Basting, and meditation

My friend Christine brought over a new quilt top for me to complete.

You'll recall that she likes constructing quilt tops but doesn't enjoy the actual quilting process.  And her experiences with commercial long arm quilters has been somewhat less than satisfactory.

I think she likes how I finish her quilts because they still look homemade at the end of the quilting process, since I quilt them either on my sewing machine (for straight line designs) or on the Sweet 16 (for free-motion designs).

She brought a twin-size scrap quilt that she made for her husband:

ready for basting

That black and white design in the middle really makes it interesting.

I think I definitely want to quilt it so that black and white portion "pops" but HOW that is going to happen is still up in the air.  Further meditation (and maybe some inspiration on Pinterest) is needed.

The Pink and The Purple

I have a fun custom order in the works that I'm going to get started on now that the Holiday Madness is nearly over.  (One more church service Christmas Eve, and then I'm off for 2 weeks--hooray!)

A food vendor at the Seminole Heights Market asked me to make her 2 baby quilts-- she's having twins in the spring!  Her "official" due date is early April but of course likely to be earlier.  I told her I would get started on the quilts as soon as possible AFTER all the Holiday Hoopla was over.  Today seemed like a good day to start pulling fabrics.

One quilt will be pink.  It was fun to pull these cuties out of my stash.

The other quilt will be purple, and she GAVE me all of these purple fabrics, and told me I could keep the leftovers.  Wow!

Her fabrics are a good starting point but a little dark on their own, especially for a baby quilt.  I pulled a few lighter ones from my stash to brighten things up a little.

This is going to be a fun project!

Under the Needle

As I mentioned in my last post (here), I'm trying to finish up as many projects as possible before the orchestra season begins ( a week from today!).

The last major item on my To Do List was to finish this quilt.  My quilt guild came over a week ago to help me baste it, and it's been sitting on a chair ever since, glaring at me accusingly.




Time to finish!

With it's large blocks, large scale prints, and general feeling of Modern, I decided this was a Straight Line Quilt.   It's 80" square, a large quilt but not impossible to push through the sewing machine.

I used the edge of my walking foot on either side of the long seams for the first quilting lines, then attached the seam guide to do the rest of the quilting, so it will be an allover grid pattern.

There's no turning necessary, I just go from end to end, then start the next line.  Super easy, but I think it will look nice!

Vermont Quilt Festival, Part 2

Last week I had a great visit to the Vermont Quilt Festival!  See this post for some awesome quilty eye candy of some of the exhibited quilts that caught my eye.

A highlight for me was the class on "Fancy Free Motion Feathers" with instructor Sue Nickels.

I had a big surprise just walking into the classroom.  I knew that the local Bernina dealer was supplying machines for this class, which was great, since I wouldn't have to bring a machine with me all the way from Florida.

I was expecting one of their "entry level" machines

 Like maybe this "2 series" machine.










I WAS WRONG

How about this one, instead:


This 750 Series Quilters Edition was all set up and waiting for me, along with about 20 others for the whole class!  Wow!  What fun to have a new state of the art machine for the day!  And there were no worries about using an unfamiliar machine:  a Bernina tech was there to thread the machine, insert bobbins, and do whatever else anyone needed.  So all I had to do was step on the pedal and enjoy the ride.

The class instructor, Sue Nickels, is the author of this book, "Fabulous Feathers and Fillers", and the class was based on the techniques in the book.

Purchasing the book wasn't required for the class-- there were plenty of handouts.  But I couldn't resist getting an autographed copy!

 The day began with a lengthy discussion of all of the elements that go into a quilt-- needle size, batting, tension, and thread.  The sample pictured above was one of the many small sample quilts that were passed around the room.  It's about 16" square, and it demonstrates how different weights of thread changes the appearance of the quilting. There were also other samples demonstrating different types of batting.

Even her little sample quilts were really beautiful!

Then it was time for the students to learn how to trace the patterns onto our own sample pieces, and stitch them out.

My first fancy feathers!  There are the feathers themselves, plus a little echo quilting around them, and small stippling to fill in the blank spots.

