Sew Inspired

Giveaway Winner

2012-05-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

The winner of the triangle mug rug was #104, Sasha.
I'll be emailing her shortly and will send out the goodies in a couple days.

Thanks everyone for stopping by and entering the giveaway!

I hope you're having a good weekend and that you can do something fun if it's a holiday weekend for you. We went on a quick camping trip yesterday... it was fun but the night was cold and I'm so happy to sleep in my own bed again tonight.

Giveaway Day!

2012-05-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

Good morning! It is wet, chilly, and gray here today. I'm hoping for a little bit of sun later in the week. I decided to make a little mug rug/mini quilt for the Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway. It's not quilted and bound yet, but it will be by the time I send it. I used some of the leftover triangle squares from the supernova quilt I'm working on:

I will include a few notions from my stash for the winner, too. :) And the giveaway is open to everyone--I'll ship internationally if needed.

To win, please leave a comment telling me one thing you're planning or otherwise looking forward to this summer. Make sure you aren't a no-reply blogger; if you're not sure what that is then include your email address in your comment. If I can't contact you, you can't win! The giveaway will be open until May 25 at 5 p.m. Pacific time.

Thanks for stopping by and don't miss all the wonderful giveaways over at Sew, Mama, Sew!

One more thing--if you're new to my site, I invite you to look around a little bit; I've written several quilting and other sewing tutorials that you can find linked up in the menu bar... or just click here for the tutorial list. Have a great day!

Spring Promise Quilt

2012-05-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

Hi friends! I'm happy to share another new quilt I made for this spring's Blogger's Quilt Festival.

It was made using the Spring Promise fabric collection by Ana Davis, for Blend Fabrics. The free PDF pattern (designed by Mary Kay Davis) for this project is located here. This quilt will be part of Blend's display at Quilt Market; I'll be looking for it in pictures on twitter and the blogs. (And yes, I am bummed even more than normal this weekend that we moved away from Kansas City last fall.)

Here's a close up of the quilting:

I did S-waves in the turquoise border and loops in the pink border. The outer border is quilted with regular stippling and I did a new-to-me sort of flame-like meander in the main body of the quilt. It is hard to see in this photo... I have one more picture of the quilting on the back side:

It's still kind of hard to see. It was pretty quick to do though and fun to try something new! I will definitely do this style of quilting again and next time I will get better pictures. :)

If you're new to my blog, I hope you look around for a little bit. I have made a bunch of tutorials for quilting (basting, binding, free motion quilting) and for some other projects too; check out the "free tutorials" link at the top of the blog. Or click here. :)

Don't forget to stop by Amy's Creative Side and see all the quilts people are sharing in the Blogger's Quilt Festival! Thanks Amy, for all your hard work!!

My supernova quilt blocks and some other stuff

2012-05-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

I've been planning out this quilt (mostly in my head) since February. Life has been busy though.... I finally got the Kona coal background fabric and some more bright-ish fabrics at the end of last week and here's what I've done so far:

The tutorial for this project is located here: Supernova Quilt-Along by Freshly Pieced

It's very clearly explained and I've enjoyed making these four blocks. The main thing I do differently is I can't bear to cut the whole thing out and then sew. I did the first two blocks one at a time, and then cut and pieced #3 and 4 together. (I also don't press my seams open, to the side works fine for me.) They go together pretty quickly, too.

I am still figuring out the fabrics for the next group of blocks and plan on making two more today.

I also decided to start making some more granny square blocks, for myself this time. I got three done while I was waiting for the supernova fabric to arrive:

Fun, huh? I have a bunch more 2.5" squares cut out for this, but I'm cutting them one color at a time. Still need to get to red and purple and gray.And regular blue.

Also I wanted to share one more thing. Back at the beginning of the year when I did the Focus on Free Motion Quilting series of blog posts, I had my friend Elizabeth (who blogs at Such and Sew and Sew) as one of my guest posters. After her blog post here, she created a tutorial for her free-motion quilted swirls and I wanted to share that with you guys, if you haven't already seen it. The free motion quilted swirl tutorial is here and Elizabeth's other tutorials can be found here. Thanks again, Elizabeth! and my apologies for not linking up to this earlier.

Now I've got to go look at fabric and get ready to sew!

Scrap blocks

2012-05-05T19:43:00.001-07:00

I had fun making a few pink and green scrap blocks this afternoon. I have about 30 of them now. :)

doing good (stitches)

2012-05-03T17:43:00.001-07:00

A while back I signed up with the do. Good Stitches {a Charity Bee} group on flickr. If you haven't heard of this group before, it's a large group of quilters that make quilts for various charities. A couple weeks later I got the email that a new circle was being formed (we're called the Believe circle), and I am one of the quilters for the group. April was our first month and (at the very last minute) I made these two Octagonal Orb blocks:

Here's the tutorial for making these blocks.

I got to choose the block for May, and I have had my eye on the granny square block for a while. I think it's such a cheerful block and I'm excited to see all the blocks our group makes! I sewed mine up this afternoon and I think I'll be making more of these soon, too.

Finished Swoon Quilt!

2012-04-12T18:01:00.002-07:00

Hi everyone! Hope you are doing well. We've been enjoying longer days and blue skies, at least some of the time. It's been spring break this week and we've visited an airplane museum and gone to see the locks in Seattle too. We were lucky to have my husband's parents and sister visit us for a few days, it's sad to see them leave.

