Merry Christmas and a Holiday Projects Wrap-up

I've got some things to share and expect to be busy tomorrow so wanted to get in a quick post before we have to head out to see the relatives this afternoon.  It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted so forgive me that this is a bit of a long one (although that is usual for me). 

First off, to those of you who celebrate it, I wish you a very Merry Christmas!

And to all a very Happy Holiday Season!!

 

It turns out the last few weeks did not go quite as I expected.  In my December "Get It Done!" post, I talked about realizing that due to life changes, I have to rethink how and when I do my quilting.  That process is still going on although it is not fully settled yet.  However, paying more attention to how my days flowed, I did mange to get a few things done, even if they were not the things on my list!

For the holidays, the plan was to finish up the wool ornaments I had been working on all year (well, at least in the first three quarters of the year!) in preparation for getting a Christmas Tree and to finally quilt the "High Strung + 2" Christmas quilt top I had started last Christmas.  However, I also wanted to make some other holiday decorations and figured they would be quick and easy enough to whip out as a warm up to the other projects.

Right after Thanksgiving, I went shopping and saw this pillow in a local Marshall's:

I've always wanted to make an Advent calendar quilted wall hanging but when I saw this pillow with the little pockets for each day, I just knew this was a better option.  Part of that reasoning involved the fact that  I already had this pillow that lives on my couch:

....so just knew I could make up a pillow cover that would kill two birds with one stone!  So after pulling stuff from stash (fabrics, fusible web for the numbers, stabilizer and ribbon trim for the front), doing some measuring, making some calculations, choosing a font in my wordprocessing program and figuring out how much to enlarge it, and then just generally making a (albeit, creative) mess:

....I wound up with this:

 I bought a few chocolate Santas to fill the pockets and I was good to go!  I even had a fabric in stash that pictures "The 12 Days of Christmas" which I used for the back of the pillow.  I also managed to whip up a label for it with some of the leftovers which was sewn onto the back of the front at the same time the pockets were sewn down:

I also love that I won't have to find a place to store another pillow all year.  When the holidays are done I can just take off the cover, roll it up and add it to the other quilts stored in the bookcase behind the couch.

I thought that would add enough holiday spirit to the couch since I still expected to hang the other quilt and have the tree in the area behind the couch (to the left of where this pillow sits).  However, I still felt the couch would need just a little more balance in the decorations.  No problem since I've collected a number of holiday decorating designs over the past few years.  One of them was this one:

A pattern by Debbie Busby of Wooden Spool Designs, this would be another in the series of projects where I get to work with wool applique.  The details of the design seemed to me to be simple enough that I thought it another thing that could be run up quickly.  However, it should be noted that the pattern is for a 9" x 7" table mat and I was looking to cover this 18" square pillow:

So needless to say, once again I needed to do some calculating to figure out how to translate the design to a pillow and enlarge it to the needed size.  I liked the scalloped edge of the original mat and needed to figure out how to easily translate that to the pillow.  The decision was that instead of the black fabric being a background with the text area appliqued on it, I made the black portion a frame to be appliqued onto a light background and the exposed center would serve as the text area.  All of this was made up from stash:  a Connecting Threads flannel for the background, the black frame and most of the red pennies from my wool stash and two of the red pennies and all the green pennies from the scraps from my (still to be quilted) Home & Heart wool BOM project.  It was also top stitched with the Aurifil Lana wool threads I stashed for that same project.  So that finished up as this:

Now at this point, with it now being the week of Christmas and the two projects I mentioned at the start of this post still to finish, I SHOULD HAVE moved on to those right?  However, by now we found out that we were not going to have to host Christmas (whew!) so decided not to go with a big tree as originally planned which took the pressure off to finish the ornaments.  I'll just add what's left to next year's "To Do" list.   However, I still wanted to do some more small space decorating and since I'd need to clear off my cutting table in order to layer the "High Strung" quilt top (which also no longer needed to be done by Christmas Day), I decided to try to work on something else that was sitting on my table.

