Cathie’s Square in a Square

I’ve been remiss in posting some of the projects I’ve worked on in the past 3 months.

This is a quilt done by Cathie, one of my favorite customers.  She is a woman after my heart and worries way too much about whether her points match…!

I love quilting her projects because they lay flat, are square and such a work of art.

I love the pattern on this one; it’s matches the colors perfectly, too!  You can’t even see the quilting, though, which is kinda cool….

New Training Video!

I got a new training video, PajamaQuilter Rethreaded, about freehand machine quilting techniques, from Dawn Ramirez, the Pajama Quilter, in the mail a couple of days ago.  You’d think I would have ripped it open, huh?  Nope, it’s still sitting on the love seat, waiting for me to have some free time!

I found out Dawn was having a sale from a blog post by Mary Johnson at MaryQuilts.com and decided to splurge a little on it, as I’ve seen some really nice quilting on some charity quilts that she’s done, and she swears by this DVD.

I’m taking the dogs to the groomer, I’ve got a sew day tomorrow, and I need to see about getting some shoes repaired and return a pair.  I’m thinking I won’t be viewing the DVD tomorrow, either!

If you haven’t discovered MaryQuilts.com, please visit her site.  Not only does she offer free scrap patterns, she runs another site called Heart Strings Quilt Project which makes string quilts for charitable organizations.

Rulers! Rulers! Rulers!

Last weekend, while I was sick, my husband helped me organize the rulers in my sewing room by mounting all of the hardware.  All I had to do was tell him where everything should go!

I bought two wall hangers for my longarm rulers from Simply Renee called Clip it Up.  They were initially designed for scrapbooking, but when I saw a photo on one of my quilting Yahoo chat groups where they had been used to organize the rulers, and immediately when I went to the site and discovered they were 50% off!  So of course I got two!

The first step was to take everything off the wall.  Boy, did I get a reality check on how many rulers I actually own!

Deciding where I want anything hung on the wall, especially when it involves putting a hole in the drywall, is an absolute chore, and it takes me forever to decide!  DH always says “I can fix it if you don’t like it there'” but I never change my mind and pull them out.

Once he mounted the first one, I hung the nested circle set, and it took all of 10 seconds to decide to mount the second one right next to it.

I decided to move another hanging ruler organizer that was mounted over the sewing machine over to the cutting table area, too.  Then he installed several hooks in various places for those miscellaneous items, and now I have a place for everything.  He even suggested that the larger rulers get hung on the wall in the stairwell, since I don’t use them that often and they’d be out of the way.  What a great idea!

I love that I can now see all my rulers!

My goal, besides getting everything off the floor, is to remember to practice with the longarm rulers so I will be more comfortable offering them as an option for my customer quilts.

I can even see all of the specialty cutting rulers for piecing that I have, too, and maybe I won’t keep searching for yet another method to make my half square triangles!  Maybe I’ll even start that spectacular quilt I’ve been planning.

Bonnie Hunter’s Orca Bay Mystery dilemma

Have you all seen the new mystery quilt that Bonnie Hunter is running again this year?  I want to participate, but I’m stuck on my colors!   I love brights, but they don’t go with anything in my house; DH sort of over-ruled that idea! Ha!

So, we have all of the earth colors and I’m still trying to figure out what I can pull together that will work in the living room, and will be a quilt he’ll actually use.  All of this indecision, and the third step is already posted!

…not to mention that I need to make a Bronco quilt for a customer before Christmas, and complete 2 other small customer quilts!

Thanksgiving Vacation 2011

The time since MQX West has just flown by!

While I haven’t decided on a specific design yet for my wholecloth quilt,  I have, completed two customer quilts.

 

I’ll be working on finishing a third one today.

I’ve been on vacation for the past 10 days, and I’ve certainly enjoyed it!  There was a lot of driving involved, which I don’t especially enjoy, but this view sure took my breath away!

My brother flew from New Hampshire to Montana to visit my mother the weekend before Thanksgiving, so I decided to join them.  We made our own Thanksgiving dinner early, each of us choosing something for the menu that we wanted to include that we loved from holidays past.  It was a very nice dinner and I even made turkey noodle soup out of the leftover carcass.

We also went to the Cat-Griz game, where the highly favored Cats got trounced.  This is a big deal since my brother is a Montana State University alum, and my mother is a University of Montana graduate.  I wore my neutral Bronco orange and blue stadium coat and cheered for both teams.  I went to MSU for a year and would have liked to see them win, but it was dang cold and I just needed to keep warm so cheering for both teams was the best way to do that! 

