Dragon Threads Open Book

Men’s Suits into Laptop Bag

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:08:00 +0000

I’ve seen this all over the internet and etsy so thought it would be a fun Winter project to make for my 17-year old son. What can you make for them that they will actually like?

I got a basic laptop bag pattern, Mc Call’s 6410 and eliminated the pleated front pocket that is under this flap. At the local thrift shop, I found two nice men’s jackets from very nice quality wool for a big total of $4 !! I cut the front, back, flap and sides out of a heavy drill to use as a base and then layered the pieces on top of that. It also served as some stiffening to the bag.

On this front flap, I wanted to use the lapel. It takes lots of ripping out and removing of interfacing and shoulder pads etc. That’s the only real labor here, lots of ripping! It’s helpful to use a surgical seam ripper…makes the work go faster. For the lapel, I had to stitched it down along the edge with a small hemstitch and then cut away all the fabric from the back of it so it would lay flat.

I opened up a necktie to fill in the left side and to add the blue color which is in the plaid that you can’t see in the photo. This breast pocket is still useable as are all the pockets.

The back of the bag was simply the hip pocket of the front of the suit.

And the front under the flap is from the jacket lining. It’s the pocket with some of the facing still attached. I had to wash this piece, it was a bit worn but it works.

Behind that front is a pocket from the inside of the black jacket cut and sewn on top of the lining. I found some gray satin and used the back/non-shiny side for the inside lining and it almost matches the gray lining of the suit! I love the look of the labels.

The other side is a big pocket cut from the lining I bought. The right pocket has little pleats and is the size for a cell phone. I added some of the necktie to the top of this piece just for color and continuity.

It was a pleasure to work with fine wool again! It presses so well and sews so easily. This wasn’t difficult and you just have to think about the best way to use the jackets. I did add some heavy interfacing for the strap and the sides to give it some body.

Getting down to the wire!

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:10:00 +0000

This is the postcard that we made to announce Jane Sassaman’s new book at the Fall Quilt Market last November. We plan to have it ready to sell at the Spring market in May in Kansas City so now we are under the gun! The books are printed in Thailand and they need 4 weeks on the press. Then shipping by boat takes 6 or so weeks although it’s always been more time with clearing customs and getting over to Ohio. So the pressure is on!

We are placing all the info into the layouts for the first round of editing. Here is a sample of the rough layout.

Now the most important and most difficult part to come…THE COVER DESIGN!

More on that to come later. We are editing the glamour shots to decide if any will make cover or if we have to graphically create one. I want to have some here on the blog for you to vote on your choice.

Pinterest and skirt tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:32:00 +0000

Over Christmas my friend told me about Pinterest and I was immediately hooked on their crafts section. I perused these photos for hours on end during my week off and found some great ideas!

It’s a website with pictures of other things on the internet and grouped by category. I also look at food and quilts and then ‘pinned’ the photos to my boards by group and saved them to look at or make later. It gives you links to the sites with the actual recipes or instructions.

I saw these interesting skirts made from old men’s dress shirts but no tutorial so I made one. Since I didn’t have any old shirts, I bought one at Costco for $17.99. The fabric is a beautiful soft herringbone in light aqua and it says “NO IRON” which is a big plus.

Concerning size, it doesn't matter about the neck size, just that the width of the body of the shirt is much larger than your waistline so it gathers nicely.

I would buy the longest sleeve length that is available to have more to tie around your waist.

My sleeves weren't long enough to go all around my waist so I attached them to the side seams. You could also use some of the back of the shirt to make another tube to attach between the two sleeves.

Remove pocket.

Remove any labels that show at hem.

Take off sleeves or cut off.

Press sleeves, turn inside out. Draw line to cuff to take off some width.

Stitch and trim seam.

Mark across front of shirt in straight line from armhole to armhole. Cut.

At top edge of skirt, stitch 1/4" from edge and then press it under.

Fold over the width of your elastic plus 1/4". I folded under 1" and used 3/4" elastic.

Stitch close to edge of fold leaving 4" open to thread the elastic through.

Try on and adjust elastic, then stitch ends together and trim off excess elastic.

Stitch down the remaining 4".

Take the sleeves and pleat them at the end.

Place it pleat side down at the side seam with sleeve going towards the back of skirt and stitch across at the point to include all the sleeve/you can see below that you need to cut off about 3”.

Then fold the sleeve to the front and stitch on top of that seam close to fold, if desired.

Tie sleeves in front to wear. Can’t wait for Spring now so I can wear it! NO, REALLY! I CAN’T WAIT FOR SPRING TO COME!!!!!

Licensing

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:47:00 +0000

When I wrote the Koos Collage Couture book, it was the first time we thought about licensing the author’s work for other related things.

Since we were introducing this in the Quilting market, I contacted King’s Road which was just starting to do quilting fabrics. Koos did two lines with them and then they pulled out of the quilt fabrics market. Below are headers of his fabrics.

Some of the prints were then made in silk and I particularly like this blouse that Koos made for me. It has a scarf with some yarn edging.

Along with the fabric line, I got Koos a contract to provide patterns of his designs to Vogue Patterns. As many of you know, Koos has about three patterns a year and has an enthusiastic following! Many just collect his patterns. It’s wonderful to be able to make a similar piece of clothing that would cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars in his Madison Avenue boutique!

