Some pink had to be added to the NYB fabrics I’m working with. First a NYB Collection 1 block with a little pink. I think this one will end up in the Tiffany Lamp quilt or … well, see below. … Continue reading
New York Beauties in the Pink
Category Archives: printing on fabric
Weekend Plans
First up, some Inklingo Cheat Sheets filled out so I can sort out what sizes of freezer paper I need to cut. Then I can print more of the New York Beauty shapes on the fabrics I’m using for these. I had some pieces of fabric that were already cut so they’re behind the cheat sheets but there is more to come. It’s the weekend, so this is my play time for the NYB blocks and who knows what else. Maybe a log cabin block, maybe some more of the tiny Drunkard’s Trail, or perhaps the 2″ Drunkard’s Path. The shapes for those last three are already printed on the fabrics I’m using, so it will be easy to pick up some of them.
I’m saving the strips from grading the seams of the NYB blocks in this little glass jar. It’s getting very colourful and will be even more so by the time I’m done, although I have a feeling I’ll need to use a larger jar.
The big book box has lots of shapes already printed and cut out, ready to stitch.
The laptop is charging now as I want to play with a couple of design ideas in EQ, but hopefully out on the roof garden. The battery on my old laptop doesn’t hold a charge as long as it used to, but I think it’s good for about an hour of play. So those are my quilting plans for the weekend. What are yours?
While we were taking the pictures, Baxter was determined to get the jar lid.
A cartoon drawing of Baxter, drawn by Mr. Q.O.
A Baker’s Dozen of New York Beauties
This is the latest one I finished. It definitely goes in the Monet set of blocks. This has three batiks in it as well as the metallic fabrics. I love the metallics but they are a bit thicker than normal quilting cotton and definitely thicker than a batik. The batiks in these blocks will help to cut down on the weight of the quilt, whatever size it ends up to be.
I’m amazed that 13 of these blocks are already finished. I had always wanted to make a New York Beauty quilt, but paper piecing? Not for me, too much machine work. Trace the templates? No, nowhere near as accurate and thin a line as I’d want. But being able to print the templates on my fabric? I was in! In seconds! That’s the beauty of Inklingo – printing on fabric and getting perfect cutting lines, perfect stitching lines and perfect matching points. It makes even the sharpest of points easy to stitch whether by machine or by hand.
Seams graded on the latest block and it pressed beautifully. Of course the batiks help. It is a bit more of an effort to get the blocks that have all metallics in them to press to their best advantage but it’s worth the effort as I love the effect they give.
I think I’ll make two more of these blocks and then start playing with setting ideas. I have a few ideas so the temporary design wall may be put up within the next few days so I can play. Clearly I’m making a series of these quilts as I have lots of blocks still to stitch but I don’t want to make these large quilts. I’d rather see them as colour-saturated small pieces to hang on a wall.
Still no flowers on the roof garden, but Baxter is on patrol on the windowsill. Mostly at night, though. He clearly seems something out there that we don’t see. He’s not as interested in watching out the window during the day as he is at night.
Mr. Q.O. captioned this one, “Don’t try this yoga pose without an attendant.” We call this one Baxter’s pretzel pose.
A Gift, Some Printing, Some Blocks and a Cake
The gift, one of the Rowenta travel irons. I am thrilled to pieces (pun intended) as it is so light and makes pressing blocks so easy on my hands. It gets super hot very quickly and has a little travel case.
The printing of everything for the Drunkard’s Path quilt using 2″ blocks is complete … I think. I may be short a few of the ’30s pieces, but can print more once I have a better idea where I’m at with that. The cutting has begun. That will take me some time as I’m not comfortable using a rotary cutter for this. But if I cut a sheet of the ’30s prints and one of the muslin each evening, I’ll have this done fairly quickly.
The little book box is slowly getting filled up with the pieces. I counted the previously finished blocks and I had, before I realized I could use Inklingo to finish this quilt, made 307 blocks. So only 525 to go.
Well, oops — make that 501 blocks to go. I couldn’t resist making a few on the weekend, some of which are shown here. Twenty-four counts as a few, right? When they’re this small and take only a few stitches to complete?
And just because they’re so cute and press so beautifully, a picture of the back of one of them.
The reason for the gift? It was my birthday yesterday. Mr. Q.O. knew I wanted that Rowenta travel iron. So he picked it up at the Creativ Festival on Friday. His favourite line is that only someone who’s married to a quilter can get away with buying an iron as a gift.
This was the birthday cake. They have these little cakes that come in small mason jars in the grocery store store downstairs. Perfect size for two people.
Baxter loves to lie on Mr. Q.O.’s cryptic crosswords. Mr. Q.O. captioned this one, “Hmm …” I think he was just showing off his lynx tips.