I messed around a little on my own during a break, and did some teardrop shapes, and TRIED to get a really small stipple.

The feathers were not very difficult but getting the stippling really small is going to take some practice.  If everything is done correctly, the feathers really "pop" visually, and almost look stuffed, like trapunto.

Like this.

A few more class samples.












Big thanks to Sue Nickels for a wonderful day of instruction and inspiration!

Adventures in Quilting, IV

I've had another major test of the HQ Sweet Sixteen for the past couple of days.



I was really, really hoping that it would make quilting T shirt quilts a whole lot easier than on my regular sewing machine.

And it did!  Woo-hoo!

You'll recall this T shirt quilt top.

With the start of the Florida Orchestra season looming (we start rehearsals October 10) I thought it would be a good idea to get this project wrapped up while I still have a little time.

If you've ever owned a T shirt quilt (or made one
yourself) then you already know:  because of the weight of the shirts PLUS the stabilizer that the shirts have to be fused to they are much heavier than regular cotton quilts.

Pushing the weight of this 82x86" monster through my regular sewing machine last winter was quite a challenge (see this post).



I recommend an all-over grid pattern to avoid having to turn such a heavy piece.

Well, in the end, that quilt turned out fine, and the customer was really thrilled with it-- that's the most important part!  But it did start me thinking about how to make this, and really all quilting, an easier and more efficient process.

Enter the Sweet 16 for this latest T shirt quilt project!
This was a completely different quilting experience.



You need to avoid dragging on the quilt, so I still use my ironing board to hold up the edge.

Each row of blocks received three vertical lines of quilting:  leaves at either side plus blobby flowers in the middle.  (They're blobby, but I like them.)

Think about this:  bright thread on black fabric.  A machine that's still feeling a little new and unfamiliar.  A custom order that's already been paid for.  Yeah. NO PRESSURE, right?

Well, in the end I think it came out nice.  And I will tell you the weight of this quilt was pretty much a non-issue while I was quilting it, which is a big relief.

Thread Obsessed

I am newly Obsessed with Thread.

I'm blaming the Sweet 16, which I've been getting acquainted with for the past 2 weeks or so.










Like all longarm quilting machines, it has a cone setup for thread delivery, as opposed to the spools we use on domestic machines.  So a fresh wardrobe of thread is in order.

When the machine arrived there was a nice little present enclosed from Superior Threads:  a spool of "Bottom Line" bobbin thread (that's the white cone), plus 2 other threads and a pre-wound bobbin.

I like the Bottom Line-- it's easy to work with.  And because it's thin (50 weight) one of those big M class bobbins lasts FOREVER when wound with this thread.

But I wasn't crazy about the other two threads.


When I went to Heartfelt Quilting for my training on the Sweet 16, I picked up a few cones of Isacord 40 weight thread and felt after trying it that it was by far the best I had tried. So I ordered a bunch from this store on Ebay.  It arrived today.

The listing was for 25 of their best selling colors.  Since I need all colors, it was fine to let the vendor chose for me. I can fill in whatever else I need individually.  This seems like a nice range of colors, certainly enough to get started with!

And while these are cones, and wound differently than spools, you CAN use these on your domestic machine:  just don't use the top cap of your thread holder, so the thread can unwind properly off the cone.  It works just fine.


And as long as we're on the subject of thread and machine compatibility:

This is the Horizontal Spool Holder for the Sweet 16, so now I can, in fact, use spools as well as cones on BOTH machines.

That is, as soon as I figure out how to attach it!  It arrived as you see it, without any instructions.

More Adventures in Quilting

photo courtesy of HandiQuilter

In my last post I mentioned that I recently bought an HQ Sweet Sixteen quilting machine.  I'm hoping that it will make quilting large quilts (well, really quilts of all sizes) quicker, easier, and more fun.

We've been getting acquainted with each other little by little.

I went to the dealer (Heartfelt Quilting in Lakeland, Florida) on Thursday for a training session.  It was really helpful!

yuck!

Before the training, I had done a lot of stitching that looked like this.

That's the back side of the fabric with all of those loops and mess.

