Back to Work!

I pretty much took the month of December off from the sewing room. We took a much needed vacation and I caught up on some organizing and reading goals.

On to the quilting goals: 

My first goal is to finish Rhonda’s quilt so I can give it to her in February when I see her. The last three steps are to quilt the 30 blocks, quilt the border and do the binding. Yesterday I started working on the blocks.

First, a drawing, then I did a sample stitchout on one of the quilt sandwiches piled on the back of the table. The prettiest fabrics in this collection have peacock feathers on them, so freehand feathers seemed like they would be fun to stitch and would look cool!

I like to be able to look up at the sketch to refresh my memory while I’m sewing.

Sewed a feather in each of the blocks, then figured that I was on a major roll, so started on the border. Same idea — a feather in each corner and then the wavy frond-like things going in the same direction that the border fabric goes. Got half the border done yesterday and the rest today.

Now all that’s left is the binding! I cut and sewed it this afternoon, but still need to get it pressed so that I can do the machine work on it. I may take it with me so that I’ll have some hand work when I go to the Pieceful Hearts Quilters retreat in South Carolina next week — from what I hear it is going to be C-O-L-D!!

Patches & Scraps, Midland TX

This is either my third or fourth visit to Patches & Scraps; owner Lisa Graham and I were trying to figure it out the other day and didn’t come up with an answer. The store has been open for four years and I came to them for the first time shortly after their opening and almost every year since. Every year they have even more merchandise and since pushing the walls of the building out is impractical, the aisles just get narrower!

This is the view to the left of the front door....

...and this is the view to the right! Lots of fabric and thoughtfully arranged groupings of notions make this a really fun store to shop. Lisa has six daughters and a son and all of the daughters work in the business, five of them in the store. So since there is Mom and five daughters all fabric shopping at Market and with the vendors who call on the store, you can imaging that there is a LOT of fabric being bought!

Nice Judy Niemeyer and other larger format patterns display right in front of the door along with some shopping totes to fill up — easy to do here!

I said “Smile” to Grace and Tara, two of Lisa’s daughters — Grace looked directly at me and smiled; Tara said “oh, no” and looked the other way.

This quilt is right outside the classroom door and I love it! It’s got that whole modern vibe going on. It takes over 5 yards of background fabric and we had a lively discussion at dinner last night about how many bolts a store had to buy of good backgrounds like this one. A 15 yard bolt may only be enough for 2 or 3 customers, so Lisa and April (store manager daughter) have found that they can go through a 4 bolt order very quickly. It was a very interesting insight about inventory management and the things a store has to think about when placing orders.

One of the most fun things about traveling is learning from the shop owners!

For the first two days, I taught my Fluff & Stuff machine quilting class; my last class here before I fly to Houston for Quilt Market is a feathers class using the Westalee rulers. I’m also going to demonstrate circles on quilts in a Baptist fan design and a few other of the template sets so that students can see some of the variety available.

Even though it’s just short demonstrations, I get to sew — and any day we get to sew is a good day, right?

One Down....

Posey Patch is in the washer to get all the marker lines out. I'm a big proponent of washing my quilts before I use them, show them in workshops or give them away. I got an email this week from my friend Paula Lidyoff about a nasty surprise she got when she washed a quilt. Her takeaway was: Always wash a quilt before you give it away so that any problems occur on YOUR watch! Bad situation, but good lesson. Sometimes we have to push through those teachable moments!

Next up: 

 

This must be Tiffany Hayes month! She did the applique on Posy Patch and designed Spooky Ride for Andover Fabrics using their Chillingsworth Spooky Ride fabrics. I bought the kit for this 70"x80" quilt at Bolts in the Bathtub (my local quilt store in Lancaster CA) and made it in a day or so at a retreat at Sierra Stars in Truckee CA.

Pinned it up with a scrappy pieced back and Winline wool batting.