Weekend Plans
There are about 75 of the little 2″ Drunkard’s Path blocks shown here.
And enough to make just a few more blocks in this fabulous box.
Deceptive, isn’t it? Looks like a book. A non-blogging friend, who knows of my love for pretty boxes, sent this to me. By the time the weekend is over, I hope to have printed and at least halfway fill this wonderful book box with the shapes for the remaining 500+ blocks I need to make for the quilt.
I’m also hopeful that we’ll make it to the Creativ Festival this weekend.
So those are my plans for the weekend – filled with quilt-related things, I hope. What have you got planned for this weekend?
And Baxter’s plans for the weekend? Cat naps and reminding us whatever way he can to go to the pet store to get his favourite food!
A Different New York Beauty
This is the first of seven New York Beauty blocks that will be made using these fabrics. I have a plan for a small doll/teddy bear quilt. Oh, who am I kidding? I just really wanted to see how the block would look in a more muted colourway. Now I know. I don’t think there’s a set of fabrics that wouldn’t be fabulous for NYB. I still have plans to play with batiks and Fassett prints and shabby chic and who knows what else. I can’t get over how quick a block this is to hand piece. It’s easy to piece one an hour.
Seams graded and pressed. One thing is noticeable. This is an ordinary quilters’ cotton while the Tiffany lamp fabrics have a metallic element to them. The ordinary cotton presses flatter with less effort. This block got the Baxter seal of approval – he licked it!
A question was asked yesterday about how I use Inklingo, whether it is to print the shapes on fabric or to print templates to trace. So I thought I’d show on a couple of fabrics just how perfectly the shapes print right on the back of the fabric. First on a light fabric. Oops — thought we had taken the picture before I started cutting but quickly realized we hadn’t. The smaller arc is the only thing missing from this sheet. If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you can see the stitching and cutting lines and matching points and crosshairs.
And then on a dark one. There are lots of ink colours from which to choose for each fabric. That said, I’ve been using Inklingo long enough that I can pretty much group the fabrics I’m printing and use certain ink colours for each group. I do tend to use the reds more than anything else as the red ink always seems to rinse out in seconds, although I always do a test sheet when I change ink cartridges just in case the manufacturers have improved their inks.
For the NYB blocks, I’m using one of the combo sheets. In this case, it’s the combo sheet which has all the shapes for a block. Each of the blocks will be slightly different as a result. For identical blocks, I would print each shape separately on the fabrics. In the case of the New York Beauty blocks, I print every shape on my fabrics as I’m hand piecing.
For some other blocks, particularly those using HSTs or QSTs, I might only print on one of the fabrics, in this photo on a muslin, and then use those lines to stitch by machine as shown for the sailboat blocks here.
When we were setting up to take the missing picture of the light fabric, Baxter decided he had to lie down on the fabric first. There’s nothing he loves more than a piece of fabric to paw at and possibly lick. Mr. Q.O. captioned this one, “Well, I’m helping, aren’t I?”
New York Beauty Beginnings and a Birthday
What more is there to say? New York Beauty. An absolutely fabulous quilt block. A new 6″ New York Beauty Collection was released yesterday and I absolutely could not resist making a block right away. It took no time to stitch. The curves are very gentle, the points so sharp — it just is utterly fantastic. This block will go along with seven others and is destined to be a small wall quilt, but I have plans for a larger size quilt using the block in combination with some others.
It presses like a dream and lies flat as can be. And I graded the seams the minute I was through stitching it. I’ve learned that lesson all too well now!
There are combo pages one can print. As I decided to use eight different fabrics for the small wall quilt, I used one of the combo pages and was able to print all the shapes for a block on each of the eight fabrics using a piece that’s only 8.5 x 12.5 inches. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you can see that all the shapes for one block are printed on the piece of fabric.
New York Beauty is a design I have wanted to work with for ages so as soon as the collection was released I stopped what I was doing, grabbed some fabrics, cut and ironed them to freezer paper, printed and then was well on my way to having the first block done. Mr. Q.O. was told nothing else was getting done until I had that block finished. He’s used to this. When a new collection is released, I just about drop everything to make that first block. I know I go on about Inklingo, but I really can’t fathom doing this block any other way. No specialty rulers, no odd angles to worry about, no paper piecing that I’d have to pick off afterwards – just print, cut and stitch. It couldn’t be simpler! My block is hand pieced, as that’s my preferred way of stitching, but I’m sure it’s just as easy to machine piece.
Baxter is one year old today. It’s hard to believe that this little kitten who came into our lives late last June is now one year old.
And posing by the toy basket. Mr. Q.O.’s caption for this one, “Birthday Boy … more toys, food … it’s my birthday!”
