Marking Satin Fabric

Posted on August 17, 2019August 17, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Markers, Quilt Journal, Reviews, Show Quilts / 2 Comments

Sew today I decided to begin working on the satin pillow top that I am making to test some methods I plan to use for my Mom’s memory quilt. I am using polyester crepe back satin, a beefy satin that I have tested previously for quilting with great results and I am trying to figure out the marking method for my Mom’s quilt, because it has a LOT of detailed stitching/painting lines to produce the designs.

I used it as the border on one of my favorite quilts Pendragon because I could not find the right color in a natural fiber under twenty dollars a yard. I only used it on the border though.

Pendragon
34 x 45

But for this quilt, I prestitched, painted, then constructed, sandwiched and quilted. I over-quilted the border with monopoly, which gave me the opportunity to bring out the over and under characteristics of the Celtic border designs. I used quilting paper with temporary adhesive dots for the marking. This works fairly well, but when you use really small details, it may break away at an awkward place or may be really hard to remove after stitching.

This may end up being the method I use for Mom’s quilt, but I really wanted to use the border method I did for Canterbury Silk and Canterbury Knight, where I appliqued on a few things, quilted it, then painted the quilting designs. For both of these quilts I used Radiance Cotton/Silk blend, not polyester.

practice pieces for Canterbury Silk

I marked those (and remarked them, and remarked them before all the original marks quite disappeared along the way) with Fons and Porter’s mechanical white pencil. It doesn’t stay on the satin very well, but was the best I could find at the time.

Mom’s quilt will be made with off white polyester satin and two blues of beautiful polyester dupioni (I LOVE these fabrics), and of course, the pieces of crocheted lace squares I found in her workbasket after she died.

I want to mark it in a way it will stay, I can actually see it, and then I can get rid of the marks completely when I block it. Is this a dream?

So today I tested multiple markers. The blue marker many of us use immediately bleeds all around the mark, as does the crayola washable marker I frequently use. This blurs the lines so they are not usable for this quilt.

I tried marking pencils, which I know go away as you work through it on satins, in particular, though I can kind of see it. The pencil pulls the fabric as I mark it, and I have to hold it really carefully. It sort of put slight pulls in it in places, and the detail is kind of hard to see under the light of my machine. In other words, it’s not really what I need. Colored chalk comes right off after just a tiny bit of stitching. Clearly not the winner.

Out of frustration, I am trying pen similar to Frixion, which works so well for seeing it, doesn’t go away as you work through the construction, and disappears when ironed. But it comes back when frozen (i.e. when shipped to the quilt show in an airplane or transported in the winter). I am testing to see if there is a way to get rid of this marker without destroying the work I do on the quilt.

I am still testing that one, however. If I can figure out a way to use it and then remove it completely this would be almost ideal. So I have ironed off the test piece and have it in the freezer to have a sample to try really removing it.

I say almost ideal because I would probably have to remove the marks after I have all the stitching done and then do the painting. But I am going to test that too. IF I can remove it, and NOT remove the painting, then I would say it is ideal.

Anyway, I completely marked the pillow sample top with the gel pen so I can practice the quilting/painting method I plan to use, and then try to remove the marks so they won’t come back.

Let me say that I would strongly not recommend this marker for most quilts. It does come back when frozen, while all the other markers…Crayola washables (my favorites), blue markers, chalk, and marking pencils come nicely off either by washing or erasing.

But this is a special case, and something I would use a lot if I can come up with a good marking method for light colored satins.

Next I will have to test the paints. I’ll let you know how all this goes in my next blog post.

Sew happy everyone! Test your techniques, fabrics, markers, threads, tensions, needles, paints, markers BEFORE you invest all those hours (and money) in your projects to prevent frustration. Also, I highly recommend you prewash your fabrics. Except for machine problems, there are few things in your studio more frustrating beyond completing a beautiful piece and have it get ruined (or nearly ruined) in the end when blocked. Have a great week everyone!

Workshops, Quilt Plans and Start!

Posted on May 25, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Classes, Quilt Journal, Ruler work, Show Quilts, Techniques, Workshops / 2 Comments

Blessed Memorial Day everyone! I like this eagle on this old label.

