Fine Tuning Quilted Art Projects: Part One, the Design to Pattern

I realized with some astonishment recently that 2020 is my sixteenth year of making quilted art projects, mostly, but not entirely in the form of wall art quilts.  I have been sewing since since I was five, when my mother began teaching me to sew, followed by years of learning and making my own clothes and helping my mother in her own sewing pursuits.  I retired from my intensive job with the US Government at the beginning of 2012, but I had already been working toward moving to full-time fabric artist upon retirement for a number of years.

Over the years I have learned a great deal.  I have almost always been in a learning mode, because I find it fun.  For me, a terrific development has been provided by generous fabric artists, digital artists and sewing technicians through online informative sewing and quilting sites, video classes, The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims, and YouTube.  This has enabled me to continue my love of learning new techniques and improvement of my skills while hanging out in my own studio and at a very low cost or even free.

What has all this to do with the title of this blog, you may be asking about now.  Well, I just wanted you to know that I do have a significantly solid and advanced basis to pull from for this series I will be blogging over the next month or so about building quilted projects for fun and excellence.

Sew approaching a new project should begin with a bit of planning and record keeping. Such projects can be divided several ways, but I like the following 10 steps, each of which will be dealt with in their own blog post:

  1.  Designing or Obtaining the Pattern
  2. Collecting the Parts
  3. Checking the Tools
  4. Cutting and Marking
  5. Constructing the Top
  6. Sandwiching Properly
  7. Quilting
  8. Blocking and Squaring
  9. Adding Embellishments
  10. Binding and Finishing.

Designing or Obtaining a Pattern for Your Project

Since I don’t normally use purchased patterns and usually create my own designs, for me that first step of designing frequently takes just under half of the time I spend on a project.  I use my computer heavily in this step.  Here are the computer apps I currently use for this:

  1. Corel Paint Shop Pro 2020 (for processing photographs)
  2. Corel Draw Graphics Suite 2018 (makes very good vector designs and communicates with Bernina Software.  This also helps me create my own pattern, size it, and print it out full size to tape together)
  3. Corel Painter 2020 (for painting.  It’s almost like having real paint,  brushes, and pencil collections with no mess and the ability to erase or add something in the middle layer.  I often start here for concept art)
  4. Bernina Embroidery Software V8.2 (for digitizing or personalizing embroidery designs, and even for some quilting)
  5. Electric Quilt 8 (aids in figuring placements, sizing, yardage, and if I need a traditionally pieced area for my quilt project, this is where I turn).

I won’t cover how to use these drawing packages for this, because I know even if you use digital design programs to help you out, you probably don’t use the same ones I do and they are expensive to gather, take time to learn, and there are lots of really good classes out there on youtube and on the sites where the packages are sold.

Once I have my design, I write out the steps, list the fabrics and threads, list the additional pieces, and think about the tools that will be required.  In other words, I create my own pattern with instructions. You may be surprised to learn that I mostly do this the old fashioned way in my planning notebook, where I glue in samples of the fabrics, write out steps, and keep other important notes as I go along. You can read about how I manage these things in my blog Project Management for Fabric Art from a year ago.  I still do things this way.

Now I know many of you don’t want to use the computer designing process, and if you want to design them yourself you would greatly prefer using a sketch book or graph paper and doing math to figure out what you need to make your project, or at the very least use Electric Quilt 8, which is an easy way to produce a good traditional quilt pattern.  This is a good approach, but I do encourage you to scan in your resulting images/designs,  keep a record of your project on your computer, and write out the steps you need to take for your project so you can start with a good pattern with steps to completion already thought through.

Also, there are those who prefer starting with a pattern that has good instructions.  That’s probably why you can make a quilt much faster than I can, and I think this is also a good approach if you have different goals from mine.  One of the keys to this is to use patterns from reliable designers that provide good instructions.

In other words, whichever your approach, the first step is to obtain or create the design with good instructions and project steps already thought through.