Cameron’s Windmills Quilt … Again
Yes, I know this has been shown before but I have it entered in this week’s Quilting Gallery contest which is for hexagons. There are some beautiful quilts entered, so please go have a look and vote for your favourites. Yes, I said favourites as you can vote for two entries this week.
With a little advance planning I was able to get the machine quilting done within a couple of hours and had only 4 thread ends to work in. All straight line quilting, of course, as that’s my skill level when quilting by machine. When I found this flannel a few years ago, I bought enough yardage of it to use as backing for 3 baby quilts.
I’ve found that a 2″ hexagon is perfect for a label as it gives me lots of room to write. I baste the turn-under allowance down as that makes the appliqueing on to the back go very quickly. In this picture it’s ironed to a piece of freezer paper to stabilize it when writing on it.
The quilt was made with “other” half 1″ hexagons which I printed using Inklingo. I love tessellating designs and had started the quilt top long before we knew about the new baby. However, when I learned my cousin’s son and his wife were going to have another baby I knew what this particular UFO was meant to be. Once I made that decision, it only took a couple of weeks to finish piecing it. With a tessellating design like this, there are tons of opportunities for continuous stitching which makes the piecing go very quickly. Of course, using Inklingo to print the shapes on the back of the fabric makes it even faster as there’s no basting over papers and removing them.
The blocks are very quick to make with a simple running stitch. Because of the matching points, there’s no guessing at where exactly the joins should be made. I think I was making upwards of 20 or so of these blocks in an evening and then had the fun of arranging and putting them together into the top. I have lots of them left and plan to make another of these little tessellating quilts at some point.
They press beautifully.
Last night we bought a new vacuum cleaner. Baxter was eyeing the box it’s in, definitely not impressed. He is not a fan of vacuum cleaners at all, but with a long-haired cat a good vacuum cleaner is an absolute must for us.
Next Border on Scrappy Star
There are three borders on Scrappy Star now. I’m working on the fourth border, which is a pieced border. For it, I need close to 200 QSTs. That’s the majority of them in the picture. In less than the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, I had all of them printed, cut out and ready to stitch.
So what does this have to do with it? On the weekend, I was washing some fabric for various projects. I tend to wash a lot of fabric by hand for numerous reasons, including the fact the washing machines in our laundry room are front loading and lock once the wash cycle begins. So I can’t check the water to see if anything is bleeding.
But that’s not the main reason I wash my fabrics. I want to get rid of the sizing and other chemicals that are in the fabrics. Many of the fabrics we use now are printed offshore and come to North America in large shipping containers, sit in warehouses and then get shipped. And something I’ve noticed a lot lately is that when I wash fabrics, even though they don’t bleed, the water is … well, dirty. It’s the only word for it. There’s a real grey dirty look to the water. After a good wash and rinse, the water is rinsing clear.
I know it’s a never-ending debate in quilting, whether to pre-wash or not, and everyone has their own preference. My choice is to work with fabric that’s clean and as free of chemicals as possible. As a hand piecer, I prefer the softness of fabrics with the sizing washed out. The very few times I’ve worked with unwashed fabrics, I’ve found myself coughing every time I pressed whatever I was making with them. I think that’s the formaldehyde and other chemicals reacting with the heat of the iron that bothers me.
I know I’m opening up a big can of worms here, but what’s your preference and why?
Baxter has no opinion on the subject at all. He’s much too busy guarding the toy basket.
The Red & White Quilt is Back!
Remember these blocks? They’ve been sitting for a long time.
Why? Because earlier this year I decided I wanted to make the quilt I had started with these blocks bigger. Of course, I was out of both the white and the red fabrics. I was able to get more of the red, which is from an old Laurel Burch line, fairly quickly. But the white? That proved to be harder to find. Thanks to Judy at Sew Sisters, who scoured the distributors for it, more of the white was finally found and we picked it up at the end of last week.
So over the past couple of days, between doctors’ appointments and tests, I figured out what I needed to print and got my fabrics ready and ironed to freezer paper.
Last night, in under 2 hours, I had the fabrics all printed and now have everything I need to finish my red and white Sunflower/Feathered Star quilt, including the pieced border treatment I’ve got planned for it.
In this close-up, if you click on it to enlarge it, you can see the lines on a couple of the pieces I printed. Because I’m hand piecing the blocks, I’ve printed all the HSTs. If I were going to machine piece, I’d have only printed on the white fabric. I wouldn’t even think of making this quilt without Inklingo. With Inklingo’s precision cutting and stitching lines and matching points, a quilt like the one I have planned is easy as can be.
Baxter has had lots of squirrel activity to watch out on the roof garden over the past few days. Mr. Q.O. calls this photo “Sheer Kitty”. I call it “Kitty Under Lace”.
Quilt Obsession 