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KITTYSPAM and QUILTSPAM
Kittyspam! Also, I made a quilt!
Nefer indulging her CONSTANT MANIA FOR LICKING.
A sight you almost NEVER see: Sora licking Nefer! He very quickly stopped doing so after I took this shot.
I think he then tried to bite her - because Sora is basically a little jackass about half the time.
WHERE WERE YOU ON THE NIGHT OF MONDAY THE 18TH?
See what I mean about Sora being a jackass? He'll just flop right over on top of Nefer, who just rolls here eyes and ignores him. Most of the time.
And now, not overexposed!
Yin and yang.
I love this one. I uploaded it to icanhascheezburger.com and hope it gets some good lols made from it.
Sora does know how to find the light.
Now! Quilt!
Back in August,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vom_marlowe posted about making a workman-style quilt, and it looked interesting enough to try one day. I haven't had a sewing machine in a long time since Mom took over my old one and refuses to give it back, so the desire remained dormant until Christmas, when I finally indulged and bought myself another one. It's an inexpensive one, because I won't be doing enough sewing to make it worth dropping $500+ on a good one, but I did go up a wee bit, to $140, to get one that came with a walking foot attachment and a couple of other nifty gadgets. The walking foot came in handy when doing the quilting.
We needed another quilt-type blanket, as we own two quilts for full beds and have a queen bed.myrialux has the stealth talent of being able to pull a quilt that is above a sheet and below a blanket completely over to his side of the bed while asleep, while leaving the sheet below and blanket above untouched. So a larger quilt was in order, but I didn't like any of the ones I saw for the price I was willing to pay.
vom_marlowe's quilt was done with a white background, which looks quite nice and I like it a lot, however I have a cat with a dodgy tummy so white as a major design feature was just not destined to happen with me. So I ended up with black as a background, and not only that, but black with a pattern on it (from the batik section, even!) so that when it does get puked on and stained, the stain won't be very evident.
Since my stash of fabrics is made of of true scraps, to use for kanzashi, I had to buy all the fabric that went into this. :) After some back-of-the-envelope calculations that turned out to be completely wrong, I got 5 yards of the black, and 8 fat quarters in different patterns that were all in the brown/russet family, with a few glints of white and gold here and there.
It ended up exactly the perfect size for our bed, or for another bed with a footboard, but is really too short to look good on a bed without something at the foot of it. If I were to make another queen-size quilt this way, I'd get 6 yards of the background and 10 fat quarters - I think 9 fat quarters might do it exactly, but I'd want a little bit more for peace of mind. I spent about $125 in toto for the supplies for this - fabric, $30 flat sheet for the backing, thread, batting, and a new pair of fabric scissors - and I like this FAR FAR more than any of the $125 quilts I've seen in the stores. (And if I had the fabric stash already, you could drop $80 off that total. XD)
As for the rest of the details of making it, my report will make a lot more sense if you go readvom_marlowe's directions first.
I was much more methodical than Vom Marlowe about this, because as it was my first quilt, I couldn't quite trust to chance. I wanted a carefully crafted appearance of randomness, rather than true randomness. :)
I cut the fat quarters into strips that ranged from 1" to 4" - 2 of each size from each fat quarter. The black fabric I cut into strips of 4", 6", and 9" wide - I decided the wider 12" ones in Vom Marlowe's quilt weren't what I wanted for mine. These were all in the vicinity of 18" long.
I also worked out an even amount of each width of the smaller strips to be sewn into each long strip of the quilt top - for the black, 8 4" strips, 2 6" strips, and 2 9" strips. For the colors, 3 of each width (1", 2", 3" and 4"). I then laid them down on the floor and arranged and re-arranged until I got a reasonable pattern for each strip - I didn't want too many of the same pattern near each other, and I didn't want any big stripes appearing across the width of the quilt from having 2 or more strips of the same width and close to the same level.
I didn't *quite* manage that, as you can see over on the left-hand side here:
I think I must have gotten two long strips mixed up, or turned one 180° accidentally, as there's three very distinct stripes over there. :)
At any rate, if I did this again, I'd add another 6" strip of the black to each long strip, and a couple more color strips. I'd also skip the 1" strips as they were more trouble than theyw ere worth to sew together - I'd probably do 2", 3", 4" and maybe 5". Add a couple more of those to each long strip, and the quilt would be the proper length to cover a queen-size bed without a footboard.
As you can see in the pic above, we've got an IKEA Malm bed, and are using two mattresses on it (although you're only supposed to use one) because I bought the mattress and box springs new five years ago and am not about to give up the box springs no matter what IKEA says. The quilt width is PERFECT for this bed, as it touches the wood surround on either side as you see in the pic above. It doesn't touch the wood at the foot of the bed unless I move it down to where the pillows end, but as we've got a bench with cat beds sitting on it there, it doesn't matter. But as I said, a bed with a solid footboard, like my mom's sleigh bed, would work just fine.
