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Archive for the tag “sewing”

25 Jan 2013

Flannel Binding

If I were to talk about one of the biggest obstacles that I’ve face since I started piecing quilts, top of my list is piecing and binding a flannel quilt. It’s almost like sewing a Lycra skirt together I would imagine. I am a “fair-weather” pinner and will always try to get away without pinning where I’m able, so long as the fabric I’m working with cooperates.

Flannel is one of my favorite fabrics to piece and wrap up in after a well-done job. This is also one of the fabrics that needs the most pinning due to the stretchiness of the material. To go a little into the woods with this topic, when I initially started quilting I wanted nothing more than to make a flannel quilt. Off to the store I went to pick out some of the warmest, softest, and flannely flannel I could find. I purchased much more fabric than was needed using the… “if it calls for a yard and a half why not buy four yards” guy mentality.

This of course saved me. I knew something was off, and at first it was that I had indeed cut the wrong size on a couple of pieces. Standing there trying to line the fabric up after I re-measured however I started to sew only to have the squares go all wonky on me once I tried to join them together. This was my initialization into the world of flannel.

Lesson #1, pin… every… little… piece… to sew it together. Then, pin each and every piece as they come together. Use the steam and weight of the iron to flatten the material and set the seams, do not stretch the material while pressing. Now I know there is someone out there that may be able to sew this without pinning using the proper tension and fabric selection on their sewing machine. When I first started with my singer, I have a difficult time getting this correct. Now that I have a husqvarna viking, it is a little easier, however I still have to ensure I have the machine set correctly.

I’ve posted before about how much I love to put satin blanket bindings on baby quilts, but I wanted these to have more of a homemade look to them. People are finally getting vocal about what works for them on a flannel blanket and I’ve decided to go with the double-fold binding. I’ll cut the fabric 2 1/2″ before folding rather than my normal 2 1/4″ wof.

Lesson #2, Don’t be afraid to leave your comfort zone. I’ll post the pics of these next week to show you how they turned out.

Until next time,

Keep Sewing!!

Posted in Blogs, Daily, How to and tagged beginner, Binding, blogging, crafts, Fabric, learning, manage, project, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Sew, sewing, Sewing machine, singer, Viking | Leave a comment

22 Jan 2013

3 Comments

Are you like a crazy person?

I love the world of quilting. I love to design, sew, and finish these wonderful projects. I am especially fond of having a finished product to admire at the end of all my hard work. The flurry of the holidays is long since passed for me and my time is starting to open back up ever so slightly. If I am to be perfectly honest, I’ve noticed that something has been missing in my life, a certain lack that when I tried to pinpoint exactly what it was, I realized that I hadn’t created anything new at all for over two months.

Does anyone else feel the same when life has “caught them up”? Given the fact that the holidays are a busy time for both work and life in general, I sacrificed one of my passions to make room for others. It’s the dance we do when a choice has to be made.

The Persian Plum that I started last year will be complete by next weekend and then it’s off to the quilters. Between then and now, I have two flannel blankets that simply need to be bound and they will be complete as well. I should have pictures up of those by tomorrow.

To everyone reading… Thank you for all your wonderful comments, they mean a great deal to me and are very much appreciated.

Sew Happy!!

Posted in Block of the Month, Blogs, Daily and tagged beginner, Binding, block of the month, blogging, Christmas, Christmas quilt, crafts, Fabric, learning, manage, project, purple, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Sew, sewing, Sewing machine

13 Oct 2012

2 Comments

My Recent Troubles with the Christmas Quilts…

It’s been crazy with work lately… Posting up what my projects are and what I’m currently doing has taken a back-seat to work, home, and sewing. I knew this was going to be a beat-down that will continue through next week but am able today to give a brief account of what I’ve managed to eek out.

While working on the original Christmas quilt, I was showing Kay a video on more patterns with which to make quilts and found one on YouTube of one that to me looked perfect for another Christmas quilt. It’s basically a Jelly Roll pattern for a quilt and since Kay had a Jelly Roll sitting around with nothing to do, she decided to attempt it. While I, having a lot of extra Christmas fabric, decided to start on a second quilt without finishing my first! I know everyone understands what spurs us on to do that…

So, I’m working furiously during my off time to get this new one completed and realized that I had not finished Teagan’s binding so I could send it out. I stopped working on the new Christmas quilt and finished up Teagan’s. With that accomplished, I pulled out both of the Christmas quilts and while looking at the first decided to incorporate some embroidery into the pattern.

