An Interview Concerning Kitsunes, Wulvers, and Golden Dragons

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, My Family

David A. Tatum

For more than the past six years, one of my chief concerns has been to try to help my youngest son David launch his chosen career as a novelist. You’ve no idea how much this means to me. He’s wanted to be an author all of his life. He made up his first story when he was about three. His dad, my dear late husband Marvin, was a book collector and librarian, and had a collection of books on standing stones. David made up a story about the enormous men who put the standing stones into place. He grew up surrounded by books with parents who encouraged reading.

David, who has his degree in history, has a marvelous and interesting writing style based on sound research and filled with interesting characters. Even though he has elves, dwarves, and dragons in his first book, In Treachery Forged, they are totally fascinating with characteristics unlike those you might expect. His woman protagonist was blinded as a young girl and has learned to handle life with efficiency and forthrightness.

His delightful second novel, The Kitsune Stratagem, does not have elves, dwarves, and dragons, but rather its female lead is a young kitsune (a human-fox shape shifting person with remarkable characteristics). It is an exciting story with palace intrigue, fascinating characters, such as wulvers and bunyips, placed in a very interesting world.

This week, he was featured in a blog interview that talks about his writing. You can find it here. And should you want to read one of these delightful novels you can find all the links to print versions and ebooks here

He has arranged it so if you buy the print version, you can have the kindle ebook version for free.

Sky Horse, Houston, and Focus for Future Quilts

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Food for Thought, Quilt Journal, quilt shows / 10 Comments

Sky Horse. A deep space quilt inspired by NASA photos of the Horsehead Nebula

The judges have finished judging and the notifications have gone out, and Sky Horse did not win a ribbon. Sew I thought I would go ahead and share the finished pictures with you. The problem has always been getting a good photo of the quilt because of the way it reflects the light. But the one above is the best I could get after getting a special lens and all. Here’s the detail:

I have no idea how well it traveled. I did my best in packing it to travel without developing serious folds or breaking of the Angelina Fibers applique (if you can call it that). I have had good success in the traveling of my first deep space quilt Stellar Nursery. It’s tougher than you might think once it gets the black veiling sewn on and the all-over quilting.

Stellar Nursery, inspired by NASA photos of “Mountains of Creation”. My first deep space quilt.

I am very happy to have Sky Horse in Quilt Fest in Houston. It’s a true honor just to get in that show. Of course, I’m a little disappointed not to get a ribbon, but the quilts that go there are incredible and I also think I did not capture the Horsehead Nebula as well as I wanted to. I may try again some day.

Over the past few months I have had several discussions with two well-known quilters who both suggested to me that I pick one or two styles and make lots of quilts in those styles reaching constantly for improvement with each new quilt. I think on the whole that they are right. But I will confess that this is difficult for me because I love so many kinds of art style quilts.

The first is 1. deep space quilts as seen above and just for reference here are several from my other styles,

2. Story landscape quilts: They tell a story on some kind of landscape:

Waiting…

The Storyteller

Then I have the 3. line drawings/blue print quilts:

Dad’s House Plan–a memory quilt for my Dad. This quilt was juried into AQS Chattanooga and will be there this week.

Perspective in Threads – This quilt was recently juried in to Houston’s Tactile Architecture special exhibit and will be in the Houston show and traveling for a year thereafter.

And then there is my newest style, which one might call 4. Innovative. This quilt is meant to be the first of a series of silk quilts focused on ancient illuminated manuscripts and other old European and American artwork.

Canterbury Silk. This quilt has been juried in to MQX Midwest and will be debuted there this year.

Sew in principle, I agree with my quilting friends…4 styles is a lot to build a reputation on, and one needs to focus on a style or two and make many of those quilts. It’s much like the decision I had to make many years ago to reduce my multiple crafts down to focus on fabric arts. But I have not yet decided. They are all fun. What do you think?

A Shift in the Studio

Posted on August 24, 2014August 24, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, My Studio, Sewing Clothing, Teaching Kids, Tools / 6 Comments

Kevin

My handsome, brilliant, impish grandson Kevin enters middle school on 2 September and we decided as a family that his after school and summer day-care will be shifted to Grammy (that’s me) instead of his former care giver who has several new younger kids this year plus her own bunch to care for. I live only a couple of miles from his school and his home. I am truly happy to have him come here for the out-of-school work hour time. It does impact my time for fabric art substantially, however, so I will have to scale back some of my plans in that direction for a few years. I hope to share some wonderful time and create some great memories, as well as teach him some art among other things. It will not stop me from moving forward in my own art, though.

