Virtual Quilt Festival

Last weekend I attended the Virtual Quilt Festival that took the place of the International Quilt Festival in Houston. While it was not NEARLY as much fun as spending 3 tiring days walking the convention floor, it was still fun to peruse the galleries and take some classes.

The most exciting thing was to see my quilt Mahek the Market Girl “hanging” in the competition entitled “In My Mind”…..

It was also fun to be able to sit with my feet up, drinking a cup of tea while I watched the classes that I had signed up for. Both were quilting related and while one was just so-so, the second one was AMAZING.

I spent 1.5 hours with Claudia Pfeil in her studio in Germany!!

I would never have taken this class in person because it was designed for a long-arm machine, but with distance learning, I was able to enjoy her work and learn lots about developing new quilting designs.

She started off by talking about her “alphabet”….the building blocks that she uses with most quilting designs…..

She starts with 5 basic patterns…..bridge, swirls, S-designs, straight lines and balls!!

Then she talked about her 5 elves (she had cute names for them) …. additional element, echo, mirror, combination, spacing

Then she moved to the machine and demonstrated how she uses these elements. As she started quilting in an area, she would begin with one of her simple designs. She would echo and/or mirror the design and start adding additional elements as she went. The final combinations were amazing….

She also showed a way to tie off your threads without having to bury them. I videoed this portion and want to get to the machine and try it out. IF I can figure out exactly how she did it, I will be sure to pass it on!!

I left the seminar feeling encouraged and inspired and then discovered that she had also provided a 27 page pdf full of quilting designs!!!

If you haven’t heard of Claudia, be sure to check out her website. And, if you get American Quilter magazine, there is a wonderful article about her quilts in the January 2021 issue!!

But sweetie….he followed me home!!

Wednesday started out like a normal day. My plans were set for working in the morning and spending the afternoon in my studio. Then, we went to the gym….and you know that NOTHING good ever comes from that!!

While plodding along on the treadmill, I started listening to a quilting podcast and towards the end they started talking about Quilting Machines….long-arm, sit-down, mid-arm etc……

Slippery Slope: What It Is and How to Respond to It – Effectiviology — **DANGER…..SLIPPERY SLOPE**

Back at the house, I couldn’t get the conversation out of my head and kept thinking about the Color Wheel quilt that is 82 inches square and wondering how I would ever quilt it on my Juki. Also, I realized that I actually have room for something like this in my new studio!!

Finally, I picked up the phone and called my local(ish) Juki dealer and started asking questions about the 2200QVP Sit-Down machine. I found out that this machine is being phased out and replaced by the identical machine, except with a stitch regulator (and a lot more $$$$$). Since I really wasn’t interested in the Stitch Regulator, I decided to make a trip to the store and give it a try.

I went prepared with rulers, quilting gloves, practice pieces and a basted charity quilt. I was immediately pleased with the stitch quality……

….but continued to sit and play!!

After about 2 hours, I was hooked and decided that this machine HAD to come home with me.

After huffing it up the stairs, Michael paused to take a photo of me and Julio……

On Thursday I found a couple of hours to keep working on the charity quilt and am again pleased with the results…..

There will definitely be things to learn and it will take a bit of time to get used to, but I am thrilled with my new purchase!!!!

Ruler Quilting–a little blip

I have been using a ruler to quilt the borders on a cute baby quilt and have learned a few things as I quilted along.

I first used the straight edge to quilt lines inside the inner border…...a nice ease-into using a ruler.

Then I started using a curved edge to quilt the pieced borders……

….and that is where I started having issues.

Firstly, I found that the foot was getting stuck as I crossed seams and, because I was having to force it along, I was making long (toe snag) stitches. I kept raising the presser foot height but it wasn’t getting any better.

Then, I had a good look at my ruler foot and realized that there is a spring and screw that, amazingly, raise and lower the foot!!!!

PROBLEM SOLVED!!

Then a few hours later, I started having trouble with the thread breaking. I completely unthreaded my machine, cleaned out the lint, including a small piece that was stuck in the bobbin case and started over but it still wouldn’t work for long.

As a last resort, I decided to change the needle and it fixed the problem. I seldom think about the needle being the issue but obviously it had a burr on the eye that was causing the thread to shred.

