It's a New Year! How did THAT happen?!

ACK!  It is 2013!  I am not sure how THAT happened!  Happy New Year to you all!  I hope 2013 will be a year of fun, safety, good health, and smooth sewing for everyone.  I know, I know, I pulled a disappearing act on you.  Well, the house is built and we moved in the week before Thanksgiving.  Of course, the entire family descended upon us for Thanksgiving!  The nice part about that was that everything in the new house got tested and I can say, everything works!  : )

This is what the new sewing room looked like about two weeks ago.

It is looking much better now but still not organized the way I hope it will be.

So....I am going on another road trip in February.  I will be visiting some new quilt shops and giving you the scoop on what they have going on.  I think I need to do a giveaway when I get back the first part of March.  That ought to help kick off the new year right!  I will be picking up some goodies along the way as I hop around the country checking on quilt shops.  I will be giving away said goodies when I return so stay tuned, pay attention as there might be some questions involved.  More information will be forthcoming on the giveaway.

I hope all your Christmas projects got finished on time and that you all had a wonderful holiday season.   The new sewing room got "Christened" by my grand daughter, Bela, as she worked on some Christmas presents.  I am one very proud Nana!

Keep Doodling!  You get better each day! : D

Still Doodling!

Yes, I am still here!  Yes, we are still going to finish these diamonds.  Remember this?  I started off showing you the green stippling in the center.  Next I am going to jump to the pink cobblestones or pebbles or circles...according to what you would like to call them.

The cool part about doing cobblestones is that you can travel anywhere you need to go.  This design is very thread heavy so make sure you have plenty of the same thread before you start out to cobble your way around a border!  For now, we are just filling in one diamond so it isn't a problem.  As you look at the finished star and all the different colors of thread that I used on it, I worked using one color of thread at a time and moved all around the star.  I tried to evenly distribute the colors so as not to make a side by side color mistake.  So....I actually started this project with the pink.

Next, I tried my version of Ivory Spring's jester hats.  Please see Ivory Spring's blog to see a great tutorial on how she does her jester hats.

This star is a sampler class that I teach.  I got tired of making little squares or rectangles to fill with different quilting designs so my students would have something to refer back to.  This star looked more interesting and something that could be finished as desired or made into a pillow.  Ok, I confess, I have lots of pieces of quilt sandwiches pinned all over my sewing room with design ideas that I have tried.  I know a lot of you make sample books to keep track of the different designs you have tried.  That's a great idea if I could make myself sit down and do it.  This seemed like the next best thing.

The house is coming along.  We do have a driveway now and hopefully we will have a final grade and some grass before too long.  Of course, I am itching to get moved into the new sewing room!  I think it will be filled as soon as I can start moving stuff into it.  Building our own home has truly been a labor of love....and I sincerely hope this is a one and only time to do it!  While this project has taken up any and all free moments, another new addition to the family came along.

Meet Hunter William Diehl.  He arrived on July 30 and promptly took over.  It has taken older brother, Tyler, a bit of getting accustomed to having competition for attention but he has adjusted.  Hunter is the newest grandchild in our growing ensemble.  I can just imagine him riding his tricycle and chasing his cousins around in the new house.  Looking forward.....: D

I will try to get back to business and finish up the diamonds as well as move on to other projects.  Please bear with me until I have more control over my own schedule.  Thank you!

For those of you in or near Oklahoma, I will be teaching a feathers sampler class at Prairie Quilt in Hennessey, OK.  This is a wonderful shop and I have been invited by the Enid Quilt Guild to present my program on threads and teach the feathers class the following day.  Mark your calendars for October 15 for the "Taming the Wild Threads" program and October 16 for the feathers class.  Please contact Prairie Quilt at www.prairiequilt.com to find out more information.  Hope to see you there!

In the meantime....

Keep Doodling!  

Fill in the Diamonds

Ok, let's start filling in the diamonds.  Please refer back to the paper pattern if you want to follow along as we stitch out these designs.  Start at the beginning of this blog if you would like a more in depth discussion of how to free motion quilt.  Most of these designs have been addressed individually earlier in the blog.  However, we will do some review.  : )   So, for you speed demons....bear with me.

Set up your sewing machine
Here, mine has my supreme slider in place and my free motion foot on.

