How it's done

Here is how I deal with the fabric warts (thick seam intersections) of a double sided quilt. Using my hands.... one on the bottom and one on the top.... I feel for where the intersections are underneath that may cause a problem. I then mark it with quilter's chalk on the top. Like this.



When doing the stitching of the design I carefully avoid those marks. In the picture above I have stitched the feather spine. In the picture below I've stitched the feather plumes.

Another picture of how I avoided the marks. Can you see how the plumes are just a tiny bit odd shaped? A necessary step to avoid the fabric warts underneath.

On the blocks I did the same thing except I used a blue marker because of the lighter color fabrics. In some places I had to get very close to the warts. I was very careful and went slow. A stitch regulated machine helps but if you don't have one you will need to slow your speed down to almost a crawl when you near a mark.

Ok, let's talk about the oddities of stitching the designs. True there are places where the design is not quite right. You will see it because you have your nose a few inches away from the quilt. You need to be this close in order to see the stitching your machine does. But.... WHO is going to have their nose that near the quilt after it comes off the machine?

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Most people view a quilt from a standing distance. A quilter views it from about 6 inches away. Most people will see the overall design but the quilter sees the individual sections. Only another machine quilter (or a contest judge) will be able to spot the oddities. Hopefully they will ask you why you did that and you can teach them this technique too.

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I'm often asked why I so freely share my quilting knowledge when so many others charge for it. It all started with my grandmother. I spent many days with her when I was a child. She said the way a person lives forever is by how much others remember us and how much of ourselves we leave behind when we die. If we pass our knowledge to our children who pass it to their children who pass it to their children and so forth.... a part of us lives forever. People may not remember the person but they will remember the knowledge gained. So that's what I'm doing when I teach others the techniques I've learned. I'm helping someone from my past live forever while adding little pieces of myself too. Make sense?

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Enough deep thought for today. I have a doctor appointment this morning and need to get ready. Doctor appointments usually take several hours because I go to a clinic. The economy has many more people going to clinics these days. More people mean longer wait times.

Issue quilt - pieced backing

Yesterday, I didn't show pictures of the top of this difficult quilt. I knew I was going to work on it so I saved the pictures for today's post. I'm sorry, I should have explained that yesterday. It's a sampler quilt. See the on point setting? I've got it stabilized and started the quilting.

Here I've chalk marked where a feather spine will be. As you can see, there are multiple seams coming together in some of the blocks. (no way to see where the fabric warts are on the back)

This is the pattern photo of the quilt. I hope you can see the feather design in the photo. Notice the feather style? I think you can click on the picture to make it larger.

Here you can see I've started working some of the feathers. This is the setting triangles. I changed the feather. It's a branching feather instead of a single feather. Branching fills the space nicer. It still has the type plumes as the original quilt.

This is the starting corner. I also finished the feather on the outside border.

This customer does not want an overall theme. She wants it finished as closely as I can manage to match the original quilt. I told the customer that the backing will have tucks. It's unavoidable. She doesn't mind. I did tell her how to avoid this problem in the future. Want to know what it is? Ok, I'll explain it.

If the backing squares have not been made then simply sew your pieces to a "leave in" non-sticky stabilizer. The kind that doesn't need to be removed. Use squares of stabilizer as a foundation to sew your scrap fabric to it. Do a sew and flip like you would do with paper piecing. The stabilizer prevents the bias of the fabric from stretching no matter which direction the bias goes. Be sure to press very well each time you sew a new piece into the block. Pressing is the key.

If the squares are leftovers from other projects then you should use an "iron-on" stabilizer. Press the stabilizer to each of the blocks and trim away the excess carefully before sewing the blocks together. Again, pressing is the key. Press the blocks very carefully before adding the stabilizer. You want to press out any fullness before adding the stabilizer.

Simple huh? Bet you didn't think of it. (wink) Yes, the stabilizer does add an extra layer of fabric to deal with but it's much better than trying to avoid tucks in the backing.

I usually don't quilt on Sunday. I have three appointments this week. I quilted yesterday to get some of the work done that I won't be able to do in the next few days. Tomorrow I'll show you how I avoid running over fabric warts and breaking needles when doing this type quilt. Providing nothing happens to take me away from the quilting machine.

Now if only, if only I could get blogger to stop messing with the spacing in my posts.... sigh.

