Happy 2022! Looking Forward to a Good Year

Posted on January 2, 2022January 2, 2022 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Ancient manuscripts, Applique, Books, Deep space quilts, High-Tech Studio, My micro-business, My Studio, skill building, Techniques, Tools, Videos, Wool

We made it through 2021! Hooray! Happy New Year everyone! I am taking a positive approach for 2022…expecting it to be a good year full of light, love, peace, and productivity! So what’s first up for Betty Jo’s Fabric Arts?

I talked a little about this in my last blog post.

I will soon be presenting the first in a three-part series of videos coupled with the publishing of a workbook with pattern for the Two Birds Project. The first part is completely filmed and being edited, and the workbook is fully written and being edited. The two remaining videos are filmed all but the short openings and I need to record the voice-over scripts for them. It will be a fun set for my followers and I’m excited to get to this point.
I am working on putting together a wool applique by machine project. Wait until you see what can be done with these techniques and materials! It’s really going to be fun!
I have worked up a production plan for the first part of the year that includes show quilts (to fit within my architectural, ancient manuscript, and deep space genres), applique projects (both wool and other fabrics), and multiple shorter technique skill project videos that I think you will enjoy. There may be other things too along the way. Plus a little bit of clothes sewing.

I got a fun addition to my studio for Christmas, a Brother Scan and Cut DX. I have been spending the last several days learning all about it and how best to use it. It adds lots of new possibilities and a great help for the applique quilts for sure, but I can also make some quilting stencils and other things I am thinking about. I now have both the Applique Go! with a nice collection of dies to help me cut multiple layers of fabric for snuggle/quick-to-make quilts and the Scan and Cut for cutting digitally created shapes for more complex individual applique designs among other things…how wonderful. Truly, except for wishing I had more space and storage (doesn’t everyone?), I have a marvelous studio for designing, quilting, and stitching adventures complete with the video equipment well set up for filming them. And yes, I also have significant help from my delightful family. Oh, and don’t forget, I have newly improved eyesight to help with all of this! I am totally thankful both to my kids and my Lord for all of this.

Sew I am making a kind of fresh move in my YouTube channel, pattern making, and books now at the beginning of 2022. Last year seems like kind of a rehearsal and learning period for me. So I’m excited. I hope to get a lot of new subscribers/readers and provide significant content you all will enjoy. I love sharing my work with you.

Let me know if there is a particular subject you want me to cover either in comments here or on my videos on YouTube. I will see what can be done.

Sew happy everyone! Have fun in your studio!

A Book, Videos, Sons, and A New Project Idea

Posted on February 19, 2021February 20, 2021 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Books, Classes, Embellishment, Food for Thought, Videos, Wool / 4 Comments

Books

My youngest son David, the author who shares my home with me and helps me in so many ways, will release a brand new book within a few days. It’s the third book in his Law of Swords fantasy series. I have read it and it’s terrific. Truly, I think each book he writes is better than the last one and this one is no exception.

I am so proud and excited about this because David had to overcome a series of major difficulties (starting with a computer crash that somehow took both his regular data and all his backups in one event that included years of research, databases, and even bunches of writing. Even the very skilled professional data recoverers were unable to get the data back. He now has a new and better computer setup with all kinds of backups so it is unlikely to happen again. This and a handful of other obstacles has delayed his books for several years beyond the expected.

Now, though, he is rapidly producing what I am sure are wonderful writings right and left. There is this book, as well as a requested short story for an anthology are written and nearly out the door, and he is diligently working hard on the second book in his sci-fi space series too with plans of completing that one by the end of the year. Please wish him well on these endeavors. He is now a full time author without a secondary job so success is imperative. I’ll let you know when the new one is actually available for purchase.

My Videos

With a great deal of assistance from my oldest son Ken, the second in my video series about embellished wool applique by machine, is likely to be published early next week (there will be a blog for that one with a second downloadable handout).

