Updating

I always kind of feel like September brings a new year.  This has been a year full of updates and maintenance both for my home and for my software.  This year I had to replace my hot water heater, have some rotting trim and all the grouting outside replaced and the whole house pressure washed, the decks and fence pressure washed and sealed, and the trim repainted.  There have been a lot of smaller items, and yesterday I just got an old builder’s grade toilet replaced in one of my small bathrooms for a nice new one.  I still have to replace the weatherstripping around my front door, but that should be all for the house for a while, I hope.

The amazing thing is how well this restored my decks (I have two).  I was thinking before all of this that I might need to replace it, but it looks fantastic, almost like new.  I have enjoyed getting out there every day the weather permitted since the deck was restored.  Sometimes my grandson has gone out there and done some reading also.  He started to school yesterday, but he still comes here after school.  This is good.

In anticipation of my fall sewing and quilting now that school has started, I first updated my website, adding a little store to sell my quilts, books, and other items from.  Additionally, I have been updating my software.  I started by installing Windows 10 and made sure it works with everything, and then I took advantage of a really good deal on the new Corel Painter 16 software update.  This adds quite a few interesting new brushes and other things, plus it allows me to use all those Dover brush stamps that I have for Photoshop in Painter now.  I like that a lot.  Painter is the main design software I use so it is important to take advantage of these major advances.

All this updating made me realize that I was at an excellent spot in my sewing and quilting plans to update the firmware on my Bernina 830 LE, which I did.  Everything is working well so far (knock on wood).

So the other day I did a little exploration of some of the decorative stitches on my 830.  Most of the ones I tried are new, but not all of them.  Here are some pictures of the test samples:

stitch sampler stitch sampler 2Aren’t they fun?   I think I’ll have to do something special with some of them.  What do you suggest?

Stitch number 713, which was there all along, is the stitch I should have used when I was trying to get a Sashiko like stitch for my border on Kanazawa Memories.  I still think it would have stretched, and I would have finished it like I did, but I’ll know next time.  These little samplers are going in my notebook.

All of this updating, plus a very expensive dental/oral surgery thing, are the reasons you won’t see me at a quilt show for a while.  I’m not sure just how long, but I am content.  I have all these wonderful design programs and machines to play with at home with a fully stocked stash of fabrics, threads, paints and beads.  It will be fun to see what I can do with all of that.

Sew happy everyone!!!  Updating can be a good thing, though it may be a little stressful from time to time.  You might be surprised at how well things work and find some new treats as you get them finished.  Cheers.

 

 

 

Working with Peppered Cottons

I just made a quilt using the beautiful Peppered Cotton  These cottons, designed by Pepper Cory, are beautifully colored and have a wonderful soft hand.  They would make marvelous bed quilts that use simple blocks, and I suspect they would be perfect for hand quilting.

I, however, chose to make a piece of wall art with precision machine embroidery using this soft, loose weave cotton because it had the perfect appearance for what I wanted to do.  While the blocks are simple in shape, they have detailed machine emnroidery, and the quilt itself presented some real challenges.

Here’s the quilt:

Kanazawa Memories, Completed August 2015

Kanazawa Memories, Completed August 2015

And a detail view:

Kanazawa Memories detail shot

Kanazawa Memories detail shot

 

When I first saw this fabric I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.  It reminded me of antique fabrics used mostly by peasants centuries ago in Japan especially in firemen’s and fishermen’s coats, which were layered together and often repaired using Sashiko stitching.  While the peasants would probably have had blue or off white fabrics, these have wonderful colors with a warm feel.

Pepper Cory, who is a friend of mine, told me about The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook (you can find this in the little box of “My Favorite Products” on my sidebar if you don’t have your ad blocker turned on) and it helped me with figuring things out for this quilt  In the end, however, I used commercially available embroidery designs from OESD:  Sashiko 1.

I thought when I started the quilt that, although it was mainly a project for me to work on improving some techniques, that I may end up showing this quilt and ultimately selling it, so I asked OESD if I could use this design set for such a purpose, and was assured that was acceptable.  (It is so important to get such permissions before one spends hours and money on making a quilt you may show or sell, even if you are going to donate it for an auction at church).

