Quilt Journal

Upcoming Free YouTube Class

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Classes, Embellishment, Food for Thought, Quilt Journal, Threads, Videos

Hi sewists, fabric wizards, and all round lovers of fabric, thread, and maybe paint for making something fun or beautiful.  Do you admire those beautiful wool applique items that are often made all by hand, but would like to try making something similar by machine? I am going to present a free video class with multiple videos on YouTube in the next few weeks (I’ll announce exactly when shortly), and I hope you will join me.

I  am planning on presenting a simple shapes project in wool applique.  It  will be easy and fun, but it requires some complexity of teaching to cover it  adequately so I will be dividing this in three or four video classes on YouTube. This will provide the techniques for making a beautiful small machine appliqued and embellished wool wall hanging to celebrate Fall.

If you want to participate in this, you will want to gather the supplies for this free class.  I am thinking the first video, which I have already shot and am currently editing will be ready some time next week.

Sew here is the list of what you may wish to gather (with links) if you want to make one or two.  Mine is 22 by 25 inches, but you can make yours the best fit for where you want to place it.  It is kind of free style field of flowers using simple shapes and the result will make a nice gift or decoration for the fall season.  You probably have a lot of these supplies already, so check your stash first, but here are some links to what I use if you need to do some shopping.

  1. Background piece…I recommend a yard of melton wool (boiled felted wool) in a dark or deep color:  Black wool (this linked page has other color options); or you can use a solid quilt cotton if desired.  A yard of the wool is 58 inches wide and so it will make two or even three small wall hangings and it has a lovely look when complete. You can also use a less expensive wool blend coating  with real success.
  2. Six or more colors of small pieces of wool felt.  Be sure to include some green if you like green stems and leaves.  I have found precut sets for somewhat reasonable prices in two places and there are several selections for you to choose from. You may have trouble picking because they all look lovely, so maybe buy more and plan on making two.  Here are some suggestions:
  3. Two yards of fusible lightweight interfacing to stabilize the background fabric. Either of these will work.
  4. Steam a seam fusible
  5. A selection of your favorite 40 weight embroidery threads, light weight bobbin thread that matches the background, Superior Monopoly, and 12 weight wool threads (if desired).  I use a wide variety.  Wool thread is expensive, so I suggest you start with the small spools set that will be suffecient for you to do this project and lets you see if you like using it before investing in larger spools.
  6. High quality Sewing Machine needles (these are the ones I use):
  7. Sew check my page Aids and Links at the top of this blog or on the menu if you are reading on a phone.  There you will find a pdf file with simple shapes for wool project that provides patterns for simple shapes if you need them.  Download this and print it.  Or, you can use your simple circles, leaves, and vines you may have in Accuquilt Cutter dies instead if you have these.
  8. A piece of batting that is not very thick large enough for the background piece.  This is a good place to use some of that leftover batting.
  9. Cotton quilting fabric large enough for the back of this little quilt and binding (if desired, though you may wish to do a finish edge with decorative stitching).

I am still very new at making these videos, so that is why I can’t figure out exactly when I will be able to publish them.  My tentative deadline for this is next Wednesday.  Of course, since it is a YouTube video, once it is published you will be able to use it any time and watch more than once.  This first class and the downloads are free, but it would be lovely if you use my links for your supplies.

Sew happy everyone.  Spend some time in your studio.

 

Simple Shapes for My Wool Project

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in a pattern, Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Design as you go, Fabrics, Project Management, Quilt Journal, Tools, Uncategorized, Videos

Sew earlier this week I got everything ready to make my first video and then discovered I was missing a cord to connect the little monitor I need to my Sony Handicam camera.  Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t think identifying cords needed in the computer world is the easiest thing to do,  Thank GOODNESS I have my own family geek squad.  Hahaha.  My son David helped me to identify what I needed and looked through our huge collection of cords, but we didn’t have the right one.  So I ordered it and it is supposed to come today. If it comes, I hope then to get my first video on YouTube sometime next week.  I don’t know how long this whole video making and editing will take me, but my tentative plan is to put one up a week at first.

Sew I got all ready to make the first item for my book/video wool project.  It is called “Simple Shapes” and it is a small wall hanging, and I really invite you to join me in making one yourself.  I will be providing all kinds of help here and even videos demonstrating it.

For several years now I have had an Accuquilt Go! cutter, and have, over the years, collected a fair number of their dies.  I find the dies are wonderful for this particular kind of project, and also I cut all my bindings and borders on it.  It’s much more accurate than I am…LOL.

