To Prewash or Not to Prewash, That Is the Question

Posted on December 4, 2017 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, Techniques, Tools / 2 Comments

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

Any quilter who follows quilting-related social media is probably well aware of the frequent discussions about whether or not to prewash one’s fabric before starting a new project. Why should one ever want to wash that nice crisp fabric with a good finish? I’ve heard many a quilter say they don’t always prewash their fabric. So why should one prewash?

I came into quilting following decades of fashion sewing. In fashion, it is always always necessary to prewash washables, or do whatever needs to be done to preshrink the fabric before making it into a beautifully fitted garment that could shrink or change the hand of the fabric when washed, cleaned, or steam ironed.

When I was a young woman I made the most beautiful two piece dress from a drapey rayon challis that I did not prewash because I was anxious to complete the outfit in time for a special event. I did wear it to that event, and a couple of times after that. But then it had to be cleaned and I hand washed it in cold water. I loved that outfit. It was flattering and beautiful and I had done an exceptional job making it. When I washed it, it shrank multiple sizes despite the cold water and line drying. I was astonished. I was distressed.

I, too, love the look and workability of fabric direct from the store. Once in a while I have made a small item without washing it. But on occasion, when pressing something with a strong color and using spray starch or spray water, the color from the fabric migrated to my ironing board cover. Sometimes that happens even to prewashed fabrics. The worst colors for this are red, browns with red in them, purples with red in them, and some greens.

I prewash everything washable now, even it it is going in a quilt I will not wash when completed. I even prewash most silks albeit by hand. Sometimes, I even wash fabrics twice if they are dark reds or some color that uses dark reds. On rare occasions, I have been very disappointed when they came out of the wash, because they faded badly or changed the fabric hand in some way to make it seem less desireable. But I figure it is far far better to find this out about the fabric BEFORE I put all those hours into making the quilt than after.

Prewashing is not only important to prevent bleeding when blocking a quilt, but fabrics shrink at different rates. Differences in the tightness of the twist of the thread when spinning, the thread count, where the cotton was grown, and the dying and finishing processes can all affect the amount of shrinkage. This means that soaking/washing the quilt might cause the pieces to become misshapen. It could cause your perfectly pieced quit top to no longer be perfect, and your appliques to slightly misshape. It might be so slight you wouldn’t be able to figure out just what happened. Why does your quilt have a wave now when you were sure it didn’t before? Why is there a bump in that part of the quilt when you hadn’t seen it before? why is there a wiggle in that center section that you thought was really straight. Of course, a lot of that can be corrected in blocking, but if you had prewashed everything, it may be possible these things don’t happen. Of course, it might just be you hadn’t seen it before. LOL

So after the fabrics are washed, I will often iron them with spray starch (starching on the wring side to prevent flakiness). Once that is complete, the fabric is nice and crisp and ready to place in the quilt. The colors are true to what they will be when blocked. Despite the time it takes, I encourage you to prewash and iron your fabric before you start your quilt.

One more thing. If you DO have a bleed on your beautiful quilt, the best advice on fixing it that I have ever seen comes from Vicki Welsh in her blog here.

Sew happy everyone. Have fun working on your Christmas/Holiday projects.

Decided to Make an Additional Show Quilt

Posted on November 26, 2017November 26, 2017 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Design as you go, Design Work, Quilt Journal, quilt shows, Techniques / 2 Comments

I’m working on a new show quilt with a January 23rd deadline. I started it too late, so it will be a bit of a race to finish on time. But the thing is, I am really having fun making it. I am making it mainly so I have something to enter into Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival because I suddenly realized I had nothing for that show and I have already made arrangements to go to it. I won’t be sharing pictures or descriptions about it until after its debut. I put aside the Bayou quilt I am making for a while, because the deadline for it is months later next summer. This new quilt is going together mostly just from my idea and directly on the quilt, because I wanted to keep the design time very short. I just made a concept sketch and plunged in, using fabrics I already had on hand and, surprisingly, I have already made a fair amount of progress. I had an interesting idea for it that required one piece of fabric I didn’t have, so I ordered that. Everything else is on hand. So there you go, I have already greatly shortened my usual design time and eliminated the shopping time for this quilt. This probably means I will finish it, although it is touch and go. I’m keeping anything about what it is like quiet because I want to give it the best chance possible. Now that I have been playing around in the quilting community for a while I find I know a lot of the judges, as is the case for MAQF. They also frequently know my quilts. I’m sure this is true with other show quilters out there. Maybe I can make one that they won’t recognize as mine.

