Tag Archives: printing on fabric

Small and Tiny Blocks

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First, the small. Pink and green log cabin blocks that finish at 5″, made with the .50″ Log Cabin collection. There are 12 done and enough printed for another 12 or 16, I think – it’s been so long since I’ve worked on these that I don’t quite remember. Some are hand pieced, some machine pieced. I’m thinking this may be the perfect stitching for out on the roof garden this summer and I’ll get this little quilt finished. This one is destined to be a wall hanging and one I know I’ll love as many of my favourite shabby chic fabrics are in along with some pink and green batiks.

The tiny. Tiny 2″ Drunkard’s Trail blocks made with the 2″ Drunkard’s Trail Inklingo collection. Four blocks are made and joined and three more have been added. I only need to make 9 more of these little blocks and join them to make the quilt I’ve got planned. Another one that just might be the perfect thing for roof garden stitching. I realized when I got that project box back out just how many shapes for it I had printed on fabric. I’ve got enough to make at least 4 or 5 small quilts. Perhaps one long thin table runner will be made once I make the 8″ x 10″ quilt I have planned. That will only take another 13 little blocks and should be something I can do quickly.

Both those projects came back to somewhere near the top of the list when I excavated my sewing table a couple of weeks ago. And both have stayed out to be worked on mostly because I know I can complete the two small quilts relatively quickly. So they are going to be worked on soon. I think it will give me a feeling of accomplishment to get a few small quilts done quickly. That sewing table excavation threw me a bit when I realized just how many projects I’ve got on the go. Some finishes are in order … and soon.

That said, I started working on the red and white Feathered Star/Sunflower quilt border again last night. I guess I just needed that break from it because now I can see that there really isn’t that much left to do. Perhaps 2 weeks of stitching or maybe 3 (because we all know I get distracted and want to play with other things) and I should have that top finished.

This is one of Baxter’s favourite poses.

A Baker’s Dozen of New York Beauties

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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.

Weekend Plans

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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

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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?”

Printing and More Printing for Quilts

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What’s that?  It’s the stack of fabrics I printed over the weekend for the Scrappy Star, Twinkling Stars, Summer Picnic Dish, Harpsichord and Joseph’s Coat quilts. The last couple of weeks I’ve been identifying the size I want certain projects to finish at. WIth the size of each determined, it took only a few minutes to figure out what I needed to print to reach that goal. Sometimes I print only a few of each shape for a couple of blocks until I’m sure I want to make it into a quilt. Once that decision is made, I prefer to get everything printed at once and get the shapes cut and into a box ready to stitch such as I’ve done for the Stormy Seas quilt.

This gives you a glimpse of the some of the shapes I printed for the Harpsichord, Joseph’s Coat and Summer Picnic Dish quilts.  Using the various Inklingo collections to prepare my templates makes it so easy to print on any number of fabrics, even black fabrics as most are markedly lighter on the back than the front and the templates will show up perfectly with one of the many choices of ink colours.

Almost all the shapes are now cut and ready to be put in a box, along with the matching threads, for the Twinkling Stars quilt, which I plan on trying to finish between now and the end of the World Series.

Because it was such a beautiful day on Monday, we took Scrappy Star out to the roof garden to photograph. It’s growing and is now 24″ across.  It will be at least twice that width before I’ll stop adding rounds. I needed more of the squares, which was another reason for all the printing that was done on the weekend.

The back after pressing.

Baxter is starting to look like a grown-up kitty in some photos, although his antics are still pure kitten antics. I think he was trying out his hypnotic kitty look in this photo.

Ready to Stitch

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A quick half hour or so and this 2.5″ stack of charms was printed with Drunkard’s Path shapes.  They are so amazingly quick to stitch that I’m hoping to have at least 25 or 30 blocks done today.  Maybe even more.

My stitching kit has scissors to cut the shapes, thread snips, needles, my thimble and two colours of thread.  Must remember to toss in a finger pincushion as well — as I cannot stand stitching without it.

It has been a long time since I’ve worked on these, but this is a sample of the blocks I’ve made so far.