I also use it to cut my 8 inch blocks I use for cuddle quilts.  I used it when I work with my grandson, who made a couple of simple quilts with my help several years ago, and he was able to cut his own quilt pieces safely.  It’s just a very helpful tool in my studio.  Yesterday it took me only about half an hour to cut out all the pieces I need for this, and most of that time was because I am backing them with Steam-a-Seam  fusible before I cut them, and I had to get that ironed on.  This makes the wool feed through the cutter so nicely and hold the pieces nicely in place.  I have other methods to do this too, but this one is my favorite.

However, if you don’t have a cutting machine and don’t want to buy one right now but want to follow along with me and try your own hand at wool applique by machine, I have made a pdf pattern with simple shapes that you can download and use.  You can find the pdf file on my Aids and Links page on this blog (see the links at the top of this blog).  I know you could draw your own, but why bother, since I have them all put together in the free pattern. They are not necessarily the same as those on my dies, but close enough.

Sew I cut out a bunch of shapes from fun several colors of the wool felt I talked about in my last blog.  As I promised, I also looked around and found you can get satisfactory quality sets from Amazon if you want to make one of these wall hangings yourself.  I would love to see you join me in this fun project. I recommend you get four sets and you will have enough for several projects. Just click on the links below.

I also found a melton wool blend in black that would make a nice background, or you can use a nice solid color quilting cotton for the background. If you get a single yard the wool, it is large enough to make two or even three small wool projects, because these are small little jewels of projects and the yard is 58 inches wide. These would make nice Christmas or other celebration presents.

Sew now that I have all these simple shapes cut out  I will arrange them in a flower arrangement of some sort.  Follow this blog in the future to see what to do.  Note that I also cut some stems and vines about 1/4 inches wide and some leasves shaped from the felt that are not on my pdf but I did use the stems and leaves die on the Accuquilt site also.

I will talk more about what to do with all these shapes in future blogs, but you might guess if you look again at my last blog where I show a lot of the test piece I did.  I will be demonstrating this on my video, assuming I am successful in getting that done.  LOL  I will be linking to my video in my next blog probably.

Test and practice piece

Sew happy everyone!  Teach someone to sew or quilt or at least encourage sewists and other fabric wizards you know.  Even the most advanced folks need encouragement.  Sending you all hugs!

Fine Tuning Quilted Art Projects: Achieving a Straight Unwavy Quilt

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Fine Tuning Series, Quilt Journal, quilt shows, Show Quilts, Techniques

When I started making quilts to hang on the wall, I was working with smaller quilts that didn’t seem to present problems of waves and unevenness.  I had a quilt in the 2013 Quilt Odyssey show and I attended the show.  When I saw the quilt hanging there, I was a little horrified at the wave I saw and how it looked a little crooked. It also seemed a little wiggly at the top.  There it was, hanging in a prestigious show (it has since decided to close the Quilt Odyssey shows) with all those amazing quilts.

Perspective in Threads completed in 2012  before I fixed the binding and after I fixed the rod pocket.

I wanted to grab it and run!  LOL  I couldn’t understand it.  When it was home and on the table it was flat and I guess maybe not as square as I originally thought, but certainly not so wiggly/wavy.  When I got it home I took a hard look at it, did some measuring, square measuring, etc.  I realized a couple of things attributed to the wiggles and waves and most of them had to do with the rod pocket! Here is my analysis of that little quilt.

  • The rod pocket was slightly too narrow and so it had been scrunched a little on their rod. It was sewn so there was no extra space on the back to prevent the rod from poking the top out.
  • The rod pocket was not level in relation to the quilt itself.
  • The binding wasn’t done very well.
  • It measured correctly with even sides and top and bottom though there was a very slight difference between the top and the bottom length.  It was relatively square and there really wasn’t much I could do about any minor unsquareness because of the way I had used the printed border.  I don’t think that is a problem.
  • It is basically a whole cloth quilt with a border and quilted well and evenly, so it didn’t pull it out of whack even though I “quilted it to death”.

So there you go.  The primary problems were the binding that could have been better and the poorly done rod pocket.  I have since replaced both on that quilt, but it has not shown since.

After that, I started carefully measuring the rod pocket when I cut it out and when I applied it so it is even from the top. Instead of 4 inches I make a 5 inch or even more pocket, making sure that it is put on in such a way that there is more fabric on the back in order to make the quilt hang straighter on the top and the rod to be at the back, and although I still struggle with getting a really good binding on a quilt, I am enormously better than I was in 2012 with that. I ewill take the binding off and redo it now if need be.

I bought a laser square and am really particular about the squareness of a quilt now from start to finish. My quilts that go to shows now are seldom, if at all, out of square.

Sew happy everyone!  Stay calm and carry on…carry on with quilting, sewing, family, friends, home, and pray a lot.  Make something for yourself or your favorite person. This plan will likely give you a lot of peace.

