Scrappy, Scrappy, Scrappy

During December, I "proquiltinated" a start on this scrappy quilt. 

It was all perfectly justifiable?!?

I needed to clear out the overflowing box of 2 1/2" strips and I have been wanting to work with Lissa Alexander's Color Me Crochet pattern (April, 2013, American Patchwork & Quilting) since first seeing it in the magazine.  It is similar to Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trips but would enable me to use lots of the short strips in the box.   If the piecing was fun, it would be a good pattern for my "good deed" quilting group to use this winter.

The group has used Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Bargello quilt pattern to make some delightful children's quilts and I thought they would enjoy working with this pattern, too.  So in the beginning, the intention was to experiment with the piecing process, be sure I understood the instructions and prepare for instructing the group.  A side benefit was that it would give me some non-deadline stitching and a brief daily respite from holiday fussing and fretting.

During the first three experiments, the accidental color combination of this block called out to me to expand it into a quilt and so I ransacked my strip box for all the reds, greens, browns, and golds.

(At the same time, I pulled out all the blue strips for one of the gals in the group to try her first 1600 quilt -- I haven't seen the results yet, but her top is finished and ready to layer up later this week!)

Lissa's pattern calls for 2" cut strips so I had to recalculate the measurements for my 2 1/2" strips.

Eventually, I realized that sorting my strips into piles by the length of each strip helped me stay organized and saved time when pulling the assortment for each block.

Here is one of the assortments ready to piece into the necessary strip set.  The red/green hombre with the black polka dots will be the central row of squares in the finished block. 

I made one small change to Lissa's instructions -- I pieced all 11 strips together before cutting the rows.  It saves a little time but my main reason for doing this was to simplify the pressing for me.

My teaching experience has made me fussy about pressing -- I want it to be systematic, straight forward and set me up for easy assembly as I move through the steps of making a block. 

The strategy we used for the Scrappy Bargello quilts worked well and I intended to apply it to these blocks.  While Bonnie doesn't specifically write out instructions for her pressing strategy, it is apparent from the pictures that she alternates the seams as in the photo below.

This pressing strategy is easier than it looks!

I begin by stitching my strips together in pairs and pressing those seams before stitching the pairs together into the final strip set.  My experiments also helped me discover that the seam direction needs to alternate with each block.  In the photos above and below, the seams of the center strip (reds) are pressed away from the strip.  That sets up the pressing direction for the rest of the block.

In the next block I "reversed" the seam direction of the center strip -- both seams of the center strip are pressed towards the center strip.  Now when the two finished blocks are joined, the seams nest together perfectly. 

To read some of my other thoughts about "pressing patchwork", HERE is a link to the first of a three part series of posts I wrote in 2013.  Parts 2 and 3 follow it when you get there.

To cut the rows, first you need to know I cut each strip 1" longer than needed to give myself a cushion so that  is why there are odd bits at the top of these rows. 

That yellow piece will be removed.

In the above photo, I have cut 3 rows starting at the left edge of the strip set and removed the extra pieces and laid them in the correct order below.

To cut the remaining 3 rows, I began cutting from the right edge and that skinny band you see in the photo below is the remainder from the center of the strip center (which must be thrown away because the whole point of this exercise is to use up fabric, not make more bits to save). 

I made the blocks one at a time and placed them on the design wall.  From the beginning, I planned each block with a "dark" print for the center diagonal row of squares.  By the fourth block, I decided I needed to be sure there was some gold/yellow in each block to keep the cheerful look of the color palette and some black was pulled into the assortment to create more drama.

Here are the first 8 blocks set together.  The strips hanging across the bottom of the design wall will be the center strips of the next row of blocks.  That was the only planning I did to assure that the darks were distributed evenly across the quilt.

It took a couple blocks for me to realize that I needed to lay each block out BEFORE I stitched the row together so the diagonals were going in the correct direction.  Try as I might, rotating the block never changed the direction and maintained my pressing order of the diagonals once the block was finished!!