I am using 40 wt. polyester thread for these because the thread color is bright and it shows up well on the black background fabric.  I put mine on a thread stand to feed into the machine.  I love thread stands--they make life easier.  Make sure you get one with a solid, sturdy metal bottom so it won't tip over.

PULL UP YOUR BOBBIN THREAD!  Ok, you all know this is a pet peeve of mine.  If you want to enjoy sewing and not cleaning out the thread mess from your bobbin, always know where your bobbin thread tail and your top thread tail are.  Take one stitch while holding on to your top thread tail.  Then pull gently on that top thread tail and your bobbin thread should pop up as a loop.

Pull the thread completely up and then hold both thread tails in your left hand as your begin to sew.  For this sampler, we are taking the easy way out and just take a couple of stitches in place and then as you begin to stitch away from where you started, you can snip the thread tails off close to your fabric.

Beginning to stipple away from where I started.

Thread tails have now been clipped.  The stipple is a wavy, curvy line that tries to stay evenly spaced and doesn't have points in it.  Practice a little as this design is a very useful utility stitch that you can fall back on for many things.

Now--what is this?  This is the worker laying the linoleum tile floor in my new sewing room!  I told you that my DH and I were building our retirement home complete with a sewing room.  Our new house is a rather old fashioned style so the bottle green linoleum fits very nicely.  Plus...I love it!  The new kitchen also has the bottle green linoleum in it.  So, this is just by way of an explanation of my disappearances from time to time.  There is a house being built.  I will share another photo of the porch swing as soon as I get it hung and painted.  : )

In the meantime,
Keep doodling!  Also...stay cool!!!  It was 104 here today....Yuck!  I don't do hot!

Quilting the Star/ Metallic Thread

Let's get started on our sampler!  You have drawn the star out on black fabric.  You have "sandwiched" it for quilting.  Now we have to "outline" the spaces we are going to fill in.  To do that, we will be working with metallic thread.  I know--I hear all the time about how difficult metallic thread can be.  Let me assure you that it can be one of your best friends in your thread stash.

Metallic threads today are very different from the thread of several years ago.  All of the name brand manufacturers are now making wonderful metallic threads that work beautifully in your machine.  The best way to see if you have a good one is to unwind about 2 feet of the thread from the spool.  Let it hang straight down.  If it relaxes and hangs straight--Yay!  you have a thread that will perform beautifully.

If, however, it curls and winds back upon itself--throw it away.  It will never perform for you.  All that twisting and curling will happen as it feeds into your machine.  Just imagine what will happen when it gets to the tension disks--yikes!  This is why some older metallic threads caught and stripped the metallic foil off the core polyester when you tried to sew with it.  Yuck--this does not make for a happy sewer.

Let's set up the machine for our outline.  I prefer a Superior topstitch needle in 90/14 size for stitching with metallic thread.  These are titanium needles and the thread just slides through wonderfully!  You can also find success with a Schmetz Metallica needle, size 90/14 as well.  These are the only two needles I recommend.  You can adjust the size according to the thread you are using.  I really prefer to put metallic thread on a thread holder.  When I put it on my machine, it tends to unwind and wind around the spindle.  On a thread holder, it comes off the top and prevents the unwinding from happening.

Put your walking foot on your machine.    It makes it so much easier to sew straight lines such as these. In your bobbin, you can use regular cotton 50 wt. sewing thread or a polyester bobbin thread.  Either will do just fine.  Make sure you bring your bobbin thread tail to the top!  With your feed dogs up, sew straight lines around the whole pattern of the star.  This means you are going to have to go over stitching that you have already stitched to travel around to cover the entire pattern.  That is good!  You are building up your outline to make it easier to stitch inside the lines for each pattern.  I stitched around the whole star at least 3 times.  It added "bling" to my star and strength to my outline.

Next we will move on to stitching out the patterns.  : )

I have a recommendation here.  There is a new quilting book on the market.  It is not about the actual quilting--it is all about designing your quilts.  I have fallen in love with this book because it takes two very different approaches to the design process.  It follows two very fun designers through their process in making quilts from the same units.  It is Debbie Caffrey and Charlotte Angotti and the book is a delight to read through as you see the differences and similarities between these two designers.  This book will really make you head to your design wall to see what you can do.  Check it out at your local quilt shop.  It is titled, "Surprise Yourself!"  You will be very glad you did!

Keep doodling!