 

 

Risk Taking in the Studio

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Embellishment, Food for Thought, My Studio, Project Management, Quilt Journal, Show Quilts, Uncategorized / 4 Comments

Test sampler I made before starting my Mom’s memory quilt.

When I make a show quilt I have a variety of steps that can be a little bit scary, even if they are also fun. I have to take the risk or I would never accomplish the things I want to do. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I pretest, when I am actually working through the quilt project, things come up that are unexpected and must be either corrected or otherwise dealt with.  I am currently trying hard to finish my Mom’s memory quilt, which proves my point.  It has been a real challenge from the start and seems even more so the closer I get to the end.

Sew I finished the loooooooooong period of heavy quilting, unquilting, quilting, unquilting, quilting.  Each part of the quilt had a different sort of quilting that required much thought and practice, but even so, I have not been as happy with it as I had hoped.  I have been working on this quilt for mny hours over the course of a year.  The top looks really pretty good, but I am not as happy with the back.  Still, I love the quilt.

Today, I have been painting the flowers and birds on the white satin that I spent mnths quilting.  The painting is going fairly well on the top, but a few spots have soaked through to the white back.  I think I have control over that now and will not have any more soaking through, and if so, I can use the upper corner where that happened as the place to put the additional label I have planned for all along that will give a little bio and a picture of my mom.  I don’t think I can get away with more thanone of those, however…lol.  So if I do have more trouble with soaking through, I will have to color the back flowers and leaves using something that I know won’t soak through like fabric crayons, which would look nice, but I would rather not do that.  Hopefully I will be able to complete the painting without additional problems of the paint soaking through (I got my brush too wet).   Before I started this I made the sampler above and had no problems with the paints soaking through.  I have painted after quilting on many quilts, and I am pretty sure it was just that I got my brush too wet. Sigh!

Earlier this week we (or rather my son David, who is in control of  our washer that is on his level in our townhome..lol) washed the quilt to get the Crayola washable gel pen markings out of it and set it up for blocking.  I  had told him to wash it on the hand wash cycle with cold water and Wooolite.  It did not entirely come out.  I have to say I was stressed over that.  But anyway, he rewashed it another time using the same directions and more of it came out but not all.  So I suggested warm wash with Synthrapol, and then it all came out.  It also did not damage it in any way and looks fabulous overall.  The quilt has a double bat with an 80/20 bat on the back and a wool bat on the top.  I had done a bunch of testing of the Crayola washable gel pens before I marked the quilt top using the same fabric.  But when I did the test I washed it out with Synthrapol, not Woolite, and I only dried it a few hours and ironed it instead of having it sit in the fabric a year.  So I suspect that is what the difference is, but it might just have been the warm water or the third wash. The point is, it came out and it was a great help while it was in the quilt. I would most certainly use it again even if I have to wash my quilt several times.  But I kind of think just one wash in warm water with the Synthrapol would have done the job.

Oddly, the part that I was most worried about when washing/blocking…the appliqued on crocheted ten inch lace blocks my Mom made…came through the wash without a bit of trouble and they even look refreshed and truly beautiful.

I had originally thought this quilt would end up a little over 60 x 60 inches, but all the quilting drew it in to about 58 x 58 in the end.  I haven’t bound it yet, but that’s what I think it will end up.  It will, therefore, be a small wall quilt in whatever shows it is in, if they will even let it in, or if they even open.

Sew you see, when I make a show quilt, there are lots of things that can and often do go wrong.  What I have found is that I have had to develop a set of approaches to fix problems when they happen, or criteria to help decide when I can let it go and stay as it is.  Afterall, I am not a machine.  I do not make perfect quilts.  I think small flaws can actually add to the beauty and magic of a quilt. I’m not sure judges agree. But sometimes, I may even have to let it go and not enter them into shows.  I think this one will be ok for entry.  We’ll see when I’m done. I am sure those keen eyed judges will see every little flaw and tell me about them if they provide feedback.  They always do.  Hahahah.

In addition to binding, I still have the painting and to add lots of pearls to the quilt. Some of those pearls are possibly going to be Swarowski hot fix pearls, but I have to test that first, because my quilt top is made from polyester crepe back satin and polyester dupioni…it’s gorgeous.  It quilted beautifully, but I will have to test to see if the hot fix pearls go on ok without a hitch, and stay, and don’t melt or burn the fabric.  I once slightly burned a silk dupioni quilt in one spot with the hot fix crystals I started to add.  I ended up glueing the crystals all on, which I found I didn’t like doing at all.  Later on, I learned that I could use the transfer tape to help apply the crystals.  It holds them in place and provides a bit of heat protection of the fabric when I used the hot fix applicator.  So I am hopeful I can use the hot fix pearls for this quilt.  But it is another risk, and the last thing I do to complete the quilt I have spent so many hours on for a year now.