I ask you please to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven’t already. This is a great help to me with YouTube. I need a minimum of 1000 subscribers and lots and lots of views before I can sign up for the small monetary return to support this work. If you don’t know, “subscribe” is like “follow” on other sites and doesn’t sign you up for anything more than letting you know the videos are there. You have to be logged on to Google or YouTube to subscribe and then to make a comment there or ask a question.

Ken is doing the video editing at least until I get my new computer (which has been delayed “because of Covid”). I hope it gets shipped within a day or so, but in the meantime Ken is editing and publishing my videos for me. He is so professional at this. I will have to try really hard to match that level when I finally get my computer and take back a lot of this work. The third video will probably be out about two weeks later. It is my plan to publish a video about once every two or three weeks for now.

In case you are wondering, all on my own I “film” the parts where I am at the machine and you only see my hands, and Ken helps with the part where you see my face. Ken has, in fact, set it up so I can eventually do that part of the filming too, but I really like having his directing and filming with his fancy camera. He does, however, have a job and a family. LOL But he came to my rescue with microphones and brackets and lights and instructions and editing.

My Idea for the Next Project

Ok. The wool applique set will be done soon, so what am I going to do next? Well, I have a long list of techniques and projects that I am considering on presenting in 2021. Only a few are wool based. The videos on my YouTube site are and will be continuously free. However, I am planning on offering downloadable workbooks and sometimes patterns to go with them for a reasonably low price (on my new website shop) that you can purchase to use with the videos. This will hopefully help underpin the video work, which so far has required considerable investment.

Sew I have given it a lot of thought and decided the next subject will be “Trees”. This will be really fun, but I leave it to you to wonder…what will BJ do with trees? Later…I’ll tell you later.

Sew happy everyone! Have fun in your studio and try making/learning something new that makes you stretch every now and then.

Designing New Projects

Posted on November 21, 2020November 21, 2020 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Books, Classes, Design Work, Embellishment, Embroidery, My micro-business, My Studio, Videos

In addition to my coming YouTube class on Wool Applique and Embellishment by Machine, which I am hopeful will be out in early December, I have begun working on new project designs. Amazingly I don’t really have any UFOs floating around the studio, except my bed applique quilt using a Sue Nickel’s pattern that I have been working on periodically for more than a year. I would call that more of a work in progress than an unfinished object, though.

What I do have is a very long list of planned fabric art projects that I hope to also include in my youtube video channel. This has certainly given me a different viewpoint on my project plans when I am considering using the resulting fabric art piece or pieces in multiple ways including not only competition as in the past, but also sharing some parts of the projects on videos and in books. While I have the concept for a major work for competition underpinning my design thoughts, I also am thinking of pulling some samplers and small works from the same project to include in books and videos.

In the case of the great wool project, I have kind of been working in the other direction of building the samplers, videos, and book first and I am now coming up with a design for a major competitive work using these techniques. I already know what I am thinking of doing for that, but I haven’t got the design drawn up yet. I have pieces of it drawn, but not the overall design. So I am working on that. It’s exciting.

Considering that I want to rapidly launch a number of videos along the way, I am sorting through my long list to figure out the next video/competitive piece project. I am thinking it should center around free motion thread and decorative elements work and quilting. It may involve using a preprinted commercial panel, but I am not sure of that yet. So this is what I am playing around with in my design work right now. The overall design is always the thing that takes the most time for me. I know that a lot of fabric artists can just sit down and draw something, but for me it is a struggle. I have a concept in my mind, but getting it out of there into a form I can use to work on is always challenging. But it is still lots of fun.

Wool Project and Videos Update:

Sampler one part one. Here we have the simple shapes of the sampler in place, ready to begin the second part of embellishment/embroidery.

For contextt…here is my test and practice piece using the same dies. There will be a lot more special stitching though.

So my dear oldest son Ken saw how I was struggling to get setup to do videos in a massive tangle cords and equipment and he came to my rescue. He has installed some brackets around my studio so I can quickly attach a camera or a light where I need it. He has given me some instruction on the use of lights and a new light and diffuser. So with all of that, he has reduced my setup work and taken down the time from a full day of setup to a few minutes. The first video segments I am working with from this are also much better lit and easier to see overall. It’s amazng the difference careful planning and assistance can make!

