Spring Fun Quilting Time Ahead

Posted on March 28, 2021April 6, 2021 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Uncategorized

It’s such a beautiful early spring here in Ashburn, Virginia. I have my studio on the top floor of my townhome and it includes two rooms plus a small section of my bedroom. Both rooms face the back where there is a wooded area. It’s lovely to have the windows. I have been working with my foot doctor for about six months now on a foot problem I had and am finally able to take some short walks on these lovely days just as spring pops out.

I got a new small Sony ZV-1 camera designed especially for vloggers for my birthday. It takes both videos with a fairly good microphone and snap shots. I used it for some of my last YouTube video I published about a week ago and it’s easy to use.

Sony ZV-1

So I am thinking of taking it out with me when I go walking and, now that I have had my vaccine, to explore a fabric store not far from here that has expanded and even taken on Berninas as a dealership. We have a larger Joanne’s going in nearby too. These are great developments for me. For some time now, all the fabric stores were miles from here over very heavily trafficked roads. I love my dealership in Rockville, Maryland, but it is about 45 minutes to an hour plus from here over very difficult roads. Anyway, I am going to investigate the near one, though I intend to keep my dealership at the Rockville store for most Bernina things. My friend Anita, however, who has a vintage 1230 is looking for one closer by.

So this past week I have been doing some design plans for new projects and having fun in my studio thinking about landscape quilts and my history of experimental quilting while planning new videos. I have some exciting ideas for my next steps.

Sew happy everyone! I hope you can enjoy a beautiful spring in your area (or fall if you are down under) as it develops. Have fun in your studio!

It’s Spring…Finishing Up the Wool Project!

Posted on March 21, 2021 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Classes, Food for Thought

Here is the finished wool applique by machine prototype.

Hi everybody! Spring is pushing up the flowers and the trees are leafing out. The birds have donned their spring mating feathers and are laying eggs and having a spring party. I have just finished the embellished wool applique by machine final video in which I sandwiched, quilted, and bound the prototype piece. I also added some hot fix pearls to the centers of some of the flowers because I had some left from another project and I thought it needed a little more something.

Here’s the video link: Wool 3

Here is the downloadable pdf of free motion fills that you may want to use for practice either before you quilt your own wool applique piece or just for free motion practice. This is the only handout for this third video. So before you quilt your piece, print this out, build yourself a practice sandwich, put on that audio book, and have some fun practicing stitching.

FMQ Basic fills

You will notice that in my video I used the red Bernina Gripper rings to help me in my quilting but I forgot to mention them there. They really make a big difference in my control, and I don’t have to wear gloves. They are designed for sitdown longarms and sewing machines with a longer harp space. They have to be purchased directly from a Bernina dealer. I got mine on sale, but even so they are kind of expensive. You can also get a very similar product by Martelli that are slightly cheaper and you can buy the sizes seperately. They are worth the price, though. Lots of people saw the center front hole on the Martellis rings in a similar fashion to match the Bernina rings, but I don’t know if that is necessary. I have heard that Martelli makes the Bernina rings anyway, so they are almost the same except for the gap in the front and the color.

I would love for you to watch this video, and the others if you haven’t yet. If you made a wool sampler along with me, please send me a picture bettyjo@bjfabricartist.com and I can show them on my blog, if you don’t mind. Or at least tell me you made one in the comments.

You can use these same techniques I showed on some of those absolutely beautiful commercial patterns intended for hand sewing of wool applique I have seen out there. My hope is by the fall, I will have some patterns of my own available. I might even do another video or two on wool applique using my own patterns, but not next.

Keeping the Experimental Quilting Process Going

I am so excited about all of this. I am finally getting in the swing of working through the design and creative process of the projects in a similar fashion to my show quilting work, and just filming most of what I am doing so I can share it with you. It has required a fair amount of adjustment to my studio and my thinking, but I believe I will be able to produce some really fun and professional-looking fabric art even while I film the process and I hope you will enjoy it too.

I am planning to do a little show and tell VLOG and talk about my experimental fabric art quilting. I think you might enjoy it, and it will give you an idea of where I may be headed in the future.

Oh and don’t forget to get my son David’s latest book (if you have a Kindle reader, you can read it for free) and we would be most grateful if you review it when you are done.

Sew happy everyone! Have fun in your studios!

Computer and Looking Ahead in My Studio

Posted on March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Classes, Food for Thought, My micro-business, My Studio, Videos, Wool / 4 Comments

Hooray! I have my new computer and it is all set up. It is lovely, fast, and has all it needs to serve me well for digital design, video editing, book writing, online demos and other computer draining activities. I am soooo grateful to my family members who gave this to me and helped me get it in place and so forth. Sew I’m off and running here in my wonderful studio.

In case you haven’t seen them I now have two videos of the three on Embellished Wool Applique by Machine, coupled with two blogs here that include free downloadables for accompanying handouts. I also have my first quick tips video. All of the videos can be found on the Betty Jo Tatum YouTube channel for free. Of course, I hope to make money from this endeavor eventually, but in a way that the videos remain free to you. Downloadable workbooks, patterns, and so forth will be available for a modest amount from the new little store I have on my main website. There’s nothing to buy there right now though but those will be published on the same subjects as new videos that are better with such downloadables. These all will be uploaded at the same time so you can follow along the easy way.

Other things are also in the plans for that little store. I will sell some of my quilts from there, and I am considering other things that can be downloaded. If you haven’t looked yet, I recently upgraded my main website. Go take a look at my gallery, if you’d like.

Now it takes some time to put together these things so I probably will need two or three weeks between each video, or even a month. They will cover a variety of sewing and art quilting techniques that I have learned over the years and really want to share because I think some of you will find them fun and you may even want to try them yourselves. So if you want to support this effort, I hope you subscribe to my YouTube channel and watch my videos. It doesn’t cost you anything, you don’t give them any information, and it helps me.

And now that I have my computer…all KINDS of things are running thro0ugh my head that might be accomplished. After I complete the next wool applique video, I am thinking of making a video or a set of videos on landscape quilting elements in both stylized types and more natural looking art quilts. There are lots of those to do, so I won’t bunch them all up together, but will spread them across the year with topics like trees, mountains and rocks, water, geologic strata, and so forth. It should be really fun for us. I have lots of other ideas and I think you will enjoy them as they come out. They will all be presented in small projects or technique demonstrations, but I will likely draw up some digital patterns for larger pieces and maybe even paint some digital fabrics for backgrounds that I might place for sale on a print on demand fabric company if I can work that out so you can buy them to use. What do you think?

If you have something in the way of art quilting techniques you wish you could find how tos for or would like to just see how I approach them, please let me know. I’ll see what I can do about it.

Sew happy everyone! Let’s have some fun in our studios.