Becky & Jan & Baptist Fans!

I spent yesterday morning with my friend Jan, sharing my skills in quilting Baptist Fans. She brought chocolate chip cookies (yummy!) and contagious enthusiasm. My sister Becky supplied a bright, scrappy Halloween quilt top and I contributed my Avante and Groovy Boards. The photo doesn't do a good job of showing off the fabrics :(

Baptist Fans is a very traditional hand quilting pattern that has been adapted to continuous line machine quilting. I call the pattern Baptist Fans, have heard it called Methodist Fans. I wonder if there are quilters out there calling it the Seventh Day Adventist Fan or the Buddhist Fan.

We used Groovy Boards, made by HandiQuilter. They are grooved boards. Duh. The trick when using Groovy Boards (or pantographs) is aligning them correctly so the quilting pattern is straight and even with the quilt. Once the boards and the quilt are set up, a stylus fits down into the groove to guide the machine. Presto! Perfect Baptist Fan quilting! It is really mindless quilting, but the final product is fabulous! Quilting 101: Combine straight piecing lines with curved quilting lines.

You can see the quilting lines very nicely on this shot of the back:


Click here to see MORE photos of this quilt on Flickr.

I Should Call Them "Marker" Bags

About two weeks ago, Becky H bought a pattern for crayon bags while we were on a shop hop. We got together last week to make the bags as Easter gifts for our grandchildren. I should call them marker bags instead of crayon bags, because I put washable Crayola © Markers in them. Whatever I call them, we had fun making them.

Choose fabrics: Zoe got frogs, Kyra got smiling suns, Cassady got pencils. Linings for all are a cute black bug fabric, which I bought for $2/yard at a quilt shop End of Year sale. That is "I'll take the rest of the bolt" pricing! Pockets and handles are bright checks for the girls and a red/blue plaid for Cassady.

Construction started at my house. We loaded the lining fabric on my Avante, layered batting and outer fabric and quilted. I did simple grids, Becky got fancy with curlicues! It took longer to load the machine than to quilt, but it is SO much faster than quilting on a DSM! (Have I said how much I love my Avante lately?)



We headed to Becky's house, where we cut and sewed. I realized how smart I had inadvertently been when choosing my pocket fabrics. Always choose fabrics with straight lines when you want to sew straight lines on them!! The original design has two rows of pockets on one side, to hold 5" crayons. I modified it for the longer markers and put one row of pockets on each side. And I cut the bag pieces 12" per side instead of 10½ and 11½ like the pattern said. Question: how many times would I have had to measure those pieces if I cut them as directed? Answer: every time I picked them up!! After we sewed the pockets (Becky had to mark hers), we serged each side of the bags. (Sidebar: I AM going to buy a serger soon!). Becky's bags, cut to pattern directions, were just a tad small for the coloring books she had.

We thought we would get them completed in one day, but at quitting time, we still had to make the handles, then attach them to the bags. No problem, just an hour's work tomorrow morning, then off to the post office.

Day 2: Easier said than done! I didn't like the directions given for the handles, but I followed them. I know faster and easier ways for next time! I broke two needles sewing through the thickness of the handles and the bags. Becky broke six. On the 3rd bag, I figured out a better way. When the bags were done, I pulled out the 20 marker sets and loaded up the bags. The plaid fabric pockets were on the small side, which meant the bag was distorted after all the markers were placed in the pockets. Remember to sew at least 3/4" pockets next time.....

Search for the blank books I want to put inside. One hour later, give up on finding the blank books. And I don't have anything else to put in the bags. Darn it. Take pictures. Write each child a quick note, print shipping labels, drop them at post office. (USPS assures me they were delivered on Saturday, BEFORE Easter!!)

Day 3: Printer needs cartridge replaced. Since I'm already down there, pull out everything to dust. Find the blank books. &%#*% Again! *#&($%($!!

Things to modify in pattern:
1. Cut bags square.
2. Choose pocket fabric with straight lines about 1" apart.
3. Make pockets longer for markers.
4. Make handles the simple way.
5. Sew handles onto bag BEFORE hemming top of bag.
6. Keep track of blank books.

I'll have to make more bags so I can use all the things I learned!

Black AND White? Black OR White?

When I decided to make a baby quilt for my brother's first grandchild, I knew I would use bright colors with black and white fabrics in a Nickel Quilt design. I chose to use TWO bright fabrics because I didn't have enough of either!

