The end of August, all of September and the first part of October have vanished in a flash. I know why. Nolan has been playing soccer after school and Jesse has been managing the team. They have had a lot of games, and every time there was a game or a Sunday practice they took my car. (No they don’t get their own car yet.) At the same time Guy was wrapping up the end of the government fiscal year in his contracts job. (I remember the feeling well.) All of this meant I was without normal transportation, and Guy didn’t want to wait around to go to work. Which meant he dropped me off as early as he possibly could no matter what time I started work. This severely limited my time at home and thus time to post here. I did manage to do a fair amount of handwork during this period.
Sometime amid this frantic paced life, I finished my Friendship Garden quilt. The whole quilt from start to finished has been discussed here at some point.
I get to mark another off my list.
– Only one more game until soccer season is finished, and my life can get back to whatever qualifies as normal.
The binding from yesterday wasn’t on a sample sandwich, it was a real quilt. I put this quilt on my A-1 over Christmas break and when my neck went it sat for months! Eventually I had a customer quilt I needed to do and finished this one to free up the machine. Almost five years ago our quilt group exchanged autumn colored 2.5 inch strips. I added a few more of my own. The directions for this quilt came from Debbie Caffrey’s Open a Can of Worms and is the Cobblestones pattern. I added 1″ sashing around the pieced strips and cornerstones to the border. Debbie’s book Open a Can of worms which uses 2-1/2 inch strips throughout was around long before I ever laid eyes on a Jelly Roll or a Bali Pop, but it has great patterns that will work with those products. Open Another Can of Worms also uses 2-1/2 inch strips.
For the quilting I did continuous curves in all the pieced squares and freehand feathers in the fabric strips between the pieced strips and in the borders. I did use a feather stencil to get an even spine, but the feather plumes are freehand.
I’m not terribly fond of browns and oranges, but once I added a lot of green, this quilt became more pleasing to me.
The completion of this quilt takes another one off my UFO list!
It would indeed be a good thing if it would snow outside! We are well into December and not a decent snow fall yet. I know there are parts of the country that would be happy to pass along some of their accumulation, but sadly it doesn’t work that way. Don’t get me wrong, it has been a relief to not worry about the roads while the boys commute over 60 miles each way to school, but fire danger in December is just not right. Since I have no control over the snow outside, it is time to move it inside!
After 10 years, I have finished my “Let It Snow” quilt!!!!
The pattern is a BOM pattern from The Stitch Connection called “Snowman Collector”. I made the blocks as a block of the month program in 2000. I put the top together sometime over the next two years. After that the quilt languished in my UFO pile waiting for me to get a chance to quilt it. I finally loaded the quilt on my machine in October and then had to unzip it to do customer quilts. (I don’t usually take a quilt off once I have loaded it and I think I got some distortion (even though I had stabilized the whole thing), because I did take it off the machine. The original pattern said “Snowman Collector,” but I changed that and added the mittens.
Here are some close-ups of a few of my favorite blocks.
I was in my NO handwork faze during the making of this quilt so everything, but stitching on a few of the buttons, was done on a sewing machine. The gold border has the first two verses of the song “Let It Snow” quilted into it. Looking at these pictures, it appears I may not be completely finished. I might go back and add some more buttons as I get around to it. However, it is done enough to cross off the UFO list!
I think I’m in a pastel phase! I keep pulling out projects that are soft and sweet. Today I finished my French Cottage Garden Quilt the pattern is from Crabapple Hill Studio. I bought the pattern while on the Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop in 2007. I started the embroidery in February of 2008. I had figured out how I wanted to quilt it while working on it, but just hadn’t had the time. I added one extra column of pin wheels because I had that many extra made and in this house “bigger is better.”
The “lattice” was marked from a double crosshatch stencil. The feathers are freehand and the rest of the quilting is ruler work.
This quilt got me excited about hand embroidery again and I’ve been at it ever since. (Another UFO to mark off yeah!)
In a continued push on my own quilts, I decided to try out the Quilt Eze Baptist Fan templates I purchased two years ago at MQS. The quilt is Warm Wishes from Quiltmaker (follow the link for the pattern – now free).
The first thing I learned is that installing the stylus bracket as directed by Quilt Eze on my A-1 resulted in a stylus that was at a significant angle, not even close to 90 degrees. My solution, install the bracket upside down.
The next thing I learned is that while the panels hook together the grooves do not match up perfectly. I found it necessary to lift the stylus over the join at each connection.
The third thing I learned is that it is impossible to line the rows up exactly with a ratchet system on a longarm. I ended up with either a slight gap or overlap no matter how carefully I adjusted the rollers. I prefer the slight gap.
I’ve done Baptist Fan quilting using other methods. A system for making arcs and circles came with my Gammill almost 11 years ago. The first times I used it there was only one slider, and it had to be adjusted for each arc on the fan. My dad kindly made more sliders for me so I could set up the whole fan at one time.
Those of you with newer Gammills probably won’t recognize this system. Even with the modifications it could still take days to quilt fans on a large quilt.
The most significant thing I learned on this quilt is even with all the minor issues with the Quilt Eze system it was still many times faster than any other method I’ve tried. Is it perfect? No. But if you used the “ride by on a horse at 30 miles and hour” rule the quilt looks good. In fact, I think just climbing up on the horse would get you far enough away to make the inconsistencies acceptable. I will offer this to customers with the understanding it will not be perfect, but it will be significantly less expensive than what I’ve charged with other systems.
