Floating - A Final Finish for 2015

I did not get many quilts finished this year.  The ongoing saga that is making a La Passacaglia quilt took up much of my time, with finishes being confined to Modern Herringbone (currently on Miss Main Street's bed) and a couple of baby quilts.  But I have one to add to the list, having finished sewing the binding the day after Christmas.

Floating is finished!  Not the best photo - it has been rainy and overcast for days here in NJ so the lighting was poor, my quilt holders (my mom and Miss Main Street) are short so the top sags, and Dillie insisted on being in the picture.  The design is by Cindy Lammon.  The pattern (called Peppermint Float) was included in last year's calendar from That Patchwork Place and Cindy made the variation and provided the instructions on her blog, Hyacinth Quilt Designs.
 

I liked the diagonal line quilting Cindy used on her quilt so asked my long arm quilter, Karen Thompson, to do the same.  

The blocks are large and went together quickly early this year, and the top was quilted by early summer.  But by then I was heavily into La Passacaglia and did not get around to binding this quilt until last week.

I used a gray on white doodle print for the backing.  The gray color matches the gray in the polka dot sashing and binding.

Floating is 81" square, so a good size but not quite bed size.  In an earlier post, a reader asked if lining up the narrow sashing was difficult.  It isn't really, you just need to pin well and not rush it.

I plan to make another of Cindy Lammon's designs in 2016.  She designs many quilts with the sort of updated traditional look that I am favoring right now.

Sewing and Fabric Shops in France

If you follow me on Instagram (cathyquiltingonmainstreet), you will have seen travel photos from my recent trip to Paris and Strasbourg, France.  I had a wonderful time!  I won't cover all the travel details, just leave you with some images.  Instead, I'll focus on some discoveries of special interest to quilters.

I made this collage on PicMonkey.

In Strasbourg, I discovered this delightful little store, La Mercerie du Bain aux Plantes (15 rue du Bain aux Plantes in La Petite France area).  The store carried a great assortment of ribbon, the kind I never find here, and if I could have thought up some projects on the spur of the moment, I would have purchased more.

But I'm ready for some Christmas 2016 projects.  Each little snowman card holds two meters of ribbon and I bought 2 meters of the embroidered ric rac.  I plan to use it all in some sort of wall hanging or pillows.

The fabric shops of Paris are concentrated in a few blocks in the Montmartre section, near Sacre Coeur (church with a white dome).  I didn't buy any fabric but had a fun browse.  There were three stores I particularly liked:

1. Dreyfus, also known as Marche Saint Pierre - had a huge selection of different kinds of fabric, especially for clothing and interior design use.
2. La Reine - stocks primarily very high quality fabric for clothing.  They had a huge selection of Liberty lawns at 26 euros per meter, as well as nice wools and silks.  
3. Frou Frou - a more contemporary store with cotton fabric similar to Liberty prints.  What makes the place special is the huge selection of buttons and trims that match the fabric.  It would be great for little projects like bags but a bit pricey for quilting.  There is a second Frou Frou store in the 6th arrondisement at 31 rue Saint Placide.

I also saw quilting fabrics from the usual American firms like Moda and Hoffman, but at prices that make me appreciate my LQS and online sources so much more.  I'm not sure I could afford to quilt if I lived in France!  But wow, the pastries are sure good!

Finished Baby Quilt

Two months ago, I blogged about the baby quilt I was making, a little disappointed in how it turned out.  Fortunately, I like it a lot better now that it is quilted, bound, and washed!

Child's Play, 28" by 36"

I made this little quilt using leftover solids from a bigger project.  I did the quilting on my domestic machine, quilting diagonal lines with a walking foot.  I really wanted to quilt in the ditch in the diagonal seam lines but hesitated because of the need to keep the line so precise so quilted parallel to the seam lines instead.  The quilting lines, combined with a little bit of shrinkage in washing, give the quilt more texture and softened the edges of the piecing.  

The backing fabric is an alphabet print from Robert Kaufman in flannel; it is soft and cuddly.  And a darker gray solid for the binding. 

Done in time for Christmas!

