Unquilting

Sigh… Big sigh.

Last week I was all excited because I gave myself a day to quilt. It’s been a stressful few months and I needed a day to myself. I also needed a quilt finish or two in order to clear my brain. So I booked a day on the long arm, got a few quilts all prepped, and went in to My Sewing Room to hang out with Emily, who runs the long arm department there. She helped me load my first quilt and thread the machine - the two tasks I always forget how to do. Otherwise I feel pretty comfortable on the long arm. I started up and went along merrily.

Yes, I checked my tension - once - at the very beginning. Admittedly, it was hard to see as it was yellow thread on a yellow part of the backing, but it looked okay. And so I rambled on. Nothing fancy with my quilting, just loops and stars all over. I was listening to some upbeat dance music and in my groove. Emily was doing her thing and left me as I felt more than confident.

Overconfident.

About halfway through I noticed that the tension was off on the stitching. I saw the blue fabric of the background as it wound around the bars and I could see my tension was off. I made some adjustments on the computer of the long arm and continued. Folks, it did not get better. Finally, I conceded to my mistake and called Emily over. I should have stopped there but I decided to proceed, after she made more adjustments. Bad move. Long story medium, we never fixed the problem. I pulled the finished quilt off the frame and set it aside. Maybe it will get fixed with a wash? I foolishly thought to myself.

Emily tinkered with the machine - the bobbin casing was a bit off - and we loaded the second quilt. This time I pulled out an extra bit of fabric and tested the tension before I touched needle to my quilt. Much better! I proceeded to quilt the second quilt without any problem and in the course of those few hours accepted what I needed to do on the first quilt. While waiting for me to finish Emily graciously started the job of ripping stitches for me.

It’s been a long time since I made a mistake like this. I don’t blame Emily, even though I was renting and she was technically supervising me. I know enough, and made that clear when starting that I should have caught this myself. It would be easy to get really frustrated and beat myself up. Or I could get angry and blame Emily too. Neither action is going to help. The only thing to do is let out that big sigh, find your favourite seam ripper, and sit down to rip. It’s just a mistake on a quilt, it isn’t life threatening or even life changing.

Ripping stitches when the tension is loose on one side is actually quite easy, just very time consuming. This quilt measures over 60” square and I have a tendency to quilt things to death, so there was a lot of ripping to do. Thankfully, my son and I have been rewatching Ted Lasso so I sat with him and ripped, and ripped. He would fiddle with the pile of thread that grew with each episode. Therapeutic for both of us in many ways. It took me the entire third season and almost all of the Netflix series One Day to finish ripping. I only put one hole in the backing so that will be an easy fix.

It was all just a mistake, it happens. I know many of us would get ourselves quite worked up over this. Maybe call ourselves a few names? Cast blame and shame? Perfectionism is a nasty beast. Of course we want to improve, not feel like we are wasting time, and get things finished. That’s normal and understandable. But making ourselves feel bad over quilting? Totally uncalled for and unnecessary. Shit happens. Acknowledge it, clean it up, and move forward.

Time to rebook in to the longarm. This time I will remember to bring an extra piece of fabric for testing tension. I will also not be so cocky and use the resources there (Emily) to make sure I am doing things right.

Sunny Day Stars

Sunny Day Stars

72” x 72”

This was one of the oldest quilts from the Quilts Under Construction list. I looked back and realized I started it in 2007! It began as a free Block of the Month called Celestial Migraine by Planet Patchwork. Shortly after the year it ran the whole thing disappeared. (Planet Patchwork also appears to be no more.) I think I made 3/12 blocks. I do remember that the final quilt was quite lovely in a seemingly random layout with a lot of negative space, mimicking stars in the night sky.

Over the years I would make another star block or two when I was craving some precision piecing. Lucky for me there are a tonne of traditional, free star block patterns. A few modern ones too. Then late last summer I got it in my head to actually finish this quilt. Well, at least the top! So I set out to make stars.

Each star block is repeated 3 times, for a total of 12 different star patterns. Each one, however, has a different combination of fabrics. Orange, gold, green, grey, beige, and white. In truth, it is a rather spring coloured quilt. But I finished the top during a September snow storm and finished the whole thing in the summer thunder storms. Still all about the sunshine!

It was a lot of fun to play with fabric on this quilt. Some stars pop, others recede. By playing with the contrast between the stars and the background, or the different components of the design I could change the entire look. The key was making sure not one star was too bossy.

The quilt back started with the scraps from making the last of the stars. Little bits and leftover triangles sewn together for fun. I used that as the centre and raided my stash for the rest. That large floral just happens to go with the first stars I made years ago. All of them are from a collection by Heather Bailly. The rest was just stuff I had around to make it work.

Quilting inspiration came from Dara Tomasson and her book, Walk, Jog, Run. She shared a ribbon quilting pattern - essentially a large meander that you echo to look like a ribbon. It was perfect for this. I quilted the whole thing in a peach Aurifil 50W.

I won’t lie, I wanted a green binding. Alas, there was not enough of the right greens in my stash and these are Covid times. No in person shopping. Then I found the grey and white stripe hiding on the cutting table. Perfection!

This quilt is already in it’s new home. As I was finishing the quilt top last fall I decided it would eventually go to a friend of mine. I wanted to spoil her with something just for her. Giving quilty gifts is the best!