Doodling 101

Here is the pattern to make the design I quilted out on black fabric.  It is drawn on a fat quarter of solid black fabric with a white marking pencil.  I used a Sewline mechanical pencil in white.  Yellow also works good on black.

If you click on the picture, it will come up large so you can print it out.  It only gives you the diagram for the designs.  It does not print out the correct size for the star.

These are the exact designs that I quilted out on my sampler.  Please feel free to add or subtract designs that you prefer.  Remember this is just an exercise to play on your sewing machine.  We learn by playing so take the attitude that you are learning so feel free to make mistakes.

I started by drawing three intersecting lines using the 60 degree line on my acrylic rotary cutting ruler.

Then I drew lines 2 inches away from each straight line--avoiding the center triangle as I did so.  No--these will not print out the correct size but it shows you how I drew the star on the black fabric.

Continue to draw lines 2 inches away from each straight line--all the way around. Eventually you will have a six pointed star made from 60 degree diamonds.  Mine was 16 inches from point to point.  That way it fit on a fat quarter (18" X 21")

This was by far the hardest part!  Ugh.  I must find a stencil for this star.  The nice part was looking at the diamonds knowing that I only had those small areas to fill in with each design.  : )

See you soon so warm up your needles!

Where Is The Disappearing Quilter?

Wow!  I didn't realize I had been "gone" quite so long!  I hope you have had a nice break and rest.  This time of year is filled with graduations, end of school, sports tournaments, etc. so I know you are all much busier than I am.  That said, I have a new class that I would like to share here.  This is the sample that we did in the first go around of Doodling 101.  What do you think?

I decided I was tired of doing squares and rectangles of samples of quilting designs and wanted to do something that would be worth keeping and finishing.

I will share some pictures here and we will start with the pattern and each design in the following posts.

Please note that this was done on a fat quarter with another fat quarter for the backing.  : )

I am making a pillow out of mine after I finish quilting the background.

Get some black fabric and let's PLAY!

See you soon so join me!

This is doodling gone wild!  : D

Quilter's Cottage, Garden City, SC

Alas, we are coming to the end of our adventure....just for the moment and until I can drum up another one : D.  Our last quilt shop visit was in Garden City, SC at the Quilter's Cottage.  What a lovely and very welcoming shop!  Hmmm......who do I happen to see?

 There is fabric, fabric, and more fabric here at Quilter's Cottage!  The staff was so friendly and helpful.

 There are lots of wonderful samples to whet your appetite.

 I just loving sneaking in among the shelves of fabric....you never know who you will run into.  : )

 Yes, that's my friend and accomplice, Sue, who is pondering a fabric selection.

 Wow!  There's a whole other room full on the other side!.....Ahhhh....sale fabric!!!

 Wait....who did I catch this time?

 Ahhh....the pose....it's Charlotte Angotti.....quilt teacher and hostess for our quilt escape!  Smile*

What more could you ask for?  Charlotte Angotti, Debbie Caffrey (the precision cutting guru and mystery quilt queen) and Pat Roman, shop owner....This must be quilter's heaven!

Yes, we had both Charlotte as our host and her good friend Debbie to hang out with and laugh with, and just generally relax and sew.  THAT'S my idea of a quilt retreat!

If you are so unfortunate as to not have experienced the wonder that is classes by either of these fabulous quilters, please read on for more information.  The two have collaborated on a book entitled, Surprise Yourself, that will be coming out in May.  Having seen a few of the quilts in it, I can say I will be pre-ordering mine.  It is a book on design approaches from two very different quilters.  How wonderful to have them each share their approach to designing quilts....how they are alike.....and how they are different.  Find them on Facebook or the web to check when the book is available.  You can find Charlotte at www.charloteeangotti.com and you can find Debbie at www.debbiescreativemoments.com.  Also look for both of them at the Quilts, Inc shows---Long Beach, Cinncinati, and Houston.  They can usually be found running around the country in between.

Please check out the shop, Quilter's Cottage at www.quilterscottagesc.com.

After that, I had to head back home......well, it was a wonderful adventure!  Thank  you for sharing it with me.  I shall have to think up another quilty adventure to get the creative juices flowing again.

So much inspiration, so much fabric, where to put it all?

The new house is started and here is the new sewing room!

What shall we tackle next?

Keep doodling!  : )