Yes, it must be amazing or shocking! I’ve finished a second quilt that will fit my bed less than one month after the first. I purchased the focus fabric for this quilt when I was in Oregon in 2005. It was 40 or 50 percent off and I bought the rest of the bolt. The remaining fabric was purchased when Ruth’s Stitchery was having a sale. I finished the bolt for the background fabric and the backing fabric so it was 50% off. The dark blue bands was regularly priced fabric, but purchased during Ruth’s sale that year so it was 22% off. I think I did pretty well for a King sized quilt. The pattern is BQ from Maple Island Quilts. I actually sewed the top together in 2006 in one day. I had to slow down slightly since my focus fabric was directional. It has just been waiting for quilting. I finally slipped it on the machine this summer. I quilted it with a the panto “Cascade.” I used wool batting and to take advantage of the wool properties I wanted a fairly open design. I also feel like the piecing is bold in this quilt and I didn’t want to distract with busy quilting.
OK, what you are really here for — the pictures. Here is the full quilt
The end of next month marks ten years since my first long arm quilting machine was delivered. Just today I FINALLY finished a quilt for my bed!!!! After hundreds of customer quilts I have a quilt. I finished the top in June and discussed my color choices in this post. Then in July I mentioned I had snuck one of my own quilts on the machine in this post. This morning I finally finished the binding. So the finished pictures.
Simple Gifts 2006 -2009
The whole quilt view
Quilting Detail
I started the quilt early in 2006 and finished it today. So about 3.75 years in the making. The quilting is Meandering Magic from Suzanne’s books, but done with stressless feathers. This gets marked of the UFO list — YEAH!
I put this little quilt on the machine the afternoon I finished the red Winter Wonderland quilt. I told myself I could finish the quilting that afternoon. I could have if thunderstorms hadn’t rolled in. I finished the last stitches on the hanging sleeve today.
I did the center portion in a class with Cheryl Phillips in 2004. She is a great teacher. I wish I could spend a few hours in her brain just to see how she comes up with the ideas for constructing quilts. This mariner’s compass is from her WedgeWorks II book. It is three dimensional. I noticed in the book most of the edges were stitched down. I wanted it to be obvious the block was dimensional so I didn’t stitch the edges down. I also put the flanges in the border. I wanted to have piped binding, but I didn’t have enough fabric left. Five years later is too late to get the same fabric.
Now over to my sidebar to mark it off the UFO list.
Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do
Snappin’ her fingers and a shufflin her feet singin’
Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do
She looked good, She looked fine
Oh, sorry — now will you have that song stuck in your head? Quilt Diva is finished and she looks good, she looks fine — I quilted one of these for a customer and Guy told me I needed one. I was collecting fabric for it in 2005, the first time I went on the Western Washington Shop Hop. So 4 years later she seems to have aged appropriately and I can mark her off my UFO list.
This is the latest UFO to be completely finished! I saw the pattern and a sample for this table runner in 2003 on my one and only (so far) trip to the Houston Quilt Festival. The pattern was designed by Prairie’s Edge Patchworks. I made the top early in 2004. I know, because I managed to get the same fabric for the background as shown in the pattern. It is perfect for the Northern Lights and I don’t think it can be found at this time. The top went together in short order, but then it languished because I just didn’t get around to stitching around that raw edge applique. It finally came to the top of the list because I wanted a finished sample of this type of applique for the presentation I’m doing at the beginning of next month. With that in mind a short tutorial follows. Please note the applique pieces are not the same as the ones in this table runner. I started another project that had been waiting for years to show the process. There will be some things that were not covered in my previous tutorial, but I also won’t go into some of the details I did in that post.
1. Trace the applique pieces on to the paper side of your preferred fusible web. (Be sure they are reversed from the end product.) You might notice I’ve traced trees into the center of other applique pieces. When a piece is large, I like to cut away the center of the fusible web to reduce stiffness. I’m cheap so I trace smaller pieces into the places I plan to cut away.
2. Rough cut the pieces from the fusible web. Notice the holes in the centers of the large pieces.
3. Following the manufacturer’s directions on the fusible web, fuse the pieces to the back side of the applique fabric.
4. Cut out the applique pieces on the drawn line.
5. An applique Pressing Sheet can be one of your best friends for fusible applique. I’ve had this sheet for around 14 years and am still using it. If you don’t have one and work with fusible web, you NEED one! It is placed over the pattern.
6. The applique pieces are then fused to the sheet. (This is for pieces that overlap.) After fusing to the sheet, allow to cool. Then peel the pieces off the sheet.
7. Now all these little pieces are one big unit when they are placed on the background fabric. Lay out your final placement and fuse in place to the background.
Unfortunately, at this point many of the people for whom I quilt quit. However, the pieces should be stitched down — usually with monofilament thread. I can almost guarantee when I get a McKenna Ryan quilt where the applique hasn’t been stitched down, the pieces are already starting to come off the background. Which means I end up quilting them down. I charge more than double my going rate when I have to do this. It really isn’t that difficult to stitch the pieces down and with the help of my 13 year old camera man, I made a short video showing the process.
I get to mark another off my list.
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