Mom came out of her class at 12:30 yesterday talking about a couple of rulers Kimmy was recommending in class. We went back up to Rob’s Rulers booth and I did end up buying something else. The “Large Curved CrossHatch” which is a new ruler (we bought two of the last three in the booth) and “Carol Thelen’s Nested Leaves” which has been around for several years. They demoed in the booth how to use the curved crosshatch ruler to stitch the spine for feathers. I can see many uses for that ruler.
Because of that last stop at a booth we didn’t leave the convention center until 1:00 pm. We got home just before 9:30 pm. It was good to be back in my own bed. I just don’t sleep well in hotels. It was back into the groove this morning. Off to church and leading Juniors’ (10-12 year olds) Sabbath school. I was happy to have leftover spaghetti sauce frozen from the dinner theater a week ago so I had something for lunch without a lot of prep work.
Tonight while watching “Evan Almighty,” which was checked out from the library, I finished marking my quilt top from the class with Irena Bluhm just before midnight.
OK there are a bunch of run on sentences in this post, but I’m finished.
My in-laws gave me money for my birthday (Thanks again Sandra & Glen). For me that is usually the best type of gift. I have pretty much used up their gift. There were a couple of things I ordered through the mail.
I got a 20-1/2″ Omnigrid square. It is going to be perfect for squaring up my Prairie Flower applique blocks. I also ordered the Omnigrid Fold Away. This one is the largest size. It is both an ironing surface and a cutting mat as shown in the picture below.
Next I took advantage of my birthday discount at Ruth’s Stitchery. If you have made purchases there throughout the year, you receive 1/2 your age as a discount the week of your birthday. I really didn’t have a long list, but picked up a few things.
I purchased these blue and white batiks thinking I would use them for the pieced blocks in my Walking in A Winter Wonderland quilt. I’m not sure they will actually work, but I’m happy to have them anyway. Blue is my favorite color. I also picked up both sizes of Circleeze templates. I’ve cut my own circle templates for applique from heat resistant template plastic in the past, but decided it would be nice to have perfect circles ready to go. I read a great tutorial on these at Blue Moon River. This is the same way I’ve prepared circles for applique in the past, just no making templates — as long as the correct sized circle is in one of these sets.
This is another batch of batiks I bought. These are going to be used as the background for a Chicken Buffet quilt.
This picture shows the fabric I picked up for the chicken bodies and for the wings. I included a picture of the book. I am a vegetarian (the book includes recipes), but this book tickled my fancy. I am going to use it for a digitized block of the month in Software club. For those of you worried about copyright, yes, each student has to buy their own copy of the book.
I originally started digitizing snowmen from Possibilities Snow Buddies Thoughout the Year. I began that effort just for myself, but my students really liked the blocks. Unfortunately, the book is out of print. I contacted Possibilities to see if we could pay them some sort of fee for each student to use the images. It took forever for them to answer, and when they did it didn’t really address my question. They said something like you may digitize the images for your personal use, but you may not give them to the students. That wasn’t what I asked. They did say they were looking at a way to republish the book that didn’t require storing them. I’m thinking that might mean CDs, but I haven’t seen anything since I sent my request more than a year ago. Just for fun here are the three snowmen I have stitched out. I have three more digitized and just need to find the time to stitch them. Click on the picture to see all the way to the edge.
The book calls for every little detail , right down to the buttons and shoe laces, to be appliqued. That is why I decided to digitize them. I could get the detail without having to deal with all those itty bitty pieces of fabric. I’m really happy with how these have come out. All of these are my first stitchout. I’m hoping we can have as much fun with the chickens.
I had a great time at our Quilters Anonymous meeting yesterday. Two other members — Lisa and Ann — are also students in Heather’s “Language of Color and Design” class. They shamed me by having their tops almost finished yesterday for our February class. All I had managed by yesterday morning was to cut out the front and back of my vest. Their progress was a huge motivator for me. I came home yesterday afternoon and applied myself to this project. I mentioned my plans for this month in my January 25 post. My plan was to be a little lazy this month. This was only a vest I should be able to finish it in a day.
I have been sewing since I was 4 and following patterns since I was 10, so I expected this to be a cake walk. The pattern included directions for a bookmark to familiarize oneself with the method. I know how to follow directions so I can skip that. WRONG! I had sort of an idea in my head about how this technique was going to work, but the directions weren’t matching up with my preconceived notion and therefore weren’t making sense. So I grabbed some scraps and put together the bookmark. Notice it isn’t finished — can I add it to my UFO list?
So now I understand the technique — onward and upward! This vest pattern requires some serious marking and after talking about a transfer wheel in my Sunday post, I can’t find it or the transfer paper. How long has it been since I’ve sewn garments, anyway? Snips, pins and chalk-0-liner to the rescue and the vest is marked. Then I need to cut strips of fusible web and iron on stabilizer. Good thing I keep a bolt of each on hand. The stabilizer then needs the cutting pattern for the folded portions of the vest traced. Finally, I’m ready to start cutting and folding. I finished that last night.
Couched threads or cords were supposed to be used to hold all those folds and points down. Fortunately, I had some Madeira Glamour (which I can’t find on their website — has it been discontinued?) and Superior Razzle Dazzle threads in the correct colors. I also had one 10 yard package of Boucle which ended up being just enough. All this didn’t fit through the cording foot so I ended up using my Pfaff’s applique foot and it did the job.
