Oz Logs Quilt

  • January 18, 2011 3:32 pm

I have fallen into a patchwork spiral. I can’t stop myself! Since the time I last posted I have finished 2 quilts. One of them was inspired by the Fat Quarterly Quilt Along. Fat Quarterly is an awesome group of quilters that have put together an internet magazine all about modern quilting.

One thing that is relatively new to the quilting world is “precuts”. Precuts are fabric that are pre-cut into specific pieces such as strips or squares and sold as a set with other pieces from the same designer or line of fabric. Basically, it is little pieces cut from a large goup of fabrics that all go together well. They are so popular and easy to use that even solid colors are being sold this way now. I don’t think quilters 100 years ago would even imagine such a thing, but today they are all the rage. If you thought rotary cutters were fast, well this is taking it to the next step!

There are tons of quilt books and patterns that are designed specifically to use with these precuts in mind. The Moda Bake Shop is a great example- Moda is the Queen of pre-cuts at the moment- coining popular names for them such as Jelly Roll’s (40 2.5″ strips rolled together) and Charm Packs (40 5″ squares). Click here for an illustration of precuts that Moda offers.

Oz Jelly Roll

This is the ‘before’ shot of my quilt. A Jelly Roll of Oz designed by Sanae for Moda. I purchased it somewhat on a whim because it was on sale and I was curious about these jelly rolls that everyone was going on about. I will be honest and say that I think these jelly rolls are beautiful AS IS. I could just have them all over the house as decoration. It did feel a little wrong when I unwrapped this. It also takes quite a bit of ironing before cutting. Nobody  had warned me about that.

I followed the cutting and piecing instructions from the Fat Quarterly blog, but deviated a little bit from the quilt top assembly opting to make mine square and double the fabric to make mine twice as big.  The cool thing about this being a quilt a long was that several folks around the internet were all making this quilt at the same time so we would all upload our progress shots to the FQ Flickr group. It is so interesting to see the same quilt made by so many different people! Everybody has their own little take on it and of course all of the different fabric choices made for some great variety.

Oz test layout on the design wall

Here are some cut pieces I started putting up on the design wall just to see how things would look. This is the moment I decided I wanted half of the quilt to be solids. I can’t stress how awesome and important having a design wall in the sewing studio is. Mine is not fancy at all; 6 yards of pure white cotton flannel tacked straight to the wall, but I use it constantly! I throw pieces up there and step back to the other side of the room to stare at it for a while.

I originally planned on grey or black, but on a whim tried cream and liked it the best. Seeing the empty blocks with white peeking through is what made me realize white centers would be a nice way to tie the quilt together and keep it from being too busy.

Here is where my favorite part of the whole quilting process comes in. I have everything cut, all I need to do is so sew ~150 blocks. It is great to be able to sit down at my sewing machine and stitch and stitch without having to think about anything else. A lot of the quilting process is very repetitive, but that can be relaxing. It was also nice to immediately have something I could work on when I had some spare time on my hands. Sewing together some pieces while I watched television in the living room at night could still make progress.

I chose to sew my blocks together randomly mixing all of the print fabrics around and even throwing in a couple different shades of Kona cream which not only made the whole process a lot easier, but I like the scrappy quality it gives the quilt.

quilt top as curtain

As the quilt top was coming along I started to wonder what I would use for the back of the quilt. I absolutely fell in love with the fabric as I was sewing it. I love seeing the same prints in different colors and trying to decide which was my favorite. Sewing the pieces together in a scrappy order led to nice surprises as they came together. I decided that I love Oz and the only perfect backing for the quilt would be to use more Oz! I found a shop online that had their Oz yardage on sale and put the project on hold while I waited for that to come in the mail. The shop mostly had the pink prints, which I did not want for the back so I didn’t exactly get to choose my favorites, but am happy with what I ended up with.

Kuma and the quilt back layout on the design wall

More Oz ended up going into the back of the quilt than the front!  Now I had the front & the back assembled and it was ready to make the fabric sandwich and get ready for the actual quilting of the quilt!

Graham helping hold down the quilt

This is when I had the quilt layers and batting spread out on the living room floor getting ready to baste it by safety pinning the hell out of it! All of the animals loved this step the most because they all got to parade all over it. I had to work quickly and do a lot of shoo-ing.

Then came the quilting. I bought a giant spool of cream thread and spent the better part of 2 days running this thing through my machine. This part is fun and scary. I can’t say enough how much I love my heavy Singer sewing machine that is set in a cabinet. I think that helps ease the troubles. I should have gotten a shot of the quilt on the sewing machine because it is truly a beautiful sight. I equated it to seeing my sewing machine all dressed up.

After washing, the new fabric gets nice and wrinkly

I chose to do all straight line quilting; 1/4 inch around each white square and 1/4 inch along each side of where the blocks are joined. About halfway through quilting I was asking myself why I chose to do so many lines, but there is no way I would have taken a seam ripper to it, so I just kept going. While quilting you really only need the small area right under and around the needle to be flat and the rest of the quilt is going to be crumpled up and shifted around like mad. I started all of my lines in the center and worked my way out to reduce shifting. Lots of people like to wear sticky gloves and push the quilt around from the top, but I tend to get my arms under the quilt and kind of pinch it from underneath and roll it on top of itself and grab it to move it around. For the most part my machine did most of the work and the feed dogs pulling the fabric kept it going. I just had to make sure the weight of the quilt hanging off the sides wasn’t pulling or tugging.

