Books quilts and sewing

Remember you're unique!! Just like everyone else.

Archive for the month “May, 2012”

09 May 2012

Quilt swap II

A word on quilt swaps, or maybe more than just one word… I entered into my second quilt swap three weeks ago and as I previously wrote was determined to make a better showing than the first one I entered. What’s a quilt swap?

There are different kinds at different sites and all have their own unique set of rules. I joined one on Flickr called Little Quilt – Sew, Vote, Swap Group at this site. http://www.flickr.com/groups/sew_vote_swap/
The basics of this site is to make a mini quilt no smaller than 12” x 12” and no larger than 20” x 20” using your best effort. The quilt must be bound and quilted either by machine or hand before entering the quilt in the swap at a pre-determined date. Once that cutoff date is reached, the moderator posts a voting sheet to each quilter where you set your preferences from 1 thru 20. One being the quilt you want to be sent most, two being your second choice and so on…

Not to get too much further into the rules, depending on how many votes your quilt receives determines which of your choices that you’ll receive. During the first quilt swap I ended up literally swapping with the person. You guessed it, as big as the odds are on something like that, the person that was to receive my quilt was the person whose quilt I received as well.

So bring it back to the current or second quilt swap, mine will be traveling outside of the country, but whose quilt do you think I received… You guessed it, the same person who made the last mini quilt in the first swap. You’d think I’d be upset, although I wish I could have received one from another quilter for variety I was happy to receive a beautiful quilt from a true artist. I did send her a quick note saying that she should just send me her next one as well ahead of the swap…

Here is the beautiful quilt that I received on this second swap!!

As for how well my quilt finished, I learned a very valuable lesson throughout all this. It really doesn’t matter because everyone views art differently and when you create something that you’re proud of… You’ve already won.

Have you had any interesting quilt swap experiences?

Posted in Daily, Quilt Swap and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment
08 May 2012
24 Comments

Joann Fabric’s Persian Plum Block of the Month

Time to review Joann’s newest Block of the Month, “Persian Plum”. This to me is one of their most striking quilts to date. Plum is the theme throughout this quilt and the visually stunning blocks are at once delicate in color and design and yet seamlessly placed throughout the quilt which when finished measures roughly 82” x 99”.

Each of the 12 blocks carries a different design like; Double Sawtooth Star, Dutchman’s Puzzle, etc. If you’re of a mind to learn some of these different squares, then this BOTM Quilt is for you. I will be starting the quilt this month and posting each block as I finish it. Here’s a preview of some of the colors.

20120508-122618.jpg

Here is the front of the package.  You can see all the different types of blocks used here!!

20120508-122642.jpg

This is the color pallet used for the quilt.

20120508-122702.jpg

I really love the patterns and colors in this kit and hope I can keep myself from trying to piece this together before the year is out!!  But the anticipation is killing me…  I want to see the finished quilt already.  Let me know what you think, should I do this as a monthly block, or throw caution to the wind and finish it this Summer?

Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , ,
07 May 2012

Begin at the Beginning

My wife and I have been quilting now for the past 15 years, but only seriously for the past two.  Because of that we both understand and consider ourselves to be new to quilting.  We read a lot from books, blogs, and watch videos of how to accomplish what we would like to do.

While I don’t think of myself as methodical, I do view my wife’s method of trying new techniques as a bit of a gunslinger setting patterns and colors at odds and really letting her artistic talent out on a romp at times. We’ve talked at length about how we can be successful at this new love of ours called quilting and wanted to start at the beginning.

We’ve accomplished the ¼” seam, learned how important it was to follow directions until we knew where they were trying to go.  We learned and experimented with quilt composition; determining what materials we wanted to use and how colors would go together best within the design.  I did quite a bit of research in regards to binding. Not only have I found a technique simple to use,  the finished work comes out with clean corners every time. We learned some of the basic quilt blocks, flying geese, bear paw, and others.  All while this was going on, our quilts began to look better and better.  We didn’t learn what we know in a vacuum however, but from examining the many works from other quilters. We’ve extracted pattern ideas, color schemes, blogged techniques but most comes through our own trials and error.