By the time this posts (I’m writing it Tuesday evening), we’ll be on our way to the hospital.  We have to be there by 6:30.  6:30???  We’re night owls in the Q.O. household, so 6:30 sounds almost like the middle of the night.  However, a friend assures me there are many people up and about at 6:30 a.m. (this I have to see!) and that they’re even coherent at that hour.  All I’m hoping is that the Tim Horton’s shops in the hospital lobby are open and I can get some coffee when we get there.

I’ll throw my eReader in the bag in the middle of the night morning when we get up so that if the lighting really is not conducive to stitching I can at least read.  I should point out that at that hour it will take us less than 10 minutes to get to the hospital, so we likely won’t even leave here until about 6:10 or so.  That’s a strange hour for a night owl.  Very very strange.  However,  there is a good side to this ridiculously early hour and that is that he’ll likely be ready to come home sometime in the afternoon.

I must remember to leave the television on for the kitties — it’s going to be a long day for them.   Hopefully they just have a nice calm relaxing day and Smudge is like this when we get home.

While Lester is stretched out like this.

Stormy Seas

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Back in March, when the Inklingo Storm at Sea collections came out, I made this block and had a plan for a quilt using these 4 fabrics.

Why I’ll never know, but I didn’t sketch out my idea or make any notes about it. But, wanting to get the fabric cut and ready to print on the weekend, I sat down Saturday afternoon and tried to remember what I had in mind when I purchased the initial 4 fabrics.  I spent ages trying to sort out just what that plan was but finally realized that, whatever that initial idea was, it’s not going to happen.  Whatever it was I had in mind, I certainly didn’t buy enough of 2 of the batiks.  So I spent hours working on two different ideas, sorting out just how much of each fabric was needed for both those design ideas.  By Saturday evening, it was down to the point of calculating if I had enough square yardage of each fabric — and it went on and on. So instead of playing with needle and thread, I was working out fabric requirements with the calculator.

The pieces of paper headed “Monkey’s Inklingo Cheat Sheet” are invaluable when working out a quilt design and come with each collection as well as are available to download at the Inklingo Web site.  Once I get my design sorted out, I can make a note of exactly what size of fabric/freezer paper I need for each shape/each colour and am off to the races.  I use the cheat sheets all the time and keep them filed in an accordion folder with my freezer paper.  The four cheat sheets seen here, however, are destined for the recycling bin as neither idea is going to fly.

When I finally realized that neither idea would work with the initial 4 fabrics alone, I gave up for the evening.  On Sunday afternoon, I started going through batiks and pulled out some other blues and a green.  Now I know exactly what I’m going to do with these 11 fabrics and, with any luck, will have all the shapes I need for the stormy seas blocks printed sometime this week.  The only decision left to be made now is just how large I want to make the Storm at Sea quilt.  Once that’s decided I can have my cheat sheet filled out in no time.

We were about to go out somewhere on the weekend, and I had left my purse on the couch for a minute.  I think this look says Smudge was hoping we were off to the pet store for kitty food and toys.

Lester was having some quiet time on the windowsill, although there isn’t much activity now for him to watch other than flying leaves.

And Then There Were Three

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Blocks stitched and shapes printed for three projects on Wednesday, that is.  Project one, the big pink and cream stars.  One more finished so there are now three completed.  Tuesday night I started thinking about different settings for the big pink stars and have decided on one that will include 6 of the large stars and some other elements.  Three more big stars to go and then the setting and it will be done.

The pieces printed and cut out for the remaining three big pink and cream stars.

Project two, two of the Pickled Ladies done.

Lots of clamshells printed and cut out for project two.

Lots of the shapes needed for the arcs also printed and ready to cut.

Project three, the Harpsichord Quilt.  One new block pieced and pressed.  Smudge was determined to be part of this photo — you can see his shadow.

Lots and lots of black and gold octagons and the little coloured squares printed for project three.

