The Other Side of Elephant Pillow Quilt

I'm glad I made some goals yesterday about finishing Elephant Pillow Quilt.

I finished piecing the other side today, just like I planned.

Since one side is rather busy with lots of prints, I used lots of solids on this side.  They were just sitting around in my stash, so I was glad to use them up.

Even though there were lots of simple long seams, I still like to use pins.

On Sunday I plan on making the sandwich.

It Had My Name All Over It

At Laura Waskilowski's Tiny Homes workshop, I bought some of her pearl cotton.

I had to - it had my name all over it.

I haven't used pearl cotton for embroidery, but she hand-dyed it and it was nice and shiny so I thought I'd give it a try.  I'm used to embroidery floss which comes in one thickness.  She had three.  This is what I chose for the #5 skeins, which are her thickest, and which works best on wool. She also sells #8 and #12.

I always have so much trouble with small numbers indicating a larger size.  But I decided to think about how many people can fit in an elevator, depending on the size of the people.  Five really large people or eight medium people or twelve small people.

These are my #8 skeins, the most versatile size for cotton fabrics.

I only bought two of the #12 size.  This is so thin and won't show up really well after stitching, but sometimes you want fine detail.

Her names are so nice.  The name fell off the purple one before I bought it.  Maybe it's something like Blackberry.

Looks like a braid rug when laid out like this.  She has a really useful tutorial on how to store threads for stitching.

As excited as I am to make a new Tiny Home so I can use these pretty threads, I want to finish my Elephant Pillow Quilt first.  That project is dragging on way too long because the darn quilt is too big.  I need to get over my mental block and power through to the end.  Maybe a goal or two will help.  Like finishing the piecing of the other side on Friday and making the sandwich on Sunday.

My First Tiny Home

This past Monday, I took a Tiny Homes workshop from Laura Wasilowski.  It was a really fast three hours and I learned a lot.

This is my first Tiny Home quilt, approximately 18" square.

Laura supplied the kit, which contained prefused fabric, embroidery thread and embroidery needle.  There were two pieces of fabric: one graduated color scheme of pastels and one of brights.

It was really intimidating to start cutting into the fabric.  The first thing she had us do was cut whatever shapes we wanted.  I stalled right away (What kind of shape?  How many?  How large?  Which fabric should I cut them from?  What were they going to be used for?)  There were no right or wrong answers, so I just jumped in.

We learned to cut and fuse bias strips to get nice curves.  We tried out decorative blades.  We built mini collages, then applied them to the background.

When overlapping fabrics, like on my horizon line, always place the dark color over the light.

If you place something too close the the edge, add an extension piece, like the stripes on the right.

After everything is tack-fused together with a dry iron, steam iron it to batting.  (This assumes you're using Wonder Under #805 which she strongly recommends.)  Before using the steam iron, she recommends covering the quilt with a thin dish towel in case your iron spits. 

Not thinking, I used a dish towel with a waffle weave, and the texture is now embedded in my quilt.  You can sort of see the vertical portion of the waffle in the pink sky.  It's quite visible in person.  Although unintended, I don't mind it.

This was a slapdash effort, just to learn all the techniques.  You can see another gorpy collage under the peak of the roof.  

For my next Tiny Home, I'll be able to think ahead of time about what I want, and make something I'm happier with.  But for a proof of concept, I guess this one isn't too bad.  Some things in life are a means to an end, and some things are an end.  This project was the former.  

For the next step, you're supposed to do hand embroidery, then put a back on it and do machine quilting.  I just decided this minute that this tiny home is at an end.  Why spend hours and hours embroidering something I don't really like?  I'll wait until I make my next tiny home.

Monday Is Fun Day - Balsa Wood Tree

Lots of this happening outside this time of year.

I bought this balsa wood tree (flowers sold separately) at an art museum last month.  

I like how stylized it is, and I also like how flat it is.  The branches and flowers are only 1/8" thick.

I guess it's not very "arty" for an art museum, but it's a revenue generator for them.  We both were happy with the transaction.

Ooh - Pivot Feature

I bought a new sewing machine last month.  I finally broke down and bought a domestic machine with an 11" arm, a huge improvement over the 6" arm on my old one.  I disliked quilting so much and I think now that I won't have to push an elephant through a mouse hole, I'll be much happier.  

I'm not ready to do any quilting just yet.  I'm still working on the other side (the side with the elephants) of my Elephant Pillow Quilt.  I fused my elephants to the background and now I'm zigzagging the edges.

I decided to try out the pivot feature on this new machine, and all I can say is "ooh".  No more manually lifting the presser foot when I want to pivot.  I just push a button before I begin sewing and Pivot Function is activated and stays in force until I disable it.  

This means that whenever I get to the spot I where I want to pivot, all I have to do is lift my foot off the foot pedal and enjoy the magic as the needle stays down and the presser foot lifts up.  I do my pivot, step on the gas, and the presser foot comes down and away I sew.

