One for the Wall - Design Wall Monday

Finally, I've started on my new project. This weekend, I got back into the groove of creating and managed to get a good bit of wallhanging for my family room done.  You can see the design process for this project here.  With the four designs sketched out - I decided on the second one - since I wanted it to be a bit busy but not too busy.  The last two designs seemed like there weren't enough quiet spaces for the eye to rest.  The first was too patterned.  I guess the second was my Goldilocks design (grin).

With that decision out of the way, I went up into my fabric loft to pull out some prints.  I wanted to use a good mixture of commercial, batik and hand dyeds so the whole think had an eclectic feel to it.  Also, I wanted to stick to the warm fall tones found in the room.  Here are my choices . . . .

T

 With the design all picked out - the quilt is really easy to make and coming along nicely.  I'm using freezer paper templates to make the circles (gathering the edges around underneath) and the leaves are rough edge appliqued.(with a little zig-zag stitch on the edge).  I really like how its coming and I think it will fit in the room nicely.  I'm wondering though, if I'll keep to my original idea to make twin pieces for either side of my door - hmmmmmmm we'll see!

See more great design walls at Judy's patchworks!

Decisions. . . Decisions. . . .

Well with everything that's been going on here - basically life - I haven't had time to get into my sewing hole.  Still, that doesn't mean that I haven't been thinking about what I want to create next!  Where ever I went this month, I brought my sketch pad and worked on the design samples for my new project.  You see, I have these two walls in my family room that are in drastic need of a make-over.  They have these god-awful prints on them now that truly need to be pitched donated.  With that said - now I'm left with the decision of what to fill them with.  I thought for once, I might want to put up my own art.

 My family room is big with a nice high ceiling and warm wooden floor.  Its filled with over stuff couches and my husband's shaker/mission style furniture.  The wall color is this warm terra cota which I love since the room is so big and there a ton of wood every where.  After much thought, I decided to try to make something decorative - for a change LOL - with organic lines.  But what??????

So out came the sketch book and I started getting ideas together.  At first I started simple - but as you can see - soon the designs got more and more complicated!  Which one do you think I picked???

Quilting Around Chautauqua Institute - A Review

So this weekend, I finally took the time to go to Quilting Around Chautauqua.  This was its seventh year and I've never managed to get there since Septembers are so busy here.   Still once I saw that Jinny Beyer was going to give the lecture, I promptly bought a ticket.  To say that this is just a local show would be a gross understatement.  This is a whole weekend of all things traditional quilt.  Ladies come from all over - including Canada to partake in the festivities.  There are wonderful accomodations, classes, a 800 quilt quilt show and over 65 vendors.  So what's not to love???

Well I did LOVE Jinny's lecture.  She talked on color confidence and even though I nor my friend Kristen didn't learn a thing we both absolutely found it entertaining.  She's great at talking in public and I felt like it was very personal although the 500 seat auditorium was sold out.  Her lecture was interactive and she explained how she chooses color plus showed some her  quilts and slides.  I would highly recommend seeing her if you get the chance!

I also got to hear a quick hour talk on sewing needles by the marketing director from Schmetz.  Am I the only one that didn't get what all those numbers meant on my needle packages???  Well now I do.  In fact, I can safely say that I know  more about sewing needles now than I ever need too (grin)!  Still, I wasn't bored and she handed out these super handy ABC books that showed what all the needles were and what they were suppose to be used for and on.  VERY useful.  Oh. . . and free!!  One thing I learned though, there is no tried and hard rule on when to change a needle - the answer is always  -
"it depends. . . "!

Now those are the things I liked.  What I didn't care for was the show itself.  It was VERY spread out.  Even though the grounds are lovely, it was blocks and blocks of walking all day.  They did have shuttles running but the grounds were over run with quilters and there were long lines for those.  Lunch wasn't well thought out either.  When we went over to the cafe  - we found it was smack dab in with a bunch of vendors and had an longgggggg line.  Our food - although cheap enough was cold and we ate outside since there was no indoor seating. 

I found the different buildings hard to find even though I'm usually good with a map.   The institute, for those who don't know, is a Victorian village inside its walls.  The streets are at different angles as the village grew and can get confusing.  Its gorgeous there though!  Still I didn't like wandering around looking for things.

