Design Wall 4-16-12

Well, I guess your taxes are done and you are either happy about getting something back you already paid in, or you are waiting till that last second to write the check for money you owe!  I hope you got some of your money back!  I get so frustrated with people who say, I didn't have to pay, I got money back!  That is YOUR money to begin with, you DID have to pay.......geez.  But that is the way they want you to think!

Anyway, since he got the $1,348,672  error fixed, we are getting some of our money back.  I am hoping to get to the mailbox before he does so I can claim it as quilting funds.  

I am working on the Paint Chip Challenge Quilt.  Loving it!  Here is all I can offer you at the present time.  I have changed the colors to make it unidentifiable!  But you will love it in the end.  August, you will see it in August.


I am putting the finishing touches on the Ocean Waves Zig Zag for Patsy and Chuckie Baby for the cruise.  It will be so wonderful to see them, especially in light of the diagnosis.  


I chose a blue batik scrap binding I had leftover from Matt's Star quilt last year.  I have about 2 feet of the binding to complete, and that darned label.  You know how I do so hate to sew labels on.  When I am dead and gone, there will be no labels to tell people which quilts are mine!  I know.  I know.  I am working on that.


Charlene and Xavier will be in town on Thursday and I am hoping to hug on them for a while at the casino. Who knows, maybe we will get a group for the next cruise.  That would be a blast!


glen

WOW! Another way to do a zig zag

Now this is totally amazing and one I would never have thought about!

Check out Field Trips in Fiber.  She has a tutorial on how to make a zig zag quilt that will rock your world.  It is one of those, hey, why didn't I think of that!

http://vickiwelsh.typepad.com/field_trips_in_fiber/2010/08/instructions-for-the-navy-scrap-quilt.html

A third or maybe fifth way of making a zig zag quilt!

glen

Zig zag quilt progresses to the binding stage

Tonight Frank and I were both craving dessert.  We used to go and get ice cream or pie at the Picadilly, or turnovers and ice cream at McDonalds.  But none of that is on the diet anymore.  So we decided to go to Starbucks and get a fancy coffee - decaf, sugar free, fat free with no whipping cream.  No fun at all!

I spent several hours today binding the zig zags. Not quite sure what color to put on, I found some blue batik leftover bindings hat was just two feet short. I filled that in with a gold and a red. I will have a picture when I finish it tomorrow.  I want to toss it into the washing machine and give it that "used" look.

It is looking really wonderful.  I am liking it a lot.  I want the next one to be large half square triangles.

 As I was sewing the binding on, I kept thinking of the label and what it would say. Remember, this is for my cruising buddy, who is on a liver Transplant list. I thought something like:

 When the colors of your life change, I hope the come together in a pleasant rainbow medley. And that all the waves become calmer seas.

You know the zig zags sort of look like waves...... How would you change it to make it better?

glen

I stole her picture! LOL

This is Charlene's Zig Zags!  Don't you love them?  So creative and different!

I have been noticing zig zag quilts all over the place and they are all different, but I have never seen one like this before!

Very cool!

glen

Alice in Wonderland Mirror

Well, I was really jealous that Jill had so much room!  Now she needs to turn her mirror into an Alice in Wonderland mirror and get that extra space!  LOL.

I did some quilting on my zig zags tonight.  Got Frank to help me get the tension corrected, a problem I ahve been having with the quilting machine.  Then I proceeded to quilt the entire piece in about 2 hours.  Nice!

But when I took it off the machine, the last bobbin change messed up.  If I could write the rest of the paragraph with explication it would be too mild.  I was not happy, let's just say that.  So now I have to take the last quarter out and re-work it.

While I was jumping up and down and cursing like Rumpelstiltskin after the Princess foiled his plan to take the firstborn, Frank was in there trying to figure out why the roller wheels were catching on the stupid screws and making the quilting line jump each time it passed.  He found that the wheels were off the track.  Who knows how that happened.  Gremlins.

Maybe the same ones that started popping the thread again.

Here is the quilt spread on the floor.



But this is what happens when you try to take pictures.



I like the way it looks and I like the quilting.  Just not the machine........

glen

A New Way to Look at the Zig Zags

Beryl's Baby Steps

Check out Beryl's Baby Steps Quilt.  She is not participating, as far as I know, in this with us, but was on the Design Wall over at Judy L's place.  When I saw it, I thought, why didn't I think of doing it that way???

One color, or one major color, gives it a totally different look.  And yet still keeps the zig zags true.

glen

Anne of Arizona Zigs

Anne of Arizona -- sounds like a great title for a book, doesn't it!  Anne has been laboriously trimming her HSTs to play along in the Zig Zag Quilt Along.  She calls her quilt the Ziggity Zaggity Quilt.  What fun!