This latest jacket pattern, Vogue 1277 is their current top selling pattern! woo hoo! Koos was so excited to find this out and called right away. It was the back cover of the catalog.

While introducing Noriko Endo’s book, Confetti Naturescapes at Fall Quilt Market in 2010, a booth in the row behind us was getting so much attention. It was so noisy and busy over there that I had to see what all the fuss was about. It was the Accuquilt booth with the introduction of the small portable cutting device called the Go Baby! Everyone was wearing the pink Go Baby! shirts around market.

A few weeks later, I thought about it and it clicked! Wouldn’t it be great to have one of those to cut hundreds of cherry blossom shapes to make one of Noriko’s quilts? She had told me that she and her husband had cut out maybe thousands of these five petal shapes by hand and then colored the centers. I couldn’t imagine doing it and doing it well.

So I contacted the very friendly people at Accuquilt and they not only made a cherry blossom die but also one that cuts confetti. Noriko’s technique involves cutting confetti of many colors and it is hard on your hands but with the dies, it is a breeze to have it all cut in a few minutes! It’s a dream come true!

The dies can be pre-ordered but will be ready in February when Noriko is in Utah to teach at the High Desert Silk Experience. If you can take a class with her, you will love her and the technique.

Right now I’m designing a project to use the cherry blossom die for something other than a quilt/stay tuned for a photo.

This Spring we’ll have a new book by Jane Sassaman featuring her dynamic graphic patchwork quilts using her fabric designs for Free Spirit Fabric. With a few simple pieces, she blends colors so you can hardly even tell that the quilts are pieced! This one, for example is a lot of half-square triangles and not strips of fabric…but where are the seams?

Jane already produces many other products using her graphic designs including coffee mugs, mouse pads, notecards and wall prints. Then if you read this blog a while back, she’s doing a silk scarf for sale on our websites.

I just think her design style is bold, happy and very contemporary. For years her fabric lines have been so appealing, it makes you impulsively buy it! At least it does for me.

We’ll explore what else we can do with her designs but can’t you see it as a bedding line or a tabletop collection of dishes, tablecloths, trivets,etc? Somebody should call TARGET or CRATE and BARREL and show it to them!

Leave a comment on what you’d like to see Jane do with her designs and we’ll select one for a free mousepad! Be sure to leave contact info this time.

What’s in a name?

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:26:00 +0000

Or perhaps I should say, what’s in a title?
It is usually very difficult to find the right title for the book we are working on. It is very important and we want it to convey the book content plus have some ‘panache’ so that the person will want to pick it up and check it out. I also like it to be short and sweet. The title is probably second most important after cover art.

Here’s some insight into what we go through. For Laura Heine’s book which was so colorful with lots of variegated threads and free motion work, it was difficult. One morning in the shower it came to me after many hours of thought. I had read about a new restaurant in town that said it was ‘Asian Fusion’. I didn’t know what that was and thought it would be fun to try it…thus the title became ‘Color Fusion’. I also wanted Laura to ‘brand’ her style and technique and not just call it general free motion work with variegated thread.

For Vikki’s book, we first liked Quilting Revelations but when we ran it by test audiences of students, they thought it was too biblical. Also improvisation best describes the process that she uses.

Philippa Naylor’s book was probably the easiest title we agreed upon early in the process. She has a famous, award-winning quilt in the Paducah quilt museum called Lime Light. So we played on that title since now Philippa was getting worldwide recognition for her work and we told about her story in the book.

Since Judith Montano’s book was about mixed media, we had to work to find a title that would encompass everything. Here is when the thesaurus comes in handy, along with the dictionary. I found the word ‘Montage’ and the definition described her mixed processes to combine one work of art but it also had a photography connotation so we needed another word to show that this is fabric related. Since Judith is Canadian, she wanted to spell ‘Fibre ‘the British way. I agreed because then I was sure it wouldn’t be an existing title.

If we had chosen something with Mixed Media or something common in the title, we’d have to research it to see if a similar title already exists.

Here is a book where I think we made a mistake with the title. Using the author’s name didn’t describe what the book is truly about. It is one of the books I’m most proud of but sales weren’t good. Joan’s work is spectacular and so different than what anyone else is doing.

The book is more inspiration than technique and gives you insight into the artist’s process of designing which is very valuable.

The subtitle, which is important, also helps give more description of the book and here, perhaps it should have been the title of the book.

Presently we are working on a quilting book by Jane Sassaman who makes very dynamic quilts out of her brightly colored, graphic fabric line by Free Spirit Fabric.

Here is a list of the titles we were considering:

Fabulous Fabrics Extraordinary Quilts

Fancy Fabrics Fabulous Quilts

Designer Fabrics Dazzling Quilts

Sensational Patchwork Sassaman Style

Astonishing Patchwork Sassaman Style

Patchwork Recipes Sassaman style

Patchwork Idea Book

Jane Sassaman's Art Patchwork

Art + Patchwork

Art meets Patchwork

Jane Sassaman’s Artful Piecing

Artpatch
SASSY Quilting

Jane Sassaman Goes To Pieces!

