Quiltivate

Harts Fabric - Santa Cruz, CA

 

Umm ... can you see all of those lovely fabrics?! And that's just one tiny glimpse into the amazing fabric mecca that is Harts Fabric in Santa Cruz, California! 

I spent well over an hour in here the other day, choosing fabric for a new quilt I'm starting. If I had gotten all of the fabric I liked, I would have needed this $500 Gift Certificate and it might not have been enough. Ha!

As you can see, Harts carries tons of the well-known designers' fabric lines including those of Amy Butler, Heather Bailey, and Denyse Schmidt. I knew this going in, but I got zoned out looking to for just the right fabrics for this new quilt I'm working on, so I wasn't paying attention at all. I got home and washed everything and didn't notice until I was pressing it that one is a Denyse Schmidt Hope Valley fabric - ha! I wish I could share pictures of my loot, but I'm starting this new quilt and it's a gift, so it'll be a little while. But I am really, really excited about the fabric and the new quilt.

One other thing I should mention about Harts ... it's HUGE and they carry all kinds of sewing supplies for all types of fabric projects. Here's a picture showing more of the room I spent my time in:

 

This doesn't even begin to show the size of this place. There is another entire room the same size as this! I'll admit I'm not doing Harts justice with this review. But I saw this morning that my friend Amy a la Mode also visited Harts last week and she did a great, in-depth review over on her blog. 

The bottom line is you should definitely hit up Harts Fabric next time you're in Northern California - it's worth the effort!

But even if you can't make it out to California, you can still shop at Harts ... online! In fact, you could even win $25 of free fabric from Harts! All you have to do is send out a tweet about Quiltivate before the end of August and you'll be entered into the drawing. Check out this post for more details!

Tweet to Win Fabric!

Want some free fabric from my favorite fabric shop on the West Coast? Enter to win $25 from HartsFabric.com today!

Q: How Do I Enter?
A: Send a tweet out that says something like: "Design quilts online at www.Quiltivate.com!" and you'll be entered to win. That's it!

You can even click this button to have the tweet created for you: Tweet

If you create your own tweet, be sure to include the word "Quiltivate" somewhere in your tweet so we can track it. 

The cut-off is midnight PST on Tuesday, August 31, so send your tweet now so you don't forget!

Design your next quilt on www.Quiltivate.com - it's a super fun service that could save you hours of math and frustration. Get started now - pick a block!

Finished Gray Lazy

The Gray Lazy, just-for-fun Nine-Patch is finished! It has already come in very handy around the apartment with San Francisco's amazing summer (autumn-like) weather.

Although I have hand-quilted several quilts made by friends, this is only the seventh quilt I've made on my own from start-to-finish! I can think of lots and lots of things I could have done better on this latest quilt, but overall, I think it's a significant improvement over the last six. Here are a few of the things I did differently this time around:

 

Two-Sided Quilt: Instead of doing a quilt top and a quilt back, I made two quilt tops (one with gray sashing; the other with blue sashing). I did the cross-hatch hand-quilting based on the gray side so it's a little bit off on most of the blue side, but the effect is still okay even on the "back."

Flannel As Batting: I actually only used flannel instead of batting because I had flannel on-hand and didn't have enough batting for this size of quilt. But I think this was a serendipitous deal - the weight of this little flannel-batting quilt is just right for around the apartment. I like the warmth of the Warm & Natural batting for wintertime bed quilts, but I may purposefully use flannel for mid-weight quilts in the future.

 

Binding: The greatest improvement I made on this quilt as compared to my previous quilts was definitely in the binding. Three things I did differently:

1. Improv Binding - I wanted to do the binding in the gray fabric, but I didn't have quite enough gray. I had lots of squares of the fabric I used for the blocks left, so I threw in several of those and I'm so glad I did! I might do things like this on all future bindings. 

2. Real Slip-Stitch - To bind my quilts, I machine-sew the binding onto the front of the quilt then "slip-stitch" it onto the back. In the past, I've haven't exactly been carefully hiding the stitches on the back. But I was very careful this time around and it was worth the extra effort.

3. Corners - Another area I've sort-of just hodge-podged my way through before was corners ... and they looked like it. I had to re-do it a few times on the first corner to get it right, but it's great to finally know how to handle binding corners like a real quilter.

It was a fun one to make! And I'm glad to have it to myself to enjoy. 

Now, what's next?

Bobbin's Nest Studio - Santa Clara, CA

A couple months ago, my Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild friend Amy a la Mode linked to a Groupon coupon for $20 worth of goodies for only $10 from Bobbin's Nest Studio in Santa Clara, California. Well, who can pass up a deal like that? I got a chance to go redeem my fabric a few weeks ago and really enjoyed my trip to this tucked-away little shop. Here's a peek at their fabric wall (from the Bobbin's Nest website - I was far too distracted to remember to take a picture, of course):

 

As the name indicates, Bobbin's Nest really is a bit more heavily focused on knitting supplies and goodies. Even though their fabric selection was small, it was very thoughtful - you could tell they hand-selected fabrics they loved and thought others would enjoy as well. The ladies working were super helpful and friendly. They showed me some of their new fabrics and I ended up getting a couple of those. 

If you're looking for solids or an entire set of fabrics for a quilt, you probably need to make more stops than just Bobbin's Nest. But, if you need some cute attention-grabbers to go along with the basics you've found, or if you're looking for an inspirational fabric or two, definitely check out Bobbin's Nest Studio. I will definitely return!

Time to Try Hand-Quilting

 

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.

Midpoint Doubt

 

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?

Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing

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!

Gray Lazy Nine-Patch Quilt

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! 

Tools of the Trade

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? 

Amish Abstractions Quilting Exhibit

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!