When I was assembling the quilt sandwich - quilt top, batting, and sheet for the backing - I had a hard time getting the four edges cut straight (in part because my sewing of the strips wasn't straight!) untilmyrialux had a brainstorm: laser level! I set it up at one corner, shining down the edge, and cut along the laser light. Worked perfectly! So the interior seams may not be straight, but the four edges are! Or at least were before my wonky sewing got to them!
After sewing around the edges, I turned it right-side-out and topstitched along the full perimeter, as I liked the way it made it lie flatter. I then took a leaf from Vom Marlowe's book and didn't quilt *all* the strips. I started to do that, but was driven mad within twenty minutes, and after that just quilted every 10" or so, as the batting said that it wouldn't shift if quilted at that interval.
I did quilt in the ditch (for those of you not used to this - that means in the seams) between each of the long strips, just did it more sporadically for the short ones. And this was all machine quilting - I was NOT ABOUT to do it by hand. The walking foot that came with the machine is great for this because it advances the top fabric, also - normally the feed dogs underneath the fabric move it forward as you're sewing, but when you have heavy fabrics or several sandwiched together, it can often move the bottom layers independently of the top, which isn't NOT what you want. The walking foot moves the top layers at the same time as the feed dogs are moving the bottom layers.
I did the vast majority of the construction over New Year's weekend, but ended up not finishing the quilting until tonight. It's been sitting on our bed with gold-toned quilting safety pins holding it together. XD The amusing part - the gold tones looked REALLY GOOD with it. If there were a way to put gold buttons on it (or if we wanted stuff that would catch on sheets and clothes tossed on top of it), it would look quite natty.
The cats approve, and it's already got a fine haze of fur on top of it.
There are little strips of batting and fabric all over the floor of the house. Sora has found that the batting is his new favorite toy, and keeps dragging pieces of it around and playing with it. There's one on the quilt here, that little white thing.
So ... all-in-all, a useful project that turned out quite nicely, despite me screwing up the measurements in my calculations. And I'm going to enjoy sleeping under a COMPLETELY FINISHED quilt tonight. (myrialux is going to enjoy a living room free from tables and sewing machines!)
Nefer indulging her CONSTANT MANIA FOR LICKING.
A sight you almost NEVER see: Sora licking Nefer! He very quickly stopped doing so after I took this shot.
I think he then tried to bite her - because Sora is basically a little jackass about half the time.
WHERE WERE YOU ON THE NIGHT OF MONDAY THE 18TH?
See what I mean about Sora being a jackass? He'll just flop right over on top of Nefer, who just rolls here eyes and ignores him. Most of the time.
And now, not overexposed!
Yin and yang.
I love this one. I uploaded it to icanhascheezburger.com and hope it gets some good lols made from it.
Sora does know how to find the light.
Now! Quilt!
Back in August,
vom_marlowe posted about making a workman-style quilt, and it looked interesting enough to try one day. I haven't had a sewing machine in a long time since Mom took over my old one and refuses to give it back, so the desire remained dormant until Christmas, when I finally indulged and bought myself another one. It's an inexpensive one, because I won't be doing enough sewing to make it worth dropping $500+ on a good one, but I did go up a wee bit, to $140, to get one that came with a walking foot attachment and a couple of other nifty gadgets. The walking foot came in handy when doing the quilting.We needed another quilt-type blanket, as we own two quilts for full beds and have a queen bed.
myrialux has the stealth talent of being able to pull a quilt that is above a sheet and below a blanket completely over to his side of the bed while asleep, while leaving the sheet below and blanket above untouched. So a larger quilt was in order, but I didn't like any of the ones I saw for the price I was willing to pay.vom_marlowe's quilt was done with a white background, which looks quite nice and I like it a lot, however I have a cat with a dodgy tummy so white as a major design feature was just not destined to happen with me. So I ended up with black as a background, and not only that, but black with a pattern on it (from the batik section, even!) so that when it does get puked on and stained, the stain won't be very evident.Since my stash of fabrics is made of of true scraps, to use for kanzashi, I had to buy all the fabric that went into this. :) After some back-of-the-envelope calculations that turned out to be completely wrong, I got 5 yards of the black, and 8 fat quarters in different patterns that were all in the brown/russet family, with a few glints of white and gold here and there.