Part of the time, Kevin and I are taking the opportunity for him to learn more about quilting, and possibly bag making. He made a quilt top with me when he was 9, but sort of stopped working on quilting for the past couple of years. But he’s interested again. Last week he drafted a lemoyne star using Alex Anderson’s methods presented in a TQS show, and then decided to put together a small quilt and use the lemoyne star as a quilting design. It would be a straight stitch quilting design and so he can use my big Bernina with the dual feed to quilt it.

Technology can really help in teaching kids to sew. It is my personal belief that frustration and boredom are the chief barriers to kids learning to do high-level creative things like this. He worked out how he wanted it on my Electric Quilt 7 program, picked out the fabrics from my stash, and cut it out on my Go! cutter, and started sewing it on Friday. If you have kids you want to teach to quilt, I really recommend a die cutter, because it is safe, accurate, and fast. Fast means less boredom, accuracy makes for good results and less frustration, and a machine that works well means less boredom and less frustration. So here he is sewing together the 10 inch squares on my little B350 machine. I put a 57 foot, which is a 1/4 inch piecing foot with a seam guide, on the machine and slid the machine speed down to the middle so he doesn’t sew too fast. His seems so far are perfection.

We’ll see where this goes from here. It is my hope he will really enjoy it enough to want to do another one when this is finished, but if he only finishes this one, it will be a nice accomplishment for him.

Meanwhile, I still managed to get my black blouse and slacks cut out for my dressy outfit. Hopefully, I can complete this project this coming week. Kevin will be spending some of the week with his other grandparents next week, so I have several clear days next week before the after-school thing starts.

Sew happy everyone! Teach someone to sew–your grandkids, your BFF, yourself, your annoying neighbor, your cats, your dogs. LOL

Alex Anderson, A Bit of Progress, and Some Plans

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Fabrics, Food for Thought, Sewing Clothing / 2 Comments

Today I went to G Street in Falls Church, Virginia, to attend a lecture by Alex Anderson. I had a lot of fun. I got there early enough that I could get a seat close to the front just behind the chair Alex came and sat down in while waiting for the time to start, and we had a lovely conversation about Bernina sewing machines. A Bernina representative was sitting next to Alex and joined in. I never expected to have time to chat with her, so this was an added treat for me.

Her lecture was entirely fun and very inspiring. She told us about her life centered around quilting, family, and quilting friends, and how many times she had taken one step at a time to learn something new for her books, for her quilting, for her job as a show hostess. In all of that and in clear statements she encouraged us to try new things and take one step at a time no matter how difficult they seemed at first to accomplish, learn, improve, and experiment in quilting. I loved her speech, I enjoyed meeting her, and found myself wishing that we lived close so I could become a good friend of hers. Thank you Alex for such a fun time today and all the shows and teaching you have provided.

I have been slowly building a network of really fine quilting friends across the country and occasionally I meet them face to face. I hope to continue this as the years roll out in front of me.

Anyway, as to the progress on my clothing project. I have now finished making the black embroidered reversible vest and embroidered slacks. The vest fits nicely, but I’m not as happy with the slacks. I have one idea for improving the slacks, and will do that, but I think I’m going to have to improve my slacks pattern before I make the other two pairs.

I also finished the silk brocade vest and it fits to perfection. I will make the black blouse and slacks next, and hope I can improve the slacks pattern enough to be really happy with them. If I can, I have at least one more pair I will make, and I found a nice piece of Rayon Batik I had stashed in the closet that will make a great loose casual lightweight jacket. I’m going to make at least one bag and then I’m going to stop with the clothes for a while. Later on, I want to use one of my four nice pieces of heavy wool I have to make an overcoat. I even have all the specialized interfacing and lining for two of them and some faux fur to make cuffs and a collar. But I will do that closer to winter. I think I’ll blog the making of the overcoat when I do. It should be interesting.

