Covered in Threadmalaka’s adventure in sewing

Wow, I feel liberated.  In my quilting class, the only method of quilting we were taught is to stitch in the ditch, which basically means straight lines, only.  By my third quilt, I felt extremely limited, so I decided to teach myself how to free-motion quilt.

Free-motion quilting uses a different presser foot, the darning foot, which I bought awhile back but have been too scared to even take out of the package!  After reading about free-motion quilting for too long, I finally took that baby out and screwed her in.

Then I read this article about how a sewing machine platform is essential to this process, and how to make it.  Because my handy husband was starved for a project (and on a week long vacation from work), he whipped it out without much thought.

I found the ugliest piece of cotton fabric from my stash (which just happened to be Christmas fabric) and made a quilt sandwich to practice on.  Then I went to town, buzzing around.  The correct way to free-motion quilt is to lower the feed dogs, which I did, but then I had problems moving the fabric.  I think I need quilting gloves which will help my hands grip the fabric and move it around.  I read somewhere that a lot of new quilters have had more success with their feed dogs up, so I gave it a shot.  I liked them up much better! I felt like I had more control, which doesn’t seem right.. but after a few minutes I was able to trace the pattern in the fabric pretty well!

This was SO MUCH FUN!!  Much more fun than just straight-lined stitching in the ditch.  I have a tendency to put the pedal to the metal (err.. carpet) which makes my stitching too short, so I need to practice regulating that.  I thought about wedging something under my pedal so I won’t be able to go too fast.

Another fear, overcome!  I feel like I’m learning so much that I can’t make the quilts fast enough to implement all my new tricks!

I washed my charm pack quilt, scared to death it would be ruined when it came out of the dryer because I didn’t pre-wash and I used cheap fabric for the sashing.  Nothing bled, and nothing shrank! It’s a soft, comfy, washed quilt now.  Hooray!  I feel fairly confident that I don’t need to pre-wash my fabrics now, which makes a huge difference.  The cheap white sashing IS a little more see-through than I’d like, so I’ll upgrade that next time I make a quilt with a lot of white in it.

I modified the Amy Butler Birdie Sling pattern to make a smaller bag with a different strap/band for my other sister.  I can’t post pictures because she might see it, and it’s a suprise until she gets here next week.  I’m in love with it though, I think I might have to make a couple more out of the same fabrics.

I also used regular quilter’s cotton for that bag instead of super high quality quilting store fabric.  It turned out just as good, although it tried to fray a little more during the process.  I figure I back everything with so much interfacing, if I can get away with $5.99/yd instead of $9/yd, I can save a lot of money… and it’ll still feel like heavyweight fabric.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with these quilts.  Give them to charity?  Give them to friends?  Hide them away somewhere?  Who knows, who cares?  They’re fun to make and I’m really just still learning.  Everyone keeps asking me what I’m going to do with these things (the husband, mostly!) and I certainly don’t have a good answer.

I finally finished the binding on my third quilt tonight.  I did it by hand, again.  I really want to take the plunge and do it by machine but I’m scared I’ll screw up a perfectly good quilt.  Ok, I’m really not scared.. it’s just that I couldn’t stand using blue thread that could be seen on the white border if I used my machine to bind it.  I did it by hand, again, and it was slightly torturous.

Here she is, it took me a few hours to piece it on Saturday, then a few hours on the backing & quilting on Sunday.  Monday I started hand-stitching the binding and finished early Wednesday evening.  So, it didn’t take all that long.

Here it is with the piece from my stash that I added on the backing.  I always loved this fabric, so I wanted to use it for something and keep it somewhat intact.  Of course, I didn’t have much of it left, so I only used a strip and pieced the back with yellow and blue:

Overall, I’m pretty happy that I pulled it off again without a pattern or anything.  This is my first quilt that I didn’t pre-wash, so I’m about to throw it in the washer and hope for the best.

Things I’d do differently next time (aka: what I learned)

• Pre-wash all my fabrics (I know better!)

• Plan my quilt size.  I ended up with a 52×52 quilt which would be great, except I had to stretch my crib-sized batting to fit it.  I didn’t want to spend the money on a full size batting just to cut it down.  Ok I HAD a full size batting but I didn’t want to waste it!

• I would have used 2 charm packs instead of just one.  I thought supplementing it with white would give me a twin size or larger, but I was wrong.  I had to add a 5″ border just to get it to 50 inches.

• I should have splurged on quilting cotton for the whites instead of using cheap fabric because it was on sale.  I learned my lesson, now I just hope it doesn’t shrink up so much in the wash that my quilt is ruined!