Check out her blog Quilting in the Desert and see some of the wonderful dog collars she has.  I never put it together until this morning they were one in the same person.  Majestic Collars!  LOL.  And check out the greyhounds who are not too happy with the SNOW that fell last Monday in her part of the desert.  SNOW!!!

I am glad we had people choose both methods.  If you look at her quilt you can see the difference between using the rails and the HSTs.  Even though they both zig zag, they are different.  If you used the HSTs you could really get some nice shading and make it look like a twist effect.  But i love the look of both of them.  And, of course, she had all those HSTs leftover from her Swoon blocks.  Two quilts for the price of one!  I always love that!

Anne said she wanted about two more rows, which is sort of what I ended up with.  Two more rows.

I can't wait to see all the ones people are working on finished.  If you want a very easy and fun quilt, consider the zigggity zaggity loveliness of this one!

Let me make myself perfectly clear......

I wrote the last post last night and my endorphins were running high and must have blocked out my brain work.

You can put them together on the diagonal.  Why I didn't say that word, I don't know.  Like this:

Those of you doing the HSTs don't need to do diagonals.  You can do strip rows.  That makes the HSTs easier at that juncture.

Wait, let me go stuff something down DiNozzo's barking mouth........Ok, back.

I did a really really bad bad bad Momma thing yesterday.  I totally forgot that it was Carrie and Andrew's Anniversary.  I had it in my Ipad but it crashed remember, and I lost all my dates.  Well, I never gave it a thought!


I was so upset.  I should have remembered.  But with all this going on, I guess it just got away from me.  Anyway.  I have an appointment at the hospital today and when I get back I will work on the blue, gold and green rows and make the decision about the Vertical/Horizontal look.  We will see what it looks like with three more rows.  It may not matter at all.

glen:  and then, again, it may make all the difference in the world.  I really need to get back to the zen thing....

Next Step in the Zig Zag Saga

When you get enough on your wall, or like me, run out of available pins you can move on to the next step.  But cautionary word here.  Don't go too far ahead or you will be making those nasty Y seams!

Since this is pin intensive to keep on your design wall, and you really need a design wall to construct this one, I suggest beginning to make your diagonals at some point.

I started with 7's.  Or rather L's.  I made the pink ones first and replaced them on the design wall as 7's and realized they needed to be L's.

When you get a line of L's, you can string them together.  But don't sew the rows together just yet.  I will tell you when it is safe to do so.



I thought it might be a good time to offer a tip on how to make sure this sewing part goes easily for you.


1.  Choose two blocks of the same color in the zig zag line.














2. Fold the one down on top over the one on the bottom.  I take the pin out of the top one, then fold down.  Take the pin out of the bottom block and use it to mark the seam where you need to sew.  If you do this now on the design wall, it will save you some headaches down the road at the sewing machine.


3.  You don't have to pin exact and perfect, I don't.  I straighten it up when I get to the machine.  Speed sewing for sure!  Then I sew them together and replace on the design wall.  I do about 10 block segments  at a time.  Right now there are 6 rows of colors so it is easy to keep track of where they go and in what order.

Remember don't sew the rows together just yet.  The time is not now, no matter how eager you are to get a corner done. I am already rethinking the size of this one.  I am thinking that it may need to be only about 18 squares wide rather than 20 and I can use the leftovers to make the second row of that color.

But I also had another brilliant thought.  What about a VERTICAL Zig Zag line?

Yes, my pretties, yes, vertical..........

glen:  are you following along, my pretties???????

Did I Say STOKED?????

I said I was going work on sewing for a bit, but after seeing this I am really stoked about this quilt.

I can see the rippling waves of the Caribbean as our ship glides through them.  Patsy and Chuck will LOVE LOVE LOVE this quilt!

Oh, and use this time to perfect your skills.  Since this is an exciting quilt that requires just a little bit of brain work, think carefully about how you sew your quarter inch seam.  Try to make a perfect quarter inch.

And when you trim, think about positioning your ruler so your rotary cutter is so precise when it slices through the fabric.  And think about where your fingers are -- AWAY FROM THE BLADE!

It took me a second or two to figure out how to lay these guys out.  This quilt is on point so make the bottom corner of your color strips touch the very top corner of the white strip of the next row.  Once you get the row going, you will have it.

Easy as pie!

Stoked, did I say I was STOKED?

glen:

Zig Zags (exciting) Lunch (exciting) Payton suspended (wow)

Today is horrible weather, tornado warnings, sightings, hard driving rains, lightening and thunder.  Good day to quilt!

Ok, I am stoked!  LOL.  I love this part of the project.