I finished this quilt up the other day:

And even had sunlight for taking some pictures. Maybe this photo's a little too bright but I like it anyway. We waited so long for sunny days this winter.

A few notes:

*I used Basic Grey's Curio fabric collection for the blocks and a JoAnn's quilter's only solid for the background. I am disappointed because the quality of the quilter's only solid has really gone down since I last bought some, probably a couple years ago. It has a much looser weave and lower thread count, and I won't be using it again.

*Pieced and quilted with thread from Connecting Threads; I have been really happy with their thread. I used the Essential Pro thread and will be ordering more soon. (Also they have some really cool circuit board fabric that I'm going to use to make a Kindle cover for my son.)

*Blocks are 18". The finished quilt is around 62" x 68".

*I quilted it by stippling in the background areas and doing some swoopy outline quilting around the edges of the block pieces. Here's a closer picture of the quilting:

I'm happy to be done with it and excited to be working on my next project. :)

Easter Dress 2012

2012-03-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a lot of sewing time the past couple weeks but I was able to get this sweet dress finished up for my girl.

The pattern is Simplicity 3511, in size 3 with just a little length added by not doing the full 5/8" seam allowance when I sewed on the bottom eyelet band. I got the Oliver + S fabric at the amazing Hancock's of Paducah remnant table when we were passing through on our drive to Florida last year. And I had the eyelet remnant on hand, but not enough for lining the yoke, so I just used white muslin for that. I still have to put the buttons on but other than that it's done.

Here's something funny we saw the other day in Seattle:

It's an Angry Bird ready to be launched off the Space Needle. A giant Angry Bird. Photo credit to my 11 year old. :)
Hope you're having a good Monday!

Swoon quilt top

2012-03-07T20:18:00.001-08:00

I finished the swoon quilt top a few days ago. I did the sashing as block borders instead of dealing with long strips throughout the whole quilt. I did put long strips on all four outer edges though, no way around that really. Here it is:

I am working on something fun for the back, and hope to get the back done and quilting accomplished soon!

Just one more

2012-02-27T16:08:00.000-08:00

I have eight out of nine Swoon blocks finished:

These have been fun to make. The last block will be blue and green (with some pink) and is already cut out. Guess I'll get to work on that one right away. How's your day going?

Zigzag baby quilt

2012-02-26T17:39:00.001-08:00

This past week has been busy with my parents coming to visit for a few days and the boys off school for mid-winter break (something I'd never heard of before coming to Washington.) We ate out with my parents a couple times, and went to the science museum; the 3D movie we saw was pretty good! And on Friday I ran all over town with the kids. I wanted to check out this one thrift store that turned out to be really stinky so we went to another tried-and-true thrift store in another part of town. I got the Footloose soundtrack on CD for $3 and we found some like-new jeans for kid #1 so it was a good thing we went.

My parents took some baby gifts back to Utah for my brother and sister-in-law and their sweet new baby girl. She's not even a month old; I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing her baby quilt so soon. Here it is, my first zigzag quilt:

I asked my sister-in-law, Laura, what she might be interested in for this baby's quilt and she said she liked purple and green and butterflies and dragonflies. I didn't have any butterfly or dragonfly fabric on hand but was able to find some good greens, purples, and a little pink to put this quilt together. For the quilting, I did stippling in the colored zigzags, and straight lines in the white. I have since learned that I can loosen my presser foot pressure *even more* than I did for this quilt and it takes away all shifting issues. I am still kind of a beginner as far as any kind of straight line quilting goes.

Oh, and if you want to make a similar quilt, I used 5.5" squares and made them into half-square-triangles with the drawing the line down the middle method. I didn't trim the squares at all. This quilt ended up slightly larger than 36" x 44".

I have big plans this week including dentist appointments, starting the search for an orthodontist, and getting my Swoon quilt top all put together. I'll share my progress on that soon, maybe tomorrow even! Hope you're having a good Sunday.

Swoon progress

2012-02-16T15:18:00.000-08:00

I've finished blocks 3 and 4 for my swoon quilt:

I love the grunge fabric (the yellow there if you don't know what I mean) that's in all of the Basic Grey fabric lines. So pretty. They have a really good green in this line, too.

Here are the 4 blocks I've finished so far:

I like them better together than individually. I'm working on 5 and 6 today.

How's your week going? What are you working on?

Swooning

2012-02-12T17:11:00.000-08:00

Hi friends! Hope you are having a good weekend. I have been working on some gifts that I can't share here yet, but will soon! And I've started my swoon quilt. Here are the first two blocks:

I'm using the Curio fabric line by Basic Grey, and have the fabrics picked out for the next two blocks. I want to have a smaller finished quilt (the pattern makes an 80" x 80" quilt), so I resized the blocks to 18" instead of 24".

Also, I finished up my mermaid swoon pillow yesterday:

I just finished it up with a simple envelope back, but with a double layer of fabric (unquilted) for the back pieces to make it a little sturdier. It looks really cute on my little girl's bed.

I'm hoping to get back to free motion quilting my king size quilt again this week. My wrist has been sore and I've been kind of waiting, hoping for it to feel better. I don't want to aggravate it with too much quilting.

FFMQ Winners!