Some are rather wild but we went back and forth on the title until we came close to the deadline and decided upon: PATCHWORK SASSAMAN STYLE since the skeleton of her quilts are basic patchwork.

It’s short and sweet and now we have to work on the subtitle:

Recipes for Dazzling Quilts

Bridging art quilts and patchwork

Simple recipes for using fabulous fabrics

Blended piecing…Illusion piecing

Art plus patchwork

OR try your hand at writing a subtitle describing Jane’s quilts and comment below…if we use it/we will send you a copy of the book when it is available. For inspiration, look at Jane’s Idea blog.

Christmas Wrap Up

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 23:56:00 +0000

If you’ve followed my blog the last year, you’ve seen that I love to make Christmas gifts for friends. Last year I made notepad covers and the year before, handbags. This year I made two dozen mittens from thrift shop sweaters that I washed and felted and added polar fleece lining to make them very cozy! As usual I overbought on the sweaters so have plenty left for future projects!

Also this year I thought a very special little girl would like a poncho in PINK with butterflies on it instead of mittens. This was a simple pattern with hood that took less than 2 hours total! If you start in September, you can have it all done before Halloween and it is so fun to give something that you made.

And for the neighbors, we use this Swedish saffron bread recipe and make trees for their Christmas breakfasts and deliver them on the 24th! I make the dough and my husband rolls out the tree shapes. It is sooooooo delicious and a recipe in my family since the 60’s.

Next to our tree this year, you can see my Christmas present on the wall…a Noriko Endo quilt from an earlier post.

The tree skirt is a pattern that we sold when I started the company….it’s ornaments with fancy machine stitches and comes with a wallhanging and a pillow.

On the tree are many ornaments that I’ve made throughout the years. Here are machine embroidered ones from Criswell that I used to give to all the elementary teachers.

I made these smocked ornaments. The first year that the Clintons were in the White House, they asked many artists to make blue and gold ornaments for their tree and I made one for them. They sent a lovely photo of the tree and a card. It was exciting!

I love my Christmas stocking because it is a sewing studio! A friend made this for me when I was in grad school in exchange for a formal dress that she wore to her boyfriend’s military ball. I think it was a good deal…I still have the stocking but the dress is long gone I hear!

We collect these German ornaments by Heutschenreuter ( a ceramics firm) and they may be the most expensive ornaments on the tree but the one below is the most valuable!

Made by my oldest son when he was in pre-school!

Hope you all enjoyed a very happy day with your family! Now for my husband’s sauerbraten dinner!

P.S. I already know what gift I’m making next year en masse! Stay tuned!

Christmas baking at my house

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:09:00 +0000

This is not at all related to quilting or book publishing but…it’s the most interesting subject I could come up with now!

My husband is from Germany, where many of these traditions originated. For the holidays, he bakes several kinds of delicious cookies while I sit on the sofa. A few years ago he and another German-American friend, Scott, started baking cookies together, or more specifically, springerle cookies! Those are very difficult cookies to master and it is a two-day process. I thought I’d share a bit of it with you.

Here are the molds that you use to press into the dough to make the cookies. They are very beautiful with old world scenes and come in wood, resin and the metal ones.

You can get practically any motif on a springerle board nowadays….I even have a Chinese dragon one!

They first started doing this in Scott’s mom’s kitchen with her grandmother’s recipe. After that Scott brought his mixer over to our house but this year everyone…his 2 sisters, sister-in-law, a friend and my husband baked in their new kitchen! It was wild because part of the recipe is to have the mixers going at full speed for ONE HOUR! Imagine that in the olden times, you took turns beating the dough by hand for an hour!

Here are all the mixing/work stations. The younger crowd was learning the techniques and ‘secrets’ too so it was lots of fun!

Here is what the men do when the mixers are going….

only German beer of course!

After mixing, you roll out the dough to an even thickness.

Then, you press a mold onto the top of the dough and it looks like this.

Next a fluted wheel is used to cut the cookies apart/or you can use a knife.

Then they sit on a tray in a dry,cool place overnight where the tops dry out so that when they are baked, you don’t lose the definition of the impression. There are anise seeds sprinkled on the tray.

When baked the next day, the underside of the cookies rise and spring ‘feet’. These are really white/ivory in color but the kitchen lighting came up more yellow.

Besides these cookies, my husband makes cinnamon stars, wasp’s nests, macaroons with chocolate drizzled on them, lebkuchen and our favorite…spitzbuben…a ground almond cookie sandwiched with currant jelly between and powdered sugar on top!

It’s a fabulous and fattening season!

Winners and their Quilts

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:19:00 +0000

From our last blog post, the quilt that won the most votes to become a silk scarf was SPIDERWEB by a huge margin so expect to see that soon in the Sassaman and Dragon Threads online sites.

The winner of the mousepad Sassaman style is ‘lila’. There is no email on her profile, so please send it to me on a comment below and I’ll contact you for your address to send the mousepad.

Here are photos of some of the winning quilts from Quilt Festival in Houston and the quilters. It was great to walk around and talk to some of the winners on Friday.

This is Maria Elkins. I can’t wait until next week when she comes to speak at our guild!

These two quilts above are by my Quilt Festival roomie, Susan Brubaker Knapp. She is author of a great new book called, Point, Click Quilt! She has a fun blog that you should look at.