I laid out half the rows in this block with the diagonal going from the upper left to the lower right (on the left) and the other 3 rows with the diagonal going from the lower left to the upper right (on the right).   Just trust me on this one -- I've already made the mistakes!

Once I had all the color and pressing experiments sorted, the blocks went quickly.  As I finished each block, I would organize the fabric combination for the next one so when I came back to it, I was able to piece a block in about 30 minutes.  This proved to be just enough of an escape from the holiday deadlines to calm me down and prepare me to "go back at it"!!

I finished the top, added borders and made a backing last weekend -- ready to quilt!! 

It's 56" by 68" and the top and backing used approximately 6 yards of my stash -- wahoo!

I love looking at  it and discovering all the "spontaneous" design that is happening.

Between this quilt and the blue 1600 strip quilt, half the strips in the scrap box have been used and the box is ready to restock!!  While piecing this quilt, I decided on a destination for it plus I'm ready to share the process with my "good deed" quilt group!

Happy piecing this week!!

Mary

Workshop Fun

As I said earlier this week, I taught for the Maye River Quilters Guild in Bluffton, SC.  They are an enthused new guild that has leapt from 29 to 88 members in 18 months!  I was their first visiting teacher and lead 26 members through two Value and Spontaneity Workshops.

 

I've shared some about this valuable exercise last summer HERE and how I set it up.  Once everyone arrives the trading and stirring begins.  This gal was so beautifully organized it was a shame to make her mess them up!

The trading is done in sets of 10 triangles with 5 other participants.  That means that 25% of the triangles used are from someone else's fabrics -- so participants get a few colors they would not have included or large prints or stripes, etc.  Shakes things up a bit!!

And then everything is thrown into a bag and stirred up good!!  I loved Cindy's idea to hang her bag from her nametag so both hands were free.

So did Nancy!  They had fun moving through the exercise side-by-side!

Sometimes it took two to keep everything on the temporary design walls.  Just minutes after I took this picture, the piece on the left slide down in a crumple on the floor -- ahhhhhhh!

She reacted very calmly!

Once everyone had their version laid out, I directed everyone to decide what they like about theirs before we began to survey the room and refine the layouts.  This to me is the most valuable part of the workshop!

The fabric arrangement is random -- two triangles are pulled out of a bag, decide which is light and which is dark and put them into the correct position working across one row at a time.  At the end, after some reflection, small changes are made to refine the piece before the stitching begins.

 

To retain the spontaneity of the piece, it's important not to over correct.  Some imbalance here and there improves the visual interest of a piece and holds a viewer's attention longer.  Everyone was surprised by the ability of medium value prints to switch from light to dark depending on the value of the second triangle in the pair.

 During the Saturday workshop, one of the gals reminded us that we had a great value finder tool in our pockets -- our phones!  Soon phones and tablets were out and everyone was exploring how to set it up for black & white pictures.  It certainly makes it easy to evaluate areas that need some tweaking! You can quickly switch a couple mediums and darks to break up an awkward area to give it more definition and clearer lines of contrast.

This is one I made several years ago -- the pieces always reflect the taste of the maker -- I have lots of florals, so there are lots of medium value prints in this piece.  In general, the more colors, the busier the print, the more likely that it functions as a medium value fabric.  It's an easy donation quilt to make plus I learn more about value manipulation each time I make one.  I cut scraps into the right size triangles and drop them in a box until it is full enough to make another one.

The arrangement above is the class project but there are lots of other layouts for this exercise.  Each time, I enjoy auditioning for the border since there always are several possibilities that would work and which one I use depends larger on my mindset that day.

For those of us focused on traditional quiltmaking, value is the element of fabric selection that makes a design work or fail so this exercise goes a long way at building understanding and confidence.

 

The spontaneity element of the exercise is designed to learn how to make fabric decisions with less effort and have more fun doing it!!

