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Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com
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1:47
Quilted Octopus & Matching Blanket
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.comWhen Makeshift and I went to Alaska last month, we met an awesome octopus in Seward at the Alaska SeaLife Center, and we've been octopus-obsessed since. We'd been tentacle-crazy for years, but they were usually Cthulhu-related experiments, not necessarily octopus-centric. However, once we were home again, the infatuation didn't wear off, and one morning last week we got it in our heads to make a quilted octopus, and a bunch of hours later, Makeshift had one of his very own! Granted, it is a temporary ownership in that the octopus is actually a baby gift. But for the nonce—and until I managed to make the matching quilt—Makeshift had a new tentacly companion.
I'd never even considered the idea of how to make a quilted animal before, but it seemed reasonably straightforward. The biggest problem I had was that I only had a single fat quarter of the olive fabric (I later secured more of this fabric) which I wanted to use for the underside of the tentacles, and I had a very limited amount of the onion fabric (and that was the very end of it after I reserved the piece I needed for the matching baby quilt that I planned on making), so I needed to use every possible inch and not mess up. I was only going to get one shot at this.
I extended the fat quarter by a few inches on both ends of the olive fabric to match the size of the onion fabric I had, which was easy because I knew that the selvage would be hidden inside of the head. I sketched out a head shape and reproduced it on a piece of printer paper.
Then I copied the reverse of that onto the other end of the fat quarter and drew in four tentacles coming out of either head—they all twisted in and around one another to use up as much of the fabric as possible.
Then I made a sandwich of batting and the two fabrics (good sides facing).
And I cut them out.
I then took each half-topus and pinned it up so it wouldn't move around as I carefully sewed the three layers together.
And sewed them up. Here's what the other side looked like.
I had of course left an un-sewn opening so that I could reverse the half-topuses. And I worked on that for a long time ...
Once reversed it looked like this.
I sewed a stitch into all the edges to give the tentacles some additional strength and to flatten them out.
And then I quilted each of the two halves including the heads.
I laid the heads back-to-back and cut off the edges so that they were mirror images.
I had originally planned to use binding to connect the two head pieces which is why I did things the way I did, but in the end I ended up sewing the heads together from the inside, and then reversing them, which made for a much cleaner and easier-to-make product. I could have saved myself a ton of time by sewing the heads differently, and if I ever make another quiltopus, I will know how to save some time; basically though, leave the opening for reversing the tentacles at the top of the head, not within the tentacles, and then don't bother sewing the head up until you are doing it from the inside.
I used some clamp guys to mark where I wanted to stop, and sewed four lines of stitches into the head to make it wicked strong.
Then I reversed the head.
To finish him up, I decided to make a pillow to slide inside the head to give him some extra volume, and to make it removable so that the quiltopus could be easily washed/dried. I'm told that kids barf on stuff, so things should be washable, right?
So I grabbed another piece of the olive fabric—of which I had since secured another 3.5 yards during the week, and washed and dried—and traced out the head shape.
Sewed that up and left a slit for stuffing. In retrospect, I would have left the slit at the top so that the final seam wouldn't be visible when inspecting the underside of the octopus.
Hello extra pillow. Goodbye pillow. Hello awesome stuffing.
And voilà: Octopus brain!
Easy to slip in, and thus presumably easy to slip out for washing needs as well.
And here he is, sitting up, so you can really see how little fabric this project actually took (because the tentacles all sort of fit into one another when not hanging about).
So, I still had that one remaining piece of onion fabric, and now lots of olive fabric (I bought the last of what one local shop had, and found two more yards at another shop), so it was time to make the matching baby quilt.
I laid out my onions atop the olives and I had my front and back.
I'm still working on that enormous piece of batting that I bought a few months ago. A king-size, all-natural, no glues or resins monster that I picked up for a quarter of what it was worth (sale on top of sale and a coupon equals a happy mushroom!). So, here's the sandwich.
I sketched out some baby tentacles for the edges on the back-side of the onion fabric.
And then cut them out (that's three layers there: batting, olives, and onions).
I sewed all around the edges and left a few tentacles un-sewn so that I could reverse the whole thing. Which once again took forever.