This is the famous Sharon Schamber who has won a major award at Houston for years! The amazing part of this quilt to me is the red weaving you can see here between the petals and around the border. I asked her how she did it but I’m still not sure. Spectacular.

My Bernina Artisan pal, Barb Shapel did this gorgeous quilt. What I love about her quilts is that some of them have an entirely different scene on the back. Two quilts in one! I was dying to see the back of this one so I went to her website and here is what I found….

Deborah Kemball from Chile was graciously answering many questions and handing out her postcards. I see on her website that she has a new book too. This is all hand quilted and called Euphoria. Her work is breathtaking in person.

I would love to hang this one in my livingroom! I’m partial to Oriental design and especially Chinese dragons as you can probably guess! Sue McCarty made this and had an interesting story about it below. The borders are all gold threadwork which is so thick it looks like painting. She won a $10,000 award!

I’d also love to have this quilt by Megan Farkas of Sanbornton, NH. The detail and colors are my favorites. On facebook, search ‘Quilts by Megan Farkas".

Life in the City by Sheila Frampton-Cooper is one of the two awards she won this year. There is an article about her in the latest Quilting Arts magazine! A young quilter that you should watch!

O Happy Day by Timna Tarr was just so eye-catching… simple design with effective use of color! It certainly is a happy quilt!

And then this quilt was a big winner and appropriate for this season!

The talent at this show was phenomenal….can’t wait to go next year!

Silk scarves Sassaman style

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:58:00 +0000

These are some of the quilts that will be in Jane’s new book, Patchwork Sassaman Style, coming out in the Spring. They are made from her fabric line for Free Spirit and are totally captivating with all the detail and color and pattern going on.

We’ve decided that they would make some luscious silk scarves and will have them printed for sale on our websites BUT we wanted to have your input. Which design would you want to see on a silk scarf? Put the name of the design(found below each design) in the Comment Section below and we’ll pick someone at random to win a Sassaman mousepad.

SPIDERWEB

GYPSY

PRIMROSE

DAISY.

Please just vote once since this will be on Jane’s blog also. Thanks for helping us!

Early Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 22:45:00 +0000

Christmas came a little early this year for me. Noriko Endo, author of Confetti Naturescapes, made a quilt for above my livingroom fireplace and showed it to me in Houston. It is Spring in Japan with cherry blossoms at their peak reflected on water below and it is just breathtaking! So I bought it!

She has made cherry blossom quilts before where she hand cut the 5-petal blossoms with a little notch in each petal. Then her husband helped her hand color the centers. Well this one was much easier. Accuquilt made her a special die for the Go Baby fabric cutting machine. She could place 6 layers of fabric under the die and get dozens of little blossoms perfectly cut in a few seconds! Silk and cotton were used. This Cherry Blossom die will be on the market soon so you can try this technique too!

Also while in Houston, there was a silent auction with small quilts donated by the teachers and others. I bid on a beautiful little Pat Holly masterpiece. The pieces are so small that I don’t know how she gets them sewn on! Pat is also in the Bernina Master Artisans group and I met her on our trip to the Bernina factory in Switzerland. She was there with her sister Sue Nickels. Pat lives in Ann Arbor where my son just started at U Michigan!

The way the auction works is that you bid on a sheet of paper with your number and then after a certain time limit, the high bid wins. Most of us bid and then leave so we don’t know who won. Well half an hour before the end of this auction, I texted my Quilt Festival roomie, Susan Brubaker Knapp, who was still there and asked her to go by the table and tell me if I was winning.

She texted me that I had been outbid so I asked her to write in a higher bid for me. Then she decided to stand by the table to watch until the end and ‘protect’ my bid. Here’s the photo that she sent me! Can you recognize two who are picking up some of the quilts at the end?

Thanks to Susan, I won the quilt Magical Mehrangarh Memory by Pat Holly!! I was thrilled!

It is 12 inches square so you can see how tiny some of these pieces are! What incredible workmanship! I feel so lucky!

A visit to NYC & Koos

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:43:00 +0000

After teaching ten classes at Quilt Festival, Philippa Naylor was tired and wanted to spend a few days in New York City before flying back to the UK so I gave her the tour! First stop the Met Museum with lovely works that could all be inspiration for a quilt in our eyes!

Next stop was the KOOS boutique where the owner, Puck, showed us the newest artwear creations while we tried on a few! The store is on Madison at 92nd St and a must for all you collage lovers! It’s small but packed with the most beautiful mixes of fabrics and just exciting things to see! I wrote the book, Koos Collage Couture, 22 years after apprenticing with Koos while at Pratt Institute. You can find Koos on facebook where he posts photos of his latest creations.

Rockefeller Center-left- had ice skaters (and also the Anthropologie flagship store). Bryant Park-right-behind the library on Fifth and 42nd Street was transformed into a fantastic winter venue! They had an ice rink and then all these temporary little kiosks of vendors where we got such items as NYC scenes on tiles and t-shirts. It was very warm weather and fun to walk around the park shopping. Then we met my friend Michael and ate outside while watching the skaters and enjoying the warm night air!

Our last day we spent at Koos’s workroom in the Garment District.

