Happy Easter and Workshops

Posted on April 19, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Church banners, Food for Thought, My Studio, Quilt Journal, Show Quilts / 4 Comments

Our Savior’s Way Lutheran Church Easter Banner designed and made by Betty Jo and Anita Born, completed 4/15/19

Happy Easter everyone! The Lord is Risen! Above is the banner that my BFF Anita and myself made for Our Savior’s Way Lutheran Church in Ashburn, VA. You can see this banner in person this coming Easter Sunday at the church. We added ribbon streamers with brass bells on each side of the banner so it rings happily as it is moved down the aisle. there are three dimensional embroidered butterflies and the lilies are in-the-hoop embroideries I did. Anita painted the lamb and I added its curly fur when I did a light bit of quilting. This banner is technically a quilt, although the batting is extremely light (Hobb’s Thermore Ultralight), and really is more like a soft interfacing. But it really does not have the loft a quilt would normally have. Still it needed a bit of very light quilting to keep the layers hanging nicely together over the years we anticipate it being used. So I stitched around all the appliques, added some curly fur on the lamb, and did some glory rays coming from the cross. We shared the making and stitching of appliques, and Anita made the background with the hills and beautiful fabric we found for the sky. I did the final batting, facing, edge stitching, and quilting. We are hoping the church enjoys the banner for many years.

So now that I have my Fabric Arts Workshop 1 on applique techniques behind me, we have finished the banner, and I have now prepared the kits for Workshop 2 on quilting with feed dogs up and optionally a walking foot. I am well along to getting the kits for Workshop 3 on organic free motion quilting done, and I still am a little bit behind on preparations for Workshop 4 on Ruler Work for a Sitdown Machine, but I have a month to get that done.

Once I complete all the Workshop preparations I will joyfully return to making show quilts, and taking pictures along the way for use in my books. I’m really looking forward to getting to that point. Several months back I felt nearly buried with things I had to do and was a bit overwhelmed, and I am now having much more fun in my studio. I really appreciate the assistance my BFF (aka my “apprentice”) Anita has provided to help me get unburied. Just picture a quilter buried under stacks of fabrics, threads, battings, deadlines, and paper and a friend comes along and rescues her. That’s Anita. In return, I continue to teach her what I know and help her with her own projects. Plus we have a lot of fun gabbing. She’s the same age I am and we have a lot in common. Meanwhile Mei-Ling Huang, my other BFF who is also my Bernina dealer, has also been helping me get the pieces together for my kits, and David, my youngest has picked up much of the things around the house I had to do.

So God bless you all! Sew happy! Take time to be creative and enjoy your work.

Adventures and Misadventures in My Studio

Posted on March 30, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Church banners, Classes, Food for Thought, High-Tech Studio, My micro-business, My Studio, Videos / 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bunches to Do

Posted on 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.

My Uncle and What’s Happening in My Studio

Posted on October 22, 2017November 13, 2017 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Church banners, My Family, selling quilts / 2 Comments

I’ve taken too long to write a new post. This past month has had its lows and highs.

My uncle Betterton passed a week and a half ago. He was 91 and was two years younger than my mom. I had five aunts and six uncles on my mom’s side and one aunt on my Dad’s side and all are gone now, as well as my parents. Uncle Betterton was one of my favorite uncles. He was always close with my mom and someone everyone could rely on for help. He had various tough illnesses the last several years, mild dementia, and is now no longer suffering. He was a strong Christian. Like my father, he was a civil engineer, both served in WWII, and he and Dad enjoyed a strong friendship. My memories of him are sweet and dear and the pain of losing him is softened by his wonderful long giving life and his final release from the difficulties of his last few years.

Sew what’s going on in my studio these days? My “apprentice” Anita and I finished the church banner celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The church members apparently love it, and I was really pleased with how it looks. I have still not gotten a good photo of it, but I will share as soon as I do. The big community celebration is next Sunday. I guess this tells you that I attend a Lutheran church. I do. It’s five minutes drive from my house and the it’s a lovely church with services not far in liturgical style from the Episcopal church. I grew up an Episcopalian. For many years I drove down to Georgetown to go to the historic St John’s Episcopal in Georgetown where Marvin and I both were very active and sang in the choir. After Marvin passed, I moved to Ashburn, Virginia, and the drive to Georgetown got even longer, so I looked for somewhere closer. Our Savior’s Way Lutheran Church is in my neighborhood…now that’s a luxury I had not had for decades.