I have two quilts I want to make. One has an end of the year deadline, and I will wait until early in the new year to tell you about it. The other one is a quilt based on some line drawings by the Wright Brothers of their planes that I found on The Wright Brothers organization site and obtained their permission to use for the quilt.

The Wright Plane quilt will be one in my line-drawing series. The first of that was Perspective in Threads, which has been juried into the Houston special architectural quilts exhibit this year, that will be traveling for a year. The second is Dad’s House Plan that will soon be in AQS Chattanooga.

Sew I’ll put in a few pictures of my clothes when I get them done.

Sew happy! Teach someone to sew or quilt…your BFF, your brother, your daughter, your pets.

Stress Reduction: Read a Fun Book and Relax!

Posted on August 2, 2014August 2, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought

Cover art

Life is sometimes hard to take, and the news seems ghastly lately. One of the things you can do to lower your stress level is to read a really good book. My youngest son, the writer, just published his second full length fantasy novel. It is a great read and I wish you would all rush to your favorite e-reader store and purchase a copy.

After you read it, if you’d like, I would love it if you would go to the e-reader store where you bought it, and give it a short review, or a five-star rating (if you liked it, that is). Of course, you don’t have to, but such reviews are very helpful in getting the book launched and seen by prospective buyers–much more than I realized before his first book was published. OR, if you really would rather read it in print, it will be available in print from Amazon in a couple of weeks (you can review that too, if you’d like). His books are fun, have a lot of research behind them, and are an easy read. Here’s the link to Fennec Fox Press where you can find the links to the various online bookstores.

OK, Back to my clothing upgrade project. I’ll post a blogpost on my progress there soon.

Sew Happy Everyone!

Progress Report and Thoughts on Quilting Economics

Posted on July 12, 2014July 12, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Food for Thought, Quilt Journal, Techniques, Threads / 4 Comments

Saturday Morning 12 July

Hi. It’s been a while since I wrote a post mainly because I didn’t have anything more interesting to say than “I’m still quilting.” 😀 Well, I finally finished the quilting and moved on to painting the border.

Now I thought that painting the border would not take me more than a day or two, but I have been painting about three full days so far and as you can see, I have less than half of it done. I’m using a combination of Lumiere and Setacolor paints. I found if I accidentally paint a little outside the stitching, it can easily be removed if I act quickly with a dampened paper towel. Then I finish off the leaves and flowers with a coat of SoSoft glitter finish. I actually like the Setacolor glitter finish also, but the glitter pieces are much larger in it and I thought the subtlety of the SoSoft works better for this quilt. SoSoft takes a couple of days to stop being sticky, but it dries to a level where it doesn’t disturb it if you touch it in about 10 minutes. Setacolor dries faster and better than any of the paints. After the paint dries for a couple of days, I will turn the quilt upside down into a soft towel to prevent the trapunto effect from being squashed and heat set them by ironing from the back of the quilt. I’ve already tried this with my sample pieces and know it works well.

I estimate that I will finish the painting in about three more days of work. I am using multiple paint colors on each leaf, flower, and swirl and this takes time. Then I will bind it and I have a lot of beading I want to add to the quilt…beads in the middle of the flowers, around the center of the faux sashing between the red center block and the border, and I ‘m debating whether to scatter some beads on the border. The original design from the illuminated manuscript has some scattered spots of paint that could easily be beads on the quilt. Here it is. See the spots?

My design…border taken directly from digital picture of an illuminated manuscript.

Sew that’s why I haven’t been around to post anything much lately. But I have been taking periodic breaks and watching entries in Facebook, The Quilt Show, and so forth. I have noticed that there is a bit of disturbance in the quilting world regarding what threads and fabrics to buy, what fabrics “require” what threads, and where “responsible shoppers” buy them. Sigh. I may lose some of my followers here, but this is what I think about all of this. Buy the best grade of fabrics and threads you can, because you are spending so much of your time and effort making these wonderful quilts and garments, but sometimes you can find real bargains of fine quality threads and fabrics. So buy them where you can get the best for the best price. If you buy them from JoAnns, or the big box store, you can take comfort in the fact that you are helping supply badly-needed jobs for your neighbors. If you buy them at your local quilt store, you can take comfort in the fact that you are helping to keep them in business. If you buy them from the Internet for a particularly good price and convenience without spending gas to go get them, you can rejoice in having saved enough over time to make one more quilt—perhaps even a charity quilt. Don’t feel guilty for where you shop or what you buy, but DO pay attention to the quality.