I do get frustrated at times when I’ve had to rip a seam for the third time, but can laugh at my mistakes also and soldier on even when I know that a square may still be a little off-kilter.  My wife has said that this is one of the most valuable things that she has learned from me, that it’s okay to move past a mistake and not spend hours trying to attain perfection in a learning environment.  My wife suggested that I take a moment and also talk about pinwheels…  This for us was one of the most technically difficult/fun/frustrating things that we did.

Our 23-year-old daughter has been asking about making a quilt and has come down from Kansas to spend the next three weeks with us.  She is familiar with a sewing machine but I think her expectations are a little more than her skill level.  She looks at quilting as just sewing a lot of straight lines.  As she described the quilt she wanted to make my eyes grew bigger and bigger.  80” x 110” paper pieced with non-traditional binding.

I wanted to be sure that I didn’t put her off quilting and ran across this website for tips to get your daughter involved in quilting:

http://www.joscountryjunction.com/?p=5307

After talking it through she is going to try something a little less intense for her first quilt though she is sticking to her guns on the size of the quilt.  I think back on all of the different techniques I’ve learned and all that I have yet to learn and I can’t help but wish that she would let me work with her and begin at the beginning…

Any advice?

Posted in Daily and tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment
04 May 2012
4 Comments

Using my Viking Sapphire 835

I’ve recently purchased an amazing sewing machine. I started out with a Brilliance 6180 Singer sewing machine which I still love for a lot of different reasons and if there’s enough interest later on I’ll give a review of it. For now I want to talk about the new sewing machine in my life, the Viking Sapphire 835.

This machine was obviously made for large amounts of work. I have to say that like a lot of other people that I talked to spending over $1000 for a sewing machine was an enormous leap from the $200 I paid for my Singer. I went to several different stores and once I located a Joann’s that I wanted to make the purchase at, I had to have visited it on six different occasions before finally making the purchase.

To say that I had a long learning curve with this machine would be an understatement… I stopped sewing for two days at one point because I couldn’t figure out how to set up the stitch I wanted. The NOISE!!! How can I describe the feeling and joy of being able to hear while sewing? There are too many favorites to say that one function is better than another, but being able to hear is definitely in the top five. What other improvements do I love? I’m sure we’ve all been sewing and then have reached a seam or two that changes the thickness that we’re sewing through… Sewing with the Sapphire you won’t miss a beat, or have your seam move. The machine effortlessly glides over whatever thickness of fabric you happen to be sewing through. That alone has turned out to be worth the cost.

20120504-144731.jpg

Posted in Reviews and tagged , , , , , , ,
03 May 2012
2 Comments

Joanna’s Block of the Month Quilt

The year before last, let’s call it Christmas 2010 I purchased all twelve of the “block of the month” packages from Joann’s fabric store. I was really good keeping up each month with the blocks up until about September where I really lost steam. I actually started making Christmas quilts from flannel which was more rewarding to me at the time.
The block of the month quilt suffered however, from neglect and with only three blocks to go. This weekend I’m going to bring needle and thread to bear and tackle those last three pesky blocks.

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , ,
03 May 2012
2 Comments

Hand Quilting

So after thinking about it for a while I wanted to show the back to show off some of the stitching

20120503-153356.jpg

Posted in Quilt Swap and tagged , , ,
02 May 2012

Quilt swap

I’ve been involved with two quilt swaps now and wanted to do much better this second time around than the first.

This is a picture of the first one I made for the quilt swap and unfortunately made last place.

20120502-123207.jpg

I decided to put a lot more effort into the next one and had been reading about Amish quilts, the colors, the quilting, and the styles. It was a lot more effort to put it together.

20120502-142814.jpg

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Post Navigation

Newer Entries →