For all that was spread out, once you got in the buildings, the show was packed in VERY tightly.  It was wall to wall vendors and quilters.  No room to look - I felt closed in.   You couldn't slowly enjoy and browse since it was such a frenzy. The quilts themselves were mostly hung nicely since they were hung by individual guilds.

One of the main reasons we went to the show, was to see the result of the Jinny Beyer Challenge.  35 of the 50 kits were handed back in and OMG they were amazing.  The work the ladies did was just spectacular.  I can pretty much say they were the most interesting thing we saw all day.  That said, the challenge was displayed in the main hotel, off a side entrance hall.  They were on folding racks  - smooshed together - some overlapping - displayed from way high - 8 ft - to toe level.  Mine was toe level - hung crooked and another quilt over lapped.  You couldn't stand and look at all of them since people were coming in and out trying to get to all the vendors.





So, as you can tell this will probably be the first and last time I go to this show.  It was an excellent value though - only $4 to enter - Jinny's lecture was  $15.  Still I felt like the promoters were trying to make up the extra money on vendors and their own booth. I definitely will  NEVER do another challenge with that quilt shop. The way they treated the entries was disgraceful.   Finally,  when I go to a show I  look for two things - to be inspired and to have a nice lunch out (sometimes not in that order - grin).  This didn't give me either!

Drag Along Quilt Hand Quilted - Design Wall Monday

Well once again, school starts and my blog goes by the wayside.  I really do need my own wife when things get busy.  Still I love teaching and this September has been amazing so I can't complain.  Even getting a bad cold, I managed to finish my Drag-along quilt  in time for the fair.  Since this is a project that I've been hand quilting for 2 years I was all happy with that!  It didn't win any ribbons  - guess my funky sense of style is too much for the octogenarians that run our needlework department - still I was SUPER happy to finish it up so I can use it this winter.

Some facts:

• 58" by 105"  - Couch size
• Original Design - Just radom squares
• made with Amy Butler prints and RJR Quilter's Sateen
• Hand quilted with Rayon and Polysheen threads
• Batting is Quilter's Dream Request
• Made just for me!

Things I like - I love everything about this quilt!

What I would change - the binding corners were a bit off - I need to look up how to do that again - LOL!

Anyways - it was a great fair week.  We go down every night to eat and enjoy the entertainment.  I was happy my wallhangings got  a first and second place.  Plus tons of people have stopped me to say they are enjoying my work - so that is way better than a ribbon.  It was nice that I was productive enough this year to have 3 things to enter!

Enjoy other great design walls at Judy's Patchworks!

Winter Wallhanging Completed! Design Wall Monday

So I spent Labor Day weekend laboring over completing my Christmas wall hanging.  I'm always surprised at how much the quilting adds to the piece.  As soon as the quilting line was down, the vision I had for this piece really started to emerge.  I originally had designed this piece for last Christmas but for some reason I got stalled.  I don't know if it was because all the thread work or because it wasn't coming out the way I envisioned . . . or a little bit of both.  Still, I'm so glad that its done and ready to hang on the wall and enter in the fair!

Some facts:

• Original design 
• 41" by 49"
• Made with commercial and hand dyed fabrics
• The trees are hand appliqued
• The boughs are free standing thread appliqued
• machine quilted, faced
• good points - the design is strong, complex background adds interest and the gradations works well, thread applique adds dimension
• bad points - the quilting could have been neater, the largest tree color is off - still - the borders are still a tad crooked

I was happy to finally do a piece with thread applique and now can add that to my tool box . Its so funny that last year I designed this piece because I wanted a "quickie" , little Christmas wall hanging.  Instead I got a piece that took 10's of hours, ended up being crib size and can hang throughout the winter!

Christmas UFO - Monday Design Wall

Who would have thought that one little tree could take up three full bobbins of thread??  Well, I sure didn't!  When I got my order of thread from my sewing shop - 4 big cones of Bottom Line  - it gave me the bright idea to take back out my Christmas UFO and finish it in time for - wait for it - Christmas!  Doing so I diligently wound 3 bobbins of green Bottom Line.    I decided I was going to do the background evergreen in a thread applique rather than in cloth.  I knew it was going to take a lot of thread - but OMG didn't realize how much.  3/4rd's of the way through I had to wind 3 more.  Now I only used one of those - but still that's a lot of thread.