2012-02-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who participated in Focus on Free Motion Quilting last month! I really appreciate my 4 guest bloggers and the sponsors, along with those of you who read along and commented. I was excited to see the completed projects posted in the link-up and had my son put some numbered papers in a bowl to draw the winners. And here they are:

Prize #1, 4 Cones of Essential Pro Thread in Natural from Connected Threads goes to #6, Storied Yarns

Prize #2, Hawthorne Threads $50 Gift Certificate goes to #3, Pat in Oregon

Prize #3, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #5, Beth

Prize #4, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #1, Richard of Richard Quilts

Prize #5, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #7, Sonia

I will be emailing all winners immediately after publishing this post to get your contact info for the sponsors. Thanks again and keep quilting!

Focus on Free Motion Quilting Link-Up!

2012-01-31T05:00:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's already the end of January! I hope you've enjoyed my Focus on Free Motion Quilting posts, and that you've taken some time to practice your free motion quilting this month.

I worked some more on my Mermaid Swoon pillow block, and got the quilting finished.

I decided to quilt the rest of the main (outer) part of the block with the curved outline stitching I started with, and then I did some more detailed stitching in the center square. You can click on the photo above to see it on flickr if you want a closer look. It's definitely not perfect, but I'm planning on practicing this type of quilting some more and I have faith that I'll improve over time :).

This photo (above) shows the orange/turquoise plaid that I'm going to use for the back of the pillow. It's from Connecting Threads, and I think it's a pretty good match. I might use it for binding, too. Maybe on the bias?

So now it's time for you to show off your free motion quilted projects! Here are the rules:

*Post a link to a blog post or flickr photo showing a free motion quilted project you finished this month. The project can be something that was started earlier than this month.

*Link to a specific blog post, not your blog's main page. (Click on the title of the blog post to get to the page for that post.)

*The link-up will be open until 10 p.m. (Pacific time) on February 1, and prizes will be drawn (and posted on my blog) with the help of the random number generator on February 2.

Here are the prizes:

One set of four cones of their Essential Pro polyester thread in Natural from Connecting Threads.

One Hawthorne Threads gift certificate for $50.

And three Fat Quarter Shop gift certificates for $50.

Thanks again to Connecting Threads, Hawthorne Threads, and Fat Quarter Shop for sponsoring Focus on Free Motion Quilting!

FFMQ Guest Post--Candy from Candied Fabrics

2012-01-26T05:30:00.000-08:00

Links to all of the blog posts in this series are located in the "Focus on Free Motion Quilting" tab below my blog header image.

Today I'm excited to share a post from Candy Glendening of Candied Fabrics. Here she is!

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I'm so happy that Vicki asked me here to share my take on "Focus on Free Motion"! What I want to show you is how my free motion quilting has evolved in the past 5 years. I spent a good 5-10 years BEFORE that learning how to Free Motion quilt like this:

Also in those early years I also evolved from a traditional style quilter to working with my own hand dyed fabrics and making quilts that come from me, rather than a pattern. The fabric that I dye has a luscious visual texture that I really want to emphasize, and I realized that I didn't want to cover that texture up with a whole 'nother layer of texture via the quilting. So I began trying to figure out how to do that. One of my transitional pieces is this "Falling Leaves" quilt:

I'm using free motion quilting as a line to outline the tree and leaves, giving it a "sketchy" style that I admire in artists who combine water color and pen and ink - with a wash of color underneath a sketched shape. I really liked working in this style, but at this point, I couldn't bear to not use my "fancy" free motion work at all, I'd worked so hard to learn how to do it! My hope was that using it this way, as a smaller part of a larger whole, I could allow the free motion quilting pattern shine when I did use it.

Although I like “Falling Leaves”, I ended up not doing much more work combining the two styles of quilting. Instead, I became more and more enamored of that strong line created by retracing my quilting line 2, 3 or 4 times, not following the same line each time but missing it on purpose: what I now call Free Motion Machine Sketching. After using this style in many many small art quilts…

I looked for a way to emphasize this sketching even more. What is beautiful, worthy of contemplation, perfect and imperfect at the same time? Flowers! I started FMMS flowers and leaves a couple of years ago, and this is a subject that I have only scratched the surface of!

I sell my work online, and also at local art festivals. In both places, I talk about how I do what I do, but have found that a moving picture is worth 1000 words! Here’s a video of me doing some Free Motion Quilting:

and one of me Free Motion Machine Sketching:

Believe me when I say that I can NOT sketch with a pen/pencil AT ALL! When I want to sketch a new flower, I just take a quick look at the species I want to sketch (usually a Google image search), grab a scrap quilting sandwich and give it a whirl. Usually after one or two tries, I’ve got the shape I want to sketch worked out and I’m ready to go!

Here’s a quilt I made last summer that features some of my favorite botanical sketches:

There you have it - Free Motion Machine Sketching! I’ve been sketching flowers for a couple of years now, and I don’t see myself stopping any time soon!

I hope this is provided you all a peek into yet another type of free motion quilting. Vicki, this is a genius idea, and all your “Focus on Free Motion” posts are going to be great references for lots of quilters for a long time to come!

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Thanks again, Candy! Your free motion sketching is such a unique and beautiful approach to textile art and quilting; I'm so glad you shared this with us! I might need to make my own botanical sketch quilt one of these days (some of you might not know that I was a botany major and studied the ecology of a rare plant in college.) Please visit Candy's website and her shop to find out more about the things she makes AND don't forget to check out her brand new fabric dyeing e-course!

I hope you are almost ready to share your finished free-motion quilted projects on January 31, which is next Tuesday. You'll need to link to a finished, free motion quilted project that was completed this month. Prizes will be drawn randomly later next week. Thanks to the sponsors who are providing our prizes!