Looking at the pattern, I hadn’t realized all the folded pieces were raw edge. The pattern design recommended using Fray Check on all those raw edges. I gave up Fray Check in favor of Fray Block years ago. I’ve found that the Fray Block dries softer and clearer. The draw back last night — I was using so much of it I thought I was going to get high.
When I looked at the pattern there were strips of fabric between the folded sections which I thought were just decorative. They weren’t. They were to cover where the backing fabric were stitched behind the folded windows. I have a nice stash of Batiks so I dug out some blues which help carry the Analogous theme more strongly. I cut the strips out and stitched them then pressed them over bias bars and that was as far as I made it last night.
Fast forward to this morning and I’m ready to add those strips to the vest. The pattern says to baste them, but I don’t want to for a couple of reasons. One reason is it will leave needle holes in the batik and the other is I find it difficult to get long strips straight when basting on the machine. I remembered Sharon Schamber’s video on applying binding using Elmer’s Washable School Glue.
I wasn’t applying binding, but the same concept should work. Besides I bought the pen tip tops for the glue bottles from her at MQS two years ago and hadn’t used them yet. It worked like a charm. A thin strip of glue and then press it with an iron. It held beautifully and was straighter than I ever would have gotten it with basting. I couched cord on top of those strips, then spent way too much time pulling the tails through to the back and tying knots. (While I was doing that, I kept the computer humming downloading digital scrapbooking elements. “Whenever possible multi-task,” seems to be my motto.)
This pattern had darts and I left them where the pattern placed them. It turns out that was a mistake. Apparently, the pattern was drafted for someone younger and perkier than I. Once the darts were in it was time to line the vest. I hadn’t cut out a lining yet so went scrounging for something that would work. I found lining fabric that I apparently purchased for something many years ago. What was it’s intended purpose? Who knows, but I might as well use it. It’s been a long time since I worked with slinky fabrics, but I prevailed.
The vest is finished except the hand sewing the side seams of the lining. I’ll do that while I’m watching a movie sometime in the near future. Here’s how it looks front and back. It isn’t as crooked as it looks in the picture. I was having a hard time getting it to hang and look right.
Now to my title. This is a quote from the back of the pattern, “This pattern may look complicated, but I promise it is NOT. You won’t believe how easy it is . . .” In my mind easy means fast. (Colored emphasis supplied by me.) In this instance that just wasn’t a correct assumption. In the designers defence — she didn’t say it was fast, she said it was easy. I will admit it was easy enough once I did the bookmark to learn the technique. At least the color assignment for this month is pretty much finished and I can get back to customer quilts.
While working with the blocks I posted about yesterday, it registered with my brain they were done before rotary cutters. It’s not that those blocks are particularly crooked, but they also aren’t perfectly straight. The blocks also remind me of my Grandma who made many quilts. In fact the children in that family of 11 helped to quilt the quilts — they needed them for warmth. My dad says hand quilting is easy. Apparently he has done it, although I’ve never seen him. I don’t think my Grandma ever used a rotary cutter. I can’t image working on quilts without one.
Since I knew I made those blocks before I had ever laid eyes on a rotary cutter, I wondered when they first were introduced. I did a search on the Internet and found that Olfa introduced the first 45mm rotary cutter in 1979. (They introduced the first snap off blade in 1956.) I didn’t meet my first rotary cutter until a few years later.
I earned my BS in Interiors and Apparel Marketing & Management at Walla Walla College (now Walla Walla University) in 1987. My classes for my major included sewing, clothing design, tailoring, textiles, weaving and interior design classes from the Home Ec. Dept. (Walla Walla closed the Home Ec. Dept. in 1990 or 1991), accounting, management and marketing classes from the Business Dept., Architectural Drawing from the Industrial Technology Dept., and Art History, drawing and design classes from the Art Dept. Basically lots of classes that interested me without having to take cooking classes for a Home Ec. degree. While this program is no longer available at Walla Walla it is still out there. When the Home Ec. Dept. closed, the chair of the department, Merlene Olmsted, took a position with Eastern New Mexico University. She continues to work there and offer a similar program.
The first time I saw a rotary cutter was in a lab for either clothing design or tailoring. It was NOT introduced by the instructor. The lab was supplied with sewing machines and there was a drawer full of sewing tools. We were near the end of our projects for the quarter. Jan, a classmate, was looking through the tool drawer for one of those tracing wheels to transfer marks onto a garment. She found the rotary cutter and assumed it was the same thing. (Other than size, they do look similar.) She laid everything out, opened the rotary cutter and started to “mark” the hem on her skirt. Needless to say there was a long cut at exactly the level where she had intended to fold the hem up. I can’t remember if she ended up in tears, but if not she was close. The solution was a shorter skirt than she had originally planned. If you are familiar with the tracing wheel you know it isn’t sharp at all, it was fortunate that only the skirt was cut.
I believe I purchased my first rotary cutter during the year I worked at So Fro Fabrics, right after we were married (over 20 years ago). It was a brown Dritz rotary cutter and it is still around here somewhere. I now own several rotary cutters at least one in each size. My personal favorite for most applications is the 60mm.
Do you remember when you first met a rotary cutter?
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