I am planning on making slightly smaller art quilts for a while.  They might actually sell better, since people may be able to find spaces on their walls for them.  But I will continue to do those risky techniques that make the end quilt look so fabulous.  I hope you will too.

I am hoping we are all able to begin to come out of our homes and are still stay well.  Just like a show quilt, risks are required if we are to accomplish anything good.  I personally don’t think we as a country can stay away from work for much longer without the entire world economy collapsing, which is also a massive threat to peoples’ lives, health, and overall well being…even more threatening than the Covid 19.  But we can take precautions as we go out, wearing our pretty face masks we probably all made or had made for us and washing our hands, using sanitization methods in our houses, cars, and places of business, and keeping our distance for a while.  There has been much progress in understanding this thing and how to treat it and they are still moving forward.

Sew happy everyone!  Make something fun.

 

 

Planning the Day

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, My micro-business, My Studio, Project Management, Quilt Journal, Uncategorized, Videos / 2 Comments

I retired on January 1st of 2012 to become a full time fabric artist.  When I think about it, it is a surprise to me that is 8 years plus a few months! During this time I have developed a loosely professional approach to ordering my day and I have found it really makes me feel right about the day.  I guess it is because I spent decades working in sometimes pretty intense situations in my work life and got kind of use to having to put order in the day by necessity.

Now, even though I am home-based in my studio for work, I still like to take a professional approach to the day, and if you are sheltering in place at home you may find this really helpful.  So I start like I am planning to go to work at my former job, only I have a little more relaxing time about it, and my wardrobe is more casual (all happy things).   Here’s the list I give myself.

  1. Make my bed
  2. Get dressed
  3. Read my email and make a plan for the day…a to do list if you will…which I may or may not write down, but I thoughtfully think it through.
  4. Have breakfast
  5. Clean the kitchen
  6. Go to “work”.  I put it in quotes because it is so much fun for me to work in my studio working with with fabrics and threads, or designing my next project.  Remember that work can and should include some educational activities (like TQS offers and Bluprint or Iquilt) sometime during the week.
  7. Listen to podcasts, music, and audio books as I work.
  8. Keep to a (loose) schedule and actually have a “quitting time”, a day for chores (cleaning, bill paying, shopping), a day or a couple of half days I don’t “work” and just chill out.  Sometimes I chill out in my studio though because I love this fabric art thing so much.  Try hard to stick to this schedule.
  9. Eat well
  10. Try to get some exercise every day, even if it is just stretching or walking around in my house.
  11. Enjoy a relaxed evening during and after dinner (I might do some handwork here and watch a movie with my son).
  12. Get a good night’s sleep, but don’t set an alarm (that’s partly the fun of being home-based) unless I find I am way over sleeping more than one day a week

These may seem fundamental to many of you, and a lot of you would have a different list, but I know from watching myself and my youngest son, who is a writer and also a home-based self employed person) that it is easy to get sloppy about things and before I know it my production and self esteem suffer.  This helps me to stay away from that.

Sew happy everyone!  I hope I don’t sound preachy here, but I thought you may find thinking about this helpful in this stuck at home by yourself, especially if you are new to it.  Personally, I love working in my studio most all the time so that the only thing I miss is a few social activities, but I am somewhat making up for that with Facebook and YouTube videos.  There are lots of fun things out there for that…The Quilt Show, Pat Sloan videos…look around on the Internet.  I’m sure you’ll find some you really like.  And stay mostly away from the news so you don’t get all scared or depressed.  Just check briefly now and again or online.  That’s all from grandma BJ here.  LOL

Fine Tuning Quilted Art Projects: Part One, the Design to Pattern

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Art Quilt Techniques, Design as you go, Design Work, Food for Thought, Project Management, Quilt Journal / 2 Comments

I realized with some astonishment recently that 2020 is my sixteenth year of making quilted art projects, mostly, but not entirely in the form of wall art quilts.  I have been sewing since since I was five, when my mother began teaching me to sew, followed by years of learning and making my own clothes and helping my mother in her own sewing pursuits.  I retired from my intensive job with the US Government at the beginning of 2012, but I had already been working toward moving to full-time fabric artist upon retirement for a number of years.

Over the years I have learned a great deal.  I have almost always been in a learning mode, because I find it fun.  For me, a terrific development has been provided by generous fabric artists, digital artists and sewing technicians through online informative sewing and quilting sites, video classes, The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims, and YouTube.  This has enabled me to continue my love of learning new techniques and improvement of my skills while hanging out in my own studio and at a very low cost or even free.

What has all this to do with the title of this blog, you may be asking about now.  Well, I just wanted you to know that I do have a significantly solid and advanced basis to pull from for this series I will be blogging over the next month or so about building quilted projects for fun and excellence.

