Blue and Green, Finally

This is one of the main things that's been eliminating my sewing time----the transformation of the master bath from this

to this

(Ignore the gray foreground--that's just shadow.)

It took three years, but we finally got the wallpaper off, and the paint on. I smile every time I see it!

There's more to come. The other bathroom is wallpapered, and there's a wallpaper border in the master bedroom. It all has to go!

Linen Strips

My 7-year-old grandson saw these and said, "Whoa! That's different." Yup.

These aren't bad photos, but the colors are subdued a bit and the yellow and green are a bit washed out. In real life they really sizzle. I'm particularly fond of the hot pink and red-orange.

It's fun putting together unstraight edges. No rotary cutters used here! I chop away with large shears and, when possible, use the natural uneven edges of the scraps. I take some care to match up a concave curve with a convex curve, and also put wedges in so that the panels don't curve too much, but I try not to overthink things.

I can't believe how fast this top is going together. The plan is for roughly 45 to 50 inches high and wide, and I'm already at about 45 by 35.

A New Linen Quilt

I'm excited about this new quilt! It's one I've been wanting to get to for more than a year, and a few months ago I decided I finally had enough linen collected for it. The main reason I'm starting it now is that a couple of weeks ago we finished painting the dinette/computer area, and the off-white walls (formerly wallpaper and then scarred drywall) are so blank!

The fabrics are 100% linen from yardage (maybe a quarter to a third of the total) and clothing. The weights and textures vary quite a bit. A couple are thinner than I'd like, but the colors are too good to give up.

The emphasis will be on the reds. At first, I wasn't going to include all the colors from the blues through the black, but paging through some quilt books helped me decide that more contrast and added colors will be good. We'll see how it goes, though.

Rug Done!

I love this rug! Design-wise, I was really winging it, but I couldn't have planned a better result. It actually looks three-dimensional, and the colors flow so nicely.

(Here's my previous post, which records most of the early steps in making it.) I purposely chose mostly medium colors, so it won't show the dirt as much as the larger one. These are entry rugs, so they trap the grit, wet, and general dirt coming into the condo.

In case you're wondering, washing one of these is not exactly easy, but it's not a terrible experience either. After a good shaking, I put it in the bathtub, add a little detergent and warm water, and then gently shove it around to get the dirt out. After several changes of water, when the water is clear and there's no more sand in the tub, I place it carefully into the washer, spin it, and pop it into the dryer. (I have a water-saving top-loader, so I can place the rug carefully around the sides to keep the strain minimal while spinning, and a very high percentage of the water is removed safely. Not sure how it would survive a front-loader.) I use cotton thread for joining the plaited strips, so I'm careful not to put too much strain on these rugs, especially when they're wet. I also overcast the two cut edges at least twice, and put two rows of wide multistitch zig-zags a little way in from the ends.

By the way, if you make one, make the plaited strips almost a foot longer than the desired rug length. After the plaited strips are sewn together, mark a cutting line on each end, do a straight stitch just to the inside of this line, then zig-zag over it before cutting. After cutting, do another zig-zag over the cut edge. If the cut line differs much from the marked line, add another straight stitch row and zig-zag row over the edge. I think that in every case, I've had to resew/recut the finished edges to make them more square. It takes some effort to keep the cut edges from expanding and ruffling. Add the two lines of multistitch zig-zag after you know you have finished edges. At first, the rug will not lie completely flat. It relaxes over the course of a few days.

Plaited rugs are not quick (they also eat a lot of thread). This one took roughly 35 hours (not including the ripping and resewing of the plaited strips, because the first time I couldn't be bothered to pin them), and it's only 28 inches by 57 inches. But they're beautiful, thin and flat, don't bunch up, light enough to wash and dry, and don't shrink or transfer dye to the floor. Definitely worth the effort.

Wedding Quilt Photos

I don't much like it, but I have to accept the fact that I disappear from the blogging world occasionally. When the workload gets heavy, and personal commitments multiply, blogging is simply one of the more expendable items. But things are more relaxed now, and I'm looking forward to catching up a bit.

Along with blogging, the wedding quilt got delayed, too. But, it turned out that personally giving it to the newlyweds a couple of weeks late was actually nicer than having it mixed in with all the other gifts. I had time to make a nice label. We got to chat about the fabrics and how I made the quilt. Having the more personal connection was very nice.