But in order to get good machine embroidery results using such a nice soft cotton that is so loosely woven, one needs to back it with a very good stiff stabilizer.  I used tear away Madeira Cotton Stable (you can find it through that little box of my favorite products on the sidebar also), which is temporarily fusible.  I was going to tear it out, but by the time I got it all embroidered and the whole thing pieced together, I liked the way it had softened up just while working with it and the way it helped me with the piecing. So I ended up leaving it in. It is an all cotton stabilizer and I find it softens a lot from working it and when washed..  I could have backed it with a light weight fusible interfacing and used a wash away stabilizer that would have probably done the same thing.   I do love this stabilizer, and have found I can pretty easily tear it out when I want to, but it stays in place until torn.  I use it for a lot of my embroidery.

So, thinking I would probably wash the quilt when I was finished, I prewashed all the Peppered Cottons in cold water AFTER I serged the cut edges of the fabric before I cut it.  Such a loose weave really needs to have the edges serged before washing or you could lose a large bit of raveling.  If you don’t have a serger, you should stay stitch the edges prior to washing.  Indeed, this is a good way to approach any loosely woven fabric.  I serge the edges of silk dupioni just to store it in my stash because it ravels so badly.  I think that Peppered Cotton is not quite as bad, but when machine washed it would be bad.   This step saves lots of headaches.

The other thing I did for piecing this fabric was to use half inch seams instead of quarter inch.  In spite of the fact that this was initially a mistake in my cutting of the blocks, I found it much more stable overall that way.  Although when I did the moon, I did only a narrow turned edge…maybe even less than a quarter of an inch…but it was around a piece of freezer paper and I used a lot of spray on starch that I sprayed into the top of my starch can and painted on with a stiff little brush, then ironed the edge around the moon pattern.  I then glued the moon to the background and stitched around it with a short applique stitch using monopoly.  This worked really well and looks great.

After that I cut out the background behind it, I appliqued the Japanese flower arrangement onto the top.  I got the flowers by painting them digitally using Corel Painter and printed them on Electric Quilt fabric (Find them in “My Favorite Products” box)

I added an extra layer of wool batting just under the moon because I wanted the flowers to have a slight trapunto appearance.   Then I sandwiched with wool batting overall and a pretty quilting cotton print for the back, giving it all a lot of stability.

Everything went really well for the quilting of the central theme and the background using monopoly over the embroidered background and closely color matched 100 wt silk for the moon.  I did use a heavier weight 40 wt cotton to quilt the little creatures around in the moon.

Then I got to the borders.  I failed to back the borders or the binding with anything except the wool batting and backing.  It stretched during the quilting and binding.  You can read about my struggle with that in this post if you want.

To wrap up, when using Peppered Cotton, or any soft, loosely woven cotton you need to:

  1.  serge the edges of your yard goods before you prewash them.
  2. prewash the fabric in cold water with like colors.
  3. iron with some spray starch on the wrong side
  4. back with a stiff stabilizer for any machine embroidery
  5. back with fusible light weight interfacing for accurate piecing results and to reduce stretching when quilting.
  6. a cold water soak and blocking after completion is important to make the quilt square and flat. (You can steam it flat and square if you just don’t want to wash it and it’s a wall hanging).
  7. enjoy the quilt…it feels soft and cuddly and has a dynamic lovely look.

In the end, I am really happy with this little quilt and have decided to try to show it before I offer it for sale, mainly so some of my friends who live elsewhere can see it.  I don’t  think it will win any ribbons, but I think it might get into the shows, and that makes it really fun.

Sew happy everyone.  Try making a nice cuddly bed quilt with some Peppered Cottons, and, if you dare, make some blocks or a wall quilt that requires some precision.   Or you could make a fisherman’s coat to wear on cold wet days out on the sea.  Cheers.

Starting a New Quilt

I am beginning a new quilt in my “Waiting…” series.  I love my original quilt “Waiting…” but there are many things about it I would change today if I were remaking it.  Rather than remaking that quilt at this time, I decided to make a similar quilt with multiple changes.

The new quilt will still have a woman waiting at the side of the sea looking to see a tall ship bringing her lover home to her.  The ship will be a different clipper ship, the woman, whose hair will still be blowing, but more styled, will be in the nineteenth century rather than the eighteenth.  She will be standing on a rocky coast.  Their will still be a wave constructed from traditional storm-at-sea blocks.  The proportions will be slightly different, and the borders will be either narrower or no borders at all.  I may have a small, not-very-detailed light house in the distance on the rocky side.  And finally, I will paint a new sky similar to the one I have in the original quilt, but slightly more stormy and maybe with some lighting.

Here’s the original “Waiting…”:

Waiting...