For me, I also want to load up my audible books, music, and podcasts to listen to while I work through the construction phase.  My next blog post will discuss building your own kit so you know you have what you need.

Sew happy everyone!  I encourage you to use an ordered approach to your quilted projects, however small or large, and you will really enjoy the process and probably come out with a wonderful result.

 

 

 

Back to My Beloved Studio

A couple of days after I got home from California I came down with a monster cold that has totally shut down my work for weeks.  I am finally emerging from that, though I still have a cough here and there.  Coughing, even though it is far less, does not work well with precision quilting.  LOL.  So for a few more days I will do a little video watching, a little writing, a little planning, and a little design work.  Still, it is progress for me to get back to work finally.  It is my sincere hope that you, dear readers, do not catch something like this. Apparently it is going around, since a lot of my quilty friends seem to have had it too. It’s a bear and antibiotics do nothing for it.

Sew we recently bought a ROKU device and I have been playing around with it while recovering. One of my favorite things is that you can get YouTube on your big screen TV with ROKU along with whatever additional streaming service you have subscribed to.  I have what came with Roku, Amazon Prime, and Netflix.  Yesterday, I found Alex Anderson’s Simply Quilts from years ago on the HGTV channel.  I also found It’s Sew Easy on Amazon Prime.  What a delightful way to be entertained while I lay around like a coughing couch potato.  I tell them where they could improve their techniques, and learn something to try later…hahaha.  I still have to watch TQS and my BluPrint and IQUILT videos on my computer, but I can connect to my tv with a cable for that. It’s just not as convenient.  I’m thinking I really need another day of video watching before I fully launch back into quilting and writing in my studio.

I did arrange with G Street Fabrics the other day that I will be teaching four workshops in April and May similar to the ones I taught last year. I have also talked with my oldest son Ken about helping me get fully set up for making some videos for YouTube on a regular basis.  He has designed and built a couple of camera holders that are attached to the ceiling and can manipulate them to give different angles for the cameras.  He just needs to install them.  I also need to purchase a second video camera to work with them.  I plan on launching a periodic video showing my techniques very soon, probably in early March.  I have slowly been assembling everything I want for this and am close to launch.

Beyond that, I will be spending most of my time making show quilts and samplers for my books all year, as far as i can determine.  I think I want to hang out at home and avoid any further disruptions to my work.  I am excited about that now that I am getting over the monster cold.

Sew happy everyone!  Stay healthy, enjoy your studio, and find a way to share what you learn.  Let me know what you think about my video plans.

My Trip: San Diego, Road to California Show, and the Imperial Valley

Here I am at Road to California. I’ve grown my wings. LOL

I had a most wonderful trip.  My dear brother Pat and sweet sister-in-law Carol gave me plane tickets to fly from here (northern Virginia) to San Diego and back and then gave me the most lovely time. We went to the Safari Animal Park in San Diego, went up to the Road to CA show and attended that together, then took a delightful drive down through the desert, first to see the amazing rust scuptures at Galleta Meadows and down to Brawley, California in the Imperial Valley. I did some of my growing up in El Centro in the Imperial Valley and it was a pull on my memory heart strings to visit this area of the country again. We stayed there a couple of nights while my brother and nephew went duck hunting (they eat what they shoot and fill their freezers with what the hunt and fish).  Then we drove back to San Diego with a brief drive through El Centro and up through the mountain pass with interesting rock formations.  The following day we went to the San Diego Zoo, then went to a fun local play in Coronado Island, where they have a lovely condo.  So you see, I got to do a lot, walk a lot, see a lot, and visit with my family at the same time.  It was wonderful.