Planning (exciting)
Designing (exciting)
Creating cutting Plans (exciting)
Buying fabric (exciting)
Finding fabric (exciting)
Cutting up fabric (exciting)
Sewing pieces together (exciting)
Sewing blocks together (exciting)
Sewing blocks to top (exciting)
Sandwiching (maybe ok)
Quilting (ok)
Binding (no fun)
Label (torture)

That is what I like about quilting.  And you can tell that is true by the number of To Be Quilted Tops on my floor.  But I am working on that. And I digress.......

Zig Zags.

I sorted out the color strips last night while I watched Jamie Leigh Curtis kiss on Leroy Jethro Gibbs.  Ugh!  Not a good match.  I wonder why they thought that would work for all of us vibrant sexy older women lusting after Jethro ourselves?  They should have left that story line alone.  But I digress........

I have two, count them TWO boxes of light 2 1/2 strips, so I should not cut up my piece goods and create light strips.  With this many I can control how light or how beige-y I want to go.  I think I will go white light.  And this will be the quilt that goes to Chuck and Patsy to commemorate the cruise next month, so it has a home, and it should get done and quilted.  Quilting will be easy, I am already thinking of that.

I am going to start sewing after I upload some photos.  Sewing will be just putting a light and a dark together and making sure I have at least a 4 1/2 by 4 1/2 square.  (can you see the ruler saying it is 4 1/2 inches?) If you use 2 1/2 inch strips you should be getting a 4 1/2 inch square from the two sewing together.  And what I also did was to trim making sure the strip itself in that block was 2 1/4 inch showing on right and left side of the strip.

If you are wondering what I had for lunch, I am SURE you are wondering about that, this is what I had:

Kale, celery, bok choy, spinach, snap beans, sugar snap peas, Swiss chard, garlic and some Asian spices tossed in.  Stir fried with some olive oil I brought back from Greece.  Then some mushroom soup.

Yes!  Calories?  Not much.......maybe about 50.  I am looking for some coconut oil.  It does not go to fat in the body.

Oh, just heard that Sean Payton, head coach of the Saints have been suspended for a whole year..........wow.
Not that I am a football fan, but hey, big news around here.

glen

Scrappy Zig Zag Quilt Along

Leaving off the S in Scrappy doesn't work here...........

OK.  Thanks Patty and Charlene for responding.  I know there are more because I have some good friends who are dedicated lurkers who are dying to play along as well.  You know who you are.......LOL.

So here's the deal.  There are two totally different ways of making a zig zag quilt.  We need to choose which way to go.  Neither of these quilts are mine, I have them saved as examples of what I like.  For some reason both are brights and I normally don't work in brights.  Maybe that is what attracted me to them in the first place.  I do like the white in between though.


One involves half square triangles.  Lots of them.  This method allows for some flexibility in color options or scrappy-ness.  As long as you adhere to the "dark/light" principals you will do fine with this method.  Half square triangles can be tedious to make if you have to make so many though.  I think these quilts tend to have greater value opportunities because you can add value "shadows" to make it appear the line is twisting or has a shadow.

The second way is to use the rail fence method.  This is just a pair of strips, light and dark, sewn together then placed perpendicular to each other.  It gives you the same visual in a totally different way.  You don't have to have it go on a diagonal, you can Do it straight as well.

This one appears to have two color strips and one white divider strip.  Let me find another example.  Can you see it working in this one?  Two rails, a light and a dark, and horizontal rather than diagonal.  Make it larger so you can see it better.

I kinda like the easier rail fence way.  I get tired making all those HSTs.

Now the size.  I guess that is determined by what you want to do with it and how many scrap strips you have.  You need to get a general idea of what you would like.  I want at least a lap quilt.

Here is my rendition of the quilt in EQ.  This is 53 x 64 and says it takes about 2 yards of lights, and maybe a half a yard or so of any given color grouping for two rows.  I used the green as a measure.  The strips are from my 2 1/2 inch stack.

So the next thing I will do is to sort out my 2 1/2 inch strips into dark and light of course.  Then the darks into colorways.  Like all the greens, blues, reds, yellow, oranges, purples, blacks, browns.  Is that all the colors?  If not, wing it from there.

Then start to put your similar greens together, similar pinks (see there is one I left out) together, etc, etc, etc.

I think that should keep you busy for a few nights.  And of course I have to leave time for you to get lost in your stash scraps.  Finger the materials.  Remember what you used it for.  Who has that quilt now?  Is it still in your UFO pile?  Did you love that quilt?

I am sure I left out some questions there too!  LOL.  I will pull some strips out and start sorting tonight and have some pictures for you tomorrow of the mess I made!

glen: any questions?  I am making this up as I go along.