Simultaneous Release !

And then they had cocoa. Finally, pulled loose with not near the trauma of the mere 18-25 hour potholders that preceded it. The strong canvas bezel took the strain of the first pull, and held the ends of all the outer joins together. If it hadn't taken so long to assemble, it would be a shoe-in as the kick off of a multi-panel "Teefes" baby blanket. I'm definitely going to do another panel from "My First Hundred Teefes", but till I've gotten a lot faster at the stitching, I'll probably be sticking to single panel projects.

The slightly damaged holder board says, I didn't sew near as much foil to the back of this one. Even though I doubt I'll want to sew this one again this size, I'm still holding on to it for a while. It kinda reminds me of Han Solo (carbonited Han).   

Hanging there on the back of my chair, the recently freed hotel ghosts sip their cocoa, mocking me. Live it up fellas, you haven't escaped the needle.

"We've been Framed," Cried The Chocoholic Ghosts.

The stitching of the picture is done, Woo hoo! Now I have cut up an oldish (10 years), slightly stained, but very tough bakers apron to make the bezel (frame) and back in one piece. Once again the bakers parchment pattern transfers the slightly funky rectangle of the image to what should look like one of Tedy-cam's photos.

Although it might seem like extra work to inlay the image by hand, it seemed a shame to give up any of the picture for a stitching tab. Even with relief cuts in the stitching tab that come to just over an 1/8 of an inch from the corners they still mushed out a little (rounded unexpectedly). Huh, I meant to do that. Well only about 3 more feet of tiny catch-stitches and I can start closing it up.

Hungry Ghost, Post-Nasal

I guess I saved the best for last. Tiny Teefes roots, inner tube, and the even tinier water inside the inner tube, plus the dreaded marshmallows also remain to be stitched.  That said I am much better prepared now, having experienced the Hungry Ghost nasal aperture training just yesterday. Cross yer phalanges.

Chocoholic Ghosts Make 18 Hour Potholder Look Practical

I have yet to face the dreaded marshmallows, but I'm pretty sure I've passed halfway with the stitching. This one makes that "Simple 18 Hour Potholder" look downright practical. I guess it's too late for that paper-cut huh?

 I am finding close examination of my stitching is painful at best. Still I remember, this is not a prom dress, and the acceptable standards for arty, experimental, potholder quilts are a bit more lenient. In other words, "It would have to look a lot stupider than this before I could feel good about giving up". 

 Perhaps not yer museum quality pot-holder, but maybe good enough to hang in the kitchen and pick up hot stuff for years and years.  
Notes on the stitching; Especially on the shiny stuff, poking the needle toward the center (while not as pretty as a parallel to the edge stitch) and double wrapping the needle (knotting) each stitch helps keep them from bursting the edge as often. over cutting (leaving extra width) particularly in narrow spots cuts down on the,
"I meant to do that", on the fly image redesigns. Wish I had more, I mentioned over-cutting didn't I? Oh well Like Shakleton and Oat Willie, "Why stop now, onward through the fog". After the Shackleton family motto "Fortitudine vincimus" (By endurance we conquer).       

Haunting Progress In The Cold Morning Light

If somebody asks how long this took, lie. Better they think yer silly than nuts. This is making the standard, tacking the edges of heat stuck applique method seem worth a second look. The six inch thread sticking out of the greenish area is waiting to be pulled taut and snipped. It will draw back behind and disappear. It's already short enough to make knotting challenging. Future runs at this method will definitely have more over cut (bigger tabs for stitching on) especially on the shinny fabrics. 

The scary part is I've just gotten started good. While it seems like these pictures are a bit dense detail wise, I really like how they look as fabric mosaics. This is probably one the very few that will get a potholder test. I am totally stoked about doing some of  them as baby blankets (single frames). Several of the pages from "My First Hundred Teefes" (especially the front cover,"Hyah") are landscape-like with way too much detail to do in a panel (potholder) but might make a weird enough baby blanket to get hung on the wall. I can already see the old growth Teefes as various kinds of ticking, Hyah!

If Not For, Till Then

Poking the fabric, yes? Picky and slow enough to be a little embarassing, if it didn't look so cool. As I continue to fill it in I also continue to edit the picture. Just three shades of white and some black and its done, at least till the stitches begin.









