Starting and Stopping Thread Work and Quilting

Posted on January 21, 2018January 25, 2018 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Food for Thought, Techniques, Threads / 2 Comments

Sew it’s been a while. I’ve been enormously busy finishing my quilt for the Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival…and yes, I finished and I’m now working on my little Milky Way “You are Here” mini. It’s only about 20 x 20 inches and it’s for my part of the space exhibit at MQX. All of my deep space quilts will be there and this is just a little fun piece to show where we are in our home galaxy.

There are a lot of opinions out there in fabric art/quilting land about how to best start and stop your thread. Do you bury it? Do you stitch small stitches and cut close? Do you back it up and cut close? The answers to these questions can frustrate anyone dealing with this issue. Some quilters have no problems with it because they’ve already decided just what they are going to do and do it the same all the time. I however have a plethora of ways to get going and stop.

For the most part, I hate to bury knots. On my show quilts, especially, I stitch very densely in many areas, and sometimes there simply is no way to get that knot fully under the top without problems. Also, I’m not convinced it really holds down the thread any better than other methods. So I analyze what I’m working with and so forth to decide what to do. Let me just say at the start, that if I am making a utility quilt…baby, give away, cuddle on a cold night…I will back stitch or stitch a short stitch close cut. It just takes the rough and tumble better than buried knots. I’m sure there are those who will disagree with me about this, but I stand by it after 65 years of sewing. So here is how I handle this issue for wall and show quilts:

Thicker threads, such as 12 weights and some 30 weights almost require burying in some form because they just show up at the end. Maybe I will just bury them without a knot and carry the thread through the quilt fairly far using a long basting needle. If it works out in my overall quilting, I bury the thicker thread and stitch over the end in my background quilting, but that doesn’t always work.
Very thin threads of 50, 60 or 100 weight can easily just be cut close after some close stitching…say 15 stitches per inch (spi), so I never bury those.

But what about those 40 weights and specialty threads, such as monopoly and metallics? Well, it has been my experience that these very lively threads WORK better and stay better with a careful back trace stitching and then cut close. I am not sure judges will agree with me, but the thing is, such lively threads WILL come up from a bury even when knotted if certain directions of friction are encountered in the handling of the quilt for shipping and hanging and unhanging. If stitched carefully enough, a backtrack is virtually unnoticeable, except you can probably see it with a magnifying glass and a flashlight. (Did you know that some judges look st your quilts that way?) But I decided my metallics will be backstitched and close cut since they go through a lot when sent to shows. If you decide to do this, go really slowly when you backstitch and get it as exact as possible.

The 40 weights are the problem because they aren’t easily determined. Some of them, such as Superior’s Magnifico and Sulky’s rayons are really shiny and show up everything, especially with a high contrast. So in that case, I will probably bury them with the long thread no knot method if I can bring myself to do it. LOL. Some of them, such as Superior’s King Tut, a cotton thread, will melt into the background when the contrast is low. They do well with a short stitch close cut ending.

Sew the answer then is either to quilt so well and planned that you NEVER have a start or stop (LOL) or to test the starts and stops before setting out on quilting that special project and decide how you are going to approach it. Also, always be flexible as you go, because when you are quilting certain places you can change your mind.

Sew Happy Everyone! May your dreams be met, your life be full of love and simply lovely!

By the way, I need some funds to help me keep my dreams for 2018 going, so I am hoping to sell several of my quilts this year to finance my attending the Houston show and keep me in stitches (LOL) and make room in my house for more. You can see which ones on my website gallery…just scroll over the quilt and you can see the price and size. Contact me if you are interested in one and maybe we can work something out that suits your budget. I’ve instituted a lay away plan for the quilts. If you don’t want to buy a quilt but do want to help, there is a donate button on this blog if you are so inclined and the funds will all go to financing my trip or keeping this blog going.

Spiral Galaxy Completed and a Few Thoughts

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Deep space quilts, Food for Thought, My micro-business, Quilt Journal, quilt shows, selling quilts / 6 Comments

I finished the quilt! It hasn’t been professionally photographed yet, so full pictures will come later, maybe after its debut at a quilt show. Here’s a detail shot I took myself in which you can sort of see my quilting:

detail picture by BJ

When I finish a show quilt I really enjoy making I experience mixed feelings of delight that I have made a new quilt and a little let down on not having it to work on any longer. This is at least in part because I am driven to create.

To me, creating is a most wonderful privilege given to me as a blessing by my Creator and encouraged by my family and friends. Ever since I was a small child, I have been blessed with many talents, the strongest of these being sewing, art, and music. I do not engage in all of these at once, but like many artists, I have traveled from one to the other through my life with some overlaps from time to time. For the past ten years, and drawing in more than sixty years (!) of sewing, I have worked to develop quilting as an art form and I have retired from music making. What I find so wonderful about quilting as an art form is that it draws together many of my interests and talents, even applying some of what I learned in the decades of my music, but that’s another topic. Quilting has its ups and downs, but it’s very fulfilling to me to create a quilt of any kind and especially wall art quilts. I intend to continue making quilts until I can no longer hold a needle or run a sewing machine…perhaps into my hundreds. 😀

I love showing my quilts to share the fun with my friends and in the hope that it makes people happy or inspired. It adds a little spice and fun to that when I win a ribbon too. I love sharing my techniques and quilt adventures because I would be delighted to see what I have learned become useful for other quilters.

Here’s where you can see my quilts as of publication of this blog post:

First of all, you can see pictures of many of my quilts either on my website gallery or you can also see them here on The Quilt Show. If you click on the photos in my website gallery, you’ll get the full view and look at the caption on the bottom of each quilt for the name of the quilt and the price of the quilt if they are for sale. If you are interested in purchasing one of my quilts, or just want to know more about it, just contact me at BettyJo@bjfabricartist.com and I’ll get back to you shortly with more details about them. I have a paypal account that enables purchases safely, so just contact me at BettyJo@bjfabricartist.com and I’ll get back to you shortly.
If you are going to AQS Syracuse at the end of this week and over the weekend, my little quilt Canterbury Knight is in the show. It’s been through several shows and received Stevii Graves Judge’s Choice ribbon at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival earlier this year. I would be very surprised if it takes a ribbon, but it is a very nice little quilt you would probably enjoy seeing. I’m thinking this is probably the end of its show season and I plan on hanging it in my living room when it comes home. It’s sister quilt Canterbury Silk is already hanging, and I think it will be a nice addition. So I’m keeping these two quilts and not putting them up for sale.
G Street Fabrics in Rockville has generously hung several of my quilts in their Bernina section. Those are for sale, and include Dad’s House Plan, Kanazawa Memories, and The Storyteller. I periodically change the quilts hanging there.
If you live or are coming near Ashburn, Virginia, send me an email and we can arrange for you to come see any quilts that happen to be here at the time.

Next it’s full speed ahead on the quilt my son Ken designed for me and continued work on my book.

Sew happy everyone! Teach someone to quilt…your child, grandchild, husband, wife, or neighbor. It can be fun for everyone and a great stress reliever in these troubled times.

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.