Quarantine quilting – the tale of a scattered serial quilter

 

This week was scattered – mask-making, working my whole cloth tablecloth, playing with Lumiere paint, fixing some annoying computer/laptop/phone issues and starting a pieced quilt top that I may or may not finish. You know the apocalypse is nearing when you find me piecing, so there’s that too.

So here’s where I land on the whole mask thing: I have read many articles on the pros and cons of these. I have looked at 1.5 zillion tutorials including “the best”, “10 min mask”, “15 min mask” and, not to be outdone, “the very best”. BTW, none of them are truly 10 or 15 min and some can be quite fidgety to make. My bottom line: I am making for family and friends.

The one at the top I made for Hubby, made it as “masculine” as I could. I made a super cute one for myself but it’s MIA at the moment so the bottom one is a no-sew from a folded bandana with 2 hair ties. It works just as well as the one on top that took me a lot longer to make. I do not see the need for some of the intricate, involved masks that I see. Please, no tutorials, I’m done with them!

I made some great progress on my vintage table cloth whole cloth, progress that would have taken me weeks while working. Yet, progress seems soooo slow. My expectations and reality do not line up. You might recall this is what I started with.

I knew some of that excess white needed to come off the edges, my friends helped me see that. I was going to just square it off but the dog gone thing was very wonky; you know, vintage piece and all. So this happened:

I followed the edges that were there and it is not symmetric in any way. I love that imperfect wavy edge! It was a process to get there though. It started innocently enough with interfacing:

I had this interfacing in my stash, unlabeled, most likely purchased from an ASG Garage Sale so it could be quite old. It is 21″ wide, a very odd width, a one-sided fusible with those distinctive parallel lines, not dots. I doubt that it is currently manufactured because no Google search turned it up. I suspect it is antique Palmer and Plesch. It is divine! It is super soft yet those lines totally control the fabric. I wanted to know the type because some interfacing has special handling needs. So far, so good with this one.

My carpet is wool so I could carefully fuse on it; it fused easily, the drape is divine and that vintage linen is controlled.

I carefully marked my new edge, creating a buffer zone for it to lie in. I eye-balled the edge to echo the print. I could not live without my 72″ steel straight-edge! Yes, I use it to rotary cut with also. Carefully.

Before cutting into that linen (yikes!), I needed to secure that edge. I first stay-stitched along the marked edge, then painted Terial Magic on the edge and got this:

Once my edge was secure I could cut into it and finish it with a turned and stitched edge.

Ah, but now I needed to add something to that edge, I could not just plop it down on my front fabric and call it a day. I decided to put a tiny piping down. The adventure begins:

PSA: Do not ever attempt piping without this tool, the Piping Hot Binding Tool. The tool, and the accompanying directions, make piping easy, perfect and fool-proof. Ah, but I could not find my piping tool. Sigh.

Quick aside. Years ago I needed to make piping and I could not find my tool. I knew I had two! But I needed it right then so I bought another. When it came time to remodel I found all 3! I gave 2 away. Since I lost that one and needed it for this project, I had to order yet another – how annoying. That would put my lifetime (so far) purchases of the piping tool at FIVE! The very day that I ordered the new one, I found the old one:

It was disguised in this container! It had been misfiled in my incredibly organized studio (for real, it is very organized since the remodel 3 years ago). UGH!

Onward to the piping. I decided to lay in one round of piping but that was not nearly enough, it needed two. Ack – I did not have enough piping cord for the second round. I tear through all my trims and there is no similar piping. Ugh, order more. Again, the very day I received the fifth piping tool, and it included piping cording! Ridiculous, no? If you need to borrow a piping tool, I’m your girl. And I’ve even got some cording for you.

After all of that, here is what I got:

Meh. BTW, this was just a practice piece with deliberately dark thread so that I could see how it was working. I could have worked it a bit more to get it to lie better, but the whole thing just left me cold. It brought the whole piece into the fussy zone. On a whim, I pulled out some rickrack:

Definitely the wrong color but I love the vibe! This prompted an internet search for rickrack and I pray that the rickrack I ordered is the right purple. I’ll be waiting oh so patiently….

In the meantime, I had two more play dates with myself:

I ordered some Lumiere. Bless those Dharma Trading people – they were eager to fill my order and yes, they were working in a warehouse environment that was properly social-distanced. All I’m doing here is figuring out the dilution level and seeing how my colors look. I have a project in mind but I’m waiting on some thread for that. More on this later…

I’ve been drawing/doodling a bit every day. This is not something I’ve done before – I’m just not a sketchbook kind of girl. But desperate times created a space for this to happen so I did a Hail Mary and dug in to sketch every day. Yesterday this happened. Since I had those 3 fold masks in mind, this quilt block design jumped onto my sketchbook page:

This is some well-aged Michael Miller from probably early century, Free Spirit. I love those gradated stripes. So the little curved parts are the sides of the mask and the 3 stripes in the middle are the 3 pleats of the mask. It’s my COVID quilt. I just played with this today for the first time, there is no buttoned-up plan for this, just playing. I like my start. Those curved parts I think are best fused, with perhaps some sort of stitching to secure their edges, or maybe not. I’ve backed them with Misty Fuse. When those squares are pieced together, you get this twirly thing going on at each corner. It’s kind cool, liking it so far. I cut the curvy parts from an EE Schenck ombre print. This whole project may prosper or die on the vine, stay tuned.

My spirits remain up. I am thankful. I hope yours are too.

I’ll link up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday, always great links there.