WIP: I Finished Piecing the Road Map Quilt Top

 Matt refers to this as "mission creep."

My original objective was to make my baby niece, who likes cars, a simple little roll-up road play mat. 

Then I got left at home alone for too long, started a five-hour podcast about a school group that got stranded on Mount Hood, and things... got out of hand.

This is the Fishing Net quilt pattern. I'm not proud of my visual design sense (although I do think it's improved over the years), so thank goodness that one of my kids has a GREAT visual design sense and the patience to hold my hands and reassure me as I continually disturb her to ask things like, "Would it be weird to have some black roads and some grey roads?" or (holding up several coloring pages of this quilt pattern that I have filled in with crayon) "Do you like the way I colored it here better, or do you like this one better? Or this one?"

She liked the alternating grey and black roads better, so that's the way I started planning it!

I DID iron all my fabric, but animals kept lying down on my layout and then the robot vacuum got into it, as well.

Syd was also required to look at every piece of flannel that I own and help me come up with believable prints and colors for a road map, then lay them where they ought to go:

Here we have a park, two neighborhoods, two construction zones for the epic mini Tonka trucks I bought her, and a ginger cat without a thought in his head:

Now I've added a couple of rivers, a couple of parking lots, a dino dig site, and an ocean:

And now I've got everything!

I was actually just finishing cutting out the pieces for this quilt as Matt and Will pulled into the driveway, home from Peru. Neither of them are big communicators, especially when they travel, so imagine my surprise when instead of coming straight in for hugs and celebrations and snuggling on the couch, Matt backed away from me when I met them on the driveway and asked for a COVID test.

And then imagine how I felt when both their COVID tests were so chock-full of COVID that they pulled up that dreaded second line right away. By the time the fifteen-minute timer actually went off, I'd already partitioned off part of the house, fetched the air mattress and extra sheets and towels, and was busy sobbing quietly to myself in the bathroom.

Friends, let's follow Grandma's on the Roof rules with your loved ones: if you're traveling and wearing your mask like a baller but have to take a six-hour bus ride with some maskless stranger wetly coughing behind you the entire time, maybe just, you know, go ahead and tell your loved one at home that. And then a couple of days later, when you're finally heading home and you arrive at the Chicago airport and you've got just a four-hour drive ahead of you and you start thinking, "Huh, I'm starting to feel kind of crappy," maybe just shoot your loved one a quick text along the lines of "Hey, feel like shit, COVID tests on the driveway before hugs!" That way your loved one, who's barely seen two sentences in a row out of you for the past two weeks and misses you a LOT, can, you know, modulate her excitement with some fair warning.

I mean, hypothetically.

ANYWAY, you know what spending the entire next day after a huge disappointment disassociating from your sadness does for you?

It makes you SUPER PRODUCTIVE!

The instructions had me piece big triangles as if they were log cabin quilt blocks. It was a little tricky to wrap my head around, but I only had to pull out the seam ripper once, so yay for me!

So then the quilt actually comes together as four big triangles, with that one road that runs corner to corner pieced last as a sash:

Especially considering that I wasn't really able to picture how it would look pieced, even with all the pieces laid out (darn my visual-spatial thinking deficits!), I am SO happy with how this road map quilt top turned out!

My next visual-spatial reasoning challenge is to add just enough applique road map embellishments to give a hint as to the purpose of each different part of the map, without having the embellishments look tacky or ugly or overwhelming or too restrictive.

The Fantasy Quilts I'm Working On because Everyone Has Left Me Home Alone

Syd and I have pretty big plans while Matt and Will are taking a graduation trip to Peru. They may be going to Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca and tasting chocolate and pisco, but Syd and I bought a month of Disney+ and checked Stardew Valley out of the library. So. We're pretty well set.

We've also been keeping the house really, really clean, because we are not the messy ones, and it's really, really quiet, because Syd doesn't get up until noon and sometimes works in the evenings and other times has sleepovers with friends. 

So. I've been pretty much going stir-crazy.

I've gotten way too invested in this history of salt that I'm reading, and I've gotten WAY ahead on my freelance writing schedule (synchronized with getting WAY behind on getting paid, so that's fun), and dang, has it turned out to be a week for quilting!

Above is the quilt that I'm sewing Will for her dorm room bed. She's not going off to college until January, so I've got plenty of time (and it's actually going to be one of her Christmas presents, so don't tell!), but it's also fiddly as hell, involves a couple of new-to-me techniques, Will's not here to get a peek at it and spoil the surprise, and I'm bored.

