Happy New Year!!!!

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, Quilt Journal

Happy New Year!!!! May 2015 be one of your best years ever, and God’s blessings be upon you.

Do you have some quilt related resolutions or goals for the new year? I have several quilterly goals. I call them goals because I think they are much more attainable than “resolutions” which seem black and white…you do it or you don’t…success or failure…whereas a goal has measured steps you can take toward it and eventually reach it or change it as you develop understanding and abilities.

So my primary quilt-related goals this year include:

Solid improvement in my actual quilting. My quilting is ok now, even better than average, but not as good as I want it to be. This will be something I work on a lot this year.
Completion of two books I have begun writing and the patterns and videos that accompany them…one on applique and one of surface design
Share what I learn as much as possible.
Make some money from my quilt skills.
Complete several new show quilts.
Make several quilt projects just for fun and charity.

I know this seems a lot, but they interrelate and merge, and I believe it is possible and will provide me with a lot of fun.

Sew happy everyone! Teach someone to sew or quilt in the new year…yourself, your child, your crazy uncle, your dog or cat. 😀 Happy New Year!

Canterbury Knight: Ready to Start Making the Quilt

Posted on December 27, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 2 Comments

I’m pretty happy with my overall design for this quilt now. Canterbury Silk is 36 x 44. This quilt ended up a little longer…still 36 wide, but 50 long. It was just the proportions needed for the design were a bit longer. Anyway, I turned the design into a black and white and got it printed on 11 x 17 inch sheets ready to tape together. I use Corel Draw for this. If you have the Bernina Software, that has a Corel Draw part of it that will do the same thing for you. Or if you don’t have either, your spreadsheet software will probably work. I know that Microsoft Excel works. You open a new document and place an image in the software and size it to the size you want. All these programs will automatically break up your document into tiles for printing on the paper size you specify. It’s a wonderful way to get a full sized pattern. Here is how it looks on the screen all ready to print in Corel:

Now that I have the completed design properly sized, I can measure the central block and all the pieces I need to work with further. I still need to paint the horse and face of the knight and print them on fabric. I may do that for the birds, too. Not sure. Anyway, I can start to actually make this quilt now. I love it when I get to this point.

Oh, you may want to see the finished design in color. I took the horns off the little musician fellow. That makes him more of a musician announcing the arrival of the knight and not such a jester.

Sew Happy Holidays everyone!

Merry Merry Blessed Happy Christmas to All of You!

Posted on December 24, 2014December 24, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Uncategorized

Thank you all my friends and family who take the time to read my mutterings on this blog. Merry Christmas to you and to those of you who do not celebrate Christmas, have a blessed week. I am greatly looking forward to the new year and all our adventures together…quilts, books, family, music, love, faith, and joy…may they all be part of your life and mine. We are going to the candles and carols service tonight at church at 7, and then come home and have the chicken and dumplings I have cooking away in my slow cooker. Thank the Lord for slow cookers and sewing machines, and computers, and all the material blessings that make my life easier and more fun. And thank Him especially for His coming to save me and mine and fill me with happiness and for my family and friends. Merry Christmas to all and let the celebration begin! Can I say it again? Merry Christmas to all!

Canterbury Knight: Reworked Border Design

Posted on December 22, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 4 Comments

Reworked border design

I decided the other border did not fit the series theme, so I spent much of the day reworking the border design, and here is my latest result. This border was inspired by a Medieval border design found in Dover Pictura Art of Illuminated Manuscript, but I substantially changed and reworked it. This border is much more in keeping with its sister quilt “Canterbury Silk”.

So I think this design is almost complete. I was thinking about how to approach the horse and knight and the background castle, and decided it will have to be done in a number of steps. First of all, I will digitally paint the horse all by himself, without any of his armor or tackle, and without his mane and tail. Then print it on fabric. The mane and tail will be threadwork, and the tackle will be fabric applique or machine embroidery or both. The knight will be approached in much the same way, with a digital painting of his face and hair, and the armor and tunic will be fabric appliques and machine embroidery for the details. I am thinking of just a simple applique with detailed machine stitching of the castle in the background. This approach will put more emphasis on the knight.

I’m still trying to decide if I really want the court musician or jester or whatever he is in the border with the trumpet, or if I want to replace him with more leaves and a bird. In any event the whole border will be quilted and then painted, like I did on Canterbury Silk.