I paired one bright fabric with assorted black prints for the half-square triangle blocks and the other with white with black fabrics for the 4-patch blocks. Didn't like it! The bright colors didn't pop, the black and the white fabrics didn't work together. It looked like a jumble...




Plan B: I chose some black and white fabrics and made more 4-patch blocks. I didn't like the black and white either (no photos), so I made MORE 4-patch blocks using using black with white fabrics. Yes!! Much better!

Piecing is fast, even with the false starts and fabric/color changes. The backing is a cozy blue flannel and I quilted it using a fun panto which combines points and lines with curves and swirls. I used a bright blue thread which seems like an odd choice, but really looks great on both the black fabrics and the bright colors.


The finished quilt - the colors are subdued in this photo. Imagine them very bright! Like in the next picture!










I prefer dark binding as a "frame", so the binding is black with a bright red piping.

I hope Caleb likes it!

Ohio State Quilts - Go Buckeyes!

My Mom makes quilts. Since she is a avid Ohio State fan, many of them are OSU/Buckeye quilts. In between customer quilts, I quilt them for her at her special family rate! This is her latest. It got polite applause at Show & Tell at my quilt guild meeting in Nebraska! Those Husker fans are always loyal to their own team!

The quilting is a free-hand pattern - I love filling the space!




And in the inner black border, I quilted words from the second verse of Buckeye Battle Cry, one of The Ohio State University Fight Songs. (Across The Field is the other).


FYI, my favorite teams are the Arizona State Sun Devils, the Buckeyes and whoever is playing the University of Arizona!

Quilt Dundee

The last full weekend in July is reserved for Quilt Nebraska. It's a sort of religious holiday for Nebraska quilters, a time to take classes, renew old friendships, eat chocolate, make new friends, shop, talk and laugh. I went to my first Quilt Nebraska in 1998 (read a little about that trip here). This year, I had to cancel at the last minute. I decided to have my own private quilting time at home. To accomplish this, my family was to act as if I weren't there for two days. I would quilt, ignoring the kitchen, the telephone, laundry, chauffeur duties.....

Friend and fellow quilter Barb Rennard told her husband what I was doing. When he realized it was QNE weekend and that Barb wasn't going, Stephen said she should have "Quilt Dundee". No sooner said than done! Naomi and Deena sprung into action. Plans were formulated. Calls were made. Saturday morning, seven quilters showed up at Barb's house in Dundee for the First Quilt Dundee.

Julie, Claudia, Alice, Barb D, Barb R, Judy S, Judy M and Deb posed for a picture in front of a wonderful Quilt Dundee sign.

We had a blast! Door Prizes! Booby Prizes! Chocolate! A banquet featuring Zio's pizza and Graeter's Ice Cream! No workshops here - we all had projects: cutting fabric to start a new project, assembling blocks into a top, schlep bags, kumihimo and applique. My project was Caitlin's t-shirt quilt. It will be a two-sided quilt, so I can include as many shirts as possible. After one day of sewing at home and a day and a half at Quilt Dundee, Side One is complete!


I got a good start on Side Two, but I need another Quilt Dundee!

Becky's Quilts

I quilted two cute baby quilts - for Becky's grandsons. The first was an I Spy quilt, so I quilted the alphabet and numbers, one in each block. I thought it was neat that the C was on the Curious George block.


The second quilt was a Maple Island pattern by Debbie Bowles called Carnival. Becky used beautiful fabrics, including some she dyed. I quilted a simple stars and loops all-over pattern. Several times in the quilting, I wrote CAMDEN, the little boy this quilt is made for.




You can see more pictures of the quilts and the quilting on flickr.

Quilt for The Gathering

Teri Quinn, friend and fellow member of The Cottonwood Quilters took on the HUGE task of providing quilts for The Gathering, a fundraiser for a local private school. I agreed to quilt one of ten quilts which will be auctioned. Janice Lippincott and June Jensen combined blocks from a Houston class and made a beautiful top using colorful batiks and black and white prints.

I quilted it using a free-form spiral feather design. The thread is Superior Rainbows #821 - a multi-colored thread that was PERFECT with the batiks and showed up just as I wanted on the B&W prints!





Janice pieced a batik back that is as wonderful as the front! You can see more detail of my quilting in this photo of the back. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the entire quilt! The quilt is in the hands of yet another volunteer, who is doing the binding. I will add a picture of the finished quilt when I see it again! You can SEE MORE detail pics of this quilt on flickr.