Yesterday I completed my four part quilted fabric art workshop at G Street Fabrics for 2019. I am planning on doing the same set next April/May session there, but nothing in between. I have other plans for the rest of this year.

We finished up with ruler work for sit-down machines. Everybody seemed to enjoy it, though I think they all (but maybe one) felt a little like they needed to go away and practice a lot before they really feel comfortable with it. For those people, do that practice and to help ou out please go to my downloadables and links page and find the info there for making more marked practice sandwiches. I will also add links to some products we talked about in the classes.

* * * * * * *

Coming up with a plan

I think of things in steps. I don’t know why, possibly it came from my long years of sewing clothes before I did any quilting and progressed through solving problems at work and back to sewing again. So I have come up with steps for making a major quilt, masterpiece quilt, or show quilt that you probably already do in your everyday quilt making but I have defined them below just because.

Come up with a plan. I don’t necessarily mean a pattern, but it could be. This can be as simple as drawing a basic project design in your sketchbook or on your digital drawing package on your computer and enlarging it to full size. Or you can find a pattern you simply love that another quilter has designed and purchase it. Some notes about this:
- I will tell you that for most of my quilts, this part of making the quilt is about one-third to a half of the work. Sometimes, however, I only need basic placement guidelines for something so clear to me where I’m going, and kind of organic or freeform in nature that I don’t really need a pattern. I do however always need help in keeping parts properly sized and placed.
- If you are using someone else’s photograph or drawing for this, make sure you have permission from that person to use it for your quilt. This may involve purchasing the rights (something I have done on occassion) or writing a letter and requesting the use of the inspirational piece. Get that answer in writing to protect yourself.
- Frequently you can find an inspirational design in royalty free designs, such as that available on Dover Publications books, or even online at museum sites for ancient documents that are so old they are free to use.
- Don’t assume that the inspirational resource is free to use just because the creator has passed on. The families or organizations behind these people may still hold the rights. They must be in open domain.
- Or you can draw it yourself. Even just a simple placement drawing will help you keep things right.
- Enlarging to full size for printing is not difficult. You can use your printer’s tiling (if it has one), Microsoft Excel where you tell it the size of your picture you import and it divides it into page-sized tiles for printing to tape together, or a drawing package such as Corel Draw that does the same thing (remember, if you have Bernina Design software you have a limited version of Corel Draw that includes tiling).
Now build your background. Once you have your plan in hand, you need to have a quilt top background.
- Even if you are making a whole cloth quilt, you need to get your fabric sized, cut, and marked, allowing additional space around the edge to make up for the drawing in that occurs in a lot of stitching. You square it to size when ready to bind.
- If you are making a landscape, you need to start from the farthest thing away in the background and move forward piecing or applipiecing (piecliqueing) the parts together forward. Darkest to lightest maybe. You might find that working through this on freezer paper or tracing paper will help you, which is how I started, but now I find I don’t need it at all.
- Or if you are making a pieced quilt, you need to do the piecing and build your quilt top. I’m not a piecer, so I have no real advice for this step.
Assemble any applique parts. One thing that might help you, is to make free motion or in-the-hoop embroidery parts of your design independent from the top and then applique them on. I mostly use black or appropriately colored nylon bridal veilling for this with washaway stabilizers. It can save a lot of tears. LOL

Remember to do the best job you possibly can. Take the time to draw it right, print it right, tape the pattern together right, wash your fabrics, if washable, and starch and iron the fabrics, and piece the background right. Also if you are using a very light drapey fabric, such as silk or polyester dupioni or satin, backing it with a very light weight fusible interfacing will help it behave. Redo if it is wrong.

Join Me in Making a Major Quilt

Posted on May 7, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Design as you go, Design Work, Food for Thought, My micro-business, Quilt Journal, Show Quilts, Techniques / 2 Comments

I have finally cleared the deck and am now able to begin a period of making new show quilts. I have two quilts I will be making first, and one I am making for myself that is not a show quilt that is for my own bed. Sew I thought it would be fun to make a journal of these quilts as I make them and thereby share with you how you might approach a major quilt of your own or even provide some encouragement on your current projects.

