Pandemic Porch Quilt Show, Days 11- 12: A Batik Chandelier and a Millenium Quilt

Day #11: "Chandelier, Shaken"

This quilt is improv paper pieced, using batik fabrics.

Closer: 

Much closer:

A little to the left: 

Finally, from the back - I like the way the light creates a stained glass effect!

It was pure fun, with minimal measuring. The techniques I used (though not this actual pattern) are in my booklet, "Modern Paper Piece Log Cabin Triangles," in my etsy shop, CathyPstudio, here.

UPDATE: This quilt was just awarded Best Use of Color in the Innovative category, in Mancuso's Visuals #2 Pacific International Quilt Festival. All the winners are here.

Day #12: A Millenium Quilt

This large quilt (74" x 93", it almost hit the ceiling) is made of 2,000 squares, cut 2.5".

A little closer:

Center: 

Backstory: In the late 90s, a huge fad emerged among online quilters: Millenium quilts, to be made from 2000 different pieces of fabric. People set up swaps, and packs of squares were also sold online. 

When I first read about this fad, I thought, "What a terrible idea!" But after a couple of days, possessed by the audacity and community of it, I jumped in. 

I'd been quilting for almost a decade, so I had a significant fabric stash. I chopped 2.5" squares out of everything. Then I went to my upholstery sample books; old clothing; and basically, any fabric I could scrounge anywhere. 

Even then, I was still about 500 fabrics short. So I gave up on my dream of not repeating fabrics, and filled the corners in with squares cut from two different fabrics that were printed with millenium-related words in different languages. These are the mostly black fabric and the white-and-black fabric below. 

I was well into the project when I started reading that some quilters were using this project to affirm their Christian faith, which makes a great deal of sense. But since I'm not Christian, and I didn't want to leave my descendants wondering, I put the Hebrew calendar year - 5760 - along the bottom, and stitched into it an essay explaining the quilt and the millennium mishegoss that was taking place at that time! 

You can't lay out 2000 squares this size on any design wall smaller than the side of a barn. So I (and pretty much everyone who made one of these), constructed the quilt in blocks. Each of my blocks are 5 squares x 5 squares, totaling about 10 inches after stitching. Within each block, I placed the lightest square in one corner, moving to the darkest in the diagonally-opposite corner. To honor the traditional log cabin arrangement, I placed a red square in every center. I set the blocks in rows of 8 across, and columns 10 down -  that's 80 blocks, times 25 squares, gives you a 2000-square quilt that measured 72" x 93"!

The back features a whole lot of weird stuff, including this inexplicable M&M millenium fabric....

...which posed the profound question, "Is it Over Yet?" There are also a couple of delightful commemorative tea towels, from a trip we'd recently taken to London:

...and a tea towel from a sweet little amusement park we'd brought our little boy to in England, Paulton's Park. 

Plus this flea market find, curtains showing movie stars of the mid-20th century.

Until my pandemic porch quilt show, I had never photographed  this quilt flat before. The most I've ever seen of it at one time is on a full-size bed. Seeing the entire thing gave me a completely different sense of what it looks like! That's one more reason you should consider hosting your own porch quilt show! 

[The first installment of my porch quilt show, Days 1-5 is here. 

Days 6-10 are here.

The next installment is here. 

If you'd like to keep up with the show in real time, I'm posting it on Instagram, at https://www.instagram.com/cathy.perlmutter/] 

Pandemic Porch Quilt Show, Days 5-10

My quilt-a-day pandemic porch quilt show, in my little town of South Pasadena, CA, continues! (Quilts 1-5 are here). I love it when people come up the front walk for a closer look. My office faces out over the front yard, so I can keep an eye on things. I do have a sign requesting that request that visitors wear masks if they come close, and that they not touch the quilt. 

DAY 6: Invocation

This quilt, made in the mid-90s, is a Tree of Life, with the letters of the word "chai" spelled out in the branches 72 times. "Chai" means "life" in Hebrew, and it, along with number 72, is said to bring good luck. I intended it as a wedding canopy, but no one's gotten married under it yet. 

It's made entirely of batiks. 

