Tread Lightly – More information

‘Tread Lightly’ is about 70cm in diameter. The internal structure is an exercise ball, currently full of air. Unfortunately this is very sensitive to temperature changes, so when it comes back I will be filling it with expanding foam. The patterns for the globe is based on a cardboard globe from Greaves and Thomas. They are an old map making company who really know their stuff. They sell these small flat pack globes for those who can’t afford their large ones. The pattern didn’t come out quite right for me, but a globe is very easy to do fitting on compared to a human. I stitched the skin, fitted the ball, checked how much slack I had then took it apart and re-sewed it. The top of the globe had to be hand stitched closed with the ball partially deflated to have room to hold things together for sewing. I’ve also embedded a magnet in the polar ice cap. This means I can attach things like show information without using pins, which would be dangerous to the inner ball.

If you have any more questions, leave me a comment and I will add to this post for you. Everything is so obvious when you’ve been working on a project so it is easy to forget interesting details.

Clearing the decks

I seem to be making progress with my plan to clear the decks. This piece was started in a class with Pat Deacon, at the Quilters Guild AGM this year. It was a very interesting class and I had hoped to get this finished during the weekend of the AGM. I very nearly managed it so it made sense to put a binding on it and get it out of the sewing room. There was a discussion recently on the quiltart list about no show binding, and this seemed the perfect time to try it. I couldn’t find any more of the fabric I had used in the quilt (who will bet I trip over it in the next 10 minutes) and I couldn’t find a colour of binding I liked. The facing was surprisingly easy to do, and I rather like the effect. I can’t see it being the right solution for everything I do, but when I can’t find a good option for the binding I think this will be my solution. In the class we were asked to not fiddle with the design, just draw certain elements and then make it. As soon as we were told what to do I know I wanted to have a feeling of bubbles. I don’t think I got it quite right but for a first attempt I am pleased.

Please take care

I haven’t had much time for quilting today, but I did get a chance to re-learn an important lesson. There are bad guys out there and they are looking for you to be careless. I was having lunch with a friend in a restaurant. We had laughed at the fact neither of us wanted to sit with our backs to the room and that we both carefully tucked our bags onto the bench seat between us. We are so paranoid. It was a very quiet lunchtime there were only 3 tables with customers. Suddenly there was a commotion at the table directly in front of us. The older lady had lost her wallet. Their table was a right in front of the counter and maybe 3 steps away. There were staff at the counter and myself and my friend looking directly at her table. She had put her bag open on a chair and then gone back to the counter to get something while her daughter settled children at the table . In that time someone had come in, sat at the next table, reached into her bag and taken her purse. No one had seen anything. The counter staff were distracted by the woman herself and our view was blocked by the daughter. Impressive isn’t it. If she had closed her bag, or kept it on her shoulder, or any one of a dozen things the thief probably wouldn’t have had a chance. That moment of inattention ruined her day. There is CCTV footage of the theft it happened to have a clear view but is an old system and probably not good enough to identify the thief.

Now for the real kicker, the lady then left her bag in the same place while her daughter was talking to the manager and went to the bank a few doors down the street. The bag was open with a mobile and all her ID clearly visible. Now I know I wasn’t going to let anyone touch it, but did she? It doesn’t look to me like they learned from this experience, I hope you do. I don’t want to see thieves winning, let alone so easily.

‘See Sound’ final pictures

Here are the promised pictures of the PCB quilt. I am really annoyed with the chalk I used to mark the front. I keep washing it out and it keeps coming back. I thought about withdrawing it because of the markings but decided not to. Now I am worrying about it. Will people think badly of it or me because of the markings? Will it put them off asking me to do longarm quilting for them? Who knows? I suppose I just have to let it go. It has gone now and I can’t change that. I think part of my concern is because it is likely to be fairly noticeable, and probably memorable.

