Q*bert Quilt 2.0, Planning, Update 1

To get started, I decided I needed a hands on look at exactly what I was doing and where it was going. I printed out several triangle sheets in different sizes from incompetech.com. I went as low as 1.25 triangle sides and as high as 2.75 inches (the failed quilt was 3.75). Then I cut the suckers out and laid them out for measuring physical measuring.

Left is 2.5 inch triangles, Right is 2.0 inch triangles.

The 1.25 inch set of triangles would have made a nice sized wall hanging. But seriously, applique a Q*bert or Coily in less than 2.50 inches?? It sure didn't sound appealing so I dropped the wall hanging idea and moved on to the bigger triangles. After much calculating and soul searching, I settled on the 2.5 inch triangle sides. It is big enough to be a functional lap quilt with no danger or moving into twin/full territory. It gives me about 5 inches to work with for the appliques which means I can use my machine rather than hand adding tiny little eyeballs and tongues and such.

I really don't want this blanket to be square, but it keeps falling into that territory. I'm taking a little bit of artistic license with the sides and top and not keeping the exact ratio of dead space to board and board to bezel of the arcade game. I really feel like if I keep the ratios, the dead space will look really dead when translated to fabric. I little add a little nip there and my finished size should be right at 52x46.

A look at the madness!

Since I have smaller triangles, I'm planning on attempting to sew them together then applique them to a large black piece of fabric. I wasn't sure how this was going to work because there are so many seams on the back side of the board. I thought it was possible I had another hair brained idea that was going to end in failure. I decided to cut out a chunk of the failed quilt (OH NO!) and try it.

This is tacked with a paper backed fusible web then edged with a blanket stitch. I also went ahead and tried a bit of quilting on it to see if I would get the effect I desired. I'm less than thrilled with the seams showing, especially under the yellow, but overall happy with the result. I think it is miles better than the less than perfect seamed in corners and lopsided stretchy-ness of the rhombuses. I may try a non-paper backed web in the future because the paper is really hard to get off the seams without pulling them away from one another. 

I did all the calculating and the size is just outside of the width of black fabric which means I'd have to buy a ton extra to fill in the space on the back of the quilt. I think I'm going to do the back in quarters made of the front side board fabrics. I can use 25" of the width of the fabric for a back quarter and use the remaining fabric for rhombuses and triangles. Guess it is just another hell trip to Joann's and I'll be on my way again. Wish me luck!

Q*bert Quilt, Failure, Update 4.5

After finishing the black background on the right side, I had a nice post all set up explaining my convoluted, but seemingly working, method of attaching the pieces. After putting on the left side over the weekend - I've admitted my failure. I promised myself this blog was for the good, bad, and ugly. In my case, that often includes failures and abandoned projects. However, for this project, I'm determined to make is work; no abandonment rather a do-over. Yeah, I'm having to toss about 10 hours of work and about $30 in fabric, but I'm not tossing the experience and knowledge gained. I have a much better idea of what I'm getting into now, and feel like I can do a much better job even if I have to make concessions to my original plan.

Here's is where it stands:

The problems:

1. The sides went on with a baste, test, baste, test, finish method. Some of the corners look fantastic, some of the corners leave a lot to be desired. While I think overall the corners are not a deal breaker, they add to my decision to scrap it.

Left side: should have removed and put back seams, Right side: A pretty good looking corner.

2. The bias cut rhombus have too much stretch in them. All of the handling to all the sides warped them and I've ended up with something far from square. You can really see it at the top where the middle of the black is very high and the two sides sink down about an inch each. It might be fixable with creative seams, but my nice horizontal lines in the black background have quickly become very slanted. I'm also concerned that the stretch will continue before I can quilt it leading to further distortion.

3. The SIZE! I believe I mentioned before that it had grown a bit bigger than I wanted it. I completed the math and stealing a few inches from the sides and top, it will finish up at around 55"x76" one inch over a full size quilt. Not what I was going for at all. I don't have nearly enough black fabric and the size will require lots of long cuts, which I really don't like to do.

The fixes:

The size fix is pretty easy. I'm going to do a few test sizes. I think I will start at 60% and work from there. I could go even lower, like say 25% and make a wall hanging rather than a blanket. I will probably make test prints of each and get an idea of what I will really have before I buy/cut any more fabric.

To deal with the stretch/background I think I have two choices. The first is to do all of the black as well as the colors with the rhombus shape. I think that would give really nice seams/edges and they will stretch equally. The down side to this method is the rhombus shaped seams would be in the black background as well as the board blocks.  Alternatively, I can make the rhombus game board and use a fusible web to "glue" it to a solid black piece of fabric essentially making it a giant applique. Downside here - it is a giant applique. I really think I would prefer the giant applique over the extended background. I really want to quilt in horizontal lines and don't want them to compete with the rhombus shape  more than I don't want the giant applique.


I've got a bit of calculating and decision making to do... stay tuned for Q*bert 2.0!

Q*bert Quilt, Cutting and More Cutting, Update 3

woot! Time to switch from planning to DOING!

For starters - I needed to TEST my plan and make sure it was going to work. I keep a nice stock of muslin around for pattern or seam tests and was thrilled when my rows came together and actually looked kinda like a Q*bert board!