In my estimation there is no zoo or animal park better managed anywhere in the world than the San Diego Zoo and Safari animal park also managed by the SD zoo.  They do a lot to help save endangered animals, make the animals that stay there happy, safe, and well cared for.  It is a great place to see them.  So if you have a chance to go, do so.  I was fortunate in that Pat and Carol are members of the zoo and could go whenever it is open with several guests for no additinal costs.  I did not take any pictures on this entire trip, partly because I had a sore foot and had to use a walking stick, but it worked well.  My brother took some pictures, but mostly you can see a lot of what we saw by Internet links provided below.

Safari Park

Here we took a cart around the park, did about a two plus mile walk around, and skipped the Platypus because it was a holiday and so many people were there.  I enjoyed the plants as much as the animals.  They are wonderful.

San Diego Zoo

Here we first took the shuttle ride around the park, then we walked around, especially concentrating on the birds.  They were fabulous!  We had lunch there and my niece (in-law) joined us for most of our time there.  It was delightful.

Here we are at the zoo. My brother Pat, me, my niece Melanie, and my SIL Carol.

Road to California

I know, a lot of you really want to know more about the quilt show.  It was a wonderful show with fabulous quilts.  We toured the whole thing.

Here I am talking about my quilt The Wizards’ Duel and explaining some of my techniques to some friends of P&C who had come to see the show. I was disappointed in the way the quilt was displayed, crowded together with other quilts with little space around it, and the light is coming from below, which makes the top, nearly invisible creatures totally invisible. Nevertheless, I was happy to have it in the show.

Here’s the Pegasus in the upper right corner of the quilt that you really couldn’t see at the show.  I learned from this that I need to have a stronger values difference in my threads when I want my quilting to show wherever it is displayed.

Here are a couple of links provided by others so you can see some more of the quilts:

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Keepsake Quilting video

Sew I wanted to show Pat and Carol the machines I have in my studio and I took them over to the Bernina booth and showed them the 880 plus and the Q20.  While there, I tried out the quilting hoops that I am considering buying.  I did not buy it then…but I think I will sometime this year.

After attending the show, we drove down to the Imperial Valley the next day.  I graduated from high school in El Centro, California, and this drive down through the dessert brought back many memories.  I had not been there since I left to go to college after graduation (my parents moved to Iowa at that time).

On the way to our hotel, we visited

This is Galleta Meadows where the artist, Ricardo Breceda, who creates these magnificent rusty statues displays his work. The owner of the site allows people to drive through and take pictures. They are life size to bigger and are wonderfully done.  This is the only place I took pictures.  Here are a few of the statues.  They were wonderful.

My brother and nephew went duck hunting near the Saltan Sea near Brawley.  They hunt and fish and often fill their freezers for most of their meat supplies during a year.  Pat and Carol also grow fruit at their northern vacation home they built themselves shortly after they were married 54 years ago.  Carol puts the fruit up in the freezer and makes jams and jellies.

So the next day we drove home through the rock-filled mountains, driving first through El Centro.  I was a bit shocked when I saw the gigantuan wind turbines running throughout the beautiful dessert I remembered from my youth as being so gorgeous.  They are soooo big and sooo many that I felt they really greatly marred the pristine nature of the desert. Here is a picture I found of some of them, though they look much smaller here.  Remember when you see it that these turbines are massive…much much larger than most trees.  These big blades only last about 25 years, and cost a lot of energy to produce too.  Surely we can do better. (I am not trying to start a conversation about these here, just providing my kind of somewhat shocked impressions).

These wind turbines are some of the ones I saw and are each taller than the Empire State Building,

Here is a link to a discussion about how massive these turbines are.  They are apparently planning on making them even larger.

Wind Turbines in Imperial County.

So now I am home safe and sound.  I did pick up a little cold, but that was almost inevitable when I sat just one seat away from a guy who sneezed the whole way home on the plane and never covered his mouth.  Sigh. I’m feeling much better today.  It was a fabulous trip, however, and I had a marvelous time.

Sew happy everyone!  I’m going to get back to work in my studio this week, but my house seems to need some cleaning…I didn’t do much of that before I left.  LOL   My studio calls to me.