Custom Quilt - Double Wedding Ring Whole Cloth - Quilting

Today's post is all about the quilting that I did for this quilt.  I think it provides a lot of lessons about handling large quilts with wide open spaces!

I got this quilt loaded on the frame, and then quickly realized that I would need to take it off the frame.  Why?

Well, first of all, I hadn't quite decided exactly what I was going to do before loading the quilt, and once I realized what had to be done, I had no choice but to take it off the frame soon after it was loaded.

If you're doing a wholecloth quilt (or something very close to one like this is), you really need to mark the quilt unless you're just going to do an allover pattern from edge to edge and top to bottom.  I can't do this because of the rings in the center.

Second, since I appliqued the DWRs to the quilt, and I couldn't quilt right over them (because of the color change from dark, to light, to medium, and the embroidery) I needed to define them better in the quilt.  The best way to do this is with stitch in the ditch.  On the long arm this can be accomplished with rulers, which I initially tried, but this was extremely painstaking work when you don't have a ruler with a curve that matches what you are doing.

So what I decided to do was take the quilt off the frame and do the stitch in the ditch at my tabletop machine.

To have any hope of getting the quilt back on the frame after it's been partially quilted, I needed to baste the quilt completely.  I did this with a big serpentine stitch:


I prefer basting with a serpentine stitch rather than a straight line because you get more coverage with fewer stops and starts.  I also realized that these machines really do only like quilting from left to right - lots of thread breakage when I tried to go the other direction really fast & really long.  The thread I'm using by the way, is So Fine #402 in the top and bottom. The quilt is an ivory color, and this seemed to blend in the best.

Once the quilt was basted, I took it to my Viking to do the SID work.  I took an extra bobbin that I had wound for Darcy, took a bit of it to wind a bobbin for the Viking, and then used Darcy's bobbin as the top thread:


This just insured I had a perfect thread match.  This exercise made me realize two things: that I hate working with large quilts on a table top machine, and that it's a good thing I have Darcy or this quilt would never have gotten finished.

I decided to do a pantograph design for this quilt instead of custom free motion.  I mentioned this earlier about keeping the customer's budget in mind when you work on these quilts.  I quoted this project to be a certain amount, and I have to make it work within that budget.  Needless to say, pantographs are not necessarily a bad thing - they have their applications and uses and I am glad to have a nice selection to pull from.  This design is actually one that I was saving for my French Liberty quilt, but it works out well on this quilt too:


Now because of the rings in the center, I actually quilted this in a different order than I would normally.  I marked about 2" away from the rings along the top and bottom, and then I quilted the top half (from the rings to the top) and the bottom half (from the rings to the bottom.)  To do the first row, I needed to identify where the rings fell on the pantograph, and mark that on the pattern:


Where the rings fell in the pattern, I then modified the path of the design so that it was still continuous and blended into the design.  To mark the rings, I used the hopping foot of the machine and my needle up/down to mark points along the curve, and drew dots on the grid where the laser light fell.  Then I connected the dots to mark the curve.  I gave myself plenty of room when drawing the new path so there was no chance of running over the rings.  Here's what it looked like stitched out:


As I went, I removed the basting stitches, which is a pain in the neck (literally) but a necessary evil.  You don't want to stitch over the basting because that just makes it doubly hard to get out later.  Also, I didn't want the basting to stay in longer than it needed to, because I didn't want the holes left by the basting stitches to be more difficult to close.

Now with the top half and bottom half stitched, I needed to address the sides of the rings:


For this, I again identified the edge of the rings and centered a row of the pantograph on the quilt.  Then, because there was a gap at the top and bottom, I just did a couple of curly loops to blend in the sections.  So tell me, if I hadn't pointed it out, do you think you would have noticed that filler stitch?


After that, it was time to address the rings themselves.  The two outer rings didn't have any design at all, so I wanted to put something in the center.  I have a matching block that goes with this pantograph, so initially I tried to use the design as a pantograph.  This didn't work out so well:


It ended up being extremely off-center, so I needed to work this from the front of the machine.  I ripped out the original stitches, traced the block pattern onto Golden Threads paper, and pinned it to the quilt. This way I could watch the stitches as I went and make any corrections that were needed:


I traced it using white chalk, because I know this doesn't stain the quilt if the powder gets on it:


After stitching it, I just pulled off the paper.  It's so much better to have it properly centered!