DAY 7: Blue Cross, Blue Shield

This quilt emerged one day during my denim period, in 2016, after the phrase, "Blue Cross, Blue Shield" lodged in my head. The plus signs were fun to improv cut and piece from old jeans; but then I got stuck on how to make shields. I was about to peruse my 2-ton encyclopedia of quilt blocks, when it struck me that jeans pockets are shield-shaped! A blog post with more photos and details are here. 

Below, sans sunlight. It's heavily quilted.

Day 8: Cosmic Map

This is an English Paper Pieced quilt, and was selected to hang in Houston's IQA show in 2019. It's also a projects in my book, "Hexagon Star Quilts, 113 English Paper Pieced Star Patterns to Piece and Applique." (More about the book here.) While designing it, I thought about subway maps in cities I've been lucky enough to live in, including Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. So this map has a pink line, a red line, a lavender line, and more! 

It's heavily quilted, with more stars. Closer: 

Day 9: Fireflower 600

This is the first in my series of improvisational log cabin triangle quilts. It's made from 600 3 3/4" equilateral triangle blocks, improv pieced in different patterns, on top of scrap paper. My technique and a booklet that includes instructions for this quilt are in my Etsy shop, here. 

Detail: 

Day 10: "Eyeshadows" 

This quilt is one in a series made in 2017, by playing solitaire with stacks of solid or batik squares. Such fun! It was simpler than in the photo below, but it didn't impress anyone else as much as it impressed me. So, empowered by the last quilt show just before the pandemic, I fancied it up with floating stuffed circles and lots more quilting. The whole story is here. 

Days 11-15 are coming soon! You can also keep up with this show daily, at my Instagram feed, at https://www.instagram.com/cathy.perlmutter/. 

Pandemic Porch Quilt Show Launch!

This idea isn't original to me - hanging a different quilt outside every day to entertain pandemic walkers. A quilter friend in Louisiana did it first - I saw from her posts that she and her neighbors were enjoying it. Then I heard about members of a quilt guild in Northern California, who showed off their quilts at the same time, so folks could follow a map to visit them. 

Even then I might not have bothered, because hanging a quilt is a schlep! But then I needed to bring my hanging rack into our house's front room, for a Zoom presentation. The front room is right next to my front door, so my quilt show was launched! 

Here are the first five quilts I've featured. I'm mostly working backwards in time. 

Day 1: Luncheon Linens
This quilt is composed of vintage linens, with English Paper Pieced hexagon-shaped blocks overlaid on it. We are lucky enough to live in a beautiful old Craftsman house, so this sets the scene. My beautiful assistant, wearing his fanciest pandemic underwear, is on the right. 

A MUCH closer look: 

I think of this quilt as a lunch party. The old textiles represent the grandmas throwing the party. (The giant central square is a tablecloth). The new hexagon blocks are the young visitors, who travelled back in time from the next century. (Directions for making a quilt like this are in my book, "Hexagon Star Quilts, 113 English Paper Pieced Star Patterns to Piece and Applique," here. )

Day 2: Cherry Pie in the Sky with Diamonds 

I absolutely love red and white quilts - who doesn't? So when I was writing the book, I decided to English Paper Piece one. On my porch, I took this off-kilter photo. 

The book's photographer photographed it sideways, too.... 

The next photo was taken while I was constructing the quilt. I persuaded my daughter to hold up the central formation, first from the back. All the cardstock templates are still in position...

...And from the front. Much as I liked it as a freestanding piece...

...I ultimately did stitch it in place to a white backing. 

Closeups:  

Day 3: My Oldest UFO

You may have read about this quilt on my blog in August. It was created from an almost 30-year-old failed attempt at a Mariner's Compass quilt. 

Here's a better view, and you can read more about it in the blog post here. Most of the side blocks are curved English Paper Piecing, which is not always a good idea, as you can read in my blog post here.  

Day 4: Red and White Vintage Linens

This is a completely DIFFERENT red and white quilt from the one on Day 2. It's made of vintage linens, especially aprons,  and spectacularly kitschy embroideries, and a mystery textile on top. I blogged details of this quilt in July, here. 

