How to Handle the Big Quilts a Little Easier!

A lot of quilters complain of fatigue and shoulder and neck pain when they sit down at their sewing machine to work on a quilt. Since I quilt for several hours every day, I have found that working in no more than 90 minute increments keeps me from having my chiropractor on retainer!

After a maximum of 90 minutes, I get up and stretch, walk around a little and generally loosen up. Then I’m ready to get back to work. Four or five 90 minute segments works well for me as a regular work schedule.

A lot of the difficulty quilters experience with large quilts is controlling the weight of the fabric, batting and pins! If your quilt is constantly falling off of your work surface, you are expending a lot of energy repeatedly lifting it back up to the table. After three years of struggling with this issue in my quilting business, I finally found a way to “trap” the quilt’s bulk on my table by putting my sewing table in a corner so that the left side and back of the table are both along a wall:

 

When I'm working on larger projects, I use the whole table positioned in a corner so that my quilt can bank up against the walls. This makes the weight of the quilt much more manageable...

 

For smaller quilts, I put some decorative storage boxes and the cover to my sewing machine on the table. This creates the barrier "closer in" so that the little quilts will bunch up and then will be easier to maneuver...

 
Once you have hoisted your heavy quilt to this table, it can’t fall off. The weight is supported by the table and all you have to worry about is the part that's in your lap!

Another problem with quilting large quilts is that gravity always seems to be pulling your quilt down. If you keep the quilt fluffed up as you feed it through your machine, you will not get the loss of control and the little bitty stitches caused when your quilt is “hung up” on your machine table or on a corner of the platform that fits on your machine (if you are not working on a flush surface).  I pull the quilt up from my lap, pile it on my chest and then sew down from there rather than trying to pull the quilt directly from my lap to the machine. Try it - your stitches will be more even.

See more tips and tricks on my website!

It's Dream Day 2016 and I Finished the Ruler Project

I have this cool app on my iPhone that tells me all the weird, wacky and obscure holidays for each day of the year. For instance, today is: Middle Name Pride Day, Plumbing Day, Johnny Appleseed day and Dream 2016 Day. Of all of those choices, Dream Day seems like the best -- so think about the absolute best outcome for whatever your brain is dwelling on these days, break it down into baby steps, and let's do it!

A beautiful sunrise like this morning's is so inspirational -- must have pink fabric around here somewhere, right?

Got the binding on the ruler class project -- this will remind me to never ever ever bind dark fabric with the same fabric. Practically went blind trying to do all the hand stitching, so when I make this again for the trunk show that Sew Steady is putting together I will definitely use a print in the thread colors rather than the dark blue again.
A very nice and educational thing about doing the binding was that I used Wonder Clips instead of hair clips (they were sold as quilt clips, but still, they're the same darn thing) and loved them. Carol and Shelley had given our whole group a bunch of them on a card (I think there's maybe a dozen or so) to use in a project they were teaching us. When Missouri Star Quilt Company had a sale on a box of 50 PINK ones, I grabbed them right away. Now I find that they will be my new favorite thing for binding!
I loved working with the rulers, so want to make some other things using them to do the quilting. Possibilities are running all around in my brain, so on Dream Day 2016, that's what I'll be thinking about!

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Golden Chicken & Orzo (sort of) Soup

For the past few months, I've subscribed to the Make It Tonight Easy Dinner Download from Fine Cooking. Once a week, they send out an email with 5 dinner recipes labeled Monday through Friday, along with shopping lists and recipes. What I especially like about the shopping lists is that they are coded for each day so that you don't have to wade through a great big long list and eliminate the ingredients for the dishes you aren't going to make that week. I usually make two or three of them per week when I'm in town and there are always great ideas for when I just don't know what I'm hungry for.

The download is in pretty color, but I always print it on my office computer, which is just a black and white.
It would have taken me less time to make, within the 30 minutes that most of the recipes take, except for two things: No rotisserie chicken on hand, so I poached two largish chicken breasts in chicken broth. Didn't want orzo so fired up rice in the rice cooker, which normally takes about an hour. Used 2 cups American jasmine rice to 3 cups water and a bit of sea salt.

While the chicken poached (even though they were large, it only took about 20 minutes), I minced up some celery and onions. Since I took a knife skills class at Sur la Table, that goes a lot faster than it used to!