During Black Friday weekend, the Primitive Gatherings quilt shop held their "Primitive Christmas" sale.  I had purchased my Heart & Home BOM from them as well as most of my wool stash through a Monthly Wool Gatherers Club mailing back in 2011-2012.  One of the things I purchased in the Christmas sale was a kit for a wool table mat.  I had special plans for this kit that involved these candles (battery operated) that I purchased from Leisure Arts.

Once again, the belief was that this was a really simple design that would make up quick and then move onto the layering of the Christmas quilt.  The good news was that for the most part the cutting and stitching was quick (finished over about two days):

The kit also came with the brown homespun fabric on the left for the backing and was supposed to be finished by blanket stitching the edges.  I had, however, also considered backing and binding it with the red plaid on the right from my stash or even doing a "pillow turned" edge for a cleaner finish and then maybe still adding the blanket stitching as more of a decorative element.  Also as I was stitching around the applique motifs, I thought about how cool it would look to add beads to the trees as "ornaments" possibly to something in the center of the mat (maybe some more applique or a small oval cut-work doily?) for when I decide to actually use this as a table mat in the future.  I admit I wanted to entertain all these ideas but there was no time for it and for what I wanted to use this mat for right now, it was actually just fine as it is!  So executive (and time crunched) decision:  Let's just leave it as is for now, put it in place for decoration until New Year's and add further embellishment of it to the "To Do" list for next year.  I know, I know, I'm asking for trouble but we executives sometimes have to make the tough decisions!!   So that said, up it went:

 

It is sitting on top of a pretty (turned over) basket that had been part of a food gift basket given to us a couple of Christmases ago.  I always kept it hoping to use it for some kind of display and this was perfect!  I actually have another plan for a display for in the basket come Easter so let's hope the "To Do" list doesn't get the best of me next year and I can get to it!  Oh, and I 've got to say those candles are a great investment.  Here's a better shot of them when the lights are low:

 

 

They are remote controlled and can be changed to twelve different colors either separately (as you see here) or as a group.  They also can be set to cycle through all the colors and can be set to "flicker" at two different speeds (hmmm, next time I'll make a video of that and post it). 

 

Now, I'll bet you're saying:  "that wall behind it looks a little bare".  Well that's just what I was thinking and I had a plan for that too!  Again, back in the December "Get It Done" post, I had led off talking about starting on Pam Buda's "Tucker" Quilt Along.  At the time I was waiting for the final reveal post so I could finish mine.  I didn't do it right then but after finishing the candle display, I realized I had the perfect spot for that little quilt.  Also re-reading the reveal post I realized just how easy a finish this would be since it was not meant to be quilted (although you can if you want to).  Ok, this means I could take just one more day, sew the rows together, make up some quick Flying Geese units for the last part of the QAL, back, bind and hang it up!  So I pulled out the project boards holding the project (these are my Lori Holt (of Bee In My Bonnet) design boards that I made with her tutorial but the Fat Quarter Shop also sells some premade ones now here).  Digging into my CW stash and started cutting some more squares to finish the set up of the Part Three unit (on the right below):

 

 

As you can see on the Part Two unit (on the left above) I started to sew the rows together and....what don't you want to hear on Christmas Eve with rows to sew together and another quilt waiting to be quilted?!?  Yes, my Janome machine which had already starting making noise as I was sewing up the table mat, really started acting up as I started to sew these squares. 

The machine in better days when it came back from service in April.

As far as I could see, the bobbin case is not staying in place as the machine begins to sew!  Drat!  There is no way I can take this machine in for service until next week at the earliest and I know that even if I do there's a good chance it won't get worked on until after the New Year!

Ok, technically this shouldn't be a problem since I also have another machine, my old Euro-Pro.  I had used this machine for the first eight years and thirty-five quilts of this quilty life.  However, this machine, purchased from one of the TV shopping networks, had never been serviced and I think it was a little "dodgy" when I last used it.  But, in a pinch, you've got to work with what you've got.  So I loaded it into my table:

...and...Ugghh!!  I'm having the exact same problem!  The bobbin is not staying in place.  Now, I've been sewing since I was a teenager so the workings of machines are not completely foreign to me but these are definitely issues beyond my control.  O.k., there's one last possibility....

