piecedgoods

Kaleido Crazy

Posted on February 28, 2011 by piecedgoods

There are lots of scraps generated by the Kaleidoscope quilt.

Despite cutting most of another Kaleidoscope out of some of the scrap pieces (though I’m not sure how much I like this second one yet ), I still found myself with a pile I wasn’t ready to relegate to the garbage pile.

Normally, I keep scraps that are strips, test blocks, and end pieces in a big heap. But I felt like I needed to either do something with these soon or they’d be junk. The scraps from cutting out Kaleidoscope pieces are odd triangles and trapezoids. Not a pile of scraps I could imagine myself fishing things out of in the future.

So, I dived (dove?) in and made, well, bigger scraps. There are quilts shown in the book that have scraps used as border – I might do that with these. But I also like the idea of making something out of them floating on a solid white or black background. I have used scrap pieced things, extra blocks and things like this for the quilt backing , but what with the thick seams in the middle of the kaleidoscope, and some thick-ish seams as a result of the crazy scrap piecing I don’t want to risk having two thick seams back to back.

These are just some of the crazy pieced bits. There are more to come

Posted in Quilts, Sewing, Uncategorized | Tagged kaleidoscope, Quilting, Ricky Tims, scraps | 5 Comments

Kaleido Scoping

Posted on February 27, 2011 by piecedgoods

The Co-Quilter (otherwise known as Schnap, but now referred to in this posting as Co-Q, not to be confused with Co-Q10 which is something else entirely but apparently recommended by Dr. Andrew Weil) is requesting that the quilt pieces be moved lower. The Kaleidoscope quilt pieces are currently about 3 feet higher than Co-Q would like.

Because the pieces cut for this quilt are largely on the bias, and highly persnickety about how they fit together, I believe that Co-Q should just be pointing and making recommendations rather than moving things around. Co-Q did not agree and expressed her annoyance with barking, growling, shin nudges, and a hairy eyeball.

Despite all this, kaleidoscope #1 was sewn together with only one seam needing to be ripped out. Not bad considering.

Lessons learned:

Here are things I learned sewing kaleidoscope #1 together and cutting kaleidoscope #2 that I’m not sure is in the book (which I think does a very nice job with instructions)

Sew the strata with a close stitch – I used the 2.2 setting on my machine (whatever that means) You will be cutting the strips apart into funky shapes and you don’t want the seams to open up on the sides before you anchor them with the subsequent seams.
Pressing is super important. Press in the directions Mr. Tims says in the books. Press open seams when he says as well even though that’s a pain.
Do not go crazy pressing with steam and stretch seams.
There is a big fat lump in the middle of the kaleidoscope (Mr. Tims calls it ‘the nose’ where 12 joins meet. If you press carefully, it’s not as crazy as you might think. But it’s still thick, there’s no avoiding that.
See the little pointy bits in the middle below in kaleidoscope #2? I think they’re going to be problematic. When you cut ‘the noses’ of the kaleidoscope, it would be best to avoid having a seam closer than about 2″ from the point of the nose because of the bulky build up in that area. I fear that I may have a problem with kaleidoscope #2 that I cut from leftovers of kaleidoscope #1 what with the seam about 1/2″ away from nose, and I am considering recutting that pattern piece with some new strata pieces with more of a margin.

Posted in Quilts, Schnap, Sewing, Uncategorized | Tagged Co-Quilter, Dog, kaleidoscope, Quilting, Ricky Tims, Schnap | 11 Comments

Kaleido Planning

Posted on February 26, 2011 by piecedgoods

The kaleidoscope bits are cut and starting to come together on the design wall. I noticed laying out the bits and pieces, there is a lot of wastage in the strata layers of fabric. Being the sort that tries to use every scrap (That’s the point of quilting, right?), I can’t throw out all the funny shaped pieces remaining after cutting the pieces out. So…. I’m laying out a second smaller star/kaleidoscope with some the fabric strata leftovers. I’ll lay that out later.