Completing the Woman and Child Applique Pattern

Posted on October 10, 2015October 11, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 8 Comments

I love being able to share things with my friends. It is fun, it is helpful…especially when they give me feedback…and it helps me keep things on track.. So I thought I would show you some of the various stages of my drawing and what I now think is the completed applique pattern drawing. I would still like your feedback if you see something that really stands out that needs changing.

Here is the original one I used for the first quilt “Waiting…”

I thought I should change her for the new Waiting… quilt 2. So I tried drawing several new women drawing.

Then I decided to go back and recast the original one.

After some feedback I realized the hair was not right and the clothes are not colored properly. I also drew a little girl. Here are some of the stages of that process:

So after some tweaking and moving and so forth, here is where it is now. Keep in mind when looking at this that it is just a pattern. The only thing printed will be the faces and hand. The rest will be created from various textures of fabrics, thread work, highlighting and lowlighting from inks or paints, but I do work best when I have a pretty good idea of how it really will look when finished. The woman’s dress, cloak, and hair are still not quite right, but that will be changed as I work through making the applique.

I am so looking forward to getting these put together now. I will make several versions of both the woman and the child and see which ones look best, and, after talking it over with Beth, my DIL, I decided to print out multiple faces and hands on a single sheet of fabric and set up a practice sandwich with it so I can figure out the best quilting for those. The faces are not large, but always the most difficult to quilt.

Sew there you are. These appliques are so important to the overall quilt. They aren’t easy, and they have taken a lot of time. I need them, though, to make the quilt I see in my head. I also have gotten together most, but not all, of the special pieces of fabrics I painted, pulled from my stash, and ordered for this. I am only waiting on the velveteen for the girl’s and woman’s coats and hat and the furry yarns for the edges. Time to sew!

Sew happy everyone! Have a great week. Please comment on my blogs.

Addendum: After some feedback, I made the girl smaller, the woman’s chin less prominent and did a few other changes to the hair. Here it is.

Waiting…, Quilt 2: Drawing the people

Posted on October 7, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 4 Comments

For my second quilt in the Waiting… series, I am struggling not only to draw the woman right, but to add a young girl at her side. I tried a lot of different women, but decided to go back to more or less the same woman with some differences in hair and clothing, so that drawing is progressing, but the child has been a huge struggle for me so far.

First of all, you need to know that I have to get the drawing right before I can make the applique. The only thing I plan to print onto fabric are the faces and hands of the woman and the girl. The rest might be appliqued fabrics, yarn, and thread painting. Still, I have to get it right so I have a pattern to go by.

I have combed the internet to find a good model for the little girl standing in the right pose with more or less the right clothing. The closest I came are two girls from Dover Pictura and neither one of them are right. Here they are:

So I am struggling to draw a little girl with all my requirements. She has to be pretty, she has to be a little windblown, though not as much as her mom, because she is shielded a little by her mom. She has to be looking out to sea, and she has to be dressed in the mid 19th century outdoor winter clothing. So far, I have managed to sketch the head, and that’s all.

The head, of course, is the most important part and also the most difficult. That’s the part I will printout in fabric and use as an applique. The rest of it has only to be properly proportioned and designed, because that’s just a pattern, unless the drawing is wonderful, then I may use much of the whole drawing for the applique and just add embellishments of thread painted hair and the yarn for the fur edging. I have spent a lot of time drawing this head with some frustration. Now I have to paint her. I’ll show you the finished woman and child when I get it done. It takes time, but if I want to make this quilt, I have to do this.

Sew happy everyone! I hope to have it ready to make the entire two appliques by the weekend. What color do you think her hair should be?

Cheers.

National Sewing Month…Happy September!

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Design Work, Food for Thought, My business, My micro-business, Quilt Journal, quilt shows / 2 Comments

September is National Sewing Month. I like September for a lot of reasons, and this is just one of them. It seems like a page-turn in life, almost like a new year and I love to watch the leaves turning from green to purple, orange, red and yellow that starts in September. I like to turn the page and start afresh in my studio too.