A quilt project like this makes it hard to write blog posts on a regular basis. Additionally, the Bayou quilt also has some restrictions on sharing pictures of it for the most part until completion, at least. Nevertheless, trust me when I say it is all fun right now. I’ve gotten both quilts fairly well started and over some of the beginning problems I had for both of them.

A Question for my readers:

Over the decades I have accumulated a lot of sewing and quilting knowledge. I’ve sometimes thought I am a techniques collector just for the heck of it. LOL. Sew my question to my readers, assuming there are any, is what would you like me to blog about? I can provide some short tutorials, answer how to questions, and talk about quilty things. I will use your responses to write my blogs while I’m working on these two quilts. Please respond.

Sew happy everyone!

Spiral Galaxy Quilt: Finished the quilting and adding the stars

Posted on July 16, 2016August 1, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Art Quilt Techniques, Deep space quilts, My Studio, Techniques, Tools / 4 Comments

I am totally amazed that I was able to finish all the quilting for the spiral galaxy so quickly. Now I loved quilting on Gibbs, my Bernina 830 LE, and it made it possible for me to make quilts I would have otherwise struggled with a great deal. But I am awestruck by the ease of free motion stitching/quilting on my new friend Fritz, my Bernina Q20 set up as a sit down longarm. It is fast, its stitches are very even when I am using the BSRs, it has no problems that I have encountered so far with tension, it sews smoothly, and I can see everything. I even found that using rulers (with foot #96) is just plain easy. I see a very happy future with Fritz.

My new Bernina Q20 named Fritz.

Gibbs will still, of course, be a big player in my quilting life as will E.Claire, my little Bernina 350 I named after Edith Clair Head. I also have Betsy, my sweet old Bernina 1230, and she is a wonderful machine that I use occasionally for some special stitching, since I have a lot of unusual accessories for her, and when I have other stitchers here in my small studio.

I am feeling exceptionally blessed with my studio lately and have some fun things planned for the future. Next on the docket is my oldest son Ken’s quilt design he gave me for my birthday (see my blog An Extraordinary Present).

Sew now I am putting the many hot fix crystals of different sizes and colors that represent the stars on my spiral galaxy quilt. I am using a new notion to help me with this project. In the past, I have occasionally burned around a crystal when I was placing it on a deep space quilt. The veiling is nylon and the Angelina Fibers darken with too much heat.

I have been looking for something to help me get the crystals heat set without that and, thanks to a Facebook friend, I “discovered” rhinestone transfer tape. There are several brands that were originally created for placing hot fix rhinestone designs worked out in cutting machines and others. I am using it slightly unconventionally. I place a bunch of crystals on my quilt about where I want them, making sure they are right side up and then carefully lower down the tape and stick them all down.

Tape holds down the crystals in place and acts as a pressing cloth.

The crystals stick to the tape and it holds them in place while I iron them on. I then use my little individual crystal placement wand and hot fix them in place (the tape is still there between the crystal and the wand), and count (tapping my foot…one, two, three…twelve (for little crystals)…15 (for medium crystals)…32 (for big crystals).

Heat setting individual crystals with the wand with the tape still in place.

Once all the crystals on the film are heat set, the tape peals off, leaving them behind. You can tell from this if you have them all set, because if you missed one, it stays with the film, so you can set it back down and set that one. No burns, no color changes for my Angelina Fibers, no movement of the crystals, no flipping them off the quilt and having them fly through the air to the other side of the room (yes, I did that!). I caution not to keep the wand down too long, and to use the smallest wand end that works for the crystal size, though, because it is probably still possible to burn the quilt if you aren’t careful.

Sew happy everyone! I hope you have some time to create something wonderful. In these dark times it is particularly important that we make our homes and office spaces beautiful and warm and surround our families and friends with love and beauty.