Now you're probably thinking I would leave the embroidered center alone, but I did not.  The quilt needs to be just as beautiful & well thought-out on the back as it is on the front, so the embroidered block needed to have a design too.  To get the right effect, I swapped out the top thread with MonoPoly, which is Superior's monofilament thread.  I had to make a tension adjustment, but the MonoPoly just blends into the front, while giving a consistent design on the back.  Here's a close up of the rings from the front:


And a view from the back:


And here's the quilt coming off the long arm:


In another post, I'll talk about the finishing process for this quilt and some other goodies!

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

More Feathers...

There was a show new to Chicago called the "Sewing and Quilting Expo" that was here last weekend, and I had the opportunity to take more classes and continue my feather exploration.  I took a total of 3 classes - one was an applique class where I learned a new method to applique circles, and the other two classes were on the long arm.  I was fortunate to have signed up for a class called "Feathers for the Feather Phobic" and I'm really glad that I did because I learned a third way to make feathers!

I don't know for sure which method I like better, but I can see where they would all have their different applications.  The neat thing about making these feathers is that they don't incorporate any backtracking and they don't have to be connected together.

Here are a few photos from my sampler. The basic feather looks like this:


The things you have to watch out for is to make sure you "hook" around deep enough to form the shape, and that you leave yourself enough room to bounce back out of the hook.

Once you get that method down, you can start to vary them.  Here's one variation with spirals:


Here's another variation with multiples stacked on top of one another, and a different flourish at the tips:


I had a lot of fun trying the different techniques.  I personally find this one easier to do than the other methods I've learned, but it could be that because I had the fortune to take the other class first at Handi Quilter (and so closely to this one) I was able to adapt more quickly to the movement.

The instructor gave me a very nice compliment too - she asked if I'd considered teaching, because I'd be good at it.  I was going around helping other people with the machines and their feathers.  We were working on the Gammill Vision (a fussy machine if I EVER saw one, and so glad I didn't get it & got Darcy instead!)

Once I got the hang of it, I started combining techniques - stacking rooster combs, combining with spirals... the possibilities are virtually limitless.


We ran out of time to do shapes, but I did manage to try to fill a large triangle.  Let's just say that one is gonna take a lot more practice.  :)

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

Conquering My Nemesis: Feathers on the Long Arm!

When I first got Mr. Darcy, my feathers looked like this:

I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I was in for a steep learning curve.  People told me to practice drawing.  I did - for a little bit... but that only proved to me that I couldn't draw them either. I watched videos, read some books, drew some more... a couple of folks suggested that maybe feathers weren't my "thing" and not do them, and then I developed a complete mental block over feathers because I told myself over and over how much I could not do them.  So far I've refused to put any feathers on a quilt - not even by pantograph.

Well, since this is the year of HONE (my word for the year) I've decided once & for all to tackle my fear and try to remove the mental block.  So this week, I'm attending a course called "Advanced Techniques" offered by HandiQuilter, and then on Friday I'll be attending a class at the Sewing & Quilting Expo called "Feathers for the Feather Phobic."  Yup, that's me!

So in my advanced techniques class, first we focused on micro-quilting.  We spent the day working on a little microquilting sampler with different designs in each, and a special set of handles.  Maybe I'll remember to actually take a photo of them so you can see them in action!  I don't own them myself... yet, but I can definitely see where they will come in handy.  Here is a picture of my sampler before I took it off the machine:



These squares are 3" - so that should give you a little bit of an idea of how small each element is.  I couldn't help pulling something out of the Leah Day manual and adding to my sampler in the lower right.  :)

One of the things we learned is how to mark the quilt using different marking tools.  Getting comfy with chalk, stencils, and different marking pens was one of the goals.  I normally hate marking quilts with anything but sidewalk chalk but I think the lightbulb went on that experienced quilters didn't get that way by not marking, and sometimes you need to do it to get the effect you want.  I also learned that microquilting can cause you to lose 6-8" across a quilt - WOW!  Whenever you microquilt, that should always be the last thing you do, after the rest of the quilt is stabilized and you've marked out the areas where the microquilting will go.

Anyway, as fascinating as this all is, the point of me getting up early, before class, to post - is to show you my feathers!

On Monday afternoon, we sat down to draw feathers.  The instructor drew them on the board showing how - we tried feathers with spines in a border, on a curvy spine, in a square, diamond, and triangle... and that darn mental block was super stubborn!  I was nearly in tears (literally!) because I get frustrated when something doesn't come easily to me.  Then we tried a little bit of McTavishing, and that made me nearly cry too because I know that it's just free curves and echoing, but for some reason I couldn't get that either.  I think I was just really tired - microquilting is no joke.  Those 19 squares you see took nearly 7 hours to do, and after you do all that, you're just really not ready for anything else but dinner.