Later he is coming over to help me with the audio so, unlike my original video that I removed from YouTube, you should be able to hear it well thorughout (and from his other work to see it as well)! What a great couple of sons I have!

All week I have been taping segments that will join together to show how its done and I will do a voice over script.

A box full of simple shapes ready to place on the sampler that I cut with my Accuquilt Go! cutter using five different dies I bought for other projects.

Here are the dies I am using for this overall project.

This has involved my sewing on my ssampler quilted wall hanging that is the subject of the first three videos. So I am taping a little while I sew, sewing a lot in between, and taping a little more. I do not think I could do this well in one continuous live presentation like I tried to do with the video I first made. If I were to go live, it would involve a little live and a little pretaped bits. (My current work jingle: sew a little, film a little, talk a little, sew sew sew) ???

Sew happy everyone! Shortly I will drop the discussion of making the videos and go back to mostly fabric art talk. I thought you might want to know why I wasn’t producing a lot of fabric art, but that has begun again! Finally! Cheers.

Wool Applique and Other Things

Posted on September 20, 2020September 23, 2020 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Books, Deep space quilts, Embellishment, Food for Thought, Machines, My micro-business, My Studio, Show Quilts, Videos / 2 Comments

Hi dear readers. I am pretty excited because I have finally gotten a good start on my wool applique project and have made a decision about what I will work on for my secondary project.

Test and practice piece I made to make some decisions before starting the actual project.

So today I pulled together all the pieces I have had around the studio for a while that are available for my wool project. I was pleased to find my packages of felt that I had bought some years ago are fine melton wool felt . These are mostly two unused packages of a variety of colors I bought them from Nancy’s Notions probably 7 or 8 years ago and they are in wonderful shape. They don’t have these now, so I recommend Sue Spargo sets such as the blue set or the red set I highlighted available on Amazon.

Here are the melton wool pieces I will be using for this project. The background reddish brown piece is richer in color than it appears in this picture. It is one of the new pieces I ordered from a tailoring supply place in California. The smaller precuts were purchased years ago in multicolored packs and are also melton wool felt.

I have several gorgeous melton wool pieces in one yard cuts that I ordered about a month ago. Since the wool applique projects I am making for my book and videos are small, these 60 inch wide one yard cuts will make two or even three of the projects background pieces, a test piece, and are likely to have small leftover bits that can be added to the smaller pieces for the appliques.

Detail showing some of the decorative stitching.

I have also been identifying where to find the supplies for people who want to make these projects themselves. I will share those with you at some later point once I figure it all out.

A detail from the test piece showing how well the applique is stitched on by machine with almost no visibility of the stitches.

I have some interesting hand woven placemats I bought somewhere sometime years ago and decided they were not going to work for placements for me, but they were really interesting handwoven look. I don’t know the fiber content though I think it is cotton and wool, and I can’t even remember when or where I bought them. I washed and dried them by machine and they came out in good shape. They will be an interesting addition for appliques I can use in the future or for the show quilt I am planning on making at the end of the great wool project. Before I cut them out, they will have to be backed with interfacing and/or Steam-a-Seam fusible, which kind of acts as a stabilizer and will keep them from fraying. I will show those to you when I figure where and how to use them.

Additional detail stitching. I am saving a library of these stitches as I have them set in the files on my Bernina 880 Plus. I have had this machine for about a year now and the more I use it the better I like it. It’s amazing.

Sew I have made a couple of decisions for studio activities for the future. I plan on making a new deep space quilt as my second project to work on for when I need a break from the wool project.

Spiral Galaxy No. 3 one of my deep space quilts.