Sew approaching a new project should begin with a bit of planning and record keeping. Such projects can be divided several ways, but I like the following 10 steps, each of which will be dealt with in their own blog post:

  1.  Designing or Obtaining the Pattern
  2. Collecting the Parts
  3. Checking the Tools
  4. Cutting and Marking
  5. Constructing the Top
  6. Sandwiching Properly
  7. Quilting
  8. Blocking and Squaring
  9. Adding Embellishments
  10. Binding and Finishing.

Designing or Obtaining a Pattern for Your Project

Since I don’t normally use purchased patterns and usually create my own designs, for me that first step of designing frequently takes just under half of the time I spend on a project.  I use my computer heavily in this step.  Here are the computer apps I currently use for this:

  1. Corel Paint Shop Pro 2020 (for processing photographs)
  2. Corel Draw Graphics Suite 2018 (makes very good vector designs and communicates with Bernina Software.  This also helps me create my own pattern, size it, and print it out full size to tape together)
  3. Corel Painter 2020 (for painting.  It’s almost like having real paint,  brushes, and pencil collections with no mess and the ability to erase or add something in the middle layer.  I often start here for concept art)
  4. Bernina Embroidery Software V8.2 (for digitizing or personalizing embroidery designs, and even for some quilting)
  5. Electric Quilt 8 (aids in figuring placements, sizing, yardage, and if I need a traditionally pieced area for my quilt project, this is where I turn).

I won’t cover how to use these drawing packages for this, because I know even if you use digital design programs to help you out, you probably don’t use the same ones I do and they are expensive to gather, take time to learn, and there are lots of really good classes out there on youtube and on the sites where the packages are sold.

Once I have my design, I write out the steps, list the fabrics and threads, list the additional pieces, and think about the tools that will be required.  In other words, I create my own pattern with instructions. You may be surprised to learn that I mostly do this the old fashioned way in my planning notebook, where I glue in samples of the fabrics, write out steps, and keep other important notes as I go along. You can read about how I manage these things in my blog Project Management for Fabric Art from a year ago.  I still do things this way.

Now I know many of you don’t want to use the computer designing process, and if you want to design them yourself you would greatly prefer using a sketch book or graph paper and doing math to figure out what you need to make your project, or at the very least use Electric Quilt 8, which is an easy way to produce a good traditional quilt pattern.  This is a good approach, but I do encourage you to scan in your resulting images/designs,  keep a record of your project on your computer, and write out the steps you need to take for your project so you can start with a good pattern with steps to completion already thought through.

Also, there are those who prefer starting with a pattern that has good instructions.  That’s probably why you can make a quilt much faster than I can, and I think this is also a good approach if you have different goals from mine.  One of the keys to this is to use patterns from reliable designers that provide good instructions.

In other words, whichever your approach, the first step is to obtain or create the design with good instructions and project steps already thought through.

For me, I also want to load up my audible books, music, and podcasts to listen to while I work through the construction phase.  My next blog post will discuss building your own kit so you know you have what you need.

Sew happy everyone!  I encourage you to use an ordered approach to your quilted projects, however small or large, and you will really enjoy the process and probably come out with a wonderful result.

 

 

 

Problem Solving Tools 2: Markers for Satin

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Markers, Quilt Journal, Show Quilts, Techniques, Tools / 2 Comments

Marking satin for quilting and placement has been a BIG barrier to making some quilts.  I want to make several quilts using polyester crepe-back satin and have been working on figuring out all the techniques that come with this.

First I made this sampler pillow top, in which I figured out what batting and backing to use, what paints to use, what background quilting I wanted for one of my projects, and markers.  You can read more about this in Satin Sampler blog below, but there is more to know about the marker.

When I refroze the sampler, the marks came back and then I soaked it with Dawn and Oxiclean all day long (9 hours).  the marks did NOT go away at all.  The marker test failed (I have ironed away the marks in the photo above).

Sew I thought about this a bit and began to wonder if there were any pens that were designed to wash out of clothing or go away with water for kids to use.  When I searched for such pens online, I came across Crayola’s Washable Gel pens.  So I ordered a package from Amazon and yesterday I ran a test on the markers.  To my delight, my test worked!  The pictures aren’t great, but here they are.