Re-Appreciating Hand Sewing

Did you notice my new look?  I wanted a cleaner, custom look for my blog so I hired a professional, Rebekah Louise.  She made the re-design process so easy, I wish I had done it sooner.

I made a couple more rosettes for La Passacaglia.  While these two don't look like they go together at all, I am confident they will coordinate better once in with the rest of the mix.  This quilt can be a real mashup though I am confining myself to a specific color palette.

I also cut and pasted a lot of pieces, ready to go with me on some travels in December.  One of the good things about this project is its portability, so different from most of my quilting which is confined by the sewing machine. As I sat there sewing, I got to thinking how similar this project is to my start in quilting.  Well, not the complexity, really just the hand sewing aspect. 

I took my first quilting class in 1982 or '83, an evening adult class in the local school district.  We drafted templates out of cardboard, used them with a pencil to draw both the cutting and sewing lines on the wrong side of the fabric, cut out the pieces with scissors, and sewed with a short running stitch.  I enjoyed it but after making two throw pillows for my living room and a small wall hanging, I retired from quilting because it was too time consuming.  I was working full time, playing in a tennis league, doing volunteer work, and frankly, husband-hunting.  Any sewing time was spent making silk shell blouses to wear with my power suits (it was the dress for success era).

Then sometime in 1991 I happened to be in the vicinity of the quilting supply store (Quilters Barn in Allentown, NJ - long since closed) and went in for a look.  They were advertising a quilt in a day class.  I asked how that could possibly be and was introduced to the new quilt world of rotary cutting and machine stitching.  I signed up and made a log cabin quilt that became my first nephew's baby quilt. And I was hooked!

Except for occasionally hand quilting a smaller quilt, hand sewing fell by the wayside as I embraced the speed of machine sewing.  Long-arm quilting and pre-cut fabric have added new dimensions to speed quilting.  While I love the gratification of finishing a quilt in less than a year, and the time to make all more of the designs I want to try, it has been relaxing and fun to get off the quilt highway and into the slow lane for this project.

Behind The Scenes

It isn't just the hand sewing that turns making a La Passacaglia quilt top into such a time consuming endeavor.  The cutting and glue basting require a lot of attention as well.

This picture shows some fabric I fussy cut in order to get the look I want.  Of course, you could make this quilt without doing any fussy cutting, but fussy cutting some prints greatly adds to the complex look of this quilt. I've been fussy cutting my striped fabric as well as cutting specific motifs from a large floral print as well as a couple of paisley fabrics.  Without fussy cutting, these larger scale prints would have looked randomly chopped on the small pieces in this quilt.  Whenever I fussy cut, I need five diamonds for the center star and 10 pentagons for the outer ring.  

I'm rounding out the fussy cut fabrics with lots of pieces cut from tonal prints that can be cut in the conventional (and much faster) way.

Then there is the glue basting step.  Each cut piece of fabric needs to be basted to its paper backing.  I use a Sewline glue pen on a rotary cutting mat, My Olfa mat is square but I think a round rotary mat would work even better.  The rotary mat makes the job go faster because you can turn the piece being glued, rather than trying to turn your body or twist your arm around a stationary position.

And there is a lot of gluing to be done!  Here, I'm gluing the star points that connect all the rosettes together to make the final pattern.  There are 1368 of these in the quilt; they are about 1" long.  
I better get cracking!

Making Progress

I've made some progress on my La Passacaglia project.  When I last posted about it, it looked like this:

I've added three more rosettes to the lower left edge.  That part is complete except for some partial rosettes to fill in the edges once I have it squared up.  

I'll work on the lower right portion next.  

Yes, this quilt takes a long time to make.  And, proof that I am completely crazy, I already have my next English paper piecing project selected.  

Desk Calendar

I have a desk calendar for 2016 already.  I found it in a lovely independent book store in Saratoga Springs, NY, called Northshire Bookstore.  I love a good independent book store and Northshire is the best I've been to in a long time, independent book stores having become so rare.  They have a store in Manchester, VT, too.  

Anyway, I found this easel style desk calendar with quilt designs. Turns out, it was designed by One Canoe Two, who are now designing fabric for Moda.  So next year, I can be reminded of my hobby/obsession while working at my day job.