Sometimes it is just as cheap or cheaper to buy a high quality thread in a cone on sale than it is to buy a low quality thread in smaller quantities at a discount store. The lower quality thread also can damage your machine, so that has to enter into your thinking about the economics behind your purchases. Also, it is not necessary to use cotton threads on cotton fabrics. The quality of the higher end threads, especially, are so high now that no longer applies.

Sew those of you out there who have developed into–for good reason–thread snobs or fabric snobs, please be gentle with those who shop where you think they should not and buy the threads you think they should not, and vice-a-versa. Love thy fellow quilter or sewist as thyself.

Sew happy everyone! Teach someone to sew…your son, your granddaughter, your nephew, your niece, your fiance, your neighbor down the street, your cat, your dog. 😀

My Mentors

Posted on June 16, 2014August 9, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, From the Archives, Quilt Journal

On a trip earlier this year, a friend of mine asked me who I considered my mentor. I was driving and the traffic was heavy, so I didn’t give a very good answer to that question. I have had many mentors, the chief one being my mother. Sew I decided to pull an earlier post from my archives of my old blog, but looking at it, I realize I have added several additional mentors and so I put those into the post in blue text. I am so thankful for all the wonderful quilters and sewists who have taught me so much across the years. Many of them I have never met.

AUTHOR: BJ Tatum
TITLE: Let us now praise famous women (and men)
DATE: 8/7/2011 9:35:54 PM
—–
BODY:
I don’t quite know why, but I have been thinking a lot lately about the
wonderful women and men who have handed down their skills and forged
paths in sewing, engineering, painting, fabric weaving and printing, and
development of all manner of tools and notions that have brought us to
the fantastic opportunities we have now spread before us. I thank God
for them.

Let us now praise famous men [and women], and our fathers [and mothers] that begat us.
The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through His great power from the beginning.
Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, men renowned for their power,
giving counsel by their understanding, and declaring prophecies:
Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of
learning meet for the people, wise and eloquent are their instructions:

Such as found out musical tunes, and recited verses in writing.
Rich men furnished with ability, living peaceably in their habitations.
All these were honored in their generations, and were the glory of their times.

There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.

And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though
they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born;
and their children after them.

But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten.

With their seed shall continually remain a good inheritance, and their children are within the covenant.

From Ecclesiastics 44, King James Version

Several quilters and sewers have had a huge impact on my appreciation and love of sewing and quilting. And you know, I’ve only actually met one of the most impactful of them besides my mother.

Zephana Bivens: She was my dear incredibly brilliant talented mother, who was an advanced sewist and knitter. She never made quilts to my knowledge, but she taught me to sew and knit and embroider from the time I was about 4 or 5. I honestly can’t remember exactly when I began, but I do know I made my first dress, with a lot of help from her, at age 6. Late in her life, she got interested in intricately carved woodworking using a scroll saw and made some wall art that I can only characterize as “wood lace”. Sadly, she passed away at age 79 from cancer just as she was perfecting her woodworking, and she never got to see my quilting development. How I would have loved to share it with her, but somehow I believe she knows about it. She was not famous, but she was clearly an artist.

Martha Pullen: The other day, I was watching “Martha’s Sewing
Room” where one of her guests (sorry don’t know her name), was showing a
way to sew something and turn it that was remarkable in its result and
simplicity, but required an engineering mind to figure out in the first
place. Martha has provided some remarkable teaching from her program and I have learned a ton of new methods especially for heirloom sewing.

Sharon Schamber: The first time I realized that quilts might be a fascinating “hobby” for me was about 7 years ago when I attended the Chantilly Sewing and Quilting Expo where they had one of Sharon Schamber’s quilts on display. I was astonished and fascinated with her piecing and quilting techniques and, oddly, I didn’t even particularly like her overall quilt. I realized, though, that she has a remarkable talent. Since that time, I have studied many of her how-to videos on her network. She taught me to improve my piecing, my quilting, and especially my binding. [Sharon’s videos are now available in DVD form on her daughter’s site Purple Daisies]

Alex Anderson: Alex’s TV show Simply Quilts, which never seemed long enough to me but which introduced me to many new concepts and techniques piqued my interest. Now she and Ricky Tims and their families and colleagues produce The Quilt Show, which has provided me with a huge amount of teaching through the shows, the classes, and the access to other quilters online.

