TINS and SINS and Value

TINS = Triangle in a Square

SINS = Square in a Square

Okay, I made those up. But made ya look, huh?

These will soon be the final pieced border for my Stained Glass Too. (The last border will be a narrow unpieced border to punctuate the quilt.) It will finish at 66″ x 70″.

This quilt began with leftover hourglass blocks, which were too pretty to set aside. I’m in the midst of building that border of TINS and SINS. This is the quilt so far:

ugh, shadows…

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Since I shared some thoughts with you on the value of a quilt, I’ve tried to be more aware of how much time goes into what I make. While I’ll probably never track time carefully, I estimate this last pieced border will take about 15-20 hours in total. That is fabric choice, prep, cutting, stitching, pressing, assembly, and attaching. This doesn’t include design time or quilting and binding. Now figure a reasonable wage for a skilled artisan, and you can see ONE border adds up to a pile of money.

If I assume that unpieced borders take 1-2 hours and pieced borders take 10-20 hours, a quilt with several borders (and a center) might take 80 hours or more. This quilt has 9 borders, including the turquoise strip border for the final edge. Again, consider the value of my time, and tell me if you would pay me that much for my quilt.

Playing With Color

Remember how my word of the year is “Experiment”? Well, I have been experimenting in a lot of different ways, some in quilting and others in other parts of my life.

My main quilting experiments have been in teaching. In April I taught one class session on the Underground Railroad Quilt Code. And in April and May I taught Medallion Improv! I’ve taught before, but the subjects were in Finance, not quilting!

But I’ve also pushed my edges a little in my creative work, as well. My Harlequin Medallion led me through quilting with rulers and a ruler base, with a style of design different for me. Genes and A Cute Top (and its back) were a foray into modern quilting, with the plus design so popular these days.

And now that I’ve finished a few other projects, I’m ready to play. For a while I’ve wanted to play more with color and with shape. Triangles are the perfect medium.

This is just a start. I have reds and blues to cut and try in the mix, too. If I sewed this just as shown, I’d have a piece that is about 21″ square.

Imagine the things I could do with that. Perhaps it would serve as the center of a medallion. Maybe it would become a table mat or wall-hanging by itself. Maybe I’ll make a bunch of “blocks” the same size and make a bed quilt. All kinds of possibilities…

What are you playing with these days?

You can find Catbird Quilt Studio at Facebook, too.

Triangles

Yesterday I appliquéd triangles on my small group round robin project.

In the photo above you can see triangles on the dark turquoise border, in the lower right corner. My friend, neighbor, and round robin partner Nancy put those on, and I like them so much I wanted more. So yesterday I put four more in the opposite corner.

To me it finishes the top.

Now that it’s done, I’ve started prepping for quilting. This morning I loaded the backing fabric on the frame. Next I’ll cut batting. (Actually, I may piece remnants of batting since it isn’t a big project.)

Once the whole thing is loaded on, I’ll machine-quilt parts and baste other parts for hand-quilting. I haven’t done a lot of hand-quilting, but for this I think it won’t matter. My plan is to use bright embroidery threads with primitive stitching.

Besides this project, I still have to stitch the binding on my big medallion quilt. It’s been put off more, partly because of pain in my shoulder and neck. But maybe I can get that far today.

What are you working on today?