Month: March 2019

Adventures and Misadventures in My Studio

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Church banners, Classes, Food for Thought, High-Tech Studio, My micro-business, My Studio, Videos / 2 Comments

Wow, what a week in my studio. It was full of both frustrations and accomplishments.  So I thought the picture above, which is something resulting from one of my playful edits in one of my digital art software programs seems about right.  LOL

So anyway, this week I realized I am only a few weeks away from my first quilted art workshop at G Street Fabrics in Rockville Maryland.  April 12th!  Yikes!  It’s almost here and I’m not ready!  Well, I know what I’m going to teach, because I have given this class once before, and I have the kits figured out…but I frantically found the bag I had left over from the last class to see if I have enough pieces to make any kits at all for the class.  I put together five finished ones ready for use, three that are partially finished, and I need ten altogether.  Yes, it’s just a little class of not more than eight students and not less than three.  Sew I make ten kits..eight for the students, one for me to use in demonstration, and one for oopsies.

A frantic text to my friend Mei-Ling, who is the Bernina dealer there and with whom I am running the class, solved the problem of missing pieces.  She has the thread.  She has the needles.  I shopped my stash and found I have the fabric.  I can print off the handouts.  SO all I need now is time.  Well, in truth, I can do all the things I have left to do for workshop 1 in one day.  I’ll tackle that early next week.  And then I must put together kits for 2, 3, and 4, but they are less difficult and take less time.

There is also the Easter banner my friend Anita and I are making for the church.  It seemed to be progressing very slowly for a while, and I was feeling a little frustrated, but yesterday we got the main top or front together and it is looking fabulous.  We just need to stitch down the embroideries, which are large sets of lilies I edited from an old design and stitched out in the hoop.  There are two sets and each set took about five hours to stitch out, but they look really good.  There were some odd skips of stitching and missed outlines, probably resulting from the wrong setting on pull compensation and other editing errors on my part, but I took them to the machine and free motion stitched the repairs and corrections…so they look great.  We have them glue-basted on to the banner and all we have to do is zig zag them on with monopoly.  The cross, the lamb, and the little applqued banner at the top are all on.  And yes, I will be taking pictures and posting them here for you to see.

So I have been trying to solve the problems related to making instructional videos for posting on YouTube and to give a little taste of some of the things in my Bernina V8 book, Twelve Skill-Building Projects for Bernina V8.  I also want to develop a series of videos on quilting using both my Bernina Q20 sitdown longarm and my Bernina domestic machines.

So I had first to learn to use the software…that was and is a challenge.  But I have succeeded in making several test videos now.  Then I couldn’t get the software to connect to my microphone, but today, I finally figured out where to find the setting on my computer to allow this to happen.  Eureka!

The first voiced video showing how to take a simple design and turn it into a really pretty wreath design on Bernina V8 is really quite funny,  I am thinking I will leave in all my mistakes and backups and fixes along the way because it shows how to overcome things and is much more amusing too.  In the end I managed to crash my computer and will have to take it up again and edit the pieces together.  Gosh I wonder how hard it is to add additional RAM (random access memory), which is what I need to not crash the computer.  I thought I had plenty in my current machine, but when it gets into making videos coupled with advanced software like Bernina, it isn’t quite enough.  Oh sigh.

Anyway, when I finish this first demo I will put a link here so you can find it if you are interested.  Even if you don’t have Bernina software you may find it funny enough to watch it.

Sew now I’m going to work on the sample for my fourth workshop, which is on ruler work with a sitdown machine.

I am so looking forward to getting the workshops prepared, the Easter banner done, and getting back to making quilts.

Sew happy everyone!  Stay tuned for future videos.  Also, would you like a podcast about once every couple of weeks?  I think it would probably be just me talking to you, but once in a while might include a guest?  Let me know.

 

Bunches to Do

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Books, Church banners, Classes, Food for Thought, My micro-business, Quilt Journal, Ruler work, Workshops

This nice drawing is from Dover’s Chinese Designs. Whatever would I do without Dover!

 

Oh, dear readers, you knew it was coming didn’t you?  I have gotten to the place where I am feeling a bit swamped with things to do.  That’s why I have been lagging in my blog writing. It would be ok except I seem not to have time to do my favorite thing right now…work on show quilts.  And I have show quilts that need to be made!!!

Sew I am preparing for a book signing party on April 20th and four classes I will be running at G Street Fabrics in Rockville MD this spring.  Each has handouts that need to be updated or created and kits that need to be assembled.

  1. Fabric Arts 1:  Machine Applique Techniques
  2. Fabric Arts 2:  Feed Dogs Up Quilting (on a Domestic Machine)
  3. Fabric Arts 3: Free Motion Organic Quilting (on a Sitdown Machine)
  4. Fabric Arts 4:  Ruler Work Quilting for Sitdown Machines

The real project right now is for my church, that asked myself and my bff Anita to make a new Easter banner for the church.  I was already swamped, and the addition of this project is a bit of a time draw.  Fortunately, Anita has been working with me for over a year now to learn to use fabric and thread as a medium for her own art.  So she is doing most of the work, though not all, but coming here to do it where I have the machines and tables and paints and bunches of fabric and thread.  LOL.  I am doing a lot of the specialty items, like machine embroidering the words and guiding the methods.

Easter banner concept drawing

In case you didn’t know, I now have published both Ten Skill-Building Projects for Bernina V7 and Twelve Skill-Building Projects for Bernina V8.  So if you have one of these programs for digitizing your in-the-hoop embroidery, you might find this of interest.  I beg you, please, if you buy the book and like it, please please write a review on Amazon.  It does not have to be very long…just a single sentence or a couple of sentences.  Reviews really help the authors.  So far I have a single review on both books.  Much appreciated, but I need more.

                                New book!!!

Sew I am preparing to do a book signing at G Street on April 20th, and plan to show some demo videos of the software.  This has taken me a considerable bit to learn how to do these videos…live screen capture, editing the resulting videos, trying to get them right.  I will post these on my new YouTube channel (Betty Jo’s Fabric Arts), when I get them complete.

And the fourth workshop listed above for G Street..the ruler work..is not fully designed yet.  I have been working on making a sampler and made much progress on what I want to show and teach, but it isn’t done yet!!! Yikes!!! It also will provide a kit with a little quilt sandwich, premarked with some guidelines.

Show Quilts…what am I doing, or trying to get time to do? 

  • The Bob Ross challenge by Cherrywood Fabrics.. Due July 1st.  I have the fabric, I have a design concept…will I get the time?  It’s small, so that helps, only 20 inches by 20 inches, but it will need a bit of time.
  • A train quilt with a steam locomotive to showcase a number of interesting applique and embellishment techniques. No real deadline, but I would love to finish it in time for the fall Mancuso show in Oak Pennsylvania.  Deadline is sometime in August.
  • A stack of other interesting, fun, hopefully beautiful, other ideas I won’t discuss right now.

So to top it all off, I am working on another book..the first in a series of Quilted Art Techniques books.  My concept right now…subject to change, of course…is for three books talking about techniques…one on building the top, one on quilting the quilt, and one on surface design and embellishment.  The challenge for these is to provide a way forward for quilted art without just being the same-old same-old that is already out there.  That’s a big challenge, but I also still think there is room for me to present my techniques in a way that will help artists and/or quilters to accomplish a vision they have in their heads but haven’t been able to do until now, or were had not yet figured out the steps to take.

Sew happy everyone!  I have not abandoned my hope to do a weekly or more blog post talking about adventures in fabric art.  Have fun in your studio, even if it is just a small space!