Quilt of Valor

I thought I would write a quick post while I have a few minutes to show what I've been doing the last couple of weeks.  I'm sure most of you have heard of the foundation, Quilts of Valor.  If you haven't, this is a wonderful organization whose mission is to "cover service members and veterans touched by war with comforting and healing Quilts of Valor."

While deciding what to purge out of my fabric closet, I thought I would do something even better than just donating a box or two of fabric this year.  Like most quilters, I tend to hoard collect fabric!  I thought what better way to use fabric I no longer want than to actually MAKE a quilt to donate.  By creating a quilt to make someone feel comforted and happy, I would also get the satisfaction of actually making something quickly and feel like I got in some quality sewing time.  I did some searching to see which organizations are accepting quilts and was overwhelmed to find so many wonderful groups.

Based on the style of fabrics I have on hand, I chose to make something for an adult.  I had read articles about Quilts of Valor in the past but decided to do additional research.  After reading the info on their website and seeing what a huge impact they have had, I chose to do a Quilt of Valor in the traditional red, white and blue colors.  There is a set of guidelines that gives the basic requirements for donating a quilt.  According to their website, they have donated 115,900 quilts to date!  I think that is absolutely amazing!

This is a double Irish chain and I did a simple border on two sides to get the quilt to the required dimensions.  It went together very quickly and I got tremendous satisfaction from making it.  I will eventually quilt it in the upcoming months.  I hope to make more quilts to donate in down time when I need to "use up fabric!". 

I  put this little Easter basket quilt together the other day.  It was fast and easy to do and again, gratifying to see something finished so quickly.  And I cut into some gorgeous unused florals, even better!  

And finally, I made a bed skirt to coordinate with the Ocean Waves quilt I made for our bed.  I wound up using fabric I had on hand that I originally had bought for a quilt backing.  It worked out perfectly and once again, I used something out of my closet!  Yay!

I know, I know, there are some of you wondering where all the vintage floral pillows went!  And why haven't I made the new pillows out of the florals I showed you?  Well. . . . after I put the new bed skirt and quilt on the bed and saw how well it all tied with the existing floral area rug, I thought I would try living with it like this for awhile.  I am kind of liking this new de-pillowed, clean, calm and serene look!  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE vintage florals and will always love vintage florals.  But I was getting tired of the time it takes every morning to make the bed with a dozen decorative pillows!  Not to mention where they all wind up every night when my husband unmakes the bed!  So I'm trying this for now, I still may add two smaller pillows in front of the shams, it seems to still need a little something, but overall, I am pretty happy with the new look.

Hope you all are getting lots of spring sewing done!  Until next time. . . .Happy Quilting!

Finished. . .Finally!

Well, my Ocean Waves quilt is finally finished and I am really happy with how it turned out and ready to move on! 

I still have lots to do as far as decorating/re-decorating our bedroom goes, but this quilt was probably the most labor intensive part of the project, so now I feel like I can officially BEGIN with the rest of my to-do list now that this is done.  I started this quilt in mid-December and have put off so many other things these last few months in order to stay focused on this quilt.  But now I am really ready to play catch up, including a major spring cleaning of our house.

I did get my Bernina 710 back in time to finish the quilt.  I had probably done about 80% of the quilting with my old 440 and it worked great through the entire process.  But having the 710 and the extra space under the arm made a world of difference!  I could easily quilt the feathered wreaths in the center of the quilt without cramming the rest of the quilt under the machine.  It was wonderful!  And between free-motion quilting and straight line quilting with the walking foot, I had no issues with the Invisafil thread shredding this time around.  Hooray! 

For those of you that are curious, the upper thread is Invisafil (100% polyester, 100 weight, very fine) and the bobbin thread is Mettler Metrosene (100% polyester, fine).   The batting is Hobb's Heirloom 80% cotton/20% polyester.  I use this batting predominately because I really like a flat, crinkled, vintage look.  I did wash the quilt prior to binding it.  I know many quilters have made the transition over to the wool battings but I have yet to do so.  Something about wool in Florida just doesn't sound appealing to me!  But I do think the quilts that are quilted with the wool battings are just spectacular and I will probably eventually try one just to see if I like it.