Stitched in the ditch with Mettler's Transfil monofilament and now I'm ready to stitch around the characters, bats and other scary things in the panel squares. Here's my machine setup: Transfil as my top thread, Mettler 100% cotton, 50 wt silk finish thread in a yummy orange (#122) for the bobbin. Should get the outlining done today and then I can start on the spooky tree I want to stitch on the right hand side!

 

It's All About the Gadgets!

Seems like I'm always buying new tools to make things a little easier around the quilting rooms, especially this time of year when I know I'm going to be home more than usual during the summer. My teaching seasons are definitely spring and fall, but I often start working in early January and work until the second weekend of December, so don't get a long winter break. No spring break, but I'm generally done around Memorial Day and then have sporadic work until after Labor Day. So I guess you could say I have a similar schedule to public/private elementary/middle/high school teachers!

While I have all that great sewing time, I keep my eyes open for gadgets and I also get them in my subscription boxes, such as Sew Sampler, Quilty Box and Stash Builder Box, although SBB is more about the fabric than the things that go with it. I'll have to remember to do a post about my latest Stash Builder Box; I was delighted when I opened it!

This was my latest gadget acquisition; I had a bright green one right next to the sewing machine and wanted one for the other room. Bordeaux is a new color - I like wine - my house is decorated in a wine grape theme in bordeaux, gold and green - seemed like this would work in the "big" room. My big room has two 30 inch wide by 8 foot long tables, the Mettler thread fixtures, batting fixtures, some bookcases and my ironing board with a 6 foot long rectangular top.

Have to show off my Mettler fixtures again!

I know a lot of quilters like to have everything within reach so they can pin, sew and press without getting out of their chair. I like to get up a lot and walk from room to room; gets my steps in and I don't get achy all over from staying in one position for a long time. So I'll do a bunch of chain piecing, then take them to the big room to iron.

Once I get the blocks made, I do most of the row pinning on the tables and then take them into the smaller room where the sewing machine is to do the sewing. Then back to the big room to unpin and press. Same with the borders, so I thought it would be helpful to have a pin caddy both by the machine for the quick pin/unpin thing and on the tables for the more major efforts.

It's pretty and useful -- all good! I bought this at my local quilt store, but since it is made by Clover, it should be readily available in the bordeaux color, a bright green and at least two other colors that I've seen.

Now back to sewing!

Playing Around with a New Gadget

One of the new (to me, at least) items in the Sew Sampler box is the Press Perfect by Joan Hawley for Clover. I've been keeping a tool next to my machine called the Wooden Iron, a wooden cylinder with a slanted bottom for coaxing seams open and getting them flat. I usually used it for the diagonal seam when joining a binding -- I'm way too lazy to drag the whole quilt to an iron or bring the iron to it!

However, my little wooden iron tool seems to have disappeared, so looks like the Press Perfect arrived at the perfect time!

So of course I had to try it out on a 4 patch I just pieced:

Looks pretty good from the back...

And here's the front! I think this tool just earned its place in my quilting toolbox!

Have you ever used this? What is your favorite quick press item?

When I'm piecing a quilt, I normally press seams to one side, not open like my binding seams. So let's give Press Perfect a try:

What do you think?

Have You Tried Alphabitties?

We probably all agree that chain piecing is a fast and easy way to sew our pieces into units, units into blocks and blocks into quilt tops. But what if you lose track and sew the wrong pieces or blocks together? Then out comes the seam ripper!

I have been using a system involving fabric pieces stacked up on a cutting board. When it came to sewing rows together, I didn't chain piece. I would pick up two things, sew them together, then take them out of the machine, put them back where I got them and pick up the next two.

All that changed for the better when I was at my friend Linda Petrik's house and saw a stack similar to this:

I pounced on the stack! What are those? Linda said "They're Alphabitties and I got them from the Fat Quarter Shop!"

I always have two or three quilts in the piecing stage so I ordered three sets. Then I went to Target and bought a bunch of itsy bitsy binder clips.