I always want two projects going at once to give my mind and sewing muscles differing things to do from time to time. The neat thing is that deep space quilts are made almost entirely free motion with angelina fibers, a little bit of painting, and hot fix crystals. That means it will mostly be done in Studio Fritz the room where my Bernina Q20 longarm sitdown machine (Fritz) resides. While the wool project will mostly be done in Studio Gibbs where my Bernina 880 plus (Odette) lives and where my cutting/painting/whatever island is. I also plan a bit of needle punching with my little Bernina 350 for which I have the needle punch attachment. That, too, will be part of my book and video projects.

A Word About the Future of the Craft of Sewing

Okay. I know I said two decisions. The second one is to figure out the direction for my work for the future. I decided I don’t want to do online live classes like on Zoom, but I will do some hopefully enjoyable videos and put them on YouTube. I have been and still am a studio artist and this is my main focus. I did do some local classes at G Street Fabrics, and was kind of considering entering the larger teaching circuit, but that avenue is no longer available at the moment. I had found it so much work and it barely paid me back for the work and expenses I invested in the classes. I loved it and glad I had the experience, but I won’t be returning to in person teaching.

While I still very much wish to share what I have learned, I am going to do this by writing books and making videos and perhaps the occasional trunk show if invited. I will continue to work in my slow way toward these goals.

I don’t know if the quilt shows will fully come back for years. I am going to still make professional show-quality art quilts, and capture the making of them in videos and blogs and books. If the in-person shows come back, I will then have some to enter just for fun, but I’m not going to stop making them. I don’t know what I will do with them beyond that and giving them away here and there or selling one every so often and enjoying them myself.

Don’t worry when you hear of shows closing and people changing their current paths in the quilting or sewing world. The sky is not falling. There even appears to be some new interest in sewing and quilting brought on by people making masks and experimenting with sewing during the pandemic. Sew if you have the opportunity, teach someone to sew even if it is remotely. As Becky Thompson on her YouTube Vlog Power Tools with Thread likes to say “Go sew something!”

I Figured Out Custom Backgrounds on Bernina V8 design software

Posted on July 12, 2020July 12, 2020 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Books, Design as you go, Embroidery

Hi there. I have been working out how to get embroidery designs placed properly for my summer clothing efforts using my Bernina V8 software. I could not find this anywhere in the help or manual, so I wrote it up and put it into the following PDF file for those of you who have the software.

Making a Custom Background Design Template for Clothing in Bernina V8

Here is a picture of the Jeans Vest Jacket back I managed to make the template for and then I discovered how to put it into the software so I can change the color and size.

I started with the line drawing in the pattern that I scanned into my computer and took it from there following the directions in my pdf file. So fun. Now I can place the embroidery onto the garment and know how large to make it and where it needs to go. I wonder what else I can use this for?

If you have the Bernina V8 software and have problems with it, I wrote a book last year that you may find useful if you don’t have it already. I wish I had discovered this before I published it or I would have included it into the book.

Sew happy everyone! Stay healthy and happy.

A Notebook with Fabric Samples on Projects

Posted on July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Ancient manuscripts, Books, Fabrics, Food for Thought, Project Management

I have sometimes seen on tv shows about history, costumes, or fashion development books from history that hold samples of fabrics used for interesting events or proposed for historic figures. They make me want to spend some time with them pouring over the interesting or beautiful fabrics. I recently saw a show “Stitches in Time” on Britbox streaming where such books were used in research to better understand clothing from the past and recreate a costume.

This got me to thinking about how, as a fabric artist, I have also made some attempt, albeit not suffiicient, at keeping such records as I work through my more advanced projects.

Here is a couple of pages from my notebook where I kept the records of my projets over several years. I recently filled it up and started a new one. I did not use all these fabrics in this project, which was my quilt “Pendragon”, but my son had given me the fabrics for the project and I wanted to keep a record of all of them.