It ended up exactly the perfect size for our bed, or for another bed with a footboard, but is really too short to look good on a bed without something at the foot of it. If I were to make another queen-size quilt this way, I'd get 6 yards of the background and 10 fat quarters - I think 9 fat quarters might do it exactly, but I'd want a little bit more for peace of mind. I spent about $125 in toto for the supplies for this - fabric, $30 flat sheet for the backing, thread, batting, and a new pair of fabric scissors - and I like this FAR FAR more than any of the $125 quilts I've seen in the stores. (And if I had the fabric stash already, you could drop $80 off that total. XD)
As for the rest of the details of making it, my report will make a lot more sense if you go read
vom_marlowe's directions first.I was much more methodical than Vom Marlowe about this, because as it was my first quilt, I couldn't quite trust to chance. I wanted a carefully crafted appearance of randomness, rather than true randomness. :)
I cut the fat quarters into strips that ranged from 1" to 4" - 2 of each size from each fat quarter. The black fabric I cut into strips of 4", 6", and 9" wide - I decided the wider 12" ones in Vom Marlowe's quilt weren't what I wanted for mine. These were all in the vicinity of 18" long.
I also worked out an even amount of each width of the smaller strips to be sewn into each long strip of the quilt top - for the black, 8 4" strips, 2 6" strips, and 2 9" strips. For the colors, 3 of each width (1", 2", 3" and 4"). I then laid them down on the floor and arranged and re-arranged until I got a reasonable pattern for each strip - I didn't want too many of the same pattern near each other, and I didn't want any big stripes appearing across the width of the quilt from having 2 or more strips of the same width and close to the same level.
I didn't *quite* manage that, as you can see over on the left-hand side here:
I think I must have gotten two long strips mixed up, or turned one 180° accidentally, as there's three very distinct stripes over there. :)
At any rate, if I did this again, I'd add another 6" strip of the black to each long strip, and a couple more color strips. I'd also skip the 1" strips as they were more trouble than theyw ere worth to sew together - I'd probably do 2", 3", 4" and maybe 5". Add a couple more of those to each long strip, and the quilt would be the proper length to cover a queen-size bed without a footboard.
As you can see in the pic above, we've got an IKEA Malm bed, and are using two mattresses on it (although you're only supposed to use one) because I bought the mattress and box springs new five years ago and am not about to give up the box springs no matter what IKEA says. The quilt width is PERFECT for this bed, as it touches the wood surround on either side as you see in the pic above. It doesn't touch the wood at the foot of the bed unless I move it down to where the pillows end, but as we've got a bench with cat beds sitting on it there, it doesn't matter. But as I said, a bed with a solid footboard, like my mom's sleigh bed, would work just fine.
When I was assembling the quilt sandwich - quilt top, batting, and sheet for the backing - I had a hard time getting the four edges cut straight (in part because my sewing of the strips wasn't straight!) until
myrialux had a brainstorm: laser level! I set it up at one corner, shining down the edge, and cut along the laser light. Worked perfectly! So the interior seams may not be straight, but the four edges are! Or at least were before my wonky sewing got to them!After sewing around the edges, I turned it right-side-out and topstitched along the full perimeter, as I liked the way it made it lie flatter. I then took a leaf from Vom Marlowe's book and didn't quilt *all* the strips. I started to do that, but was driven mad within twenty minutes, and after that just quilted every 10" or so, as the batting said that it wouldn't shift if quilted at that interval.
I did quilt in the ditch (for those of you not used to this - that means in the seams) between each of the long strips, just did it more sporadically for the short ones. And this was all machine quilting - I was NOT ABOUT to do it by hand. The walking foot that came with the machine is great for this because it advances the top fabric, also - normally the feed dogs underneath the fabric move it forward as you're sewing, but when you have heavy fabrics or several sandwiched together, it can often move the bottom layers independently of the top, which isn't NOT what you want. The walking foot moves the top layers at the same time as the feed dogs are moving the bottom layers.
I did the vast majority of the construction over New Year's weekend, but ended up not finishing the quilting until tonight. It's been sitting on our bed with gold-toned quilting safety pins holding it together. XD The amusing part - the gold tones looked REALLY GOOD with it. If there were a way to put gold buttons on it (or if we wanted stuff that would catch on sheets and clothes tossed on top of it), it would look quite natty.
The cats approve, and it's already got a fine haze of fur on top of it.
There are little strips of batting and fabric all over the floor of the house. Sora has found that the batting is his new favorite toy, and keeps dragging pieces of it around and playing with it. There's one on the quilt here, that little white thing.
So ... all-in-all, a useful project that turned out quite nicely, despite me screwing up the measurements in my calculations. And I'm going to enjoy sleeping under a COMPLETELY FINISHED quilt tonight. (
myrialux is going to enjoy a living room free from tables and sewing machines!)
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Very nice - quite handsome!
I ought to get my act together and do something like that with my ancient polyfill comforter - it's so thinned and flattened with use and time that it would be great innards for a quilt.
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I guess I wouldn't recommend tufting a quilt with floss ties considering you have cats, but that's my usual quick-and-dirty way of immobilizing the batting when I've finally got the top pieced and the whole thing sewn!
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