Thoughtful (Technique) Thursday - The Papers (sewing templates)

By now, I have the feeling of having gotten acquainted with the blogging world. Seeing that many EPPers struggle with problems I know only too well from my mainly self-taught history, I thought, I'd spend some Thursdays to share my thoughts on techniques and material, design and quilting.

Let's start with the base of all EPP: The Papers.
You could think, there was nothing much to say about Papers. I think, actually, that this is one of the more important things in EPPing since it influences how the entire piece handles.

What possibilities do you have? There are a lot, actually.

- Newspaper. The cheapest solution, often sewn through.

- "Normal" printer paper. Definiely the easiest solution when using shapes off the Internet, from incompetech or other sites. (Try out http://www.kunstundmarkt.com/schablonen.html, it's German, but I like it a lot since it's got almost every shape you might ever need and you can save the pdfs to print again and again and...)

- Thin cardboard. With a grammage of about 120g/m² most modern printers can use it, it's resistable and my fave for self-made papers. Many die cut papers (paperpieces.com and prettyanduseful) are from paper of this grammage. Re-usable for several times, depending on the size, the shape and how you handle them. I'd say ten times is the minimum.

- Coated paper. Used by Patchwork with Busyfingers it is very good for the glue-basting method since the glue easily will separate from the paper.

- Mylar. Also known as Quilt Patis or Brandy's pieces, these are almost indestructible. Unfortunately they're thicker as most cardboard and don't bend well. Personally, I don't really like them.

- Overhead transparency. Never heard of that? I didn't find it on the internet, but I tried it myself. You can print on those transparencies, they are easily cut by scissors, feel about as stable as thin cardboard and are not thicker. You can bend and even fold them and they are re-usable beyond belief. Oh, and if you use the laser-printable variety, they even stand ironing.

Myself? - either I'm using thin cardboard (die cut where available, I'm lazy) or laser printable overhead transparencies for my works. I do have some of the Patchwork with Busyfingers papers and as long as I'm glue-basting I'm okay with them. I don't like them for thread-basting, though, and that is my preferred method of basting.

What I found out really fast is, that as long as you cut along the lines, the self-made templates are as consistent as die-cut ones. The tenth-millimeter you are off on your self-cut ones? Ignore it. The fabric will be thicker in the end :D

Tuesday morning Star Count

I didn't get it finished on Monday Morning. Not even on Monday evening when I'm honest since last night was spent at a phantastic concerto instead of sewing. When the MD's secretary comes in waving four tickets to a Prokofieff and Dvorak concerto, for free, "It's just, it starts in two hours..." Who'd say no? I didn't. And spent a great evening. Not sewing.

But: I only have to close one seam and add six pieces, then it's done. Since I easily will do that tonight, here's what I managed. 111 pieces pieced as today, if I take the picture below we're at 117 pieces and finished.

Now you should have all the pieces in the puzzle to put the square design together. Admittedly, due to fabric constraints (ten fat quarters are more than enough for this, but you have to make colouring compromises if you've sort of over-used one colour. Which I did in my design.) I had to rework the exact colouring scheme on where to use which colour.
When I'm done piecing tonight, I'll have almost three weeks left for the quilting. I think, that'll be enough for a 24" x 24" thingy. Even though I plan this to be my first real attempt at Trapunto quilting. Naaah, nothing as complicated as stuffed feathers. I merely decided to stuff the fifteen namegiving patches so they don't only stand out colourwise.

See you next WIP Wednesday?

Post-Birmingham Monday Morning Star Count #4

Seems like I've still got soooo much to tell you about the NEC exhibition at Birmingham, but vacation's caught me up and I don't think that there will be more than some pieces whenever I've got a finish or something pops up in my mind.
First of all, the quilt I entered, you remember?  This one:

First of all: we did get judged, yeah!!! And won three "Excellent", quite encouraging, don't you think?

During our stay, I wrote something about our workshop with Paula Doyle. I managed to turn the little sample into a mug rug, using the binding-less backing technique she described to us. Here it is.

 I just quilted a little in the ditch... Too glad we got a pattern for a handbag and Paulas book... I will have to do that again :)

And now, last but not least, the Monday Morning Star Count to be liked with Life under Quilts - which to be honest is to be a "monday evening star count" since I'm only now done...

 A little teaser first... this is my "workbook" with a lot of pre-cut pieces showing the "true colours" of my little project.

 And here's what I managed to sew during the last two weeks. Yes. I know. I wanted to be done. But reality caught up with me and I needed the time during the holidays to just plain relax.

114 pieces done, which brings me up to 230 pieces done, with 117 still to go. I'm convinced to be finished with the top by next week's monday.