Sawtooth Sampler from Walk, Jog, Run: A Free Motion Quilting Workout

A few years back I met the bundle of positive energy Dara Tomasson. I think it was at a trunk show I was doing but don’t quote me on that! As we got to know each other we discovered that she had family living only blocks away, her husband and I likely crossed paths as teens, and we had a mutual love of dogs and ice cream. Now she has her first book debuting in the world! When she asked if I could help her showcase it I did not hesitate.

Walk, Jog, Run is a free motion quilt (FMQ) book designed to help you build muscle memory, and thus, expertise. It isn’t just a book full of doodles for FMQ though. Dara walks us through set up, the right tools, and trouble shooting before she even gets to quilting patterns. As a former school teacher and current coach she is adept at breaking everything down to feel both manageable and informative. One of my favourite bits is the discussion on tension troublesheeting - something that I still have to look up after 21 years of quilting.

One of the other parts of the book that makes it unique is the drawing exercises and ‘training’ she suggests to build your skills. Like the title suggests, you can’t run a marathon until you know how to walk first. You can’t FMQ the king size beauty until you can draw the lines you want to make.

Now I am pretty comfortable with my FMQ skills. But I admit that I get lazy. I want to minimize stops and starts so I choose all over designs. Or I want to finish quickly so I choose something easy. But after reading the book and making this Sawtooth sampler I am motivated to try a few new to me things. That’s because they aren’t any more difficult, it was just my perception of the difficulty.

I’ve never done the ribbon candy before, but I love the look. It is definitely something that requires the muscle memory, so I did it all over the background on this piece. And one of my new favourites is the double meander on the top there. These are only 15” stars so quilting on a piece this size was a perfect way to practice. The sandwich was easy to manipulate yet I had ample space to experiment

To quilt I used two colours of Auriful 50W - a fuschia for all the stars and a pale yellow on the backgrounds. Of course, if you really want your stitching to pop then use a contrasting thread. You can see that in effect when I used the fuschia on the blue star.

Confession: I made a mistake when I was cutting the fabric for one of the stars, but I didn’t notice it until I was sewing. Of course, I didn’t have enough fabric left. So with a quick pivot I decided to turn this into a pillow cover. With pandemic shut down though I had to go with a size of pillow form already in the house. That just meant I could do a literal pivot too. I rotated things as I trimmed the quilted pillow top, cutting off points and the oddly shaped star mess. A fun solution! Since it had to be just a few inches bigger than my largest ruler I made the pillow back first and trimmed based off that. Nothing fancy there, just an unquilted envelope back of some fabric in the stash.

Congratulations Dara on your book! It’s a great one and I hope the rest of you will check it out. Especially if FMQ is new or intimidating to you. This book is a great trainer and Dara is a wonderful coach.

As you can see, about 20 minutes after I finished the pillow was put to good use as my littles listened to a teacher reading stories.

All The Sundays

All The Sundays

70'' x 70''

An oh so special quilt is finally finished. I wasn't impatient or anything, but as soon as the last stitches went in the other day I realized how much I wanted this quilt to be done. Only so that it could be real, that it could be a thing I used and loved.

The first bits of piecing in this quilt started years ago. I was teaching a Slab class, the technique popularized in my book with Amanda Jean, Sunday Morning Quilts. In my prep for the class I grabbed a bunch of scraps from making the quilts in A Month of Sundays. They were handy, that's all. I had no specific plan. So I made my samples for the class and that was that. A bit later I was reading Denyse Schmidt's book, Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspirations. Her Shoeman's Puzzle quilt grabbed me immediately.

I'm not sure when the moment was that I decided to combine all these influences into one quilt, but it happened. And it was love at first sight.

It wasn't an easy quilt to make. I made freezer paper templates to keep me on track. Those didn't come into play until after I'd made slabs though. The templates were totally necessary to keep lines as they should be, especially important with all those angles and bias edges. Of course, then there is the removing of the paper. Thankfully there are only 3 seams in each block, about the easiest paper piecing you can do.

The quilt top sat for a year and a half in the closet, keeping a dozen other quilt tops company. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do to quilt it and was willing to wait until the right idea hit me. Or, the right person to do it for me. 

Last summer I met Dara from Stitched Quilting Co. Turns out her MIL lives a few blocks away from me. We had a few visits and chatted quilting, dogs, and mothering. Well a couple of months ago Dara messaged to say she had an opening in her long arm schedule and delivery ready, if I had a quilt to go. Seeing as my Quilts Under Construction list is quite long I wasn't about to turn down the opportunity! This quilt made the cut precisely because I didn't have a plan for it and I already had a wide back purchased and ready to go. After a frantic evening of pulling papers and a few repairs I got it to Dara.

With so much solid expanse in the whites/creams of the quilt top this needed a special touch. Dara gave it just that! Such custom, detailed work. So much attention to detail. There are secondary and tertiary patterns in this quilt top and her quilting highlighted them. I'm thrilled with the outcome.

For the backing and binding I chose to go back to my dear friend Amanda Jean's fabric, Good Neighbors. She had a wide back fabric in that collection. And the orange dot was absolutely perfect for the binding. Conveniently I'd just ordered a half yard of it, the perfect amount. And lucky for me, because neither are available anymore!

My husband will happily tell anyone that we have a ridiculous amount of quilts in our house. He is very obliging if we are asked for donations or gifts. Little does he know that this quilt will never leave my hands. It represents so much to me, not to mention that I think it is absolutely beautiful. I will always think of friendships, how my career has grown, and the history contained in some beautiful fabric.