Charity quilts

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I’m a member of two quilt guilds here in Fredericton, and something most quilt guilds do is make quilts for charities.

The members donate fabric, batting and even money. Some have work days where they sort the donated fabric and plan quilts. Sometimes they even sew them up. Then others volunteer to quilt and bind them.

So that’s what I did.

I got a quilt from each guild to finish and quilted both of them up. I made sure to keep them in separate piles so I wouldn’t forget which quilt went back where. This week, I delivered both.

The first one was this one bordered in a deep green. I liked the green. Hourglass blocks alternated with four path blocks, and I quilted the squares with a curving line next to each seam. The triangles in the hourglass blocks got a looping swirl. I did use my walking foot first to stitch in the ditch and stabilize the entire quilt.

This was the one that also gave me thread issues and I broke two needles because of a pin in the spool of thread, ugh.

Not five minutes after I handed it over to the lady in charge of the charity quilts, it was handed to a fellow member to give to her friend who has cancer. I hope it provides her with some comfort & warmth.

The next night, I went to the other guild and handed over the second charity quilt. This one was backed with fleece and did not use batting. I got overly ambitious with the quilting designs, using swirled hooks in the blue sections and looping Ls in the white print, which wound up invisible. Either way, it’s still cuddly and useable. I think this one is going to Transition House.

On top of donating quilt to various organizations, and things like the placemats one guild made for Meals on Wheels, both guilds regularly contribute to other charities and whoever has a need. At one meeting a couple members are working directly with Syrian refugee families. Many of us have things to donate, so we’re working on pickup, and we also passed a motion to donate money too.

Both guilds heard of a fellow quilter in need – an art quilter and teacher from Nova Scotia has cancer and money was raised from members and matched from the guild accounts.

The big thing I noticed about this is there were no announcements in pubic, no press releases, no social media – the ladies just go out and do it. We see a need, we pass a motion, we send funds and we pull together.

I like that, and I’m happy to do what I can.

(I brought home two more quilt tops to quilt).

Pinwheel baby quilt

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Andrea R — 2 Comments

Sometime last year I did a quick and easy throw quilt from Tula Pink’s Elizabeth fabrics and very large rectangle snowball blocks. No pictures or write up yet though, sorry.

But! The triangle bits cut off the corners were plentiful and quite large. Enough to make a baby quilt for sure. I sewed up each corner as I cut them off – working on two quilts at once – and played around a bit with layout.

Pinwheels are pretty straightforward, so to liven up the boredom, I also added sashing with cornerstone blocks from more scraps. The white sashing itself was from my white scrap bin too.

I swear, this fabric is going to live on forever… I also have a runner from more scraps from the same project.

I posted a picture of the completed top and Kathy contacted me to claim it for her granddaughter. Fun! Anything for a fellow member of the cool grandma club.

For the quilting, I wanted it to be nice and custom and pretty and basically what I call quilting the heck out of it. But first, I stitched in the ditch around each block. Technically I could have left it there, it was secure enough. But you know me!

I wanted to challenge myself as well, and time it so I could see how long it took for me to quilt when focused.

The sashing has back and forth lines, sometimes called switchbacks.

Each cornerstone has “bumps” – a curved line that goes from corner to corner.

The pinwheels also have bumps in each triangle, but with them all together almost form a flower. It only took a couple of blocks to figure out the best way to travel with the least amount of back tracking.

Did I mention I hate breaking threads? Most of the quilting here is done all in one go, save for bobbin changes.

The small border around the outside, same width as the sashing, is done in half feather bumps, just to soften the look a bit. I had trimmed the quit after the first step of straight quilting, and by the time I got to the borders was kicking myself. Some places I was holding on with my fingertips!

Super happy with those corner turns too.

So, time spent doing the initial straight quilting was 20 minutes. I stopped for lunch, swapped out the walking foot for the FMQ foot and went at it, knowing what to do for each section. I quilt fast and at top speed. Time spent for the custom work? An hour and a half. Maybe an hour and 20 mins.

Then it was on to the fabric choices for binding. I sent Kathy a picture with options.

She picked the green stripes. Perfect! I cut it on the bias, because bias striping is always a great choice.

The finished quilt.

All this puckered crinkly goodness is after washing. It already looks like a family heirloom!

Have a look at the back.