Before (note the clear marks that are smooth and thin. The ink did not spread at all.  The ink glided over the satin without pulling the weave of the satin like pencils do:

Here is the after picture.  I washed it in cold water with Synthrapol by hand (with a three minute soak).  The ink you see is a Sharpie to keep up with what the sections were…one was not ironed, and one was ironed.  There is not one bit of the gel pen marks.  Today I froze the fabric for a while just to make sure the marks would not return.  This is the result…no marks:

For me and the projects I want to do this is a HUGE breakthrough.  I can now proceed in marking my current project and design the others. I will note that one of my quilty friends said he had used this pen and had them bleed some splats, and some of the colors were less washable than others.  He also noted that if you accidentally get water on it it may spread like watercolor. He lives in California and his water may be different or some other difference.  I have not used this much either, and he probably has. Also, I have not tested this on cottons or silk. So I don’t think I can fully recommend this marker yet–perhaps in the future after I use it more–but I am going to use it.  Even the occassional splat (that washes out) is greatly preferable to the pulling from a pencil that occurs when trying to mark satin that way.  Therefore, I suggest if you are going to use this that you run a test on your particular fabric and wash with your water with Synthapol before marking your quilt.

One of the cool things about my sampler is that the paint was untouched by all the attempts to remove the marks…it survived it all.  The paint is a combination of Jacquard’s Lumiere paints and Setacolor paints that were dried and heat set.  I also like the general concept for the background quilting.

Sew happy everyone!  Remember to test your techniques and products before investing those hours into your project.

 

 

Satin Sampler

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Design Work, Embellishment, Fabric Review, Fabrics, Food for Thought, High-Tech Studio, Machines, Markers, My micro-business, My Studio, Quilt Journal, Techniques / 2 Comments

OK.  I have been working out a satin sampler to test markers, techniques, threads, paints, and background designs for several projects, one being my Mom’s memory quilt.  The cool thing about this is that I am making it with polyester crepe back satin.  It has a lovely beefy hand and I wanted to test it for future projects.  Why?  Partly because I can get a 58 inch wide piece for about $5 per yard for a lighter hand up to $8 a yard for a heavy satin instead of the $17 to $40 a yard for 43″ wide fabric, and partly because there are some wonderful colors available in the polyester that don’t run when washed.  I am using the heavy polyester crepe back satin for this sampler.  I will be making it into a pillow top for my bedroom since I can tell I will like it when finished.

Sew I have layered it with a cotton backing, and a double bat of Quilter’s Dream 80/20 select loft on bottom and Quilter’s Dream wool on top.  I marked it with a heat-away gel pen (see my blog on marker testing for this satin) that I do not recommend unless you are prepared to go through a removal process that requires much effort and time.  This ink returns when frozen (such as in the airplane when you check your luggage or ship it someplace). Also, my marker testing is incomplete, because I want to finish the sampler, freeze it, and completely test the removal process again on this sandwiched piece. I am quilting it with 40 weight Superior Magnifico and, where needed, 100 weight microquilter.

I painted this sampler with a combination of Setacolor and Jacquard Lumier fabric paints in order to get the colors I wanted.  Their steadfastness will also be tested in the freezing/washing test.

Here is a little look at my work on this little sampler thus far.  I am really having fun with this.  While most of the stitch work has been on my Bernina Q20 sitdown longarm, some very small amount was done on my new B 880 Plus machine, just to see how it quilts.  LOL

 

 

So my conclusion about good quality polyester crepe back satin as a quilting fabric…it works, it’s beautiful, and it both paints and quilts well.  I do back it with a very light weight pellon fusible to make it behave well.

* * * * * * *

Something I didn’t tell you all earlier is that just after I got Odette all sorted out with a new machine from Bernina because the first one seemed to have a serious problem, I made a mistake in threading it and got a huge glob of thread nest in it that I could not remove myself.  So I had to take it in to the dealer to get it fixed.  It made me weep. I was really gloomy when I found that Lew, the magical tech guy, was out for two weeks and so I had to wait.  He fixed it almost imediately when he got back and I got it safely home on Tuesday and have done considerable sewing and embroidery on it since then.  It is clearly a wonderful machine.  It was my mistake, and I have since figured out what I did wrong (with Lew’s suggestions).  I didn’t want to whine again or have people tell me I was wrong to buy it in the first place because their prefered brand works so much better they think.

Anyway, that meant that I was without my main sewing machine for nearly three months with the exception of a day or two twice!!!  So I did a lot of sewing on my little Bernina 350 and a lot of free motion work on my Q20, and a lot of non-machine prep work for future projects, and stacked up quite a bit of work for the new machine.  I will, therefore, be missing a few deadlines I had tentatively planned on.

I have begun attacking the stack of work and have been having a huge amount of fun and the icy fear of further machine problems has begun to melt away over the past week.  In addition to some “regular” sewing, I did some in-the-hoop embroidery last week that came out so perfect and beautiful that I was nearly weeping again, this time in joy.  You should know that I seldom cry for anything much, and am known as a “tough old bird” as one of my former colleagues told me.  But this machine saga seems to have loosened a few tears from me.