Company is always nice

For a little while I had company Thursday evening. Dad had to work late and Mom had class so NaNa got to feed them and play for about an hour. Ladybug can't decide whether to eat or have her thumb in her mouth. EJ just wants to ham it up for the camera. Ladybug doesn't like McDonald's. She only wants foods with tomato sauce or only green beans. She spits out and frowns at anything with meat or cheese. Must be a phase.

This is the next quilt to go on the machine. I've been dreading working on this one. This is the back. It's going to be a reversible quilt.

Why have I been dreading it? Because it's going to be very difficult to quilt. Why?

1. It's batik front and back. Batik is tightly woven fabric so it does a snap, crackle, pop thing when the stitching is being done. The needle has difficulty penetrating two layers of batik and a layer of batting. I have to be very precise in the stitching because any frog stitching will leave needle holes. No margin for errors.

2. The back has lots of bias cut fabric. There isn't any way for me to know for sure if the individual pieces are going to stay flat next to each other. It's underneath where it's difficult to see a problem. I'll probably get several tucks in the back because each piece has it's own direction of stretch. I always tell the people who do pieced backs to be sure that the fabric stretch goes all in the same direction. If one piece is cut horizontal and the one next to it is cut vertical or diagonal... the stretch is different. One piece is slack while another piece right next to it is tight.

3. Multiple seams crossing each other can cause a needle to break. I could get a fabric wart on top of a fabric wart. A fabric wart is where multiple seams meet such as in a pinwheel center where the 8 seams come together. It's called a wart because it makes a hard knot. Think how many layers of fabric would be in one spot if two of these come together in one spot.

4. The top must be centered on the backing so a small portion of the outside border of the back is included on all sides of the quilt. Centering a top on the backing (top to bottom) is difficult because the quilting draws up the top. The side to side centering is easy.

5. The top is an on point setting. Which means a whole new set of bias issues to work with. Often when someone pieces a top into an on point setting they use fabric cut into squares and then cut on the diagonal. This means they are sewing the stretch of bias when doing the setting triangles. It would be much, much better to cut the squares on bias then cut the diagonal which would actually be on the straight of grain. I'm not sure I explained that right but I hope you get the idea.

I decided to go ahead and finish this quilt because it goes to the same owner as the last quilt I finished. I want to ship them out together. Besides.... sometimes it's best to get the difficulty done so the rest is more relaxing.

Friday, I went shopping. It's been at least a couple of months since I chauffeured my SIL. I did get my new faucet for the kitchen sink. I won't open it until the plumber can tell me if it will work on my sink. If it doesn't fit I can return it unopened. I spent twice as much on this as I had planned. I saw it and decided my "old" kitchen needed a little bit of "update" in it.

I also got a new door knob for my front door. Yes, it is for a closet door. I use a deadbolt to lock the door and don't like being accidentally locked out of my house if I use a self locking knob.

I've been thinking about what will be my first art quilt project? I haven't yet decided on a theme but I have decided on things to incorporate. 1. Curved piecing. 2. Bright colors 3. A cartoony drawn character (my style of drawing) 4. Thread painting

Seeing what Marilyn (Metaphor in Fabric) did with her sandhill crane had my creative mind churning. I love the flip flops on her crane!

I do have to be realistic.... I have a lot of UFO things to finish before starting new projects. I have several charity tops waiting to be quilted. I have window quilts I want to make. Not to mention the rest of the customer quilts to finish. Oh yes, and my daughter moving back home in a few weeks. This will require some reorganizing of the house.

The other day, my post on when I would finish the customer quilts may have sounded negative but it wasn't meant that way. I was just doing a bit of mental calculations on when I could do my own projects again. It mentally seemed so long before I could get to my own things that it was a bummer.

One of the things a professional quilter must learn to do is plan their own projects weeks or months in advance. That's what I was doing that day. The nice thing about being retired will be that I can work on one single quilt and not have to worry about WHEN it will be finished. That won't work though if I plan to make art quilts to sell. A person can't sell what they don't have. If I want to sell my art I'll have to start thinking about creating and completing work. Selling my art brings up a whole new set of problems.... where and how will I sell it? I'll need to learn new "marketing myself" rules.

I also don't want to forget.... the cardboard furniture and writing a book. Hmmm.... maybe this is too many projects? (just thinking) I did say I was going to "say yes to less" this year. I should do more thinking about what I can accomplish and what I can't. Oh well, I have plenty of time for thinking. A quilt awaits me. Lots of thinking can be done while playing with the quilting machine.