Here is the finished border…..

I was able to quilt it without having to make any marks and it adds so much more than my normal 3 squiggly lines down the middle.

This was a simple pattern, using the easiest of the rulers, but I am pleased just to have made a start!!

I am one Happy Quilter!!!

Making my mark on the 4th of July

Over the past week I have been working on a design for my “Henna Whole Cloth” quilt. I spent several evenings making Google searches for Henna Tattoo designs and came up with TONS of great designs. It was especially hard to whittle them down to the ones that would work on my quilt!!!

I cropped the images that I liked, used Power Point to print them in the size that I wanted and started working on my full size pattern. I started with the original design that I tested and then started building out from there. This is the final design……

I say that this is the final design…..there will be some echo quilting around the circle designs and also in the blank corner areas.

So, today my plan was to begin tracing this intricate design onto the fabric. In the past I have used a small (12 inch square) lightbox and was really not looking forward to trying to do something this large on it.

But…..quilting friends to the rescue….. My friend, Sheila, had a large, flat light box that she allowed me to borrow for this task…..

….and boy did it make a huge difference!!!

There are two great features on this piece of equipment….first of all it is flat so that my pattern and fabric were able to lay flat and not slide around. Secondly it has a dimmer so that the light doesn’t have to be so bright. When it was on bright it looked like this…..

…..and I couldn’t see where I had drawn already!! The dimmer function allowed me to see the lines and also see the blue oft the markers…..

So, after about 5 hours and 4 blue pens later, the main part was traced…..

My next step will be to make sure that the corners are going to be square and then I will add the four peacocks in the corners.

Now I just have to figure out how I am going to baste it!!!!!

Project Planning

As I have been working on various Quilts of Valor, I have been thinking about new projects to start and I had two in mind…….

The first is an inspiration that I had when we were in Chengdu, China back in 2016. There was an office building next door to our hotel and at night there were long strings of colored lights shining brightly on the building. These is a very bad quality photo that I took to remind me of my inspiration…..

The colors would change from blue to red to yellow and sometimes the light lines would split up……

Again a horrible photo but it was best that I could get from inside my hotel!!

So, I have been thinking about how to make a quilt that has these same slivers in it. Here is where I am so far…..

…but this ain’t cutting it. I am not sure if the slivers that I am using aren’t bright enough or what, but I am not happy with it.

I have been wondering if it would be more interesting if I completely pieced the black/grey backgrounds first (maybe in a brick style) and then made the slivers go from top to bottom. The biggest problem with this will be that every time I add a sliver, it makes the edges wonky.

And, looking at this photo, I think that the slivers may need to be a bit wider and maybe I only want to use the lighter orange ones???? I have been trying to use some silks that I bought in India in 2015 but they may not be the right colors…..

SO…..since I am sort of stuck on this one, I turned to my other inspiration.

On the same 2016 trip, we spent some time in Trivandrum, India, and one of the things that I wanted to do was to get a Henna tattoo.

As I watched the young woman applying the Henna designs to my skin I couldn’t help thinking that the technique was similar to free motion quilting…..of course I viewed this exercise thru my “quilt-colored glasses”!!

So, I have been combing the internet looking for henna tattoo patterns with the thought of making a “white on white” quilt using those designs. I didn’t really want it to be white but was thinking about more of a tan-on-tan.

Yesterday I bought some appropriate fabric and decided to make a sample to see how it looks, and I am SOOOO happy with it……

I was thinking about doing some Trapunto work on it but decided instead to try using two battings. I placed an 80/20 batting on the bottom and a fluffy batting on the top. Unfortunately, I don’t have the bag that the“fluffy” one came in so I have NO idea of exactly what type of batting it is, but it works and I have enough for the big project so…..who cares!!

Now I need to spend a lot of time designing what this 40 inch square is going to look like. I am pretty sure that this sample design will be the center of the medallion and I am planning to put peacocks in each of the corners, but who know what else will be added to it!!

I also have to figure out a way to get the design onto the fabric. I have a light box but it is too small to do a big piece. I will have to put on my thinking cap!!!

So, no finishes, but a couple of FUN starts…… more to come!!