Pendragon, 34 x 45, this quilt was exhibited in several major shows and won some ribbons, including 3rd place in AQS Paducah (Fall) and was shown in Houston IQF

It is a delight to me to look back through these project pages, especially for those that were particularly successful. I wish I had used more pages and put larger fabric samples . Indeed, I am now adding larger samples for my current projects. Not all of them have fabric samples, but I find myself wishing I had added them. Something to enjoy in years to come and pass to my family in the end, who may decide to pass it on to the trash bin (but I won’t mind at that point), or who may find it a lovely memory. Perhaps some anthropologist centuries from now may also find this intriguing, especially if the resulting projects are still around. LOL I laugh in amusement, but the researchers from the show were looking at record books hundreds of years old with samples of fabrics trying to match them to paintings or actual aged garments. Sew it does seem likely that at least some of my work will be around long after I have gone from the earth.

1890 embroidered wool (origin unknown)

Keeping records as I make these projects is not only interesting, it is very helpful to me. In the notebook I also put a lot of information as I go, such as stitch settings and a step by step list of things I need to do. Then I can refer back to them if I put the project aside for a while and return to it or when I make a companion quilt, as I am planning to do for Pendragon. I hope to begin on Excalibur this year.

Such records are also useful for me as I am writing books and blogging about quilted and embellished fabric art. It is my hope to get one of these out this year.

Sew happy everyone! I encourage you to make a record with samples of the fabric along with information about the fabrics. It’s not a waste of time, doesn’t take very long, and can actually save you time in future projects if you make notes along the way of your project near the fabric samples.

A Sunny Mother’s Day and Considering Next Steps in My Studio

Posted on May 10, 2020 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Books, Deep space quilts, Embellishment, Embroidery, Food for Thought, High-Tech Studio, Machines, My Studio, Show Quilts, Tools, Videos

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone. Yes, many of you are mothers and grandmothers, but I know a couple of you who have no children but provide much learning and support to us quilters and sewists in motherly fashion. So Happy Mother’s Day to all of my readers (even the guys). My oldest son Ken has already called to talk with me, and my youngest son David, who shares my home with me, is going to cook a steak dinner tonight. Lovely!

My side yard

It’s gorgeous here in Ashburn, Virginia. About 65 and totally sunny with not a cloud in the sky. I just spend about an hour out back enjoying it all. The back of my house looks out into a small woods, just thick enough so I can’t see over to the next part of the neighborhood and thin enough so developers won’t come and build back there. The wildlife is delightful that live there…birds of several varieties, bunnies, turtles, squirrels, chipmunks, and even foxes. I feed the birds so I can see them and they pay me back by keeping down the gnats and flies and singing to me.

My youngest son David on the upper deck.

Sew I had hoped to finish the quilt I am making in memory of my wonderful mom, but though I have made great progress, I still have a ways to go. I have finished the quilting on the central part of the quilt and am working on the borders. I put freeform feathers on the bottom border, and I plan on doing the same on the top border. I got some new stencils and am have marked a beautiful vine with leaves coming down both sides. Since I quilt everything to death, except my snuggle utility quilts, I have a lot of quilting to go yet. And then I will have to wash it to remove the markings, and paint some of it. So there is much to do still. I had thought it would not be pretty enough on the back to be a good show quilt, but I just turned it completely over and was surprised to find it is beautiful. Yes, there are flaws, but it is still beautiful. The flaws don’t seem to show much on the front. Some of them will be removed, others will maybe go under a label or two (I’m thinking of writing a little biography of my mom in a simple text label in addition to the who made it when and so forth label).

What’s Next?

Sew I am close enough to being done with Mom’s quilt to think about what my next major project will be. I actually have three going now. One is my own personal snuggle quilt for my bed using Sue Nickles applique blocks that I just use to work on when I want to do something that is just relaxing sewing, one is a fairly extensive project of wool applique by machine that I am simultaneously writing a book about.

I have found that there is a slight bit of room in the art quilting world for books that people with advanced machines may want to have. There are a lot of how to quilting books for beginners, piecing books, and yes, even some advanced art quilting books, but I think while there are some books out there for people with all these wonderful stitches and feet and other attachments, that area might still have room for some skill building books for using these advanced machines many of us have. Wool applique by machine is my first of these skill-building books I am working on (I just bought a second camcorder and will be making videos too).

