These techniques save a lot of time and simplify what used to be the tedious part of creating a quilt. Instead of cutting out hundreds of triangles we can create 2,4, 8 or more half square triangles (HSTs) with only a few seams, a rotary cutter and ruler. (See how here) One of my favourite quilt patterns is the Double Irish Chain. This pattern, like many others, was developed around tools like the 2 ½ inch wide ruler and rotary cutter we use for strip cutting/sewing. Other tools like the 6 ½ inch ruler and specialized triangle rulers are key to some of the new, quicker assembly methods in the patterns that we follow. Chances are that there are not many new quilt patterns that are yet undiscovered. Every quilt block we make today may have been developed decades or even centuries ago. The new patterns that are available now use those patterns and employ new techniques to make piecing easier - but often with one drawback. Waste. I can’t tell you how it pains me to buy the fabric the pattern requires and to follow the directions only to learn that as much as half a square is cut off after sewing - and discarded. (sew and flip method). I was so disappointed finding many of the new patterns di this that I decided to stop buying patterns and develop my own. One such pattern I drew up, I did to highlight some beautiful fabric. It would be simple - a play on the rail fence quilt square - with a wider center strip. I used my 2 ½ ruler and my 4 ½ ruler and strip cut and sewed a 2 ½ inch + 4 ½ inch + 2 ½ inch strip set the WOF. (width of fabric). This created a strip set 8 ½ inches wide. To make a square I would cut this strip set into 8 ½ inch lengths making 8 ½ inch squares to put together to create a quick and easy quilt. So I did. And I was disappointed that I did not think ahead. After cutting the strip sets into squares I realized I could get 4 squares at 8 ½ inches with a leftover strip of 7 ¾ inches. Wow. What a waste. Yes I could put that into a scrap pile to be used some other day - NOT - (or donated). But I began to think how I could rewrite that pattern idea into something that would make better use of the fabric. I did a little ciphering, and realized if I changed the center strip to be 4 ¼ inches instead of 4 ½ , I could get a full 5 squares of 8 ¼ squares out of my strip set. AND NO WASTE! (See the new patttern here - My First Waltz) Over time I realized that one small change to technique or measurements on a pattern can often save as much as 25% of the fabric required for a quilt. All that can add up to $20 and sometimes $30 a quilt. I began thinking about all the patterns that are out there that could benefit from such a small adjustment so as to save fabric. And I found a second pattern that I adjusted. And that is how I began to rewrite history. I am on the quest to tweak and re-write traditional patterns and blocks to use fabric more economically while still using newer techniques that save time. (You can see a few here. ) AND - with the cost of fabric today it means instead of scaling back on what I love to do - I can continue to create quilts with abandon and within budget! It means using less fabric and having less waste. We live in a very affluent society but life for many who are retiring and living on a fixed income or those raising a young family are having to pinch pennies just to get by. Sometimes all we need to do is make a few adjustments here and there and we can still do many of the things we love. Rewriting patterns to reduce waste keeps me doing what I love! I think my Grandmother - who lived through the depression - and made dozens of quilts during that time - would be proud.