I started off trying to directly copy this Lily the Dragon quilt, and you can see that I'm using that exact template, too, but then I got way into the weeds and it looks super different entirely because I do not know that ticker tape technique the author references and could not figure it out. 

Fortunately, I think that what I did end up doing, which was just ironing fabric scraps willy-nilly to interfacing, looks fine and probably better suited to my kid's grown-up nerd girl aesthetic than the look in the original blog post. Also, Syd helped me with the color arrangement of the wings, because I never mastered my preschool Montessori sensory work. 

I bought the grey Kona cotton background fabric and the black flannel backing fabric, but the entire dragon is made from scraps and stash. I tried to stick mostly to quilting cottons, but the white spikes (and yes, each spike is a completely novel shape so each one had to be numbered, traced, numbered again, cut out, traced again, numbered again, and cut out again ugh) are some kind of dimensional bottomweight leftover from a pair of pants Syd cut up for some Trashion/Refashion Show garment once upon a time. And hiding there in the blue wings are pieces of a flannel shirt and a skirt that my tiny youngling child once wore. 

I did the same thing for this quilt below:

That black flannel is what I didn't need for Will's quilt backing, that grey flannel was in my stash but uncut so I KNOW I must have bought it for something specific (oops!), but all the rest of the flannel is scraps, including my greatest triumph, that brown that I had exactly enough left of for just those half-square triangles. 

Most of that other flannel is leftover from the Great Jammy Pants Craze of 2014. 

I don't know if you can even tell what this quilt is supposed to be, but basically, it's me deciding that my baby niece might like one of those road play mats for her upcoming birthday. 

And then I got left alone in the house for too long and I went overboard. 

Like, why a felt play mat, when a quilted cotton play mat would be so much more versatile and sturdier? 

And if I'm doing what's essentially a quilt, I might as well make it an actual quilt size so it's even more versatile. 

I love this one, so I'll just buy the pattern and copy it. 

And now I'll spend the entire day going through my flannel scraps and figuring out which ones look vaguely road play mat-themed. 

Syd had to come to my rescue with her design sense superpower again, but I think I got it nailed down. Green is going to be a park, green plaid is going to be neighborhoods, brown is for construction zones (and maybe a dinosaur dig site), black plaid is parking lots, and blue is water. I picked out some interesting scraps that I can use as applique fabrics to add trees and houses and whales and dino bones.

I think I made it WAY too big, though. It's only a throw, but a throw size seems really dramatic for a road play mat. 

Oh, well. You don't want the world's largest play mat, then don't leave me to my own devices for this long! 

I Made Rainbow Fibonacci Placemats, Because It's My Pandemic Hobby

 

I've been obsessed with rainbows (it's like alphabetizing for colors!) and math (so many patterns, so many puzzles, so many correct answers that it's possible to suss out!) forever, and teaching myself how to make my niece's Sierpinski triangle quilt also got me obsessed with how satisfying it is to sew absolutely perfect seams and angles and iron them just so and end up with a creation that's gloriously precise.

Add in a nice long podcast, preferably in the true crime genre, and nowhere else to be and nothing else to do but sew and listen, and I'm as happy as a clam can be while remaining socially isolated and terrified of the ongoing global pandemic...

And we actually DID need placemats! I Googled around for a while trying to find a pattern I liked, but I don't like anything floral or cutesy or too curvy, I'm not in the mood for something novelty or pop culture, and the only color schemes I really like are galaxy and rainbow, because I am ten years old. I was about to just put the whole project on the back burner when I suddenly thought, "Ooh, I could sew the Fibonacci sequence just like I did when I made my Fibonacci quilt, and stop on a number that's the perfect size for a placemat!"

"Let's see... how many different squares would that give me.... OMG SEVEN?!?!?!?"

And the rainbow Fibonacci placemat is born!

Don't those squares, sewn so precisely and ironed nice and sharp, soothe that tense pit in the bottom of your stomach?

And don't you find that concentrating on cutting and pinning the layers together and matching everything up just perfectly requires so much focus that there's no room for any actual original thoughts in your head?

So pretty! So orderly!

And isn't it nice to quilt such nice, straight lines while listening to the behind-the-scenes story of the Chippendale dancers?

And doesn't it make your kid's ravioli soup, ripe peach, and half a homemade pumpkin chocolate chip cookie look elegant instead of the result of you 1) cleaning out the freezer and 2) foisting off the last of the canned goods you panic-bought almost exactly one year ago today because it was practically the only thing still on the shelves at THE HARDWARE STORE (stay classy, Midwest!)?

