A Weekend Finish

I gave the new Bernina a workout this weekend, making this tote bag for Miss Main St. She is turning 14 in April and likes Japanese anime and manga so when I saw this fabric on eQuilter.com I thought it would make a good tote bag for her. It was a great project for testing out the features on my new machine - zipper foot (there is a zippered pocket in the lining), the edge stitch foot (makes topstitching a breeze), different needle positions. I am loving it!

I used a pattern from U-Handbag. Check this site out if you like making purses and bags. She sells supplies and patterns and has lots of free tutorials. I'm going to try one of the clutches with a metal frame sometime. I might start small and make a case for my sunglasses.

Miss Main St. objects to the use of wrapping paper on environmental impact concerns so I'll use this bag as the "wrapper" for her other presents. Now I need to decide what to do next. I'd like to start a new quilting project but have Christmas Pickle in process. I'm afraid if I don't get on with it, it will become a UFO.

My New Sewing Machine - Bernina 440QE

Or, as they say in the manual, it's a sewing computer! Yes, I splurged and bought a Bernina. I was totally bowled over by what this machine can do. It has 180 different stitches (I'll probably use just 5 or 6 on a regular basis) and comes with a stitch regulator attachment for machine quilting. I love the optional knee lift for the presser foot; great for machine applique. Plus it does all the usual stuff like button holes, blind hem, and so on. I am still learning how to use it (so many more automatic features than my old machine) so I'm planning to give it real workout this weekend. I'll report back on Monday.

Baby Quilt

I made this baby quilt for a silent auction that is a fundraiser for an organization I support. It was a spur of the moment idea. I am reluctant to make quilts for these sorts of things because the money they bring in is usually a pittance compared to the amount of work it takes to make it, let alone materials. But I had a set of pre-cut 4” squares I bought on eBay a couple of years ago so it was pretty quick to run up. I machine quilted it in a grid pattern using my walking foot.

This may well be my last project on my old sewing machine. Tomorrow, I’ll show you what I bought!

Seaside Rose

I was doing a little spring update of the décor here on Main Street this morning and got this quilt out. I made it a while back (the border is a Moda print from a few years ago) and I call mine Seaside Rose but it is based on a pattern called French Roses. It uses raw edge appliqué. This was my first attempt with raw edge appliqué and I found it pretty easy (I suggest practicing on some scraps first though) and I was very happy with the way it turned out. I’ve seen samples of this quilt in a lot of stores (physical and online) but I added the sashing which is not part of the original pattern. I think the sashing gives it more ordered appearance and helps pull all the fabrics together.

Looking at this quilt again got me thinking about my approach to quilting. In the early days of my quilting career, I always had an application (bed, wall, etc.) or recipient in mind when I started a project. The next step was color scheme and pattern or design, then I chose the fabrics from the LQS for that particular project. Of course, any time I was at the LQS, I bought for my stash too, because there was always something that was just to good to pass up and that I would use "someday." As my stash developed, I would still work in this same fashion but often pull at least part of a project's fabric supply from my stash. Then fabric companies began selling broader, more coordinated collections of fabric from a single designer, and stores began displaying them as a unit, instead of breaking up the line and merchansing with other, like colors. So I began buying more coordinated sets of fabric, either yardage or fat quarter bundles, and later the pre-cuts that Moda is so famous for offering. (I have a rather extensive set of Robyn Pandolph's Folk Art collections for Moda that I acquired this way, and though I've used it several quilts, there always seems to be more in my stash!)

Now I've reached the point where every bed, wall, display space in my house has at least one quilt if not more and I've made a quilt for every family member, so I make fewer quilts that I need to make for something specific and more that I want to make "just because." Sometimes I start with a design or pattern. For example, Christmas Pickle was to challenge myself with more intricate piecing. And sometimes I start with a fabric collection and try to figure out what to do with it. Right now, I'm very taken with the Legacy line from Moda, though this brown/blue/pink fabric does not really go with my mostly yellow/green/white home decor.

Oh well, so many quilts, so little time!

Vintage Garden Quilt

I've mentioned this quilt before. I call mine Vintage Garden and I made it using the Vintage Rose pattern from The Pattern Basket. This quilt lives in our family/tv room, where we have a beige couch and dark green walls. I used a floral upholstered chair as the basis for selecting the fabrics for the nine patch blocks – those fabrics were all from my stash. I chose the beige and cream toile specially for this quilt; I think it was from a line by Ro Gregg called Heaven Can Wait but I made the quilt in 2007 so that fabric is probably long gone from store shelves.

This is an easy-to-make quilt but I just love how it came out. It combines three blocks: nine patch, rail fence, and plain squares, and is set on point with setting triangles and borders. It would be quite easy to vary the size.

Explanation of how we got in this mess

I found this great explanation of the origins of our current economic crisis and thought I'd share.




The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

A Just Finished Quilt Top

I began this quilt at the beginning of January but it got shunted aside when I took the Christmas Pickle class. I’ve made progress on Christmas Pickle to the point where I feel safe putting it aside for a while (Christmas seems a long way off) while I work on some other projects. (Do you juggle projects like this? Is this normal?) So I finished the piecing over the weekend and added the borders last night.

I used a Moda University pattern called Hexagon Magic and two jelly rolls. In this close-up you can see how the top is pieced in strips, with two sides coming together to form the hexagon shape. They are not real hexagons because all six sides are not the same length but this technique is a lot faster than dealing with real hexagons. I like it as an alternative to basic squares. I think the seams will disappear after quilting. The fabric collection is called Fig and Plum (also from Moda) but looking at this, I see cabbage. I’m thinking of naming it Mon Petit Chou (French, literally means my little cabbage but used as an endearment, especially for babies). I need to decide on a name soon because I’m going to piece the label into the backing, using the technique explained here.

This was my first jelly roll quilt and I have to say, my experience with the jelly rolls did not make me a fan. I had a hard time dealing with the pinked edge, accuracy-wise. But the bigger issue was that the strips had not been cut exactly perpendicular to the fold of the fabric, consequently were very noticeably V-shaped. This would have been a disaster if making a pattern that uses the full WOF strip. Mine involved cutting the strips in small segments plus the quilt did not require using all 80 strips so it worked out even though I could not use the middle of each strip. I have two more jelly rolls but plan on using them in a design that involves piecing the strips together into strip sets then cutting. I hope it works out okay. By the way, I haven’t had a problem using the pre-cut squares (charm packs and layer cakes); I’m a big fan of those as a way to get a scrappy look without a big $ investment in yardage.