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Many years ago I took coaching training from Jack Canfield. (Remember Chicken Soup for the Soul?) I learned a great success principle - a life concept called, "Clean up your messes". The premise was that starting a project and not finishing it causes us undue stress. We carry the "failure to complete" around with us in our subconscious and it makes us feel unsuccessful. I know, I know, the project was not going well - so we stash it in a cupboard. Push it back to the very back, behind the hidden M&Ms, Fracktals or chip bag we have hidden away for those OTHER stressful moments. Maybe if we leave it there long enough we can forget how much we spent on it and how many hours we worked on it - only to have it look like..... well - let's just say it's not how we wanted it to look. Wonky corners. Wobbly borders. Colours that SUCK when put together. Stuff it, stuff it, back under the mending that has been there for years, back, back, back to the very back corner. Scrunch it up as small as you can! GO AWAY you terrible project! If we are lucky maybe we can find it several years from now and "DARN the mice got into it!" All kidding aside - every one of us has those UFO's. Unfinished Objects. Projects that we started and for some reason or another we abandoned. It really is OK. But all those projects weigh on us mentally whether we know it or not. SEW much STRESS. So, there is a solution. Clean up your messes. Recently I had a quilt order come in for a specialty quilt. A dragon. In a garden. Specific colours and quilting patterns. I spent waaayyy too much time on it and when the top was almost completed - I realized it was far too big. I had followed the pattern - but never really considered that it was going to be too big for a baby quilt. This one I could not stash away. And it could not remain unfinished. I had a deadline. Oh, what to do - what to do? Then I heard that inner voice say: "STEP AWAY FROM THE SEWING MACHINE. Yes. Step away. Take a break." Take a walk. Go outside. Call a friend. Listen to your favourite song. When all else fails - think about cleaning your house. That should fix things! We all run into issues once in a while when working on a project. But stashing it away only causes us more stress. In the back of our mind we know it is unfinished. A mess. Instead of stashing, take a break. Talk to a friend or someone who may have an idea or different perspective. Maybe even take it to a fellow quilter's home or studio and work on the issue together. Clean up the mess - finish the project. I cannot tell you how much better you will feel. Success IS IN YOU. Me? I took two days to do other projects and then BAM - it hit me. (In the middle of the night - of course.) The solution on how to get the quilt to look as I expected came to me when I was no where near the sewing machine. So, out came the "jack the ripper" and I started in on the alterations I needed to make to complete the project as I envisioned. Success. I dug down deep and found it. Yes - it is in me. (It's in you too!) Wait! Isn't that backwards? Don't we make lemonade out of lemons? I remember a new quilter telling me that her husband could not understand why she bought perfectly good fabric, cut it up into little pieces and then spent hours putting it back together again. "Why not just do a puzzle?" he asked. When you think about it logically he may have had a point. But a craft like quilting defies logic - and under the maker's hands, becomes a work of art. Lemons, as we all know, have many health benefits. One lemon contains over 50% of the vitamin C we need for one day. Lemons are also known to reduce high blood pressure, aid in digestion and have numerous other health benefits. Unfortunately lemons can be a little bitter all by themselves. So once cut up and mixed with a sweetener and water, we really have no desire to put them back together again. A quilt however, contains little bits of fabric - that may in the beginning, look a little like the pieces of a cut up lemon - a little sour. Not surprisingly many of the fabrics we put together may not appeal to us at all in the whole. And in fact in the beginning quilts were often made of old clothes, old curtains and bedding. A quilter would put them together with other fabrics and piece by piece - create a large piece of fabric (the quilt top) that is sweeter than how it began. The health benefits of quilting and finishing a quilt are both physical and mental. A finished quilt contains enough "vitamin - see" to pull just about any quilter out of the winter blues and warm toes at the same time. But the act of pulling little bits of fabric and sewing them together to make different shapes and even scenery can have even more health benefits than we know. Health professionals worldwide have studied the art of quilting and conclude that it can improve cognitive function, memory, and overall mental health. Quilting also provides a sense of accomplishment and pride, which can boost self-esteem and confidence. It also decreases stress levels and causes the feeling of a sense of accomplishment as it increases the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin - the reward chemicals in our brains. As a result, it also lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke. An entry in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows evidence that quilt making decreases the blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate. Over the last several years quilting has also been recognized as a powerful tool for healing trauma. It can provide a creative outlet for people to express their emotions and find peace. A simple google search will reveal scores of vets returning from front line combat who have healed PTSD through quilting. And that in my mind - is making a beautiful healthy lemon out of lemonade.