Also, both that placemat and table are kinda dirty. I'd warn you not to look too closely, but I suspect you already knew I'm not landing on the cover of Good Housekeeping anytime soon...

I'm so happy with how these placemats turned out!

I wanted to make more, but we don't actually *need* anymore (especially not if I'm going to make myself a whole other set out of rainbow prints, ahem...), so I made a rainbow Fibonacci placemat listing in my Pumpkin+Bear shop, because making them for other people is just as fun!

Anyway, I suppose that mathematical rainbow-themed quilting is as good of a pandemic hobby as anything else!

P.S. The Fibonacci Sequence makes a great homeschool math unit!

My DIY Rainbow Sierpinski Triangle Quilt

 

I'm probably supposed to tell you that the best thing I've ever made is my children. 

And don't get me wrong, because they're super great, but 1) I'm pretty sure that they actually made themselves out of nonsense, candy, and pig-headedness; and 2) they are NOT a completed rainbow Sierpinski triangle patchwork quilt!

I LOVE this thing. It's, like, the perfect distillation of most of my favorite things: colors lined up nice and orderly, sewing, math, and picky little details that it's almost but not quite possible to get absolutely perfect.

If only I could somehow combine it with reading, cats, and hot chocolate spiked with matcha and Bailey's, I'd be gone right now because I'd have reached Nirvana. Oh, and literal Nirvana would be there playing for me, too.

When you last left me thisclose to Nirvana, I had completed the beautiful rainbow quilt top. I was pretty pleased with myself for being so far ahead in my homemade Christmas gift game that I then complacently did other things for a month, then was all, "Crap! Christmas is this month and the Incompetent Narcissist in Chief has made a shambles of the post office! I should probably get my gifts in the mail so that I can start fretting about them being lost in the mail!"

To finish my rainbow Sierpinski triangle quilt, I sewed a .5" sash to the perimeter, added a cotton batting layer, and then backed it with one piece of black Kona cotton (I LOVE extra-wide fabric!). I added an extra 2" to the backing fabric on all sides so that I could make a back-to-front binding on the quilt. 

I really, really, REALLY struggled with what thread color to use for quilting--first-world problems, amiright? I consulted my teenagers, who were sarcastic and unhelpful--thanks a LOT, Kids!--and with Matt, who was probably helpful but I didn't like anything that he said. I finally decided to stitch-in-the-ditch around every triangle with white thread on the top and black thread on the bobbin...

...and now what I wish I'd ACTUALLY done was use black thread on the top and bottom and only stitch-in-the-ditch around the black triangles. The problem is that I don't super love the look of quilting--gasp, I know!--and I always want the lowest-profile, least-distracting-to-the-patchwork method. 

It might have worked if I wasn't shitty loose with my stitching in the ditch, but I don't like seeing the white thread breaking up my rainbow triangles:

Oh, well. It's done now. And I'd probably be a little sad if I didn't have an excuse to make another entire quilt just to have another go at one small and fiddly detail.

Anyway, what I actually feel is total love for the pretty quilt that I have accomplished! Here, have some more photos of it!

I am 100% going to make myself one of these now, both as an excuse to make it even more perfect this time, and because *I* want one! And then I'm probably going to list one in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, because I quite enjoyed the challenge of sewing this and wouldn't mind making some more.

I think I want to play with different rainbow patterning to see if I can achieve true rotational symmetry, and I might see if I can come up with a more creative rainbow pattern than just rotational symmetry, as well. I also sort of want to buy this coloring book and try to recreate some of the mathematical patterns in it, because if Sierpinski triangles make an awesome quilt, then what else might?!?

And I am for SURE going to try quilting my next one with black thread on the top and bottom. My new rule of thumb is that whenever I'm debating between black thread or not-black thread, I should choose black thread.

My Rainbow Sierpinski Triangle Quilt Top is Complete!

 Check out the third coolest thing that I've ever made!

I was inspired to make this quilt when I was looking for ideas for baby gifts, of all things, and found a picture of this quilt. It's perfect for a baby, right? It's colorful. It's a great size for tummy time. It's got a clever and sophisticated mathematical pattern on it to build little baby brains!

And most important... I'm obsessed with rainbows. And math. And I like to sew.