After quilting I must admit the quilt sat around for a while until I could get around to cutting, ironing and stitching on the binding. I changed my mind at the last second on which print I would use for the binding. I had originally planned on using the tiny black and cream polka dots, but after unfolding the fabric that I had bought I decided to save it for another project because it was too awesome to cut into tiny strips at the moment. I instead chose the small flower print called Dizzy that I had bought extra of after my sister expressed that it was her favorite.

Hand stitching on the binding is another one of my favorite parts, not only because it means I am in the home stretch and almost done, but because I am literally just sitting on the couch as I stitch. That is a little bit of why I almost felt guilty during this quilting process. No that is not a typo I said Guilty. Sometimes it would take over and instead of doing things I was supposed to be doing I would work on this quilt.  In my mind it did seem almost crazy to spend so much time sewing something that I wasn’t going to be selling. I got a lot of questions and who or what this quilt was for and never really had an answer. I just had to make one. Now I think I might need to make another one! Although this would match by bedroom perfectly I ended up giving it to my parents because they have been very supportive of my sewing business and the changes it has been going through this last year and not to mention they really love it!

Mom & Dad holding the Oz Logs quilt

They also earned it by going out on a cold windy winter day to help me take pictures of it! Now I am off to dream about my next quilt.. more on the second quilt I recently finished later.

xo gina pina

Diaper Bag Process

  • August 17, 2010 11:51 pm

Here is a bit of a process post. I was asked to make a diaper bag as a gift for a new mother. The only requirements were that it be massive, use the Michael Miller “Yippee” fabric that the mother was sure to love and have inside and outside pockets. Fortunately the awesome Stitch Lab here in Austin came through with a random acquirement of said Michael Miller print! So I bought a yard and brainstormed.

At first I thought of how much I like those elastic pockets that hold bottles and that I should definitely include those. How to stitch those onto my normal messenger bag style though? I had no idea, more brainstorming. The pockets would be much easier if the sides were flat, making the bag have 4 sides and be more of a rectangle box shape. I had never actually done a bag in that style, but was confident I could pull it off. Anytime I am cutting fabric for a new design though it requires much pre-planning so that I cut the right size and don’t waste any fabric. Measure twice, cut once!

Here are some sketches I did to figure out the finished size + seam allowance pattern. I always write notes for anything that I make not only to help figure it out, but also so that if I have to go back and re-make it I remember what I did.  At first I was planning to patchwork a stripe onto the bottom 3rd of the bag, thinking that it would maybe help the bottle pockets not stand out as much. The more I looked at the Yippee print though the more I thought I should leave that as large as possible. I ended up cutting out 2 fat quarter yard panels, layering them with quilt batting and a thin cotton and doing some ‘stitch in the ditch’ quilting on the cheater print. This left me with 2 tiny baby quilt looking panels which I cut to the exact size I needed for the whole side of the bag, 13.5″ x 16 and then stitching on stiff sides and bottom.

I LOVE that it came out so quilty and soft on the sides. I think the open top design will be handy for easy access. Fortunately the stiff sides and bottom along with the dec weight lining being interfaced still gives it enough body to stand on its own. The Denyse Schmidt county fair ginger dizzy dots & scallops fabric was a pretty perfect fabric match too! I used that as the sides, lining, inside pockets and straps. I also made a little covered button and loop with it. Another feature I added to this bag that I normally don’t is that I padded the sleeves with some fleece. They are puffy soft and awesome! I only wish I would have gotten better after shots. I have a bad habit of not doing that for my best most time intensive items and always feel like an iphone snap is enough (most of my sewing gallery photos here are iphone shots quickly snapped after completion). I was especially happy with the elastic inside pockets. I had never made them either and kind of winged it, but they turned out great. You will just have to take my word for it or study the shot above with my sketchbook because it is sitting on one of them prior to being stitched into the lining.

I always compare sewing to cooking and say it is kind of like a stir fry- tons of chopping and prep work, but once you heat up the wok and throw everything in it comes together fast. Once I had a pattern sketched out and got into cutting the whole thing came together relatively quickly. Well I say quickly, but I spent the better part of 2 days on this thing! Phew! Making a new bag pattern for the first time always takes much longer than making a repeat would. Fortunately my own mum made the trip to Austin and spent the weekend sewing with me, which was nice. It helps to have a cheerleader in your sewing room. She enjoys hanging out in my sewing room while I work and we always wish we had more time to do that when they come down for the weekend. In fact I was done and we were still hanging around so I decided to throw together a little changing blanket made out of some left over Yippee and some blue flannel. I also threw in a nice big oilcloth pouch thinking that would be handy to keep any messy diapers or clothes in the bag. I think the next diaper bag I make will probably be all laminated cotton for super easy cleaning!