As you can see I’ve become distracted and have lost focus… the only good news is that I AM progressing on getting these two quilts finished until…

While reading through a quilting magazine, I came across a really simple quilt pattern that I thought would be perfect to use with some flannel material. You can already guess what I did, I stopped working on the Christmas quilts and am 2/3 the way through this new quilt.

Alas, I have no willpower when it comes to starting new projects while the old ones languish waiting to be finished.

Posted in Blogs, Daily and tagged beginner, blogging, Christmas, Christmas quilt, crafts, Fabric, learning, manage, project, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Sew, sewing, winter

26 Sep 2012

6 Comments

Quilts and the iPad

Like almost every quilter I have a phone and a computer. I read a lot of books as well, though mostly fiction. Until recently I had a Nook from Barnes & Noble that I used for the bulk of my electronic reading, but a friend of mine was upgrading his iPad 1 to and iPad 3 and made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse. If you’ve ever held an iPad, you’ll notice a huge difference in weight between it and an e-reader.

As great as it was, it was just too heavy to use for reading and it languished on a shelf for a while. One day while flipping through a favorite quilting magazine I noticed on the back an advertisement showing that you could put a subscription of the magazine on the iPad. Color me intrigued!! Though for me, the iPad is much too heavy to use for normal reading… the larger screen and size is actually ideal for walking around with quilting patterns and instructions.

You may be saying that a magazine is just as easy, but I’ll make two points about ease of use. One, the most distracting thing is to have a magazine open while reading cutting instructions and have the pages flip on me while I’m reading it. This invariably leads to some not so nice verbiage from me. Secondly, I can carry around 12 issues… or 32 quilt patterns chock full of pictures, measurements, and ideas that can inspire my creativity wherever I am.

Send me a note on what you do to inspire your creativity!

Posted in Books, Daily, Reviews and tagged beginner, blogging, books, crafts, Fabric, gadgets, learning, manage, project, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Review, Sew, sewing, technology

24 Sep 2012

Finished at the last gasp

Kay was getting a little upset as I started putting on the first of my planned borders for the Christmas quilt. We had two hours before we needed to leave to get to Linda’s house clear across town and I was just starting to put the first of three borders on. I really meant to do them the day before, but lacked the motivation.

Meanwhile, Kay had a lot to finish and DID do a lot of it the day before with only a little bit remaining on the day we needed to turn it over to the quilter Linda.

As I was sewing on the first border, I looked at the back and realized that a patch was all wonky! That’s what I get for trying to go too fast… another ten minutes wasted. I finally got on-track and managed to get all three borders sewn on in less than two hours. The last border was the toughest and required the most amount of attention with all the seams it had.

We were talking to Linda after we had arrived and were discussing thread colors and quilt patterns and I looked down at the six piles of fabric, their backing, and the batting realizing that this represented six quilts (translated… a LOT of difficult work) and it honestly put me in awe of what we had accomplished. Two of the quilts Kay had ear-marked for a firehouse, one of the large purple ones to our oldest daughter Amanda for her birthday, and the last three to keep.

As I mentioned before our daughter Samantha had a valid point that we can only use so many at a time. I really do like having them around the house though… on the backs of our couches, on the bed, and in the closet. I keep saying 10 more quilts should be sufficient, but don’t feel the slightest bit of bad when I make one for a relative and two for me. It’s not like we’re charging anyone.

Anyway, I actually wrote all of this to say that by the time I’d finished the Christmas quilt we had to leave immediately. Yes, I did finish all three borders. With Kay’s help I had the backing sewn as well. As we rushed them out to the car I realized that I hadn’t taken the photo of it yet. Delaying our trip slightly more, I placed the last bundle in the back of the car and snapped a quick shot of all six bundles on their way to the quilters.

Posted in Daily and tagged Batting, beginner, Binding, blogging, Christmas, Christmas quilt, crafts, daughter, Fabric, learning, manage, project, purple, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Sew, sewing, Sewing machine, winter | Leave a comment

11 Sep 2012

4 Comments

Our daughter put us to shame

So it looks like Autumn is coming to Texas finally!! I realise that we may yet have a few more days that the heat makes us uncomfortable, but with this forecast it’s a promising sign that we’ve turned the corner and can start pulling out those quilts soon.

Have to love it when the weather cooperates!!

On an entirely different note, I did over the weekend manage to finish binding the schoolhouse quilt and the Land of Whimsy quilt. Since my daughter was here and will be thru Thursday, we decided to try to complete a mini apiece to hang on the wall as a family project. This started out really great with all of us picking out the pattern that we were to complete and then… Kay started working on a completely different project (more on that project later), I initially was helping our daughter determine fabrics and layout, and finally I realized that both sewing machines would be in use so I opted to finish the bindings of the other quilts.