I use the letters for the rows and the numbers for the blocks in a row. I can clip the numbers on my blocks and sashings for a complete row, gather them up and take them to the machine to sew -- and not get them mixed up!

As I finish the quilt assembly, I put them on my work table in order so I know I have a complete set ready for the next quilt.

I used the Alphabitties while piecing a quilt from the Rainbow Seeds line from Wilmington Prints. It made the whole thing faster and I only had to rip one little seam in the whole thing!

Love these!

Have You Tried This? The Original Thread Cutter!

We love this little goodie!!  It came in a Quilty Box and has become a necessary tool!! 

What do you use to make cutting go quickly??

Leaders? Enders? Am I Always the Last Quilter to Hear About This Stuff?

Warning: Tip to make piecing better that, while I hadn't heard of it, you probably already know all about it and have made your last 20 quilts this way!

When I was teaching at Calla Lily Quilts in Greensboro NC, I was happy to be able to stay with my friends Karen & Graham in Reidsville. Karen is an avid quilter, owned a quilt shop at one time, and knows just about everybody! So as I was leafing through some of her back issues of Quilt Moderne (yes, of course I subscribed -- those quilts are killer!!!), Karen asked me if I used the leaders-enders technique, to which I intelligently responded, "The What??"

Well, she explained, we've all been using leaders for the whole time we've been piecing our quilts -- those little scraps of fabric that we fold in half, feeding the creased edge into the presser foot to prevent thread barf at the very beginning of sewing. Straight edge = possible thread barf; folded edge = much less chance of said TB. I knew about the leader method and have been doing it practically forever. But now there seems to be a variation on that theme that results in a more productively piecing you -- and still no barf!

Goes like this: Basically you cut the pieces for two quilts, the one you are actually working on and another one that is fairly mindless, like sewing a bunch of squares together for something that turns out like this:

This is from a book called "Moda All-Stars - Lucky Charm Quilts". All of the quilts in the book are based on charm squares and the quilts are arranged by how many charm packs it takes to make them -- one, two or three. This was a three charm pack design, so I purchased three Kaffe Fassett charm packs and a coordinating solid from Calla Lily Quilts when I was there. It's just a bunch of little squares, so I should be able to get a good start on it using the leader-ender method, right? This is kind of a long name and spellcheck keeps trying to correct it, so I'm calling it the L-E method from now on!

So I started by cutting a charm pack into fourths, yielding 168 2-1/2" squares. Stacked them into piles on a cutting mat and took them to the machine.

First a pair of squares from my L-E quilt...

..then as many pieces of the "real" quilt, the one that I'm actually doing on purpose, as I need to run through before taking them out and going to the iron. In this case, 4. So I sewed the four, and then...

...another pair of squares from the L-E quilt. (Actually, I should call this the Dividend Quilt because you get a second finished quilt as a extra added bonus from working on the first!) Then I cut the others off, go to the ironing board, come back to the machine and that sewn square is just waiting patiently for me to start on my next group of pieces for the primary quilt.

The way I see it, I'm doing pretty much what I've always done, while getting another project done at the same time. If you used small projects for the L-E quilt, like table runners and baby quilts, I think you could get a bunch of bonus projects done.

Do you use this method? If not, do you think it's worth trying? I'm going to keep track and see how long it takes me to get the bonus quilt done this way.

The Best Pins for Piecing?

I sew over pins. There, I've said it! I know it freaks some people out and I have to be really careful when I teach my Borders & Bindings class to remember to take the pins out in my demonstrations so that my students don't wreck the beautiful machines that the stores have brought in for them to sew on. Because there is a technique to sewing over pins and they have to be the right pins.

For a long time, I used the finest flower head pins I could find, then I started using the blue and white headed fine pins (I think they are from Clover) and was happy with them. Then last year at Thanksgiving, I was sewing in Salt Lake City with my friends Rhonda Lopez and Josephine Keasler. Josephine is one of the very best piecers I know and she recommended the fine patchwork pins from Clover. She told me that she uses them all the time and tells all of her students that these are the very best!

