Ruler Quilting Practice

For the last few years I have kept saying that I needed to learn more about using rulers for Free Motion Quilting. When I have done this practice time in the past, I have simply pulled out my rulers and played with them a little and said….well that was fun!!! But I never really LEARNED anything.

I have now purchased a series of rulers from Angela Walters and am watching many of her videos as I excitedly await their arrival. At the gym I watched the video where she talks about using a straight ruler to quilt a spiral pattern in a square. Since I already own a straight ruler, I decided to give this a try today.

I started out by making 6 practice pieces using some low quality cotton fabrics and batting. Then I drew an 8 inch square on one of them……

…..sat down at the machine and started playing!!! The first step was to quilt around the outside of the square and then quilt from the corner to 1/2 inch past the next corner…..

With the first few rounds, I chose to mark where the ruler would fall along the line. In this case the ruler was placed 3/4 of an inch away from the corner. Because of how the ruler foot is built, this means that the needle will fall at the 1/2 inch mark.

I kept working my way around the block and was able to finally stop marking each corner which saved a LOT of time.

This design is really good for practicing because it makes you use the ruler in all of the four orientations…… in front of the needle, behind the needle, to the right of the needle and to the left of the needle……

I was relatively happy with how this first practice block turned out…..

What did I learn from this first block…..

– there are a LOT of lines in an 8 inch square when you space them 1/2 inch apart!!!!

– GO SLOW…. and don’t worry about having to stop and reposition your hands.

– CONCENTRATE!!!! ….or you end up crooked lines, lines at the wrong angles and stitching that goes beyond the line.

Okay….that was fun. Let’s do it again with 1 inch between the lines…..

I went really well until I got well into the center and then I lost concentration and sewed one line wrong……

So here are my errors on the second try……

I am still happy with this first practice piece and I have already learned a lot. AND, I am thinking that I might use this design on one of the next quilts that I have in the queue to quilt.

I think that I will try this a few more times tomorrow and see if I get better with it!!!

Meadow Art….collecting the supplies

On Monday morning I had planned to start with my new drawing/painting regime, but I had several errands that had to be done in the morning and simply ran out of time. Plus, I managed to lose the leaf that I had collected for my first drawing inspiration!! I did eventually find it, but decided that it was telling me that it was okay to put it off for a bit.

Since one of my errands was to a local art/craft/fabric store, I spent some time going thru the supply list for the Meadow Quilt and seeing what I actually had on hand.

I pulled out the box labeled…..

“Other” meaning non-quilting fabrics….you can see that I don’t own many!!!

I found an inspiring array of fabrics, including two pieces of “Color Catcher” that might work as well……

The printed piece on the right is probably a polyester so I will see how it accepts the dye before I use any of it.

I also found a white silk scarf that had come as a freebie when I placed a dye order many years ago…..

Then I moved to my box of laces and trims and began looking for pieces that could look like flowers or weed in the background. Remember that these will all be painted over…..

My favorite find of the day was a long piece of tatted Tricot loops that my Grandmother made……

It will be so much fun to include a small section of this in the project!!

As I head to the store today, I am going to look for “Daisy” trim that doesn’t have the green leaves in it, maybe a white burlap and some yellow tulle for the buttercups.

I did buy one thing from Amazon because I couldn’t find it anywhere around here…..horticultural fleece. If you are like me you are saying “W H A T”??? This is the lightweight fabric that you use to cover your plants during a freeze. I bought a HUGE piece of it but will only use a few inches….at least it isn’t expensive!!!

I think that this project will be a blast!!!!

Travel Log Quilt #1

My very first “Travel Log Quilt” is called “Take Me Back To Guana Quay”……..

Take Me Back to Guana Quay

In July of 1997, our family spent two weeks on or around the ocean. The trip started with 4 days on a sailboat in the Florida Keys, followed by 10 days on Guana Quay Island, part of the Abaco chain in the Bahamas.

It was a fun trip, as our kids (ages 12 & 10) had never been on a plane (that they remembered), never been on a sailboat, never been fishing and never snorkeled!! We spent much of our time watching for dolphins, birds and other ocean creatures…..

I actually took fabric on the trip and started making a few of the blocks by hand, but quickly decided since I would be doing a lot of paper piecing, it would be better to wait until I got home. Instead I spent the time looking for inspiration for the individual blocks in the quilt.

At that time I had made a couple of quilts using the ideas in Judy Hopkins book “One-of-a-Kind Quilts”

The idea behind this book is that you can put lots of different sizes of blocks together to form a pleasing design.

Most of the designs came from existing patterns but I designed the sailboat and the lighthouse myself….

I had SO much fun looking thru design after design until I found exactly what I wanted to use in the quilt. Some were paper pieced and some were simply cutouts that were appliqued to the background fabric…..

