and then...

...there were other things to talk about.  Elizabeth's bag for one.

 

and those chandeliers.  Having seen them from below, perhaps our opinions had changed?

with the temperature soaring, it was time for a spot of lunch.  We resisted the temptation to go and watch the soapbox derby going on in the next street (though I think one of us would have really enjoyed that - sorry Mark!) and went over to a restaurant in another iconic building instead, where the world was put to rights, our plans for the weekend discussed!  Surprisingly (or perhaps not) no-one is eager to join us for that...

Saturday morning

A great dinner at El Cholos last night  (mmmmm...green corn tamales....yum!) meant that we didn't wake with those awful feelings of early morning starvation, being some 8 hours behind UK time.  It was no problem being up and ready to roll bright and early though - we'd agreed to drive over to Mary's for 9am and since it can take us an hour or so, depending on the traffic, we started our day bright eyed and bushy tailed and left our hotel at 7.

We stopped for breakfast at Canters, an LA institution - in the company of several members of the LAPD who clearly enjoy the same kind of breakfast as Mark.  corned beef hash with eggs sunny side up.

Looking at their waistlines, it could be that they enjoy it rather more frequently than he does, however!

 A hearty breakfast was quite in order for Mark, who was going to enjoy a day in the company of women.  No ordinary women either, but four lively and ebullient friends all of whom work in community education.  Elizabeth  had offered to take us on a tour of the LA Public Library where she works as a volunteer docent and Diana (last seen at St Pancras Station, enjoying champagne and afternoon tea last Christmas) decided to join us.  Of course, Mark copes well in such great company and the five of us had a great time looking around this fantastic building.

There was plenty to see - both old

and new.

You don't imagine we were short on opinions about the art in the building do you?

But we were all in agreement about one less spectacular art installation.  When the card index was replaced with a digital database, there was the question of what to do with all those small index cards.

The answer was the line the lift - and the liftshaft - with them. 

 Not only that, but every card begins with "Complete" or "Comprehensive", summing up the library so elegantly.  Clever, eh?

After eleven hours of doing nothing

we are here

Santa Monica.

The sun is shining, the temperature's a comfortable 26C and we're feeling relaxed after a smooth flight.  Mary will be here in a min and we're off out to dinner.

Love it!

Binding

Having extolled the virtues of David Walker's method of binding the edges of my quilt and being the enabler that I am, I thought I'd post a more detailed explanation of how I did it.  I'm a far from expert quilter but find this method works for me.  Not only that, but it satisfies my need to see straight edges and crisp corners!

Goes without saying that a crisply cut corner and straight edges are the best starting point.  What did we do without rotary cutters?

Next step is to cut strips two and a half inches wide and sew them together into one long strip.  I like to include several of the prints from the quilt in the binding, especially if, as on this occasion, I had very little fabric left.

I press the strip in half along the entire length.

Using my trusty walking foot, I stitch the raw edge of double thickness fabric to the raw edge of the right side of the quilt.  I take a 3/8" seam because I find a quarter inch binding a little narrow for my liking.  I use a bit of the sewing machine foot to keep me on the straight and narrow.

At this point, I press the folded edge over the raw edge of the quilt.  If I've measured and sewn accurately, the folded binding goes over the edge and meets the stitched line on the back.

I usually handstitch the binding in place, finding such mindless sewing rather therapeutic, but it would be easy to machine stitch from the right side and in theory, stitching in the ditch of the binding seam should catch the edge of the binding underneath.  Maybe I'd start with three inch wide strips to be sure of that.

 The finished binding is neat and straight.  The double layer of fabric provides a bit more thickness and gives a bit more support to the edge.

But Helen asked how I do the corners.  Hmm.  I'd rather like to be able to do a mitred corner using this method but so far I've not managed to do one successfully.  No prize-winning quilts here, so I simply work as neat a finish as I can.

I fold the end of the strip inside as I get to the corner and trim off some of the excess fabric - there are at least ten layers here, not to mention the wadding!  I fold over the binding and stitch into place as neatly as I can.

It's not perfect, wouldn't be recommended if I could find a better way, but on the kind of quilts I make (definitely not of the heirloom variety) I'm reasonably happy with the result.  Added to which, on such narrow binding, it's not really an issue.

But if you devise a way of working a mitre, you will please share, won't you?  Thanks!

Quilt in a day

Good friends of ours were moving house on Friday and I'd had the idea to make them a quilt.  Nothing too traditional and certainly something easy.  I'd seen quite a few of the bright new Kaffe Fassett fabrics around and thought that they would fit the bill well.  I'll record the whole process here so that when I want to repeat the project, I know where to find the details. 

Whilst shopping in Bath on Wednesday, we chose six different fabrics in the same colour range, mostly Kaffe Fassett prints but at least one is a Philip Jacobs design.  I bought 40cm of each, plus an extra 2m of the "beads" fabric to use as backing.  1m 40 of Warm and Natural wadding, two reels of cotton thread and a reel of variegated quilting thread (should have bought two!)

I didn't really have a design but simply cut widths of the fabrics and stitched them together.  These glorious fabrics work so well in large pieces - by cutting them into small shapes to stitch together again I think they'd really lose the character which makes them sing.  I did have problems with the two geometric designs however - the beads and the barcode pattern were both printed askew and trying to manage those patterns whilst keeping everything square and straight wasn't easy.  In the end, I told myself that all wonkiness was due to the printing of the fabric and none of it was down to me!

I took all shortcuts available and used 505 spray rather than tacking the layers together but "does not clog up sewing needles" Hmmm...  I backed the quilt with the beads fabric - with hindsight a badly printed geometric print was not the best choice but  next time I'll know better.

Out came the trusty Bernina walking foot - the best invention since...well....quilts were made by hand! I stuck to a simple straight horizontal line quilting, following the seams and varying the widths of the quilted channels.  I began in the centre and worked out towards one end and having got there, immediately began to panic that I'd run out of quilting thread.  For some reason, although I'd bought two reels of sewing cotton, I failed to realise that it's the quilting that eats up thread and only bought one reel of the gorgeous variegated quilting thread.  Perhaps I'd been seduced by the larger bobbin without stopping to work out that the same yardage of thicker thread results in a bigger spool?  Who knows.  But it did get to the stage where I was sewing quicker to get there before the thread ran out!

Sadly, my photograph of the quilting stage is too blurry to use, but you'll just have to imagine my perfect stitching ;-)

I bound the edges of the quilt using a method taught to me by David Walker at a Rolduc workshop a few years ago.  Since then, I've never used any other method, so reliable is it.

I cut strips two and a half inches wide* from the leftover fabric.  As you can see, there wasn't much left!  I joined these strips together and pressed them in half.  I attached this double layer of fabric to the right side of all four sides of the quilt sandwich and pressed the seam open.  I then turned the folded edge over to the wrong side of the quilt and stitched it in place by hand, using a small invisible hemming stitch (this was the only hand stitching I did)

The finished quilt is here, hanging in the laundry having been washed and tumbled for a short time to fluff it up.  The wonky printing is clear to see, but then so are my neat square corners!  It measured about 120cm by 150cm when finished and felt beautifully soft - what the fabric lacked in precision printing, it made up for in texture.  Sadly, the glorious colour isn't shown to best effect in this light - a cellar room lit by an energy saving lightbulb, but other photographs give a more accurate impression.

24 hours after finishing, the quilt was packed up, tied with a ribbon and in its new home.  I was really quite sad to part with it and feel another similar one won't be long in the making.

*I am such a supporter of metric measures that I feel I should explain that my lapse into inches at this point is due to the American origina of my quilting ruler!