• The metal folding chair I’m currently using as a sewing chair is NOT cutting it.  My entire right shoulder/arm hurts so bad when I’m doing the quilting.  The minute I brought my nice desk chair upstairs, I felt 100% better.  The only problem? Then I didn’t have a desk chair in the office.

• I’m bored with stitching in the ditch.  I need to learn to free motion, stat.

Ok quilting is out of my system for at least a week.  I’ve got the greatest idea for a bag that I can’t wait to make!

I’m devoting an entire entry to charm packs… that’s how excited I am about them, right now.

What’s a Charm Pack?  It’s a stack of 35-40 5″ squares from a collection of a designer’s series.   They all ‘match’ because they’re from the same series.  This drastically reduces my cutting time, and I really don’t like cutting at all…  so that means I love charm packs

Shopping for them is rough, though.. because I want them all!  I have decided that the Fat Quarter Shop (clicky the link to see their awesome selection) has the best selection of charm packs that I’ve found so far.  I bought 3 from them, which should be getting here today.  I should have bought 2 of each, now that I realize I’ll likely need more than one charm pack to make a decent sized quilt.  What I love about these babies is that they’re $7-9 for 35-40 5″ squares.  That means I can make a full sized quilt for about $15 + solids, which I can get on sale at non-quilting stores.

That brings me to my point.   I ran up to the quilting shop that is right around the corner from my house - Ready to Sew.  I was so excited when I found that they had taken over the space next door and had nearly doubled their shop space.  This place is literally 5 minutes from my house, and considering I live so far out of town that nothing is 5 minutes away, you can imagine how happy this makes me.

After I ordered the charm packs from Fat Quarter Shop, I decided too  grab a couple from Ready to Sew and get started on one of the quilts I had been tossing around in my mind (charm pack quilt, see previous entry with inspiration pieces.)

I’m really trying not to be one of those people who calls their fabrics by name, but it does help to know the names so I can purchase more, online if necessary.  These are the two I bought on Saturday:

Here’s the quilt top I started on Saturday from the Nest charm pack:

I had to supplement the charm pack with a few 5″ squares from my stash because I wanted to try a little bigger quilt this time. I used cheap white fabric, which will likely ruin this quilt once I wash it. Last night I pieces together a backing, using solid teal, solid yellow, and one of the prints I used from my stash. I started the quilting, I’m almost done.

New techniques:
Sashing! I totally dove into this one, I have seen so many quilts with borders around the blocks and I didn’t know how to do it. Now I do! It’s easy as pie.

Quilt Border. I wanted to add a five inch border, and it was a little tricky because my quilt was already 44×44, so if I didn’t cut on the bias, I’d have to piece the border together and it wouldn’t look as good. I sat down and thought about it for awhile and realized that I could add a 5″ square on the corners, in white, and that would work.

Quilting from the center. I realized with the border, I didn’t want to start my quilting from the edge, but from where each row started. This was tricky because I probably should have pulled the bobbin thread up, but I didn’t. I guess we’ll see how it turns out..

Pieced backing.  I just can’t seem to make myself use that much of one fabric on the backing.  So, I dug into my stash and pieced it.  I’ve been wanting to try this anyway, and it seems like the hip thing to do

I was still too scared to try free motion quilting.  I did a lot of reading on it though and I think I’m going to take the advice of many out there and create a test sandwich to play around on, then I won’t be ruining a quilt when I screw it up.

Richard would ask me what I was doing quite often during this process and my reply was, as always.. “I have no clue!”

But it was most certainly a lot of fun.  Can’t wait to finish it.

I realized that I had not finished the binding on the two small quilts I made while in class.  I despise hand sewing so I put it off forever.. but I spent most of Sunday finishing those up. I realized on Saturday, while I made my 3rd quilt top, that I couldn’t just have a bunch of unfinished quilts laying around, even though I’m using them as learning tools instead of.. well, you know.. blankets.

I have to tell a story about this quilt because I’m not totally in love with it. See, we learned a LOT about color in quilting class, and then she sent us out to find fabrics. It was hard, we had no idea what we were doing. I put these together and then realized, before it was too late, that I’d probably be happier if I used the brown/blue with something else and the orange/white&pink on another quilt. I brought this up to my instructor and she said NO WAY that this is perfect and it’s modern and beautiful. I think it’s ugly, but it’s my first born so I have to love it anyway, right?