All the straight lines, the two cable borders, and the straight lines behind the large feathered border were done with a walking foot.  The feathered wreaths in the white squares and feathered border were all free-motioned.  I did use the Schmetz #75/11 quilting needle and I did slow down my quilting speed.  I also lowered my tension even more than what my dealer suggested.  Part of the reason for this is that I used a pale pink thread in the bobbin to match the backing and with the tension set at 3.0, I could see little pink dots of thread coming to the top of the quilt in the holes the needle left behind.  So for free-motion quilting I set the tension down to 2.0 and for walking foot quilting, I set the tension at 2.25.  The stitch quality looks fine on both the front and back and this eliminated any bobbin thread from showing on the top side.  I did not have a single thread breakage!  Back to being a happy quilter!

And I just want to thank those of you that cheered me on for my perseverance!  I appreciate the support!  I'm sure you've all been in a situation at least once where you keep asking yourself, why the heck am I going to so much trouble and aggravation??  But the extra effort is generally worth it in the end and I will admit that I really am happy with the way this turned out.

And one last thank you. . . .I LOVE all of the comments and e-mails you all are sending me and I am just so overwhelmed at the response I've gotten from all of you!  I know I don't blog nearly as often as many popular bloggers do, but I really do appreciate your loyalty and sticking around in spite of that.  You really have no idea how broad of an audience you have when you blog, there are stats you can check to see how many hits a post gets, but as far as readership, I am truly clueless as to how big of an audience I have.  Sometimes I wish I could take a roll call!  But it is just so reassuring to have real live feedback from you and it lets me know that I am not just writing to some void in outer space!  So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading, commenting, and for your support!  Hugs to all of you! 

I may be gone for a bit longer between posts since I have tons to catch up on, but don't worry, I will update you as soon as I have something to show you again.  Happy Quilting. . .

Quilting Frustrations

Happy March to everyone!  I am STILL working on quilting this Ocean Waves quilt but I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm sure you are all sick of hearing about it, too!  I really hope to be finished with it by the end of this week if all goes according to plan.

Speaking of which, the original plan I had for this was to quilt it with my new Bernina 710 and really put the machine to the test.  I bought this machine last fall mainly for one reason and that is for the extra room under the arm to the right of the needle.  It has about a 10+ inch span, versus 7-7 1/2 inches on a regular machine, like my old Bernina 440.  Since I don't see a longarm machine in my future, this was supposed to appease me for the time being.  The quilt I'm working on is a king size and was going to be the perfect way for me to test the new machine and practice free-motion quilting on such a large scale.  Well, my plan didn't work out as I had hoped!




Bernina 710

Bernina 440

I started out with the walking foot and quilted in the ditch and straight lines in the body of the quilt.  After about an hour into quilting, the Invisafil thread that I use for quilting kept shredding.  I've used this thread by Wonderfil for eight or more years and have never, ever had issues with it previously in my 440.  However, I have heard from a couple of you and also read on various blogs where many people cannot sew with Invisafil on their machines and the 710 popped up repeatedly in these discussions.  I couldn't understand why!  I e-mailed my Bernina dealer several times to see if we could come up with a solution.  One was to switch to a different needle, a Schmetz 75 quilting needle.  This helped a little bit at first.  I also lowered the tension to about a 3 and at some point, even down to 2.75.  But once again, I began having issues and I couldn't go longer than 15 or 20 minutes without the thread shredding.  Frustration and several favorite expletives took hold and at that point, I decided to give up.  I put the old faithful 440 in its place and took the 710 to my dealer, where it still is today.

In the mean time, after finishing up all of my straight lines with the walking foot, I began to notice that all the areas where I had used the blue pounce powder with the feather stencils had almost faded away to nothing!  I was not a happy quilter!  I guess due to the time that had lapsed and so much handling of the quilt, it just didn't hold up like I had thought it would.  So I had to go back and spend two days remarking all the feathered wreaths and border with a blue water soluble pen.

In the mean time, my Bernina dealer called me and said my 710 is fixed and ready to pick up.  He replaced the thread guide on the needle clamp because the old thread guide wouldn't hold the thread in place.  He also did a lot of sewing with Invisafil, getting the same results I was.  He spoke with the Bernina people and they told him a lot of this issue is due to the rotary hook feature in the bobbin.  I don't know the technical reason why the thread shreds because of this, something with the way the needle goes down into the bobbin, I think.  But he said to use the #75 quilting needle, a lower tension, around a 3, and to sew at half speed.  He said once he did that, he didn't have the shredding issues.  So we will see, I am anxious to see if that makes a difference once I quilt on it again.

