Whenever I’ve shown Inchies or talked about them to quilter friends, almost the first question out of everyone’s mouth is “What do you do with them?” I mean, really, where’s everybody’s imagination? I’ve had a plan all along:

Sure, you can make them, trade them with other quilters if you’re so inclined, keep them stashed away in a box, or make jewelry out of them, but why not create larger quilt art pieces with them? These were the first Inchies I made, and they’re all from the same chunk of fabric. You can see closeups of the Inchies here.

The Inchies are made from two layers of fabric fused to either side of Timtex, and attached to this simple background quilt with Velcro Fabric Fusions. I wouldn’t use Timtex again, because while I like the stiffness and ease of construction use, it’s just too hard to hand sew beads and embellishments to the Inchies through the Timtex. I’ve discovered a better combination to use as a base from now on (more on that later).

The iron-on Velcro isn’t very user friendly either (or maybe I’m just challenged by fusible things). I’ve had a terrible time getting it to stick permanently like it’s supposed to; it seems to be stuck just fine until about an hour later when it’s completely cool, and then all the glue becomes goopy again and the pieces peel right off the fabric. Part of the problem is undoubtedly that I’m fusing it to two layers of fabric and batting or Timtex, but it’s completely strange that it seems stuck right after fusing, and then unsticks when it cools. I’ve started fusing it twice to see if that will help.

I wasn’t even sure I’d like the Velcro treatment since it might make the Inchies stick out too far from the quilt surface, but now that it’s done, I really love it! It gives the Inchies a “mounted” look and adds some dimensional interest. I was planning to tack the Inchies to the quilt with thread, but I did a couple that way and didn’t like doing it or the way it looked, so I switched to the Velcro. The Velcro has other advantages as well, since I can rearrange the Inchies on the quilt, or switch them out to display a different set.

When the quilt was ready for binding, I wasn’t too keen on adding anything visible around the edge. I remembered keeping an article about facing quilts during the great magazine purge, so I went digging. Thanks to a most excellent article by Katleen Loomis in American Quilter Ultimate Projects 2007 Magazine, I learned a new technique and the back of the quilt looks like this:

Her technique uses a one-piece curved corner facing and some dressmaking techniques to keep the facing from rolling to the front of the quilt. Where the corner and side facings meet a little pocket is formed, and if you don’t sew it closed, it makes the perfect place to put a piece of dowel rod for hanging a small quilt like this.

I think I was a little too vigorous when I pushed out the corners after turning the facing, so the corners of the quilt look a tiny bit dog-eared, but it isn’t as bad in person as it looks in the photos. That’s just something to remember for next time I use a facing to finish a quilt.

If I had the whole quilt to do again, I’d either leave more space around the outside of the Inchies, or shrink the space between the sets a bit. I had a moment when I wasn’t thinking ahead about binding and finishing at all, and forgot to leave a seam allowance for that when I trimmed the edges, so there’s a bit less space around the outside than I originally intended. There’s always next time. All in all though, I’m quite happy with the finished product!

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The carefully chosen palette for my next current project has been sitting there on the cutting table since I took a picture of it to share, over a week ago (it has now entered “current” project status, as you’ll see). It’s not that I don’t want to work on it, I do, other things keep getting in the way, including my own “quilt design block.”

Short “house” update: the heating/hot water system is working about as well as it’s probably ever going to work, after the plumber’s visit last Friday during which he finally figured out that a 5″ section of copper pipe was almost completely blocked by water deposits and cleaned it out. He’s coming back though, with the owner and a service person from Vaillant, the manufacturer, to replace the section of pipe, and figure out why else it’s not performing up to par. And of course, it’s a bit hard to tell if it’s going to heat the house to my satisfaction in winter anyway, since it’s the end of April and it’s not exactly cold here right now.

Other than that, there are various other things, some small, some not, that the owners need to take care of for us before they take off for Canada in mid-May. I’m still making weekly trips to the hardware store for this and that, and yet another trip to Ikea is probably on the schedule for this weekend. I did get a really great office chair for a lot less than I expected to spend there last weekend, so that was an unexpected pleasure.