I have four quilts out for shows right now, and I will learn whether any of them placed in mid-September. I always hope I will get a ribbon, but I think the chances for any of these placing is quite slim, considering all the fabulous quilts in these shows. Two of these shows are in mid-September: Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza in Philadelphia, which has Sky Horse and Kanazawa Memories and AQS Quilt Week in Chattanooga, which has Canterbury Silk. International Quilt Festival in Houston, which has Canterbury Knight doesn’t happen until the end of November, but they say they inform the winners that they have won something around mid September. So if I don’t get any ribbons, which I am always disappointed over even though I tell myself not to be, I can get over that all in the same part of the month and move on.

Speaking of moving on, this September is bringing the beginning of several fun projects. I am starting the second in my women keeping the home fires burning while their men were away for work or war throughout history series (I’ve GOT to get a shorter title for this series, and perhaps I need to end it with a modern day man keeping the home fires burning for their woman, but that is a ways away if I even do it). I began this series with “Waiting…”, and then decided it would make a wonderful series. I have gotten all the fabrics together and a sky painted. I’m not sure about that sky…I may paint another one. I can’t tell until I have more of the other parts of the quilt made and can put them kind of together. It’s really kind of a rework of this quilt, but actually is going to be considerably different:

Waiting…

I’m also designing a quilt for Hoffman Challenge 2016 but the fabric isn’t yet available. They have posted what they will be here. I like the fabrics this year. I wasn’t inspired by the choices for the past few years. So I decided to make a 2016 quilt.

I like to work on two quilts in different phases at once so I can switch between them when I feel like throwing them out of the window. This is an inevitable phase of making show quilts…I always have at least some point of time I need to leave it alone and work on something else just so I don’t take my scissors to it. So since I can’t get started on the Hoffman Challenge quilt until the fabrics are available, I am also working on a couple of other quilt designs I have rumbling around in my head right now. I’ll tell you about them later.

Additionally, this month I’m picking back up my work on two books I’m writing. One of these is about 80 percent complete, and the other is outlined and I have the first chapter written. Both require samples and pictures…so I am working on those also.

And finally, I am working on developing a couple of classes to teach locally. I’ll let you know what those are and how they go when I get them further along. I’m thinking machine applique for one, and domestic machine quilting for another, but they are very much in the early stages of just thinking about them at this point. I have the location already worked out.

So happy National Sewing month everyone! Learn a new technique, practice an old one, or teach someone to sew…your kid, your brother, your cat. So happy everyone!

Working with Peppered Cottons

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Embroidery, Fabric Review, Fabrics, Quilt Journal, Techniques / 6 Comments

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

And a detail view:

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:

serge the edges of your yard goods before you prewash them.
prewash the fabric in cold water with like colors.
iron with some spray starch on the wrong side
back with a stiff stabilizer for any machine embroidery
back with fusible light weight interfacing for accurate piecing results and to reduce stretching when quilting.
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).
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.

Working With Different Fabric Types

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Embroidery, Fabrics, Techniques / 5 Comments

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.

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

Sew happy everyone.

Precision Broiderie Perse by Machine

Posted on July 21, 2015July 21, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Quilt Journal

Machine appliqueing with very narrow zig zag

My current quilt project includes a broiderie perse Japanese flower arrangement (Ikebana). I “painted” the flowers in Corel Painter 15 based on some Dover black and white drawings that I heavily edited. (See my post on painting the flowers). Broiderie Perse flower arrangement appliques using printed flowers has been around since the 1700s.

I am using my technique for narrow stitching the raw edged appliques, and I thought I would just share with you how I set it up to be as precise as possible.