I saw this dress and fell in love with it years ago. It has interesting side draping and a fishtail drape in the center back! So unusual and I love unusual so I traced off the pattern. Well, it was so complex, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it so one of the

ladies helped me cut it out and pin it together for me to take home and sew. It came out beautifully and I ended up making a second one too! It’s very forgiving fit. Philippa and I went fabric shopping to all the fantastic stores around there including MOOD,the famous store from Project Runway and she got some beautiful red and black wool. Then we went to the best leather store around called Leather, Suede, Skins and she bought some fox dyed bright red to make a matching collar! It’ll be spectacular and unique for sure!

We ate great food and shopped until we dropped! The best thing we did was to see Daniel Radcliffe on Broadway in How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He was a super song and dance man and amazing to watch/that show is a MUST SEE! Perhaps we can make NYC an annual trip after Houston!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Quilt Festival Quilts

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:13:00 +0000

Here is an overview of the Quilt Festival selling side of the show floor before opening:

And only here will you be able to see a QUILTED car!

Or a QUILTED horse!

There were some lovely group quilts where they took a photo and cut it into pieces, gave a piece to each quilter who interpreted it in fabric and then put it together. The method is explained in my book, Quilting Party…wish I had a group to do one of these again!

Here is Noriko Endo’s Confetti Naturescape entry this yr:

close up of section.

And here are some done by her students in her style:

And this cute one:

I have much more to show and giveaways to come so stay tuned!

Quilt Festival Classes

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:32:00 +0000

Just back from my 4 days in Houston at the International Quilt Festival. I haven’t taught in 4 years so I missed it and loved my classes! The students were so creative and loved sewing with silk and I enjoyed meeting them. Here’s some photos of their projects and you can see the variations of the projects.

And then in the afternoon Silk Flowers and Spirals quilt class:

And if you walk around the hallways and peek into the classrooms, you can see what you’d like to take next year!

Here is Philippa Naylor’s class…author of Quilting in the LImelight. She offered 10 (TEN!) classes this year and some were double-filled! The hardest working quilt teacher…

Another of our authors, Noriko Endo’s confetti naturescapes classes were full also and with happy students.

This year I roomed with Susan Brubaker Knapp who taught some thread sketching and painting classes that everyone loved! Her new book is Point, Click,Quilt but I love her videos since you can see Susan actually sewing and it looks so easy! Susan is a rising star, more on her in the next blogs…

Do you feel as if you missed a great week? Well, you did!! Plan to attend next November and look for the class booklet this summer…you need to sign up IMMEDIATELY to get your first choices but then…they are all great classes!

Threads magazine article

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:03:00 +0000

I was so excited today to get my copy of THREADS magazine because I have my FIRST article for them in it!! I’ve written many articles and designed many quilt patterns for other magazines over the years but I’ve always wanted to be in THREADS! The article is how to make the spiral moebius scarf that I shared in this blog months back.

I’ve been reading THREADS for decades, enjoyed their interesting articles and have even met the editors. The next page has an article written by my former Pratt roommate, Patricia Keay who is an incredible fashion illustrator and a remarkable garment sewer. What a coincidence huh?

I’m a fashion designer, maybe from birth, I think it is in my genes. My mother was a fashion designer. She attended a college in New York City and I attended Pratt Institute and got a BFA in Fashion Design too. She never worked in the industry but she made clothing for my sister, my father, herself and me, as well as drapes and stuffed animals, etc. Can a love of sewing and fabric be in your genes? That’s for someone else to answer but I think so.

Well I’ve submitted some other projects to THREADS for their Quick Stuff to Sew issue and other special fashion issues and hope they like and publish them in the future. Next week I will go visit Koos and see what else he has to share with you.

I’m off to Quilt Festival to teach my silk classes and shop till I drop. Will take photos for you all!

WINNER of the sewing caddy giveaway was Jackie from Canada…her blog is http://jabotquilt.blogspot.com/

My guild,a free pattern and a giveaway

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:24:00 +0000

Last year I joined a new guild in town, a chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild. I like it because it is easy and fun and doesn’t have all the parliamentary stuff and rule book that some older guilds run by. So, I’m one of the leaders of the group ‘swaps’. They are a fun way to get to know each other.

The first one was mug rugs.

People brought in baggies of their favorite fabric scraps with their names on bags and put them in big box. Then they blindly pulled out a bag of someone’s scraps, went over to meet/chat with them, then took bag home, made them a mug rug and brought it to the next month’s meeting. Everyone was very pleased with their ‘gift’!

This month we started a new one that is a sewing caddy to keep all your tools handy. If you have a machine that fits into a table then you have no need for this daily but it comes in handy if you take your machine for a class. It’s fast and easy and here are my instructions:

Materials
    * 2 different fat quarters 18" x 22"
    * 18" x 22" of batting
    * decorative threads

1. Cut both pieces to be same size/roughly 18" x 22".

2. Place two fabrics right sides together, put batting on top and sew 1/4" seam around all edges leaving an opening for turning. Trim and clip corners. Turn. Press and stitch opening closed.

3. Topstitch around entire piece close to edge. Quilt all over if desired.

4. Fold up the short end 5" to form pocket. Pin in place.

5. Stitch vertical lines to divide pocket into 3-4 spaces for tools.

TO DECORATE -Mark off the bottom 5" which will form the pocket and decorate before putting together.