I have gotten a start on my next show quilt. I’m not sure I would call them “show quilts” any longer, except that’s a term many understand. I like to show them, but my primary goal for these quilts is to make wonderful art, and hopefully sell most of them in the long run. Everything I make I hope to meet show quilt level, but sometimes show judges don’t seem to understand why the techniques I choose are done the way they are, or how difficult they really are. Sometimes they seem to see things and remark on them that I simply cannot see, and sometimes I think they don’t see something about my quilts that I think is especially unique and interesting. Maybe I need new glasses, a flashlight, and a better magnifying glass. Or maybe I need a microscope. LOL So I have found a lot of freedom in reaching for creating beautiful art the best way I can make it and not worrying too much about what a judge might see or not see. Competition can be rough on one’s ego. He-he-he

Anyway, back to my latest project. It’s based on the art piece I bought the rights for one art quilt from the Disney artist Joel Christopher Payne. It’s set in the Bayou and has interesting trees, and two rather rundown homes with light peaking out through the cracks in the boards. One is a houseboat, and the other is a shack built on stilts on a platform. The scene is at night and there is a little pale light filtering through the trees in a way that suggests a heart shape, and there are fireflies. This is a huge challenge for me, but really, I am enjoying myself so far.

I have the houseboat “built” and the shack about half done. Yesterday I did a little low and high lighting with Neocolor II pigment crayons. When you use them with fabric, you can just color it on and then brush it with water to blend it onto the fabric and then heat set it for a permanent color. Sometimes when I heat set it, it gets lighter so I have to go back and add more color, but it’s a wonderful way to over color an existing fabric pattern to add shadows and lights where you need them or “correct” colors. In this case, I have three different wood print fabrics that I have backed with Steam-a-Seam II light and cut into board shapes. I am using these to “build” the shack and the houseboat.

The picture has really big trees that also have some Spanish moss hanging from them. I have five different tree bark prints that I will use to make the tree appliqués. They, too will need to be overpainted to get the right look and color, I am planning on thread painting the Spanish moss on, and probably it will be more than Joel put in his picture because this is a fabric and threads interpretation of his wonderful art piece.

I have obtained some glow in the dark paints and threads to make the fireflies with, and the paint has some additional pigment so it will look good in light too. I may add crystals to the fireflies for added dimension.

The biggest challenge as I see it is the light that is getting the back light that is coming through the trees and reflecting across the water right. I am thinking this will have to be done with paint, but I’m still thinking about it.

Sew I hope you all have a wonderful week. Try something new and push to get it as well done as possible. I have a lot going on in my studio besides this new quilt, so I hope I will get back to my weekly blogs for a while. Cheers!

A Church Banner for Reformation 500

Posted on September 22, 2017September 22, 2017 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Church banners, Design Work / 1 Comment

One of my church pastors asked me to make the church a banner for an area wide celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation toward the end of October. Another pastor asked my friend Anita Born, who is an artist, to make the banner. The funny thing is that I am teaching Anita to make baby quilts and wall quilts and we get together frequently, so on Tuesday, we discovered that we had both been asked to make the banner. So we did what any reasonable friends would do, decided to do it together. We had both drawn up some concepts for the banner. I had just decided that mine was too formal, and would probably take too long, for this particular kind of celebration and I should probably start over and maybe have some trumpets on the banner when I found out she had also been asked to do the banner. So here is what I designed at first:

My original design for the reformation banner…too formal and too complex.

So when Anita came over on Tuesday for our usual Tuesday afternoons together, she brought several drawings and one of them had trumpets! Here is her original drawing:

Anita’s original drawing

So we worked over the design a bit. She came back yesterday and we finalized our design concept and I redrew it a bit in my drawing software and we decided how we were going to make this. Below is the design we came up with and I just got the fabric. Anita is going to paint us some trumpet appliques and do most of the handwork, and I am going to embroider the words in my Bernina 830 LE (Gibbs). and we are going to do the applique cutting and placing together. We decided, after talking with our pastors, that we should put the “Reformation 500, 1517 – 2017” text on a removable text box applique so we can change the text and use it in other ways for the church…something celebratory.

Here is the final design concept. The green ferns will be made from multiple greens and placed in small sections on the banner, so may look different when finished.

We are having a lot of fun doing this together and it will speed up the project a lot. I’m so glad we found out about both being asked before we got two banners made! I’ll post more on this project as we go. I need to get back to work now.

Sew happy everyone! Have a wonderful weekend and week. Find a friend to do some creative things together.