This quilt was a perfect fit for quilting each quarter separately and then sewing the quilted parts together. The method is a pain if you need to match the sections (actually, I've never been able to get such sections to match at all), but it's nice when matching isn't an option to begin with. I can't abide leaving overlapped batting in the finished quilt, so there's a lot of fussy trimming and hand sewing, but that's better than maneuvering an entire queen-size quilt sandwich, especially when using straight pins to hold the layers together. (Safety pins are too thick. They break the threads of the mostly tightly woven shirtings.)

I knew right away I'd do an all-over meander. I think it's a nice contrast to the hard, straight edges, not to mention that it's the one type of machine quilting I'm even somewhat competent at. I used leftover thread from my hand quilting of the linen quilt--variegated green and variegated yellow--plus a somewhat strange variegated pink-beige, gold, and green that worked surprisingly well.

This was a fun quilt to make, and I got pretty attached to it. It was hard to give it away!

The Rug Is Taking Shape

No significant quilt content today---I've been too intent on the rug. 

I really like the way it's turning out! Here's the first plait:

It's almost 4 inches wide and has 12 laces. But I need to back up....

To recap, I started with 12 pairs of pants and was able to cut enough 2-inch strips (actually, just a shade narrower, to allow better travel through the binder-making tool) for seven 7-foot laces from each pair (with only a few scraps left over). I folded the strips, pressed them, and stitched them into laces. The colors grouped into two sets of six---one with more grays, the other with more beiges.

I originally planned to plait 6 different-colored laces (graded from dark to light) into one plait. (The photo above and below show the laces sewn together at their tops, in these sets of six, ready for plaiting.) The resulting 14 plaits would then be sewn together to make a rug. Here's the beginning of one plait:

Nice, but the plait would be at most 2 inches wide. I wasn't liking the design possibilities. Besides, that's a lot of plaits to sew together. Time to rethink.

I had never worked with more than 9 laces at once, but I figured that I might be able to handle 12. What the heck. I tried it.

Much better!

I had put two laces of each color next to each other (six colors, and a total of 12 laces) and expected the pairs to stay next to each other throughout the plaiting, but they didn't. They would have if I had done what I normally do, which is simply put the leftmost lace over the one to the right and continue to weave it all the way across, diagonally. However, that leaves the upper right free of plaiting, and with 12 laces, that's a fair amount of wasted lace length. Instead, I started with the next-to-last lace from the right and put it over the rightmost lace, then worked with the fourth lace from the right, weaving it all the way to right, then the sixth lace from the right, and so on. This allowed the plaiting to go all the way up to the the upper edge.

Serendipity! The outermost pairs of laces did indeed move along together, but the interior pairs separated. So, instead of a clearly defined light-to-dark zig-zag, I got a more subtle but, I think, very nice gradation.

I'm mulling the idea of sewing the plaits together by hand instead of machine. The only workable way of doing this would be to slip a blunt needle through the outermost lacing edge and weave it back and forth between the two plaits. But my suspicion is that I'll run into problems because the outer "loops" won't always line up with each other.

In any case, I'd really like to get this project all wrapped up by the end of this coming week, primarily because I have to get back to the wedding quilt---the wedding is only 5 weeks away, and I have lots of non-quilt-related stuff to do during that time, too. I ordered batting, and it should be here in a few days.

Seduced by Cotton Twill

The plan was to dig through three bins that might have suitable yardage for the wedding quilt backing. To get to them, however, I had to get past a bin overflowing with cotton twills ("khaki pants" in their previous life). In fact, I distinctly remember purposely overfilling that bin with the cut-up pants I'd chosen for my next plaited rug, specifically so that I'd notice and, hopefully, make the rug.

I know myself too well. Those almost velvety surfaces, the dense but not too firm hand, the subtle colors ... irresistible. All quilts have been temporarily supplanted. And we really do need another rug for the entry.

I never posted photos of my last rug project, so here they are.

I chose the lightest, most subtle colors and a complicated design with bilateral symmetry. 

The individual strips have anywhere from three to nine laces.

I love it! It's perfect with our tile, too. Twenty-six pairs of pants contributed, with enough fabric left over to fashion a large coffee table runner (not plaited---just made from the 2-inch strips). Plus the inevitable scraps.

The new rug will be a range of somewhat darker colors, although it's hard to tell in this photo. The darkest fabrics haven't been cut up yet. At the far left are the remaining whole pieces, to the right are six bundles of finished laces (all of which will be plaited together). In the middle are two sets of strips ready to fold and sew into laces (plus one bundle of laces). 

I'm deep into the project but, now, almost regret starting it. I'll be so busy with work (courtesy of a small avalanche of freelance projects) that I won't get to any quilts but the wedding quilt anytime soon. Ah well.