Connecting Threads

Hawthorne Threads

Fat Quarter Shop

Focus on Free Motion--Simple

2012-01-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

Links to all of the blog posts in this series are located in the "Focus on Free Motion Quilting" tab below my blog header image.

So, I've been thinking about making a Swoon quilt. I want my quilt to be smaller than the 80" square quilt you'd get if you followed the official pattern, so I did some drawing and figuring and tried out an 18" version of the block (the one in the pattern is 24").

It turned out ok; there were some cutting/calculation errors but got it figured out. I don't super-love the color combination--adding a colored binding around the edge might help with that, I think. I'm going to make this one into a pillow, after I quilt it some more. I've been feeling a little crummy and all I've done so far on quilting this is the curvy outline stitching, just on the white sections. I'm not very good at it, yet, but it's something I want to practice. This is one of the techniques discussed in Diane Gaudynski's Guide to Machine Quilting. I'm not sure how I will quilt the colored segments of this block--do you have any suggestions?

Oh yeah, I caught the backing fabric in my quilting, look:

Have you ever done that? I've done it before. Oh well. I'm just going to cut the excess backing fabric away from the stitching and pull out the threads of the fabric piece that's caught in the quilting.

Are you almost ready for our end-of-the-month roundup of free motion quilted projects? (And the prize drawing?) What have you been working on?

Thanks to the Focus on Free Motion Sponsors! (only one more week until the link-up!)

Connecting Threads

Hawthorne Threads

Fat Quarter Shop

First 2012 Finish!

2012-01-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

So I finished this little table runner up, almost exactly 1 year after I started it. Not bad, huh?

I did a spiral of echo quilting inside each heart, and finished it off with machine-stitched binding. The straight lines in the echo quilting are not easy to do with the free motion foot! I'm still waiting for supplies to finish some of my current in-process bigger things, but I got another small project started that I'll share tomorrow.

We had a crazy week last week, with school cancelled every day and the power out most of the day on Thursday. We were pretty lucky to have our power outage only last 12 hours; some people in the Seattle area are still without power after the snow-and-then-ice storms we had last week. I'm looking forward to getting back into a good routine and checking some things off my to-do list this week!

Hope you are happy and warm! What are you working on this week?

FFMQ Guest Post--Alex from Teaginny Designs

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

Links to all of the blog posts in this series are located in the "Focus on Free Motion Quilting" tab below my blog header image.

Hi! I’m Alex from teaginny designs. I know Vicki from our time together at the KCMQG, before she moved westward. I’ve been free motion quilting for about two years now, and Vicki was one of the people who really encouraged me to keep at it.

I’ve got a lot of improving still to do, but as Vicki said, you really do get a little better with each quilt. Besides lots of practice, there a few of tools and tips that have made FM quilting easier for me. Jaime, a seamstress and Bernina guru, hooked me up with an extension table for my sewing machine. Having a large surface that is level with your sewing foot is so helpful. The quilt can move around smoothly, which makes the whole process a lot less frustrating!

The other tip Jaime passed along to me is grabaroos quilting gloves. I’ve tried several different kinds, but these are the only ones that have worked for me. They are thin, so you can still feel the quilt in your hands. And only the finger tips are grabby, so you don’t get hung up while you’re moving the quilt around.

One final tip that helped me enormously was the concept of quilting your design in columns. I find it much easier to accomplish an overall FM design if I know where I’m going, and there’s no quilting yourself into a tight spot and getting stuck.

I actually enjoy FM quilting now, and I especially like taking my inspiration for FM designs from the piecing. It is a way to add another design element to the quilt.

Thanks for hosting me, Vicki!

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It's Vicki now; thanks so much, Alex! The quilting in your deep blue sea quilt (seen above and at that there link) is gorgeous! Please stop by Alex's blog and shop to see more of her gorgeous projects.

We're getting closer to the end of the month, I hope you're working on your free motion quilted project for our link up and prize drawing on January 31!

As always, thanks to the FFMQ sponsors!

Connecting Threads

Hawthorne Threads

Fat Quarter Shop

Here are the prize drawing details:

*About the prizes--there will be a link-up at the end of the month where participants can link to a blog post or flickr photo sharing their completed free motion quilted project. The link-up will be open for 24 hours and then winners will be chosen randomly from those who enter.

Focus on Free Motion Quilting, Heart Table Runner

2012-01-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

Links to all of the blog posts in this series are located in the "Focus on Free Motion Quilting" tab below my blog header image.

I finished quilting 8 of the big blocks on my king size quilt and decided to take a little break from it. My quilting gloves are over 11 years old; they have plastic dots on the palms and fingers for gripping the quilt, but the dots (especially the ones on the fingertips) are losing their grip/slight tackiness and that makes it difficult to move that big quilt while I'm quilting it. So I ordered new quilting gloves and am also continuing to practice drawing my feathers.

I have been reading up on how Victoria quilted her king size Christmas Crosses quilt in 2010 (she also used a home table-top machine) and I also put Diane Gaudynski's book, Guide to Machine Quilting on hold at the library. I'm pretty sure I will quilt long feathers in the sashing spaces and then do echo stitching around them to fill up the rest of the space. As far as the wide borders go, I'm stil not sure how I will quilt them. I think it's worth taking it slow so I can figure out what I really want to do on this quilt.