Another book I am thinking of is multiple deep space quilts using a variety of methods in homage to the magnificent deep space scenes you can find many of on NASA’s website that are copyright free. Here I have some credentials in the quilting world, because I have won several nice ribbons on my deep space quilts and I have many more to make. So I thought this would be a good book and already have it underway using photos I took while creating some of these quilts. I plan on making several more, some step outs and some small ones to sell for people who may want one of these for their wall, or to give as a gift. Of course, I will be producing show quilts from this project also, giving my work double, or even triple use (I will be making some videos too).

Sttitching Spiral Quilt 3 with a reference picture. I gave this quilt to Ken and Beth.

I guess maybe that is all I can do this year, but it doesn’t stop me from planning other quilts, and thinking about how I can incorporate them into books and videos. I may speed up, and some of these books are nearly written and only need a few samplers. so it might not be as overwhelming as it sounds.

I would love for my readers to tell me what they want me to teach by book and video (I am not going to do much travel for a while), realizing that I have been sewing for more than sixty years, having even once owned my own fashion design business, and quilting since 2009, with ribbons and other awards to my name.

One of my most prized awards that may sound unrelated, but is not, is a simple honorable mention I won in Kanazawa Japan decades ago. I studied Ikebana there, receiving my fourth year Sogetsu School Ikebana certificate, the next one, had I continued, would have been a master certificate. While there, I entered a flower show and made an arrangement using great big sunflowers, chrysanthemums, and swooping curls of broomstick. It won an honorable mention. Theoretically, it was anonymous. But there were some magnificent arrangements there. It’s something I have never forgotten. Nor have I forgotten a single bit of my training. I have sketch books with some of my arrangements too. A flower arranging quilt would be fun.

Kanazawa Memories, with machine stitched sashiko and a fabric Ikebana arrangement I made by printing individual flowers on fabric and appliqueing them into an arrangement. I lived in Kanazawa Japan for three years as a young woman. I no longer own this quilt.

In the stitching/sewing world, I can probably teach almost anything except piecing and hand sewing. I can do those things, but only at about an intermediate level, whereas clothes, tailoring, and now art quilting, I consider myself to be at an expert level in many of the techniques. Please comment and send me your questions or suggestions either here, on Facebook or send me an email/message, realizing it will be a while before I get the answers to you, unless it is a simple answer I can put on my blog. Also, what do you think of my planning to write books for people with higher tech machines?

Sew happy everyone! I hope you get to go out and enjoy the great beauty of spring or fall wherever you are.

Looking Forward to 2020

Posted on December 29, 2019January 2, 2020 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Ancient manuscripts, Books, Deep space quilts, Design Work, Embellishment, Food for Thought, High-Tech Studio, Making Clothes, My Family, Show Quilts / 2 Comments

Happy New Year everyone and God’s blessings on your lives for the new decade!

I have a lot of fun plans for 2020. As I usually do, I have almost certainly planned more than I can accomplish, but there is always the offhand chance I will actually get them all done and that would be grand.

As many of you may remember I made big plans for clothes making in November. Read all about it here in my past blog. But November was basically eaten up with my making of my son David’s “leather” coat, which, albeit successful in the end, required a lot of unexpected time while I polished up my rusty tailoring skills from decades ago, fixing several big mistakes, and taking my time doing a good job on the coat with the great feet and machine I had to sew it with. If you missed it, you can see the end results in this blog.

But I still need some new clothes for myself. Fortunately, most of the fabric I have for this update is four season fabric. So I am going to scatter this sewing across the year. Besides, I am hoping to lose some more weight so it would be a good idea to go kind of slowly in this wardrobe revamp project.