I encourage you to chose a project get your planning notebook and join me. The first step is figuring out what to make and either obtaining or creating the design for the top. Even a basically simple quilt design can become a masterpiece quilt by the time it is complete. The second step is gathering the fabrics, threads, and notions.

Such a quilt does not have to be for a show quilt. It may be for the beautification of your own home, or to honor someone for an achievement, or to give to your Mom, Dad, or grown child when they leave home to build their own adult life. But whatever you are making such a quilt for, you want it to be made with your highest level of art and technique and not skip the correcting of mistakes or doing the boring or hard parts thinking it is “O.K.” I assure you that it is a great journey full of interest and fun, a little frustration and joy in overcoming problems. In the end comes a sense of real accomplishment and satisfaction that continues every time you see it. You will learn a lot and use what you learned in your future projects. You will find after making such a quilt that the cuddle quilts will be so much easier and faster than you ever thought possible.

This brings up a point. Even quilts made for charity should be lovely to look at. They may not be as perfectly pieced or quilted as well as a major quilt, but they should be soundly made to last through washings and attractive to look at and lovely to cuddle with. Making a major quilt (as if it were a show quilt) will so improve your abilities you will be amazed. Stretching for that best quilt is overall fun, and you may decide to show it in the end.

Sew next I am making a small 20 x 20 inch contest quilt for Cherrywood Fabrics challenge honoring the late Bob Ross, who gave so many of us a lot of joy watching him and learning how to paint beautiful landscapes simply like magic. Fabric will require more work, but will be fun. It will be a challenge, but is a great way for me to get back to show level quilt making. I already have this designed and acquired the materials I need for this project.

My mother’s crocheted blocks. 10 x 10 inches. I am likely going to place them in this configuration to form the star in the middle with the pentagon around it.

In the meantime, I am working on the design for what may be my most challenging show quilt using as the centerpiece several beautiful pieces of crocheted lace my late mother had left in her workbasket that were obviously meant for a large piece (bedspread? Table cloth?). She had made five of them and sewed four together. I was able to take them apart with only a slight bit of fixable damage to one of the blocks. I will be making a more traditional quilt than I usually make, although it will likely not be truly traditional in any pattern, not very symmetrical, and have some interesting machine techniques with lots of beading planned. We will see. I haven’t yet completed that design by far.

And then I will pick up and continue my fun applique quilt that is a Sue Nickels pattern. Yes, I am using a pattern, although making a few simple changes to make it large enough for my bed and choosing my own colors. I have a bit more than half of the blocks made and the others have the pieces fused down and are ready to stitch. This is my stress-lowering project I will work on from time to time.

Pick up your needle and thread and let’s go!

Start thinking about a main quilt project of your own. If you don’t feel you are ready to design your own, then hunt for a pattern you simply love but may seem a little beyond your current talents. Or make a simple top and use it as a background for advanced quilting and embellishment work. Or draw a design you love and think about how to make it. If you join me, this will be your time to stretch and learn. I will be here glad to answer questions if I can and find a link or other way of finding the ansers if I cannot. I hope to provide encouragement. You should start by making several small practice pieces (see link at the top bar on the right to my new page on downloadables and links). If you just took my classes at G Street you have a good bit of the skills you need already, but make a small practice piece using the techniques you plan for your major quilt. Take as long as you need for this, and either work exclusively on it, or work on it a little bit every week. I know it is nice outdoor weather, but you will still want some indoor cooling off time.

Sew happy everyone! I plan on future blogs to help you in your journey…markers, threads, needles, design, fabrics, battings, surface design and embellishments, machine work, and quilting. I also hope to create videos to go along with some of this. Cheers.

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.

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 First Book

Posted on January 12, 2019 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Books, Embroidery, Quilt Journal / 2 Comments

Hello gentle readers, I am very happy to tell you that my first book “Ten Skill-Building Projects for Bernina V7” has been published. Yesterday’s launch was a nice start with it ending up the day and starting today as #1 New Release in Embroidery on Amazon, and just recently was listed as #1 New Release in Sewing on Amazon! I can only guess that they don’t have very many releases in those two categories, but I will be happy to celebrate this as a successful release.

