Sarah from Hip to Piece Squares had a hand-quilting tutorial featured on Sew, Mama, Sew!. I see a couple of little things Sarah does that I haven't tried, so I'm eager to pull out that quilt I'm working on and give them a go.
If you haven't tried hand-quilting, why not try it now? Sarah doled out plenty of great tips to get you started.
Denyse Schmidt Quilts linked to this article on The Improvised Life blog - here's the key point: "A really big part of improvising/creating/making is getting used to things not looking good while you're working on them."
They're focused primarily on painting or improvising in the article, which are definitely creative activities where you may not know how things are going to end up while you're making them. But I'd argue that this point exists even in carefully-planned creative activities, like non-improvisational quilting. At least this happens for me! I almost always think in the middle of assembling my quilt top that those seams aren't as lined up as well as they should be or maybe those colors don't look as good together as I was hoping they would, or whatever. But usually, when the piecing is done and especially when the quilt is all finished, all of those tiny things I thought "didn't look good" turn out to be completely unnoticeable and the overall finished product is really satisfying. Does this happen to you, too?
The photo is of Einstein's desk hours after he passed away. This just goes to show that even the most brilliant and creative thinkers have some messiness along the way. In fact, I bet the messiness actually helps with the creativity. What do you think?
I got a gift card to Barnes and Noble for Mother's Day yesterday - wahoo! Since I pretty much read all of my for-fun books on the ol' iPad these days, I perused bn.com for a while today looking for new quilty/crafty books to buy for my collection. After not too much deliberation, I went for Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts. I can't wait until it arrives!
I actually received Martha's general Encyclopedia of Crafts for Christmas this year and I've spent hours and hours perusing the pages getting ideas. I haven't done anything yet (I'll blame that on the move across the country), but I have several projects marked that I really want to try. So, since I like that book so much and I love fabric and sewing, I thought I'd go for the motherlode resource and get this one as well.
Do you have this book? Have you tried any of the projects in it? What do you think? Are there any other quilting or fabric project books you'd recommend I check out?
Thanks in advance for the tips! And I hope all you mommas had a super fun and relaxing Mother's Day!
The for-fun quilt I started last week is all assembled and I even started quilting this weekend! I'm calling this the Gray Lazy quilt because it's just the right size for lazing around the apartment. And it's my very first "just for fun" quilt - no recipient in mind at this point!
I started with a few of the nine-patch blocks I made when I did the Crazy Mom Nine-Patch Quilt-Along last November (all of the fabrics are pre-washed, pre-cut 3" squares from Stitch Simple). I got a bunch of solid fabric in gray and blue from my co-Bay-Area-Modern-Quilt-Guild friend Amy a la Mode at our last meeting, so I used some of it for sashing here (reason #854 to join a quilt guild, by the way: fabric swapping).
I did the same thing for the back of the quilt except I didn't have enough gray, so I used blue (also from Amy - thanks, Amy, for dumping your excess on us). I think I like the contrast of the gray sashing better, but it's fun to have a quilt with two slightly-different personalities.
The hand-quilting I started was the good, old faithful crosshatch. Seemed like a great idea when I started it, but realized when I was looking over my handiwork last night that my blocks on top don't exactly line up with the blocks on the back, so the stitching on the back is off-point by about 1/4". Oh, well - guess I'll keep this quilt for myself and chalk it up to a learning experience for next time.
One thing I realized assembling this quilt: I am really, really bad at estimating how long assembling things will take me. I told my husband, "I'm just going to add sashing then quilt the blocks together, so this should only take me a couple of hours total." But my extreme optimism got the best of me again. It took me three nights of intense sewing and pressing to do both sides (probably a total of about 12 hours ... not two). Am I super slow, or does it take everyone else this long for a task like this?
It's a super fun and inspiring little project though, and I'm excited to forge ahead on it and start the next thing soon.
Have you started any new projects recently? I'd love to hear what you're up to!
Here are a few of the little tools I use that help me enjoy doing hand-quilting just a little more:
Pincushion Ring from ArtNest's Etsy Shop: I got this super-cute pincushion from my ridiculously creative friend Sheri and I always wear it on my right-hand ring finger while I'm quilting. This is a great way to keep track of the safety pins as I remove them as I go along.
Leather Thimble: I've tried lots of thimbles since I started hand-quilting and I've found the leather ones to be most comfortable. This one needs to be replaced because it's getting worn down on both sides, but it has lasted through several quilts and is more durable than some of the metal thimbles I've tried. I'm pretty sure I got this originally from Purl Soho, but I don't see them on their website right now. They sell similar ones at JoAnn.