Nancy Zieman: Over the years I have watched every Sewing with Nancy episode I could find and have bought a number of her dvds and books. I improved my basic sewing skills from her teaching.

Diane Gaudynski: Diane is relatively new in my unmet masters. I bought a couple of her books on machine quilting using a domestic sewing machine and they helped me to vastly improve my quilting. She helped me to realize I don’t have to have a long arm machine to do high-end quilting.

Laura Wausalowski, who I took a workshop from a couple of years back and she taught me how much fun quilting should be and how to improve my fusible applique.

Recently, I have developed a lot of interest in the techniques that are used by Caryl Bryer Fallert, which, remarkably, closely relate to many of my favorite methods, though our quilt subjects are so different and she, of course is the master, and I am just an explorer at this point.

Pepper Cory, from whom I have taken several workshops and with whom have an ongoing friendship. Now Pepper is mostly a hand quilter, but her knowledge of quilt history, sense of design, and ability to deal with stencils (and other quilting design sources) have been an enormous help to me in seeing some directions I need to take in my future quilting.

Pat Holly and Sue Nickels, and their books Stitched Raw Edge Applique and Machine Quilting: A Primer of Techniques along with their video appearances on The Quilt Show. I have only briefly met Sue Nickels at her lecture at The Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival this past February, but they are both such effective teachers that their books and videos have been enormous help in improving my quilts.

Everyone develops their own styles and methods, and often they are a mix of things learned from others…but it’s just wonderful how much is out there today to help us get there and we don’t even HAVE to go to their workshops to get that advantage…though it is much more fun if we can!

Have a great week everyone.

Cheers,

Betty Jo

—–

Playing in My Studio: Combining Multiple Techniques

Posted on May 30, 2014August 15, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Embroidery, Food for Thought, High-Tech Studio, Techniques, Uncategorized / 1 Comment

I really love taking the different techniques I have managed to gather over the decades and apply them to make an art quilt, a decorated vest, or a beautiful bag. Since my retirement a couple of years ago I have spent a lot of my time learning and perfecting new and old techniques with the goal of being able to call on anything to produce the look I want. In my quilt “Waiting…”, for instance, I used drawing, paper piecing, regular piecing, applique, trapunto, fabric painting, digital art printed fabrics, thread painting, free motion quilting, and embellishment.

Waiting…

So whether you are a traditional, contemporary, art, or modern quilter, I encourage you to gather your techniques and tools and put them all together to realize your own masterpieces. It’s really fun to not be limited by not knowing how to do some technique and you can end up with some delightful items while you learn. While it’s always nice to have a face-to-face class with an expert, one of the nice things today is there are many sources for learning these techniques online, sometimes with accompanying books.

First of all, If you haven’t already, I suggest you spend the modest amount of money to buy a membership on The Quilt Show and watch the shows, the classes, and the videos that accompany the BOM (Block of the Month) even if you are not making the BOMS. This has been a big resource for me in improving my quilt making, learning about who are the major quilters in the world today, and being inspired when I get discouraged.

Secondly, I discovered that Nancy Zieman has many of her Sewing With Nancy available free to watch on Wisconsin Public Television online website, many of which relate to quilting, but in fact, most any kind of sewing relates to quilting. Also, you can purchase her dvds with accompanying books from Nancy’s Notions.

Sharon Schamber has dvds available now on some of her techniques from her daughter’s website that she used to have on a downloadable website. I subscribed to that website that is now defunct, and downloaded and watched everything available, even the long arm ones. I fortunately still have them. Some of the videos seem a little primitive in format, but her techniques are wonderful. I particularly recommend The Quilt Fairy, which shows a painting method that has stood me in good stead for many places on my show quilts. Now that brings up another point. Fabric painting has different styles and materials just like applique or piecing, and each one has its place and learning as many of them as you can is helpful. On “Waiting…” I used Sharon Schamber’s method presented in The Quilt Fairy to put the lowlights and highlights in the woman’s dress and cape. I used my own computerized digital painting to paint her face and hands and printed them on fabric and appliqued them. I used watered down Setacolor fabric paints to wash paint the sky fabric as demonstrated by Mickey Lawler show number 1305 on The Quilt Show. Her hair is thread painted, which is another key technique especially useful for art quilts. While I developed my own technique for this, it closely matches that shown by Nancy Prince on show number 1004 on TQS.

Wind-tossed woman showing the high and lowlights on her clothing, her digitally painted face and hands, her thread painted hair, and a little embellishment.

The clipper ship has wool batting between the sails and the quilt. Together with the dual bats (one 80/20 and one wool) I used in the quilt itself, this provided a wind look behind the sails.

If you are going to be at AQS Charlotte in July, my quilt “Waiting…” will be in the show and you can go see it for yourself. It may not place. I have had it in two shows so far and it did not. One judge at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival thought my borders were too large. Another judge at HMQS really didn’t like it. She didn’t like my color choices, my overall design impact, and my quilting. But hey, to each his own, right? I would make it in the same colors today even after that critique, and I happen to like what I call “organic” quilting for a story landscape quilt like this. The winners for that show are magnificent quilts, I will say. Nevertheless, I am honored to have my quilt show in the big shows even without a ribbon.

I want to show you one other quilt, because it has a heavy dose of in-the-hoop machine embroidery, which isn’t used in Waiting…, that I digitized myself and also motifs I used from my Bernina software that I enlarged and painted after it was quilted.

The Storyteller…now touring with Hoffman Challenge 2013 show

The phoenix and dragon in front of the sun is the story she is writing. The word on her tablet is “Betty” in Japanese Katakana. I drew and painted her on my computer myself, printed her on fabric and appliqued her down. After that I added some highlights with real paint. Then I drew and digitized the tree trunk myself from scratch. It was a bear to stitch. I stitched it out twice on a piece of brown fabric. It required two hoopings on my jumbo hoop on my Bernina 830 LE, and then I turned the edge of the brown fabric behind the stitching and appliqued it to the quilt. Even though the tree trunk was tough to do, I like it so much I am planning on using this kind of tree trunk in a deep dark forest quilt that I am planning, which will have a beam of light making it through the trees to a color-filled spot on the forest (perhaps the ruin of a beautiful little church with the light shining through the stained glass window to the floor of the forest where flowers are blooming. It’s been in my head for a long time now.

I am telling you all of this because I am thinking of writing a book about some or all of these techniques. I am working on a book proposal now, but I can’t share much about this with you because of the publisher rules, who understandably does not want things published before the book gets published. I have temporarily put aside the Bernina book because I understand that many of my frustrations have been dealt with in the latest v7 software upgrade, but I need to obtain this product before I can see for sure.

Sew happy everyone! And pull those techniques together–even hand quilting and embroidery–to realize your dream quilts.

On Managing Stashes for Busy Sewists

Posted on May 5, 2014July 11, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Fabrics, Food for Thought, My Studio, Threads, Tools, Uncategorized

I hear a lot of embarrassment out there from my sewing friends about the size of their stashes, but I say don’t be embarrassed, but be grateful and manage those stashed right into productivity. It just needs a realization that there is a huge value to having well-stocked stashes collected over time and properly managed. I began this practice decades ago when I first used sewing as a supplemental income when my children were very small and improved it substantially since retiring a couple of years ago.

Since retiring and reorganizing my stashes I have found the value of spending just a little time each week making sure things are put where they belong and taking note of what needs replacing. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not very good at this. Instead of carefully ironing and folding my fabrics and organizing them carefully on shelves, as some of you do, I sort of fold them straight from the dryer, and then stuff them into my generically labeled drawers. I just dump my threads in similar plastic bins according to type. Libby Lehman, bless her dear heart, had a magnificently organized studio, properly labeled (I would guess it sits there waiting for her full recovery still in its organized splendor). She was my inspiration, but I will never reach her level of organization. Still, she helped me see that at least SOME organization is needed. I’m sure some of you would be horrified if you saw what I considered “organized”…LOL