A couple of tablespoons of olive oil went into the pot first -- my in-laws brought this back from a trip to Italy and I never get tired of looking at it.

After preheating the olive oil, the chopped celery and onions went into the pot, along with saffron and thyme. Sautéed that for a few minutes and then added the broth (I measured what was left in the skillet from poaching the chicken and then added more to make up the 8 cups called for) and brought it to a simmer.

The chicken went in next and the pot simmered until the music went off, signaling the rice cooker was done. Fluffed up the rice and added a cup of frozen corn to the soup pot along with fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper.

To serve, a scoop of rice went into each soup bowl and then the soup was ladled over it -- yum! Our weather has still been pretty chilly, so it's nice to have a hot bowl of soup to sit down to!

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Happy International Women's Day!

Browsing my blogs on my Bloglovin feed, I saw this one from Lauren Conrad that informed us all that today is International Women’s Day – did you know that?  I sure didn’t, but it seems like an excellent reason to have a nice glass of champagne and maybe cake! Lauren Conrad had a lovely post about women today... read it here!

Start Machine Quilting... with Paula Reid

I've been promoting my favorite Craftsy Classes for the last week because Craftsy is doing a big giveaway to a craft-focused charity later this month!

Today I am featuring MY Craftsy Class!!!!!!!!  It seems like forever ago that I was in Denver recording my class.  Craftsy made it so much fun and I have wonderful memories from my time spent with them.

So... This is the description for my Craftsy Class and if you purchase through this link, you'll get 50% off (plus you'll be entered into the drawing!).

"Finish all your quilt projects with confidence alongside prolific instructor Paula Reid. Choose the perfect batting, needles, thread and machine feet for every project. Layer and pin baste your backing, batting and quilt top for pucker-free quilting. Adjust your tension and stitch length for stitches that look and act just the way you want. Straight stitch quilts so that your layers remain securely fastened through multiple washings, and your starts and stops are virtually invisible. Master Paula's "fluff and stuff" method to easily move any size quilt through your machine. Select, mark and free-motion quilt the perfect designs for your quilt. Plus, gain the confidence to freehand quilt gorgeous hearts, flowers and leaves with no marking. Turn your pieced tops into quilts you love!"

Playing with Rulers!

When I was at Quilt Market in Houston last fall, I was intrigued with the Sew Steady booth further down the aisle from us. I've worked with Sew Steady before in promoting acrylic tables that support quilts so much better than the small trays that come with a lot of machines. The newest thing Sew Steady is doing in the world of acrylics is cutting rulers that can be used by longarmers, midarmers and now us, the domestic machine user who wants to free motion quilt various designs without marking.
I purchased the required free motion foot for my machine and the Sampler Template Set 1 and started to play with them with the end game being to stitch a sample and begin teaching classes. I've finished the ruler work on the sample and am ready to bind it -- I'll show you that when it's completely finished.

Meanwhile, here is a peek at some of my practice pieces. I had a whole bolt of this beautiful blue fabric, so whacked some off, grabbed some wool batting and 40 wt. Mettler PolySheen thread and started stitching using the rulers as my guide.

It's a rainy cloudy day here in Southern California, but all of a sudden the sun came out and totally transformed the fabric color on the top photo -- doesn't even look like the same fabric!
So what do you think of the designs that I did with the ruler set? Doesn't this look like a lot of fun?

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Wild Quilting

Wild Quilting by Christina Cameli.

A - MA - ZING !

Christina makes this such a fun class, the techniques you'll learn are incredible, and the projects you'll make after taking this class will be absolutely stunning!

Check it out at my affiliate link HERE!   (p.s. It's on sale!)

Visit Christina's website for more of her fun style!

Artisan Bread in Minutes

My fabulous assistant Monica and I got to go to the Craftsy Instructor Summit in Denver the end of January.  We were able to hear many excellent speakers talk with us about promoting our classes, our brands, etc.  I learned a lot, but Monica is a total computer chick, so she got so way more out of it than I did – made her even more knowledgeable about all the social media stuff.