I thought I would show you the inside of the quilt. There is a lot of spare wire because while I was connecting it I wanted to leave myself a lot of options for where to hide the electronics. In the end I decided to embed the boards in the middle of the quilt to protect them as much as possible. The battery case hanging from the bottom of the quilt is made from a large cardboard tube, and contains 4 9v batteries. I think this should be enough to keep it going all through the show. I put a switch on the battery case so the lights wouldn’t be going off in transit and in the hanging instructions I have asked that they turn on the quilt. I did call the organizers first to check this would be OK and they were surprisingly calm about it. In the worst case I can flick the switch when I get to see it.

The last couple of days I had been looking forward to taking some time off, and doing something else. Now it comes to it I want to get back to work. Even if work happens to be doing a tax return. There are days when I wonder if I am doing the right thing. I think tax returns looking good answers that one.

Before that I need to clear the decks. It is amazing how much stuff has collected in my work room while I have been going flat out for the show. I am discovering lots of projects I had to pause that I could now get done and out of the room. Also in the piles I’ve found my Sin City novels. I am planning a quilt in the style of Frank Miller. I thought a cityscape in the rain. I love his art style and I think it will work well in fabric. I’ve been playing with Misty Fuse and I think it will let me do some more detailed work. Maybe I should test the theory with a Frank Miller quilt.

…and stop.

I’ve gone so far beyond tired it isn’t true. There is no entry for yesterday because yesterday turned into day. Somehow we missed the bit where the sky went dark and we went to sleep. On the other hand if I can teach binding to someone tired, stressed and sore at 5am while I am in the same state, I guess I must be OK at teaching. It was an experience getting everything done, but finally it all came together, and the quilts made it to the drop off point with an hour to spare. I would say it wouldn’t have been as close but for the oh so helpful motorway traffic. What you really need when lacking sleep is a jammed up motorway in the heat, yup really makes it easy to stay awake and alert. The 120 mile round trip took over 6 hours, I am amazed I made it in one piece. I am also amazed that all the quilts fitted in the car. Having two 3D quilts does take up a lot of space.

I did take pictures of everything but they can wait until at least tomorrow, right now I need some sleep. I am already planning lots of new pieces, I must be mad. Night night.

Eeeep

My copy of Popular Patchwork arrived today. Now I will probably be the only subscriber to say this, but it is early. I was expecting it next week. Why does it matter you ask? Well I am in it. I was interviewed about longarm quilting, which is fantastic. In the article it is mentioned that I offer a longarm quilting service, also fantastic. However, I’m in the last stages of trying to get my entries ready and delivered to the NEC, and I will be out delivering them on Friday. Not the ideal situation if potential customers are trying to get hold of me. Oh well these things happen.

Blink Blink

It has been a busy, tiring, at times frustrating, but ultimately very productive day. To start with I have managed to get a lot of the components onto the front of the quilt. I am really pleased with how well the capacitors are standing up. My resistors are much easier to read than the real thing too I have to make an R14, when I planned the components I did it from the parts in the kit rather than the list of parts. The kit was missing one resistor, and although I have bought a real one to make up the kit I haven’t got round to making the fabric one yet. Either way this is definitely recognizable as the board in the kit so I am happy.
This is the real thing. Not the clearest picture, but I am tired so it will do. You can probably see it has been adjusted slightly, this is because some of the component need to be spread around the quilt so have been put on spur boards.

Finally here is the wiring loom for the quilt. The four small square boards are the LED clusters. I have replaced each single LED on the original with four on the quilt. This should make them visible in the exhibition center. For some reason this very simple kit didn’t want to play ball at all. As I have mentioned I felt I had a problem with the sensitivity of the microphone and I wasn’t getting the brightness I wanted from the LED’s. Bytepilot had been giving assistance but nothing was working. I simply wasn’t getting the results we expected. Last night I admitted defeat, this wasn’t going to work for me, I needed an man who knows and an oscilloscope. My DVM is great, but it isn’t what you need for tracking audio around a circuit.