I set my zig zag stitch width to .9 (the blanket stitch would also work if it were set just as narrow and shortened).
I set my tension a little looser on top and thread my bobbin for embroidery. This has to be done carefully and with a test to make sure that even though the top thread pulls to the back a little bit it doesn’t make the stitch come out unsecured.
I use my magnifying glass attachment
My needle is a 6.0/8 Microtex Superior Titanium
I use the 37D quarter inch foot for my Bernina 830 LE. And yes, usually this foot is for straight stitching, but it will accept a zig zag width up to 1.1. I like this narrow foot because it has an open toe, it holds the applique tight to the fabric while stitching, it has a mark at the back of the open toe that shows the precise center of the foot, and I can engage my machine’s dual feed mechanism, which helps the stitching to be more even. If you don’t have this foot, I suggest your open toed embroidery foot instead.

37D foot in action

I use a very thin thread–usually Kimono silk 100 weight or Bottom Line 60 weight–in a matching color to the edge of the applique.

I discovered if I use this setup and aim the edge of the applique right at that center-back mark on the foot, keeping the edge as close to centered in the foot as possible that it stitches precisely with the zig on the applique and the zag on the background fabric (doesn’t matter which side the fabric is on and which side the applique is on). Also, by doing this, I can tell exactly when I need to turn and how far. There is a lot of turning in machine applique of flowers.

Stitching fairly slow to medium speed and trying to keep an even timing, produces the best most even stitch.

The result is very hard to see, but even under a magnifying glass it looks pretty.

I sometimes use monopoly using this very same setup only I use a universal Schmetz 7.0/10 needle for the monopoly. I don’t know why, but it seems to keep it from misbehaving so much. I don’t like working with monopoly because it is so lively and hard to see. Still, sometimes it is the right thing to use, especially in something like this.

I printed off and cut out more flowers than I needed and arranged the flowers in place on the quilt, using Steam-a-Seam 2 so I could hand stick them down before I fused them in place. I found I really could use a lot of the things I learned when I studied Ikebana even though the flowers were flat.

A side note: I have my fourth year certificate in Sogetsu Ikebana school that I obtained while living in Kanazawa, Japan. My class was a group of three wonderful Japanese women and myself. All three had lived in the United States and spoke English very well. They taught me flower arranging, how to keep house in Japan, Japanese cultural items I needed to know, and a bit of Japanese. I don’t think I could have managed life in Kanazawa without them. There was much to learn. This quilt is being made in their honor.

Sew happy everyone. Try some broiderie perse precision applique by machine in your next quilt project.

Peppered Ikebana Quilt: Putting It All Together

Posted on July 17, 2015July 18, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 4 Comments

OK all…I have made all the appliques (sort of) and am ready to put them onto the Sashiko background. I must confess, the background came out so pretty I am sorry to cover some of it with the moon and Ikebana arrangement, but it is going to look fabulous….at least I think it will. I embroidered the whole thing because I wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted the Ikebana arrangement, and the Ikebana arrangement ended up fighting with the background, so I am adding a larger moon than I originally intended.

I worked it all out with paper cutouts and have just printed the flowers onto Electric Quilt Printable fabrics. They came out vibrant and beautiful. I still have to back the flower prints with fusible web and cut them out carefully. I did finish the moon from Peppered Cotton and the Japanese Ikebana Vase from an interesting piece of what I believe to be hand dyed silk dupioni that I purchased some years ago from the old G Street Fabrics remnants table.

placement for the moon…the moon will cover all the blocks behind it.

Sew I hope all my friends on Facebook that “liked” my picture of the background will still like the quilt when they see how much of the background is covered with the appliques. Even though I kind of regret covering/removing those blocks, I think the result will be worth it. What do you think?

And about another thing….Almost no one ever comments on my blog. I would really love to hear from you. Please feel free to comment. I only remove the obvious spam that occasionally shows up.

Sew happy everyone!!!

Ikebana for a Quilt

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Design Work, Embroidery, Quilt Journal

As some of you already know I am currently making a quilt that has a Japanese Sashiko emboridered background with a Japanese Ikebana foreground. I am machine embroidering Sashiko blocks of various sizes for an irregular layout based on a five inch grid. I am almost finished with the embroidery, but I discovered I needed a little more gray to make it have the look I am after. I am inspired by antique Japanese fishermen’s and firemen’s coats for the background, and that part of the quilt is coming along nicely.