When the quilt arrived at Kathy’s place she said the same thing my mom always says. “The pictures don’t do it justice!” 😀

Thinking about a longarm

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Andrea R — 1 Comment

For those of you who are not quilters, or not familiar with a long arm, it is a quilting machine. It looks like a sewing machine, but it is on rails on a track. The operator moves the machine over the quilt, instead of doing what I do now – maneuvering the quilt through the machine. A long arm is pretty much the Holy Grail of quilting equipment.

I super love quilting. Well, I’ve been sewing for 30+ years, quilting off and on, but when the modern quilting movement hit and free motion quilting became popular, it was something that really struck me. I wanted to try it so I did.

And I LOVED it.

Eventually I upgraded my trusty 25 year old machine to a shiny new Bernina QE 440. Holy wowzers. Any struggles I had learning to FMQ were solved. All I needed then was practise. And boy howdy have I been practising!

For the past two or three years I have been treating my quilting hobby as if it were a business. The volume of quilts being finished is pretty good – around 25 a year. Some of them have hours and hours of quilting time. On one (not gonna say which one) I’m sure there were 16 hours put in. (No, I didn’t charge enough and the price I did charge made me gulp anyway.)

I have a full time job too. That’s not going to change. I’m perfectly happy right now being a part time quilter. And as in any kind of manufacturing business, one of the biggest ways to increase your business if you can’t increase the time, is to produce things faster.

That’s the other thing you can do with a longarm. It’s just *faster*. Even with the custom quilting work. If you ever wonder why I’m so hard on my on work, it’s because the people I look up to are not only long arm quilters, but leaders in the field. You know, people like Angela Walters, Karen McTavish, Judi Madsen, Karlee Porter.

So, what’s stopping me? Well for starters – the price. YES I know I have a Bernina, which is like the Ferraris of sewing machines. But we got a deal on it (shop model) and … my mom bought it for me. In return, I do all her quilting. Fair enough.

A longarm starts at $5,000 US dollars for the most basics of models, for small quilts. They also come in sizes. So that 5K model? It only does baby and lap size quilts – no larger. You want one that will let you do up to king size? Now you’re looking at 12K. You want computerized controls? Shoot up to $20k.

If you’ve ever sent your quilts out to a longarmer to quilt for you – now you know why they charge what they do.

Longarm machines also take up a LOT of room. The largest have 12 foot tracks. Plus you need to put them somewhere you can walk all around them.

Those of you who don’t follow me anywhere else may not know we bought a house last year. well, a year ago last November. We are still renovating and haven’t moved in yet. Renovations are expensive! Plus my new sewing room currently looks like this:

It will not be finished before we move in.

Another challenge is you can’t just go to your local quilt shop or fabric chain and pick one up. They are sold via dealers. The closest to me are Halifax or Montreal. Minimum 6 hour drive in either direction. And what happens if I get one and it needs maintenance or repairs?

Plus there’s so many different features and add-ons, I don’t even know what I want or need yet. I need more exposure. While there are 3-4 people locally (within 100kms) who offer longarm services, none of them (to my knowledge) rent time on the machine to other quilters or give lessons.

So yeah – for now this is on my dream list. I know that “someday” it may be possible, but realistically it will be 2 to 5 years before I can even seriously look at some.

And take for a test drive.

And do the quilting I dream about.

Until then I’ll just drool and doodle and be the best domestic machine quilter I can.

APQS
Gammil
HandiQuilter
TinLizzie

Triple Treat Modern quilt

Posted on February 26, 2016 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

One of the pattern books I go back to a lot is Happy Hour from Atkinson Designs. They all use up fat quarters and work up fast. They are especially good for showing large scale modern prints. I wish their site showed more of the patterns in the book. There’s really mostly three main ones, but she does three more in alternate block sizes, plus a couple bonus patterns. For this quilt, I did the Triple Treat pattern, which is basically a large square block divided into a small rectangle, skinny strip, then larger rectangle.

I dug through my stash and pulled out a variety of prints from various lines and designers but stuck to a loose color scheme of pink, light teal and this lime/ chartreuse. I’d found a length of floral print that had all these colors in them. Some of the challenge here was using up odd bits from my stash that were not full fat quarters, and the other was being too enthusiastic and not completely following directions.

Either way, it still worked out and unless you compared the blocks to the actual pattern, you would never know this. While digging out pictures, I realized I started this quilt back in August of 2014 so I really have neglected to write about this one.

It’s got a nice wide border and is a decent twin size.

By the time November rolled around, I managed to have it quilted with just a plain white backing.