So I am still chugging along on the 440, fighting with perfecting my free-motion skills in a tight little space on a huge quilt.  Challenging doesn't begin to cover it!  All I can think about is how those amazing women whose work I admire, like Diane Gaudynski and Sue Nickels, can do such incredible show-stopping quilting on a home machine and stick with it for such a long period of time on one single quilt.  You don't realize the amount of mental concentration and physical ability it requires until you are actually doing it yourself.  It ain't easy!  But I will be sooooooo happy when this is done and I cannot wait to show you the results after the quilt is washed. 

Hopefully I will have more pictures of my quilt to show next time around.  Happy Quilting!

Bedroom Decorating

I thought I would share a little bit about our bedroom, so I thought I would let you all in for a peek!

As you probably know, I am currently in the process (and a very LONG process at that!) of making an Ocean Waves quilt for our bed.  It is going to be the inspiration for, what I hope to be, a new look for our bedroom.  It may take me awhile to get it all together and complete it, but in the mean time, I will show you what our bed currently looks like so you can see the "before" look.

I have had a Ralph Lauren comforter that I have been in love with for years and this originally set the tone and look for our bed.  I made the nine-patch quilt using these colors as my inspiration.  I also collect vintage floral fabrics and they happened to work perfectly with the colors and look as pillows for our bed.

I used an extra flat sheet and made the Euro pillow shams to match the comforter.  Our wrought iron bed frame is not an antique one, but I still love the look.  However it has turned color!  It used to be very white, now it's sort of an ecru.  This is one of the reasons (among others) that I am wanting to change things up a bit.

As a quilter, it's always about the quilts!  I like to constantly change things out but I always keep things flowery and colorful.  I love pattern on pattern, especially anything with vintage-style roses, and I love soft, pretty, vintage colors, and I love busy.  I try not to get too caught up in the matchy-matchy look and just keep putting things together until it "works."  And yes, I make the bed every morning!  I cannot stand an unmade bed!

Here is the "new" look I am aiming towards, although it could change at any minute!  The blue floral is a vintage drapery fabric, the pink is an old Ralph Lauren fabric and the stripe is a home dec fabric I bought on eBay years ago and have been saving for the perfect project.  I guess you could say I am going a bit bolder with color, although all of my accents and furniture pieces will be whites and off-whites.  Hopefully the color won't be too bold and the overall look will still be soft with accents of color.  We'll see!  I am still hunting for a stripe or ticking to coordinate. I will have to complete the quilt and pillows and then make a decision once it is all put together.

In the mean time, I am hoping to start machine quilting my Ocean Waves soon, the marking is just about completed.  It's a lot of work, I forgot how much time goes into such a huge quilt!  I will show more photos once I make some progress.  Until next time, Happy Quilting! 

How I Mark My Quilts

I thought I'd write a bit about how I mark my quilt tops since I am starting to mark my Ocean Waves quilt, which I finally finished over the weekend.  This is the fifth king size quilt I've made, but the largest to date, finishing at 118" wide by 105" high. 

Ever since my tutorial on quilting cables last year, it seems like I have had dozens of questions from readers asking me about the type of pens I use for marking, where I purchase them, and where I buy stencils from.  So I am offering up some info. . . but. . . (disclaimer inserted here!) . . . understand that I am in no means the final word on what to use or how to mark your quilt!  I am not paid by any company to test their product or promote their website, nor do I get anything sent to me for free for mentioning them on my blog.  And I use what I like and what works best for me.  You may not like the same thing and that is ok!  This is where we are free to experiment and figure out what works best for each of us.  You may read elsewhere that other quilters really dislike certain pens or products that I may use, and that is fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

These are the stencils I have chosen to use on my Ocean Waves quilt.  I usually order stencils online from The Stencil Company at www.quiltingstencils.com.  They have a great selection and an easy site to navigate and you can search by type of stencil or by size.  They will also make a stencil for you if you submit your own artwork.  Please contact them for more information.  Another good source is Quilting Creations International at www.quiltingcreations.com.  They also have a wonderful variety to choose from.  If you do a web search for "quilting stencils" I am sure you will come up with others.

For those of you who have asked, here is a photo of the marking pens I use the most.  Most of the time I buy the blue water soluble pens at Joann's or Michael's with my coupons.  The Sewline Styla and Clover pen were purchased at a quilt shop.  The water soluble pencils are from my art supplies, so any good art supply store should carry them. 