The other night I was looking through my big bin of quilt fabric and found this table runner that I started last year. At the time I had thought I would hand quilt it but I am a big procrastinator when it comes to hand stitching and I never got around to it. So I decided this is the perfect time to finish it. I got the background quilted in tiny free motion loops. (The gloves are not as big of a deal on a small project like this.)

I am going to finish up the quilting in the hearts but there is only so much light on a January day here so I wanted to get a photo before it's too dark. I will use red and hot pink thread in the hearts, maybe echo quilting in spirals into the centers of the hearts.

Have you been practicing your free motion quilting? What are you working on? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks to the FFMQ sponsors!

Connecting Threads

Hawthorne Threads

Fat Quarter Shop

Here's the prize drawing information FYI:

Chicken Quilt

2012-01-16T13:59:00.000-08:00

A little while back I got an email from Cindy, who's a member of a yahoo group about chickens. She was asking about my chicken quilt block tutorial and the chicks I used in my quilt for DQS8 way back when. Turns out that another member of her group, Karen, made a chicken quilt using my chicken block! I think it is super cute and got Karen's permission to post the pictures on my blog:

I really like that egg fabric in the border. And the colorful chickens.

She sent close-ups of a couple of the chickens:

Karen says "the green one is molting." Too funny! I love the stitched legs and beady eyes, too.

If you want to make a project with this quilt block you can find the tutorial here. The chicks that I made for this quilt are made from a pattern in the book "A Quilter's Ark." Do you have chickens? How do you like them? Maybe one day (when we get into our own house again) we will try having chickens. Or maybe I'll just make my own chicken quilt.

FFMQ Guest Post, Amy from AmyLouWho

2012-01-12T12:41:00.000-08:00

Links to all of the blog posts in this series are located in the "Focus on Free Motion Quilting" tab below my blog header image.

Hi Sew Inspired readers! I'm amylouwho and blog over at www.amylouwhosews.com. I was flattered that Vicki asked me to share my experience with free motion quilting! I am no expert, still a beginner, but have learned a few things along the way that I'm happy to share with you!

I was spoiled from the get-go with free motion quilting, because my mom and her sisters have a long-arm quilting machine and that was the first way I ever did any free motion quilting. It was AMAZING!! That was over 10 years ago before I was really sewing again and I can't remember if I ever did more than one little baby quilt. Which I don't have a picture of. Sad, I know.

Fast forward several years and I started sewing again when I started my own family. Most of the quilts I made early on were quilted by my aunt or my mom or by me with just with some straight lines on my little Bernina and my mom's walking foot. (I still need to acquire one of those!!)

My first project that I actually free motion quilted, by myself, on my little machine was my bird quilt from my very first online quilting bee, just a little over a year ago. It was a daunting task, because I loved the quilt but didn't want to ruin it. I decided to quilt each block individually as I did some straight line quilting in the sashing.

I practiced loop-de-loops, stippling, and even came up with my own leaf design.

Focusing on a 14" block was a lot better than trying to look at the huge quilt as a whole. I used a variegated green thread to quilt with which was great on all of the greens, but the darkest part of the thread really shows my imperfections on the white. I would probably use white thread if I were to do it again.

Something I started making to practice my free motion skills were quilted dishmats.

Basically, a piece of cotton, cotton batting, and chenille. Spray basted together, quilted, and serged off on the edges.

They are super easy to maneuver in your machine for practice, make great gifts, a quick finish and a nice way to add some color to your kitchen.

Another great way to practice free motion quilting, and quilting in general is by making mini quilts! I made my first mini-quilt for the Spicing up the Kitchen Swap on Flickr last year.

and another after I attended the Sewing Summit last fall.

I took Allison's (of Cluck, Cluck, Sew) free motion quilting class and learned a few new tricks and basically gained confidence that I might actually know what I was doing. I liked how she talked about doing your quilting in rows up and down your quilt. I always tended to go wherever and sometimes you quilt yourself into a corner, literally! The mini quilts are so satisfying and quick. And yes, it IS STILL QUILTING!! yeah! I have a serious problem finishing things in a timely manner! So something small and quickly finished feels great!

I just finished a quilt a few weeks ago for a Christmas gift. Start to finish 3 weeks! It was a Christmas miracle!

It is 72x72 finished, so it was pretty large in my little machine, and I had anxiety half-way through the quilting that I wasn't going to like it. And then I washed it and dried and it. And it was great! Not perfect, but that's okay!

The hardest part of any new thing for me is the starting. Once I start quilting, I have to keep going. And once I'd free motioned a whole quilt, other projects seemed less scary. The thing that surprises me the most about quilting is that halfway through every large project I've done, I hate whatever it is I'm doing, and wished I had a long-arm. I'm so busy focusing on each tiny stitch and all of the imperfections that I see that I lose sight of what the whole quilt will look like quilted, washed and dried. The stitches disappear, the quilt becomes crinkly and soft, and the overall look is one of pretty coziness. I need to remind myself of that while I'm in the midst of the quilting!!

The biggest things I've learned are:
1. Don't kill yourself over perfection. Very few people, if any, will analyze each stitch the way you will while quilting.
2. Use thread that matches the lightest fabric in your quilt.
3. I love my quilting gloves - they help keep my grip on the quilt.
4. Put the foot pedal all the way down. Going faster actually helps keep your stitches more even. This comes with practice, but I find my quilting always looks better when I'm moving my quilt slowly and the needle is moving quickly.
5. If your machine doesn't sit flush with your table, sit in a taller chair, or an a booster (I put my kid's booster upside down) to keep from hunching your shoulders up to your machine while you sew. I find this helps any time I'm spending a lot of time at my machine.
6. Practice, practice, practice! The more you do it, the better you get, and the more confident you will be!
7. Have fun!