I, on the other hand, listened to what made sense to me and kind of zoned out when they got technical.  But another awesome part about being there was that I got to meet a lot of the other Craftsy instructors and network with them.  I even got to meet my bread baking idol, Zoe Francois!  I have to admit, although I’m not ashamed of it, that I was a total FAN GIRL when I met her, complete with posing for pictures.  I don’t think I jumped up and down and squealed when I saw her, but I can’t say for sure that I didn’t, either.  ;)

I’ve been baking bread out of Zoe’s book, “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” ever since it was published several years ago.  (See the pics of my bread in this post!)  It’s the only way I ever bake bread now, so my bread machine has been sitting in the pantry for a very long time.  When I saw a few months ago that Zoe was teaching her methods on Craftsy, I immediately grabbed the class and couldn’t wait one second to watch it.  The main reason was that, even though I had been baking out of the book, there is nothing like watching Zoe actually do the techniques and listening to the instructions as she does it.  It was amazing and I would definitely recommend this class!

Plus Craftsy is hosting a big giveaway..... Today through March 13, use this link to shop for ANY Craftsy class and you'll be automatically entered to win $1,000 for the craft-focused charity of your choice!  (Be sure to use the link because that's how you'll be entered to win!)

At  the end of the month, Craftsy will select one lucky winner at random and notify them that they've won!  The winner will then choose a craft-focused charity to receive the $1,000 prize.  It's an easy, fun, and impactful way to make a difference!

P.S.:  Even though I was sort of giddy around Zoe, she was very nice and gracious.  Definitely my all around baking hero!


Visit Zoe's website HERE.  


Click HERE to check out Zoe's class!

Wandering Stitches, Orlando FL

For the last three Quilt Markets, Mettler has been running a promotion for the stores who carry Mettler thread. They enter a drawing and the winner gets me! We agree on dates and then I go to the store and teach my two day Fluff & Stuff class and Mettler covers my fee, travel expenses, door prizes and thread gifts for every student. The store usually provides lunches, more door prizes -- in other words, this is a whole lot of fun for the people who get to go!

Wandering Stitches won the fall Quilt Market promotion and I went there last week. The store is located in an industrial complex just a few miles north of the Orlando airport and is owned by Lisa and Steve Mullins. Lisa started as a longarm quilter and there are four longarm machines in the store, which is huge! There are 6500 square feet of fabric and machines -- Wandering Stitches is also a BERNINA dealer and I got to do one of my free motion demos on the new sit down longarm, the Q-20! Fun!!!

Ooops! Got a little distracted there -- polka dots!! Pre-cuts!!

There are a kazillion samples on the walls and I took a lot of quilt pictures. The one on the right is from a book that they had sold out of -- does anyone know what book this is in? I love the modern vibe (which reminds me that I still need to post my QuiltCon pics) and, yes, I know I could figure out the design but I definitely believe in paying for another person's vision and hard work. So if you recognize the quilt and know the book name, could you please leave a comment?

Quilt samples for upcoming classes. There are two classrooms here; I was in the larger of the two and everyone had plenty of room to spread out. While I was teaching in one classroom, there were BERNINA serger classes going on in the other. A lot going on in this store!

This little wall quilt intrigued me because it was using the decorative stitches on the machine to create the striped fabric. I know my machine has probably 500+ stitches and I use 3 -- well, maybe 4 as I like a couple of different stitches for applique.....

Could not resist taking pictures of some of the Mettler thread fixtures in the store. First of all, I've never seen so much Mettler thread in one place outside of a trade show! They have everything! Secondly, when Lisa ordered the fixtures she asked if they could make them in black rather than the normal white wood that they come in. I love the way the black fixtures make the thread colors pop!
As for the bottom photo, this is the fixture that I have been drooling over -- all the 50 wt. colors in one place and displayed so conveniently. I do have a fixture, but it's older and showing signs of wear; I really have to start saving my quarters and $1s and $5s and get this puppy!

This is my class on the second day, taking a quick break to thank Mettler for this event!
If you are in the Orlando area, Wandering Stitches is definitely worth a side trip. It is so close to the airport that even if you have about a 2-3 hour layover, you could Uber on over there! Store is located at 5818 Hoffner Avenue, Suite 905 in Orlando (phone: 407-658-4044). When you enter the complex, you turn left and then proceed to a T, then turn right. So it's toward the back of the complex on the left hand side. And -- yes -- a box is following me home....

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