Closeup of some of the prints. The green is really not that brown, it was hard to get a decent shot that showed the green properly.

I can’t remember if Ron helped me lay this one out or not. Probably not.

For the binding, I tried out a new technique with a flange, sometime called double binding. I used a solid pink to pull out the pinks in the quilt, paired with a blue and brown polka dot.

Totally impressed myself with the corners.

The quilting was an all over flower pattern, pretty easy, lots of bumps. You could use Lori’s peony technique explained here, it’s very similar. I left the borders unquilted.

Such yummy, yummy texture. And it works up fast!

Some memories in these prints – a top for Izzy as a baby, a purse, a tote bag, some leftover bits from Ayla’s quilt. An Amy Butler print and a couple polka dots that are hiding apples.

Those fold lines wash right out.

If you love this quilt, it is also for sale in my Etsy shop.

Houndstooth Quilt in black and white

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Andrea R — 3 Comments

A few months ago, Susan contacted me about making a houndstooth quilt, just for her. She was pleasantly surprised to find the finally price was all inclusive. She didn’t have to pay extra for the pattern, the fabric or even the shipping.

I used this houndstooth quilt pattern, as it has multiple sizes included and supports a smaller indie designer. Since I would be making a queen size and thus using 12 yards of just the white fabric (since it is backed in white as well) I waited till my local fabric chain had a 50% off members-only sale on their quilt cottons. Their premium cotton is super soft and I’m pretty happy with it.

When starting with a new pattern, I often cut just a few of the first pieces and not everything at once. So I cut a few strips and squares first to get the hang of it.

Once I was happy with the process, including any starching and pressing processes, then it was on to cutting many many more strips.

And lots of blocks.

Testing the layout with what I had thus far. Looking good! This is gonna be huge.

Once I have it down, I chain piece and basically get into a groove of production sewing and wind up with stacks and stacks of blocks, all at the same step. Sewing, then cutting the strips.

But then I have to press them. Thank God for Netflix and my ipad stand.

Then it was on to the block units. Lots of double checking everything is going the right way. I stack and pile, then sew.

After the blocks, it’s time to do the rows.

And admire the seams. Look at those nested seams – LOOK AT THEM.

So I bet you’re thinking this might be pretty boring or monotonous sewing, but I find this is really good low-stress, especially when you’re organized or tired. Then it’s pretty mindless. You can also focus on cutting or sewing accuracy too! I still had some pretty inconsistent seams but only had to fully repair one. So I thought that was pretty good overall.

Another layout check on the floor to see if I mis-counted. I’d rather cut too little than way too much.

WHEW! Finally the top was done. I pieced the backing, got the batting ready (50/50 warm & white), pressed everything all over again, layered and basted.

So many pins. o.O I think it took an hour to baste, but again – Netfix to the rescue and my handy Kwik Klip basting tool.

Then it was time for quilting. Yes, I can do queen sized on my domestic machine. I did all the diagonal seams first with the walking foot, right in the ditch. I switched to the FMQ foot to go around the pointy bits the other way – the “ears” of the teeth if you will. Some parts I used rulers to go straight but eventually ditched that for speed. There’s a few wobbly bits but only if you look really close. 😉

I use a combination of rolling and smushing, because I find the rolling is sometimes not flexible enough. I did the quilting over two days and yes, my shoulders were a bit sore after.

I prepped miles of binding and wrapped it around a spool. Okay, not miles, but something like 400″.

Finally! All done and then tossed it on my bed for modelling. A quick run through the washer and dryer then I look it all over for weak seams, hanging threads, etc.. do any trimming or fixing up, sew on a label and off it goes. Susan is SUPER HAPPY with it too.

I would definitely make one of these again. All told, this took 3-4 months but that was also over the holidays.

A WordPress t-shirt quilt for James

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Andrea R — 7 Comments

A while back, my friend Mason (owner of WP Valet) contacted me about making a quilt for one of his employees, James. Mason surreptitiously gathered as many tshirts as he could that he knew James also had. Then he secretly shipped them off to me.

We had decided on a queen size, which is why So Many Shirts! o.O I think there was around 30. I tend to fill in any needed space with blanks blocks to show off more quilting.

So, after I did the initial trimming of the shirts and cutting the largest size blocks from all of them, I started to lay them out on the floor for the best design. This is even after I do some math on paper to figure out completed size and square inches based on the pieces cut.