I built myself a Sierpinski triangle template by printing this triangle graph paper and drawing in only the triangles that I knew would be black. I photocopied it, the better to make numerous attempts at a roughly symmetrical rainbow and then get mad at each one for a different reason and recycle it. Finally, I settled on this one--

--which I kind of don't love in some ways, because I wish it also had rotational symmetry, but it more or less works, and it looks pretty.

On to cutting out a zillion triangles with my brand-new 60-degree triangle ruler--

--and then laying them all out on the floor while binge-watching House until I got an arrangement that I liked:

Then I stacked them all up by rows--

--and pieced them together a little at a time, whenever I had some free time and felt like binge-listening to This American Life podcasts.

The media which will be binged is just as important as the activity conducted while binging, don't you think?

For pictures that show how to piece these triangles into rows, check out my quilted rainbow mug rug tutorial, where I give a step-by-step walk-through and have a bunch of pictures that I took while it was stormy outside and so the pictures are dark and gloomy and gross, too, and I don't want to republish them here.

But be assured that I pieced the entire triangle quilt just like I did in that tutorial: three triangles pieced together with corners matching, then that three-triangle piece pieced onto the larger strip:

My mini iron earned its keep here, which is awesome, because I'm pretty sure that I impulse-purchased it at least a decade ago and I'd be surprised if I really used it since.

I used the snot out of it ironing little triangle seams open, though!

Done by threes, each row comes together pretty quickly:

Sewing the rows together is a little trickier, and I ripped out my first row several times before I figured out a couple of different tricks to get my triangle points lined up at each row.

So, looking at the wrong side of the row, you can see the point at each seam where three different fabrics meet. If you put a pin through exactly at that point--

--and then poke it through the exact top point of the triangle facing it, you will have pinned them exactly to match:

If you're not feeling quite as picky, you can eyeball it:

But you probably know that I'm always feeling picky.

You should be good if you're sewing everything with a precise .25" seam allowance (don't be afraid to be picky!), but to make 100% sure that you're not sewing over any triangle tips, you can look for that same point where three fabrics meet while you're sewing the rows together. Put your stitching directly on top of that point, and your triangle tips will look perfect!

I'm not gonna lie--all these triangles did make for a LONG project, but it was surprisingly not tedious, because the whole time, it was really pretty! In every state of WIP, the quilt top was mesmerizing, with interesting patterns constantly being revealed with every new triangle sewn to it:

I think it's the prettiest now that it's finished, though, and you can see the complete pattern, both mathematical and rainbow:

The quilt, itself, isn't complete, but finishing that quilt top is most of the battle! I know exactly how I'm going to back it and bind it, and who I'm going to give it to for Christmas, and then, you guys...

I think I'm going to make another one for ME!

How to Sew a Quilted Rainbow Mug Rug

I have been obsessed with sewing triangles lately, mainly because this WIP rainbow Sierpinski's Triangle quilt has taken over my thoughts and dreams:

The sewing on it has to be really precise so that all the nice points are nice and pointy and match all the other nice points, so first I practiced by sewing lots of other triangle projects.

And in the process, I came up with this quilted rainbow mug rug that I'm super into!

It's VERY good practice for the precise cutting and sewing required with triangle pieces, but at the same time it's a reasonably quick project to get through. It's apparently a fun project, as well, because as soon as I made one mug rug, I immediately pieced a second one.. and then a third... and then a fourth... and now I have a full rainbow set of six happily at my disposal.

Here's how YOU can sew a fun rainbow of your own!

You will need:

•  60-degree triangle ruler
• six different fabric prints in rainbow colors
• cotton batting
• cotton broadcloth in a single rainbow color
• thread that matches the broadcloth
• universal sewing needle. This one is a good size to handle the 2-5 layers of cotton that it will be sewing.
• small iron (optional). A regular iron can handle this project, but I LOVE this particular iron for ironing seams flat as I sew.

1. Measure and cut the triangles. For this mug rug, I think that 2.5" triangles result in the perfect finished size. Your 60-degree triangle ruler has printed lines that guide you to making the correct cuts, essentially having you cut a 3" triangle that you'll sew with a .25" seam allowance. For triangle sewing, your seam allowances have to be really, really precise (the fact that I keep emphasizing this means, I fear, that my sewing is not normally so precise...), so this is also a good time to get out your ruler and make sure you know what an exact .25" seam allowance looks like on your sewing machine.

All my photos are terrible because it's raining and it's going to rain forever and if I wait until I've got natural light to photograph things so they don't look terrible I, too, will wait forever.