 

I've had this featherweight since my mother died eleven years ago.  I believe it was her boyfriend's machine who had been a tailor.  Ever since I took possession of it, I always wanted and used it as a display piece although I know these are much coveted as "work horse machines" among quilters.  When my Janome was out for service for a very extended period earlier this year, I began to think about pulling down this little machine and figuring out if it was possible to get it in shape for service.  To that end, after reading a few recommendations, I bought David McCallum's book "The Featherweight and I" with plans to one day sit down and learn about what I had.  I've never had to chance to do this until now.  So I pulled it off the shelf, began reading and looking and....

...discovered I was (still) sunk!  The "V belt" that drives the motor is broken!  I did plug it in and the light and motor do work but without the belt to drive the flywheel which drives the needle mechanism, this option is now too a bust.  However, I've started figuring out where to get parts both locally and online.  The belt fortunately is readily available and not that expensive, however, I want to do a full work up on the machine so will need some other supplies to do a thorough job.  So while this won't be an easy solution, it will be yet ANOTHER project for the "To Do" list next year!

So what does this mean for the outstanding projects?  Well, let's just say that on the plus side, this all kind of works into the plans I had set for New Year's anyway.  As I said, I expect to be busy tomorrow but am hoping I can put a post up on Sunday.  For a hint of where I believe I'm heading.....



and

 



Hopefully, I'll be back soon with an update!

The Kaye England CW Samplers Are Finished!!

I am glad to say that a big project that has been at the very top of my "To Do" list all year is finally done: Over the last two weeks, I finally quilted and bound the two Civil War sampler flimsies I finished up back in August of last year.  It's been hard to get good pictures of them so these will have to do for now and I'll try to get better ones later:

Re-piecing the Past from Kaye England's Craftsy class.

 

 

Civil War Legacy from Kaye England's book.



 

All the blocks were made from the scraps and leftovers from my other Civil War projects.  Through out the time I had worked to bring them to the topper stage, it had been my intention to probably finish them up by doing some simple "all over" stitching like Stippling or Baptist Fans because the layout was so busy.  I wound up sticking with that plan so "Re-piecing" was quilted with the Baptist Fans:

This was another chance to use my Westalee Circle templates (for more information on them, scroll down on this page).  I had also used them last month to start the concentric circle quilting on the "Thea's Puzzle" quilt seen in this post.

I liked using the templates because I was able to quilt the really large 12" fans evenly, without marking and by free motion quilting them.  I have quilted fans before:  on my "Stashbuster" quilt in 2010, I did them free hand and free motion.  They came out okay but it was harder than I thought to try to keep them even and back then I only stitched the widest arc at about 8".   More recently I did them again on one of the mini quilts I finished back in March.  That time I made cardboard templates for each size round with the widest arc 5".  I used a walking foot to stitch around them and had to swap out a different template to make each round, pinning them to the quilt to hold them in place while I stitched.  They were not as rounded as the Westalee fans are because the cardboard template was made based on a quarter circle.

With the Westalee template, I was able to use just the one template for all the rounds.  If I had wanted a different spacing between the rounds I could have swapped out other templates simply by placing them on the same centering pin.  If you want to see the template in action, check out Westalee's video here.  The next project I hope to try to do with them is use them to make the foundation circles for  Lori Kennedy's "Circle Doodle" quilt and use it to test out different decorative threads.

The center of "Legacy" was stitched free hand and free motion in a Stipple pattern and the narrow inner border was stitched with a walking (Accu-feed) foot.  The challenge was what to do for the other borders.  I wanted something simple to complement the simple center quilting but also something that complemented the border print.  I found what I wanted in two books on Amish quilting:

The pattern on the left is from Amish Quilting Patterns For Machine Quilting by Pat Holly and Sue Nickels and the one on the right is from Amish Quilting Patterns by Gwen Marston and Joe Cunningham.  You can see all the quilting better from the back:

Originally, I was a little concerned about what thread to use since the riot of color in each quilt might make it difficult to pick just one color.  However, I wanted to avoid, if I could, having to make a lot of thread changes.  Fortunately the quilt gods always come through for me!  I read a post back in November by Lori Kennedy who blogs at the "Inbox Jaunt" and is now a regular columnist for "American Quilter", the monthly publication for the American Quilters Society (AQS)  .  I've been following her blog for awhile now as she has been providing coaching on Free Motion Quilting techniques and patterns which she does on a domestic machine.