 

I never tire of teaching this exercise and love all the variation and excitement of it.  Of course everyone loves everyone else's and is disappointed with their own, but doing it in a group helps everyone recognize the gaps in their fabric stash and that's valuable. 

The challenge is to go beyond deciding you "like it" or you "don't like it".  One also needs to get specific about the "whys" so you can learn to control your choices in the future.

 

So get together a group of friends and try this out for yourself!!

 

And I can't finish today without a nature picture -- rose-breasted grosbeak (male) in my backyard!!

 

Mary Huey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



A Value and Spontaneity Exercise to do with Friends

This week, I'll be teaching in Springfield, Ohio for the Remembrance Quilt Guild.  It's a Set-In Piecing Simplified workshop using a scrappy tumbling blocks quilt as the project.  As I was packing my workshop samples, I got to thinking about how much easier making a spontaneous, scrappy quilt is for me since teaching the spontaneity and value workshops based on Gai Perry's classic book, Color From the Heart.

 

 

Earlier this year, Joanne over at Everyone Deserves a Quilt asked how I organize that exercise and this is what I shared with her.  I'm sharing it with you today because I think it would be a  good warm up for your fall quilt making activities.  Invite a few quilting friends, a minimum of 5 to 6 people is best -- more is fine, to join you.  Here's how I set it up.

 

Everyone cuts 4" squares into triangles -- usually two squares each from 50 fabrics so there are 200 triangles.  When the group gets together, everyone trades 50 triangles -- easiest, fastest way to do that is to count out 5 stacks of 10 triangles then trade each stack with a different person. 

The amount of time for the session determines whether or not the group does any sewing. 

For a half-day session, there is no sewing.  After the trading, put all the triangles into a brown paper bag.  Have a piece of flannel or cotton batting set up for a "work wall".   Pull two triangles out of the bag, decide which is the darker of the two and then position them on the flannel depending on the overall layout being used. 

For an all-day session, after the trading is done everyone sits down with their bags, pulls out two triangles out of the bag lottery style and stitches them together -- no cheating -- chain piecing should get most quilters through this step in a hour to an hour and a half. 

 

Press the seams towards the darker triangle.  Then back into the bags they go again.  Now begin to draw out the HST's, one at a time, and place them onto the "work wall" in the correct position for the design.  Expect to whine a lot at this point but just keep pushing through!!

Everyone starts at the upper left corner and works across the top row until there are 10 HST's in place.  Then begin the second row at the left end and just keep going until the piece is 10 across by 10 down.  Once everything is laid up on the work wall, it's best to take a break. 

After about 5 minutes, participants should then come back to their work and they can make minor adjustments.  First though it's important to identify what they like about the spontaneous layout.  An important part of the exercise is to experience the spontaneity and see that when you are working with fabric you enjoy, it works well.  An example of a minor adjustments might be something like there are only 5 aqua triangles in the entire piece and they are all clustered in the same area -- then it's good to scatter them around so they don't draw the eye to that area but rather serve as a "bit of sparkle" here and there. 

It's helpful to the group to make part of the exercise walking around and looking at each participants work wall, talking about each piece, identifying things that work, and paying attention to how they feel about each other's pieces.  Doing this quadruples the effectiveness of the exercise.

 

It's easy to overwork these pieces by switching so much around that the piece loses it's spontaneity and becomes too controlled to be interesting.  The unexpected is what makes a quilt interesting!!  The two fabrics in each HST don't have to be coordinated or match -- the light vs. dark positioning carries the design.

There are lots of options for the overall layout.  Usually I have everyone do the same simple arrangement but it might be fun to have several arrangements and randomly assign different ones to each participant?  I've never tried that.

 

This is the last one I did.  They are fun to make and the final border really brings them to life.

And they make cheerful charity quilts as well. 

 

My charity group just had some books donated to us to sell off to raise money for our batting.  There is a copy of Color From the Heart available if you are interested!!  $10 plus shipping -- just leave me a comment!!

 

Hope your week is off to a good start!!

 

Mary Huey

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