Progress Report and Thoughts on Quilting Economics

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

Saturday Morning 12 July

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aprille with Chaucer…slow but steady progress

Posted on June 29, 2014June 29, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 2 Comments

I probably quilted more than 40 hours for both the past two weeks, and all of it was on my silk Chaucer quilt. I estimate at least another 50 hours of quilting plus the painting, beading, and binding that comes after that. Do my quilting muscles hurt? Truly! Am I having fun? Absolutely! I have been making quilting decisions as I go along.

Some of you have asked how I was doing the text box, so I thought I’d show you. I first digitized it in my Bernina v6 software, embroidered it on a piece of black Radiance, and pieced it into the quilt. Yesterday I finished the quilting around all the words and the rest of the text box, adding some soon-to-be-painted flourishes on each side of the text. Here is the result so far:

textbox quilted

As you see I also have a 1 1/4 inch faux sashing. I plan to edge this by couching some Ricky Tim’s Razzle Dazzle on either side, but I have not figured how I’m going to quilt it yet.

All the stitching around the embroidered vine and the appliques is complete, but I haven’t done much with the background stitching, nor have I completed the quilting of the appliques themselves. I had to do a lot of frogging and restitching to get it up close like I wanted it. I still see a few places where I still need to do this. But here’s a sampling of the center:

Applique sampling

I still have a lot of stippling around the border and, after much thought and searching through books and Electric Quilt, I figured out generally what I will use for the background stippling of the central theme. Originally I was going to do a diagonal decorative stitch from my Bernina, but decided it just won’t work with all that stopping and starting. So I THINK I’m going to use a nice vine/leaf style I found on one of my EQ designs. I have to practice first to see if that works before I stitch that part.

I have been happy to see the waves and wrinkly parts go away the more I quilt, as I had thought they would. Here’s a view across the quilt.

Across the quilt

Sew I am making slow but steady progress on this challenge to myself. I’ve also been enjoying a lot of music and audiobooks on my ipod as I quilt. I just “read” the final in Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarian series “Crown of Renewal”. I give it about 4 stars. I thought the ending could be better, but I won’t say how here because I don’t want to spoil it for you in case you are reading it.

Sew happy my friends! Teach the young and old alike to quilt and sew, men, boys, girls, women, dogs, cats! 😀

Progress and Plans

Posted on June 13, 2014June 13, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal, Threads, Uncategorized

I’ve made a lot of progress on my little silk folk art Chaucer quilt, temporarily titled “Whan That Aprille”. I have completed the central section, embroidered the text box, and assembled the top with the black border, which I also marked. I am waiting on my order of additional black Radiance for the back and while I wait, I have been experimenting with threads and settings for the quilting.

I decided I really like the look of the antique gold metallic from Superior Threads. Now I have discovered that my old Bernina 1230 “Betsy” has no problem with Superior metallics at all, and neither does my little B350 “E-Claire”, but my big old honking “Gibbs”, my Bernina 830 LE has some trouble with it. It’s all related to the tensions of both the bobbin and the top. It’s one of the best features of Gibbs, but also one of the most complex that it allows tremendous adjustment for both the bobbin and the top. I really want to use the big machine to do my quilting so I can use the stitch regulator and the large table arrangement that makes quilting so easy. I must have spent three full quilting days trying to figure out how to get the setup right and the gold thread to quilt without showing up as “tension problems” on the back that judges simply cannot abide. But I finally got it, I think. Here is the setup I have for the black borders that I plan to quilt in antique gold thread:

Silk-Cotton black Radiance for both the top and the back
90/14 Superior titanic top stitch needle
Superior 100 weight silk thread in the bobbin
Top tension 2.0
Bobbin thread for embroidery, but tension is loosened two clicks to the left (there is a special tool for this)
Bottom layer of batting is a thin polyester from Quilter’s Dream
Top layer of batting is Hobb’s wool.

Now yesterday I had no problem with this. Both the top and the bottom looked absolutely even. Today I had a few spin out loops on the back, but I think it is because I got overly confident and started sewing too fast. So I slid the speed control to the left and slowed way down with no more problems. My other two machines will not sew that fast. It just needs time to make it right. I have successfully quilted one of my five little practice mug rugs. I plan on finishing up four of them and sharing them with some of my friends that I owe mug rugs to. I will use them as practice painting samplers also, since I am planning on painting the border designs.