The post of hers that helped me out this time was one on "Choosing Threads For FMQ".  It was a great post in that it distilled the concepts down to a few simple starting questions to guide your choices.  It was also great because it was the perfect complement to another helpful post that I had read on this topic even earlier.  Wendy Sheppard  blogs over at "Ivory Spring" and is another accomplished quilter who also quilts on a domestic machine.  Her work has been frequently published in books and magazines, she has a FMQ course available through the Annie's catalog website and also has her second book coming out from Landauer Publishing this fall.  On her blog she has an ongoing series of posts called "Thread Talk From My Sewing Machine".  Back in April 2014, she did a post on the topic of achieving "Subtle Contrast" when it came to her quilting.  For this she uses thread colors that contrast enough to show against the backgrounds or piecing but not so much that the quilt stitching overpowers the quilt design.  She also identified which were her favorite Aurifil colors to use to achieve that. 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Edited  10/4/15 To Add:  Wendy recently announced that her "Subtle Contrast" concept has been picked up by Aurifil Threads and will be sold as a thread box set!  Check out her post here about it.  I've searched and haven't seen it listed for purchase anywhere yet but hopefully that will happen soon too!

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Armed with the wisdom of these two ladies, I have used their advice to help me decide on the threads I wanted to use to quilt all of my CW projects.  I was fortunate to have the perfect color for both of these and was able to use the same top thread for both:  Aurifil's #2324.  Both quilts are backed with Marcus Fabric's Aged Muslin in different colors.  For "Re-piecing" I used the Dark Brown muslin and Connecting Threads Essentials thread in Milk Chocolate.  "Legacy" was backed in the Tan muslin and I used Aurifil's #2000 thread.

Lastly in both cases, I monogrammed the label information onto the backing with my machine, listing the quilt information and all the block names. 

Before Quilting

 

 

After Quilting

 

With these done, in September I have to work on displaying all the quilts made to date.  I also still have to quilt the Chronicles BOM but I'm not sure when I'll get to that since I want to work on trying to finish my DWR next.  However, for the last few days left of this month it will be ornaments, ornaments, ornaments!!

Project Recap: Thea's Puzzle Quilt

In my July "Get It Done Recap", I noted that I had one finish in July and one almost-finished.  The finished project was detailed here and this post is for the almost-finished that is now finished!

Let me present the quilt called Thea's Puzzle from the free pattern by quilt and fabric designer Amy Butler:

Front

Front Close-up 

Back

 Back Close-up, label area

My DH discovered a plus:  this looks like a cool stained glass quilt when the light shines through it!

This is a rare bright colored quilt for me, done in an even rarer improv and modern style.  Edited To Add:  The pattern was designed to showcase Amy's Designer Collection solids from Rowan/Westminster fabrics but mine was made from my stash of Kona Cotton and other solid fabrics.

Once the design was done I debated on a number of ideas for the quilting.  The important thing for me was to bring the attention to the center but also integrate the borders.  I had seen a number of quilts around the web stitched in concentric circles and decided that was the ticket.  I found a great tutorial on this at Karen's Anderson-Abraham's Blooming Poppies blog.  Her method involved marking a medium sized circle (she used a food processor bowl) on the quilt and then stitching with a walking foot around the outside of the circle out to the quilt edges and then around the inside of the initial circle to the center of the quilt.  I took a slightly different path (and you know me, it must involve gadgets):  I started the quilting right from the quilt center and did it by free-motion using some new templates:  Westalee's Circles on Quilts!

 
This set of templates will quilt circles from 2" to 12" wide at increments of 1/4", 1/2" and 1" spacing.  You will need to have a ruler style presser foot which Westalee also sells if your machine brand doesn't offer one (Janome does).  Also good news:  Westalee, which is based in Australia, now has a stateside distributor:  Sew Steady and according to their website, the Westalee templates may eventually be offered in stores. 