Now the colors are placed. I haven't sewn several of these fabrics before. To tell the truth I'm not sure that I want to stitch it and make a backside for this pot holder.




It's colorful, finished looking, and may get ruined when I begin the catch-stitch and sew it all together for real. It would be really easy to Sum it up, hold what I've got  and get a frame. But no! Till then, it's the coolest page for "My First Hundred Teefes" so far. Sew, if I wasn't so tired I'd jump it tonight. I really want to see a quilt that includes this panel.

Cairo Solid Thwarted By Outlaw Polygons

As I looked at the assembled peels from Poly and speculated on a Cairo pattern wrap for the Snub Square Antiprism (j85), I noticed something odd about some of the pentagons around it's sides. Because every angle of these pentagons had it's roots in an equally divided equilateral triangle, they look very hexagon like. On further reflection, I began to wonder how they could be so odd, and still be equilateral pentagons? Attempts to construct them in 2 dimensions failed.The pentagons containing the "right" angles came in at 570 degrees of interior angles, while the troubling looking ones contained a whooping 600 degrees.   Further research revealed, the sum of the interior angles of a two dimensional pentagon is 540 degrees. Using the following formula (I found at mathsisfun.com) with n as number of sides,  (n-2) x180= the sum of polygon interior angles. Duh! 

The circular king of Flat Land would have had me bisected for even entertaining such a heresy as a pentagon with five 120 degree angles! Careful examination of the model on the right,  revealed that the pentagons on the Snub Cubeoctahedron (which presents the closest I've found so far to a spherical snub square network) were also impostors. They contained a total of 570 degrees of interior angles.these were only marks, representing the true dual.

Pentagonalicositetrahedron

 

Obviously something different happens when one strikes a line from the center of each polygon in a 2 dimensional snub square network. A careful examination of these pentagons reveals, three120 degree angles, and two 90 degree angles, in each.

 I still believe a visually similar and highly thought provoking result could be achieved on the snub square solid. While I'm pretty confident, I think a little more Photoshop and a working model will precede my fleece experiment. I found the true dual of the snub cube, but have yet to model it.

If Not For Tedy-Cam

If not for Tedy-cam, they would have never known their room was haunted!
Ok, back to our roots. This one is experimental on so many levels. The picture it's drawn from is the original "electric finger paint version" (drawn on a Nexus 7 tablet, with a finger tip, in an older version of Spray Paint by Netox). This later became a neater line drawing page in "My First Hundred Teefes". Now it's in testing to become part of  Teefes quilt. If you look closely, you can see the color pic at right has a few visible ball-point pen lines ( and probably a few holes).

I'm only on the second piece and I can already tell it's going to have some challenging places. The marsh mellows were trouble in Spray Painter, which had a very limited undo. They could be fixed easily enough in this phase (and should have been). It's easy enough to change stuff. Still I like the weird little marsh mellows, and who knows if I'll stitch this anyway.                                                    










Ow, the crown installation was a little painful as well. What tha heck it's an experiment, and part of it is to find the sticky places early and adapt them, or bail.

 Once again it's a little embarrassing how long this is taking, but I like the faux quilt look. At the least I'll get an interesting looking illustration out of it. Or two if I get to the backside, remember it's still a potholder if it works.

Cairo Cover For Snub Square Antiprism Pillow (Single Wiggle)

While bringing Pillowhedra up to date I saw the single wiggle snub square antiprism, and immediately wondered how it would relate to the Cairo pattern. Since I still had the model (a pre-wiggle version), I put a pencil dot in the center of each face and laced it up correctly to see if it was consistent.

 It worked well enough. I automatically pictured it with the colors and textures of the Cairo/snub square baby blanket that worked so well just recently. Although with it's row of non-regulation, hexi-looking pentagons around thewaist. It really does look a lot like a turtle shell. With project ideas piling up, I'm not sure which way I'll jump, but it's nice to have so many toys to choose from. This pattern looks so cool wrapped around a shape, especially this one. This feels like one of a pair, or perhaps a trio of pillows (or whatever). One thing's for sure, it's gonna be challenging to do something else thinking about this one.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".