After getting back to the hotel, I tried practicing drawing feathers, but I kept getting stuck, and with no one around to help, I just gave it up as a lost cause and went to bed.

The next morning, I went down for breakfast, and was trying to practice.  One of the ladies (SanDee - a sweetheart if you ever knew one) sat down at my table and coached me everytime I got stuck.  I'd stop and say, "I'm lost!" And she'd talk me through it.  Eventually... a breakthrough!

Yesterday, we had to create a sampler using rulers, stencils, and freehand feathers... on black fabric with a thick, loud thread.  Quilting with thick thread is like drawing with a felt tip marker - every hesitation or missed line shows up like you wouldn't believe.

My first feather was pretty scary looking (ok - all of them were scary) but as I practiced, my confidence grew.  I started to feel more comfortable with it.  I'm still not very good at it, but I'm better than I was, and I actually love embellishing the feathers - it hides mistakes like you wouldn't believe!  So here are a couple of photos of some of my feathers:



At the very top on the left is a feather that was created from a stencil.  I still had to freehand them to a certain extend because a lot of the chalk had rubbed off, and I couldn't see where they were. When you make feathers this way there's a fair amount of backtracking over things you've already stitched, and I don't have enough feather practice to always hit the line - and you can see that.

The feather on the lower left was also a stencil, and I went around the design once to create the design, then went back over it again to add the embellishments and the center design.  You can see how thick my backtracking stitches are around the paisley!

On the right are swags created from a ruler (I'm actually pretty good at ruler work) and then feathers I freehanded by using the swag as a spine.  I had a couple of "oopsies" but overall those were really fun to do & made me feel like I could put feathers anywhere.

Feathers also tend to look better the next day - when you're not standing over them stressing about a missed backtrack.  If I were using a thinner thread that didn't contrast so much, I'm pretty sure they'd look even better.

There's a sign in the classroom that says something about the pursuit of excellence being of real worth, and the pursuit of perfection as a colossal waste of time because there is no joy in that kind of effort.  I need to copy down that quote because it really puts things in perspective.

Here is another feather:


So what do you think?  Have I had a complete feather makeover? Anybody itching to have feathers on their quilt?

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

Long Arm Quilting: Return to Sender

You know, I really debated whether to post this or not tonight, because I don't want to end up sounding like a witchy, spiteful harpy. In the end, I decided this particular incident was worth sharing because... well, quilting isn't all roses and sunshine.  Now, mind you... I do still hold some things back.  There's a difference between sharing the good/bad/ugly and just plain gossiping.  I hope that I have enough sense not to embarrass someone or make them feel ashamed when I post something, or air my dirty laundry just so I can say I'm being open and transparent.  You guys don't get EVERYTHING but you get enough; but in this case, I just think it's worth telling my side of this story (as far as I can see it) in case anyone ever has a question about the way I run my business.

Let me bring everybody up to speed: last fall, I decided to invest in a long arm machine, and after reading a lot of forums and information, the consensus was that you needed to get about 200-300 hours quilting on it before you could start taking in customer projects.  Well, with all the things I have going on, I knew that there's no way I could make quilt tops fast enough to get in that much practice.  I decided that to accelerate the learning process, I needed to practice on quilts that other people have made. So between October 15 and December 1, I decided to offer "free" quilting to anyone who sent their quilts in by the deadline, and agreed to follow my rules. I thought it would be fun (and for the most part it has been) and I'd learn a lot in a short period of time (which I have already.)

Now one of the very, very basic rules that I asked people to follow was to not send me anything in expectation of a delivery date. You get it when you get it, as I can fit them in with the other things I'm doing, and working around the clients who pay me to make quilts for them. Of course anyone has the option to ask me to return their quilt at any time (no harm, no foul) or could pay me to do the quilting (price list is here) and immediately jump to the front of the list.  I have NEVER missed a customer deadline; I've always tried to accommodate people, and when I make a mistake I own up to it and correct it to the best of my ability.

I feel like I've been making pretty good progress at a decent pace on my quilting. Since the deadline was December 1, NO ONE was getting quilted before then.  I did want to practice on a couple of mine first before digging into someone else's quilt, plus I needed to order thread (so much cheaper to order 30 spools at once than one spool every other week, trust me), Darcy needed surgery, I had Fall Market to attend and get out the Christmas orders.  I've been getting about two free quilts done a month, in addition to the 2-3 customer & studio projects.  That's a quilt every week, which isn't bad for someone holding down a full-time job and running another company too!