But finally I had it fully reversed and all the tentacles sitting pretty.
Then, exhausted, I went to bed. The next pictures include natural light and coffee!
I sewed up the few tentacles that I had left open for the reversing process.
Then I put a stitch all around the edge to strengthen and flatten—so many twists and turns!
And then tens of thousands of stitches got placed as I quilted from the outside edge all the way to the inside.
And eventually, however many hundreds of turns later, it was done! Here's the oniony front side.
And here's the other—sucker/olive—side.
Here's Quiltopus atop his blanket, blending in just as octopuses are prone to do.
And again ...
May my new small friend enjoy these tentacly, octopus-inspired gifts as much as we enjoyed getting to know our Alaskan octopus buddy, the predominant influence behind them.
And here are three pictures of our enormous Alaskan friend and his super-cute little horns:
Thanks for the show, Thumb! You're awesome!
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5:18
Friday's Fantastic Fabric Fandango
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.comYou know how when someone you know says something like "Hey, you should check out my vintage fabric collection—I've got kind of a lot of it," you smile and think, Hey, yeah, that's cool, I have a few boxes too. But politely and excitedly say, "Yes, sure, I'd love to check it out. And yes, sure, we can barter the thing you want of mine for a few vintage scraps."
Well, Stacy weren't kidding. I was literally speechless when I walked into her vintage fabric room. Truly awesome!!!
The sheer volume of awesomeness was overwhelming at first, but then I enthusiastically dove in ... only to find that there was even more fabric than I first believed; layer upon layer of incredibleness. I had just been reading about inspiring workspaces in my new issue of Uppercase magazine, and wow, did this space inspire me! I wanted to go get my sewing machine, bookshelves, comfy chair, and quilting/crafting supplies, and move right into the middle of it all!
So, thank you Stacy for the incredible Friday afternoon adventure. And thank you for the inspiration and the awesome barter.
Here are the amazing fabrics that I got out of it:
And here's why I chose each of these delicious prints ...
1. Three vintage Alaska tablecloths. Each full of errors/typos, cultural insensitivities (by today's standards), and stereotypes, but each a representative example of its time. Given that my husband has been in Alaska since July (mostly floating around in the Arctic Ocean), and given that I recently took my first trip to Alaska, my infatuation with the state is deep. These three gems themselves were worth the price of admission—oh wait, that was free. I am a lucky girl! I have no idea what I might do with these, but I can't wait to find out ...
This one is 34 inches by 37 inches:
This one is 31 inches by 33 inches:
This big boy is 50 inches by 47 inches:
2. I love anything with a vegetable on it, and this is the oddest vegetable-related fabric I've ever seen (it's another tablecloth measuring 52 inches square). The Dutch (?) rabbit with the apron is downright sinister, and the truly bizarre collection of quotations is insane—a sampling:
"Cares melt when you kneel in the garden"
"Don't get carrot away"
"24 carrot gold"
"Do you carrot all?"
and, um:
"From caring comes courage —Lao Tzu"
Wait, what? Clearly this must become a quilt, but for whom?3. How could I pass up the kind-of-creepy fish?
4. I've been octopus-obsessed since my trip to Alaska (and my run-in with the awesome octopus in Seward), and I've been drawing out octopus-inspired quilting designs in my journals since my return. This fabric make me think of the suckers on an octopus' arms, and I already know just what I'm going to do with this black and white scrap of masterpiece!
5. Well, these are mushrooms. How could I pass up a mushroom fabric? Not possible.
6. Given that my husband is in the Coast Guard, and given that because of that we will probably always live very close to the water, we are surrounded by nautical hints at every turn. This fabric will make an excellent quilt or pillows or even curtains at some point ...
7. And this bizarre pattern and color combination will make an amazing accent to a more sedate quilt or scarf.
So, that's my haul ... I can't wait to do the laundry again and get all of this washed up and dried.
Thank you dear Stacy for the fantastic glimpse into your vintage fabric world—it left me inspired and excited to see what comes out of my sewing machine next ...