Sew what else have I been doing while waiting for the backing fabric? I have been rejiggering my quilting plans for the rest of this year and beginning of next year. I put them on my website (did you know I also have a website)? I have also started updating my quilt show list I keep there, but I figure that will take me a few more weeks to complete. I’ll let you know. Anyway, here is my “current projects” list (actually it’s my current plans list, but I like the feel of “projects” as opposed to “plans”…seems more like I’m making lots of progress. 😉

Whan That Aprille: A folk art applique, embroidery and beading experiment. I combined this with the illuminated manuscript project. This is a silk and silk/cotton/Radiance quilt. The main center section is complete, the black border is pieced on and marked, the text box is successfully embroidered and pieced in. I am ready to make the sandwich and begin the quilting, but I decided I needed considerable experimenting, testing, and practice before I do this, and have put together five small mug-rug sized practice pieces for this purpose. I estimate completion of this quilt by 1 August.
**NEW** First Flight: New blue print based whole cloth quilt based on Wright Brothers’ Line Drawings and an applique/embroidery rendition of a plane in the center. Mostly designed, although not patterned out yet.
Volcanic Fire with Flying Things: Erupting volcano with dark mountain, smoky orange sky and fiery volcanic lava…in the near orange sky there will be a fight between phoenix and dragon in hopefully magnificent colors. This was inspired in part by my recent storm-at-sea quilt “Waiting…” in which I placed a rocky lower border. I enjoyed making that border and it made me think of volcanic rocks. It was also inspired by my work on “Sky Horse” and I decided the phoenix or dragon should have a large component of Angelina Fibers and crystals as part of the applique.
Peppered Ikebana: This will draw from old Japanese Sashiko for the background, and will have a Japanese flower arrangement in the foreground. I am planning on making this largely with Pepper Cory’s shot peppered cotton fabrics, both free motion machine quilting and Sashiko large stitch quilting, and a combination of applique and machine embroidery for the flower arrangement. Remember, I have my fourth year flower arranging certificate in the Sogetsu School of Ikebana that I got in Japan and I want to use that in a series of flower-arrangements on quilts.
Flower appliques and embroidery: I am using Beth Tatum’s beautiful flower pictures to design both in-the-hoop appliques and embroideries and out of the hoop free motion embroideries as a joint quilt with her (my DIL). Working on applique designs.
Jazz On a Crystal Night: A stylized nighttime city scene with musicians silhouetted in tall building windows and doors. The music stream will be floating out of the windows and doors to the sky where it “explodes” into “fireworks”. This quilt will have a lot of crystals. Set in the 1920s.
Light in an Ancient Forest: Very dark forest with great old character and large wonderful trees. Coming through the trees is a beam of sunlight that lands on the floor of the forest highlighting [something] in full of color. The something may be an ancient ruin of church with the light coming through the stained glass or a small patch of colorful flowers. There may be a woodland creature or two peaking out from behind some of the trees. 🙂
Perspective in Silk: Second in series of perspectives in thread drawings…I will do this one on silk with colorful threadwork. This may become the start of a series on American monuments or something else.
Zephana’s (my mother) Gifts: Using my mother’s unfinished hand-crocheted lace I found in her workbasket after her passing for embellishment and a key design component, this quilt is in her memory. I will use a background of linen and silk fabric.
Dragon Dress for Competition: Black quilted silk sheath dress with flared skirt, will have appliqued trapunto dragon wrapped around the dress. This is for competition and will include machine embroidery, hand embroidery, Angelina Fibers, crystals, beads and sequins. I just have to figure out how to make the dragon wrap so it looks right.

Sew Happy everyone, and what are you working on or planning now?

Playing in My Studio: Combining Multiple Techniques

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

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

Waiting…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Storyteller…now touring with Hoffman Challenge 2013 show

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

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

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

Whan That Aprille: The words section

Posted on May 13, 2014July 19, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Embroidery, Fabrics, Quilt Journal / 1 Comment

I am currently in the process of stitching down all those little applique pieces on the red section of my little Chaucer quilt. I’m about halfway through that and my shoulders and neck are kind of hurting now, so I thought I would stop for a bit and work on the words section. Think of this as a page in a Medieval illuminated book. The red part is in the upper center and below that is the verse in a Medieval style text box. The border around the edge is probably still going to be black, but will be quilted in metallic threads (I think…may change my mind on that). I did a mock up of what I am thinking as far as the text box. I am planning on trying a tea-dye on some white silk/cotton Radiance and will try adding some additional aging with a very thin bit of watered down brown Setacolor inks. Here are the words I am going to include. I am going to try to digitize this in Bernina v6 so I can get it embroidered in the hoop.