But something happened today that is just beyond the pale, and I'd like to explain what happened and how I handled it, because I'm pretty sure that someone else, somewhere, will have to deal with a difficult situation, like this, and wonder how someone else might handle it in the same position. So here's the story.

Back in November, I got a phone call from someone who found out about the free quilting offer, and asked if she could drop off her quilts and get on the list. At the time, I was at Fall Market, so I told her she could drop them off at my mailing office and I'd pick them up when I got back.  I also gave her a brief summary of the rules but told her I would email her the complete information so she would know what was up.

I did that, thought everything was fine, and continued bopping along.  Regular readers know that I post at least 1-2 times a week about what's going on in the studio, who's up next, who just got done, etc. Well, this person isn't on the computer very much, so she asked me to just email her when they got done.  No problem!

You all know that I have 30 free quilts to do.  Some are gonna be done early, some later, and some in the middle somewhere.  I do want everyone to get their quilts back by Christmas, so I expect to pick up the pace a little more in the summertime - but in the mean time, I'm just bopping along.

She emailed me again about a month later (gosh - how fast time flies!) and asked if her quilts were done.  So I said no... but offered the option to send them back if she was in a hurry, or said she could pay for the quilting & go right to the front of the list. She declined and just said, "I don't want you to forget about me."  Nope, I won't! I have 30 to do... they are all hanging in the closet nice & neat... not gonna get lost or forgotten... So I continued bopping along!

Now... fast forward to today.  I was out running errands and stopped by the local quilt shop to show off my magazine submission quilt.  One of the ladies in the shop told me that this woman had called them, asked if they'd heard of me, and then proceeded to complain to them about how long I'd had her quilts.

WHA?!?!?!

Can I just express how annoyed I was at that?  I mean, on one hand... YES I've had everybody's quilts for a long time and I do feel guilty about keeping people waiting... but on the other hand, I have been completely up front and open with everyone, I'm sharing what I'm learning, I'm showing progress, and I'm not holding anybody's quilt hostage. As long as everybody is cool and in agreement still, we can continue on; the minute someone is not cool and no longer wants to wait, all you have to do is ask me for your quilt and I am HAPPY to oblige. 

But calling local companies where I do business, to badmouth me, when I'm not doing anything wrong?  That's just so... so... NOT COOL.  And it makes me sad to have my reputation marred because someone decided to take a passive-aggressive approach and talk about me behind my back, meanwhile sending me sweet little emails with smiley faces and wishing me a good day in the sunshine.  How many other places has she called to sully my name, where I don't know the people well enough to be able to overcome her smear?

So... tonight, I wrote a very professional email to her, letting her know how saddened I was to hear from someone else how unhappy she was, and in order to prevent any further anxiety or unhappiness, I was packing up her quilts and sending them back unfinished at my own expense.  I sealed the box this evening, put it by the door for my errand running tomorrow, and can honestly say I haven't felt such relief at sealing a box containing unfinished work since I sent off the Queen Sized Monstrosity last year to someone else to quilt.  :)

I've taken away several things from this situation, which I'll summarize here:

1. ALWAYS remain professional.  Sometimes your first inclination isn't always the best.  I've probably slipped up more than once in this post.  Maybe I'm being a little passive-aggressive & hypocritical too by sending a professional email but blasting her on my blog.  So, do as I say, not as I do.  :)
2. Know when to cut your losses.  Difficult customers are rarely worth the trouble it takes to keep them. I'm not suggesting that lodging a complaint makes one a difficult customer, but the way people handle conflict and disagreements usually gives you a good idea of what to expect in the future. If someone behaves like this when your services are free, imagine what it would be like once they actually give you money and the expectations are different.
3. Don't start none, won't be none.  Because from time to time, I have to demonstrate that I am, indeed, turning into my mother as I get older. But for me what this really means in this situation is that - if you don't allow people to treat you like crap when they are paying you, don't put up with it when you're giving away your time, talent, and energy either. There's just too much negativity in the world already to willingly allow yourself to be a source, conduit, or recipient of it.

Now... some really awesome roses & sunshine DID happen today, but I'll save that for a separate post because I don't want to remember both events as tied together in any way.

And if you've made it this far... what do you think? How might you have handled the situation?