I really like the water soluble pens in blue (and in white for dark fabrics).  I like the immediacy of the pens, the fact I can barely touch the tip of the pen to the fabric and it leaves a line, and they show up on almost all fabrics and colors.  I like the fact that they wash out and I have never, ever, in over 20+ years of using these pens, have had the marks return after time.  And I wash all of my quilts after I quilt them, show quilts included.  You'll see a couple of water soluble pencils in there and I only use these when I have a really dark or busy fabric where the pens just aren't making a mark dark enough or bright enough for me to see. 

I write the date on the bottom of each pen when I take it out of it's package so I can keep track of old ones versus newer ones.  I probably get a least a year or so out of a pen.  I store them in a Ziploc bag when not in use, laying flat, in a drawer (out of light).  I use several pens at one time when marking a quilt and rotate between them so I'm not wearing just one out completely. 

The down side of using the pens with stencils is the tips wear out rapidly from the abrasion of the stencil plastic against the felt tip.  It also can be a bit time consuming tracing every single line, especially if you have a detailed stencil and/or a very large quilt to mark.  So for this quilt, I thought I would try a couple of new marking tools to see if it would save some time.

I wanted to do a little sample test to try out a couple of them and make sure they wash out of the fabric I used on the Ocean Waves quilt.  I also wanted to get comfortable quilting the designs before I tackle them on such a large quilt.  All my fabric is prewashed, lightly starched and pressed, so I did the same thing on the sample to achieve the same effects.

I tried the Barely Blue Quilt Pounce by Hancy in combination with the stencils.  It is a light blue wash out chalk that you fill into the pounce holder.  It is a very fine, soft silky chalk and reminds me of baking powder or baby powder.  You don't pounce it or bang it onto the stencil, you rub it or wipe it across the stencil.  I found it worked well when I rubbed in a circular motion and the best part was it was super fast and easy to do.  Taping the stencil down is also a good idea to keep it from shifting. The blue chalk does NOT iron off like the white chalk does, it is only a wash out chalk.  It also comes in pink.  I ordered it through www.connectingthreads.com when I was purchasing Hobbs batting during their sale last week, but you can find it in quilt shops, at Joann's, and on other websites.  

Here is a  video by Leah Day that shows how to use the pounce pad:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZvWVNJHHqs 

Because I will be handling a large quilt and folding it, rolling it up on itself, etc., I don't want the chalk to brush off.  So I sprayed the chalk markings with Niagra spray starch and let it air dry.  This acts as a temporaray fixative and keeps the chalk from rubbing off until the quilt is washed.  One important note here:  if you plan on using any water soluble marking tool on your quilt along with the chalk, do so AFTER you have sprayed the starch over the chalk lines!  Do all of the chalk lines FIRST!  The spray starch will remove any water soluble lines due to the fact that it is a wet spray!

Roxanne's chalk pencils are the other marking tool I experimented with.  The package came with two silver and two white and I also ordered these from Connecting Threads.  I used the silver pencil to try with the stencils.  I used it with a heavy hand, making fairly dark marks to really put it to the wash out test.  It grabbed the fabric well and made a visible line that was easy to see.  It looked more like a graphite line than chalk to me, however.

Free-motion quilting on the blue chalk lines was a breeze.  I could see the line clearly, it remained bright and distinct, and for backtracking, it was very easy to see my previous stitches and needle holes.  I did not like the gray lines from the Roxanne pencil on the free-motion area for the feathered wreath.  I couldn't tell where my previous stitches were or see the needle holes for backtracking at all, it all blended together, making it difficult to see.  That could also be partly due to the fact that I did make these lines fairly dark.  However, for the straight lines, the silver pencil worked perfectly fine. They were easy to see and when I was just sewing forward or backward and not backtracking, it was satisfactory.

Here is the finished test sample after it has been washed.  The top thread is Wonderfil Invisafil 100 weight in white, an extremely soft and very fine polyester that is absolutely wonderful to sew with and just sinks into the fabric.  The batting is Hobb's Heirloom 80/20.  It was washed in warm water on a gentle cycle with liquid Tide.  After the first washing, 100% of the blue chalk lines were gone.  I am completely happy with the blue chalk pounce pad and will be using it from now on with stencils!  The silver lines from the Roxanne marking pencil were about 90% gone.  There was still a light gray shadow that remained, however, and considering they claim this is "chalk," I was a bit skeptical.  So I spritzed it with OxiClean spray stain remover and washed it a second time, exactly as I had the first time (I did not let it dry between washings).  Upon removal, I was happy to see that ALL markings were 100% gone.