I would encourage any of you who are intimidated by free motion quilting to just start. Find some scraps and batting and just play! Have fun with it! After all for a lot of us this is a hobby that should be fun, not stressful! No get going and make something pretty and have fun while you are doing it!

***********
It's Vicki now, thanks so much to Amy for this post. I love your Christmas quilt and am very impressed with the quick turnaround. I can't wait to see what you make next! Please stop by Amy's blog and check it out; she's the host of Sew & Tell Friday which is a fun link up party occurring on many Fridays and encouraging us to finish up and show off our projects!

Also, I want to encourage you to post your free motion quilting practice or projects on the link-up from Tuesday's post. I'd love to hear about what you're working on!

And finally thanks again to the Focus on Free Motion Sponsors!

Connecting Threads

Hawthorne Threads

Fat Quarter Shop

Here's the prize drawing information fine print:

*About the prizes--there will be a link-up at the end of the month where you can link to a blog post or flickr photo sharing a completed free motion quilted project from this month. The link-up will be open for 24 hours and then winners will be chosen randomly from those who enter.

Focus on Free Motion Quilting--tension and sketching

2012-01-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

Links to all of the blog posts in this series are located in the "Focus on Free Motion Quilting" tab below my blog header image.

Hi everyone, welcome to week 2 of Focus on Free Motion Quilting! I spent some time in the last few days working on basting and quilting my king size quilt. It is challenging but I'm breaking it up into chunks to make it more doable. More on that in a bit.

April and I exchanged some emails last week about tension, and I wanted to address that here on the blog in case anyone else is having tension problems while free motion quilting. I didn't mention this in last week's post, but I do adjust my top thread tension when I free motion quilt; this keeps the top thread from getting pulled to the back when I do loops and curves. It took me a while to feel like I could change the tension dial as I was taught as a kid to never touch it! But I realized if I didn't like what happened when I changed it, I could put it back on the default setting and everything would be ok. Here's a picture to show how changing my top thread tension helps with my FMQ tension problems:

This is the bottom of my quilt sandwich, that's where top thread tension issues show up in my experience. I started on the bottom right with my tension at its normal setting. See all the places where the top thread was pulled down to the bottom? (April calls them eyelashes, they kind of look like it.) In the top right area of this photo, you can see where I adjusted the tension dial up to 7 and the top thread was no longer being pulled down.

April also blogged about her tension issues, and also discussed the success she's had with quilting with her feed dogs up. Her practice free motion quilted leaves look great!

Now about my project: I am quilting a king size quilt in a regular size domestic machine. In order to make this a little easier, I decided to only layer and baste batting into the middle approx. 1/3 of the quilt. After I get that part of the quilt all quilted, I'll hand baste the remaining batting on one side at a time, and baste and quilt those outer sides. I'm quilting the big blocks first and then I'll do the sashing.

I took Elizabeth's advice and sketched out my blocks and how I would quilt each part of them. I have also been practicing drawing my feathers and other quilting designs.

I'm going to keep practicing.

And here are pictures of the blocks I've quilted so far:

Block 1

Block 2

Block 3

What have you been working on? Do you have any questions or tips to share?

Thanks again to the Focus on Free Motion sponsors!

Connecting Threads

Hawthorne Threads

Fat Quarter Shop

Here's the prize drawing information FYI:

*Be thinking about what you want to do for your free motion quilted project for the prize drawing at the end of the month. It needs to be finished this month but can already be started if needed. The project could be a small mini-quilt or a large quilt, or something in between, it’s up to you. Over the next few weeks, I will share some projects that I think would be good for beginning or improving free motion quilting skills.

Tablet Keeper Blog Tour--Kindle Fire Measurements

2012-01-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! I'm excited to share my version of the Tablet Keeper today! The Trace 'N Create Tablet Keeper template is a versatile pattern that can be made in 3 sizes for electronic tablets or paper tablets. The pattern is in the form of a template on clear plastic with cut-out areas where you can mark cutting lines, elastic placement, and strap placement.

I was really happy to be asked to participate in this blog tour, but when the template and other materials arrived, I found that the smallest size on the template was still much too big for my Kindle Fire. So I knew I was going to re-size the pattern to fit, but I was a little worried about getting it right.

First, I decided to use some of the fabrics from my Parisville fat quarter set. Here's the initial fabric (and interfacing) pull along with the template & instructions, rectangle rings, strap interfacing, and tablet keeper "shapers" which are hard plastic inserts for making the tablet keeper really sturdy.

Next I stewed about making the measurements right for a few days, then re-read the instructions and realized the fabric measurements were pretty much the finished product measurements because the inner and outer layers are sewn together wrong sides together and then it is bound. I came up with the following measurements for the inner and outer fabric layers, along with the two interfacing layers:

8 1/4" tall
11 1/2" wide (or 5 3/4" from the fold--this will make sense if you have the instruction sheet)

I actually made a mistake and cut everything 8" tall and it worked out ok but I think it would be better with that added 1/4".

Here's everything all cut out:

(Except I switched to a lighter fusible interfacing and didn't use the heavier interfacing shown here. The very top interfacing in the photo.)

Also, two long strips cut from a fat quarter is *not* enough to bind the whole thing. Cut three strips across the long side of a FQ for your binding.