And if you're someone who has a quilt with me and now you're too scared to ask for it back - don't be.  I realize that Christmas is potentially a really long time to wait to see your quilt again, and it's ok if your sense of adventure and mystery is on a very short leash.  I promise not to blast you if you ask me, but if you call my local quilt shop instead of me... all bets are off.  :)

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

Attaching the Rings to the Double Wedding Ring Whole Cloth

I decided this weekend that I needed to make major progress on this wholecloth quilt so that I could get it ready for the long arm.  For that to happen, I had to figure out a way to get the double wedding rings attached to the quilt.

One idea was to square up the double wedding ring, and then piece that into the whole cloth.  I quickly rejected that idea though, because having gone to the trouble of acquiring extra wide fabric for a whole cloth quilt, it seems a little insane to chop it up into various bits and pieces. Plus, I know that my piecing wasn't perfect, and the idea of doing the math and paper templates to figure out the curve along the edge just did not appeal to me.

So the next logical answer was to treat the double wedding rings like an applique and stitch it to the quilt.

I mentioned previously having messed up one of the embroidery stitch-outs early on in the process; the reason for the error was because I did not check that the embroidery was centered in the block before I cut it.  That is really goofy in hindsight, and I should actually learn to trust the little voices in my head - particularly the one that piped up just as I was putting the mat over the die and said, "Are you sure you wanna do that? What if it's not centered?"  Of course, I have another louder & more obnoxious voice that replied, "Of course I am! What, do you think I'm stupid? I pinned it!"

So having discovered that I did indeed cut the embroidery off-center (because I cut according to the center of the fabric, not the center of the embroidery), I determined not to make the same mistake twice - at least not on the same quilt. I think I need little signs posted all over the studio that say, "Is it CENTERED? Really?" because I seem to make this mistake a lot, and not all of these mistakes can be recovered.

Anyway, so I wanted to explain that first, in order to introduce the topic of how one goes about centering an applique in a whole cloth quilt.

First, you need to make sure your quilt top is square, which I did a couple of weeks ago.  It certainly doesn't hurt to check it again though; that's probably the start of another studio sign ("Is it SQUARE? Really?)

Once you know the quilt is square, you need to mark off centering lines that are equally spaced across the quilt.  Since I hate drawing on quilt tops with anything but white chalk, and white chalk being impractical for a white quilt, I opted to mark it by creasing the quilt. First, in half width-wise:


The crease is on the left.  I press as I go, advancing the quilt top to get to the next section and making sure I'm keeping the edges square as I go.  I used starch to aid in this process.  I actually mix my own starch, and many people have asked me what's the concentration I use.  So here's a picture:


Fair warning: this is a heavy, stiff starch at 3 cups water, 2 cups liquid starch.  I shake it before using it to keep it evenly distributed.  Yes, I've tried Best Press, but that stuff is pretty pricey for as much as it needs to be used.  As soon as my current BP bottle is empty, in will go a homemade starch mixture, because I like the spray nozzle on that bottle better.  :)

Ok, on to the centering!  After folding it width-wise, I then folded it in half lengthwise, and then in half again:


Creasing these folds too.  This gave me good reference points for the applique.

Next up is to press under the raw edge of the DWR all the way around.  I did this by sight & by feel, easing around curves and tucking in some places where the piecing was not perfect:


(Yah, I know I swore off Rowenta, but this one is ok as long as you don't put water in it. I'm still debating what new iron/steam generator to get.)

Now with that task done:


It's time to pin the DWR to the quilt.  I unfolded the quilt onto my cutting table.  I spread it out so that the ring was easy to reach and I could get a smooth surface all the way around. I marked the centers of each ring all the way around, and then aligned them with the centering lines on the quilt top:


Smooth, smooth, smooth!  That's my advice.  It's like basting a quilt top, pin the centers, pin the ends; find the center between those pins, and keep pinning in that manner all the way around.  I actually alternated pinning, moving to the very center of the ring, pinning it, then moving to the inner arcs, then finally to the outer arcs.  It was a very time consuming process but necessary to make sure the DWR stayed flat and centered.  I didn't count the pins, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a hundred or more:


Next, stitch choice and thread choice.  The thread choice was pretty simple - it had to be a monofilament.  If I were doing this by hand, I probably would have used chocolate brown and used a blind stitch, but I am not a hand quilter (except for binding, and even that is rare these days.)

The monofilament I chose was MonoPoly by Superior Threads. This is usually for my long arm, but it's great for this application because I know that it is strong, heat resistant, and won't yellow or turn brittle over time. It's also super-thin, so it virtually disappears in the fabric, which is what this application calls for.