Spiral Galaxy Quilt: I Might Actually Make My Deadline

Posted on July 4, 2016July 16, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Deep space quilts, Design Work, Machines, Quilt Journal, quilt shows, Ruler work, Tools / 4 Comments

I have made a good strong start on my spiral galaxy quilt. I am using several pictures found on NASA’s gallery of pics of M101, aka The Pinwheel Galaxy as my model. This is for inspiration and to get a good spiral galaxy look. I will not be making a picture of this particular galaxy…it will be my homage to these gorgeous galaxies. Here’s one:

The Pinwheel Galaxy M101

Sew I have been thinking about making this quilt for over a year now, and decided I needed a quilt for the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza (PNQE) this September because I have plans to go to that show. It’s nicely in driving distance and I have a friend who lives close enough for me to stay with her. She wants to come and see it too. The deadline is August 15th!!!!! Yikes!!!!!.

The advantage to making this quilt on the fast track is that I have thought it through for some months and collected all the pieces. I knew exactly how I wanted to approach it. The time consuming part of this quilt is figuring out how to do it, quilting it, and adding the crystals. I think I can make the deadline. I first made a practice study to help me not only practice before quilting, but make decisions on threads and patterns. Here that is:

Doing the study

So I decided on black 40 weight Superior Magnifico for the main swirl, Superior monopoly for quilting the spinoffs, Isacord 40 weight rusty number 1335, and 100 weight black silk for the background stippling. I have hot fix crystals in three sizes, in ab crystal, blue, and pink. I am planning on A LOT of crystals. Here’s a close up of one of the spiral galaxies…look at how many stars there are that look like crystals, and no, I won’t get anything like that, but it gives you an idea of why it needs a lot of crystals:

M74

I got the background black fabric painted with an underlay paint of thin white to give the white, pink, and blue Angelina Fibers some help. Then I made the Angeline Fiber applique in a couple of days and sandwiched the quilt … black back, black 80/20 Hobbs batting. the top, the Angelina Fiber applique (which is only sewn down during quilting), and topped it all with a black nylon bridal veiling and pinned it together.

Now here’s the thing that makes it potentially possible for me to meet this deadline…Fritz! Yes, my new Q20 is really fast. I also obtained a couple of sets of Lisa Calle’s pro echo rulers in long sweeping curves to help me quilt the main spirals. Actually, I got that done and this morning I picked out and restitched the couple of problem spots, but they weren’t very much. I was surprised by that. The ruler work really did make it go smoothly and quickly.

quilting the main quilt

I just started the vast amount of organic quilting. This will take some time, but I have several weeks. After quilting the swirl gas clouds, I have the organic looking rusty dust streaks that go with the swirls (take a look at the two NASA pictures, and I think you’ll see what I mean). That will probably take another week. That’s three weeks to complete the quilting. That will leave me time to bind it and get it photographed and an additional week to fix problem spots if needed (I really hope it isn’t).

So I believe I will make the deadline and it will be a fun quilt to show my friend in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) if it is let in the door. LOL

Sew happy everyone! Try a fast track quilt once in a while just to see if you can do it and for fun (but don’t stress out over it).

When Projects Go Awry

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Embroidery, Food for Thought, Quilt Journal, Techniques, Tools / 4 Comments

One of my wonderful mom’s favorite jingles was a song taken from an old movie that was as old as I am. It was You gotta stick to it tivity: You’re gonna do all right, you’re gonna do all right. She sang that to me when things I was trying to accomplish needed more work or went really awry. I can still hear her from time to time singing to me from heaven. 😀 I did see that movie, So Dear to My Heart sometime in my childhood and remember it a bit.

A little heart mug rug…just showing it because this story touches my heart strings.

It didn’t seem like it at the time, but over the years I realized her singing that little jingle to me repeatedly was a gift that has served me well across the years, and most recently in my quilting. While working on the past several quilts I have had things go awry rather badly and I thought it may be the end for both of those quilt projects.

Just this week, I started embroidering an element on my Hoffman Challenge 16 quilt and took extra care to place it perfectly along the cross hairs with my brand new laser cross hair light. It was stitching wonderfully, until I looked at it and….

Gasp! I had put the hoop on sideways! Oh no. The element was turned a perfect 90 degrees wrong. I stopped the embroidery machine immediately, but it had already stitched quite a lot. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before I did.

Well, I honestly wasn’t sure I would be able to fix it. Machine embroidery is very much harder to remove than ordinary machine stitching.

So I started the process with my stitch remover and tweezers and realized I was simply not making any significant progress and I had put a small hole in the fabric. So I thought I would not be able to repair this quilt. But I was wrong.