GIVEAWAY- I’m giving away the caddy in the photo that I made out of Jane Sassaman fabric by Free Spirit. Just leave a comment below- tell me if you do some small projects like this for your guild or gifts…we need new ideas! We’ll use random.org to pick a winner Oct. 31.

And the winner of last week’s giveaway...a copy of Silk Unraveled book is Kathie MacKie from Canada.

I’m teaching at Quilt Festival Houston November 2 so should have some interesting posts after that trip!

Sewing with Silk and a Giveaway

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 02:18:00 +0000

A few years ago we published a book called Silk Unraveled: Experiments in Tearing, Fusing, Layering & Stitching by Lorna Moffat.

With Lorna living in South Africa with small children, she is not available to teach these techniques so I’ve been offering a few classes. This November at Quilt Festival in Houston, I’m teaching the Spiral and Flowers quilt top class

and the Silk Crystal pillow class.

Both are fun classes because we aren’t precise, we just tear up silk and let the loose threads be a part of the work.

Many people love the look and sheen of silk but are afraid to try it. Maybe it is the price of silk, although it is available for less than it used to be and cotton quilting fabric is getting more expensive. We use silk that is stable (not slippery or shifting) such as dupioni, shantung and taffeta so it can be cut, sewn and treated as a substitute for cottons. I use the same threads and needles and don’t do anything special.

You don’t prewash it and after sewing, it could be hand washed or dry cleaned. Many of the projects in the book use small scraps of silk. The base of this crystal pillow is half-inch strips of assorted varieties in different colors so you could even go to thrift shops and collect nice silk garments to cut up and use.

The flowers,as well as the crystal above, are just backed with Steam-A-Seam 2 by the Warm Company and then fused on and stitched! The cut edges won’t ravel anymore. But this book celebrates the raveling and shows you how to use even the loose threads from the warp.

GIVEAWAY SILK UNRAVELED BOOK! For a chance to win a copy, leave a comment below telling if you have sewn with silk and what you’ve sewn. We’ll pick a winner Oct. 23 and start a new giveaway then!

As I said in previous posts, I’m teaching the Silk and Spirals flowers quilt on our cruise to Panama Canal and the Caribbean in 2013. Sign up for the email newsletter to know when the contest to win a cruise is open! Tell your friends to sign up too!

The winner of the set of Jane Sassaman notecards is Vivika! Congrats!

Enter the giveaway for beautiful mugs on Jane Sassaman’s blog too.

Sassaman Giveaway

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Here is the first of our giveaways to promote the upcoming Patchwork Sassaman Style book.

It’s a set of 7 of her beautiful notecards from her Free Spirit Fabric collections over the years. They have matching colored envelopes.

Jane and I have planned a wonderful cruise for Jan 14, 2013 and hope you can join us. It’s with Quilt Retreat at Sea and they do a terrific job to make sure that everyone has a terrific time. They are very personable and give special attention to make it an intimate cruise and lots of fun!

So, I selected the 11-day Holland America cruise that goes from Florida to Bahamas, Aruba, Cartegena, into the Panama Canal and Costa Rica. Doesn’t that sound fantastic? I love sun, beaches and snorkeling to see colorful fishes and sea life. There should be lots of that on this trip!

When the ship is at sea for 4 days, we will have a large room equipped with sewing machines and all we need to SEW, SEW, SEW! Jane’s class is Broderie Perse using her fabrics to make a flower collage with some of her art quilt applique techniques. My class uses silks to make a quilt top with torn/raw edge pieces of silk from our book, Silk Unraveled by Lorna Moffat. Check out our video to see the projects.

We’re giving you plenty of notice so you can save up your time and pennies to take the ultimate quilting class cruise! If you are in Columbus, OH on Nov. 14 at 7pm, we’re having a cruise information night at our sponsor, Quilt Trends with fun, food, prizes so please come.

Now, to win the notecards, leave a comment here and tell me your best vacation ever! We will randomly select a winner on Oct. 16.

Visit Jane’s idea blog to see what she is working on.

Dyeing Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:44:00 +0000

Vicki and I picked another gray overcast day to finish up our dyeing. This time we had primary red and yellow and a third color.

This is how the reds and yellows turned out with Frieda Anderson’s Fabric To Dye For method.

As you would expect, several shades of a color. But the third color surprised us…it turned out

to be these beautiful shades of blue BUT we didn’t use blue dye. We used pure BLACK dye and it came out to be inky variations…how odd!!

We love the color but it was a surprise and we wonder how to get Black and shades of gray? The dye looked black with blue highlights when mixed. If you know the answer, please comment below.

We also tried her 12 step color gradations formula in the book but only did 9 steps as three were solids that we dyed before. It came out beautifully and we loved the results.

You can see the top right fabric was our fun piece. We soaked up the left over raspberry and purple dyes by blotting it with crumpled up fabric.

All in all, I’m VERY pleased with our results and how easy and NOT messy this method is. The most time-consuming part was rinsing out the fabrics before throwing them in the washer.

I will do more dyeing in the future. We need to order some more Jacquard Procion MX dyes for the other 20 yards of PFD in my closet!