For the stitch, I wanted something that would travel around the edge and just catch the applique. I chose a narrow blanket stitch for that purpose:


I'm also using an open toe embroidery foot so I can see exactly where the needle is going:


I try to take out the pins just before I come to them. I decided to use a 70/10 needle, and it is NOT forgiving when it comes to running over pins.  :)  I am also constantly checking the quilt to make sure there isn't a piece of it tucked under the applique and getting stitched to itself. This is actually a pretty precarious stitching situation: with all the pins sticking out here there and everywhere, it's not about whether or not you will stab yourself, but rather how many times & with how much blood in the process.  It is literally... painstaking work.  :)

I went all the way around the outside ring in a continuous blanket stitch:


And then I stitched the inside ring using a straight stitch, and finally picked up a couple of points that weren't continuous. In some places, I did actually stitch on top of the ring rather than in the ditch; this helped me to secure some spots where my piecing wasn't perfect.  I tried to be consistent all the way around - so that it didn't look too willy-nilly.  Although the stitches are fairly invisible from a distance, if you were to look closely, you'd probably find my little boops and bobbles.

After a couple of hours (I lost track) here is the result!


Now I get to prep it for the long arm, and over the next week or so, agonize over the quilting pattern and thread choice.  I'm pretty sure that I'll be stippling this, but at what size I'm not quite sure yet.

Your next question is "why stipple?" Well, I know that whole cloth quilts are typically covered in feathers and all sorts of complex shapes, and if this were my quilt, I might think about doing that.  But the other consideration of design that I don't think I've discussed up to this point is the budget of the client.  Adding heirloom designs and pulling off really dense complex quilting is time consuming, and time is money.  I have happily wasted both time and money of my own, but I tend to be a lot more considerate when it comes to other people, and making sure that they get a good value for what they pay.

I'm actually thinking about a stipple design that is very dense in the center and then gradually radiates out into a looser and looser stipple as it works out toward the edges.  In order to do that and pull it off, I'm going to need to float the quilt top so that I can roll the quilt back and forth as I go.  This is one quilt where I may actually elect to start quilting in the center and work my way out.  I cut the quilt top at 87" to start, and I'm expecting to lose about 4-5" in the quilting and squaring by the time I'm done.  This will be quite an adventure, eh?

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

A Baby Quilt for Mary - Quilting in Two Colors & Flipping a Quilt

Last Sunday, I actually had a couple of special deliveries, and one was to pick up a baby quilt that our guild made for the President, Mary, who is expecting.  It was a super-secret project, and I couldn't even blog about it or post on Facebook so as not to ruin the surprise (yup, it's the same Mary #16!)  But now?  Let's take a look!

First, a little bit of a warning: I was very sloppy about taking pictures, so I'll try to explain the in-between parts.

My friend Beth organized the super-secret project, and we decided to do a quilt based on liberated quilting (a la Gwen Marston).  The instructions were to make a block that was 12" in one dimension by whatever other length you wanted to make it.  Just to prove that I am also someone who doesn't follow instructions all the time, I made a block that was only 8" x 10", requiring the group to do some extra piecing to bring my block up to size.  Where have I heard that before?  :)

Amazingly, we did not discuss color at all, but nearly every block used orange in it, so the quilt coordinated surprisingly well.


The pieces of paper pinned to the quilt are the names of the quilter who made the block.  This figures into the quilting, as you will see in a second.

Now, for this quilt, I actually had a consultation with my friend Wendy and her daughter who I'll call Tracy (because I like disguising the names of my friend's minor children) who came to my house for a visit.  Yes, my secret is out: I will very often turn to my friends to advise me on thread colors and quilting designs!  It helps to bounce ideas off of other people or get their thoughts on something.  In the end, I do make the final choice, but I do not mind getting help.  In this case, I had decided to use two different thread colors on the quilt, and I wanted to choose the perfect shade of orange and the perfect shade of purple for the quilting.  The issue arises when you have 5 oranges and 3 or 4 purples to choose from!  What I did know is that there was no time to order thread, so I would have to make do with what I had.

We ended up choosing Superior So Fine # 533 Real Orange and #441 Purple Iris.  Lovely, lovely threads! I wound 2 bobbins of orange and one bobbin of purple, which in a moment, you'll be scratching your heads at exactly how I came to wind the exact opposite of what was needed.  I told you I was bad at estimating!