Even though I have a fairly large living /dining room, a queen size quilt takes up a LOT of floor space. Some blanks spaces were left so I could figure out where to add solid blocks from tshirt backs.

Aha! A quadrant I can live with, and the solid areas filled in. Nothing is sewn together here. The challenge after that was getting the pieces off the floor and downstairs to me sewing room AND keeping things in the right order. That is why I take plenty of pictures.

Sometimes I pin sections together and take a small section at a time.

Finally! The top is all sewn together. Still takes up a TON of floor space.

Every quilt need a backing, so in this case I found this fantastic bright blue that just about matched WP Valet’s branding. That black strip down the middle? Makes a great artistic statement and breaks things up.

Or, it might be there to make the backing a bit wider. I’ll never tell.

On the basting.. layering the backing, batting, and top then pinning together with a bajillion little pins. My knees. Ow, my knees.

But then! Finally we get to the FUN part! The actual quilting. For quilts like these, I initially do some “stitch in the ditch” along the seams wth my walking foot to stabilize sections of the quilt. I tend to jump around by thread color, and not work completely from the middle out. I used a blue thread in the bobbin, and various colors of threads in the top needle.

I got a new book of free motion quilting designs and tried a new one on almost every other block.

Solid blocks sometimes get special treatment, where I can get fancy and do graffitti quilting like this.

Sometimes it’s a challenge coming up with a quilting design that compliments the theme of the shirt, but also doesn’t blend into the block next to it. If I do something round and swirling on one block, I may pick something very square or linear for the next one. I might even pull a design element from the print and repeat it in the background.

And sometimes I see blocks and think.. what if I tried this design? And sometimes it winds up super cool, like birds in the wind.

Sometimes all a block needs is something simple – like vertical lines. But it fits. I did use a quilt ruler here to get the lines SUPER STRAIGHT. I’m new to ruler work, but I like it. I followed the angles of the lightening bolts and just extended while outlining the cloud. The W logo is also outlined.

And sometimes I wing it. Warning: this is not a perfect block! GASP! And I left it anyway. 🙂 Most designs are freehand with no marking. For this I think I outlined the heart shape in chalk first. I was trying a feather ruler. I think I’d rather do feathers freehand.

Finally, I got it finished – just in time!

The front is one thing – but the BACK. Well, the back really shows things off. Especially after I wash and dry it so everything crinkles.

Told you that black stripe was a great design idea… 😉

When I have a few solid blocks near each other, I treat that section as one block of negative space and fill it with feathers. I love feathers. Big swooping swirling feathers. I only marked the spine and did the rest freehand.

This was from a baseball tee. I thought it would be interesting to include this as a block because everything else is so square but now there’s this one diagonal line.

Plus I got to try curved cross hatching with a ruler.

This quilt was a surprise, so I couldn’t post any progress pictures on social media. It almost killed me. (not really, but that was the hardest part) So, I finally get to post All The Pictures here.

I mailed it off to Florida, and Mason gave it to James who was SUPER HAPPY about it. They unveiled it at WordCamp USA in Philly and laid it out on the conference floor. Plenty of space there!

Lots of people came up to look and ask questions. I was amazed so many non-quilters were interested in the construction and stitching details.

And since her class has been so helpful, a link up with Amy!

Amy's Free Motion Monday Quilting Adventures

Quilt finishes for 2015

Posted on January 19, 2016 by Andrea R — 1 Comment

*tap tap*

Is this thing on?

Wow.. um.. yeah. So Life happened. And quilting. Seems when I have time, it’s time to quilt not blog.

In 2015 I sold 15 quilts. Not just finished, but SOLD. Woot! Go me!

All told, I finished 26 quilted items, including hangings and runners.

I did 23 quilt tops, including wall hangings and runners, unfinished.

I made 22 bags and wallets.

I made 5 garments.

And wrote about hardly any. I need to fix that bit.

So… there’s probably at least 5 more garments I cut out or have half assembled. The quilt top list is way too huge. I’d like to finish more top and have those ones SOLD too.

I can dream, can’t it?

How to make a Minion quilt

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

When I first saw the Minions fabric at Fat Quarter Shop, I told my husband, “OMG, they have Minion fabric,” and he said, “Buy it and make a quilt for Kim.”

So if the husband says buy fabric… well. Kim is an awesome lady we both work with. Some days I think she holds the place together. And she really really likes Minions.

This was a fast quilt for me, since I’m posting about the finish already. I ordered the fabric on July 4th.