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0:59
Scale Model Airstream Quilt for Badger's Birthday
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.comSo, Badger's birthday came around last month while he was still off sailing the Arctic Ocean and stomping around on ice sheets to his heart's content as part of the crew of the US Coast Guard Cutter HEALY. I knew that I would be taking a trip to Alaska to join him for a week soon after his birthday, and I wanted to make him a special quilt. I'd started quilting in June, shortly before he left, and he's missed a few of them since he got underway, so this one had to be extra-special. It took me a few days to figure out what he most loves/misses about being out to sea, but it soon came to me: HE MISSES HIS AIRSTREAM! (Duh.) So I spend a number of weeks in September working on this two-sided, openable, scale model quilt of our Airstream. I gave it to him while we were together in Seward, Alaska a few weeks ago, and he and Makeshift felt right at home beneath it. It has since been installed on the ship where it is having the trip of a lifetime (or rather, the first of what will be many to come).
Here are a few more pictures of what the final reproduction looks like. Our Airstream is 25-feet long and this quilt reaches five feet from tip to tail—a one-fifth scale model. It has flair that is specific to port and starboard sides; logos, lights, awnings, windows, water, refrigeration, furnace, outside shower, electricity hook-ups, outdoor outlets, hot water heater, et cetera ... (even the blue pull-tabs for our gorgeous blue-striped awnings are there if you know where to look). I apologize for the somewhat rumpled look, when we took these pictures the quilt had been in a very tightly-packed travel bag for a number of days.
Badger's rack (bed) on the ship is essentially a twin-size bunk, so I wanted this quilt to be able to both lay there reasonably—decorating his living space—but also have him be able to use it as a blanket to curl up with. He tested out that idea with Makeshift and it seemed to work just fine (I don't think a man has ever been happier to have unfettered access to broadband Internet before; that's his freshly loaded-up iPad mini in the townhouse I rented for us during our week together in Seward).
So, it all began as many projects do with me: a journal entry (or ten) outlining the pros and cons, problems, concerns, issues, and any other sort of drivel that comes into my mind. Hey, it gets me where I need to be—we each have our own process. And I should mention, I actually completed this quilt long before I had even had the notion for the Cthulhu quilt that came after it, and for once I managed to keep a secret from my husband (something I am notoriously terrible at!) and didn't tell him about it. [It didn't hurt that we had very limited communication pathways during the weeks that I worked on it—I surely would have blown it otherwise.]
Choosing the fabrics was easy, the swirly silver waves on the simple gray cotton was the obvious starting point for the quilt, and many of the smaller bits I even had on hand from earlier quilting projects: the blue was from Mom's Scrabble quilt, the red was from Tania's elephant quilt, the black flower fabric was used in Kasia's pink-hair quilt, and the orange was purchased for my brother's quilt (which continues to languish at the moment, unstarted) but was also used to make the eyes on Dad's Cthulhu quilt. So really, of the six quilts I've now made, only the Ripley quilt isn't represented here in one way or another.
Then, I spent a few hours outside one evening with a ruler and tape measure, carefully collecting all the dimensions and doing calculations. Exhausting work for my brain, but I rewarded myself with a glass of wine, so all was well. And only one neighbor actually stopped square in their tracks and asked what the heck I was doing this time! LOL. I love that Martha! She's a crack-up.
I input the calculations into Adobe Illustrator (my map workhorse and very close companion of mine for more than a decade) and created all the attachable pieces. I cut them out one by one by one by one by one by one ... it went on forever! But in the end I had all the bits cut out, fused, re-cut, and bonded—and all onto the correct bits of ironed fabric.
Windows in the making for the curb side.
And all the darker gray bits for the curb side ... (see my note in the Intermission below and you'll understand why all these pieces are together: re-do!).
Lights! Orange lights in the making for the front of the Airstream! And then the red ones were created for the back. And then all over again for the other side.
Here are some of the bits for the street side of the quilt.
Here's one especially awesome thing about this quilt and our couch (gaucho): The quilt fit perfectly on the only surface (besides the floor I suppose) that would hold it. Here's what it looked like when I had all the pieces placed atop, before anything was actually sewn on.
I'm jumping ahead, but again, check out how once things were actually attached to the two sides, they fit perfectly—two-pieces-across—on the privacy curtain bar between the living space and the bedroom. This quilt was made to be made in this Airstream!