After getting everything cut out, I just followed the included instruction sheet and looked at Nancy's blog too for some visual help on making my tablet keeper. A couple other changes I made were the strap length and placement. I made my strap 21", aka the long side of a fat quarter. I should have made it about 1.5" longer. So, my recommended strap length for a Kindle Fire-sized Tablet Keeper is 22.5". Then the velcro placement line needs to be at 5 1/2" and the fold line needs to be at 6 1/2" from the end of the strap. Again, these measurements will make sense if you have the pattern sheet. For the strap placement, I just eyeballed the middle of the cover and put it where I thought it looked good with the print of the fabric.

Some more notes about making my Tablet Keeper:

*I used my walking foot to attach the firm interfacing (I think it's Peltex, not sure because I've had it for a long time.)

*The strap interfacing is really cool. You fuse it to your strap fabric and it has perforations that make it easy to fold in the sides perfectly. I am totally going to use this stuff next time I make a new bag.

*It would be really easy to add a pocket to the interior left side. I think if you do that you should make sure that whatever you put in it will be covered up completely by the pocket to avoid any scratching of your Kindle or whatever kind of electronic tablet you use.

*Elastic. I used a cut up hair band with non-slip grip stuff on one side, as recommended in the instructions. I am really happy with how securely it holds my Kindle in place. It was kind of difficult to sew through though, and I recommend you use a ball point needle and stitch really slowly over the elastic. I marked the elastic placement using the template, I just positioned one corner of my tablet keeper on the template at a time, and moved it as necessary to mark all 4 corners.

*Tablet Keeper Shapers. These are the rigid plastic inserts for giving the tablet keeper good sturdy structure. I cut one of the large shapers into two small ones for the front and back of my tablet keeper, using my rotary cutter and ruler. It is not the easiest thing to cut, so be careful and go slow. I would suggest you measure your own tablet keeper for your tablet keeper shaper cutting measurements. My left one was cut to about 5" x 7 1/4" and the right one was a little wider, 5 1/8" x 7 1/4".

*Binding. I opted to sew the binding on the right side (outer side) of the tablet keeper and then hand stitch it down on the inside.

So here's my finished tablet keeper:

It actually turned out better than I thought it would! And it's quite sturdy too. I was worried about all the layers of fabric and interfacing before I sewed it up, thinking it would be too much for such a small cover, but it is just right.

Here it is opened up:

I really like it! If I made it again I think I would only change a few things: I would make it the full 8 1/4" tall I mentioned above. I would be more careful to make it more symmetrical, and I would make the strap a little bit longer too (it is folded over double from the ring to where it connects to the back of the cover and mine wasn't quite long enough to be doubled over that whole length.)

Thanks again to Nancy Zieman for asking me to participate in the tablet keeper blog tour. If you're interested in making your own tablet keeper, be sure to visit the other participating blogs and see how they customized theirs!

Also, don't forget to stop by Nancy's blog to enter to win one of three prize kits she's giving away! (They are really cool prizes, go look!)

January 3 Nancy Zieman http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog

January 4 Amy Ellis http://amyscreativeside.com/

January 5 Sharon Pernes http://craizeecorner.blogspot.com/

January 6 Vicki Christensen http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/

January 9 Joan Hawley http://www.lazygirldesigns.com/blog

January 10 Pat Sloan http://patsloan.typepad.com/

January 11 Eileen Roche http://dzgns.com/blog/

January 12 Liz Hicks http://blogerisms.blogspot.com

January 13 Fran Ortmeyer http://cloverusa.wordpress.com/

January 16 Ilene Miller http://happyvalleyprimitives.blogspot.com/

January 17 Julie Herman http://www.jaybirdquilts.com/

January 18 Jenny Gabriel http://www.sewvacoutletblog.com/

January 19 Natalia Bonner http://www.piecenquilt.blogspot.com/

January 20 Frieda Anderson http://friestyle.blogspot.com/

January 23 Cindy Cloward http://www.rileyblakedesigns.com/blog/

January 24 Beckie Hansen http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog

January 25 Amy Webb http://www.amylouwhosews.com/

January 26 Allie Robertson http://thinkcrafts.com/

January 27 Mary Mulari http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog

January 30 Laura Wasilowski http://artfabrik.blogspot.com/

January 31 Carol Porter http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog

Disclosure: Clover provided the Tablet Keeper template set, strap interfacings, hardware, and tablet keeper shapers for this project.

Also! If you're new here, and interested in Free Motion Quilting, check out Focus on Free Motion Quilting

FFMQ Guest Post, Elizabeth from Such a Sew and Sew

2012-01-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Links to all of the blog posts in this series are located in the "Focus on Free Motion Quilting" tab below my blog header image.

I cannot count my day complete 'Til needle, thread and fabric meet. –Unknown

Hello, Sew Inspired readers. I'm Elizabeth from Such a Sew and Sew. It is nice to meet you. I'm very honored that Vicki would invite me to guest post about free-motion quilting. At the very least, I hope that I what I have to say will not bore the pants off you. I'm hoping for the best, that you might find something helpful and be at least slightly amused in the process. Off we go then. So. Free-motion quilting. When strung together in that order, those are the three scariest words in the English language. I've been FMQ-ing for a year and a half and in that time I've FMQed 13½ quilts of various sizes. I still have to take a deep breath before I take that first stitch because free-motion quilting is scary, plain and simple. No matter how many times I do it, there is always that worry in the back of my mind that I'm going to mess it up.