With that chore over, the ladies also helped me pick the right shape for what I had planned for the quilting.  I settled on doing a freehand Sunburst (my term) based on a design I used in my Oh Cherry Oh ruler sampler. It did require my circle ruler set, but not for what you might think:


In this case, I used the different circles to outline spaces in each of the blocks.  I also wrote the name of the quilter inside the circle so I could remove the paper & pins (Mr. Darcy does not find paper & pins very tasty at all.)  This is my block which was resized:


Sometimes, when you're working on a quilt, you just will not be able to avoid the necessity of marking it. I have heard so many horror stories about marking quilts (disappearing inks reappearing later; washout inks not washing out all the way, etc.) that I rarely, rarely use anything but chalk to mark quilts, and I try to mark them as little as possible, and only use white chalk for good measure.  You need not be as fearful as I am, but since chalk has worked for me 95% of the time, I'm sticking with it.

For this quilt, the circles only indicate loose boundaries, so I don't really care whether I can see the circle all the way around.  I'm not quilting on the line, I'm quilting TO the line. 

Next up was to load the quilt:



You'll notice that I am floating the quilt top completely.  Well, only a couple of days ago I was telling you about floating quilt tops that were not completely square, but that's not the only reason to float a quilt top.  In this case, I floated it because I needed to be able to advance the quilt in some areas, and then reverse the quilt in other areas to get to all the sections.  Remember I'm stitching in two colors and the circles are staggered, so for efficiency, I stitched all of the orange first, then I changed colors and quilted the purple.  This worked out really well!

So just to be a little bit more clear... the backing is attached to two rails at the top and bottom, like a scroll.  The batting itself always "floats", and the top is usually attached at the bottom to a third rail.  That's the rail you see sitting on top of the quilt sandwich.  Well, right now the quilt is in 3 separate pieces, so with the quilt top free, I can roll & unroll the quilt and it can be treated like a scroll even when it is quilted.  However, if I attach the quilt top to the top rail, once I start stitching, the quilt is no longer in 3 pieces, it's one piece, so I can only advance the quilt in one direction; I can't unroll it past the point that's been quilted.  Clear as mud?  :)

Anyway, that was just me stalling, because I actually failed to take any photos of just the orange getting quilted! How unbelievable is that?  Well, here's what happened:

First, I used a very, very short stitch length (like 20 spi) to quilt the names of the block maker in orange:


Then, I lengthened the stitch, spiraled around it, and did these loose sun rays around the spiral.  I needed the small stitches for the names because a smaller stitch means I can have a smaller area of quilting but still get smooth curves.  It's very common for micro-stippling.  I did all the sunbursts in orange first.

Once I got done, it was time to add the purple!  Now, the tough thing about the purple was twofold: for one, the quilt top was so busy that the orange stitches nearly disappeared into the quilt, so I actually could not see the sunbursts.  if you can't see them, you can't quilt around them, and that's a problem.

Second, there were four blocks on the back made by other quilters, and it didn't seem fair for the quilters on the front to get recognized but not the ones on the back.  So their names needed to be in there too.  Writing words backward on paper is hard - to do it in cursive, while quilting, is a feat that I'm not really skilled for.  So the solution had to be to flip the quilt!

In my case, I use zippers on my leaders, so it's easy enough to take the quilt off to flip it, but the problem with that is the zippers are now facing the wrong way.  You don't want to remove the zippers because then the quilt gets a different tension and things will get out of sorts.  So I solved the problem by taking a couple of extra zippers that I had and making a flip set.  Basically, you need 4 zipper halves, and you're essentially stitching together the matching zipper of the ones on the quilt backing to the matching zipper that's on the leader.  Clear as mud?  Good, because there's not a picture of that either!  Suffice to say that I was successful in flipping the quilt.  This was also less complicated because even though the thread colors are different, the weight is the same, so I can expect the tension to be nearly spot-on from what was on the quilt before, and no one would be able to tell that I flipped the quilt over.


Here's the beginning - I like it already, and I think this is going to be one of my signature free motion designs.

Coming right along and nearing the bottom - that was fast!


My stops & starts are pretty horrendous, eh?  Well, I'm still practicing... but I've gotten to the bottom!


So now you can see why it was a mistake to wind two orange bobbins and only one purple.  I had way too much orange (didn't even make a dent in the first bobbin) and not enough of the purple (which meant I had to stop... cut the top thread, go wind a bobbin, and rethread the entire machine!)

