I am a Quilter, I am a Quilter, I am …

April 23rd, 2013
…a Quilter.  I’ve been repeating this phrase for the last few days after I spent a frustrating weekend trying to make a simple pillow and had to put in a  zipper.  I do this (put in a zipper) about once every 5 years so it’s a task that feels pretty new every time I do it, and it always takes me much longer than it should.  These are the moments where I have to bolster my confidence by telling myself that I know how to make quilts, and most of the time, that is enough!

 

It all started very innocently.  I have a new class to teach people the basics of MEA using die-cut shapes and using a technique where you never hoop the fabric but instead “float” the fabric on top of the stabilizer.  Besides avoiding the hassle of hooping the fabric and getting it centered, this technique is kind of cool because you can take a file and do multiple different designs with it, depending on how you place the fabric on top of the stabilizer.  As an example, you can start out with a simple heart and make something basic like a pincushion:
 
heart-pincushion
Learning how to make this single appliqued heart really gives you the basic skills you need.  Once you learn the basics of how to do that (it’s very easy), the you can create other designs like this mug rug:
 
heart-mug-rug
The mug rug is fine, but I wanted to have another option for something a person could make from that trio of hearts, so I came up with this pillow:
heart-pillow-R
After the hours I spent putting in the zipper, I forgot to partially open the zipper once I finally sewed the front and back of the pillow together, so I had no way to “get inside” of the “pillow-cased pillow” to turn it inside out!  I tried to gently force it to open but it wouldn’t so I ended up having to rip out one of the side seams and open it that way!
The quilting on the pillow was fun but you can’t really see it in the photos.  Here are shots from the backside of the pillow front as the quilting was going in:
 pillow-1
 
and then the final version:
pillow-2
This was the first time I hadn’t carried a quilting design through the 4 corners and I actually like how this came out.  I thought it would look kind of “fractured” but I guess I like that fractured look!

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Floral Quartet Quilt Finished

April 18th, 2013

floral-quartet-whole-quilt

I finished this quilt about a  month ago and never posted about it.  It has a lot of texture to it, which I love.  Here’s a shot of it lying on the floor near a window.  The color is not right, but it shows the texture pretty well:

 

floral-quartet-floor

Here are some other shots that are closeups of different areas.  The deep blue is more a reflection of the true color, but I had to take some shots without a flash to show the wonderful texture:

 

floral-quartet-flower-closeup

floral-quartet-sashing-cu

floral-quartet-narrow-border-cu

I love how the outer blue border came out.  I need to do more stuff like this down the road:

 

floral-quartet-outer-border

floral-quartet-floor-blue-border

floral-quartet-floor-block-closeup

I felt kind of dumb at the end because I had been really careful to mark a border line about 1/2 inch from all edges to be sure I didn’t quilt into the area that would ultimately become the binding.  Once I went to bind it, I felt like it needed a little punch of color right at the edge, so I added that narrow orange channel along each edge.  Of course, this covered the edge of the quilted design…GRRRRR!!!!:

 

floral-quartet-cornerstone-blocks

The appliques were all cut on my small Sizzix Big Shot using the Appli-K-Kutz Stems 2 die and Petals 4 Large die.  Totally, totally fun to make!

Sick as a Dog

April 13th, 2013

You might have noticed that I have been absent from my blog for awhile.  I was really sick, sicker than I’ve ever been in my life, and I didn’t do anything other than lie around for 1 1/2 weeks.  I’ve been really fortunate and never been ill like that before, so it was quite an experience.  I’m glad to say that I feel back to my old self now and am ready to go!  This first post back amongst the living is of a quilted tote bag I made about a month or so ago:

by-bag-0.5

 

I started out by creating the center block of the bag using machine embroidery applique to make a feathered wreath (this is the 10 1/2 in wreath made with the Appli-K-Kutz  Plume Family die) and then added top and side fabrics to make 2 of the front/back blocks below:

by-bag-1

I quilted each block, but did not use a backing fabric.  Here’s the backside of the front block:

 

by-bag-2

I sewed the front and back together, then made the bases into box corners.  I turned it inside out so that the good side was on the outside again, then gathered my ruffle and pinned it to the good side and then pinned my straps in place on top of the ruffle (this way they would fall inside the ruffle in the final bag):

 

by-bag-3

Here’s a closeup of what the top looks like after these layers have been stitched together:

 

by-bag-4

…and here’s what the inside looks like at this point:

by-bag-5

Next, I created the lining.  I do this by fusing the front and back lining pieces to fusible interfacing.  (I do this to give them more body.)  I cut my pockets twice as high as I want them to be and fuse those pieces to interfacing as well.  I fold over the pocket so the front side of the pocket is actually 2 layers (more body and more stable if you’re someone who likes to really stuff your pockets full of stuff!).  Here’s a shot of the lining and I placed some tv remotes inside them so you could see them better:

by-bag-6-lining

(In the photo above, the front and back lining layers have been stitched together and the bottoms have been turned into box corners just like the front/back of the tote bag were.)  Next step is to place tote bag front/back unit inside of the linign unit so that the good sides of each are facing one another.  That’s what you’re seeing in this next shot and you can see that the top edge has been pinned in anticipation of  sewing them together forever:

by-bag-8

They’ve been sewn together in this next shot, but you can see from what I’m holding that there’s a small area of the top edge that was not stitched together:

by-bag-7-inside-the-lining

You just slip your hand into that opening and begin pulling the “good sides” from the inside to the outside…here it is in a half-in/half-out stage:

by-bag-8-turning-inside-out

Once it’s all been turned inside-out, you simply pin that small opening shut and then whip stitch it closed for good.  I then pin all along the top edge and then topstitch it all together at the end:

by-bag-9-pinning-top-edge

…and here it is in all its finished glory:

by-bag-0.5

A lot of people have emailed me to ask about classes at the warehouse.  They were supposed to start later this month but we had to cancel them because I lost so much time from being sick.  We WILL be having classes in May, though.  The classroom is all ready for some fun quilty stuff:

classrm

 

 

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Timing is Everything

March 23rd, 2013

I was at a meeting of the Machine Embroidery Guild of Toledo recently and one of our members did a presentation on needles.  She talked about a needle I’d never seen before and it was called the Spring Needle.  Here’s an image of what the spring needle by Schmetz looks like:

spring needle

This needle enables you to do free motion work without any foot at all.  It sounded like a handy thing to have around and I left the meeting thinking I needed to try one of these out but I didn’t really have a particular need for one.

Two days later, I was quilting a border area on a quilt and I had divided the border into “zones” where one design would be in one area but another design would be in an adjacent area.  One design I did was a version of McTavishing I do where there is a heavy emphasis on swirls:

spring-needle-.5

 

I started to quilt the adjacent area and quickly realized I really could not see where I needed to stitch, as part of the design required me to stitch backwards.  This photo of my darning foot illustrates how it just is in the way of my field of vision:

 

spring-needle-1

Enter my new spring needle!  In this photo, you can see that I’ve removed my darning foot and regular needle and replaced them both with a spring needle:

 

spring-needle-2

…and you can improve your visual field even better if you remove the ankle, although it’s not necessary:

 

spring-needle-ankle-gone

…and here’s a shot of what it looks like as the fabric has been pierced.  You can see that this compresses the spring.  To me, this setup made me think of the hopping foot that you see on longarm machines.  The needle worked great for me and I highly endorse this product.  It’s not something I’ll use every time I quilt, but it’s a really nice too to have on hand if you need better visibility or if you are working around bulky objects and the free motion foot would have trouble with them.  Here’s a shot of the alternating border design:

 

blue-border-edge

 

If you’re interested in trying one, you can find them here.

 

 

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A Quickie and Some Class room Photos

March 11th, 2013

One of the things I learned when I started teaching is that it’s sometimes a challenge to impart the information/skills to the class while you’re also working on a quilting project.  Many of my classes are “technique” classes where we make absolutely nothing but learn a skill.  I’ve found, however, that students frequently want to make something tangible in the class.  It can sometimes get tricky trying to come up with a project that’s small enough that it’s largely do-able in the class, or at least the technique one is trying to teach is do-able within the class time period.  This was my challenge last week when I came up with  a quick quilted wall hanging for a new class:

 

salutations2-bird-quilt

(Sorry about the lousy photo.)  This class is really to learn how to stitch an easy split design in machine embroidery applique.  I had a fun time quilting it.  I used a soy batting which is incredibly soft and shows up the quilted texture very well, but it’s so soft that if I use it again, it will be the top layer with a different batting as a base.  (I say that because this batting is so soft that it has no “umph” to it and I need the batting to add some structure to the piece.)  The center section is just quilted with swirls:

 

quickie2

(Of course, this was done after I’d done all my stitching in the ditch and also had outlined all the applique shapes with invisible thread.)  The floral  blue/green fabric zone was stitched with a pair of splayed feathers.  This look always looks pretty swish but it’s easier than you’d think.  I began by marking mirror image spine guidelines in soap, and I marked the same curves on the opposite side but they are facing in the opposite direction:

 

quickie-3

Next, I stitched the feathers and I used Accent Rayon Thread by Wonderfil.  I chose this because it’s a very heavy 12-weight thread so I knew it would really show up:

 

quickie-4

This is what it looked like once both sides of the inner horizontal borders were stitched:

 

quickie-5

I next quilted “continuous capsules” in the light green border zones (sorry for the name, but that’s what they look like to me!):

 

quickie-6

…and then I quilted the ribbon candy design in the outer vertical borders:

 

quickie-7.5

I couldn’t help myself…I had to go back in and add some hyperquilting inside the feather plumes with gold rayon thread.  You can see how much it adds by looking at this shot where the feather is only partially hyperquilted:

 

quickie-10

This class is one of the classes I’ll offer next month in out new classroom-full details coming soon. Ernie took some pictures of the new classromm but we can’t really get it all in one photo so here are few shots:

classrm-1

I tried to put in features that I really appreciate in a classroom, like adjustable height chairs on casters and heavy tables to reduce the vibration of machines. It’s hard to get a perspective, but right behind the classroom is a lot of our fabric. Notice the long cutting tables so close by…how convenient!

classrm2

There are lots of colorful quilts hanging down on the classroom from above:

classrm3

…and here’s a shot of part of the classroom from halfway up the stairs:

classrm-4

Hope you’ll join us for a class someday!

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