So here’s the link: Ten Skill-Building Projects for Bernina V7 I am also working on a similar book for V8.

This is a really nice ending to the week. I caught a beast of a cold on or about New Year’s Eve, and only recently began to feel like a normal human being again, though I still have the occasional cough. Sew now that I am back to working level human I am launching into the new projects I listed in my last blog. Today I have been working on my bed quilt project. It’s a pretty applique quilt using a Sue Nickels pattern, something entirely out of my usual flower box. ? This is my low stress level project for the first part of 2019 and I am looking forward to having this pretty quilt on my bed.

While I was battling the cold, I painted the mountainous background of my train quilt and sent the design to Fabrics on Demand for a full sized printout (48 x 35.5 inches) on cotton. So I didn’t entirely lose the days I was sick. LOL

I hope you are all having a good launch to your 2019. I would love to hear from you about what you are working on.

Sew happy everyone! Encourage your family and friends and give them all a lot of love.

Report on Quilts Back Home from PNQE

Posted on September 20, 2018September 20, 2018 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Quilt Journal, quilt shows, Reviews, Show Quilts / 2 Comments

Last Tuesday my two quilts that were in Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza came home. As you probably know by now Wizards’ Duel got a blue ribbon as Best Interpretation of Theme and Night on the Bayou did not place. PNQE is a Mancuso show and they usually provide comments that are often helpful and sometimes just a little depressing. This time, I got wonderful comments on both quilts and I wanted to share with you, gentle readers.

Wizards’ Duel

For this quilt I placed it in the Innovative category. They don’t have an all art-quilt or all pictorial quilt category.

(E=Excellent S=Satisfactory N=Needs Improvement NA=Not Applicable)

I got all Es for their set items:

DESIGN

Artistic Impression/Graphic Impact

Use of Design/Pattern in Quilt Top -balance, proportion, scale – balance, proportion, scale

Use of Color & Fabric – pleasing, value contrast, scale of fabric

Degree of Difficulty

Quilting Design – enhances top, is sufficient

Innovation/Creativity

WORKMANSHIP

Piecing/Applique – precision, stitches, shadow-through

Quilting Technique – even stitches, making stops and starts

Best Features of this Quilt (handwritten comments)

Visual impact of radiating center. Very innovative use of embellishments. Good interpretation of theme

Areas that needs improvement (handwritten comment)

Nothing!

Ok, so I don’t think I have ever had a quilt where judges’ comments are provided that actually said “Nothing!” for areas that need improvement. Here is where I have often managed to save a quilt to go on to other shows that made them place. Indeed, this very quilt was shown at Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival and my quilting and treatment of the rocks was called down as needing improvement. So I improved them between shows, and it clearly paid off. Sometimes I disagree with judges’ comments and in such cases dismiss the comment. This would be when my artistic opinion conflicts with theirs, but I have also gotten really good and helpful advice from such suggestions. Judges for this quilt were Augusta Cole and Marjan Kluepfel

Night on the Bayou

For this quilt I placed it in the Wall Quilt category and the grade sheet had the same categories and grading system, except the judges wrote in G=Very Good and gave me all Gs on all the categories!!! Harrrumph! Not only did they choose the nonexistent G for all the categories, their grades seemed to compete a bit with their comments. See what you think.

Best Features of this Quilt (handwritten comments)

Absolutely LOVE the moss hanging from the trees!! Beautifully executed

Well chosen quilting designs enhance visual texture of tress vs water vs sky

Splotches of orange lights prevent monotony from happening

Areas that needs improvement (handwritten comments)

Some surface distortion noted [I can probably fix this with a new and better blocking and hopefully dryer and cooler weather for future shipping…I think it was caused by the hot very humid weather for shipment, coupled with the heavy yarn and thread treatments]

Perspective is good but not quite perfect [uhhh…artistic opinion and I submit that art quilting in particular is never “perfect” anywhere. She might have been more impressed if I had been able to get more moonlight filtering through the trees as my friend who attended the show suggested. I’ll see if I can accomplish that before sending it out again. For the most part, the paint just sinks into the quilt on this fabric]