Those tension discs were the culprit.  You have to really pull the thread in between those discs.

I had been trying to quilt without any top thread tension.

Much better!

My Viking sewing machine has all automatic tension adjustment so I definitely needed some instruction on how to manually adjust the HQ.  And one on one instruction is always so much better than learning from the manual or even a video.

We also went over the screen functions.


I think top speed on this thing is Warp 11.

We also set up the bobbin winder, and discussed bobbin tension.

The bobbins for the machine (on the right side of the picture) are extra large, which is going to be great for quilting large items.  More quilting, less bobbin winding.

I chose any easy project as the first one to try after just doodling around on scraps for awhile.  I topstitched around the edge of these placemats with my sewing machine (that's the blue zig zag stitch that you see at the bottom) then did a simple stipple with the HQ.  The thread I used is light and rather fine, so it's hard to see the quilting in the picture.  But it came out great, and was really quick and easy!   Hooray!

I am hibernating in my home for the next few days.  It seems like a good idea, all things considered:



And if the threat of a hurricane/tropical storm wasn't enough:

The elephants have arrived.

The RNC will be taking place a mere 5 miles or so from my house.  It's kind of a crazy scene around downtown Tampa. Expected this week are sporadic road closures, protests taking place (hope those folks brought their raincoats!), police everywhere, tanks, rocket launchers already in place on top of buildings-- really, it will be like nothing we've seen here before.  And I plan on watching it all from the comfort of my home-- assuming, of course, that Hurricane Isaac doesn't knock out our power!

Adventures in Quilting

Well, as I hinted at in my last post, I recently purchased a HandiQuilter Sweet Sixteen Quilting Machine.  I've spent the last couple of days getting acquainted with it!  ( If you're unfamiliar with this machine, here's a video about it.)

I bought it from the nearest HQ dealer, Heartfelt Quilting in Lakeland.  They could not have been nicer, or more accommodating, so a big thank you to them!

They have a floor model to test drive at the store, but they don't keep the machines in stock.  To purchase one, they order it from HQ in Salt Lake City, and it gets delivered to your house.

It arrived Tuesday in 2 enormous and very heavy boxes.  One held the table, the other the actual machine.

A third, shoe-box size box held the bobbin winder.

 We decided the best place to put it is upstairs in our bedroom, where my other sewing machine is.  That way, my work space is most efficiently arranged, as opposed to having things spread all over the house.

This corner had to be rearranged.  The TV (at the top of the picture) is now mounted on the wall.  The armoire was emptied and moved to my son's room.


(Nemo moved also)

And there it is!

Setup was quick and easy, thanks largely in part to my son carrying those big boxes upstairs.  This is basically a long arm setup without the frame-- set the table up, put the machine on, attach a few parts and that's it.






Stay tuned for more Quilting Adventures with the HQ Sweet Sixteen!

A new quilt, and big news

I just finished the top of this fun new quilt.

The large scale floral and the blue print are from Anna Maria Horner's "Loulouthi" collection.

I resisted the urge to just use that collection for this quilt.  As pretty as it is, sometimes I think if a quilt just uses a single collection of fabric, it looks like the fabric designer's quilt, and not like my quilt.  So the green and brown border pieces came from Joann's.

It's just 15 pieces of fabric, and my favorite kind of pattern:  big pieces of large scale prints.

OK, here's the big news.  This quilt is NOT going to be quilted on my Viking Sapphire sewing machine.  Which raises some questions:

Is it going to be hand quilted? No. 

And I'm wiping away tears of laughter just at the thought of that.

Is it going to be sent somewhere for longarm quilting?  No.   

I'm going to quilt it.  On this:

It's being delivered tomorrow.  It's highly possible that my head is going to explode with excitement before it gets here.

Before and After

Yesterday I addressed a problem that was LONG overdue for fixing:

As you can see, my sewing machine is not in a cabinet.  It sits on the table.

You know what happens.  Fabric drags and drops off the edge.  This can be a big problem when quilting a whole quilt.  It makes it harder to feed it evenly through the machine.





Off to the Viking Dealer!

  Hooray!

MUCH better!