to a better product from even a slightly better seamster.

These patterns feel very traditional to me. Even though I haven't seen quilts like this, I've got a feeling they're out there somewhere. Mine may be a little ham-handed, and not really do the pattern justice, but I'm looking forward to making a bigger sample. The Cairo baby blanket has already got me wondering just how far I'll be able to go on my machine, as the amount of material bunched to the right of my pressure foot was getting fairly crowded with just a 28x36 inch baby blanket. I'm still extremely thankful for my trusty steed, and if all I can sew on him are samples (pot holder sized) and baby blankets I'm still thrilled.

 Somewhat customized steed with skateboard stickers.

Monday, November 17, 2014

My First Six Quilts, (revisited) 2nd Post


The attempt below is typical of my early efforts at 2D cyclocentric polygon networks. this one looks like it might work, from the back-side, but when flipped over the rippled edge wasn't visible(hardly worth the challenge of sewing that curvy line!). With the time pressure off (weddings over) I decided to revisit my duds to see if there wasn't some way to pull em together.

Even though I'd been unable to coax them to lay flat so far, my previous successes making pillows out of these tortured polygons ( pillowhedra.blogspot.com) made me hungry for more wiggly strangeness. So I had yet another go at it, and then another.








This effort though promising looking at first glance, took a crazy long time and really didn't ripple worth a darn. The pre-creasing of every-other edge wasn't that effective, yielding a bogus wiggle very slowly.








Rucy, you got some splinin to do! Oh yeah , this was much easier (not).  To the right you can see the second run at the channel and spline method. It turned out that the foam-core board wasn't thick enough to hold the tab down for stitching, so I got out the rubber-cement and stuck on some cardboard triangle thickeners. This didn't proceed quickly either.





 Tricky at first, this method was effective at holding the wiggle intact accurately. Now if I can just sew it without pulling it loose. I went looking for alternative hand stitches for joining these constantly curving edges. I found what I've been using with a different name in a University of Kentucky pdf called "Hand Stitches" Prepared by Nadine Hackler, Associate Professor Extension Clothing Specialist. 
 They called it a catch stitch, and implied it wasn't meant to show. It looks like the redwork stitch, but I can link to it. This is the best way I've come up with to join these wiggly triangles together.










 Alrighty then, with the template as a guide (so I don't do more of this than I absolutely have to) I've gotten to the stitchy part. Again Linda Causee's  "Quilts A to Z" had a solution. Yup, page 30 again, the Herringbone stitch she recommended for covering along the edges of the Redwork picture blocks and borders worked pretty darn good. I got better, but mine were never as good looking as her's. I tacked all the wiggly triangles and pieces of triangles together while they were being pinned by the grooves in the cardboard and foam-core . Shoulda gotten a shot of the fresh peeled patch-o-wiggly beasties, but I was antsy to sew it down and start the quilting. Continued in "How To Make A Simple Potholder In Only 18 hours".

Monday, November 10, 2014

CAIRO, QUILTED FLEECE BABY BLANKET 4th post, asembly test


Ah, I'm shrinking! Somebody's not crossing their fingers. The top picture shows the bottom 4 pieces, all but the right edge piece, with their right edge trimmed of flush with the framed center area. Fitted together they were expected to be 28 inches wide. As you may have noticed the plan area bound by the fine line is 27 inches. Ouch, now even though the proportions look good till I finish putting the rest of it together I must say I'm a little disappointed. Looks like another late night. I really wanna Know if it's just a little shrunk, or warped.

Alright, We're shrunk a bit but not warped, and it only took till 4:30 am to find out for sure. I downloaded these pieces from the web and clipped and asembled them (laid up to measure not glued tonight eh). Woo-hoo! Ganight already.

CAIRO, QUILTED FLEECE BABY BLANKET 3rd the pieces

This One's going to be Image heavy. I searched all my Cairo Photoshop files, but it did no good. There is no full pattern image of the plan except the photos of the one I assembled. It's cut to pieces now so I'm glad that at least the pieces survived. The whole idea of working full size was to make an accurate pattern. Fortunately















when I made them each was saved for the web. After they're uploaded I'll test them. Cross yer fingers!

CAIRO, QUILTED FLEECE BABY BLANKET 2nd post

Remember I mentioned I got five books on quilting from the library? That doesn't mean I read five books on quilting. If that were the case I probably wouldn't have stumbled through so many projects, in such a short time. So I have been going back through several of them, to see if there weren't some warnings and tips that might have saved some embarrassment and time. I got bummed and didn't photograph a number of my weirdest flops.
For instance, I used a really cool light blue thread to outline the snub square pattern. It turns out the fleece is so fluffy that the only places you can actually see it is where I got paranoid about unraveling stitching ends and backed up and ran over a few stitches to lock down the ends.
In one of  the books (I will give credit when I find it again) there was a tip about not cutting the trailing ends of the quilting process too short, so you can come back thread them up on a needle and dive em back in near where they come out. Then run the needle an inch or through the batting layer, surface and pull the slack to suck the knot under and cut it short. If it's taut at that time, when the mashed fleece (or batting) springs back, it disappears the thread end for good. Duh, no backing up and over-sewing stitch bunches to show! Also less pressure foot skid marks. Ow, I had a few, distressing yes but not horrible.
Machine sewing isn't totally easy, but even a rookie can sew a fleece quilt, if yer patient and hardheaded. My Cairo-fleece baby blanket took about two weeks, from Photoshop to washing machine (remove the blue chalk marks). I doubt I could sell my odd amateurish result, but I don't think I'd do this just for money.  This seemed like a kinda tough quilt. Springy, thick, kinda fragile edged, stretchy fabric, but truthfully most sewing is weird. I wouldn't be surprised if most of yer average stitchy types were actually a little smarter than me, still if I wanted something easy to do, I'd probably be watching TV.

 

CAIRO, QUILTED FLEECE BABY BLANKET

 I waited awhile for the blanket to get where was going before I posted pictures of it. While the fleece was a little challenging to sew, with a 3/8 inch tab it held stitches well and the bulgy tabs disappeared into the batting just making it plumper not lumpy.


Quilt experiment #7, this fleece blanket, is based on the only one of my first 6 quilt experiments that was completed in time for the wedding. My first six efforts were all potholders. The Cairo patterned one (finished with 20 minutes to spare, sorry no pictures yet) inspired this 28x36 inch fleece baby blanket . The pictures I used to make both patterns came  from a Wikipedia article on the Cairo pattern, one of which also showed it's dual.
           Working in a 30x36 photoshop document, I pieced together a  template that was 28 by 36 inches. Leaving only half an inch outside the snub square grid representing the quilting. After cropping and adding guidelines, I removed the colors and cut the plan into sixteen 8 1/2 by 11 inch pieces with numbers and borders to allow gluing. The resulting full sized plan below is what I worked from.

So as not to risk breaking this document (post) and
having to do it all over (again). The Cairo story and the pieces of the pattern will  be in a series of posts.