So, returning to our regularly scheduled program ...
Then I had to figure out how to best attach all those bits. I decided on an awesome stitch that looked like it would cover up the edges completely so they wouldn't fray in the wash, as well as hold strong for many years to come. And so began the sewing-on of bits ...
It took SO LONG to sew on all those windows using that thick, complicated stitch, but I love how they came out.
There was so much more measuring and math ...
I added a darker grey stripe along the bottom of the trailer just like it really has, and added the wheel wells, too.
And then the "chrome" strip that runs between the aluminum above and the grey below needed to be created and attached. I even sewed it to match the horizontal grooves in the real-world strip.
Then I decided to make the riveted door frame out of a piece of binding. I thought I could use what I call the Asterix stitch—cuz he put up with Obelix—to adorn it. Natch!
I needed a bit more bite so I added a long scrap of paper to the mix. All the better for the feed dogs to grab.
My theory worked and the paper tore away easily enough, leaving me with a long piece of "riveted" binding.
Getting the curve just right and sewing it on took a miracle, but it worked! Here's what came out of the experiment that night: Success!
I also used that same Asterix stitch to create the (curved) lines of rivets that run top-to-bottom and end-to-end along the Airstream.
Then, I took a break from the main parts of the quilt and figured out how to make the awnings! Always with using up every scrap! This batting remnant from the eggplant quilt got cut down to be used inside the awnings.
The smaller awning arms for the two sides (different lengths for each of course) were easy enough, but the awnings that run the whole span of the Airstream were almost five feet long on this quilt; that took some careful maneuvering.
But I got it. And look at the cunning little blue pull-tab. :)
So, much later (after the quilting was completed) I attached the awnings, but since I'm discussing them here, I'll add the relevant pictures to this section.
So, as an aside—or maybe by means of an Intermission if you are actually reading this—someone I know said that I should add more "screw-ups" to my quilting blog posts. Well, here's one: I thought I was going to be able to use the reverse side of the grey fabric (which was a nice solid grey, not some faded number), and had made all the original grey pieces in that fabric, but check out how it just disappeared into the sparkly fabric, not effectively showing off the particular component. I tore them out and went on the hunt for a darker grey. Believe it or not, grey is not a particularly popular color and it is actually incredibly difficult to match.
I worked and worked on the first side until all of the little bits were added and then I cut the shape out. Then, I had to start all over again with the other side (which is arranged in a completely different way, but thankfully, is lacking a [very difficult to sew] door).
After both sides were fully decorated with their accoutrements, I had to quilt them. Another set of almost-disasters occurred during this phase, but all the major ones were somehow averted.
The first sandwich began.
With something this big I knew I had to quilt top-to-bottom (a million times) and start from the middle. It was a major concern that the layers of the quilt sandwich didn't shift because I was working with less than a half-inch of wiggle room. Wiggle wiggle woo!
Even so, it barely fit rolled up in the crook of my machine. And I was very careful to quilt around every one of the elements, which meant I had to go back with different thread colors and quilt into those separately; all the black and dark grey bits got their own attention ... it felt downright Sisyphean.
I wanted to include all of the pieces that attach to the outside of the Airstream, so I had to create the logos. The tiny little logos. Crazy-town! Ours is an Ocean Breeze model, so it has an extra palm tree logo in blue and silver by the door (under the traditional International logo): Nailed it!
And the International logo sits by itself on the street side.
Two quick things I should mention that I realized about our aluminum home simply by making this quilt that I hadn't known before: (1) there's an International logo on the street side (cool), and (2) there's a grounded power outlet right next to my chair outside, where I have literally been sitting and said to myself (or maybe written in my journal), I wish there was an outlet out here! Well, there is! (Badger will have know this all along [duh!] and will laugh at me when he reads this clear lapse in aging brain power; he'll make an excuse for me though, and say that it must have looked like Cracker Barrel sign, lol.)
So, the binding. SO MUCH BINDING! I needed more than 30 feet of it! And in two colors: silvery-grey for the body and the darker grey for the base. I was so glad that I had invested in a new iron before taking on this quilt.