After my triangles are cut out, I like to play with arranging them to make sure I like the aesthetic:

2. Piece the triangles into two rows of three. Piecing together three triangles, top points aligned, will give you a perfect 180-degree straight line. Your triangle ruler will have already had you cut each triangle with one notched point, and that notched point is the easiest place to align the triangles. Carefully align two triangles, right sides together, and sew them with a .25" seam allowance. Iron that seam open.

I had to practice and practice and practice before I could consistently sew this third triangle just right. I ripped out SO MANY seams, and walked away from my sewing machine to go do something else SO MANY times. 

So that you don't have to suffer the way that I did, here's how I double- and triple-check that I've got this last triangle lined up correctly:

See the triangle points that stick out because you ironed the seam open? Those points help you match the pieces! If you've matched the notched piece at the top and you match this triangle point at the bottom, your piece is perfectly aligned and you can sew it with a perfect .25" seam allowance.

Iron the seam open, and here's what your three triangles should look like on the back:

Here's what they look like from the front:

I took the photo at a weird angle, because taking it from directly above would have entirely blocked the small amount of light present in my study on this gloomy day, but if you look carefully, you should see that the middle triangle's bottom point does not extend all the way to the bottom of the piece. There should be .25" between the bottom point and the bottom raw edge.

If there's not, rip it out and try again. Lord knows I've done that many a hundred times in the past few weeks!

3. Piece the two rows together. Lining up the points when you piece the two rows together is also a little tricky, and also had me ripping out seams multiple times before I finally figured out a couple of tricks. First, check out the picture below:

In this picture (which is actually of my Sierpinski's triangle quilt in progress, mwa-ha-ha!), see how the back of the black triangle has a top point that meets the two blue pieces? Ignore the seam that goes off to the right to make a point, and just look at where the three quilt pieces meet at one point.

That point is also the triangle's point on the front side! If you can pin that point straight through to the point on the other piece of fabric, your points will match.

It also gives you a visual guide when you're sewing. Make sure you stitch directly over that point, and your triangle will look nice and pointy from the front:

Look at how tidy and pointy and almost exactly perfect the finished hexagon is!

4. Quilt the hexagon to the batting. For these mug rugs, I've decided that I prefer quilting the hexagon to the batting only, and adding the backing fabric later. So cut out a piece of batting that's a little bigger than your hexagon--

And then quilt the hexagon to it by stitching in the ditch with white thread.

5. NOW you can sew the backing fabric to your quilt! The backing is going to serve not just as a backing, but also as the back-to-front quilt binding for your mug rug. To that end, pin your quilt to the backing fabric, then enlarge the hexagon an extra .75" on all sides. A clear ruler makes this super easy:

Cut out the backing fabric.

Crease and pin the binding. Here's where that mini iron really comes in handy! For each side, fold the extra fabric in half and iron to crease, then fold it over again and pin it to the quilt. Here's a really great tutorial with clear illustrations for exactly how to do this back-to-front blanket binding.

And here's what it looks like in progress!

Now all you have to do is sew the binding to the quilt, using matching thread. It doesn't really matter if you use a straight or zigzag stitch, and I experimented with both, but eventually decided that I prefer the look of zigzag for my mug rugs:

And so that's what I did!

I like how clean the back looks, since it doesn't have any of the quilting:

And as you can see, it's the perfect size for a coffee mug!

I enjoy making these so much that I made a listing in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop so that I can keep on making them. 

You can order your own quilted mug rug in sets from one to six, with the backing fabric color of your choosing. I choose your print fabrics, but they'll always be a six-color rainbow:

Trust me when I tell you that a rainbow on your coffee table is a very cheery thing to have!

Six Months Ago: A DIY Binomial Cube/Trinomial Cube Manipulative

One Year Ago: 20+ Things to Do with Apples

Two Years Ago: Movement and Grace: Scenes from the Ballet Classroom

Three Years Ago: Montessori Pink Tower Extensions for a Sixth Grader

Four Years Ago: American Revolution Road Trip: Bay Front Park, Maryland

Five Years Ago: Hawaii with Kids: Luaus and Leis on the Big Island

Six Years Ago: La Maestra

Seven Years Ago: Trick-or-Treating with IU Basketball: Haunted Hoops!

Eight Years Ago: To Build a Fire: Junior Version

Nine Years Ago: Halloweening

Ten Years Ago: Willow Bakes Amelia Bedelia's Cake

Eleven Years Ago: One Deer Down, One Clown to Go

Twelve Years Ago: Illness and Ornaments and Perhaps a Psychotic Break