Without the sunshine: 

Day 5: Hexagon Masquarade

This quilt was made from mask scraps. 

A better view: 

Blogged heavily, here.  

The next installment of my porch show, with days 6-10, is posted here. 

Turning Lines Into Circles for Curved English Paper Piecing

What do these English Paper Pieced blocks from my new book, "Hexagon Star Quilts," have in common? 

Answer: They're all straight lines. I've always been curve-averse, and although I've done plenty of English Paper Piecing in recent years, almost everything I've made with the technique has had straight lines only.

But quarantine is an opportunity to try new things (assuming you don't have an essential job, young children, and/or a sourdough fixation). So a couple of weeks ago, I plunged into curved EPP in a big way. It turned out to be mostly easier than I feared, but with a few trickier situations. 

In fact, I have a new name for curved EPP: Extreme Paper-Assisted Applique. Because using freezer paper and/or cardstock to create and applique curved shapes is almost the same as English Paper Piecing, except the latter is harder to do accurately.

If you're pressed for time, here's my conclusion about curved EPP: It's doable, but recommended only for blocks that have relatively few curves.  

Here's how I did the research that led to this conclusion. I didn't have any curved block patterns, so I picked star patterns from my book to translate into curves, starting with this block, Star #91.  

Here's my original piecing diagram:

I replaced the small central square with a large circle, and turned the outer hexagonal edge into a circle too. Result:

I grew it from 6 to 7", cut out all the pieces, basted fabric around them, and stitched them together. I used the flat-back stitch, which I found quite easy. 

And - ta daa - here's the front. (That wrinkle will go away, it's not an actual pleat.)

It's okay, but far from perfect - especially at the light star points, where dark blue pieces are supposed to meet. If I'd appliqued the green star and red bars on top of a blue circle, it would have been faster and more accurate, and there wouldn't be the tiny, thready gaps and unevenness at the edges.

Next, I printed my pattern for this block from my book, Star #98.

 

I simplified it, replaced the central hexagon with a circle, and also converted the outer edge to a circle I rounded off all the triangle tips. I sewed the basted pieces together by machine, from the top, with monofilament thread. Here's the back:

And the front. 

Could be much better. Once again, the narrow tips of the dark blue pieces - where they curve around the light lavender petals - was challenging, and I didn't entirely succeed. The underside of the blue fabric is showing at the edges. Again, simply using freezer paper or needle-turn applique and layering the pieces on top of a blue circle would have been faster and neater.

Finally, here's a block that started as a straight-line six-pointed star. I deliberately created gentle curves that I thought would be easy to piece. 

And once again, it's okay, but not okay enough. The gaps and bumps at the edges just couldn't be filled.

Summary of findings:

 1. The basting part of curved EPP is just about as easy as straight line basting. You can pretty quickly get the hang of distributing seam allowance pleats neatly around concave curves, and and clipping seam allowances to make smooth convex curves. 

2. Setting shapes around a central circle is much harder than surrounding a straight-edged shape (like a pentagon or hexagon.) Not because of the curve - it's because a circle doesn't show each piece's starting and stopping point. This creates a challenge in deciding what order to join pieces, placing them in exactly the right position, and distributing the fabric evenly with necessary precision. 

 3. The flat-back stitch is ideal for joining curved pieces. In fact, I can't even figure out how you could join curved edges with a traditional EPP right-sides-together whipstitch. Biggest flat-back drawback so far: I have to check the front frequently to make sure I don't accidentally stitch dog ears into the seams. (Which I did, Twice.)

3. A machine zigzag from the top works beautifully with curved piecing. 

What did I wind up doing with my imperfect curved EPP blocks? I combined them with actual appliqued blocks, and set them into the side borders of this "Frankenquilt" - my oldest UFO, finally finished.

Here are a couple of closeups. For more about this quilt, go to my last post, here.

If  you want to try flat-back stitching and curved paper piecing, Mr. Domestic has a nice tutorial on youtube here. 

If you're interested in my book with 113 English Paper Pieced stars - all straight lines - find more information on my blog here, or on Amazon, here.