Sew what do you think about this? I was really pleased, even with the comments on the Bayou quilt. I was not pleased with having a whole scale special grade that was less than “excellent” on all the categories and that then conflicted with some of the comments. I can only think at least one of the judges is a person who has a really hard time rating anything as “perfect”. I can guess which judge this came from, but will not say. The judges for this quilt were Dierdra McElroy and Bobbie Bergquist

If you look up all four judges you will find that none of them are art or pictorial quilters. They are all four traditional and a couple specialize in hand quilting, which should tell you something about how far they had to stretch their view of quilts to make a judgement call on the art and pictorial quilts and therefore, I think they did a fine job. All four of them. It’s a hard job when faced with such fabulous quilts throughout a national or international show.

Sew overall, I am happy, and now believe both quilts have the potential to bring in some nice ribbons from future shows. I’m going to have to do some choreography in placing them. Houston rejected Wizards’ Duel, but that was before I fixed the rocks. I think perhaps I need a new set of pictures for both of them. Pictures make a big difference in what a show will take.

Sew happy everyone! I wish you fun in your studio or office and that you be surrounded with love.

Bring on Fall!

Posted on September 9, 2018September 9, 2018 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Ancient manuscripts, Applique, Classes, Embellishment, Food for Thought, My business, My micro-business, Quilt Journal, Sewing Clothing, Workshops / 6 Comments

I have some fun and interesting plans for the fall and winter quilting season and have been spending nearly all my working time preparing for them for the past couple of weeks.

First of all, I am preparing for my fall workshops at G Street Fabrics in Rockville, beginning with the first one on Saturday, September 22nd at 11 am! See more about this on my blog from a few weeks ago here.

So I have all my handouts made and the kits for the first workshop. I almost have all the kits for the second workshop and have made progress on the third workshop. So when you come, you will have a lot of fun and be able to dive right in to our projects. You just need to call G Street sewing machine department and sign up! You can sign up for one or all three. So much fun to come starting in just a few weeks! I should finish preparations for these this week and be able to get back to sewing and quilting.

Sew my plans for the fall and winter sewing and quilting season are exciting for me. As you may know by now, I like to run two or three projects at once to keep me from getting frustrated…hopefully all at different stages along the way.

My current quilt project is for my bed, making an applique pattern by Sue Nickels that is really pretty and will add a lot of beauty to my bedroom. I am about half way through that. It is not for a show quilt and is just for fun and adding something to my home for me.
I am currently working out what my next show quilts will be. My plans are exciting and two of them involve other people.
1. My dear friend, student, and what we jokingly call my apprentice Anita has drawn a beautiful scene with a steam locomotive train and gifted it to me for use as a quilt design. It is full of wonderful things and will be quite fantastic if I can pull it off…trees, rocks, trestles, the locomotive with steam, pulling cars…one with a load of wood. So cool! Send good thoughts, because this one is a challenge but I plan on starting it soon.
2. My oldest son, who designed Pendragon, is designing an accompanying piece Excalibur. Oh I can hardly wait to see his design. He started earlier but work got so busy for him that he had to lay it aside for awhile. Things have gotten a little more sane for him now and he thinks he can finish it soon.
3. Okay, so I am working on my own design(s) also. I have an array of things I want to do, and am engaged in trying to draw up some of them to choose from for this season. I am thinking of making one based on polyester satins that I embellish multiple ways to show what can be done with a limited quilt budget (under $100 is my goal). That design work is not done yet, and I keep oming up with new ideas with new subjects…I’m currently leaning toward a dark forest with spots of beauty and fun woodland characters, but it could end up entirely something else…spending a little time every day on this. So it will be a little while before I just get the design sealed down and ready to make.
4. And then I also want to do another line drawing quilt based on architecture. I have a couple of possibilities, but I’m still looking.
I haven’t forgotten my book. I have actually made considerable progress on it this summer, and hope to finish it sometime in October.
Plus I am wondering just how I can approach the passing on of my many surface design and embellishment techniques. I have won several ribbons on this aspect of my quilts, and feel I have much to tell you about. I already have a book outlined and started, but I am thinking of videos. My son Ken has gotten me all set up to do videos, and I am thinking of making several…some on quilting and some on surface design and embellishment techniques.