If you want to make your own, you will need:
Minions Fat Quarter bundle + two panels included in the bundle (oops, out of stock. 13 prints plus two bundles)
Yellow Brick Road pattern
5 yards backing fabric
1/2 yard binding
batting

I followed the Yellow Brick Road pattern for the twin size right up to the laying out of the blocks. The twin size gives you 40 blocks from 12 fat quarters, but to go around the panel properly, you need 44.Since there are 13 FQs in the bundle, I set one aside to use as the corner blocks. I could just manage four 9.5″ blocks from the extra fat quarter. With the addition of the panel in the middle, it finishes at lap size. I left off the borders in the pattern.

I did a preliminary layout here. There are two rows of seven blocks above and below the panel, and two columns of four blocks on either side. I did an initial trim of the panel to fit.

Here’s the final piecing of the top, after some rearranging. I pieced the columns to either side of the panel first, then added the top and bottom rows.

And then I quilted the heck out of it! For the panel in the middle, I went around each Minion and highlighted details. I used a pale yellow poly thread, top and bobbin.

I decided that otherwise, I’d use an all over stipple, right into the background panel.

For the backing, I used the second panel with 5 yards of a yellow solid, and slightly offset the panel from the middle.

You can see some of the quilting of the Minions on the front on the back and how they overlap the panel there. The quilting and binding were done over two days, my Friday and Saturday off work. I might have started Thursday evening, I can’t remember. I got out of the habit of writing it down and will have to do this for my other projects.

(Kim is one in a Minion, for sure.)

For binding, I like to frame my quilts, so I picked a navy that was present in some of the prints. It was a less harsh than black.

And then I stared at it and smiled. And took it to TWO quilt guild meetings where everyone OOOHED and AAAHHED and “where DID you find that fabric??”

Then I wrote a nice note from the both of us, mailed it off and waited.

I think she liked it, because she cried. 🙂 I loved making this quilt, even though it killed me not to post progress shots. Kim does a lot, and it’s hard to look at this quit and NOT be happy, so I’m sure it will brighten her day every time she looks at it.

I think this was one of the faster finished this year, since from ordering the fabric to receiving the finish was three months.

Giggles quilt finish

Posted on September 28, 2015 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

A while back, I heard that a friend of mine was expecting and told her I’d love to send a quilt. I sent a few pictures of ones I had on hand that were finished and some in progress. She really loved the Giggles quit top I had finished, because of its modern aesthetic.

Thankfully by then it was basted and I was left with the hard part – how to quilt it. I confess I basically did what Angela Walters did on the pattern cover. I have taken a number of Craftsy classes from Angela so I’d like to think I nailed it.

I started out stitching in the ditch, just to divide it up and stabilize it.

Since I deviated from the pattern itself in terms of color placement, I decided to leave the one red portion unquilted. I did use batting that will take up to 10″ unquilted so that should be fine. I also used white thread, top and bottom for white areas, and a navy thread top and bobbin for the blue areas.

After binding in the same blue as the back, I washed it in homemade laundry soap that is scent free and detergent free, then gave it a spin in the dryer without any dryer sheet, so it has no harsh chemicals on it for baby’s skin. I also remembered to add one of my labels!

Best part it also has that crinkled loved in look already! It will soon be on its way to cuddle the new baby, who has since made his appearance.

I would definitely make this again, and maybe do up some sketches on paper to play with different color placements.

Fast Forward with kids and puppies

Posted on September 20, 2015 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I started this quilt a couple-few years ago, never posted progress shots, barely mentioned it in a to finish list, then eventually quilted it, Instagrammed some shots and never blogged it.

WHEW.

So.

Here’s my official record.

With the Fast Forward pattern from Julie Herman picked up at my local quilt shop, I paired it with a really cute jelly roll whose line I can’t remember. Also purchased at my local shop. Back in 2013.

I paired it with a brown solid, since I liked the dark effect on the pattern cover. I also had lots of brown to use.

For the back, I picked out a matching light blue, just to break up the brown.

Eventually I stared at it long enough to figure out how I wanted to quilt it. (that was last summer)

I used a dot to dot sort of technique, with radiating lines. I did mark main lines to the middle of the strips. In the print parts, I did a FMQ loop de loop.

Then I put it in my Etsy shop. It’s looking for a home.

I might make this again, but different, maybe a light background? There’s another pattern that looks similar, but the pieced prints and solids are reversed.