Back:

The quilting class was moving too slowly for me. Basically she didn’t want us to have any ‘homework’ but I wanted to be sewing something outside of class, so I made another quilt while we were learning stuff in class. I’m much happier with it, but any quilter will tell you that it’s TERRIBLE. Why? Well, without boring you with too many details, the design and fabrics and colors are good but the execution is BAD. Nothing matches up. But, I love this quilt! I totally taught myself how to do it, and picked everything out on my own.

(I love this green & brown polka-dot fabric, I should go get some yardage of it before it’s discontinued.)

I should have done more quilting on this one, but I was borrowing a walking foot at that point and had to give it back.  I wanted it done so I went ahead and binded it.. now I wish I would have quilted more.  Oh well, I’m still learning!

I’ve been tossing ideas around in my head for my next quilt.  I’m scared to take on anything bigger than a lap/baby quilt, but at the same time.. why make one if it’s not big enough to use?  So I think I’m going to do something simple, with either more pinwheels or just plain squares with sashing.  I just ordered a bunch of bright charm packs from a local shop (they’re really far south, so it’s easier to order and have her shipped to me!) from Fat Quarter Shop.  Besides, in the sewing world it’s hard to find vendors who keep nice, up-to-date websites… so I’m definitely going to support them (and they’re local, see.. I’m keepig it in the family.)

Here are my two inspiration pieces, from flickr:

flock of triangles quilt by hopskipjump

charm pack quilt, by rose (is red)

I also really want to teach myself to free motion quilt.  I bought the right foot for it, but I’m so scared I’ll make the whole quilt top then screw it up with the quilting!  I guess I’ll use one of the charm packs I bought and make a really simple block top and try out my free motioning.

Applique is on my list too, but I’ve tried it before and took on a project the might have been a little too ambitious, because the appliques were tiny and I got really frustrated.  I’m going to try again with something simple.  Hearts? Stars?  Maybe even circles.. that would be a good use of my 5″ squares from the charm packs.  Ohh.. juices are flowin’!

Most of the time I don’t do anything at all because there’s too much that I want to do.  I need to pick a quilt and start on it!!

I took a trip to Denver last month to see my twin sister and her new baby.  I drug her to a quilting store to look at fabrics (addiction, you know) and she picked up an example in the store and came running up to me with it.  It was Amy Butler’s Birdie Sling.  I groaned because not only did I not like the shape and size of the bag, but the Amy Butler thing is so overdone.  I told her I would consider making it for her.  A month later, she called to inquire about the bag so I decided I better get on it.  On Tuesday after work, I ran up to my favorite local quilting store, Honeybee (bad website, GREAT store!)  I get excited when I walk into craft stores, hardware stores, and fabric stores.  It’s ridiculous, but the idea of creating things makes me really happy.

Back to the point.  I whole-heartedly resisted making this bag, then when I started looking for material, I kept traumatizing myself by looking at too many different things.  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go wild or go practical.  Then I saw it.  Totally wild, totally NOT my sister’s style, but I fell in love.  It was RJR’s Red and Black Soiree (the pictures there do not do this collection justice.)  I specifically stayed away from Amy Butler fabrics, even though my sister loved the whole collection — I couldn’t handle it… it’s way too overdone.  I walked over to the ladies at the cutting table and laid it out for them — they both loved the idea of making it into Amy Butler’s birdie bag.  One of them teaches a class every month on making this bag, so she’s seen lots of combinations.  She loved my idea so much she bought the same fabrics for herself!

I got home and immediately started on the pattern.  I have to admit, I was having a ball with this pattern.  Even cutting it out (my least favorite thing ever!) was fun.  I was scared because this bag had pleats and bands and TONS of interfacing… but I couldn’t wait to see it come together.

I thought it would take me a week to finish, but I completed in about 4 hours.  I even added a bunch of stuff to it that the pattern didn’t call for.  I did some research, since it’s such a popular bag, and lots of bloggers out there had “things I would do next time” so I took that and ran with it.  The “large interior pockets” were too deep, so I shortened them about 2 inches.  They’re still big, deep pockets.  I added a zippered interior pocket and put the “small pocket” right over it.  I also added a keyfob and a magnetic snap on the band.   I had SO much fun with this bag.  I can’t wait to make another Amy Butler bag.  I know, hypocrite!  But, I’m admitting it.

Let me say that Amy Butler’s bags are popular for several reasons.  The first, they’re super cute and modern.  The second — these patterns are a breeze to read.  They work more like tutorials than patterns, and I think that’s why most of our generation has shunned pattern-sewing, because they rarely come with instructions.  Amy Butler’s patterns come with illustrated instructions, walking you through every step.  I felt like I had a teacher.  I never got hung up once.  It was a blast.

with Jasmin, for size

interior