Ooops, not quite enough clips for the first side ... maybe I'll make another small investment in these useful grabby guys.
The "sunglasses" which wrap around the front of the Airstream were easy enough to add, but I had to put them on after the binding was secured so that they would show the illusion of "wrapping" around the silver shell, also, I gave them depth by adding some padding, just like they have in real life.
And then I had to devise a final solution: a fabric hinge to attach the two pieces of the quilt. I came very close to messing this up about a hundred times, and almost quilted the whole thing together in reverse—that's one of the main problems with too many exceptionally late nights in a row while on deadline: brain-rot.
But in the end, it all came out just fine. I decided not to attach the wheels as they seemed somehow dwarfed by the rest of the structure, even though I remeasured a number of times. I thought about making larger ones but they wouldn't sit right, so I just left them off—and now that just looks normal to me.
And so you have managed to make it to the end of this blog post (wow—thanks for reading/scrolling!). Here are two more views of the finished quilt: curb side and street side. These images may make the quilt look small, but really, for a badger, he has a significant wing-span.
Also, if you've seen the Cthulhu quilt post and the picture of my Dad peeking out from on top of it, this isn't a meme; Badger did the same peeking thing with this quilt before Dad even received Cthulhu (he was in the mail, winging it from Alaska to Maine at the time), and the two haven't seen one another's pictures (Dad will when this gets posted of course, and Badger will when he gets some good Internet again).
Happy Birthday my love ... I hope your makeshift Aluminum Loaf is keeping you comfy.
Can't wait to see you again.
Hugs, Mushroom -
7:10
Cthulhu Quilt [Hat/Helmet] for Dad's 70th Birthday
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.comMy Dad is a very difficult man to buy presents for. He'd say he isn't because he has an Amazon Wish List, but he's going to buy that stuff for himself in the end anyway (if he still wants it). I did very well last year with the Mystic Order of the Elder Gods fez; it's a thing of beauty and a tribute to American craftsmanship, and he wears it very well!
But this year is his 70th birthday ... so something significant needed to be designed/developed/created. My Dad isn't really a quilt person—it takes an act of magic to keep a darn napkin on the man's lap (if we do end up giving him one, he inevitably stands up and dumps it on the floor anyway, so we mostly don't bother unless fancy company is around who might notice that a setting is lacking a face wipe). But he does love to watch his obscure episodes and movies, and often I think he might want company or might possibly be chilly in the 50-degree room where his monitor is (we don't have a TV, we have a "monitor" that plays DVDs and streams video). So, for a month I was trying to imagine a quilt-like thing that I could make him; something fun and yet maybe useful.
Finally, on the first page of a new journal, on the day before his actual birthday, it came to me and I drew it out: a Cthulhu Quilt! A lap blanket (a cotton codpiece if you will) that might keep him warm (or at least the popcorn bowl better balanced), and provide a smattering of company.
Within the hour I had the fabric ironed and was cutting out tentacles! Luckily, I already had all the fabric I needed in my fabric box and it had previously been washed and dried. I had purchased all of the remaining three-plus yards of this incredible onion print fabric from a nice lady at a tiny quilt shop in Port Townsend, Washington a few months ago with a quilt for my brother's new baby in mind, but I hadn't gotten around to making it yet. And I had two types of orange fabric that were also originally destined for two other quilt ideas, but that also hadn't yet been used, and I even had the green and orange thread that I'd need, and the batting. This quilt was magical from the start!
This is only the sixth quilt I've ever made, and I've never done one that was more fabric-art than blanket-type-thing. So I was totally winging it.
I started out by making a sandwich of fabric and batting for the tentacles.
Then I cut out curvy strips that I imagined would make good tentacles.
One of the two green spools of thread I had on hand was from my first quilt—the RIPLEY quilt—which used a bizarre gradated green thread. I still had quite a lot left so I used it to sew the thousands of inside tentacle stitches.
To make the tentacles, I took the fabric that was on the bottom of the sandwich and put it on the top, front-to-front, with the batting beneath.
The I sewed the three layers together.
Reversing the tentacles was much more time-consuming than you ever might have imagined. If the tentacles were wide, it wasn't so bad, but if narrow, they took forever and a certain amount of swearing was expressed. (Makeshift, cover your ears!)