I like this for three reasons:

1. It's fun.
2. It saves time.
3. The presser foot reliably stays up until I step on the pedal again. 

On my old machine, I had to manually lift the presser foot, and lately it would sometimes decide to just fall down again.  Then I'd have to raise it again.  My repair person told me that there's a little plastic stick-out part that was worn, and that's why the presser foot wouldn't always stay up.  If I had told him about that problem before he tuned the machine, he would have fixed it cheaply.  To fix it now costs the same price as a tuneup, because he has to pull everything apart.

So it's just as well I bought a new machine.

Round and round I go, looking forward to every pivot.

Mini Garden #1: In the Forest

As promised, I spent all day Monday making mini gardens.  Made three of them, in fact.  Since it takes three times as long to photograph, develop photographs, and write a post at it takes to make a garden, I'll be showing them over the course of the next week or so.  At first I thought it would be fun to show them on consecutive days, but that wouldn't leave much time for anything else.

So here's the first one, named In the Forest.

New purchases for this were the coconut fiber planter, moss, all the plants except for the pine tree, and the chair that the cat is sitting on.

The big gorpy saucer wasn't in my original (not very well thought-out plan).  I started with a much smaller clear plastic one, nice and unobtrusive.  After I got the plants in and started watering, the water came out the sides.  Not fair!  I only wanted it to come out the bottom.  Since I was creating this project on my sewing room table in a room with a carpet, the water flow was a minor disaster.  After throwing down some paper towels, I literally ran out to the garage and grabbed the largest saucer I could find. 

I attached an air plant to the trellis, adding some pretty color.  I've never seen an air plant bloom before, and they tell me it will continue to do so for another few months.

I used ribbon to tie it on, because they told me to submerge it in room-temperature water for 10 minutes, once a week.  They said people underestimate how much misting to do, so the dunk method is preferable.

So let's get in here and root around, shall we?

These cute little pigs were a gift from a friend.  They're walking on handmade ceramic tiles I bought at an art fair many years ago.  On the left and right are two different kinds of moss.

The little pigs are following a larger pig, who is following directions from the cat. 

More moss is shown here, along with the other two plants that are new:  white Hypoestes and a shiny thing that I don't know the name of.

The cat was the slider on a bola that I bought at a garage sale a few years ago.  The chair is sitting on a stone patio - really a coaster.

One that almost got away.

A view from the back.

What's that nestled in the V of the folding screen?

It's Fancy Fur Girl.  This is what the runaway pig was investigating - you can see the farmer behind her.

I bought three different versions of these fobs at Jo-Ann Fabrics earlier this year, with no idea what to do with them.  I was really hoping that the fur on her was fake, but based on the interest that our dog showed, I'm afraid it might be from a real animal.

Monday Is Fun Day - Mini-Gardens and Terrariums

Last Friday at Barnes and Noble, I bought the last copy of Mini Gardens & Terrariums.  I hate spending $10 on a magazine so I put it back on the shelf after giving it a good once-over.  But in the end, it was just too much fun to pass up.

Oftentimes when I buy a magazine, it winds up on a pile and it might take me months or longer to get to it.  Or else I'll start it and then not finish it until who knows when.  But I read this entire issue the same day it came home.  

Yesterday I did some shopping to augment some pieces I already owned.  And today I'm going to spend the rest of the day making you-know-whats.

The Elephant On the Other Side

I decided to applique some elephants on the other side of my Elephant Pillow Quilt.

I free-hand sketched an elephant profile on newspaper, then cut it out and used it as a pattern to trace onto the fusible.  By making mirror images, I'll have elephants walking in opposite directions.

The background of the other side is a variety of solid colors, so I chose this print (used in blocks on the one side I already showed you) for the elephants.

Here they are, all fused down and awaiting a good edge stitch.  Each elephant is 10" tall and 17" wide.

Never Too Simple to Make a Mistake

I'm making a quilt to go with my elephant pillow.  The quilt will cover a chair, and the pillow will sit on the chair, with the quilt as a backdrop.  You won't see very much of the quilt at all, so I went with a simple design of 9" x 12" unpieced blocks.  To get just the right size, I needed to add one 9" x 6" block to each column.

Since the blocks were just one rectangle, unpieced, it should have been a simple job.  But I learned it's never to simple to make a mistake.

Sewing my first two rows together, this is what I got.  I thought maybe I needed to do a little easing, although that seemed more than a little out of range for what you'd expect to ease.

Nevertheless, I started pinning on both ends, and this is what I found in the middle of the column.  Now it finally dawned on me that I had made a mistake.

Turns out that when I cut my 9" x 12" blocks, I had some pieces leftover in the 9" width I needed, but too short for the 6" height I needed.  I set them aside.  But not far enough aside, evidently.  When I cut accurate 9" x 6" blocks, they sort of accidentally got mixed in with the others that were approximately 9" x 5.25".  

I was glad I hadn't goofed up every column, just a few of them.  It was an easy, but still annoying, fix to rip out the wrong block and sew in the right one.

Here's the finished product.  Originally I was calling this the "right" side, but I'm so excited by the other side (not finished yet) that I don't want to call it the "back" side.  So I'm calling them "one side" and "the other side".