In the meantime, I hunted through some of the older jackets and shirts I had stored away I used for work that I haven’t worn for a while because they got too tight, but now they are nice and lose. Some even require taking in. The first thing I did last week was take a tan faux suede jacket I had but never wore much because it was just too boring, and embroidered the back and fronts with some really pretty steam punk designs in blues. The designs include an old style sewing machine, an owl, and a bunch of gears and swirls. They came from this OREA set of designs. It really improved it and I will be using these designs elsewhere. I also found the long dress that goes with it. I don’t really wear dresses anymore, but it is also made from the same nice faux suede and I might make a bag or something to go with the jacket or I might just wear it as is, adding maybe some embroidery on it too, but I doubt I will do that. In any event, I am not planning on buying new clothes in 2020, because I can make the ones I have work and can make some new ones while I continue to lose weight.

I think I have what I need ready to go now for my trip to California to see my brother, sister-in-law, and the Road to California show we are going to together. It was a wonderful gift from my SIL. We have a lovely relationship and I really am thrilled with this trip. I will also get to see my nephew and his family.

Sew once I get back to my studio what are my plans? Since I usually work on two quilts at a time, this year I will work on one quilt and one garment at a time for a while. I like working two projects to give me some changes in muscle and eye activities periodically without losing a lot of time.

Sew in addition to my clothing plans I have an exciting plan for show quilts, books, and maybe some additional items for sale. Right now, I am quilting my Mom’s memory quilt. I have made a significant start in the quilting, but I have a long ways to go. I really enjoyed returning to quilting this past week.

I made a list to pick from the other day for 2020 show quilts. I was thinking four quilts, and ended up with nine on the list to choose from. I am fairly certain I won’t get nine show quilts made this year…hahahahaha. Here’s a short list of some of the ones I am considering making.

Mom’s memory quilt already well along the way
A strata landscape quilt with embroidered and beaded fossils
A steam locomotive train scene using the fabric I digitized and had printed for the background
A new ancient manuscript quilt (probably Excalibur)
A new deep space quilt
An ancient map with a ragged edge
A deep ancient forest that shows off my couching and thread painting
Several landscape quilts based on my daughter-in-law’s beautiful travel and flower pictures
A wool applique quilt with interesting decorative stitches and heavily beaded.

Plus I am writing two books, which require samples. I am about halfway through the one on embellishments and have the one on quilting for art quilters outlined and started.

I will do what I can and not try to push myself too hard this year…just sew along and enjoy myself along the way. But I would really love to get it all done. Great fun in my studio.

Sew happy everyone! I would love to know what your plans for the new year are, at least to begin the year. Enjoy your New Year’s Eve and Day!

Bunches to Do

Posted on March 22, 2019March 22, 2019 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.

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!

Project Management for Fabric Art

Posted on February 22, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Books, Church banners, Classes, Food for Thought, My micro-business, My Studio, Quilt Journal, quilt shows, Show Quilts, Studio maintenance, Tools / 1 Comment

Since I retired in 2012 to become a full time studio fabric artist, I have found a need to develop a system to keep things organized for time and technique management. Initially, I felt that taking time to keep records cut into my creative time and resembled work too much. After all, I was here to have fun and make fabric art, right? ?

Lately, I have added teaching local workshops and for several years have been working on writing several books.

So I found it necessary to figure out a way to keep up with all of this. In fact, the multi-faceted system I came up with saves time and reduces stress, and some of it is kind of fun. Without records I would spend a lot of time figuring out where I was within a project, what was next, and making mistakes I would not have made if I had notes I could refer to. This is especially important if there is an interruption in a specific project and I have a gap of time, or if I am working on more than one project at a time, which I often do (a show quilt, an approaching teaching session, a bit of writing, and even something just for me like clothing or my current bed quilt project).

My daughter-in-law Beth, who is also a quilter and a computer professional, suggested I look into www.Trello.com, which is a free organizational program designed for businesses. I find this program very easy to use and set up. It helps me keep up with project ideas and a general overview of where I am on each project, and you can put in a check list. It’s especially nice when I am doing a project with another person. Beth and I set up a team “Board” of Tatum Quilters so we could share projects. We haven’t done much in that direction, but we still talk about it from time to time…LOL So you might want to check it out.

