Annies Crazy World

I am now ready to start cutting…When trimming traditional quilt blocks to size the ruler or template is placed on top of the block…Doesn’t work for crazy quilted blocks, the embellishments destabalize the ruler makeing it impossible to get a clean accurate cut…The Trick is to trim the blocks from the edge, that is where the 9″ square marked with arrows on my cutting board come into play…

Warning: Trimming the blocks from the edge does mean that if you slip with the cutter it will cut into your block as well as possible injury to yourself…So Please do be carfull with your cutters, use a sharp blade so that you don’t have to push hard and force it through the fabric; Hold your ruler with a firm downward pressure; Don’t be tempted to cut at awkward angles, it may save a few seconds at the time but the risk of injury to self and block are substantially increased, it also makes it harder to line up the ruler and see the line to be cut, much easier to Always spin the block so that you Always cut away from your body.

The first cut…

If the corner points have been marked through the hole in the template than the 1st cut is made where the ruler lines up with 2 of the marked spots.

Otherwise position the block in the marked square on your board, eyeballing its position and making sure that the block is meeting or covering all edges and corners…place the ruler so that it is lined up with the cutting boards grid lines that you can see above and below the block, the fabric under the ruler is what will be cut off.

For the second cut spin the block and line up the first cut edge with one edge of the 9″ square marked by the arrows… place the ruler on the second edge again lining it up with the cutting boards grid lines that you can see above and below the block.

repeat for remaining edges which should leave you with a 9″ square block and because all the blocks are measured from the same marked square than all blocks should be of equal size…

that is unless some of the blocks are under size…Linda noticed from the photo that her block was not the full 9 inches and that she wasn’t square (see comments) but her Eeeeek will fade away when she sees how easily I can make her into the full 9” square…So watch this space for Part 3 – “how” to make Linda into a square….

Blocks for group quilts are inevitably different sizes and this one is no exception…the different sized blocks are more of a problem with traditional patchwork blocks, which have points that may need to be cut off, than what it is with CQ blocks and actually this lot or pretty good with only small variations in size of the embellished area, together with 1/2 inch seam allowances to play with my job easy.

In Their blogs today Linda described me as “(Genius and Goddess of Quilting)” and Sharon described me as “an expert assembler – with a passion for getting such things just right”…what they mean is that I will measure everything to the nth degree and that my corners will meet perfectly, even though they will be covered by the buttons that will hold the quilt layers together, other people would describe me as anal retentive LOL but when you know “how” it is really not difficult to get such things just right…

Note: I use a rotary cutter and board, if you don’t have this equipment you can follow along using your table where my board is and mark your fabric with a ruler and pencil, then use scissors to cut along the marked line.

Before starting

I marked a 9 inch square on my cutting board with black arrows. this can be done with a piece of masking tape if you don’t want to draw on your cutting board.

I made a plastic window template with the 8 inch finished size cut out and the 1/2 inch seam allowance lines marked onto it.

I pinned the block information to the pin board so that I could work with the blocks, you can see the contents of this one on Vivienne’s blog

Preparing Blocks

The First thing that I did with each block was to put the window template over it…

I could see at a glance wether the block was under or over size.

I could see where the maker intended the edge of the finished block to be.

And I could see any stitching that would need removeing from the finished size of the block.

The next thing that I did was to remove any stitching that would be visible on the finished size…

…and yes that does leave holes in the fabric, it marks some fabrics more than others and is easier to get out of some than what it is others…hint longer stitch lengths leave less marks (and are easier to pull out) and hand basting is much easier to remove and leaves far fewer marks on the fabric…

A gentle massage with your thumbnail or between your fingers will remove the holes from most fabrics.

For the more stuborn holes I used a damp cotton bud….hint do a test in the seam allowance to make sure that the water is not going to mark the fabric.

Most blocks had enough extra seam allowance that I could eyeball the first cut but some blocks, whilst their foundation was full size the patches only had 1/4 inch seams so there was no room for error, on those blocks small holes in the template, at the corners of the cutting lines, allowed me to mark the corners to make the first cut.

Blogging this is taking me longer than it is to make the quilt lol and it is again time for me to get some sleep…so watch this space dear friends for Part 2 How to trim blocks to size.