In the end, only one mini quilt was near completion and almost ready to be bound… our daughter’s mini. We still plan on finishing our minis later on, but will not be doing it as originally thought as a family project. I’m okay with that however, as I was able to spend a lot of time with our daughter discussing quilting and watching her abilities grow.

The other thing I was able to accomplish was to finish my niece’s daughter’s quilt. This is a picture of the backing that I finally decided on and now just need it quilted down.

Posted in Daily and tagged beginner, blogging, crafts, daughter, Fabric, learning, mini quilt, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Schoolhouse, Sew, sewing, Sewing machine, Viking

07 Sep 2012

2 Comments

Work Took Over My Week

My daughter came into town this week, but with everything that is still going on at work I haven’t really been able to spend too much time with her. She brought her half-finished quilt and we are determined that this weekend I will not think about work at all, but help her out with her project.

On a funnier note, I had tried a new quilter who was very inexpensive on a sage garden quilt that I had finished piecing. Last night for two hours my wonderful daughter was pulling stitches out of the quilt and got further along than I would have thought was possible. I’ll have to find a way to reward her for all this hard work because I thought it was a lost cause. I don’t know what to say to the quilter who obviously was trying to do a good job, any advice?

Our daughter has been teasing that if she’s putting all this work into the quilt that it should be hers afterwards. She even went so far as to accuse her mom and I of “hoarding” quilts! Can you believe it?? When she arrived for her visit we were showing her some of the quilts we’ve finished, the ones we’re working on, and the tops that we’ve completed that are yet to be quilted. She asked where the quilts were going and to whom they were to be given. It was at that moment that she accused us of hoarding our quilts.

This weekend I’ll be finishing the last two blocks from Joann’s Persian Plum quilt kit and be able to start on the setting kit. My goal was to have the quilt finished already, but I’ll be happy having it finished before the end of the year. So many stops and starts on this one, but I really love how it’s coming together.

Posted in Daily and tagged beginner, blogging, crafts, daughter, learning, manage, project, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Review, sewing

04 Sep 2012

The Schoolhouse Quilt is back!!

I was lucky enough to get a call from my quilter on friday, she said my Schoolhouse quilt was complete! Yeah, me!! I picked it up at lunch and brought it home with me, full of promise for getting it bound and hanging on the wall. Alas, It was not to be as I was still on-call for work and had a VERY busy weekend. I did however manage to finish binding three of the sides and with only one side left and me not being on-call anymore I’m certain I can get it completed tonight.

I really enjoyed making this one and can hardly wait to get it hung. Here’s another picture of it close-up.

Posted in Daily and tagged Amish, beginner, blogging, crafts, Fabric, learning, manage, project, purple, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Sew, sewing | Leave a comment

24 Aug 2012

9 Comments

Soldiering On

I’m in the middle of sewing some of the Christmas blocks together and I hit a wall. I turned off my sewing machine and unplugged the iron from its power source. I don’t understand why for the life of me I could have been so excited about it one day and then wanting to throw it in the bin the next. Have you ever felt like that? It is turning out okay, but maybe I feel a little daunted by how much work is going to go into this quilt when it will only be used either for decoration, or just a lap quilt.

Either way, I need to work through this. I don’t have the designed firmly set in my mind, though the design is down on paper. It’s all laid out and measured and I know where each piece is supposed to go. I don’t know if I’m sold on the four-square piece that will be interspersed with it though.

If anyone has any suggestions or advice, let me know…

Posted in Blogs, Daily and tagged beginner, blogging, bored, crafts, diy, Fabric, home, learning, manage, project, quilt, Quilting, Quilts, Sew, sewing

22 Aug 2012

2 Comments

It’s Never Too Early to Start a Christmas Quilt

So I started last night thinking about the first Christmas quilt of the season. What pattern to use though? Here is a quick preview of the fabric I’m going to be using.

Now, in my previous post I mentioned that it’s a good idea to have already picked a pattern out… and I did, I promise. I may still actually use the pattern I picked in the end, but while playing around with the Electric Quilt software I came across a block that with a little embellishment would highlight the blue fabric like I wanted.

The next thing I knew I was designing an entire quilt around the block I created. I have the look that I wanted but don’t yet know if I’ll change it in the end. Here is the finished test block, I still don’t know if I want to fussy-cut the fabric… it just seems such a waste, but I may end up doing it in the end.