Sew happy everyone!  May your stitches be beautiful and your machines play well with you for many years.  Hugs to you all!

 

Fall Is In the Air

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Fabrics, Food for Thought, Machines, My micro-business, My Studio, Quilt Journal, Sewing Clothing, Studio maintenance / 2 Comments

Color Swirl by Kevin Tatum (my grandson) using Corel Painter.

Ever since I was in High School, which was a long long time ago, I have gotten excited when I started thinking about fall and winter sewing and quilting.  This year is no exception.  In fact, having just reorganized my fabric, thread, paint, and notions stashes, and purchased a new Bernina 880 Plus, I am more excited than usual about the projects I have before me this year.

One of the things I always like about going through my studio to sort things out is finding pieces of fabric I had forgotten about or had at least pushed to the back of my to do list.  This is for both clothes and quilts.

When I cleared up my studio this year, I also went through my clothing patterns, pruning out about 75 percent of my old patterns and keeping only those that seem right for me now.  The remaining patterns and fabrics for clothes on hand are inspiring me  to think about making some new clothes. My wardrobe really needs an update too.

When I bought my new machine, I got it at a time when they were providing a gift that includes new feet, some machine luggage, additional embroidery motifs for use in the hoop and a variety of other neat things.  I was able to exchange some of the feet that duplicated those I already had for some new ones.  So now I have a lot of feet that are inspiring ideas for using interesting techniques.

Remember when I talk about all  the things I have found in my studio, I have been sewing since I was five years old and I am 72. I retired in 2012 to be a full time fabric artist.  So some of the things have been hiding for a while from me in some of the closets, in boxes under my bed, and even in plain sight…LOL.  I feel very blessed.  Because of all the things I recently rediscovered stashed away I don’t have to buy anything new for most of the projects I want to make.  I did restock some threads and paints that I anticipate needing.  So I have resolved to myself that for the next year I will attempt to do m work without new stuff.  Now I want to make:

  • a new bag, in leather (I now have feet for use with leather and vinyl and some leather).
  • a new suit, in black denim (I have a stash that includes a fair amount of denim) with embroidery
  • a blue denim jacket
  • a new dress suit in wool with a silk top to go with it
  • a new jacket in raw silk, maybe 2 since I have 2 nice pieces
  • several new tops and use some heirloom techniques  (I have a nice collection of feet to use for this now) and embroider some of them.
  • I also want to make several new show and utility quilts.

It is fairly certain that  I won’t get all of this done this year, but it’s nice to have them on the list to pick from as I do have time.

Clearly I have an exciting and busy time ahead that will last well beyond fall and winter, and I have already started.  I will have to plan my days in order to fit other important things into my life.  I’m excited!  I’m sure the nicely rearrangement of my studio, and my wonderful fleet of machines will help me accomplish a great deal of these projects though.  So I won’t have to buy any new clothes for fall through spring either. I don’t have much in the way of summer fabrics, unless I use my quilting cottons.  LOL

Oh, and last year I made a new dressy overcoat with a “fur” collar using some of the fabrics on hand.  It’s warm and cosy.  So I really do complete a lot of these dream projects.

Messy work table with coat pieces

Progress Report on My Mom’s Memory Quilt

I have made a good start on my Mom’s memory quilt, which is going to also be a show quilt, but I have a long ways to go on it.  It has a large pentagon in the middle of it on which I am appliqueing her needle work.  The pentagon fabric is a lovely medium blue dupioni that sets off the beauty of her crocheted lace.  It’s a pentagon because I thought I only had five of the ten inch squares I found in her work basket, but during the reorganization I found a sixth square.  It’s a slightly different shade of crochet thread, though, so I will find something neat to do with that one.  The color difference is probably why it was in a separate  place.  There are  some more crocheted items, but they don’t work with this quilt.

I had no idea how difficult it would be to make a perfect pentagon that has 21 inch sides.  It was a challenge.  A good friend of mine sent me a Corel Draw pattern for one to print in tiled sheets and taped together.  I thought that it would then be easy to get it right, but putting the tiles together that way gave many opportunities for slight variations in the shape.  I had to try it several times until I got it right, but finally succeeded when I started using a lot of rulers to help.

So yesterday I cut out the freezer paper pentagon, cut out the fabric, and then glue basted the edges down.  I checked the edges for straightness and measurements.  It’s very good.  the sixteenth of an inch off I had on the paper pattern disappeared as I worked the fabric from it.  I love how it looks.  I placed the crocheted pieces around  it in a way that forms a star in the middle, just laying them down to see how it looked for now.  (No pictures until its debut show, whatever that will be).

