Spiraling

Yeah, I know that's usually a bad thing, as in spiraling into depression or something like that.  But, not this time.  This time, it was about finding a way to quilt a spiral into the triangle quilt I showed last week.  

My plan was to find or draw a spiral that I could use as my starting point, then use the extension on my walking foot to measure and echo that spiral out to the edge of the quilt.  My efforts at drawing a spiral were not so good and I quickly turned to the internet, where I found a great spiral and printed it.  I laid my printed copy on a piece of tissue paper (I'll remember to iron that tissue paper before I do this next time) and using an unthreaded needle and the extension on the walking foot, I needle punched the pattern into the paper.  If I could do that on tissue paper, then I knew there was a really good chance I could do it on a quilt.  If it didn't work on paper, then time to find a new plan.  

It worked.  I pinned the tissue paper to a practice sample and I'm very happy with the result.  The plan is to needle punch the pattern into tissue and use my free motion foot to quilt the quilt center.  This practice showed me that it's going to be a pain to maneuver the whole quilted around in a circle and I think it would be much easier to do free motion.  Once I get outside the paper, I can use my walking foot to do the rest of the quilt.  The free motion foot will also help avoid distortion in the quilt.  

The quilt is laid out in a grid.  I need to make sure I don't distort that grid by pushing the top fabric around before it's quilted down.  Because the free motion foot goes up and down, it doesn't push fabric around, but the walking foot, which feeds fabric from front to back would push the quilt top in front to it.  Granted, because it's a walking foot, it won't be much, but it wouldn't take much to throw off the optics of the quilt.  A thin cotton batting will also help avoid distortion.  If the quilt top was floating on a nice cloud of wool batting, it would be very easy to distort, but on a flat piece of cotton, which grabs the quilt top and helps hold it steady, it will be less likely to distort (I hope!)

Now, I've got to get it sandwiched so I can give all this spiraling a try.  

I also made the American Stars block for May.  I did traditional piecing on the first one, but it took so long that I decided to paper piece them.  Then, I found out that took even longer and was just as prone to errors, so it was back to traditional piecing with the last two.  I'm using every skill I learned from Sally Collins in her Precision Piecing class.  In that class, we were working with miniatures, but the same principles apply when making larger blocks (I could fit 16 of the 3" blocks we made in class in this one 12" block).  One of Barbara Brackman's sample makers is Becky Brown.  She has a wonderful sense of color and pattern.  She used a stripe in the background of the block and I was so inspired, I wanted to try it too.  I really like the effect!  

Some people show you pics of their grandchildren, I show pics of my garden.  

Last week, we had a regional meeting in the hybrid work environment. We had people from four time zones and at least 6 states for a full day meeting to get to know one another again and our new members and to talk about how we work and function in the new environment.  I was on the planning committee and the ice breaker was my idea.  We asked each participant to send in a picture that spoke to "who they are" and spend a minute talking about the picture to the group.  Of course, there were plenty of family pics and funny stories.  This is the picture I sent.  I talked about how the garden is my resting place and how much time I spend out in it.  And, how relaxing it is and how it's my refuge (and when my managers stress me out, this is where I go).  There were lots of oohs and aahs and laughs at how I talked about it and our 51 week a year gardening season.  It was hard to choose between the garden and a quilt for my photo. 

Some other fun pics from the garden this week:

This is the first year this lovely orange Iris has bloomed.  What a beauty!  

These yellow swallowtail butterflies are all over the yard.  

The first phlox.  The phlox usually all bloom at the same time, but this year, this one opened earlier than all the others and is really showing off in a prelude of what is to come.  I grow phlox in several places in the garden, so when they're all in bloom, they're a real highlight.

The nasturtiums have started to bloom.  Not sure about these this year.  They don't seem like they're going to hold up to the extra sun we're getting this year.  That's okay, I have three large pots of them that I can spread around the yard in some shadier spots.  

I don't know how old these glads are.  They've been in a shady spot and haven't bloomed in years.  I found them last year and moved them to a better spot and they must have liked it.  I found a few more small ones that I'm going to lift and move this year and hope they bloom next year.  

It's been a long week and the news of republican suppression of freedom hasn't changed.  I'm ashamed of how quickly our country has regressed and at the fools who are being played in order to make it possible.  It's not about life, it's about power.  If it was about life, we'd have gun control.  It's not about freedom, except the freedom to be protestant and straight and white and own a gun.  That's not freedom at all.   

Everybody have a great week!  

Lane