Cutting diamonds

I started my challenge block for the next month. Up next: diamonds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIlaT7O1tK0

What am I working on?

Here's a peak of what I am working on right now.  I've never done a pieced scrap quilt before. Wow do they take a lot of time!

How to clean a sewing machine

Here I demonstrate how I clean and oil my machine.

Small Group Challenge

Continuing the vlog idea.  Here is a peak into my sewing room as I make an improv block using equilateral triangles for my march small group challenge.





So? Do you like the videos?

Starting something new

So i've been really bad about blogging lately.  I decided to try something new, and have done a few short videos/vlogs.  Tell me what you think- do you like watching videos or would you rather read the blog?

This video shows how I store my fabric. And a quick peak at the disaster that is my sewing room right now.

2015 Small Group Challenge: Rectangles

For 2015 our small group challenge required us to pick a color that we would use in the challenge each month; then at the end of the year I will put them together as a quilt top.

The color I picked was Jade. Kevin told me I couldn't pick pink because it wouldn't be a challenge.  I have to say, this will be difficult to work with and incorporate other colors!

This month's challenge was rectangles. I made a simple, modern block using improvised piecing. I didn't have a plan when I started.

Dancing Butterfly #3 and #4

Two more butterflies done (there are 12 total).  Sorry about the weirdly rotated pictures. There is no way to fix them in

Butterfly number 3 features Echo Shell and Zigzag Path. 

I really like both of these designs and I am getting a lot better at keeping consistent spacing. It is fun to see how much I've grown in my ability to quilt over the past few years.


 Butterfly #4 features sharp stippling and bamboo forest.  I found the sharp stippling to be really challenging. I'm not sure mine really looks like what the design was set up to be, which is more flame like.  I'm so used to either all curves, or sharp zig-zags, that trying to make curves with points was really though. 

2014 Color Challenge Quilts

In 2014 my small quilt group came up with a challenge. Each month, someone would bring a fabric or collection of fabrics to act as color inspiration. Then all the members of the group would create a 12" quilt showcasing those colors.  It was amazing to see what different people did each month.

Although I didn't intend to, my quilts seemed to have a few themes running through them. I grouped them by technique, but you'll notice a lot of circles and stripes too! Here are my twelve quilts from 2014. I may have shared some of these before, but never as a group.



Two quilts with stitch and slash.  I love the red one!

And then there were applique quilts. Here the dresden plate is my favorite, but I also love the raw edge arrows.

 

The next group is improvised piecing. I love all of these, but the gray with pink is my favorite of the 12.  It is a lot of fun to piece with no idea of where you are going!

 And then a few odd balls. Painting instead of piecing, quilt and piece at the same time, woven fabric, and then my very first try at a mosaic technique (the flowers are from where I spilled something when we met at Panera...)

New for 2015: Dancing Butterfly

I finished the quilt that I showed in the Mosaic tutorial. I do need to post it soon (though, as infrequent as I post- is anyone reading?)


But first, Leah Day has struck again. In a great follow up to Building Blocks Quilt Along, she has released the dancing butterfly quilt. This pattern has amazing video support- you get a password when you get the pattern, and you can watch her every step of the way. I don't really plan to watch the videos, making it an expensive pattern- but I wouldn't even be quilting without Leah, so I think it is well worth it.

 

Even for a semi-experienced quilter, this is a great project. Especialy since I quilt such small scale most of the time, this is forcing me to work on my large scale quilting, something I'm not great at.

 

I picked fabrics from the $1.99 sale at Fabric.com so I didn't have much choice, and unfortunately my thread doesn't show up great on the busy fabrics, but I think that will just add texture and color to the quilt. The back is a really busy pattern, so the quilting won't show up much there at all.

So now, explanation of the pictures
The pattern is set up where you quilt two "design blocks"  and then use those patterns to quilt the butterfly square.

The first up: Paisley and Ocean Currents. You can't really see them in the design blocks- so I didn't do close ups. Paisley was a real challenge- filling space with a large design. And Ocean Currents I kept having thread issues, so it took me a long time to get through too.

And set two: Zippling and Feathers.
I didn't do close up of zippling, because it's just a stippling design, nothing exciting. The feathers I am mostly happy with. I used bounce back feathers, a method I've finally started to get better at.

 

The one thing with this quilt is that it is quilt-as-you-go so there is a binding that covers 1/4" of the edge. I was so nervous about having my feathers covered up, I did the border ones much too small. Since this is not a show quilt, I am not going to rip them out to fix them, but blah.

Mosaic Quilting tutorial

I've been working on a quilt to submit to shows next year using a mosaic technique I kind of made up. I say kind of because I heard someone talking about a book (Serendipity Quilts), but I never got the book, and after I did it, I looked through the book and found that she does it somewhat differently (and her quilts are amazing, where mine is basic, but I like it.)

Here is how I make a mosaic quilt.

First, find some scrap fabric and draw your design on it.  You need a line wherever you are going to use a different color. If you draw in the wrong place, just X out the line so you know not to pay attention to it. No one will see this. 

 Next, get a big stack of a lot of different fabrics of the color you plan to use.  You want a lot of variety or it won't blend as well in the end.  I raided both my scrap boxes and my fat quarter stash.

You are going to glue these down to the base fabric, but DO NOT glue all the way to the line.  Here you can see where I put glue down.  I do a mix of gluing the base fabric and putting glue on the fabric I'm putting down, but it is easiest to avoid the lines if you glue on the base fabric.Use washable glue sticks.  If you get them at back to school time, they cost a fraction of the rest of the year.

Fill the whole area, going OVER the lines.  Use lots of small pieces.  Or if you want a non mosaic look, you could just use one big piece, but this technique probably isn't the one for you.

Now, carefully cut all the fabric away so that it is exactly on the line.  I found using small applique scissors made this the easiest.

Here is why you didn't glue all the way to the line.  Tuck the next color of fabric UNDER the first color.

  

And fill the shapes the same way. Again, don't glue all the way to the line.

When you are done filling this color, trim again to the lines.

 

Keep going until the entire fabric is filled.

 

Now, you need to make a regular quilt sandwich- backing, batting, and this is your top.  I originally layered with tulle but I received some advice that it muted the colors too much, so halfway through I switched. 

Let's talk about tulle first:  To make the tulle "hide" you need to quilt very dense microquilting. This holds down all the fabric, and it also puts enough thread on the fabric that you can't see the thin layer of tulle without looking really hard. This also holds down any fraying and makes the raw edges basically not raw.  But it does mute the colors; but you could experiment and try different colors of tulle and see what they do.

The quilt artist who critiqued my quilt didn't like the muting of the colors, and she also thought the microquilting made the overall look too flat. She recommended looser quilting.  I did that on the outside of the flower (I had already done the flower).  In this case, I layered water soluble stabilizer over my quilt top, and then flipped it over and quilted from the back. (Because I had already done the center using the back better allowed me to see the design.)  This design choice also has a downside- raw edges. The tulle doesn't hold them down so there is visible fray.  For a few, I used non-washable glue to hold them down since they showed my background fabric, the quilting is not so tight to hold it down.  If you plan to do this method I would use coordinating background fabric and not just any old fabric like I originally did.

The front of the quilt is still a secret, but here is the back of one of them after quilting.  You can see how tight it is over the tulle.

Please let me know if you use this technique or if you have any questions!  I'd be happy to answer them.  Stay tuned for the final quilt.