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!
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'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!
The interwebs are abuzz with the upcoming launch of Fat Quarterly! For $8 per quarterly issue or $28 per year, this new eZine promises to be chock-full of sewing patterns, designer interviews, fabric previews, giveaways and much more. They say:
Do you love modern quilts and other craft projects? Do you salivate over all the new exciting fabric lines? Are you always looking for new ideas and inspiration? If so, you've come to the right place.
Welcome to Fat Quarterly!
Fat Quarterly is a new e-magazine written by modern sewists for modern sewists.
Be sure to look at the Fat Quarterly tutorials, too - these are really good, simple definitions and instructions for some basic quilting methods and techniques. They cover basting, quilting (grid and free-motion) with links to good tutorials for hand-quilting, binding and hexagons.
The countdown to Issue One begins! Are you going to subscribe to Fat Quarterly?
Does this look familiar? This is how all of my quilts used to begin. I'll admit it was kinda fun the first time, seeing a quilt come together on paper. But the novelty of it started to wear off two hours later when I was on my fourth draft and I realized I'd just drawn a complex block upside-down ... for an entire row. And I hadn't even started in with the coloring yet:
Not to mention the mind-boggling math involved in determining how much fabric is needed to make your painstakingly-designed custom quilt:
In short, designing a quilt in the traditional way using graph paper, colored pencils and 8th grade geometry is frustrating and tedious. I know it's supposed to take elbow grease to make a quilt, but does it have to require so much WORK just to plan your quilt?
That's where Quiltivate comes in. I don't think it should be such a chore to plan your quilt. Wouldn't it be amazing if you could pick the quilt block you want to use, design your entire quilt online, then get fabric calculations and pictures of the quilt you're getting ready to make? It's like a kit you'd buy in a fabric shop or from your favorite designer on Etsy, but the difference is that it's YOUR design and your unique quilt. The only "work" involved in making a Quiltivate-designed quilt is actually doing the sewing.
Check this out - we're doing a charity quilt in the Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild and a couple of the ladies have already made their blocks using the Dutchman's Puzzle block, so if I want to design my blocks using the same block and need to know how much fabric I'll need, it's easy to do that on Quiltivate.
You see your block here with the color wheel on the right?
You can choose any colors to fill in your block - and that's just the beginning! The Quilt Builder lets you completely design your quilt, including block, borders, backing and binding. When you're finished you can get a print-out of the quilt and quilt block you designed as well as detailed fabric calculations for your entire quilt. The whole process takes less than five minutes. Check out this quick video for an overview of the whole Quilt Builder:
I love seeing the creative quilts designed using the Quiltivate Quilt Builder. Yesterday, someone played around quite a bit with the Blocks and Stars quilt block and they ended up creating three extremely different-looking quilts with the exact same block! Check 'em out:
#1:
#2:
#3:
This is exactly why I wanted the Quiltivate blocks to be shown "empty" - so you wouldn't feel obligated to fill it in with the "traditional" way each block is designed. Why be so limited, when the possibilities are endless?
Design your own Blocks and Stars quilt now, or pick another block. It's fun, free, easier and less frustrating than using graph paper and colored pencils to design your quilt. And for only $9, you get a beautiful quilt plan that includes detailed fabric calculations. What are you waiting for?
Wow, check out how gross my sewing machine is! Well, this is not actually a picture of mine, but mine probably looks pretty similar to this ... except mine is an 8-year-old $49 Singer from Wal-Mart and this is a luxurious, gorgeous, wonderful Bernina, which I can't afford. But, I dream of having a Bernina and I was disappointed to discover that not even Berninas clean themselves - bummer! But, regardless of what make the sewing machine is, I hear it'll run way more smoothly if it's clean.
Here's a very helpful post from the Bernina Blog on how to clean your sewing machine. In addition to learning how to clean my machine, I also learned some sewing machine part terminology that I didn't know before. So, thanks, Bernina!
[Thanks also to @VictorianaQuilt for the original link on Twitter!]
Have you all heard of the Oliso Smart Iron? Apparently, it has a little stand that pops up when you set it on the face to prevent it from burning things. It looks fantastic for quilting!
I have just a plain-ol', standard, cheap-o iron and I'm always almost tipping it over or almost burning myself as I get new pieces from my sewing table over to my ironing board. This sucker is going right onto my Amazon Universal Wish List (here's how to get your own Universal Wish List)!
Thanks to Kim from A Peach in Stitches for blogging about her own Oliso Iron, and her great experience with their customer service.
on all Quiltivate quilt plans! Through Sunday, it's only $14 for complete block, border, binding and backing fabric calculations and beautiful full-color, full-page images of your quilt block and quilt top.
This is brilliant! Fantastic creation from Kevin Kosbab at Feed Dog - he created a portable ironing station out of an IKEA laundry basket plus a few spare parts.
I'd make this tomorrow if our nearest IKEA wasn't two states away! Come on, Denver ... get crackin' on that beautiful blue building, would ya?