I decided the next morning to research what other people do when this happens and found a couple of videos on you tube of people using a hand held shaver and and another with an electric shaver-like device to remove such embroidery from the bobbin side. Someone noted in the comments that it was a regular small razor, which is what it appeared to me to be also. I bought a “Peanut” razor by Wahl, which is a very small palm sized razor and significantly less expensive than the embroidery specific razor.

It came and I successfully removed the embroidery with no further damage to the fabric. Woohoo! I turned it to the back, braced it on my sewing ham to give it a solid rounded basis and shaved the bobbin side holding the razor kind of upside down as shown in the videos. I didn’t think it did anything until I turned it over and scratched at the embroidery with my tweezers, and it started coming up! It took me a couple of hours, but it all came and left no further damage than the small hole I made earlier.

So yesterday I starched and ironed the area and restitched the embroidery off quilt on nylon veiling, which I will applique on. It will cover the small damage to the fabric with no problem and it looks wonderful.

This event follows on the heels of my completing Drawing Nigh which I just finished after having multiple problems and nearly giving up on it more than once.

Sew this is what I think. It is all right to abandon a project, but if you have spent hours and money on it, it can pay you to try to fix it. You may want to step back from it for a while and give it some thought. Do some research on what you can do to fix a problem you may not know how to fix, and keep on trying through one problem after another. If, in the end, you just can’t fix it to look like you want, you may be able to cut part of it into another project, or simply throw it away. But i suggest you don’t do that until you really try to fix it. You may end up with a wonderful end result.

Sew happy everyone and “stick to it tivity: you’re gonna be all right!”

Laser lights and robots in my studio

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Embroidery, High-Tech Studio, My Studio, Tools / 2 Comments

This week I got a new toy. It’s a Perfect Alignment Laser 2 cross-hair lamp, which I am hoping will help me a lot in my studio especially with aligning embroideries and multi-hoop embroideries as I hoop them for my Bernina 830 LE and squaring up small quilt projects. I already had a laser square, which helps me square up my quilts and which I used just this week to make sure my quilt now named “Drawing Nigh” (the Waiting…2 quilt) was perfectly squared up. I found that the laser square didn’t quite do the job, however, because I have a lot of trapunto on that quilt that interfered with the lights, so I had to go back to rulers. I eventually got that done though it did take me quite an effort. Here is the first full picture of this quilt…Ta da!!!

Drawing Nigh, completed 4/17/2016, 39.5 x 44.5 inches. Original design by BJ

Sew today I’ve been doing some stitch-outs in my embroidery module of little animals for my Hoffman Challenge quilt. That quilt is a happy whimsical forest path with big funny flowers, butterflies all over the place, and big trees. I thought it needs some animals peaking out here and there and running or walking along the path. The embroidery module, of course, is a robot.

All of this got me to thinking how much fun it is to use these high tech toys to achieve the looks I want and to wish for a robot that would straighten and clean my house so I could live in a cleaner home. At least, I could live in a cleaner home without having to stop playing in my studio with all my toys in order to clean it up. I was looking at an IROBOT vacuum cleaner ad the other day. The problem is, it doesn’t do the straightening first, which is my biggest problem. Once it’s straight I can vacuum it without too much effort. LOL

Sew happy everyone! Have fun in your studio this week. Learn to use your high tech assistants you have…computer drawing and design programs, laser tools, and especially the wonderful things your machine can help you do if only you just knew how to use it. 🙂

“Waiting…” 2: Finally Moving Along

Posted on March 19, 2016March 19, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal, Uncategorized / 2 Comments

Have you ever had a quilt that struggled with you to the point you nearly abandoned it? Well, that was the second in my “Waiting…” series, but I picked it up and did some substantial fixing, and now I am at the point of coming close to finishing the top and I love it at this point.

First of all, I pieced a storm at sea section to become part of the ocean. The piecing was challenging, but enjoyable and I liked the way it came out. Here are the first two blocks of that section.

When I put it together with the fabric piece had for the rest of the ocean, and added the sky, the whole background piece seemed disjointed and the colors simply didn’t play well. So I took the ocean off the sky and overdyed the ocean (both pieces joined together) with a more sea-like color and they blended beautifully together. The only negative result is that, even though I hand dyed it, the pieced storm-at-sea blocks’ seams tended to fray together, so I no longer had the nice flat open pressed seams I started with. But really, by the time I spent several hours re-flattening and spray starching the sea, it looks wonderful.

But the sky…oh the sky. It was just too dull and gray and lifeless. I wanted a sky with an obviously approaching storm at sunset, just as the clipper ship can be seen on the horizon. This is to add the drama to the story…can the ship make it into port safely, and will the family be reunited and get into shelter before the storm hits?

I had tried painting that sky three times already, and I didn’t like any of them. So I took the one I liked the best and added clouds, lightening, sunset colors, and yes, I think it now has the drama (and color) I was hoping to add. So I put the sky and the ocean back together.

Here is a quick pic of the ocean after I dyed it and got it back together with the sky.

Then I added the cliffs to the left of the picture and it began to look right. I just put in a lighthouse on the top of the farthest away visible cliff, added the rocky steps and the stone platform in the nearest stony area for the woman and her daughter to stand on and surrounded it with stones as it would be. It has made all the difference. I now finally like the quilt top.

But I was not happy with the original clipper ship I had chosen to use. I am using a Dover high-definition painted ship and I have the collection. They are much more beautiful than I could have made from scratch, and I don’t mind using commercially printed fabrics, so why should I mind using a fabric I print myself from a collection of great nautical paintings. Using this still requires considerable advanced techniques in applique, thread work, and quilting.

The ship I decided not to use.

The ship I’m using.

So I hunted through the collection and found another one, which I printed out about five different sizes, and finally got it about right. I like this one. It has life, the sails are billowing and are a better color. I’m slightly leaning it on the quilt to add to the look of speed. I printed it out both on the EQ regular cotton fabric and the EQ lawn. I am appliqueing the whole ship down from the cotton fabric, and have added wool batting to the back of the front sails and will applique those in place to give it a bit of 3D billowing sales. I am also adding a layer of wool batting behind the ship and trapuntoing it all in place. Then I will stitch the rigging. That will probably take me a couple of days to applique and another stretch of time to do the quilting and stitch the rigging. Here is my machine stitching around the stones and stone steps up to the platform where the woman and her daughter will stand.

Then there will be the stirring up of the sea with some Angelina fibers and some thread work. That will be fun.

Sew happy everyone! Wishing you all a wonderful National Quilting weekend, and a happy Palm Sunday on the morrow.

Progress on Several Projects

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Books, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 4 Comments

I have three projects currently underway and I’m having fun trying to clear my work flow of these three projects in order to attack two intense show quilt projects I’m also really looking forward to making. My current projects include:

Hoffman Challenge 2016…I’m currently constructing the top. It’s a happy little quilt, just a little bit fantasy-like and I’m currently placing and stitching down all the appliques. I am planning on adding lots of bead work to this quilt, so a good part of the work will be after the sandwich is quilted and done by hand in the evenings.

The background was constructed using applipiece/piecelique technique.

Stitching the appliques down. I will also add some machine embroidered animals to this fanciful forest.

The second quilt in my “Waiting…” series (name to be determined) is finally moving along. I had a very hard time with the sky and the sea. The woman and her daughter appliques were really hard to get right. They still require a lot of details that will be added with stitching. I also have to make the clipper ship applique, which will probably take me a lot of time. But it’s finally looking like it is going to become a quilt. I had my doubts when I didn’t like the sky (I repainted it), didn’t like the sea (I over-dyed both the pieced section and the non-pieced section together to bring them together), and I didn’t like the planned clipper ship design (I found a new one in Dover that has lots of motion). I still have many rocks to add, and the more I look at it the more I think it needs a border…not very wide. Long ways to go on this one.

It’s a start…long ways to go, but it seems to finally be cooperating. This pic is not square on to the quilt, I see…a little at an angle. 😀

And I’m working on my applique book, trying to draw up all the patterns. This is a book showing several techniques of machine applique and the project related to it is a soft fabric book with applique samplers in it…ending with both an art project and a reference aid to the sewist for the future. I got a package of 10 inch precuts to see if I can make the whole book using one layer cake and some white fabric for the pages.

Sew I have been having lots of fun in my studio, but it is getting a bit messy. I am trying to clean it using a little bit of work at that every day, but I seem to be taking one step forward and two backwards…LOL.

Sew happy everyone! Go have some fun in your studio and don’t worry about the mess. Oh, and I haven’t forgotten the step of the month project…I am afraid though that it will have to wait a few more months before I can get to that one.