La Passacaglia: Big 4 Complete!

Hooray! I am SO EXCITED to finally be finished with all four of the “big rosettes” in the La Passacaglia pattern – those with a double ring of stars. I’m happy with how the Liberty Tana Lawn Mabelle print in blue and red looks, too:

My overall progress looks something like this:

Yeah, I can’t believe I failed to blog about that little guy in the bottom middle, either. I guess I thought I must have done it when I posted to Instagram instead. Bonus rosette!

Now I’m trembling with naïve optimism that, with the most time-intensive rosettes finished, the rest of the pattern should practically sew itself and be finished in the next month or so – HA! Never mind it took me over two years to get to this point. And I will be having a baby in a month or two, depending when she decides to arrive.

Speaking of which… I have been disappointed when bloggers suddenly shift directions and turn a blog about home DIY into a blog about polar bears. Just for example. I didn’t want to do that with this blog, so feel free to check out the secondary blog I created, Building Home & Family, if you’re into home renovations and family life. We’re just starting both ventures, so I expect a lot more content should start flowing in future months!

I do have a few sewing-related posts over there:

Planning for a Market + Quilt
Free Boppy Cover Pattern
Crib Sheet to sew crib sheets

Reader Question: Is there any interest in having my family-focused sewing projects appear here, too? Or are you more interested in quilts-and-only-quilts? Most blogs seldom receive much feedback anymore, so it’s difficult to anticipate what readers might want without going the ol’ trial and error route.

That said, there is one question that keeps popping up in relation to this blog, and I thought I’d answer it here for posterity:

Q: How do you create your “progress” images for the La Passacaglia?
A: It’s really time-intensive. Kind of like hand sewing the Passacaglia itself. But if you’re still interested, read on…

Step 1: I used the pattern image from the book and desaturated it (i.e. turned it from color to black and white). Don’t have the pattern? It’s in the Millefiori Quilts book, available here. (The vendor I used is sold out, but the linked Etsy shop owner is someone I met through the DCMQG when I lived out east, and she’s great.)

Step 2: I photograph my latest rosette finish, preferably against a neutral background to make editing easier.

Step 3: In Photoshop, I open the photo and delete/remove the background, including the extra “tails” on the triangles of the rosette to get a clean shape.

Step 4: Finally, I open the full pattern image, copy and paste my newest rosette, and resize/transform/rotate it until it covers the space allocated in the pattern. I aim for “pretty close” vs. perfect because even an overhead photo of a rosette tends to have at least a little bit of angle that makes the proportions a tiny bit wonky.

A few people have asked me to share some of the templates I’ve created for my personal use in designing my La Passacaglia, but I think it’s important not to violate the designer’s intellectual property rights. She worked hard on the design, folks! Given all the hours I’m putting into my quilt, I feel the cost of the book is probably the lowest per-hour book cost I’ve ever spent! And I DEVOUR books!

Check out my WIPs page for links to all my La Passacaglia posts.

La Passacaglia – 3rd & 4th Rosettes

My progress on my La Passacaglia continues slowly. In the meantime, I finished some Christmas projects (in March!) and generally enjoyed a break from most sewing.

Since my last Passacaglia post, I’ve added two new rosettes, one large and one small. My original plan was to work on all the large rosettes first to have the best idea of what my finished quilt would look like. I have revised the heck out of that plan! The smaller rosettes are infinitely faster to finish, so I’m trying to pepper those in so I feel like I’ve at least made some progress! Here’s what I have so far:

My 3rd rosette was especially fun because it doubles as a quilt label. My new husband’s last name is Bayer, which he pronounces as “bear.” (I use two syllables.) I incorporated both Bayer and bears into the rosette. And a few hearts. ❤

Here’s a closer view from a progress shot:

And this last rosette is the one I made after starting rosette #3 but before finishing it because it took FOREVER. (I mean every single one of those capital letters!)

As you can see, my blue-and-orange color scheme also incorporates some reds and yellows.

Early on, I made a coloring template for my Passacaglia in MS Word. I didn’t share it because I was concerned about copyright laws and didn’t want to steal the work of a designer. That said, the Passacaglia is everywhere, and others have made their coloring sheets publicly available. Theirs are also better than mine because all the shapes actually line up, haha. If you’re interested in a free La Passacaglia coloring sheet, I used the one I found here.

Check out my WIPs page for links to all my La Passacaglia posts.

La Passacaglia: New Rosette + New Template

At a rate of about one rosette every two months, I’ve finally finished my second!

With saturated red-oranges, prints resembling snowflakes (at least if you squint), and wintery novelty prints (polar bears and Heather Ross/munki munki ice skaters), I call this my “fire and ice” rosette. I mentioned in earlier posts (here and here) that I plan to make my entire quilt in blues and oranges.

I know I also said this before, but the rosettes are HUGE! I took a photo with my feet for perspective.

Here’s a progress shot to show how I work. I got the hour basket as a swap gift for my birthday (#birthdayclubhandmade) and keep pretty much everything I need inside it so I can take it with me to the coffee shop on weekends.

Probably my rosettes would go a lot faster if I worked only on one at a time from start to finish. Instead, I usually finish the center of one, start basting (hand sewing), get bored, and sew another center or two in the meantime. I am currently started on three other rosettes.

One of my new rosettes will feature a single image in the center. Some quilters have done an incredible job of lining up individual pieces. I plan to shortcut the process and combine a few pieces at once. Here’s the process I’m using:

First, I made a template of the rosette center. I think this is no major feat since anyone can line up a few diamond shapes, and it’s pretty obvious how they fit together if you’ve seen a photo of even a single rosette. The trick to La Passacaglia is how all the rosettes fit together. Definitely get the book if you want to make the quilt! After printing a template, I cut out the center of one of the images.

I lined up my fabric underneath the cut template.

Then I cut around the outer edge of the template to add 3/8″ seam allowance. Since the lines are traced by hand around the paper pieces, I used an acrylic ruler with my rotary cutter (for the outer edge) and Xacto knife (for the center piece). When you’re done cutting, you should have two pieces (one fabric, one template) like this:

You could start basting your fabric to the center template at this point, but I wanted to glue mine in place for precision.

Place your fabric wrong side up. Line up the seam allowance piece around the outer edges of your fabric.

Place the center piece (with diamonds meeting in the middle) wrong side up. Glue the back of the center piece using either a fabric glue pen or a washable glue stick. Glue the center piece to the fabric (obviously glue side down), lining it up with the seam allowance piece. Then remove the seam allowance template and press.

Note on laser printers: Since laser printers use heat to bond ink to paper, running your iron over laser ink is like getting paper wet when it’s been written on with washable marker: the ink will smear. If you’re using a laser printer, I suggest placing a piece of scrap fabric over the template before pressing. Also, it’s best to press without steam since the humidity from steam will curl your paper.

Here’s the final piece held up to the light so you can see the seam allowance through the fabric:

One final note: I traced around each piece separately when making my template so I could use it as a single piece or remove any portion (e.g. removing one diamond to use a different fabric). However, it is much easier to baste convex corners (corners pointing outward) than concave corners (corners pointing inward), so keep that in mind if you remove a portion of the center template.

Check out my WIPs page for links to all my La Passacaglia posts.