Now, what to do with all these colored half yard cuts?

Patchwork and Everything Sassaman Style

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 18:50:00 +0000

I am so excited to announce that we are working on a book of patchwork ideas and recipes for quilts Jane Sassaman style! If you follow her blog, you’ve seen these remarkable quilts that blend color and pattern to make some dazzling patterns. Sometimes you don’t even know where the seams are. The fabrics just blend. I’ve been fascinated by them for ages and am thrilled that we’ll have a book to show you how to design and make them yourself.

This book came out of the frustration. So many of Jane’s fans buy her fabric collections by Free Spirit but then are stumped about how to incorporate these bold, bright colors into quilts that show off the fabric. Her amazing, vibrant prints include larger scale patterns which have great visual impact but may be challenging for some quilters. In Patchwork Sassaman Style, Jane clears up the mystery! She'll come right into your studio and work with you to unlock your creativity using any large scale “personality prints” as she calls them.

When I started this blog a year ago, I wanted to take my dear readers on a tour inside the world of quilt book publishing. This book is the perfect opportunity to walk everybody through book production, step by gorgeous step! We're taking you in, with lots of giveaways, polls, ideas, and detours on the way to keep your creative juices flowing.

I've known and admired Jane Sassaman since 1996, when I first saw her Willow quilt at IQA Houston. This quilt was absolutely breath-taking. The detail was incredible. Jane was standing by it with white gloves on, answering questions of passersby. I asked the stupidest question EVER: "How many hours did it take you to make it?" From then on Jane has been my favorite quilter, and that's saying something. I followed her work in magazines and shows, and have been to her studio which is just as interesting and inspiring as she is. Her unique graphic style and unbelievable detail have to be seen to really be appreciated.

I have taken three Sassaman classes now was inspired every time. (I’ve never taken a class by the same teacher three times!) Our paths have crossed through the years, and we've gotten to know each other well through the Bernina Master Artisans group, quilt shows, classes, etc. I love Jane and her work, and can't tell you what an honor and delight it is for everybody here at Dragon Threads to work with her.

Starting now until the book is released in early 2012, Jane and I will be blogging our hearts out about the book. We've got studio tours, downloads galore, newsletter sneak peeks, and special sales coming up. Don’t miss anything! Sign up for our newsletters at Dragon Threads.com and Jane Sassaman.com. Look for us on Facebook, too. We can't wait to share Sassaman Style!

A Day to Dye

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:24:00 +0000

After all the nice sunny Summer days, my friend Vicki and I finally found a day to dye but it was cool and drizzly! Oh well, you do it when you can.

This all started with a casual dinner with Frieda Anderson last year. She made it sound so easy so I bought her book, Fabric to Dye For and read it cover to cover and it is easy with her method. So Vicki and I got 3 bolts each of Pimatex PFD fabric and cut them up into half yard pieces.

My favorite company, Jacquard Products, provided me with 6 colors of Procion MX dye plus black. We worked on Vicki’s patio with metal table so spills wouldn’t matter.

Without going into detail, which is in Frieda’s book… here is the basic process we did.

All the fabric was soaked in a bucket of soda ash, we used Arm & Hammer Super Washing soda from the grocery store.

We mixed up 3 dye colors at first with hot water and used them for our gradations…purple, raspberry, cobalt.

Then we mixed dyes in different concentrations as Frieda describes in her book and soaked the half yard cuts in the 7 buckets from dark to light.

We mixed the fabric around to try to get the dye evenly on the fabric even though we were going for a mottled effect.

Next we squeezed out the fabric and put them in zip lock bags for transport and to let them sit for 24 hours before rinsing.

The next day I started rinsing each cut in the sink. I think this was the most time consuming part. I thought I should rinse until the water was clear but that wasn’t happening so after a few minutes of rinsing and wringing, I dropped the fabric into a big bucket of hot water and Retayne which sets the color. The water looked dark purple but none of the color transferred onto the fabric so it was ok.

After sitting for few minutes in Retayne, I put them all into my front loader, gave them a cold rinse and spin…then washed in hot water with detergent…then cold rinse and spin and into the dryer.

Here is what they look like after ironing with steam. I love the colors and think they turned out very well….mottled as we wanted.

Next Monday we’ll do the last colors. Someone had the audacity to ask what we’ll use this fabric for!! Well, you know it may sit in the stash to ‘cure’ for a few years… but I think of it this way…it’s something that I’ve wanted to learn and try and the cost was worth it for the new knowledge.

IT WAS FUN!!!!!! TRY IT!

Joan Lintault exhibit in VT

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:50:00 +0000

http://handeyemagazine.com/content/passion-quilts

Here is a great article about Joan Lintault and the special exhibit that she has at the Shelburne museum in VT until Oct. It has some of her work in the show as well as antique quilts that she has collected for years from far and wide.

Her book, M. Joan Lintault: Connecting Quilts, Art & Textiles is more of an art book than a quilt book. Her philosophy of design is that of an artist rather than a crafter.

When I first saw her work at Quilt National in Ohio, I was awestruck! All the negative space in her work and the detail was amazing. The quilt, The Midden, had a poem around the border…the letters were cut out of the fabric as when you use stencil letters but I didn’t see it until I was across the room from it! You can just stare at her quilts for hours, wondering how she did this detail and that detail. Did she buy lace and add it on or make the lace? (the latter) Did she buy fabric with dish patterns printed on it or did she screen them herself? (the latter)!