Waiting…

I’m working on the woman, which to me, is the hardest part of this quilt.  Here are a couple of sketch starts, but the end result will be very different even if I use one of these for a pattern:

Woman looking to sea_001woman 2_002

The sketch is primarily a pattern. I will be appliqueing different fabrics for the clothes, and thread painting the hair. I will probably do a digitally painted face and hands that I print on fabrics.

Sew let the fun begin!!! I have the sky fabric all set up ready to paint. I will paint the sky in Setacolor fabric paints all watered down onto a damp prepare for dye fabric.

Adjusting My Fabric Arts Business Plan

For some time now I have thought I would monetize my little business by selling downloadable embroidery designs and printable appliques and just toss out a book or a quilt or two for sale every now and then.

I have been working very hard in recent weeks on rebuilding my website, setting up an online shop, and trying to figure out how to place an Amazon associates button on the sidebar in this blog…all designed to bring me a little money so I can keep on making show quilts and  writing blogs.

I have a new plan, which I have just put into action.  I have discovered if I do the downloadable items they will absorb all my time and I don’t enjoy making them like I enjoy making show quilts or writing how-to books and this blog.  Besides, I don’t think ultimately they will bring in enough to pay me for those hours of work I don’t much enjoy.

So if you click to my main website link at the top of this post, you will find several things there:  my gallery of all my main quilts (it runs a little slowly at the moment…I’m working on that), my bio, my current projects list, a list of national/international shows, and a link to my shop.  Take the tour.  I have four quilts currently for sale on my new little shop.  There will be more in the future, along with my books and I may have some other things from time to time.

My new plan is this..1) Make show quilts designed to sell, 2) Show quilts in a couple of shows and get them appraised in their third show 3) By the third show I can generally tell whether it is going to win ribbons or not, so at this point I will start offering it for sale at another couple of shows and on my new little store.   If I somehow miraculously make a big winning quilt, I will probably not sell that one…just keep entering it as long as possible in other shows and use it for trunk shows.

In addition to the quilts, I will continue to write and test the projects in my books and the first of those will be out by the end of October…in time for Christmas…if I possibly can do this.  My son David is going to publish them through his small press “Fennec Fox Press” (the other link at the top of the blog).  In other words…I’m more or less self publishing them, and they will be available on Amazon.

I’m getting help on putting the Amazon associates button on this blog, since I haven’t been able to get that to work yet.  That is where I will recommend the products I have found work best for my techniques and if you click through the button to buy the products I will get a small percentage of the profit.  It may not be much, but every little bit helps and it is a way I can help you to find the products too.

Hopefully, this plan will enable me to bring in a little supplemental income so I can go to shows, buy machines when needed, keep my supplies well stocked, and pay for unexpected items like dentists or home repairs.

It’s a plan.  We’ll see how it works.  Wish me well in this endeavor.

Sew happy everyone!  Cheers.

 

Working With Different Fabric Types

I have almost finished my Ikebana/Sashiko quilt, and had some difficulties toward the end that were my own fault, but which reminded me that over the years I have learned a great deal about fabric properties and how to work with them to get results I want. Sometimes, I don’t succeed, but almost always it is because I skipped a step or substituted another technique to try it out.

In this case, I failed to back the border with the same fusible interfacing I backed the blocks with in the central section.  I thought I could get away with this because I was using a temporary spray adhesive attaching it to the batting.  It didn’t work.  The border stretched, the stitching looked horrible, and it wasn’t the machine’s fault.  I ended up cutting the border down to only 3/8″ wide plus the part to be covered by the binding.  Even the binding became very challenging at that point to get it on straight and true.  But I have succeeded, I think, although I still have to stitch down the back of the binding by hand.  If I had fused the interfacing to the border fabric, it might have had a very different outcome.  In the end, however, I think I like the narrow edge of green fabric better than the wider border would have been, even if I had succeeded in what I was trying to do.

This made me think to share this little chart I worked out for my own use that I think you may find interesting.  I leave it to you to determine brands and content of the stabilizers and interfacing.

Fabric chart

What do you think about this?  I’d love to hear from you.

Sew happy everyone.

Getting It Straight

I cannot quilt a straight line. I am finishing up my Ikebana/Sashiko quilt, which I will now name “Kanazawa Memories” in honor of the wonderful two women–Sensei (teacher) Endo, and Nobu Katagiri–who took me under their wings when I was a young woman all those years ago in Kanazawa, Japan, and taught me how to manage in a Japanese home. Not only did they teach me flower arrangement in the Sogetsu Ikebana School, but they taught me how to take care of unfamiliar parts of the home like tatami mats.