The “W” has to be fabulous and I will probably color it somehow (I’m thinking fabric markers). I have one choice in the mock up, and here are 4 more. If I use the first one, I will probably not use the mermaid somehow, but I kind of like the rest of it. With that in mind which one do you like? (Reference as “Mockup”, Top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right)

Just so you get the idea for the look I’m kind of going for, I thought I’d include this example–I probably will add a decorative border down the side, and maybe even the man on the horse…in keeping with the Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales…if it doesn’t fight too much with the red floral center, which represents the opening prologue:

Anyway, as you can tell I am adding a bit of difficulty to the overall quilt, but I think it should be splendid if I can only realize the vision I have in my head. Then there is the matter of quilting it…. 😯

Sew happy Everyone! 😉

Whan That Aprille: Machine Applique

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Embroidery, Fabrics, High-Tech Studio, Quilt Journal, Techniques, Threads, Tools / 6 Comments

Fused and Ready to Stitch

I have all the appliques cut and fused down. They are made from silk/cotton blend Radiance that I purchased at a quilt show. The appliques are tiny with little pieces, so I was able to do all of them from the 10 inch squares I bought in a collection of colors. I even have enough left to do a second quilt like this.

I love doing machine stitched appliques both fused stitched raw-edge, like I am doing here, and turned edge, machine stitched. Since these are so tiny with complex edges, I decided on the stitched-raw edge for this quilt. The stitch I use depends on the look I am going for. In this case, this folk-art influenced quilt works well with the blanket/applique stitch. Note that satin stitch, double blanket stitch, and some decorative stitches also work well. Here’s a little example, and I do mean LITTLE! The flower here is a little more than one inch across.

It always interests me how I can miss problems when I’m looking at what I have done, but see them when I photograph them. I had a little tension trouble when I did the black perle cotton number 8 bobbin work at one point. I thought I had found it all and fixed it already, but here you see I missed a couple of spots:

Sew remember to use the photography test for your own work. I’ll fix this.

I am experimenting with a new setup for my stitched-raw edge applique because it is SO SMALL and requires so much turning to keep the blanket/applique stitch at the right angle. I took an old super slider I had that was a little worn around the stitch hole and cut it so my feed dogs are exposed. I think this will help me move the quilt top around easier and more accurately. You see the disadvantage, though is I have to change thread colors a lot for this quilt, which means taking it up and putting it back every bobbin color change. I’ll let you know if it makes enough positive advantage to use it despite the thread changes.

Sew happy everyone, and happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there.

Whan That Aprille: Begin Again

Posted on May 3, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Embroidery, Fabrics, High-Tech Studio, Quilt Journal

Sew! I completed the in-the-hoop embroidery on the new piece of wine red dupioni. I had digitized this from my design and it required five jumbo hoopings for Gibbs (my Bernina 830 LE) to stitch it out. I have a problem getting those alignment marks they put in there in good places. As far as I know, there is no way to adjust the placement of them, so I ignore them. This requires that I print out the full sized template from my software, tape it together, mark where the hoops go and the center mark for each hoop, and cross my fingers as I hoop them. For the most part, I am usually successful, but it requires close watching and sometimes a large amount of adjustment. For some reason when I get the hoop placement just right so everything is green in the computer (that means they fit in the hoop and the whole design is covered), and then save it to the USB stick, it isn’t the same when I sneaker net it to Gibbs, and is often totally off.

Nevertheless, I generally manage to get it to line up by some finagling, and often have nothing out of place. This one was tricky though because of that long central trunk vine curving up through three hoopings. So I got it a little bit off, but just in one spot and I think I can fix it ok using a satin stitch (out of the hoop). It’s quite narrow, but here’s a close up of the misalignment, and it also shows that one black berry was not stitched fully (it came outside of the hoop on Gibbs despite being in the hoop on my computer, and so I just let it go…to fix that later too:

Anyway, I’m very happy overall with the embroidery, and the next step, after I fix those small errors in the embr is a lot of bobbin embroidery from the back using # 8 Perle Cotton. Once that is completed, I will start on the appliques. I have so many lovely colors of Radiance 10 inch squares and a few larger pieces from which to make the appliques. I think the hooping was the most stressful part of making the quilt top, so I’m glad that is behind me. I have to embroider the words, but thanks to a friend’s suggestion, I have a new idea for how to go beyond this central part of the quilt that places the words better and will also make them easier to embroider. Hopefully I can fit them all in one hoop!

I know I will have to do a dramatically wonderful job of quilting this, and I am planning on marking it pretty fully once I figure out how to quilt it. I’ll be asking you all for suggestions once I have the top finished.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Sew happy!