Back to this project on my cutting table. I’ve been thinking about working on it more than actually working on it, and part of the reason for the delay before actually setting rotary cutter to fabric has been due to a niggling little feeling that something’s not quite right. I did make templates for a couple of pieces, and actually traced one of them onto the border print, but I wasn’t keen on taking that next step, so I kept turning my mind to other things. I finally decided that the lovely border print was the big problem and had to go, because it’s just not fitting in with my (admittedly slightly foggy) vision of the finished product.

After that flash of insight late last night, I was determined to progress today in the studio, and I had all day to do it in since I had nowhere to go. I spent all morning drawing trying to draw appliqué designs for the spaces that I’d planned to use the border print for, only to be soundly defeated by fusible web by early afternoon. I HATE that stuff! I don’t know why I ever bother with it, truly. I didn’t even get past peeling the paper off of it after fusing it to the appliqué piece. I could only get some of the paper off, and the rest stuck terribly and never would come away. Into the trash bin it went.

Still determined to get something done today, I started cutting, and threw eight pieces up on the wall. I looked at it and lost my nerve, or whatever it was I had left at that point. Maybe I just didn’t know what to cut and place next color-wise. I decided to break into the Hoffman Watercolor Wraps that I bought for this project before the move, and play with the colors, since the embellishments that will go on the quilt will be made of these fabrics. This is how I spent a very happy hour or so in the late afternoon:

There were 160 different bali fabrics in the eight tubes that I bought, and I sorted and played and pared down until I had 128 left. I thought maybe I’d have a better direction in mind if I could visualize more of the whole thing, or at least more of the whole color scheme. The row on the left is winter/spring and/or air/water colors and the row on the right is summer/fall and/or fire/earth colors. I hope. I think it helped the whole design process a bit though I’m not entirely positive, but I do feel better now. It’s possible that I feel better because I played with all these fabrics and colors though, and not necessarily because I’ve made any great design decisions!

The appliqué patterns I spent the morning agonizing over may become quilting designs, though I’ll hit the Arts & Crafts shop tomorrow for a different kind of fusible web and perhaps torture myself some more at a later date if the design really needs the appliqué. Hopefully life will allow me a bit of studio time tomorrow to see if my color play today opened the floodgates to design heaven. At least it’s officially a “current” project now, since I have cut into the fabric.

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It seems like all my tips are about storage and organization. Can you tell it’s a hot topic in my current small, cramped quarters? I buy stabilizer for machine embroidery off the bolt at my LQS, and I can’t see folding it up when I get it home to store it like I would if it were fabric.

I know you can iron stabilizer (well, depending on what kind of stabilizer it is anyway), but why put fold lines in it to begin with when you can just leave it in a roll and cut off what you need to use? Problem is, how do you store the rolls so that they don’t get squished flat by other things and have mega creases in them anyway?

Enter the waste bin. Yup, a medium size basic white plastic Rubbermaid 21 quart waste bin does the trick. You can sit it straight up in a corner and toss the rolls in it, or use it on it’s side on a shelf, and rolls of stabilizer, fusible web or freezer paper are contained and easy to access. If you’re into colored bins that go with your decor (I’m not, but that’s another story), Rubbermaid’s got you covered in either Blueberry Frost or Bisque.

Longaberger baskets sometimes work well for this task too, but obviously Rubbermaid is the budget-wise choice. For the ultimate in organization, make tags or labels for the rolls so that it’s easy to tell what’s what, since in my experience many stabilizers look frighteningly similar. If you need medium weight tear-away, a wash-away stabilizer might cause some problems in your project, right? I’ve had moments in the past when I’ve had to use some water to try to figure out which was which…

(You might notice that there are no labels on my rolls. I said “for the ultimate in organization” and I’m not quite there yet, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, maybe? It’s on my list of things to do…maybe later today…) This works for me!

Have a WFMW tip you’d like to share with the blogosphere? Find out more about Works-for-Me-Wednesday at WFMW headquarters at Rocks in my Dryer! Basically, the idea is that on Wednesday you post a little tip you’ve learned on any topic–anything that has “worked for you” in making your life easier. Visit Rocks in my Dryer for great tips on everything from kids to money on this Works-for-me-Wednesday!

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