Most of us who use computers have experienced the "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD). According to Wikipedia "The Blue Screen of Death indicates a system crash, in which the operating system has reached a critical condition where it can no longer operate safely." I call it a forced shut down. And that is exactly what happened to me yesterday. Sometimes we get moving too fast - trying to do too many things at one time. In my house when all the windows are open - there is a beautiful breeze, but when I have too many windows open in my life (too much going on), I know that at some point there will be an inevitable 'forced shut down'. For some of us it may mean a headache or health issue that stops us in our tracks. For others it may be a family member needs us to drop everything and help them out. Hopefully it is not tragedy that forces us to stop our over-doing and running hither, thither and nigh. For me the call to slow down usually happens with technology fail with an item that I use to do my work. AND - it most often happens when there is a holiday that I have planned to work through to get caught up. (as if that in itself isn't the first clue!) One year it was a power cord failure for my computer on Christmas Eve - right in the middle of a web site build. Not surprisingly the exact thing happened one year later on you guessed it - Christmas Eve in the middle of a web site build. I mean how many times does one have to learn the same lesson over and over? One year it was a delivery I was making on Easter week-end. My car decided it was time to stop running the roads and the delivery had to wait. Last May it was a quilt I worked hard to finish for a friend to give to her mother in law for Mother's Day. I finished it early - and mailed it in plenty of time (a week early) to get to Saskatchewan. The Time Gods laughed at both of us and re-routed the packaged quilt to Rouyn-Noranda Quebec before sending it to its intended destination, a week after Mother’s Day. Finally, yesterday, it was a "mother board" failure. (Not my mother, that happened a week ago). A friend asked me to assist her in a HUGE job that required a computerized program to create upholstery fabric for a BIG company with a SHORT deadline. Most of you know I learned to custom quilt before I added the computer feature to my long arm. The computer is a great feature for repetitive patterns and perfect for this job. I was happy to help and had planned to work through Thanksgiving to get it done. "Not happening", whispered the Time Gods once again. Forced shutdown. For no apparent reason the motherboard on a key component on the computer part of my longarm self-destructed. The repair tech told me that it sometimes happens and there is no explanation as to why. I sighed and almost started explaining to him WHY it happened to me on the eve of a long holiday week-end. Forced shut down. Then I thought - well I can always send out a message to my Newsletter list - and get some feedback. So I sat down and created a survey and sent it out to my list. The link did not work. Sent it out again. Failure. Sigh. Lesson learned once again. Yes, it is time to slow down and take a breath. As many of you know, this year has meant a lot of changes for me. A long distance move that we did ourselves. My longarm was only out of commission for one week - so essentially I just worked through the move. I launched several new parts to my business - which took a bit of work. And now I am working hard to expand in a new area. At the same time we have been trying to settle into a 33 acre bush property and get going on all the outdoor work that comes with it. And I LOVE it all! But I realize some days I just need to rest. Sometimes the world can move too fast and many of us easily get caught up in the frenzy that really does not need to exist. I mean what if a marketing company began planning ahead for display items for Christmas in April, and realized that they needed 100 meters of upholstery fabric in June and ordered it in July for a late October delivery. No rush. No anxiety. No forced shut down for those who try to get it all done at one time. AND when you think of it realistically - all in the name of selling more product to a consumer hungry population. I sometimes wonder at the wisdom (or lack thereof) of it all. And this is why I love quilting. No rushing. It's an art that takes whatever time it takes. And so my forced shut down means taking time to leisurely brine and cook a turkey, make pies and concoct a new recipe for my cranberry sauce. In between creating in the kitchen I'll slip down to my work room and take my time, custom quilting a wedding quilt someone sent to have long-armed. And instead of a stock pattern, this customer will get a custom work of art that she will be delighted to give as a gift. Her lovely pattern and assembly + my custom longarming = wedding quilt masterpiece. That is really what life is about. Taking the time to create a life of masterpieces. Thoughtfully. Taking one day at a time. Seeing the beauty in our lives. Finding reasons to be grateful. Me - I am thankful for the motherboard failure and the 'forced shut down'. AND thankful for you - my reader, my customers and my friends. Happy Thanksgiving to all. |