Sew…now I have to come up with the foreground appliques. This will be somewhat like actually building an Ikebana arrangement with real flowers, but I will be using fabric flowers. I found slumbering in my stash a wonderful piece of hand-dyed silk dupioni, very slubbed and with rusty and brown colors that looks a lot like an ancient Japanese ceramic for the vase.

The actual arrangement needs to be done on the quilt top much as I would do in a vase with real flowers. Sew I found a lot of flower fabrics that I could use for my embroiderie perse flower arrangement, but I may not use them. I am also drawing from photographs or changing and coloring in some vector flower designs in my Corel Painter 15 from Dover Pictura which I might print on fabric and use for my appliques. Here is a sunflower that started out as a black and white line drawing from Dover. It needed a lot of editing before I started the coloring. If I use it, I will do some substantial thread work after applique to bring it alive. I might separate the flower from the stem and leaves so I can print them larger.

Sunflower ready to print.

One of the arrangements I did way back when I lived in Japan that won a ribbon in a contest in Kanazawa, used two giant sunflowers, some greenery and some broom straw, which, when held properly, can be bent into swoops and swirls that hold their shape. If I use that as the basis of my Ikebana arrangement, I will couch on some thick decorative threads and cording to replicate the broom straw.

It’s great fun. When I get to the flower arrangement, I’ll take some pictures and share with you some basics on Ikebana. I hope to complete this quilt by the end of July.

Sew happy everyone! Try your hand at some broiderie perse. I found this very interesting article talking about it. http://www.womenfolk.com/quilting_history/broderieperse.htm Mine will not be using chintz, but it’s still the same concept, although I will be using machine applique with a very narrow edge stitching.

A Greeting in Fabric from the Heart

Posted on April 12, 2015April 12, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Design Work, Embroidery, High-Tech Studio, Software

As I work through writing and building the projects for my Bernina v7 Skill-Builder book, I am delighted with how much is there to use. Some of my projects are fairly simple in design because I want to concentrate on the techniques and design elements available in the software. Yesterday I worked through a project to develop a little fabric greeting card…or it could be a mug rug…about 5 inchs by 5 inches. It discusses using the art canvas Basic Vector Shapes, turn the heart shape into Advanced Applique, using Pattern Run to fancy it up, and working out the quilting in the hoop. Here is the resulting design, ready to be stitched out:

5″ x 5″ fabric greeting card or mug rug

It is my hope that by the time someone works through all ten projects that they will be able to develop almost anything they want with it. I did set aside my hope to include making lace in the book, because I am thinking of writing a second book if this one is successful for more advanced projects. And in case you are wondering, I have no connection with Bernina other than I love their products. This software goes well beyond Bernina, and I thought this might be helpful to those of you who use it or want to use it. I had quite a struggle to learn it myself, so I thought I might be able to save you some time and frustration.

Sew Happy everyone!

A Whimsical Cat Applique

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Design Work, Embroidery

Hi there. I just digitized this cat applique for my Bernina v7 software book. I am going to stitch it out later, when I go through the book to test everything. I really love Dover Pictura, which has the following statement on their website:

“Whether you’re a crafter, craftsman, artist or designer you’ll find something that will excite your eye and inspire your work. Best of all, all of our image collections are royalty (and worry) free. Use them however you’d like as often as you wish.”

Wow! “However you’d like”!!!!! Imagine the possibilities! 😀 😀 So I am using their designs for most of the art basis of my Bernina v7 instructions. Anyway, here’s the art from their American Folk Art Designs collection next to my applique design in Bernina v7 ready to stitch out where I left out some of the details:

Drawing Beside the Applique

For some appliques, I am not real crazy about the thick satin stitch around the edge, or even the alternate blanket stitch. So I’m going to do a project in the book showing how you can change that. Can you tell, I’m having fun? I hope you are.

Sew happy everyone!