We were sewing together for a couple of days, so she brought me two boxes on our second sewing day. I tried them and loved them! Here's a comparison between what I was using and these:

The pin on the left is the one I used to use and the one on the right is the fine patchwork pin. A bit shorter and quite a bit finer. My new quilting love! Thank you, Josephine!

So what is your favorite straight pin when you are piecing? And do you sew over pins?

Laying Out the Presents Quilt

Something I read somewhere a few years ago forever changed how I lay out my quilts. I still lay the blocks out, play with them, rearrange and turn them about until I like what I see:

Then I do the additional step of taking a picture using my phone's black and white filter so that the quilt is rendered in grey scale. This enables me to tell how the color values are relating to each other. Too many darks clustered together? Too many lights?

It seemed like there were a lot of light and medium blocks with just a few darks hanging out in groups. This surprised me as I felt that there were a lot more dark fabrics than lights until I took the B/W pic. So I rearranged some blocks and took another B/W:

This is how it looked in color:

I still want to mess around a little more before I sew them together. I really like the way the red bows stand out and there are four different pink prints for the other bows. The white block backgrounds were from an assorted white on white print jelly roll using a strip for each block. Of course I have to obsess over none of the bow prints or background prints being next to each other, but the black & white pics will help me make my final decision.

Have you ever used this technique? What other cool things do you do before you start sewing the blocks into rows?

Now You See It – Now You Don’t!

One of the first things I teach in my two day Fluff & Stuff machine quilting class is ditch quilting.  If done correctly, quilting right in that seam should give your piecing (or applique, if done right off the edge) dimension without the actual stitches showing.  Monofilament thread seems to be the best way to accomplish this so that the piecing may be accentuated without any imperfections showing up quite so much.  The brand I use is Transfil, a nylon monofilament from Amann-Mettler Group.  Mettler is known widely and deservedly for their various weights of cotton threads, but I think the Transfil should be discussed as an essential part of a machine quilter’s tool box.

When we think about how a quilt is constructed, as we are piecing we are most likely pressing the seam allowances to the darker fabric so that they don’t shadow through.  Because of this, most “ditches” appear on the lighter fabric.  That is the reason that I use about six spools of clear Transfil for every one spool of the smoke color.  A quilt has to be pretty dark for me to grab the darker shade of Transfil.

The two pictures below explain that best:

In the picture above, I’ve placed the clear Transfil across an area of a quilt that has both light and dark fabrics.  You can see the clear against the dark green but it just disappears into the lighter green fabric.  This would be the correct choice when I am quilting in the ditch on a lighter fabric.

This second picture shows the dark (smoke) color of Transfil on the same two fabrics.  The reverse effect occurs – you see it against the light fabric but it disappears on the dark.  That would be perfect if the pressing dictates that the dark fabric is to be stitched in the ditch.  All of those triangles were pressed away from the points and the dark fabric was the ditch fabric in this particular place on the quilt, so I used the dark Transfil here.

Another way I use it is when I do cross hatching, also known as diagonal grid, on a quilt and will be stitching over different fabrics as I go.  The picture below shows a variation of the diagonal grid; this is a partial grid in each individual block of the quilt.  I chose the clear Transfil because it blended best with the autumn colors in this quilt....

Another question I get a lot:  Can I iron over Transfil?  Sure can!  When I teach, I carry around a stitched sample that has had a hot iron held down on it for 3 minutes!  If you are using a different brand of monofilament, I would test it first, but I know that I don’t need to worry about Transfil if I need to iron over it – it’s not going to melt! 

I have made a couple of YouTube videos about Transfil – one shows how I use it in machine quilting and the other shows you how to wind a bobbin with it.  Enjoy and be sure to ask any questions you have about this!

Oh, and before I slip away from my desk – I have 20 spools of clear Transfil to give away!  Do you want some?  Like us on Facebook or sign up for our Newsletter and you'll be entered!  We'll draw the winners next week!!