What do you think?

Sew Happy everyone…Merry Christmas!

Progress on Canterbury knight design?

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Design Work, Fabrics, Quilt Journal / 2 Comments

I’ve been working all week on the design for my new Canterbury Knight quilt that is the companion quilt to Canterbury Silk. It may be questionable whether I really made progress yet or not. 🙂

I thought that getting the knight and horse right would be the toughest part, that is until I started trying to get the border right. LOL. I am still thinking about it…is this the right border? Should I redraw the knight and his horse? I researched and found that a lot of Medieval illuminated manuscript central pictures have fairly elaborate backgrounds, especially where knights are concerned. Almost all of them I could find on the Internet and in my reference books appear to have a castle, so I put in a castle. They also often have trees and streams. I plan on adding those, but just haven’t gotten to it yet. I found a piece of pure silk that has some wonderful colors for the background of the central part. It will require backing with a fusible interfacing, but I think I will use it. It kind of resembles what I put in the drawing, but is much prettier.

Anyway, here’s my design concept so far. There is much work on it yet. PLEASE DO NOT copy and paste this design elsewhere. If you want to share this whole post, that’s ok.

Design concept for Canterbury Knight

I am still unsure about the border. I have identified several potential border designs from ancient manuscripts. I may back the whole thing in black and use the rest of this design. I may replace the berries with flowers in some places. But I do want creatures…birds, and especially an owl, and animals…mixed into the border. I am thinking I will have to draw it from scratch (another week of work). The A is only a placeholder. I’m hunting through my resources for the right embellished A in the verse.

Sew have I really made progress, or am I going to redraw everything…that is the question. 🙂

Sew happy everyone! Merry Christmas!

Printing on Silk/Cotton Test Results

Posted on December 19, 2014December 19, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Art Quilt Techniques, Fabrics, High-Tech Studio, Quilt Journal, Uncategorized

In preparation for some of my planned quilts using silk/cotton blend Radiance by Kaufman fabrics, I decided to try some printing on the fabric to see how it came out. I chose a picture from Dover Pictura Fantasy collection because it is rich with colors that could fade or bleed. Here is the picture as it appears on the screen:

Test: Screen shot

I ironed two layers of freezer paper onto the back of prepared for dye white radiance and using a rotary cutter and ruler, I cut the edges carefully to fit a letter size 8.5 x 11 inch sheet. I set up my printer as described in The Quilt Show episode 702 and taking into consideration some information that Jeanie Sumrall-Ajero provided on TQS–increasing the saturation, contrast, and darkening the picture a bit. Then I printed it in my Epson Workforce printer. Here is how it looked after printing and removal of the freezer paper:

After printing and before rinsing

Then I heat set it, rinsed it in cold water. squeezed it out, and ironed it dry (thereby adding to the heat setting). Since silk is easy to over-press and damage the look of the sheen, I pressed it from the back placing the right side on a fine piece of cotton on the ironing board. Here is how it looked after all of that:

My eye cannot see a difference. My camera shows a very slight difference, but my camera skills may be responsible for some color differences, so take that into consideration. I believe this is a successful print test. I have not washed it with soap or hot water, but rinsing in cold is sufficient for my purposes, because that allows me to soak off glues and markings and properly block my quilts I might use this method for. More wash testing should be done before using it in a quilt that will be washed repeatedly.

I think it is necessary to use “prepared for dye” fabric, and back it stiffly and all over with freezer paper and set the ink intensity up to make this a success. Also be prepared for slight lightening of your printout on the first rinse. I did repeat rinse and had no additional lightening that I could see.

Sew happy everyone! Hope you find this of some use.

“Hand Sewing” by Machine

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Embroidery, High-Tech Studio, Quilt Journal, Techniques, Threads

It is my belief that almost every look that hand sewing provides can be duplicated in a reasonable facsimile by machine. No, I haven’t lost my mind. At least, I don’t think I have. 🙂

I hope those of you who are hand quilters and embroiderers are not offended. I truly greatly admire the beauty of beautiful handwork. But I have some arthritis in my hands and in dealing with that I have developed a fascination for making my machine provide equally as beautiful stitching and in some cases take it far enough to make the viewer wonder if–or even be convinced that–they are viewing hand sewing.

