Fabric Selection Fail

My next project will be a table topper for our dining room table or for the secretary in our foyer. Mike’s been lobbying for the topper for a while now. I bought two charm packs (5” precut fabric) of “Amethyst Magic” (that’s the triangular lavender/amethyst fabric in the two pictures above). The yellow fabric you see at the top will be sashing (narrow bands of fabric that set off the block). I cut fabric for one block and created the half square triangles (the amethyst and brown) and laid the block out.

We thought the brown and mottled blue fabric would look great. The picture on the left shows the brown fabric and the right shows both the blue and the brown. I thought to myself “Ugg” and showed the blocks to Mike. He said “Ugh” too. Somehow it’s too muddy. I’ll be off to the fabric stores here in town looking for lavender fabric and maybe burgundy for the sashing. This is one example of how fabric stash grows 😁

What will 2020 look like?

A new year and a new decade. My goals for the new year are severalfold:

• Continue honing my skill in the basics of quilting: cutting accurately; sewing a consistent 1/4” seam; getting better at binding the quilt.

• Learn foundation paper piecing

• Attempt more complicated blocks: circles, half-square triangles (HST)

• Implement more quilting patterns on the quilt sandwich

I’ll continue making baby quilts for charitable giving.

I have a couple of items I want to do for the house: two table toppers (one each for the dining room table and for the secretary); two decorative pillows for the house and perhaps a present for a couple of relatives.

Let’s see what I can accomplish. . .

Cat Quilt 2 Complete !

The second cat quilt is complete ! That’s Calliope (better known as “Callie”) our llasapoo posing for the camera. This quilt is demonstrably better than the earlier quilt so I’m making progress in my quilting skills. I don’t aspire to entering a quilt show but I’d like to continue honing skills like cutting more perfectly, sewing “in the ditch” (stitching in the valley of an existing stitch — mostly done when applying the binding) without any bobbles and so on. . .

Cat Quilt Top Complete

The quilt top is complete ! And I’ve made significant strides in my sewing and piecing because most of the corners match 😁 I have a little bobble here and there, but I think the quilting process will mask most of those. I’m real pleased with the colors in this quilt. My sister saw the fabric picture and asked how the baby would sleep since the fabric was soooo “loud”. I laughed and said I considered the fabric bold and vibrant and someone with the same taste would like it too. I think the turquoise helped cool it down, though. And wait’ll you see the backing I’ve chosen 😉

Now I’m off to create the quilt sandwich (top, batting, back) and do some study about what quilting I want do on this.

Amazing Quilt (not by me)

The fabric is a panel titled Dream Big Horizon by Hoffman Fabrics.  The panel itself is very beautiful but the FMQ (Free Motion Quilting) is absolutely gorgeous. Notice how smooth the feathers are — no bobbles or jagged edges. Also the quilter used a darker thread color around the outer edges of the quilt.  I would guess this was done on a free-arm machine. This is a seriously gifted quilter.  Click here to read comments from other quilters..

"Practice Makes Progress"

I wanted to get some practice in piecing (it needed improvement on the crib/baby quilt) and I thought the quilting I did was pretty boring to the eye. So I constructed a 12” block of a cat using scraps from earlier projects.

I also wanted to practice more interesting forms of the actual quilting process. I used some stitches that are pre-installed on my Singer Quantum Stylist 9960. That’s what you see in the second picture below. I have 600 different installed stitches on my machine so I’m sure I can find some nifty quilting stitching to embellish my quilts.

Next I’ll be practicing free-motion quilting (definition here). Angela Walters seems to be a leading instructor/practitioner of free-motion quilting and she has excellent books and video tutorials on the subject. She might have coined the phrase “practice makes progress” and I like that very much.

My First Quilt

My first quilt is now complete !! It is small and suitable for infants and small toddlers. You can see that our dog, Calliope, is awestruck (or perhaps it hurts her eyes 😉 ). The quilt looks better than I expected since I see every single mistake that I made—all of which are common for beginner quilters.

I learned several important lessons:

• precise, exact measuring and cutting accurately is crucial to the process—even being off an eighth of an inch can multiply to an inch in the right (or wrong) circumstances

• some fabrics have directionality — I discovered that when I saw that some blocks of cats were sideways. I had to purchase some more fabric and re-cut the blocks.

My next “project” will be using scraps (amazing how many scraps are created) to create two blocks. I’ll do my best to measure and cut accurately and join the two blocks to see how well I’ve done. I’ll be practicing free-motion quilting too.

Crib/Baby Quilt

I’ve been away for a while dealing with other projects but I’ve created my first quilt top (above), created the quilt “sandwich” (quilt top, batting and backing in solid yellow) and quilted the quilt (which probably sounds redundant but isn’t.

Not surprisingly I’ve made every single error that a new quilter makes. When I’m cutting the fabric if I’m off even an eighth of a inch on each block that translates to a full inch on each row or column. Additionally, the rows and columns don’t match up.

On the whole, I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. Next up is binding the edges of the quilt and then the quilt will be complete.

For my next project I’ll be creating some sample blocks to get more precision in my cutting and trying free-motion quilting. Stay tuned !!

My Third Quilting Project

I finished another set of placements - this one with mitered corners. I’m getting a bit better, but you can see that the corners aren’t quite correct. I really like this pattern, so I’ll be making another set and I expect to see some improvements in the corners. . .

My second quilting project

My second project was another placemat. I’ve chosen placemats to begin with because they are small and because we need new placemats !

I ordered a “charm pack” (a pre-cut 5”x5” set of fabric) that coordinates well with our dining room. I wanted to try my hand with piecing and am pretty pleased with the finished product. You can probably see that I’m still having problems with the corners and I haven’t mastered cutting very precisely yet. I learned a heck of a lot on the project and look forward to my next placemat project.

Quilting Aspirations

Someday . . .

My first quilting project

I completed my first quilting project !! Hooray !! It’s definitely a beginner project. I learned so much (thank you YouTube and all those who post videos there !). This project doesn’t bear close scrutiny — you’ll notice that it isn’t square (or even rectangular) and the stitching is not even around the binding. But, hey, I’ll get better !

New Hobby Begins

Sooo — counted cross stitch no longer rules my heart (and I guess I should change the name of this blog. . . )

Quilting has been calling to me for more than two years and I’ve decided to heed the call. After much research I purchased a Singer Quantum Stylist 9960. It doesn’t do embroidery stitches but it does do fancy stitches (600 or so (!) ). The first picture is the machine and the second is a randomly chosen group of stitches.

I’m sure that it will take me a while to get used to the machine, so my first project will be one very simple placemat. I’ll be quilting the placemat and that will give me a chance to get used to the machine and practice some simple quilting.

Time for a New Hobby?

I’ve completely lost the “cross stitching bug”. I’ve laid out my current project on my work table, sat there for a few minutes and walked off to wash dishes or sweep the floor or . . . (those who know me know I HATE housework 😬 )

Over the last two years or so, I’ve felt a call to quilting and that seems to be calling me again. But I’m not all that nuts about traditional quilts . . . I was at a quilt show at our library and saw the pictured quilt and thought “I could do that and something like it would be great on my chair !”

The pictured quilt is an antique from about 1910. The woman who created it was a seamstress and had wool samples for men’s suits. The man would choose the fabric, she would order the appropriate quantity and then used some of the fabric to create the quilt. She embroidered a simple flower on each swatch.

So. . . my next post might be a picture of my sewing machine (I don’t own one) and the beginning of a placemat which seems like a good beginner project.