12 more left

Its done. It's a very large quilt. It just barely fit onto the machine leaders.




You may have seen these designs before. Same piecing design often gets the same quilting designs. Why change a good thing. Flower design on the largest squares that flip flop in different directions. Why? Because this keeps the quilting from being directional. It won't matter which way it is put on the bed, it will always look like it's right.

A rope design on the inside border and a flower design on these rectangles.

A flower in the small squares.

I really like the flower and leaf design on the outside border.

Another view of the border.

Another view of the rope design on the inside border.

This quilt wasn't difficult. It was time consuming because it was so large and had lots of starts and stops. I guess the hardest thing about this quilt was doing the designs upside down or sideways as I quilted it. The next quilt on the machine is what I call difficult. I'll explain about it in another post.

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I want to tell you a little story.

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One morning, a very long time ago, my husband and I were laying in bed reluctant to get up. It was a cold wintry morning. Neither of us wanted to get out of a warm bed to go start the coffee. I turned to him and said "You go make the coffee this morning honey." He replied "I'm not going to make coffee, that's woman's work."

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After a minute of thought, I grinned at him and asked "If I can show you in the Bible that it's a man's job to make coffee, would you go make it?" Hesitating for a minute, his reply was "Of course". I think his curiosity got to him.

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So I slyly picked up the Bible from the bedside table, opened it, and read..... He brew.

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My husband made the coffee that morning.

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I sure do miss him and our way of playing... gotcha.

You ever wonder just what you are eating? No I'm not talking about what you cooked for dinner. I mean what's in the products you buy to cook for dinner. It seems to me there should be a "daily recalled food report" on the news sort of like they give the daily stock market report. Why? Because I've notice so many food recalls lately. Is it just me or do the recalls seem to be on foods we use most as frugal foods? Peanut butter, cookie mixes, tomatoes, lettuce, ground beef, chicken.... etc. Why is that?

Ever since the 1950s we've been told that convenience foods are the way to go. Don't bother buying a chunk of cheese and grating it yourself.... the manufacturer can do that for you. At a price of course. Don't bother growing and picking your own tomatoes to make your own diced tomatoes.... the manufacturer will do that for you. At a price of course. Don't bother checking to see if the manufacturers are giving you safe, sanitary, healthy foods.... they will give you a recall report when people start dieing.

There are different degrees of living frugally. It might be as simple as switching from using paper towels to cloth towels; or, going even further by making your own cloth towels. The more you "do it yourself" the more frugal you become. Going green and living frugal are similar but different and at the same time they both save you money. Going green is about saving the environment while living frugal is about spending less of your hard earned money.

A person living in an inner city apartment has fewer options than a person living on a large lot in the suburbs. A person in the suburbs has fewer options than a person living on a farm in the country. Obviously the person living in an inner city apartment can't have free range chickens or a milk cow. The person living in the suburbs can's have these either because of city ordinances against having farm animals but they can grow a garden. Only the person living on a farm has the option to live off the land.

So what do we do? We buy from the processor who buys from the farmer. We trust both the processor and the farmer to provide us with safe, clean, healthy foods. We trust them with our lives. Every time we open a gallon of milk to give to our children we are putting their lives in the hands of the person who milked the cow and the processor who bottled the milk. Every time we use peanut butter for a quick snack for the kids we are putting their lives in the hands of the peanut processing plant and the person who grew the peanuts. Every can of veggies we use in a dish, every spice we throw in, every ounce of meat, in every dish, is a roll of the dice with our lives.

Did you know that usually a dairy farmer doesn't drink the milk from his cows until after he has sold the milk to the processor? He sells it all to the processor and then buys it back at the grocery. It's the same with the cattle rancher and the pig farmer and the veggie farmer.... sell everything to the processor and buy it back at the store.

This post may sound negative but it's not meant to be. I'm just being very thoughtful today. I'm thoughtful because there seem to be sooo many food recalls lately. This should NOT happen. If the processors and farmers were really careful and safe about how they provide our foods there would not be a reason for a recall.

I'm also thoughtful today because I came across this advertisement for a documentary movie released in June. Here's the trailer. I love watching documentary movies. I tried finding out when this one would be in my area. The site doesn't work quite right for a search so I'll have to find it another way. This is one movie I plan to see before it comes out on tv. I don't think anyone watching this movie will look at foods in quite the same way again. How about you? Want to see what you are actually eating? Check out the trailer to see if you are interested.