Quilt Matters: Helen Howes

Thursday, 9 May 2013

TGIFF! - Seeing The Forest

Welcome to this week's TGIFF!, where every quilt finish deserves a celebration!

I'm very happy to be sharing my Seeing The Forest quilt. This started out at as a fat eighth bundle of Westminster shot cottons and Helen Howes' Twelve Trees pattern that I got from Mad About Patchwork.

I'm not great at sticking with a pattern though so I added in four more trees, and flipped half of them so they looked like a reflection of the top eight. I'm such a rebel.

Figuring out what to do quilting-wise was a challenge. This is the first time that I wanted the quilting to work for both the front and the back.

I considered free motion quilting leaves on the trees, all over leaf pattern, irregular spirals in the backgrounds of the blocks, wishbones in the sashing, etc.

It came down to vertical or horizontal matchstick quilting (kind of like bark?). I went with horizontal and I'm so glad I did. I LOVE the effect on both sides of the quilt and what's more, I actually loved doing the quilting. I used a Sulky variegated thread that went from burgundy to plum.

The quilting lines are spaced anywhere for 1/8" to 1/3" apart. I was worried that the tight quilting might make the quilt too stiff. Nope, the shot cottons handle it beautifully.

The full reveal:

What? You don't hang your quilts on a hockey net?

Seeing The Forest - Back

Quiltography: "Seeing The Forest," by Michèle-Renée Charbonneau, Ottawa, 40" by 59", 2013.

Maxing and relaxing on the steps

Have a great weekend, all!

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Seeing The Forest For The Trees - A Work in Progress

Seeing The Forest For The Trees top and back are together and I couldn't be more pleased! Before we get to that though, I wanted to share a quick tip about getting different sized blocks to a consistent, but unusual size.

With this piecing style, you can imagine that the finished blocks were all different sizes. I got them all roughly to 9"-9.5" by 13.9"ish for playing with the layout. However, before I pieced the top, I needed to make sure they were all a consistent size. I could have trimmed them to 8.5" by 13.5" but I wanted to maximize the size of the tree blocks, even if it's only by .25" or even .3" -- it adds up over a number of blocks!

I tried putting tape guides on my 12.5" by 12.5" ruler, but the height of my block is larger than that.

I found the smallest block, which was 8.85" by 13.8". I put masking tape on my cutting board to the size of 8.75" by 13.75", and used the cutting lines of the mat to trim the blocks. I'd line the block against the tape and cut along the mat lines.

Block lined up against the tape guide

Trim using the mat grid

This also worked perfectly for getting the sashing the right length for the blocks.

Sashing strip lined up against the tape guide

Trim using the mat grid

As these blocks didn't require centering, this technique worked beautifully and I was done much quicker than if I'd had to measure each block and sash piece using my ruler.

So, wanna see the top and back? Without further ado, this is the top I completed with Helen Howes' Twelve Trees pattern. Without flash...

Seeing the Forest For The Trees - Front - No Flash

With flash...

Front - With Flash

Detail of the Back

As you can imagine, the true colours are somewhere in between. The natural light has been terrible around here lately and I find shot cottons are tricky to photograph.

And here's the back. I took scraps leftover from the front in 2.5" and 1.5" widths and random lengths and sewed them together in one long chain and then cut them to 45" lengths (the width of the backing). Very improv, very quick, very fun! And I used up almost all of my scraps from the front. Bonus!

I played around with the layout of the rows a bit to try to balance the placement of the yellows. I then added some burgundy shot cotton to either side. I'm loving how the back turned out too!