While my printer wasn’t going quite as quickly as in the video I showed yesterday, it was humming along for about half an hour last night.  I like working on projects in groups of three.  Getting the freezer paper sorted out made it all so easy.  In next to no time I had the fabric pressed to freezer paper and printed for all three of  this Wednesday’s projects.  Perhaps if I keep doing this for the next couple of weeks I can have all the pieces printed and ready to stitch for another 3 or 6 projects.  What other ones?  The Summer Picnic Dish, also known as pickle dish.  The Rouenneries Drunkard’s Path — I have another 3 sets of charms to print for that one.  The Storm at Sea is definitely on the list for next week.

For the most part, the cats had no interest in what was going on.  Lester had a nap.

Smudge was looking a bit bored, I think.

Can You See Waves?

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These four blue batiks will all be incorporated into my Double Diamond Storm at Sea variation.  Five new Inklingo Collections were released Sunday night for various sizes of Storm at Sea — 4.5″, 6″ ,6.75″, 9″ and 12″ blocks.  There are a couple of extra shapes in each collection too, which really open up some design possibilities.  I already know there are some stars in my future using shapes from these collections.  I know I want to make a quilt incorporating different sizes of the blocks as well.  The free Design Book is a fabulous bonus that contains tons of information, including methods for constructing the blocks, as well as some shaded and unshaded design sheets.  The first thing I did was print out one of the design sheets and sort out what I needed to print for my first block.

I decided to first do a 45″ wall hanging using the 6.75″ templates in the Double Diamonds layout that can be seen at the bottom of the page here but with a twist.  I’m using all four of the batiks in the picture above as well as some white.  It took me only a couple of minutes to figure out my page sizes, cut and press the fabric to freezer paper, print and then start stitching.   I think batiks are my favourite fabrics to work with — and they’re perfect for this design as there are spots where a lot of seams are going to meet.  As batiks are such a fine fabric and press so perfectly, I won’t be fighting too  much bulky fabric at those points.  Here’s my centre square:

The back of my centre square was pressed in  a second thanks to the batiks.

I have the diamonds and their surrounding triangles printed and cut out, ready to go.  The little squares and their surrounding QSTs are printed, ready to cut

Last week Crispy asked about the cutting line, whether it was printed as well as the stitching line.  As I know the ink in my printer will rinse out without any problems, I printed the QSTs on this fabric in a darker red than I normally would use.   If you click on this picture to enlarge it, you can see that both the stitching and cutting lines, as well as matching points, are printed on the shapes.

I had hoped to go to the Etobicoke Quilt Guild show on Saturday but woke up with a monster migraine.  However, I got lots done on my Alabama Beauty blocks and have now got 3 of them put together.  One more block and the first of the circles will appear in its entirety.  I’m not sure how large this will grow but I think it may well end up as a large lap quilt as I want a dozen or more circles in the quilt.

Our weather this week sounds as though it’s going to be wonderful with a forecast that seems to indicate we may well see 70 by Friday.  I can’t wait!!   The nights are still quite cool, but to have days in the high 60s or low 70s in late March and early April?  Huge treat!

Smudge was very busy on the weekend, guarding the toys.  I think he knew I was about to grab them all up and put them back in the basket.

Lester decided it was a good time for a nap.

Saturday Klosjes … on Sunday

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These are the spool blocks I stitched on Saturday.  I’m coming to the end of the stack of pieces that I had printed and cut out for these little  blocks. One more week of stitching and they will be all finished.  Then I’ll decide how many more I want to add.

To that end, I pulled out a bunch of charms that will, for the most part, go with the fabrics I’ve already used.  Now it’s just a matter of ironing them on to freezer paper and then sending them through the printer to print the half long 90-degree hexagon and the 1″ squares.  I’ll have to print some more of the half hexagons on muslin as well.

It was a very rainy, windy day here Saturday.  Today is supposed to be more of the same.  I’m planning on spending most of the day playing with fabric and an idea that seems to be working its way to the top of my ideas list.

Lester is much more restrained about drinking water than Smudge but he gets water on his chin too — as this shot shows.

Smudge knows what to do on a rainy, windy day — curl up and look as gorgeous as possible so as to get as much attention as possible.