As you can see I'm almost done with the thread appliques.  If you'd like to know how I'm doing them - I blogged out the process in a tutorial.  I think I'll just add a few more pine leaves and then sandwich this up for quilting and thread work.  I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt it yet - gotta research and plan for that but I'm hoping I can finish it all in a week.  Then I'll just sew on the thread appliques on top of it!  Can't wait since this has been in my UFO pile for a year!

I did manage to finish up my memorial commission quilt.  I'll get a picture of it up as soon as I can figure out how to take a picture of a 10 ft long quilt!

See more design boards at Judy Patchworks!

Easy Quilt As You Go Tutorial - Design Board Monday

Two years ago, I was dozing sitting in a lecture by Katie Pasquini Masopust, when I heard something that caught my ears.  She was telling how she had put her amazing art quilt together by quilting it in sections on her regular machine and then she sewed the sections together.  She explained it quickly but it sound like all she did was sew them together and put a strip down the back to hide the seam.  Huh?!  That sounded wayyyyyyyy too easy.  So I just filed it until I could catch up with her later for further explaination.  Well. . . later turned out to be this summer at Quilting by the Lake and I asked her about it.  She said - yep - that's all you do.  She showed me her book where she explained it  - Fractured Landscaped Quilts (which of course I bought from her (grin)  Its really is a super book!).

Why all the interest you ask?  Well, I do have this monster commission memorial quilt that would like to be delievered to its new home.  All three sections managed to get quilted this week and by the weekend I was ready to sew them all together.  I thought I would blog out the method for you all, since it worked really well!

1. I cut 1.5" strips of the backing fabric.  I sewed them together so that they were long enough to stretch the entire length of the two columns  - 115" (yeah I know - ridiculious isn't it?)



2. Then, I cleared off my big sewing table and squared up my quilt using my 16" square.  I had quilted it to the edges just like each piece was its own individual quilt.  I like this method since I could use regular 44" width fabric for the backing without having to piece a back or buy special backing. (TIP: Buy large yardages of fabric when its super cheapie for backings just like this!  Got this RJR bolt for $2 a yard) 








3.  Then I took 2 columns, matched right sides together and pinned every 3" or so.  Make sure you're careful when pinning any points you need to match.

4.  I sewed them together on my machine (using the Accufeed 1/4" foot for all my Horizon owners!) with a smaller stitch length of 1.7 (which I normally use for piecing anyways).  I used the regular 1/4" seam allowance.

5.  I pressed the seams open and trimmed them to 1/8".  DO NOT sew the seam at 1/8" or you'll never get it to press open - don't ask me how I know this (grin)!

6.  Now this is where I differ from Katie's method.  I took my strip of backing folded it length wise wrong sides together and sewed.  I then took it to my ironing board and folded it over and ironed the seam under the new backing "tape".  Katie takes hers  - sews wrong sides together and pulls thru to the right side tube-style.  That just didn't seem fun to me since my tube was 115" long LOL!

7.  I then basted the long backing tape over the seam on back.  I did this old skol with a needle and thread on my big table - but I imagine you could use pins if you like.


8.  Then I used a blind applique stitch to stitch it down with matching thread.  This was a tedious, quiet process - I sat in my easy chair with my knees up and my big block 16" ruler on my lap under the quilt to use as a hard surface  - don't let your applique stitch go through to the front.  Let me just say about this part - Thank God for Netflix!

I picked this picture 'cause you can see how it went a little uneven

And Ta-daaaaaaa -  that's it - 8 hours later and all three columns were put together and you'd never know unless you look close that that backing tape is there.  It wasn't nearly as bulky as I thought .

As a side note:  I did design this quilt so that there were very few points to match once the three columns were put together.  Those that were there were easily matched because I pinned carefully  - the way that you would pin if it was just a normal quilt top.

Anyways - I will definitely be doing this method again.  I don't like to send out my work to a long arm machine quilter only because I like the quilt to have a "home hand made" look to it - plus I can do the design I had in mind for it.  This also keeps costs down for me and my clients.

All that's left is the binding - which I'm thinking of doing by machine - for the first time ever!  Funny how sewing down 390" of binding by hand doesn't sound fun (grin). . . .still I'll do a sample this week and we'll see if I like the look.

Hope this was clear - any questions please feel free to email me or comment!!

You can see more cool design boards at Judy's Patchworks!