But it looks super-cool in my opinion.  The batting I used is Legacy 50/50 Bamboo/Cotton blend.  I chose it because I know bamboo is super soft & cuddly for a baby, but I didn't have a big enough piece left of 100% bamboo (and the replacement order was not going to arrive in time to use it.)  Incidentally, you have to be really careful that you're really buying bamboo that's been made in an environmentally-sustainable way, without harsh processing, chemicals, or air pollution.  Legacy batting meets those requirements, for which I am very glad, as does the 100% bamboo that I get from another source.

So here's the front of the quilt all done up:


And a photo of the back so you can see the cool effect of the two different thread colors:


Now, the quilt was sent off to be bound by someone else (my friend Sarah) and she also washed it too.  The quilt was so beautiful and cuddly when we gave it to Mary, but I didn't actually get a photo of it!  So if anyone reading this has one, please be sure to pass it along...

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

Long Arm Quilting: #24 Ellen Finished Quilt & How I'm Picking The Rest Of Them...

This weekend was incredibly busy!  I did manage to finish all three quilts that I set out to do this weekend which is awesome.

The next one on the list was from Ellen.  She actually sent me two quilts, but this one was just so small I thought I could get it done really quickly.

This time, I remembered the stopwatch.  Start to finish, it was about 2 hours to do this quilt, which included loading, bobbin winding, and the actual quilting.

Ellen's quilt gave me some specific challenges that I want to use as illustration.  This isn't meant to be a dig or bashing of Ellen's quilt AT ALL.  That is not my intent and I hope no one looks at it that way.  I think it's been pretty taboo in the quilting world to really talk about the issues and things that can and will go wrong, but I've said before that it's not all sunshine & roses, and I really want to be candid about the what & the why so that everyone can benefit from the experience.  The only place I've seen it discussed is a video spoof & song some wrote that says, "I Can Quilt That Out!"

I've talked a lot about how important it is to make sure your quilt is square if you want to have it long arm quilted.  This is a benefit to you because if you send it square, it will get quilted square, and you get the bonus of having the quilt perfectly basted for you to attach your binding.

If you don't square your quilts before sending them out, several things can happen:

1. The quilter will square it for you, and you might not like what they do.  Plus, they will charge you for it.
2. The quilter will load it as-is, and take tucks & folds where necessary, and you might not like what they do.
3. The quilter will refuse to quilt it, and return it to you as-is, and you may not like that either.

Sometimes, the quilt can be squared with only a minor shaving that would not be noticeable, and other times, there's just no way to square it no matter what you do.  That was the case with Ellen's quilt:

If you notice the right side is fairly square, but the other three sides are not, and there's no way of trimming it or easing it to make it square without significantly impacting the design.

Here is one spot where it is going to cause the most issues:

That's a pretty big pucker and definitely presents a challenge.

Because of the puckers & general unevenness, I opted to float the quilt top entirely (which means that it wasn't attached to any of the rails) and baste it down wherever I could get a complete line of stitching.  In some places, the basting stitches are as much as 1-1/2" to the interior of the quilt.  I'll remove those stitches before sending the quilt back to her, but I had to be able to keep the quilt from creeping around as I went.

I chose Whirlpools from Leah Day for the quilting and adapted it for the long arm, keeping the spirals and echoes very loose and big.  This kept the puckers from being as obvious on the quilt and it kept me from having to take pleats in the quilt.  The thread is Superior So Fine #450 Spring Green.  The batting was not branded, but it had the consistency of felt and quilted up just fine.

In the end, Ellen won't be able to cut a perfectly square line on the edge of the quilt to attach her binding, but she should be able to just trim the edges from block to block and it will be fine.  The quilting creates enough movement across the front that your eye doesn't really get a chance to settle on whether a line is straight or not.

While quilting this, I noted that it's really difficult to make big sweeping curves when you're tensed up, so definitely relax your shoulders and arms if you want to do big curves.  I quilted this super-fast (the stitch regulator beeped at me on more than one occasion when I was outpacing its ability to regulate.)  The curves are very organic and I like the way this one turned up.

Loved having the busy backing!  Even though the backing is brown and the thread is green, the pattern is busy enough that you don't really notice the stitching & it makes a nice texture.

Now, that's the last of the quilts that I had picked out of the closet on my own.  The remaining quilts will be completely left up to chance.  My target is to finish all the quilts by Christmas, so if I work on 2-3 a month I should be able to meet that.  Of course, I do have about 5 customer quilts due before June and 2 of my own that have to get done, so I may slack off over the next couple of months & then need to pick up the pace later this summer.

So if you want to know who's next, here's how I decided:

So #3 Clair - you're next!

To endless possibilities,

Ebony