Imagine that you have a great idea, found that perfect pattern, or have designed a special project in Electric Quilt whatever version and want to get going on it. In your dreamworld, you go into your studio, select your fabrics from your impeccably organized stash, and get started. Then you pull the perfect threads out of your thread stash just right for your project. Your small amount of time is well spent and you make significant progress on your project in that little bit of time. Now I know it is fun to go shopping in your local quilt shop, but my time and budget is limited even since I retired, so I needed to develop a list of what I needed for several projects ahead. Since retiring to full-time fabric artist, I have had to organize my projects, deadlines, show quilt schedules. It saves me far more time than it cost to set this up initially and keep it going. I use simple computerized spreadsheets and it seems to work. I also put deadlines on my computer calendar so it reminds me when I need to do something to help counter that vanishing-time problem. 🙂

What kinds of stashes do you have? I have several types of stashes–quilting cottons, various types of silks, light woolens, denims, etc. in the fabrics sections. But my thread stashes have significantly grown since I retired. My favorite threads are #30 and #40 polyester solids and variegated embroidery threads, #100 silk threads, #12 and #16 perle cotton threads, and #8 perle cottons and Razzle Dazzle and other decorative bobbin and hand embroidery threads, and hand quilting threads that I use for hand sewing beads onto my creations. I also have a collection of buttons, beads, sequins, fabric paints and markers, brushes, stabilizers, interfacing, bag making specialty parts, and needles of all descriptions. I also have a very nice collection of tools. I did not collect these all at once, but over the course of many decades and some of these items are inherited and older than me.

In the past few years I have given away a large amount of fabrics for clothing that I know I will never make. I had decided I need to give away a lot out of my quilting fabrics stash because they no longer appeal to my tastes (funny how that happens), but instead I decided to design several very quick to make quilts that are still pretty, and take those fabrics and make them into pre-cut kits, using my die cutter, that I will either sew up myself or convince some of my friends to sew for people in need. We’ll see if this works or not. I’ve only just started this.

My ultimate goal is to reach a point where the fabrics in my stash are the ones I will use so my stuffed full drawers will once again resemble a nicely organized stash, that I have the stabilizers, battings, beads, buttons, and threads I need most of the time and don’t have to delay a project to order them (my “local” quilt shop is 45 minutes away, and the brands I like are not often available, so I buy my threads online).

Sew I have learned that a small part of my in-the-studio time has to go to managing my projects and stashes in order to keep more productive and the costs spread out across time (as you know threads and fabrics are so expensive…it just helps to have built a stash and keep it stocked so I don’t have to spend a big amount at the beginning of each project), and my fabric art humming along. I realize a lot of you are far better organized than me, but I encourage you if you haven’t done so to take a look at your own stashes and projects and do a little managing and organizing and your productivity and imagination may just take off and soar in ways you don’t expect. And you’ll probably save a little money too.

Sew happy everyone!

A Fresh Start

Posted on April 30, 2014April 30, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, Uncategorized / 1 Comment

Well here we are with a whole new blog.

I am still struggling a bit with the new blog software. There is a lot to learn to provide a nice looking, easy to read, and easy to operate blog. Nevertheless, I am glad to get this up and running. I will tell you that it was most definitely NOT my choice to change. Indeed, it was a bit of a blow to my time space continuum management plans. 😀 But I do appreciate the fact that GoDaddy gave me adequate warning and have been very helpful in getting this done so far. Truly, I understand the need sometimes for a company to make some changes to improve their bottom line, but when they do, I just hope it doesn’t impact mine. 🙂

I have decided that beginning next week I will bring in one of my older posts from the other blog every Thursday for a while. It has taken me some effort to archive it all, including the pictures. In the process of archiving everything, I found several series on making specific quilts and a few independent posts that I think may be kind of fun for our throwback Thursday “From the Archive” posts. If you remember a specific post you liked to reference and have a request, please let me know and I will post it.

Sew let us begin anew. Actually it feels kind of nice to have a bold new start. If you have any requests for topics to cover, suggested ideas for this new blog, or other comments toward improvement, please add a comment. I read all the comments I get and try to answer them in a timely fashion

Coincidentally…or perhaps not…I have also restarted my little Jacobean-like folkish birds-in-a-tree silk quilt. I was unhappy with the silk dupioni I was originally using and so I have changed to a lovely darker red dupioni that my test indicates will not run or fade and is soooo much prettier. As soon as I get this up and running I am going to re-embroider the central big vine and leaves in black, and rework the thin vines with bobbin work using number 8 perle cotton.

Sew happy everyone! Let the fun begin on this new playground!