It is in many ways a gift to my Mom. It would be so much fun if she were still here to show it to her, but I am having a lovely time making it while thinking about all the great things she taught me and the lovely things she made herself. She did not quilt, but she was a real expert seamstress.  She has been gone now  twenty years, but sometimes I think she is nearby.

Sew happy everyone!  What are your planned projects for this fall and winter?

 

 

 

Making Samplers

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Art Quilt Techniques, Design as you go, Embellishment, Fabrics, Quilt Journal, Threads / 2 Comments

I am writing a book on embellishment techniques and have a plethora of samplers to make for this book.  I will also be using examples from some of my show quilts.  One of the projects in my book includes  several samplers teaching how to make trees using couching and a variety of interesting decorative threadwork.The starry night in the winter forest scene above is almost complete.  I still have to bind it and add hot fix crystals in the sky.  But I thought I would show you what I have on this little sampler, which I stitched on with no premarking.  This is such a fun activity to just sit down with a small quilt sandwich and play.  Initially I had planned just to practice and test some tree making in preparation for this sampler, but I liked it and decided to just trim it down and make it one of the samplers.

  • The two front larger trees are couched on sport weight yarns using a couching foot #43 on my Bernina Q20 and white 100 weight Microquilter by Superior Threads with Bottom Line in the bobbin. (Q20 settings: net on the cone, bobbin tension 180 with a magic silicone bobbin washerover the spring, top tension 1.50, threaded across the silicone gadget with the pink liquid, 80/12 universal needle (note…for small thin 100 weight and monopoly threads the universal needles work best, because the top stitching needles I normally use tend to “step on” the thread and break it instantly.  This is true whatever machine you us).
  • The middle tree, though you can’t tell in this picture, is sparkly silver Ricky Tims Razzle Dazzle by Superior that I couched on also with the couching foot #43 using a silver Superior metallic thread in the top (same settings except top tension is 3.0 and needle is 90/14 titanium top stitch Superior).
  • Then I free motion stitched the two smaller back trees using Aurifil 12 weight wool/acrylic blend thread and a 100/18 top stitch needle (Bottom line bobbin set as above, top tension 3.0, spi 9, bsr1,  100/18 top stitch titanium Superior neeedle, threaded as normal, stitched slowly, use a tooth cleaning threader to thread the aurifil thread through the take up bar hole and the needle).  Clean and oil your machine after using wool blend thread.
  • After that, I free motion stitched with Superior metallic thread the lines showing the hilly shapes, ruler stitched the moon shape, and painted the moon with Setacolor paints.
  • Then I used 100 weight black Microquilter (set as in the first dot section) and did a simple stipple all over the quilt and outlined the trees.

I encourage you to try such a sampler.  It can make either a neat Christmas decoration once all the crystals are placed on it, or you could add a halloween pumpkin or owl applique for Halloween.

Progress on Mom’s memory quilt:

Now that I have it all designed, I decided I had to make a sampler to practice everything especially on the satin part of the quilt where I will have pictographs of flowers, birds, and embroidered items that are related to Mom’s interests.

So I managed to get all the marks out of the test piece when I used the heat away pen after a four hour soak and a cold water wash in Synthrapol and finally a reironing to take away the last of the marks, which were very light at this point.  I then refroze it thinking they would come back but they did not.  I will retest this on the sampler when I am finished with it.  This is the kind of treatments you have to do when your fabrics or thread colors bleed onto your quilt, so I do not recommend the use of these pens except in very rare circumstances and after much testing.  I plan on making a decorative pillow for my bed with this sampler.

Sew I thought the hardest part would be to quilt the pictographs, but I found that to be really fun and, while time consuming, they were fairly easy to do at a slow stitch with my Q20 using BSR1, spi 12, and Magnifico 40 wt thread by Superior, and a 90/14 top stitch titanium needle with top tension 3.5 and bottom line in the bobbin at 180 tension.  Now I am working on figuring out the background, but first I will be doing really really tiny scribble stitching for about a quarter inch out from the edges of all the pictographs with 100 wt thread to set them apart and make them look like trapunto.

I am using a double bat on this quilt (80/20 thin bottom and wool on top), a cotton backing, a beefy polyester crepe backed satin and two colors of polyester dupioni.  But the only pictograph quilting is only on the ivory satin.  Here are the sampler pictographs.  I think it is coming along really well, but I am puzzled about what kind of background I am going to put on the white.  I am thinking of using walking foot stitching with some simple decorative stitches on my 880 plus in some kind of grid work, but I am not sure yet.  One thing at a time on this project. LOL  It’s hard to see in this picture, and it looks like there is more problem with fabric management than there is, but here is the sampler so far.

Sew happy everyone!  Take some time to play on some samplers that you might want to use or just throw out later.  It gives you the freedom to try things you might be hesitant to do on a full quilt project.  Cheers.