Fabric Marker: The Hera marker works great for me every time. It just puts a tiny crease in the fabric where I mark it and it doesn't come out until washed. There's no ink or chalk or substance being put onto the quilt, so it washes out easily every time. It's a little hard to see in dim lighting, but I can't really do hand-quilting in dim lighting anyway. This one I did get from Purl Soho's online shop - they only have the short, fat model in stock right now, but and I'm sure it works pretty much the same as mine.
What tools help make quilting (machine or hand-quilting) a little easier for you?
I just returned from the awe-inspiring Amish Abstractions Quilting Exhibit at San Francisco's de Young Museum. I have seen pictures of these hand-crafted masterpieces, but it's really neat to examine them in-person.
A few observations about these incredible quilts:
PIECING: There was a very wide variety of quilts in the display. Some quilt tops were very simple - almost broadcloth. But some quilt tops were made up of very intricate piecing. The log cabin quilts in particular were not huge "chunky" log cabins, rather they were teeny, tiny log cabins ... maybe 1/4"-wide strips, which means the actual strips used were almost certainly less than an inch wide. The final tiny log cabin blocks were only maybe two inches square. It was phenomenal.
QUILTING: The quilting was ridiculously intricate on all the quilts. Even the ones that just had cross-hatch quilting had stitches maybe every inch apart ... not every four-to-six inches like I do mine - ha! And the actual stitches are just tiny indented dots on the fabric - you can't even see the thread unless you're looking. All of the thread used appears to be black (or at least really dark) no matter the colors of fabrics used.
STYLE: The quilts from the Midwest were obviously different in style from the quilts made in the larger Amish communities on the East Coast. The literature talked about how the Amish families that moved to the Midwest for farmland were smaller groups, so they became more integrated into their non-Amish neighborhoods and communities. That culture change resulted in an actual visual, aesthetic change in their artwork and creativity. Shows how influential our community is even without us knowing it.
It was a really interesting display - be sure to check it out before June 6 if you're in the Bay Area!
I love spending time working on Quiltivate! There are several exciting features in the pipeline for the Quilt Builder in particular ... I'm really eager to share them with you, but I'll wait until we're a little closer to spill the beans.
But, I did realize a couple of weeks ago that I spend so much time working on stuff for Quiltivate that I've kind-of neglected my passion of actually quilting and making things! So, I'm trying to re-allocate my time so I can get the things done I need to do around the apartment, work on some up-and-coming Quiltivate stuff, and also do some quilting.
To kick things off, this past weekend I got started with sashing my Crazy Mom Quilts nine-patch quilt-along blocks I created last fall using Stitch Simple pre-cut squares. Instead of making a full-sized quilt like Amanda Jean did in the quilt-along, I decided to use some of my squares to make a smaller, double-sided TV-watching quilt just to have around the apartment. It'll be a pop of color in our somewhat monochromatic living room. Lots of work left to go, but here's a tiny peek:
We had a fun discussion at the Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild meeting the other night about the pros and cons of quilting bees, and what makes a bee great or not-so-good. It sounded like most people had had both positive and negative bee experiences. Generally, the blocks they got to create with a good amount of direction that allowed for the participants to be creative and inject their own style into the project made for more positive experiences. But when the person in charge sent detailed instructions and didn't allow for variations, they felt more like enlisted slaves than participants in a creative project. Ha! My co-attendees suggested finding a bee via Flickr, and it looks like there are a bunch of groups out there.
I'm thinking I could use a challenge to get me to try new things I wouldn't normally try. Would you suggest I do a bee? Or do you have another idea to help motivate me to experiment? I'd love to hear your ideas!
I've never really been too worried about the migrating kind of flying geese, but the quilt block version always looks really daunting to me. I'll admit I'm easily intimidated when it comes to quilting projects. In fact, I basically to this point have picked which block I wanted to use based on how easy it looks to assemble. Which explains why I've pretty much done Fundamental Nine-Patch blocks except for my crazy foray into half-square triangles with my little boy's robot quilt using the Flock Block a couple of years ago.
But, thanks to the first issue of Fat Quarterly, I see now that Flying Geese blocks aren't really as hard as they look!
Fat Quarterly has great tutorials for three different methods to create these feathered blocks ... and all three look really easy! One uses two half-square triangles to make the effect of flying geese; another uses one rectangle piece for the goose and two square pieces for the flying part; the final version is one big square and four little squares and you end up with two Flying Geese blocks. No mitering or voodoo necessary for any of the three methods!
To get the actual tutorials, head on over to Fat Quarterly and pick up the first issue. I'm not even halfway through yet and I'm completely inspired and excited to go try some stuff. it's totally worth the $8. Time to pull out the sewing machine to start my next project!
After a feverish few days of almost relentless hand-quilting, I have at last completed a quilt I've had in the works long before I'd heard of Denyse Schmidt or modern quilting. This is the second quilt top I ever made ... over six years ago! I'll give the full run-down on this puppy and her history in a few days, but here's the quick iPhone-camera preview:
