Quilts by Julie Ramsey
geek
Two new geek ideas
Mar 15th
Idea: quilts inspired by engineering!
Engineers use diagrams like these to design circuits, and I think they’d translate fairly well into a quilt. There wouldn’t be a lot of color involved, nor a lot of actual piece-work, but I think a satin stitch to do the lines, and my embroidery machine to do letters and numbers, would make for something very cool.
My dad and my little brother are both engineers, so I may need to recruit them to do up a simple circuit design for me to play with.
Another fun project, once I get the hang of appliqué, would be a circuit board quilt– though hopefully a board a little less complicated than this one. The background would be pieced in the light and dark green to represent the paint on the board, and then I could appliqué on the chips, resistors, and whatnot. It would look especially snazzy if I used silver metallic thread to embroider on the letters and other small details!
Progress
Feb 20th
Finally got all of the blocks completed! Nothing like seeing something close to a finished result to make pushing through the repetitive tedium of piecing worth it, huh?
I was unsure about some of the extreme color contrasts for a few of the colors, but seeing the whole thing laid out makes me feel much better about how the whole thing looks. Now I’m very excited to get the blocks put together and start getting borders on it!
Tetris progress
Feb 20th
More Tetris blocks done! Two more colors to go, and then I’ll be ready to start assembling the top. Off to the fabric store today to buy materials for the borders 
Quiltris 2.0: first set of blocks finished
Feb 18th
Finished the first set of colored blocks last night, and I’m definitely pleased with the overall effect. (Not sure what I think about the colors here, the bottom is probably too dark, but I think I’ll just roll with it.) I’d say it’s not quite as impressive as the original beveled-square design, but it worked up a heckuva lot faster!
I’ve already started in on writing up instructions, and thanks to the lovely folks at the LJ quilting community, I’ve gotten some great feedback on the pattern so far. I have instructions for fabric shopping, cutting, and block construction completed, so I’ll have to wait until I’m ready to assemble the top in order to finish the rest.
Shopping victory
Feb 16th
While running some other errands today, I decided to stop by Jo-Ann to check out their selection of fat quarters for the Tetris quilt. I really lucked out: I was able to find fabric in three shades for each of the colors I needed!
I also did a test-run with the new block-construction method this afternoon, using some scrap fabric I had sitting around. (I think black, grey, and white will be a good method to show the different contrasting fabric pieces when I take the “final” pictures for the printed pattern.) Unfortunately, I messed up the math; I can never get the calculations for half-square triangles right! In this case, I think that to have 4.5″ finished blocks, I’ll need to cut the initial squares at 6 1/4″ in order to cut down the squares twice.
This leads to another bit of math– and to think I hated math in school– as I figure out how many pieces I can get out of each fat quarter, and whether or not I’ll have enough fabric to construct all the blocks. If my triangle calculations are correct, I may be short on the “medium” fabric for several colors. I’m reasonably sure I can finish the necessary pieces out of my stash, but I’ll need to account for that when I write up the pattern.
In all, I’m very excited that the fabric shopping went so well, and I’m looking forward to creating another geeky video-game quilt!
Tetris Quilt 2
Feb 16th
I’m currently working on a nicely-formatted written version of my Tetris quilt pattern, hopefully to sell as a PDF on Etsy or somesuch. The more I work on the pattern, I realize that my initial design was awfully complicated, using 1″ half-square triangles in each of the block corners, which made for an overwhelming amount of work overall.
So instead of using the complicated version with lots of itty-bitty pieces, I’ve decided to simplify the design a bit. This new version still gives the blocks a 3-d appearance, but will ultimately be a lot less work: 5″ squares sewn into triangles, cut in half, and then resewn to create the four-piece blocks shown here. The result is just as impressive, I think, and will require both less effort and less fabric shopping– only three shades of fabric per color instead of the original five.
The additional benefit of making the pattern easier to create is that it makes me a lot more motivated to craft a second one. My first quilt wasn’t the greatest, craftsmanship-wise, as I hadn’t been quilting for very long when I started the project. Now that I have several years’ experience under my belt, I’m sure this one would turn out a lot better.
Who knows, given the popularity of the first one, I could see about making several of these to sell and probably make a good profit on them. Maybe if I’m lucky, I could even see about getting one accepted into a Child’s Play benefit auction or something like that.
At bare minimum, I’ll need to create a single set of colored blocks using the new pattern, since I’d like to take pictures to include in the written instructions. If it turns into a full quilt, then that’d be an added bonus!
One down, what next?
Aug 16th
The Morse code quilt is officially bound off and finished! I’ll be mailing it off for photography ASAP, and with any luck it’ll photograph better with a pro doing it as opposed to my quick shot on the living-room floor.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. I do wish the borders were a little bit wider, and the corners aren’t terribly straight, plus there’s a pucker or two in the backing fabric… but overall, I’m pretty happy with it. Besides, it certainly turned out a lot better than the last secret-message quilt I made, craftsmanship-wise!
I’m not sure what to do for my next project. I’m just not “feeling it” with the basket of FQs I bought lately, but I don’t have any inspiration for a new project. None of my quilt books have projects I’d like to do right now, and I don’t have the energy to try the paper-pieced Escher quilt I’ve been thinking about (re-) doing for quite some time now. I spent several hours wandering around the fabric store, and still don’t have any grand ideas.
I did fall in love with this kitty-print fabric, though, and I’m sure I’ll come up with something out of it. (The striped fabric says “Goldfish <3 tunafish <3 any fish <3″ and is absolutely adorable!) Time to go poke around Quilter’s Cache and see what I can find!
Morse code 2: finished top
Jul 14th
The top is finally pieced, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed with how it turned out. It ended up a lot bigger than I’d planned, since I made the decision to space out the horizontal rows, but at least it’s very nearly twin-sized now. Unlike my first quilt in this style, it actually lays flat with no puckers, wrinkles, or wonkyness, probably because I used much bigger pieces. Overall, I’m really happy with the way it’s turning out.
Starting over
Jul 12th
Well, my second attempt at the morse code quilt ended up failing.
First try, the squares kept falling off the fusible web, which was a bit of a disaster.
Second try, I salvaged the fabric and tried to sew squares together one-by-one; sadly, I neither have the time nor the patience to tackle things that way.
So instead, it’s back to strip piecing (a la the first time I made this kind of quilt), and with a new color scheme. Isn’t it fun to start things over?
Morse code 2: problems in progress
Jul 3rd
I’m quickly becoming very grateful for gridded fusible web; I was able to lay out all of the seemingly-random squares before sewing, making sure that they’d all end up aligned correctly. Unfortunately, I learned the importance of making sure EVERY SINGLE PIECE is solidly fused to the web. Three rows in (out of thirteen), I’ve got pieces falling off and coming loose!
Luckily, I wrote which color goes on which bit of grid using magic marker, so it’s not too difficult to make sure the right bit of fabric ends up back in the correct spot. However, it’s quickly becoming tedious to double-check that all of the pieces are in each row before I begin sewing!