When arranging blocks for a quilt it is possible to go on rearranging the blocks till you have many different arrangements but none neccisarily better than another…I felt that with the difficult and distingtive blocks positioned the others blended nicely around them and I resisted doing anymore rearranging, I did visit Sharon so that she could cast an eye over them to see if anything looked out of place to her, Jerry was there and he thought that the yellows in the top right corner didn’t look balanced being up there on there own, so I looked at the blocks that could be moved and we tried Valeri’s block 2nd row down on the left, not good because it put to much pink in the 2nd row, but swapping with the block below did work and that was the last change made…

Home again I took everything off my pin board and pinned the blocks to it…I stood back to look at them and all that I could think was WOW…

I have half the blocks trimmed to size and stitched into pairs and 123 photos to sort through and resize so that I can to show you step by step how to stitch blocks into a quilt…

Note to makers of the competitors blocks, who may be wondering where there blocks are…they are in the white bag with the red apple that is pinned to the bottom of my pin board.

When I got the blocks from Sharon they where in the plastic bags that they had arrived in and the first thing that I did was to remove each block from its bag, I wrote the makers name with pencil in the seam allowance on the back so that there could be no mix ups and I pinned the notes and bags of extra beads to the back of the block so that everything connected to each block could be kept together….

I handed the blocks, with its info attached, to my sister who enjoyed having a good look at each block before laying it down on the sheet I spread on the floor to protect them so that when all were done they where arranged in the random order in which they came out of the bags.

I am now going to try and tell you my thoughts as I rearranged the blocks into a visually pleasing quilt…The
All that Jazz blocks varied greatly in colour and style and comlexity and they needed to be blended into a balanced whole…

The first block that I moved was Marty’s, as winner of the popular vote I felt that Marty’s beautifull block deserved to be in the central portion of the quilt which is more a focal point for the eye than the edges.

Janet added no embroidery or embellishment to her block which I thought was going to make it difficult to position but when we read the words ‘Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans’ it seemed obvious that it should be in the bottom right corner like a signature block because the simple message seemed to summarize the feelings of the quilt.

Catherine takes the prize for the heaviest block received and I placed it in the bottom row where I felt that it would be least likely to cause the quilt to sag under its weight.

Willa’s ‘Sunrise in New Orleans’ was the most distingtive block and needed to be carefully placed and that was easy to do as the block told me that it needed to go down the bottom of the quilt where the sun’s rays could rise into the quilt.

Alison’s Lois Armstrong block needed to move to the right side so that Lois would be blowing his Trombone into the quilt. I put it in the central portion of the quilt because Alison’s block is one of my personal favourites.

Linda’s fan is also a distingtive feature and looked best on the left side where it had more space to show it off.

Betty’s peacock with his stunning tail needed to come into the centre of the quilt where it could be framed by the surrounding blocks.

Sharon’s Saxaponist looked a bit trunkated with other blocks around it so I moved it up to the top left corner where he not only plays into sharon’s block but plays into the whole quilt.

Kate’s Angel flew to the top row from where he could keep watch over New Orleans.

Pam I love your block but it did set me a challenge, being the only block to use white fabric, it was the most difficult to position….folding the seam allowances back so that there was less white helped, with less visible white I found the spot down the bottom where it is balanced by the light colours in Alison’s.

Hi dear readers, here I am back again after an extended break…I have just read my last post and a lot has happened since then…I did a few more seams on my katrina block but was making no headway and eventually decided to piece another block, I kept the idea of the stage coach and pieced the block so that the stage coach would have a background and I had started the wistera when christmas activities took over followed by a visit with my family which was to be a relaxing 3 week holiday, I took my stitching with me thinking that I would be able to sit under the mango tree and stitch…did I get that wrong…with from 12 to 18 mouths to feed there was a lot of shopping cooking and cleaning to do, and the Mango tree has grown since I was a kid, there was a lot of leaves to be raked, and then there was new year and a couple of birthdays to celebrate and my brother’s inlaws visiting from Germany, And there was a wedding to be organized for another of my brothers who got married under the Mango tree, which we had lit up with fairy lights, my sister and I iced the wedding cake and I was proud of my son who, besides doing most of the food catering, made the wedding rings…for several days leading up to the wedding it had been very hot and humid but a cool change came through so that their day was beautiful and the rain held off until late in the evening and then it rained for several days, flooding our tent and creating additional loads of wet towels and cloths…my 3 relaxed weeks extended to 4 whirlwind weeks but even though I didn’t get the Rest that I had so wanted, we did eat well with fresh fish my son caught and spanner crabs fresh from the trawlers and I did enjoy the sun, sand and swimming, the walks down to the creek, and the outdoor life that we live up there and I got home feeling refreshed and ready to stitch…