The two most useful tools I had during this phase were a bone burnisher and the pen for my drawing tablet. With the burnisher on the inside and the pen helping to guide the sleeve from the outside, I managed to get the tentacles reversed one after the other.
It did rather feel like I spent my entire afternoon skinning hagfish (aka slime eels), but it was worth it as the door to the Airstream became progressively covered in tentacles ...
Then I switched to a darker green thread and added a stitch all the along the outside of each of the tentacles, helping to give them some additional strength and uniformity as well as a bit less floppiness.
And then, by the end of a the first very long day, I had completed the tentacles. They took at least twice as long as I ever might have imagined, but they looked awesome!
Oh wait, then I couldn't sleep, so I started playing with ideas for the eyes. A while later I had constructed these lovelies. Completely winging it once again ...
Makeshift was especially pleased.
I should also mention that I broke my first needle! Crunch and Snap! Quite the surprise when it happened. And a rite of passage I suppose. Lesson learned: No matter how awesome those metal clips are, you must remember that one end is longer than the other, and the longer end should be on the TOP of whatever you are sewing. Otherwise, your sewing machine needle will hit one and snap apart in a blaze of terrifying glory. Thankfully, I had 100 spare needles waiting. Turns out, sewing machine needles are incredibly cheap when purchased in bulk (I paid $16 for 100 on Amazon—those are cunning little pouches of 10 each).
The next day I started working on the two sides of the head. Somehow, overnight, I had gotten in my head that this quilt should be able to be worn as a HAT. Don't ask my why, it was just very clear to me that this needed to happen ... (Bad Makeshift!!!)
A sandwich of fabrics and batting began the back side. I chose an orange fabric to line the inside of the head.
Smaller tentacles were cut out of the sandwich.
The fabrics were re-sandwiched and prepared for sewing.
Note how all of the clasping-pins are long side ON TOP this time.
Tentacles sewed.
Ends snipped away and edges also cut down a bit to make for easier reversing.
And then, much later, the tentacles had been reversed. Note to self: Long thin tentacles are almost impossible to reverse successfully. And one of them got completely buggered up. But in fact, the anemic little deformed tentacle might even be my favorite. So Cthulhu!
I was much smarter about the front of the head—the tentacles are much wider.
So I sewed the head tentacles, reversed them, added a stitch all around the outside and then started attaching the long tentacles. Again, long sides UP with the metal monsters.
Also, I attached on the eyes ...
More tentacles added ... seventeen in all ...
Makeshift was totally enthralled with Cthulhu ... it was a bit of a love affair for a few days.
The back and front of the head were quilted ...
Then, Makeshift demanded that Cthulhu have wings. So I made some ...
Makeshift spent quite a lot of time that day trying to fly ...
Wings were attached.
The two sides of Cthulhu's head were shaped and cut, and then sewn together with some binding.
Makeshift pleaded to keep Cthulhu ... but alas, their friendship will have to exist via the Interwebs.
At that point, I was rushing to get out the door to start my trip to Alaska—planning to meet up with our large-sized Badger in Seward when his ship pulled into port—so Makeshift and I ended up in a hotel room in Seattle for the night. The room had two large beds, so they took over one of them while I attended to some well-deserved beers at the bar.
And then we were in Alaska with our beloved Badger!
We made him wear Cthulhu as a hat in a sweet church-cum-cafe in Seward that we frequented quite a lot during our week together. As usual, he was a very good sport about it.
And we made him model it, too (I laughed for WAY too long):
Then Cthulhu got mailed from Seward, Alaska to rural Midcoast Maine. I knew he'd probably fuck up the works, but I had no idea he'd shut down the government nor that he would take two extra days to arrive (the Express Mail money-back guarantee meant I collected my refund with no trouble, so although the government is still askew, I have my $40 back in my pocket = essentially free shipping and money for another QUILT!).
But then he did finally arrive in Maine!!!
(The following pictures—as well as the two at the very top of this post—were taken by my mom of my dad with Cthulhu; delayed but unharmed.)
Happy Birthday Dad! May Cthulhu keep you warm and amused for decades to come.
Love,
Kate