I Quilted Today!

And yesterday, and the day before! And the day before that. It started with a red, white and blue top. I had a partial spool of a cotton YLI variegated thread - wasn't sure how much had been used, but decided to take a chance. You know it! I ran out of thread about 3/4 of the way through the quilting. A nearby quilt shop had some Valdani thread, cotton, same weight. Expensive - $12 for a small cone. I bought it and have been sorry ever since! This supposedly long-staple, high quality thread was fuzzy and had slubs. It shredded and broke in my HQ16, even after I changed needles, re-threaded, adjusted tension, changed needles, re-threaded, adjusted tension, changed needles.......

It isn't often I say NEVER, but I will NEVER spend another penny on Valdani thread!

I eventually solved the problem by going to a different quilt shop and buying a spool of Sulky thread (cotton, red/white/blue). It worked wonderfully & I finished the quilting without any more problems.

Moved on to quilt the sweet lavender and green quilt in the photo below. The photo looks way too blue - I can add "learn photo-editing" to my To Do List. This is Diane's first big quilt, made for a granddaughter. I finished it today. I LOVE quilting!

Quilted to Death!

Whenever possible, I have volunteered to help on Judging Day for my local quilt guilds. One often-heard comment, usually made when borders are quilted significantly less than the interior of the quilt, is "needs more quilting". I just returned from the Machine Quilters Showcase in Overland Park, Kansas. Few of the quilts in this show will elicit this comment.

The quilts are quilted. And quilted. And quilted some more. As the popular phrase says - "quilted to death". And while looking at the quilts in this show, it seems that, to some extent, this amount of quilting is excessive. Don't misunderstand me - the quilting is wonderfully executed, technically fabulous, incredibly beautiful.

But excessive because it causes the viewer (me) to think "Forget ever entering this show - I don't do this amount of quilting". And if I'm thinking it, so are many other quilters. Many of the attendees at MQS are professional machine quilters, running successful long-arm businesses. But they aren't entering a show created specifically for them.

It seemed to me that the exhibit area was heavy on Special Exhibits and light on actual entries. There was a lot of empty space - black-curtained bays without any quilts, extra-wide spaces between quilts in the Special Exhibits. Maybe some of that empty space might be filled if the standard for quilting wasn't "quilt it to death".

I Have A Handi Quilter!

On Tuesday morning, it was an empty (relatively speaking!) room:

Getting it to this point involved hours of sorting through piles of mostly quilting stuff, going through boxes of mostly quilting stuff and making decisions about what stays and what goes. I sold one sewing machine and a table, but what you don't see in this empty room picture is the full shelf in the next room of Stuff-That-Stays.

Leslie & Kevin showed up at 10:30 am with a truckload of boxes and several hours later, I had my new baby - a Handi Quilter 16! I love it! If you want me, I'll be quilting!

More Christmas Stockings

I've used my sewing time to make a tree skirt for my oldest daughter and stockings for two granddaughters. My original plan was to do alternate wedges in the crazy quilt method used on the stockings in a previous post. Time dictated otherwise and I went with solid fabric wedges. The visible quilting around the outer edge is done with glow-in-the-dark thread. DD's reaction to the tree skirt was "PERFECT!", which is the absolute perfect ego stroke for me! Last year, she used her quilt as a tree skirt. The back of that quilt is the darkest snowflake fabric in the tree skirt.













Zoe and Kyra will have Christmas stockings. I used just a few chile fabrics from my huge collection. Most of my family has cross-stitched stockings. I started making quilted stockings for my grandchildren.

Christmas Stocking

I do two things every year in late November. I avoid shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, and I make a stocking for the Omaha Quilt Guild's Stocking Challenge . This year, I sent my family off to a movie without me on Friday afternoon and made my stocking. Photos show front and back of stocking.

The orange fabric was the challenge fabric. I chose snowflake and sky fabrics to be a background for my free-hand cut star.

I like to try something on a small scale that I am thinking about for a larger project, so this stocking has crazy-quilted patches. The stitching was done by machine and I didn't fuse the patches onto the background.

I'm happy with the stocking and what I learned: It is easier to start at an "end", rather than work in a circular pattern around a middle.

I hope the child who gets this stocking enjoys it for many years.