While Trello helps me keep up with my ideas and plans for quilts, I found I need more detailed information and some of that doesn’t fit into a computerized file. So I also have my big black low tech notebook. I use this from the very beginning of a project and also keep other information in it. I write up ideas, make a general overall plan, keep tiny samples of fabrics, lists of threads, and other supplies, and put records of everything I need in this book for keeping my project together. The following images may give you an idea for your own notebook.

Here I have the original design of the Renaissance banner my BFF Anita and I made for the church last year. This is her original design. I added notes, and a list of the fabrics I ordered for the project. I just stapled her original drawing in to the notebook since it fit. If such a design doesn’t fit, I sometimes fold it one or two times and staple it in.

So here is the finished design after I put it into the computer and drew a pattern for us, making a few changes we discussed along the way. On the right side is a plan for making the quilt from start to finish, which we checked off as we completed it. I just printed a page size of the pattern and stapled it in on one page.

Sometimes I just staple drawings into the book to keep them from getting lost. This is my train project I am about to start working on. The one on the left is a copy of the drawing my BFF Anita did for me to use for this, and the one on the right has a few scribbly additions I did thinking about how I might make it. I have pages after this with a brief list of steps to make this quilt and have space for notes on stitches, settings, etc. for my machine work.

Here I have the samples of the fabrics and a list of the threads for Pendragon. Ken (oldest son) and Beth (his wife) gave me this wonderful addition to my stash along with the design for Pendragon that Ken drew. Pendragon was such a major project requiring many advanced techniques I had to develop or had never used it has ten pages in my black book that includes all kinds of things related to it.

Here is my trial of the upper left corner of Pendragon. I digitized the outline of the ancient design for stitching just the outline in the hoop, which needed a lot of fixing. So I had to do a stitchout before putting it on the quilt. I also wanted to try the painting to see how that would go. So I just stapled the sample into the book because I liked it and didn’t want to throw it away. If you look hard, you can see on the right a very loose sketch of how the quilt pieces fit together.

If you’d like to learn more about Pendragon, I have several blogs in which I included the making of this extensive project. The testing of borders and the making of Pendragon. So as you see, I also keep what you might think of as progress reports in this blog.

You might think that would be enough record keeping, but when I started doing show quilts that went to several shows, and sometimes had multiple quilts out for shows or exhibits, I found I had to make sure I knew where they were or were going. I needed to be careful that I didn’t enter the same quilt in a show that was being held at the same time another show that I had entered was held, or enter it into this year’s shows when they had already been shown or rejected from another year’s show (Just as a matter of principal, I never reenter a show that has rejected my quilt previously even if they accept this kind of entry). And I found I can’t enter another Mancuso show if the quilt has received a ribbon in another Mancuso show. So it became a kind of choreograph of the dance of the quilts.

I take care of this with a simple Microsoft Excel workbook with two spreadsheets. One keeps up with what shows that I am interested in and the deadline dates. The other spreadsheet keeps up with what has been where or entered where, with a simple asterisk if it placed in that show. I include an example of my workbook here. I don’t know if it will work on your computer or if it is anything you might want, but it was easy to include if it works for you and you are into show quilting.

Quilt Show List example

Sew there you are. Yes, it is a complex four part system, but it also works well for me and so I wanted to share it. Believe it or not, it saves more time than it spends to do this, especially after getting started with it all, and it really helps keep down the stress factors in my busy busy studio. One more thing, I put on my calendar when a quilt has to be shipped once they are accepted into a show. I have occassionally waked up and wondered if I had missed a deadline, only to be happy to find I had not by looking on my calendar.

Sew happy everyone! Try making a show quilt or a master quilt, even if you don’t want to show it. You might want to keep your own records, with lots of pictures along the way (oh and yes, I have computer files with folders by the year for quilts made in that year. Yes, I back up everything). It will be fun to look back on it or if you want to remember how in the world you did that technique on that quilt some years ago.