I wrote her name down and went home to research if she had a body of work and her webpage showed many intriguing pieces. So, I called her and asked her to write a book and luckily she was just retired and had the time.

If you have a chance to see any of her work in person, it is well worth the trip!

Bernina Sewlebrity feature

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:34:00 +0000

http://www.berninausa.com/webautor-data/589/BERNINA-LindaTeufel-082011.pdf

This month I’m featured in the Bernina blog as a sewlebrity! (Don’t you love that word?) They also reposted the blog article on making the Koos mobius spiral scarf if you missed it before.

I am fortunate to be a member of the Bernina Artisan group for the past 7 or so years. They had meetings at their offices in Oklahoma City and Chicago areas where a group of us would learn about new things in the industry and work with Bernina products and it was always fun. I met many nice artists in this group too.

We also gave input into many aspects of marketing and especially into the design and features of the revolutionary 830 machine. That entailed a free trip to Switzerland and their Steckborn headquarters which was wonderful! They treated us like royalty, fed us well, put us up in a beautiful hotel by the lake, took us to a fashion museum, shopping, chocolate store and picked our brains! It was a trip of a lifetime!

Confetti Naturescapes class

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:08:00 +0000

Remember in April I wrote that Noriko Endo, author of Confetti Naturescapes was here to teach our guild her fabulous confetti class?

We had the finished ones on display at our local store, Quilt Trends for the high traffic months of June and July when everyone is in town for all the quilt shows and conventions.

The amazing thing about Noriko’s class is that everyone made a successful piece. How often can you say that? Her technique was easy to do and she guided us to make some great pieces. Of course it would take lots of practice to be as good as she is but it is fun to do and I’ll try it again.

Thought you’d like to see some of the finished work.

Noriko is teaching at Quilt Festival in Houston this November but you must sign up fast, the classes fill up so fast!

A Visit to Quilt National 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 20:46:00 +0000

As I said before, it’s great to live in Ohio in the summer when all the quilt shows are going on in town! Quilt National is every two years and is my favorite! It’s a juried show with 85 quilts accepted and shown in an old dairy barn in a cute rural town. For me, it’s only a 1.5 hr drive from Columbus and so I go every year. The town of Athens is the location of Ohio University and has many great little places to eat too…a quilter’s second favorite thing to do.

I just got back with my friend and we loved the show! So many beautiful quilts of wonderful color palettes and techniques. We quilters are looking closely at techniques and found many inspirational ideas so that was exciting. Looking at the quilts we are trying to memorize easy quilting patterns for the ‘free-motion impaired’ as well as color combinations that are particularly striking. You can’t remember it all so the best thing to do is buy the book of the entire collection.

Lucky for me, and you, Kathleen Dawson, the director of the show sent us these photos of the gallery to share on the blog! They arrived at my IN box the moment I got home and sat down at my computer! A big THANKS to Kathleen since you aren’t allowed to photograph the show and a blog without photos is not as interesting!

They ask you to vote for your favorite quilt and above is mine/the Dandelion one by Kate Themel. Close up you can see the stitching lines on white tulle that make the whispy part of the dandelion and gives it that lifelike effect. Of course it was impossible to decide on a favorite and I changed my mind ten times but thought I would like to have this hanging in my house!

On the left is a piece by Elizabeth Brimelow from the UK in 3 long panels that go up, over the rod and down the other side. The piece on the right is the Best of Show by Bonnie Bucknam.

Many of these quilts are for sale but the ones I loved were already sold or optioned. The gift shop has many smaller quilts that are reasonably priced and nice samples of the artists’ work.

This is only a small peek into the show and nothing compares to seeing the quilts in person so try to visit if you can before it ends Sept.5. Check their website for times www.dairybarn.org.

And if you still can’t make it to the show, buy the hardcover book, Quilt National 2011.

NQA part 3/details

noreply@blogger.com (Dragon Threads Open Book) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:00:00 +0000

TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON BY NANCY SAYWARD

I took this photo of Nancy’s quilt for all the detail she has in it. Of course I love the Asian theme but the three-dimensional flowers are what captivated me…as well as her use of color.

Years ago, I bought the Kumiko Sudo book Fabled Flowers which shows how to make many of these flowers but have never tried it aside from making flowers in her class.

WHITE TAIL MORNING BY DUSTY FERRELL

This quilt also had so much detail. What I liked it that it was mostly straight lines doing the shadowing and details….just MANY straight lines.

BLUE MOONS BY JUDY GIGNESI

From a distance it looks like a color study but up close the stitching detail is amazing.

This quilt, TEA AT TENBY, by Pat Holly and Sue Nickels (sisters) has these great wool ‘tabs’ along the outer edges of the quilts…and the machine quilting work is small with medallions and so complex! Photos can never show the stitching detail as well as putting your nose up to the quilt!

I hope these give you more inspiration when making your own works of art!

And now a little vacation time on a lake in New Hampshire for me. I will for sure visit Keepsake Quilting one day. Will report if I see anything interesting to stitch!