When I got home I spent a lot of time with my husband, including getting the carpets cleaned and going out for breakfast.  Two of the dogs got groomed, and Gizmo got his first dental.  Poor guy, he’s down to 11.5 pounds and needed some pain medication that evening.  I’m happy to report he’s doing much better now and has even submitted to being brushed without too much fuss.  The vet said to start feeding him some wet food to try to get some weight on him and I think it’s already starting to work.

We were also fortunate to have  friends over the day after Thanksgiving who showed me how to make authentic Malaysian curried chicken.  It was delicious and now I’m interested in finding more Malaysian recipes!

Of course, all of this running around means I haven’t been in the quilting room much.  Before I left I started straightening up and working on getting the batting rolls hung under the longarm.  I still need to complete that project to my satisfaction, but at least I was able to start on my customer quilt before I left.

While working on my customer’s quilt yesterday, I realized I am running out of backing, one row away from finishing!  And this is a huge back!  I know I measured and fussed with it a lot beforehand to make sure this wouldn’t happen.  I have a TON of extra backing on the sides, but the back is about square, too, so I think what happened is that I wasn’t skimpy with where I started the quilt at the top.  Of course, it’s a king sized quilt, and I’m not about to unroll it just to find that out, at this point!

I basted down the middle of the border to stabilize it, and  I’m going to have to find some fabric to secure to the rest of the backing so I can attach it to the leader and finish this row.  This isn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Sunday morning!

While I’ve gotten a lot done during this time off, there are still items on the list.  I supposed that’s the way it will always be, as long as we are living life.  The trick, I think, is to make the quilts you really want to make a priority, not just the obligatory or “easy” quilts.  It’s in the doing that we achieve that satisfaction and increase our skills.  The love always shows.

MQX West 2011–Summary

Overall, I had a great time at MQX West!

I got to catch up with friends, and made some new ones!  Candi from Washington, who’s been quilting for customers for a year and has done over 200 quilts, and Mari Lee Seei, from Off The Edge Quilting, who sells those wonderful pink long arm rulers!  She was so delightful, informative, and inspiring with the versatility and amazing designs she’s come up with for her rulers!  I bought the new Frill ‘em Up set, which is a  baptist fan variation, the Gimme Frills line ruler,  the 4” Chain O’ Hearts template… and now I want them all!

I took one hands-on class from Judy Woodworth, and had a wonderful time.   Here’s the practice piece I brought home with me:

It was a real confidence booster, especially when Judy told me I was doing a good job!  I’m going to put the piece back on my machine and keep practicing until it’s all filled up.

I took a feather class from Linda McCuean, and while the technique wasn’t new to me, I got inspired to make a whole cloth quilt!  And, of course, it can’t be a small lap quilt, like the sample she showed us in class, it has to be a king sized quilt!  I bought a bolt of 108” wide fabric, batting and thread to go with it, and have been working on a design, mostly in my head at this point.  When I got home, I decided that it should have a flannel back, rather than cotton, which I had originally intended.  So, I need to get some flannel, but I don’t have to hurry at this point, I can keep my eye out for the right piece while I design and practice!

Today, I’ll be working on a comfort quilt with my lunchtime quilter group, and then back to finish my customer quilt.  Oh, what a short weekend!

New Thread!

I got 4 cones of Aurifil longarm thread at MQX West in Portland last week!  I’ve been wanting to try it for a long time, especially since I use it exclusively for piecing.

One of them is a new color, a beautiful autumn, rusty orange!  I got it specifically to do a wholecloth that I was inspired to make while taking a feathering class from Linda McCuen.

I saw the technique she presented about 3 years ago, so the class itself wasn’t new information, and I’m very comfortable with the technique.  She showed a sample in her class, of course, and it’s just beautiful!  It got me to thinking about how I could do the same thing.

While I was visiting a wholesale store in Portland, I purchased a bolt of 108” wide cotton and a couple layers of batting to make a king sized whole cloth!  I’m really excited about it, and I can hardly wait to start!  After I got home, I started thinking I should back it in flannel, so I need to find an appropriate wide backing.

I was lucky enough to come back to have 4 customer quilts to do, so while I’m working on those I’ll be modifying the design we saw in class to work with a king sized quilt.  Since I’ve never done one before, I’m wondering if I should pre-wash the fabric?  I always do on my pieced tops.  And I’m wondering if I should pre-mark before I load?  That seemed to be the consensus in one of my other classes, but they were talking about the chalk marks (I can’t believe chalk wouldn’t come off during the loading process!)

If anyone has experience making a whole cloth, I’d love your input!