In conclusion, I will be using the blue chalk pounce pad along with the blue water soluble marking pens on my quilts.  If I choose to use the silver Roxanne pencil, it will be with a much lighter hand and only on straight lines.

The pictures below show how I am marking the actual quilt.  I work on a section at a time on the counter in my studio.  I marked the feathered wreaths in the white squares first with the stencils and blue pounce pad.  Then I sprayed those with starch.  And after everything was completely dry, I marked my straight lines with my water soluble pens.  Then I move onto the next section of the quilt and do the same thing.  I will mark my borders last.  I will cover up any areas of the center part of the quilt that have water soluble pen with large sheets of paper before spraying the borders with starch.  I definitely do not want to erase hours of work!

I hope that answers some of your questions!  If I have left something out, please don't hesitate to e-mail me or leave a comment.  Happy Quilting!

3/30/2017 UPDATE:  PLEASE SEE MY POST ON HOW TO FIT CABLES ON A BORDER FOR MORE INFO.

Happy 2015!

Happy New Year!  Well better late, than never, right?  Hope you all are recovered from the holiday season and getting back into your normal routines.  I know I am, finally, and happy to be at the sewing machine once again.  



I recently started on an Ocean Waves quilt for our bed.  It is a bit slow-going and has a lot of triangles (always a favorite of mine!).  But it will be worth the amount of time involved once it is completed.  This is going to be a large quilt, finishing out at a king size, but will have borders on four sides, so hopefully, that will reduce a bit of the time involved.

Since I am only using two fabrics in this quilt, I am piecing the half-square triangles using the Triangulations software by Bear Paw Productions, printing out the pages of the exact size triangles I need on my printer, and sewing them together.  This is my favorite and fastest method for sewing half-square triangles.  I absolutely love this method and highly recommend it if you have never tried it.

So have you made (and kept or broken?) your New Year's resolutions?  I won't get into my long list of them except for one that I've had for over two years now and have finally decided to tackle----to learn how to use my fancy, pancy digital camera that comes with all the bells and whistles and to learn to take better pictures!  My husband bought me this wonderful camera as a birthday gift a few years ago and other than using it for shooting pictures on the automatic setting, I am ashamed to admit that I have hardly used it!  I guess I have to be in the right state of mind to learn some of this techy stuff, but the time has finally arrived.

So with the help of some great camera books as well as reading lots of info on websites, I am determined to learn how to take better pictures, learn about lighting and hopefully post better quality photos.  It is the one thing that I greatly admire about  so many of the popular blogs, their photography is just incredible! 

Queen of the May quilt block

Besides learning how to use the camera, there is a whole other learning curve involved and that is learning how to use the photo editing software!  So I am determined to make an effort at this, even if it's just baby steps and it takes me months to grasp, I have wanted to understand photography for a long time but have never taken the time to learn it.  Here are a few beginning shots, all with NO flash!  Using a flash is apparently the first big no-no!  Who knew??  Good photography starts with natural lighting.

Don't you just love these old feedsack fabrics?  They remind me of candy!  I never get tired of looking at vintage fabrics.

I thought it might be fun to let you take a peek into my world!  Here are a few shots of our family room and looking beyond into the kitchen nook. . . 

The quilt on the wall is the quilt that I reproduced from an antique quilt I blogged about a year ago.  I made the slipcovers and pillows on the sofas almost 13 years ago.  The slipcovers are on their last days, sadly.  I'm afraid if I wash them one more time, they will begin to come apart.  I've been debating if I want to buy entirely new sofas with white slipcovers OR make new slipcovers for these sofas, which are close to 25 years old.  I'm just so uncertain about all white, if it will be too plain for my taste, whether they will hold up to pets and a husband (!), and whether I will be washing them every week!  If anyone has input, I would welcome your opinions and experience!

The ceiling in this room is over 22 feet high, it's actually a little much!  I don't think I would do such high ceilings if we were building a house again.  We do get a lot of sun in this room from the windows that are up high as well as from two sets of French doors, which is great for bright natural light but terrible when it comes to fading fabrics.  Currently I have the upper shades down so the room is not as bright as it normally is!

This pic is looking into the foyer with the dining room beyond.

And I couldn't resist a picture of Molly.  I thought this photo turned out pretty good for a beginner!

Until next time, Happy Quilting!