I tried to find a really slick way to cut the shapes out side by side like a typical square quilt. I never settled on a setup that I felt confident with so I decided to take a bit longer and cut them out two at a time (fabric double layered).

I cut my template pieces from plain white paper. I pinned them to the fabric with an applique pin where I wanted to cut them out and set my ruler with a quarter inch from the template edges for seam allowance. I paid close attention to the pattern on the fabric. The top and side rhombi could be cut from double layered folded fabric while the triangle required the fabric to be cut and layered front sides up.

IMPORTANT NOTE - This fabic is cut with no regard to bias! That means it is really susceptible to warping and stretching in unappealing ways. It is pretty important to be careful with it and never put undo stress or risk changing shapes or ending up with wrinkled edges. If a seam has to come out - cut it out, dont pull or rip!

To sew it, I laid out a few strips at the time, put in the short seams, pressed, then put the two row together. Plain old quilting block building in a funky shape.

Finally - she's coming together!

Q*bert Quilt Planning and Purchasing, Update 2

Next mission, determine how much fabric is required and find it. It may be the hardest part. This is the official planning sheet from my book of mad brained ideas. I liked the way it was put together by Evil Mad Scientist. It does put a seam right down the middle of the rhombus on the right side of block, but I thought it worth it to use this method rather than the traditional tumbling block quilt, mostly so I could easily control where the color tops ended up.

 

 I used the square graph paper with intersecting lines. I realize this isn't a rhombus and doesn't represent the finished shape of the quilt, but I really wanted to exaggerate the shape to make the "rows" easier to see.  For some reason, I used a green highlighter on the blue side and a blue highlighter on the gray side, just to confuse myself about 10 times later!

Once I was happy with the plan, I printed myself a rhombus graph in the size I wanted my three part sqaures to be finished. I used incompetech's triangle graph paper generator to make the three sided rhombus (TSR)  would finish around 6 inches wide. (Generator settings - papersize 13x10, triangle side 3.75). Since the widest part of the board is 7 TSRs, the width of board would finish at 42". I added another 12" inches (one TSR wide on each side for the black) making the final width 54" falling within lap quilt range. 

FAILURE POINT - I decided on the size, then decided to add the bezel. Once I knew I wanted to do the bezel, the fabric was bought and cut. This quilt will likely finish closer to 70 inches wide which falls into twin/full quilt size. ugh!

Time to find the fabric! I really had a good idea of what I wanted and thought I would be able to avoid going to Joann's. Sadly, it didnt work out and I had to drag myself out there. 

<side rant> I hate our local Joann's. They never have enough people working and don't apologize for it. I've waited as long as 1.5 HOURS more than once to have an unapologetic, snarky employee cut it and then send me to the pay line to WAIT ANOTHER 20 - 30 MINUTES to get checked out. I've learned that the only time to go is late evenings during the week or the butt crack of dawn on special hours days. Another gripe - they use these obnoxious coupon schemes and I never know when I'm actually getting the real price. I find it sad they dont fix it and I hope when another big box retailer sees this opportunity and moves in, it really hurts them. I wont be back for sure! </end side rant>

I was looking for something that was NOT floral, or swirly, or other common quilt fabric patterns. There wasnt anything I would consider "perfect" but fabrics that were good enough. 

 

My phone doesnt do an excellent job of capturing colors, but you do get the gist. All board fabrics have a "fuzzy/line" look ant the applique (Qbert/coily) are plain. I really didnt want black for the game screen around the board. It's really a deep gray. I just couldnt find anything in that store or online that was what I wanted so black is just going to have to do. I will use the quilting and bright yellow bezel border to make the screen stand out from the bezel. 

Q*bert Quilt Research, update 1

The first step is always good research. My memory is terrible and relying on it is just asking for mistakes and something that isn’t going to be quite right. I knew that I wanted to make the quilt look like a screen shot from the video game, but wasn’t sure how I wanted to handle the borders. I started with what I knew and went on the hunt for Q*bert screenshots. 

I watched this video until I found a color set that I liked and had a bit of flow:

I stopped around 3:38. Of the board color sets, I like the blue/gray bottoms the best and found the distribution of yellow/purples to be nice and balanced here. Of course, I should consider that I've never once managed to make it the far when playing Q*bert and might consider something a bit more realistic, like 1-1!

Then I found a spiffy site, incompetech, that will generate all kinds of graph/drawing paper at with your own set size and setup parameters.  Seriously - the site is fun even if you DONT have something specific in mind. I'm sure I will use this again and again for different projects here and there.  

I thought some more about the border and decided on using the bezel of the arcade machine itself. I had trouble finding a good resource image. For now, I've borrowed this one from an arcade cabinet forum site, but will have my eyes open for a better option.

Finally, I poked around the web - surely I wasn't the FIRST person to think a tumbling block quilt looked like a qbert board! I found a few really good examples and have those printed as references as well - check them out!



Evil Mad Scientist Labs

Golden Dog Quilting (scroll down, a lot) this one even uses the bezel idea!

All ready to go - now the hard part, finding the right fabric!!