I think the hardest part about FMQ is knowing where to start. If your LQS offers a beginning machine quilting class, that is a good place to start. Keeping your expectations reasonable helps too. I went very simple for my first free-motion quilt because up to that point I'd only done a few small projects in straight lines, with a walking foot. It took me about 10 hours to do a fairly tight meander across a 52" x 68" quilt. It was tedious. I missed dropping off my quilt top at the long-arm quilter and getting it back transformed into something amazing. I saw every single imperfection. I worried the whole time that I had ruined it. I didn't think I would ever want to quilt my own again.

After a trip through the washer, the imperfections seemed to disappear. I was fairly content with my first attempt at FMQ and I even felt kind of fulfilled in making a quilt start to finish. Necessity {i.e. lack of funds} dictated that if I wanted to finish any more quilts, I'd just have to do it myself. So I tried again with loopy flowers on the next quilt. It was an interesting adventure that turned out pretty well. I went back to meandering and straight-line on a couple more quilts and then did some more loopy flowers. I decided to give feathers a try and they didn't come out too badly. I branched out from there, adding in a bit of something new to each quilt, along with the old stand-by favorites. My skills improved, my stitches got more consistent and my quilting got more elaborate. At the end of June 2011, I finished a second snowball quilt, identical to the one I'd started with. This one took about 35 hours to quilt, there wasn't one straight line or meander anywhere on it and I didn't find it tedious to spend all that time at the machine. As a matter of fact, I loved it. I loved free-motion quilting.

So, how did I go from a somewhat iffy edge-to-edge meander to a 35-hour custom quilt? Practice. Not the answer you thought I'd give, right? You were hoping I had a magic answer. An answer that would make free-motion quilting easier and more appealing. It really does come down to practice, which can be discouraging and frustrating {my first attempts were craptastic}, if not down-right boring. But I'll tell you a secret. The key to great free-motion quilting is learning how to make a smooth curve. Once you learn how to make pretty curves, you can do pretty much anything you want with FMQ.

The best place to practice curves is by doing a meander. I started with a paper and pencil. It helps tremendously to get the motion down if you doodle it out on paper. Imagine making little bunny silhouettes—two ears and a nose. Or picture puzzle pieces. I filled four or five 3" x 5" notecards with a super-tight meander. On a quilt it would be called a micro-stipple. Even though I couldn't {and still can't} quilt it that small, practicing at a small scale helps your brain to learn the motion. Once you've got it down on paper, move to a practice quilt sandwich. Or three. And then when you feel confident {or even if you don't} move to an actual quilt. Start with a quilt you're not really attached to, like two 1-yard pieces of fabric you pulled out of the bargain bin and sandwiched together. Then, if you don't love it when you're done it can be donated.

I probably did four or five quilts with an edge-to-edge meander before I felt like I could try anything else. When I wanted to try something new, I sketched out the design on paper over and over and tried it out on a practice sandwich before moving to my real quilt. I not only sketch out different quilting designs before I try them, I sketch out how I want to quilt each quilt before I begin. It helps me to organize my ideas, lets me practice moving in one continuous line, and gives me a framework to work within {I'm a color-inside-the-lines kind of gal} when I move to the actual quilt. And is easier to erase a sketch than it is to unpick quilting. This is a quilt I'm working on right now. My goal is to finish it by the end of January. I sketched out the blocks on grid paper, scanned it and enlarged and printed the images of each of the blocks. I made a sketch for each block and then I printed out a smaller copy of the entire quilt. I transferred each block design to the thumbnail size copies in the full quilt layout. When I quilt each block, I refer to my sketches. Sometimes I follow them exactly and sometimes I decide to go with something different. Not every sketch or every quilt I do is this elaborate. The quilt is a pinwheel sampler, so I thought it might be fun to have it also be a quilting sampler.

I asked Vicki if she wanted me to talk about anything in specific and she said she'd like to know my favorite design to quilt. For me, quilting should compliment the design of the quilt, not cover it up. And so that is what I work towards in my quilting. My favorite design to quilt is a row of swirls in the sashing. I use it a lot.

Notice a trend?

Yep. Swirls in every single quilt.

Thanks for letting me bend your ear a little bit about something I really love! If you don't love FMQ yet, with a little practice I hope that you will. xo -E

*************

Hi, it's Vicki again! Thanks so much, Elizabeth, for such a thorough post about your free motion quilting process. I am amazed by your attention to detail and the dedication you put into your quilting!

Elizabeth and I have followed each others' blogs for quite a while now and we were finally able to meet each other last summer at a fun blogger meet-up. She brought her beautiful snowball quilt; it is truly an amazing quilt. I hope you feel like some of Elizabeth's advice will be helpful to you in your free motion quilting adventures. I am gearing up to quilt my king size flea market fancy quilt and I want to quilt some feathers in the borders and sashing. I'm actually really nervous about it but I'm going to start practicing drawing feathers and see how it goes. Please be sure to stop by Elizabeth's blog, Such a Sew and Sew, and get to know her better. I really like the heart table runner she made and showed off in this post.

You can find all the Focus on Free Motion Quilting posts linked here. Feel free to comment with your questions or FMQ tips. Are you brand new to FMQ? Or wanting to improve your skills? What are you going to make this month?

Finally, I wanted to mention the sponsors for Focus on Free Motion Quilting. Thanks for your support!

Connecting Threads

Hawthorne Threads

Fat Quarter Shop