We have spent the afternoon poking, prodding and talking nonsense to this board, but still it wouldn’t play. We tried a duplicate, no go. Now remember these kits are supposed (and in my experience are) idiot proof. We decided that one of the transistors had died, the same one on both boards, so replaced it, and yay it did work. So how had we killed the first one? Had it been making it light just one LED? Nope. Was it trying to make it light many? No. Who knows what was wrong with it? It works now though and I am thrilled. It is far better than I had hoped after my first few attempts, the LED’s are bright and the microphone is sensitive, it was showing us an aircraft going over earlier. Thank you Bytepilot.

We have realized there may be another issue. It is sensitive enough to pick up noises when it is packed going to the show. The batteries probably won’t last the two weeks it will be in transit. I won’t be able to get to the quilt to changes it’s batteries before judging. I am going to try calling the people running the show tomorrow and ask if, as part of the hanging process, they could switch my quilt on for me. I am not hopeful, given it is a rather odd request, and if they won’t I have to find a way of it switching itself on when it is hung up. Could be interesting.

Packing Marathon

We have had an evening of trimming de-linting and packing. ‘Union Jack’ is packed and ready to go as is ‘Pair of Gems’. It is surprisingly tricky to follow all the packing rules and get all the little paper tags in the right place, but I think we have done it. You will have to excuse the quality of the pictures, it has been raining on off all day so I had to photograph them indoors. Also I can’t get far enough away to fit the whole quilt in. I hope I will be able to get better pictures at the show. I think the quilt will look great against the white walls. You can’t see it well in the pictures but the bindings each have a thin piping on them in the contrasting colour, it really makes them zing in real life.

‘See Sound’ is still causing trouble. I think I have blown something. The circuit has stopped working now. Fortunately I have someone I can ask to have a look at it with me, and that will be tomorrow nights project. During the day I can finish off the components and hopefully start putting them on the quilt. I am really looking forward to starting to built the fabric circuit.

I’ve got a new project nagging at me. I want to make building blocks of art. Like children have blocks with letters on and can make words, I want to make cubes that stack together to make images or patterns. I also want the design to flow around each block. I think I am going to have to keep myself very restrained. I like to work big, but the logistics of big blocks just isn’t worth considering for a first attempt. I think six inch cubes will be quite big enough for the first attempts. I know I will have to start drawing these up soon, every time I pause (even at traffic lights) if comes back and nags at me. So watch this space.

Quilt Labels

Some one on one of the mail lists I am on was asking about quilt labels, what they look like, what information you put on them. None of these have a great amount of information on them, but I hope it would be enough for them to find their way home even if we moved, as the URL gives a way to contact me. For quilts that I give as presents I always put on who I made it for, when and sometimes why. If the quilt has a story that goes on the label too. I like the label to tie in with the quilt as well. It doesn’t show well in the photo but the Ginko’s label is black (ish) so it doesn’t glare on the black background. For ‘See Sound’ my PCB quilt the label is green with brown writing. I also like to have a design element from the front on the back, Bicameral’s label has the same border as the front, and ‘Delta Blues’ main design element is a treble clef.

As you can guess from the picture, Gems 2 doesn’t have it’s label yet, but after a lot of handsewing we have everything else done on the ‘Pair of Gems’. I will put the label on tomorrow then over to sir for the final trim and de -lint. Which means I now only have one quilt outstanding for the NEC. ‘See Sound’ is giving me a few issues. Tomorrow I am on a mission to find a cheap microphone, ideally with a built in pre-amp. This should improve the sensitivity enough that I can hide the mic inside the fabric replica and people can walk up to the quilt and talk to it or clap to make it light up. Hopefully I can find a cheap toy with this in and cannibalize that for my quilt, failing that I will have to look at building them from scratch. At least I can go to Toys-R-Us and claim I am working

Tread Lightly – label

Blogger only allows five pictures per post so I thought it made most sense to put this one separately. As you can probably tell the label is on Antarctica. It’s a shame that no one is likely to see it because I think having all the different animal prints come together looks really cool.