Since the stitching is done free-motion, at this stage of the game there's no turning of the quilt, instead you turn the templates which are positioned on a center pin.  Westalee has a great video here showing how to use the templates.  The set up was simple:

Center point

Position the pin and pin lock 

Choose your template and start stitching.

This is what it looked like after using the 2" - 12" template (1" spacing between the circles), perfect since the center wedge blocks were 12" finished.  I realized after this that I wanted the spacing a little closer so went back in with the 3" - 11" template to add additional lines in between.  With the center of the quilt stitched, I changed over to my walking foot (on my Janome it's called the Accu-feed foot) and continued to stitch out using the side of the foot as my guide.  From here on in, it meant turning the quilt as I stitched but it wasn't too odious since I was stitching larger and larger circles. 

Once I had stitched out to the inner border, I loaded the quilt back on my cutting table to readjust some of the outer border basting before going to finish up the stitching.  I added some "faux wedges" in the outer border to break up the circular quilting and carry the block motif out to the border and then continued to add the circular quilting around them to complete the quilt.  I used the same fabric for the binding as I did for the inner border: "Fig & Plum", a Joanna Figueroa/Fig Tree Quilts print.       



This project had been waiting patiently for a long time so I'm glad to knock it off the "To Do" list.  I was also glad to get to try some new quilting templates.  The next test for the Westalee templates (and the next project up for finishing) will be to quilt Baptist Fans on one of my Civil War sampler quilts.

BTW, if you are a big Amy Butler fan, she was Free Spirit Fabrics designer of the Month for July.  Click on the links to read a blog post spotlighting her career and find out "10 Things About Amy Butler".



Project Recap: Do Something To Crow About

This is a very small project that's very long on process so be forewarned! 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To start, some background on this project:  back in 2013 I saw this little wall hanging offered on Ebay:

I loved the sentiment and the little bit of applique on it.  While I liked the format of it and homespun backing/binding, I wasn't sure where I'd hang it and wasn't jazzed about it as an addition to my décor.  Looking around, I realized that I had on hand all the materials it would take to make it myself and I had an empty frame that hangs at the entrance of my living room that I had long wanted to make a little mini project to fill.  I figured that a variation of this little piece would be the perfect thing to fill that frame.  Initially, I folded up my printout of the listing so that only the picture showed and put it in the frame as a reminder/nudge.  However, it was  long time before I came up with any definite ideas about how to translate the design.

Over time I came across a few pieced or applique heart block designs that I thought might work but it wasn't until I saw a quilt with pieced Double Heart blocks that I got inspired.  I liked the block because the hearts are made with my favorite block unit:  flying geese!  At that point I searched through my stash to find fabrics that would bring the simple block to life.  I found some in an coincidental place:  earlier in the same year I saw the listing, I had won a big stash of fabrics from blogger Vicky of the LA Quilter blog who was trying to downsize her stash.  I've been keeping that stash separate with plans to do a series of quilts from it.  I found the perfect pieces for the hearts in that stash as well as a great fabric for the crow.  

That same week, I was also looking through magazine back issues and found the perfect crow applique in a pattern by Lynda Hall of Primitive Pieces by Lynda in BHG's Sew Scrappy Vol 2.  Her project in that issue is called, fittingly enough, "Lots To Crow About".  With that name it was obviously destined to be added to this piece!  So I made my hearts (the extra flying geese will be added to the "Orphan Blocks" stash) and copied the crow template, figuring out how much to reduce it to fit the size of the piece to be made for the frame:

and then cut out and added the crow applique:

Now I needed to add the embroidery.  I typed out the phrase in a word processing program and then played with fonts until I found one I thought I could render in embroidery.  I quickly realized that transferring the words to the piecing was difficult because you can't use the "light box" method to transfer your design due to bulk from seams and the applique.  I found a few tips (like this one at Barbara's Cat Patches blog) that suggested using Sulky's Fabri-Solvy, a printable water soluble stabilizer for projects like this.  The problem was that at the time I wanted to work on this, I couldn't get to the Joann's near me to purchase the stabilizer and knowing I could get it locally, didn't want to mail order it.  So I came up with another solution:  why not take the example of  Golden Threads Quilting Paper and transfer the design to a light weight paper that I can print out the words on and then stitch over and tear away.  

Golden Threads pictures courtesy ConnectingThreads.com

I didn't have any Golden Threads paper either but I did have the next best thing:  tissue paper that you use for wrapping gifts!  I pulled some out and ironed it onto freezer paper (the quilter's multi-tool!) so I could send it through the printer. 

Sorry for the fuzzy picture but you get the idea!

This gave me my embroidery template and stitch guide which I pinned to the piece with applique pins.

I should note that this took more than a few tries to get right: as you can see from the previous picture, the first time I printed it out I printed it in black -- not at all helpful when you're stitching with black thread!  After switching to the more visible red print, I had to work on how to render the stitches.  Originally I tried replicating the thickness of the font with Satin Stitch and then an Outline stitch -- neither worked well with the Perle cotton thread I was using (I tried it with both size 8 and size 12).  In the end, I defaulted to working with the Perle 8 and using a simple backstitch and just did a simple outline of the font letters to get the job done.  This is only the second embroidery project I've done this year so I'm still getting my "sea legs" on this craft which I haven't tried since I was a teenager!  I also added an embroidered flower and stem as was done on the inspiration piece, using the Perle 12 threads I've been using for my wool ornaments. 

With the embroidery all done, I layered the finished top with a remnant of wool batting and this piece of backing:

I had this in my stash with a note attached to it that said "For Quilt Label".  The original yardage this comes from is cotton fabric that I got back in eighties!  My best friend from high school and I worked at garment district accounting firms back then.  We also sewed then so did not turn down offers of free fabric (hmmm, sounds like some things haven't changed!).  She had gotten the fabric from one of the companies her firm did work for and split the haul with me.  When I started quilting, anything cotton that was in my sewing stash was fair game for quilting so this cotton print was handy for a number of projects.  It started off as the stash for a Stack 'N Whack project (that is still a UFO I'm afraid):

....and was used to make pieced fish blocks in this project (from 2007 and recently posted about here):

Used here to make the white fishes with the rainbow stripes.

..... but found its real usefulness as label fabric:

After the layering, I quilted the piece with simple diagonal quilted lines.  As I had hoped, the wool batting combined with the tight background quilting made the hearts and crow "pouf up" just a bit to add more texture to the whole thing.  My last plan for this was to add small prairie points to fill in the areas around the applique and the block.   Have I mentioned that I'm into gadgets?  For a while I had wanted to try Susan Cleveland's Prairie Pointer tool (be sure to check out her videos) and figured that the very small (1/2" high) points I needed for this would be a good test for it.  So I chose fabric from my stash of 1-1/2" scrap squares and made the points:

The tool worked fine (although I look forward to trying some of her more decorative styles).  We're almost there!  Here is the finished piece before framing (finished size 4-1/4" x 6"):

...and here it is in the frame:

I realize that I should have more carefully measured what the finished measurements of the inside of the frame was.  The finished piece was a little too tall and had to be squeezed into the frame which means the top and bottom points got a little shortchanged in terms of visibility. 

Just before I did the embroidery on this little piece, I read this great post by Bonnie Hunter.  She viewed an antique quilt exhibit at the Vermont Quilt Festival and it inspired her to do a post on "Lessons Learned From Antique Quilts".  It's a good read and the gist of it is that quilters of the past made gorgeous quilts with a lot less tools and materials than we have now and a close look at their quilts show them to often be far from perfect.  So there's no reason for us to get all bent out of shape about our projects.  Just finish it already and love it when it's done!  In fact, 100 years from now, some one may marvel at what YOU made and how you did it!  Considering the issues I had completing the embroidery, that advice could not have come at a better time!

Note:  Also on Bonnie's post is a great sideshow of the quilts from the exhibit (click here for the thumbnail shots if the slideshow doesn't view).  Do also read the post itself for Bonnie's insightful comments about the details of many of the quilts.

So I'm glad to get this little one done and glad to get a chance to flex so many creative muscles while doing it!  Hanging this little piece near my quilt space will be a reminder that (as I commented on Bonnie's post) just finishing something is an accomplishment in and of itself!