I did mention clothes, didn’t I. I am planning on making a new winter coat this fall. I found a great pattern that I think I can make with fabrics (and faux fur) I already have..a free and hopefully gorgeous winter coat. It’s free because I’ve had this fabric for years and properly stored, so it is in great shape. If you haven’t made an overcoat, it is not really as difficult as making a shirt with a stand collar, really it isn’t. And using thick winter fabrics is very forgiving, hiding most little mistakes. I encourage you to try one. There are some great patterns just out this year. I also am planning on squeezing in a winter dress suit, yes a pants suit beause my legs just look best that way. This will challenge me to resurrect my professional tailoring skills, but I have recently lost a couple of dress sizes (though I freely admit that I am still “fat”), and I will make it in a way I can take it up one more size. I have fabric for that too.

As you see, this year is going to emphasize to myself trying to get all my sewing and quilting done by shopping my stash or keeping costs down while still producing some remarkable pieces.

Sew happy everyone! I hope you are planning to do a lot of sewing and quilting this fall and winter or are encouraging your friends and family who do sew to let their lights shine (and help them make time to sew). Happy September!

Building a Pictorial Quilt Part Two: Making a Tree

Posted on April 16, 2018April 16, 2018 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Embroidery, Quilt Journal / 2 Comments

One of the most fun I have when making a pictorial quilt is making trees, mountains, rocks and water scenes. Making these wonderful natural landscape items do not require perfect lines and matched points. So each kind and size of trees I need to “grow” on a quilt may require a different technique and plan. I have to consider the distance, the species, where the light is coming from, and then decide how to make them. Here are a few examples:

Here the trees surround the house. For these trees, I digitized them on my Bernina Software (even the tiny trees have little leaf shaped leaves, though I think that is lost a bit to the viewer because of the size). I then stitched them out on black nylon veiling with wash-away stabilizer and free motion appliqued them onto the quilt top with matching thread.

This small tree is the stitch out from an olive tree I digitized in my Bernina software on wash-away stabilizer. I placed a tree photo in the art side and traced it by hand digitizing it in the embroidery side of the software. The same could be done by drawing it onto a piece of wash-away stabilizer with Crayola washable marker and free motion embroidering it. In this case I would advise using a layer of black nylon veiling to hold everything together. The advantage of black nylon veiling is that it can be cut very close to the embroidery (without cutting through the stitching) and the little bits left tend to disappear when you applique it on…often covered with applique stitching. Note that when you soak away the stabilizer, the Crayola marker goes away also. This happens to be laying on a paper towel, in case you are wondering.

Here you see the trunks of some big Cyprus trees in my current ongoing project. I cut the applique shape from different types of commercial woody type fabrics. So then I did highlighting and lowlighting with Shiva oil paint sticks and a stiff brush, then heat setting with my iron (covering it with a paper towel to absorb excess oil paint. I plan on adding a layer of wool batting behind the trees to give them a little more depth because the trees require considerable stitching to make the base look like the Cyprus, but this is how I started these trees.

So the Cyprus trees appear to have windy limbs that seem smaller than such a massive tree trunk would have. I decided to couch the limbs on with wool yarns and then free motion embroider the Spanish moss. Here are two pictures of the progress so far:

Here you see some of the limbs on the different trees with some Spanish moss. I did a lot of looking at Spanish moss photos before I did these so I could figure how they should look. These seem to me to be coming out ok.

I learned early on that I needed to draw some guide lines for the direction of the stitching or I’d get them to be blowing around in different directions. Since the water in this quilt is going to look calm and reflective, it didn’t make since to have the Spanish moss blowing around much, though they don’t have to be exactly the same, but close. Here you see some of my marks for future stitching. Also note that I had to break the stitching on several clumps so it looked like the limb is further toward the back from the viewer. I need to keep it pretty close to the same proportions as the top part, so drawing lines is helpful.

Sew I’ll show you the whole trees when they are done. That will be a while now because they need to be quilted, and maybe a little more highlighting, to get the full impression.

Sew happy everyone. I hope you decide to put some trees on your quilts and relax…they are fun to make.