I really hummed and hawed with myself over how to quilt the border, and in the end I decided to stitch five rows of straight triple stitch around the border in earth tone Superior Rainbow thread. I started trying to stitch just a straight stitch, but found it did not lay down enough color, so I switched to the triple stitch. It was so hard to get it straight. I marked it AFTER it was sandwiched, which I am sure was the main problem, so I pulled out a straight ruler that I particularly like and used it as a guide.

Straight quilting

I really found this easy, and the straightness improved, though there were some drifts here and there and things I learned along the way.

DSCN2674

  • You must come to a full stop before you move your hands or the ruler or you may get a drift or jerky spot.
  • You have to be particularly careful in turning a corner.
  • If you press down the ruler too tightly and hold it out from you too long you get some really bad muscle aches after an hour or two of quilting.
  • The triple stitch was intended for an internal stretch seam, and it does not always stitch evenly (see the picture above, where it is obvious). So very even speed is needed to make it come out nice, but even so, it isn’t like I like in the end. To add to this, it is a very difficult stitch to remove, and virtually impossible on the soft, loosely woven Peppered Cotton.
  • The border is wavy, even though it was not when I first added it with care to measure and cut it lengthwise. It stretched on this soft, loosely woven cotton, likely because of the heaviness of the stitch. I should have backed the border with a fusible interfacing like I did the blocks. I mistakenly thought that using the temporary adhesive to attach the batting would serve the purpose.

So in the end, I got the rows fairly straight, except a very few wobbles that I MIGHT be able to fix. But I am probably going to remove the border altogether and simply bind the quilt in the same color green. I might leave a narrow border in place, adding a little to the width of the visual green, but not much.

This quilt was never intended to be a show quilt. It was mostly a learning and memory quilt for me. When I get it fully finished, I will, nevertheless, take good photos of it and might try to get it into a show or two so some of my friends who go to certain shows can see it.

In the meantime, here’s a peak at the quilting in the middle.
DSCN2680

Conclusions: The ruler was extremely helpful and I can use it with my quarter inch foot, as shown (I used it with my 37D foot, which is an exact quarter inch from the needle on both sides, making the lines on the ruler particularly useful). Soft, loosely woven cotton stretches A LOT even with some care. Even if you get the stitching as straight as you originally envisioned it, it sometimes disappoints. All good things to know.

Sew happy everyone. Try a little ruler work with your domestic machine.

On Finding My Artist Voices

quilters block
I quite frequently see discussions about artists “finding their voice” in their work. I heard it referred to recently in the context of one quilter’s work that was all very similar in that “she found her artist’s voice.” I think the idea is that once you find a type of work you really like to work in, you perfect it and use it to establish an area in which you are recognized and rewarded. It’s a great idea.

Perhaps I am much more of a fabric art adventurer, however, than one who will ever find such a voice. I am particularly inspired by historic works of art, great natural wonders, magnificent architecture, works of artistic fantasy, and historic folk art. Sew I have opted to work in sets of series focusing around these items…which I admit is a very broad brush. I have my architectural series, my deep space series, my ancient illuminated manuscript series, my women throughout history keeping their home fires burning while waiting for their men to return home from the sea (and you don’t know it yet but also from dangerous missions of all sorts). I love to take my machines through their paces and make them perform to the nth showing what they can do to closely replicate hand work, embroider most anything, disappear their stitches that are there to hold things together, or work like a pen and ink. I like to take threads of all sorts, fabrics, and a little bit of paint and some beads and pull them together into something resembling a work of art.

It is indeed my goal to one day cross into the realm of “fine works of art” in this fabric art adventure of mine.

I somehow need to make money with this work to pay for things like expensive dental work and house maintenance and repairs. I have some ideas for that, but I am certainly going to stick to making my wall art quilts. Whether they end up being “show quilts” or not, I am making them all to the show quilt level. I do occasionally make a utility quilt for home or giving away, but they are often when I need to just try something new or somebody needs such.

Sew there you have it. I don’t think I have an “artist voice” exactly, and I may never have one, but I have artistic goals of all sorts. It is a passion of mine. It is full of fun, frustration, tedious times, exploding ideas, irritating quilter’s blocks, disappointments, real surprises, and absolutely delightful times.

Sew happy everyone! Go out and make a creation you love just because you want to and don’t worry about fitting in or not fitting in boxes.