Baffled...

Now you did it, I'm completely baffled. Yesterday my blog had more traffic in one day then in the days before. One can get addicted to statistics, I suppose. But then, that's the easiest way to find out if you're writing for yourself or if anyone else is actually reading all the stuff.

Yesterday I took the time to count the EPP shapes for the "Mystery Project" - I will need 345 pieces in all, I'm done with 41, leaves 304 until finish.

Since the "mystery" component was remarked upon very positively, I decided to not just use "any screenshot" of my pattern, but to use one specific picture, so you always will have the same scale.
Here's the "new official" version of the Mystery Project picture from yesterday, this one is made up to my new specs.

If anyone is so crazy as to try a little QAL, all necessary templates and papers are - of course - available at paperpieces.com, but also at my best-loved German resource, prettyanduseful.com. Just drop me a note and I will tell you which shapes are needed.
Actually, without Evelyn Zuber and her templates and papers, I wouldn't be so happy trying whatever design comes to mind, since ordering at paperpieces.com always brings the "customs" problem.

Oh and, in case someone is afraid of following a newbie bloggers QAL - this one WILL get finished, otherwise I couldn't take part in the competition ;)

Monday Morning Star Count

Two posts within such a short span of time? Hummm... yeah. I'd rather have some things separate. I spent much time thinking on how I can take you on the journey of my present EPP piece, the one I mentioned two posts before. As it is custom in Germany, when you enter a quilt into a competition, you are not permitted to show the quilt on a blog. Stupid rule, but that's what they say.
I figured though, that using a part of the the computerized design - in "false colours" - wouldn't give too much away.
So. here we are with my first MMSC:

We're up to 41 pieces now, 23 pieces during the last week.

Linking up with Jessica of Life Under Quilts, for the Monday star count.

Counting pieces

My Birmingham quilt is finished and finally in the mail... Here's a little glimpse for you:

This is the feather quilting inside one of the blocks. Most of the quilt is crosshatched, and the colours are rather bright (well, on the other parts of the quilt :) ) since they are a scrappy walk-through my batiks.

I'm rather proud of this little detail... I managed to quilt the year in, the side of the blue shape on top of the picture is two inches long. Full pictures and more will follow as soon as the quilt is on display at Birmingham (7th of August)

Now up to the next project(s)...

I intended to start with our quilt retreat bag for the rotary cutting mat and the in-built ironing surface yesterday. I actually managed to buy the piece of thin MDF which I will need for the ironing surface, but it was so hot and humid, that I didn't bring myself to get the sewing machine and start. You know, it was like "I've planned it all, made up the pattern and it's noting but a bit of straight-line sewing" and I'm certain one evening will be enough and that's... today. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I'm right :)

Well, what instead? I went onto my next competition quilt. The theme is "15 pieces blue", it's for the anniversary of a German quilt shop and the only requirements are to use 15 pieces of their logo colour, Kona Cotton Ocean, no matter what shape or size and that the quilt be 24" by 24" (okay, we're in Europe here, it's 60 cm x 60 cm)
Unfortunately I'm not permitted to share any pictures of my progress with you, but I'll try to describe it as good as possible. I'd decided to do some EPP in different blue shades of Fusions 4070, the only solid pieces to be the Ocean pieces. The pattern is based on one of Willyne Hammersteins Millefiori quilts. Progress-wise I'm pretty proud of myself, since I managed to put together a big part of the center star consisting of ten diamonds and (as yet) eight pentagons.

Hope to read you soon, Julia

Cityscapes

Just to get myself used to blogging - and to introduce you to my already finished quilts and add some pictures.

 I'd like to introduce you to my very first piece of quilting and design. It's based on an idea published in the Austrian "Patchwork- und Quiltjournal", but I changed it... quite... a bit.

I called it "Cityscapes" and it's a wall hanger that usually hangs above our sideboard in the dining room.

It's made up of EPP'd Inner City Blocks, the biggest one the size of one inch and going down to 1/2 inch. I used Moda's "Over the Rainbow" jelly roll for the colours, the background fabric is just some Batik I got at my local quilt shop.

Unfortunately the picture does not show the quilting quite well, so I did a closeup of the biggest of the three cities.

At least you can guess that all the blocks seem to hang on yellow lines, while they are spanned to the bottom by blue lines. When the light plays over it on our wall, it's really fascinating and sometimes the cities even seem to dance. Maybe I'll be able to get a better picture when I'm using the real camera, not only the mobile phone.

Thanks for coming by. Please check the other beautiful quilts at http://ihavetosay.typepad.com/randi/show-and-tell-tuesday/