My favorite block was the large one in the bottom left corner….

I had never done any thread work and greatly enjoyed trying the different techniques to make the coral.

After making the blocks, I was excited to think about tying them together using the “Storm At Sea” block.

To finish the quilt off properly, I did Trapunto quilting around the bottom right corner of the quilt. Be sure to look back at the first photo and exclaim how great it looks!!!!

Yes, I learned an important lesson with this quilt…..if you go to THAT much trouble to do special quilting, be sure that the background fabric will actually SHOW that work. The only way to see the intricate shells is to add a light from the side…..

SIGH!!!!!!

Anyway, this post has gone on far too long, but suffice it to say that this was the first of my Travel Log Quilts and it got me started on a 23 year journey (so far) of making quilts that reminded us of our travels.

So, PLEASE take me back to Guana Quay!!!…….

Something good from COVID-19?

Something seems wrong about the title of this post. How could anything good come from the ongoing pandemic?

Even though I didn’t have extra time during the lockdown, for some reason, I have had tons of time this summer. Part of this is because of the new paradigm that I initiated in 2019, where I am using blocks of time to accomplish my goals. Part of it is because of the many gatherings that have been canceled and part is because our usual overseas travels have been curtailed!!

Because of this extra time, I have been able to finish many of my ongoing projects and am ready to try some different techniques and just do a little bit of playing!! So on Saturday, my goal was to look for inspiration…..

……for future projects, especially thinking to expand my knowledge of drawing, painting, and surface design.

But first, I wanted to get my studio cleaned up again, including cleaning and oiling my machine…..

Apparently Juanita is a thirsty machine!!

It looks SO clean!!!

When Kaitlyn and I were both sewing a few weeks back, I had put up my Viking and enjoyed having both machines up. But, once I took the machine down it seemed like a nice area to leave open for other tasks…..like inspiration planning…..

The first thing that I did was watch a video that I bought many years ago featuring Jane LaFazio and her ideas about drawing, watercolor and keeping a journal……

This video ALWAYS inspires me and encourages me to start trying some drawing….something that I don’t really believe I can do.

I pulled out my art supply box and was pleased to see that I have all of the tools that she talks about, plus a few others…..

So starting on Monday, I am going to try to draw something at least 3 times each week.

I decided to do a quick run around the yard to get ideas of things that I could sketch and ran into some pretty butterflies along the way…..

Next I pulled out a stack of books about art quilts and design techniques, found a comfortable chair and started working thru them one by one. There were two that stood out to me….

“Art Quilt Workbook” contains exercises that might help to get me thinking in a different way, and “Fabric Art Workshop” has lots of surface design ideas. I am thinking that I may try to do some of these exercises as well.

BUT, all of these are designed for making Art Quilts and honestly, I don’t see myself as an art quilter. However, I am sure that trying new techniques will give ideas for future projects.

Finally, I remembered a book that I bought at a Quilt Show some years ago…..

The idea behind this book is to first layer and stitch a lot of textures onto a background piece that is only in whites and creams. Then you paint over the texture that you have developed and add the featured designs on the top. This sounds really interesting and something very different to anything that I have ever done.

So, I am planning to make this quilt……

I really don’t like copying designs that someone else has already done but I will follow the instructions for this quilt and use it to learn this technique.

The final thing that I thought thru was whether or not I needed to make more quilts that weren’t necessarily meaningful to me. What will I do with any new found inspirations? Do I want to put them on ETSY and see if I can sell them? Maybe put them in the member’s boutique at the next guild quilt show?

Or maybe it is okay to just make art pieces without having a reason? Can that be right? It sure doesn’t fit with the way I think but it seems that this may be a good time to take a chance and change that thinking!!!

What was I thinking?

Since I had finished “Bridge Over the River KEW“, it was time to turn back to the Color Wheel quilt that I have been slowly working on for the past YEAR!!!

Now that the hand applique on the corner’s were finished I needed to turn these five pieces into one very BIG piece…..

I had been dreading this part of the process since it would be extremely easy to get the triangles off center and then the whole thing would be skewed. When doing the corner design I had marked all of the sewing lines, so it was easy to match those lines up, iron a crease where the sewing line would go and then simply sew along the marked line….

After the initial sewing, I laid the top out on the floor and used the laser square to see how close it was….

There was one corner that needed some work…..

….but a bit of ripping and re-sewing soon had that fixed.

The bottom line is that the final trim will be very close but I will get it quilted and then see where it is.

Next I needed to make a back for the quilt and at this point I started asking myself exactly what I was thinking when I designed this quilt and WHY did I make it so big!!!

It was fun using a number of multi-colored pieces of fabric for the back…..

…..especially the cute psychedelic VW Bug fabric!!

So for now, I will put this into the line-up for quilting….it is number three in the queue.