Tumbler Finished

The tumbler quilt is finally done! I've been working on this since January of 2005. I was wondering how long it would take me to sew on the binding, but this thing was taking up so much room in my sewing room that I had to get it done to move it out!

Thanks to friend Jaye for cutting so many great fabrics for me, I couldn't have made this without you!Clocking in at 116x106, it is officially the largest single quilt I've ever created.

You can see the great curvy swirls that Colleen Granger quilted all over this giant thing, I'm super-pleased with how it came out. 

There are all kinds of crazy fabrics in here, even the Venus of Willendorf, which I stamped that with permanent ink.

It is very bright and cheery and interesting to look at, I'm looking forward to having it on our bed.

It's fun to look at from every angle.

The backing is a mish-mosh of great and terrible fabrics. I think making the backing to the right size was the hardest thing about this quilt.

Tumbler Nearing the Finish-Line

 The Tumbler quilt is back from the talented hands of Colleen Granger at Sew Little Time Quilting. It looks so awesome and I'm so excited that it's close to being D-o-n-e!

Hard to believe that the last step is at hand on this beast after all these years it's almost on our bed. That's the miles of binding I made, ready to be sewn on. Any bets on how long that takes me??

1,710

 I finished the Tumbler finally! It's a charm quilt, and hopefully there are no repeats in the 1,710 tumbler shapes.

This thing was started way-back-when with the purchase of a Come Quilt With Me plexiglass template that I bought at PIQF at the same time my friend Jaye bought her hexagon template. She made an awesome Eye Spy quilt.

We decided to do a casual sort of joint project, so I also bought a hexagon and she bought a tumbler. Our plan was to cut shapes for each other out of our fabric stashes or new fabric purchases. It worked out pretty well, there's a huge variety in this quilt.

 This is for our California King bed, and it is quite frankly, the biggest thing I've ever made. I was really surprised at how BIG it is. It's a lot of work just handling the thing, ironing, moving it through the machine while I added on the last row.

These leftovers from when I evened-up the length of the rows ended up as part of the pieced back. It was kind of sad to see this project come to an end. I've been working on it for a very long time! I bought the template in October 2004. So much has happened in those years...
And yes, I realize it's not really done, once it's back from the quilter I'll have to sew down the binding, and add a label, but compared to the rest of the time I've spent on this project, it's pretty much done in my mind.

Blue Tape Reminder

 Blue painter's tape is handy for a lot of things in the studio. I'll share one of the ways I use it with you right here, when I'm piecing with a 1/4" seam, I use my 1/4" foot (a Little Foot specifically) and it has only enough space for the needle to go through in one small circular spot. So that means No Zig-Zag allowed. Thus the tape over the stitch-width button. I've learned my lesson after hitting the foot with the needle, yikes!

Here's the Little Foot in action, sewing together the last of the tumbler rows. One little zig or zag and pow, broken needle which is scary. The blue tape visual and physical reminder to not adjust the stitch width unless I change the presser foot works for me.

Maximum Tumbler Overload

I started this Tumbler Charm Quilt a long time ago (five years!) and I'm nearing the end of getting all those tumblers together into one big quilt top. I had to chose a edge fabric to put at the beginning and end of each strip and found a nice black/grey spiral. Here are the first five rows sewn together.

A sewing action shot, I'm only pinning the very beginning together, the rest fall into line pretty easily.
And two more added, up to seven rows.

Here's what the edge looks like with the black spiral fabric. I think it will make a nice framing border.Keep on sewing, strips over shoulder to avoid rolling over with chair.

All the variety, I love it! And no, I didn't manage to keep to the dark/light pattern that I'd originally started out with. But I truly like the randomness of dark and light sections.

This is the 1/4" foot that I'm using, it helps to get these long strips together more accurately. Accurately being a relative term in my quilting room of course.

Wall o' Tumblers!

Oh no! What are the chances?! The first rule of a Charm Quilt is NO Duplicates. And certainly not adjacent to each other, sheesh. And this was after the long strips were sewn together. sigh.

There that's much better.

Faces, there are a lot of faces. I've been fussy-cutting them, just because it feels funny to cut or sew right through a face.

And a few more faces. And that's how far I got, 13 rows, before I got bored of sewing the strips together. I'd say this is about 1/4 of the quilt top assembled. All the other strips sewn together, pressed and ready to go, I just have to get back into the mood to do it.

Another Quiltlet

Week #23 of the year long project of a six-word memoir quiltlet.

I made this one during my week of tumbler mania, where I couldn't stop cutting and sewing tumblers together for my tumbler charm quilt. Words say: "Derailed by my overwhelming tumbler mania."

Tumbler Plans

Even more charms for my tumbler charm quilt that I'm ever so slowly assembling. These are from my generous and industrious friend Jaye. Thanks Jaye, guess I better get sewing these together.
I think once I do that I'll be pretty darned close to having enough for the king-sized tumbler quilt I'm planning on. But I won't know that until I'm done sewing all those rows together and do some measuring. There are still quite a few of my fabric boxes that I haven't gone through a cut a shape out of each fabric. Luckily as I've been going along with this project I've been noting which boxes have been mined for tumblers.

Also, I have to figure out how I'm going to deal with the irregular edges along two of the four sides of the quilt top. Some sort of long triangle will work, I guess. Because I most certainly am *not* going to be doing an irregular binding, not me, no way, no how. Not on something this big, and that will be intended for being washable many times. Also, what color or colors will I chose for this evening-up triangle, hmmm, scrappy? a single color?

These long-term projects are fun to come back to over the years. Good thing I'm not in any hurry.

Tumbled Over

What a nice surprise!
Friend Jaye recently sent me a small mysterious Rechiutti box. Nope, no chocolate, even better...more Tumblers! Well, wait, I know that Rechiutti is Jaye's favorite chocolate, so it is entirely conceivable that the chocolate *in this case* would possibly be better than pre-cut fabulous fabric pieces for my Tumbler quilt project.
But I'm pleased beyond measure at these happy fabrics up on my wall cheering me up every time I pass by them. Thanks Jaye!

And who knows I may get the Tumbler cutting bug once again and add to the 18.25 completed strips for my eventual bed sized quilt. I haven't done a danged thing on it since January when I last posted about it. This is one of those slow-cooked quilt projects, not a race-to-the-finish deal.
But hopefully well-worth it in the end.