I also love some of the looks that only a machine can make, but this is not what I’m talking about in this post.

I just think it is fun and challenging to see what I can do with the concept of “hand sewing” by machine. Recently I have been working on the design of a quilt that uses Sashiko for the background and in the foreground is an appliqued Japanese flower arrangement. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to do all the Sashiko by machine.

Now I have some in the hoop Sashiko designs that are lovely, and I will probably use some of these in this quilt. I have done some stitch-outs of these and they look best with 40 wt embroidery thread such as Superior’s Magnifico or Isacord embroidery threads.

But I want to try some bobbin work using the heavier weight perle cottons that hand Sashiko stitchers would use in order to see if I can make it look even more like the hand work. I will let you know if this works and present some photographs of some of my experiments with this…perhaps in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, I am also trying out some turned edge machine stitched appliques using 100 wt matching silks and monopoly and various stitches to see which looks the most like needle turned-edge applique by hand. Lots of other sewists have done work on this and some are really good at it. I just want to play around with it and see if I can get it really good.

My machine also has cross stitch on it and I haven’t played around with it very much yet, but I think I will try that also. In addition, I have learned to do some digitizing with my in-the-hoop embroidery using Bernina v6 software that looks very close to hand stitching. I just bought v7 upgrade as a Christmas present to myself and am waiting for it to come in.

I think this is really fun. I hope to share a lot of the results and ways to accomplish them with you in a couple of books I am already working on and plan to complete in 2015 and some bits here on my blog.

Sew happy everyone. Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas all!

Beginning the Second Canterbury Quilt

Posted on December 13, 2014December 15, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal, Techniques / 2 Comments

Here we go! I am beginning the design work on a new quilt in my Canterbury series. This one will center around the knight from the Knight’s Tale. It will have a pictorial central section about the same size as on Canterbury Silk and a border inspired by, or even downright copied from, an 11th–12th Century illuminate manuscript.

I have multiple considerations as I work on this central design.

Can I accomplish what I design?
Does it match the overall theme of the series?
Since I am working in a theme from centuries ago, how can I make it appeal to today’s quilt audience?
How should I colorize this central part?
Should the knight look something like the knight from “Equipped to Stand” (shown below) that I made in 2012 or like the ancient illustration (shown at the top of this blog, an illustration from The Ellesmere Manuscript, one of the oldest surviving illuminated Canterbury Tales.). I really don’t like the way the knight’s head looks on the ancient illustration but I can fix that I think. I really like the Equipped to Stand knight, but he may be too modern, and I would change his and his horse’s dress, or maybe have his head facing front. 🙂
What should the background look like for him? It needs more than just the knight for balance.
Should the central theme be silk or can that be cotton and the border made from cotton/silk Kaufman Radiance, like I did for Canterbury Silk?

knight detail from “Equipped to Stand”

I really hope to make this a beautiful and exciting quilt that also goes well with Canterbury Silk. I plan on making a total of three Canterbury quilts that more or less match in size and character.

Canterbury Silk a MQX with Best Surface Design ribbon

Sew send some good wishes my way as I work through this design and subsequent making of the quilt. I plan on sharing this quilt journey with you and will discuss my techniques along the way. I hope to post a blog on this at least once a week, and occassionally more often.

Sew happy everyone!

Time for Christmas Sewing

Posted on December 6, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, My Studio

I realize that some of you are way ahead of me on this. I see it on Facebook…my friends with their houses already decorated, Christmas baking is started, and Christmas sewing is finished. I am, nevertheless, way ahead of my usual pace for December this year though.

I already have the house sort of clean and ready to decorate for Christmas, which I hope my youngest son and I will get done this weekend. I even got my studio clean and ready for the next project. That will be a few Christmas sewing projects I have planned. I’m not saying what they are here, because the recipients may read this, but I am looking forward to it,

I still have not come up with the designs for my next couple of show quilts, so I’ll be working on that a little next week also.

Sew good wishes for a wonderful week to you all! God’s blessings be upon you.

Sew happy! Take time to learn a new technique or practice to polish an old one. Christmas presents are a good place to do that with. 🙂 Teach someone to sew…your brother, your sister, your impossible relative, your cat, your dog….Merry Christmas!