…I unpacked my Katrina block, finished the wistera but when that was done I lost my way again and made ridiculasly hard work of the embroidery, I kept trying to put meaning into every stitch and having to remind myself that the embroidery is the background to the embellishments and just has to look good…maybe I was just delaying because I didn’t know how I was going to do the stage coach, when I first thought of it I had cross stitch over waste canvas in mind but the details on my picture were to small, after much dithering I decided to do the main sillohette with fusible webbing with the details added with stem stitch which worked well…I added the moon in the sky, the red butterfly and the pussy cat found his way into the garden…and then I stalled again, I had lots of ideas and lots of charms to choose from but there was no flow in how I was placing them…I asked my son and his friend if they would choose from the charms and play around with where they could be placed, one of the things my son did was to move the saxaphone up a bit from the corner where I had it because He wanted to put the music notes floating across the sky which created the flow that I had been missing, I also like the way his friend lay the shoe down with one on the side, it not only looks good, it stitche on well and disguised the fact that it is 2 right shoes…in the bead trail I incorperated hammer and nails, scissors and thread as symbles of the rebuilding that will be needed and a clock for the passing of time as our lives go on through the seasons, the highs and lows, the disasters and the triumphs as life goes on…when we had been playing around auditioning the charms I had jokeingly placed the computer charm in the sky saying that it could go up there in cyber space, I then seriously stitched it on there because it didn’t fit any where else and I did really want to put it on because without our computers and the internet this wonderful crazy quilt would not have been created…

…and I am here to tell you that it is a truely wonderful quilt….I collected the blocks from Sharon last week and my Congratulations and thanks to all who made blocks…It is an honour to be entrusted with assembling your blocks into this exquisit and I believe historic Crazy Quilt…

…How I layed the blocks out and prepared them to be joined will have t wait because it is now very late here and I have got to go to bed so I will leave you with my finished block and say goodnight.

It is my Katrina block…when I finished piecing it last night I liked the block but the zig zig fabric is very dominant and being a big patch in the centre is going to hard to work around…actually I think I was more annoyed with myself then anything as I had layed the fabrics out, thought the pink was to much so swappd it for the music print, that was to dull so I put a smaller piece of the pink back in with the music and liked it but then when I pieced the block I managed to get a big patch of the pink.

I wanted to make another block with a different centre but had no idea of what I could replace the pink with, besides there is no time to be making another one, so this morning I gave myself the reality check lecture, I would just have to make it work…but how, I was having no ideas of what embellishments to do, for inspiration I looked at images on the web and there was a few good ones but copyright prevents me using them…while procrastinating about embellishments I decided that there needed to be a bigger piece of the firework fabric and I stitched a bigger bit on, looked at it and thought that maybe I shouldn’t have done that but it was too late, what to do…make a feature of the fireworks…

I love fireworks and how they light up the sky in celebration…I think I had been lacking ideas because I was thinking Jazz but I am tone deaf, enjoy music sometimes but prefer silence, I know very little about jazz or any other music so had nothing to relate to…fireworks I could relate to and once I had a start a few more ideas followed…I was sketching them into my visual journal when they started talking about stage coaches on the radio and I thought that a stage couch would be a good symble to indicate that New Orleans has had a long history…Once again I have let time slip and I am going to be pushed to get the block done on time but that is the story of my life, my creativity is stimulated by dead lines…at least I now have a few ideas to go on with.

I have been pulling fabrics to make my block for the All That Jazz quilt. There is a lot more boxes I could look through but I think that I have enough to start. Most of them are from the OZ/USA swaps with the crazyquilt list.