Showing posts with label swiftquilter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swiftquilter. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Why cats don't quilt

A week or two ago I finally mounted the pink kitty quilt onto the Swiftquilter frame. I thought I'd try an experiment and use a different machine than my trusty Juki TL-98P based on a request from someone about using another machine on the frame. I know that the TL-98P is the one for the job, but it's always worth trying new things. I won't go into my experience using another machine, because I doubt many of you are interested in that.

I do know that everyone loves a good cat photo, so let's get to the cute stuff...

I have taken to using staples to attach my quilts to the leaders (fabric attached to the roller bars) rather than pins. The staples are quick and easy to use and I flip around the base plate thingy so that the staples ends go outward rather than inward - this makes them really easy to pull out - too easy, apparently.

Here's my nice tidy setup before I started quilting. Notice the nice flat surface for quilting?


I did just a little bit of the quilting as a trial and then was planning to switch machines to really get going. Before I managed to do this, Sammy decided that the quilt made the perfect hammock for a heavier-than-he-looks cat. As you can see, where there used to be a nice flat quilt, is now a ginger-colored trouble-maker.


I'm sure if I had used pins instead of staples, this would not have happened. Then again, if I had a pet iguana, this would not have happened.

I have not yet sorted out this problem and instead have made a few more blocks from my scraps. So far, so good, but finding and trimming/cutting the scraps is a little tedious. Still, it's a nice distraction to do a block every few days. They are big (14") so should progress into a quilt without needing to make too many blocks. I haven't decided the finished size yet - I figure I'll keep going until I run out of scraps or get tired of making them.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Stumbling towards the finish line

[NOTE: I was so disorganized when I wrote this last week that I never finished it - so, you have to imagine going back in time to read it and then moving forward in time to see the finished photos.]

Have you ever had a project that just didn't want to get finished? That's how I feel about my blue snowflake quilt - especially now that I've been so close to finishing for ages.

It's been a WIP for over 3 years and it was rescued from being a UFO a few times. In August I did a big push to get the last block appliqued and the top done, and by mid September it was mounted onto the Swiftquilter frame and I started the quilting. But then life got in the way and the quilting (which was more detailed than anything else I have done) took much longer than expected.

So, each deadline that I was trying to make, I missed:

  1. Auckland Quilt Guild Festival of Quilts submission on 4 October
  2. The Blogger's Quilt Festival (see Amy's Creative Side) entries closed on 31 October
  3. And finally, Auckland Festival of Quilts merchant's stand setup tomorrow (I know, there's still a chance I will make this one)

The quilt has been near-done for almost two weeks, but the hand sewing on the binding took me a while and the tucking of hundreds of thread tails is lingering over me like some leftover Halloween specter.

[Here it is - finished and hanging in our merchant stand.]


[Here's some detail, I love the back.]


And then there's Mario (of Nintendo Mario Brothers fame). I am used to missing deadlines for myself, but this is not a lesson that I want to teach my 10 year old right now. I moved through Halloween unscathed by costume prep because last year's still fit and she was happy to wear it again. But, when the invitation arrived for Charlie's "Video Game Dress Up Birthday Party" this Friday, I knew I was in trouble. I did suggest putting a box on her head in the style of Minecraft, but that was not popular.

So, it was off to source costume supplies last weekend - $50 later we had fabric for blue overalls, a red t-shirt, red fleece for a hat, white gloves, white buttons, yellow paint to cover the white buttons, and a variety of stick-on mustaches.

So far, the overalls are sewed together, the hat is made, and the buttons have been painted with about 10 coats of paint. All that's left is to seal the buttons with acrylic and sew them onto the overalls. I also have to make massive buttonholes for the big yellow buttons. My Juki F600 has a fab automatic button-hole attachment, but it has it's limitations - in this case 1-1/4" buttons. My buttons are more like 1-1/2", so I will need to do them old school. I am considering using Velcro instead, it is just a costume after all.

[Mario, all finished.]


Meanwhile, tomorrow is setup day for the Festival of Quilts and I will spend most of it packing up sewing machines, accessories, tables, a Swiftquilter, display quilts, etc. and then unpacking them all for the show.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Quilting time

After a long period of little sewing, I have managed to move forward on a few things.

Last weekend Melanie and Robyn (from Monday Moderns), my mother, and I started quilting one of the two community quilts that I picked up from the Auckland Quilt Guild at the last meeting. A few of the girls were interested in giving the Swiftquilter a try and I thought it would be a good opportunity to finish off a few quilts for the guild to give away.


After a brief intro on using the frame, we worked through some ideas for the quilting. I admit that this is the hardest part of quilting on the frame - there's a bit of forward planning required. I suppose that this is the case with all quilting. The simple block design on the little quilt made a good guide to quilt around. We ended up with some diagonal squiggles and some spiral-centered daisies in the squares and feathers and swirls in the narrow border.


The group managed to quilt about half the quilt with everyone taking turns. I finished it up during the week and then mounted another one onto the frame. I made quick work of it with an all-over pattern.


Both quilts still need binding - I have a few volunteers, so hopefully, they will be back to the guild soon to give to someone that will appreciate them.


Monday, June 16, 2014

Finished wedding quilt

I finished the quilt for my friend's wedding which was on Saturday. I almost forgot to put a label on it, so with only a couple of hours to spare I was sewing it on the back.

I'm very happy with the end result and almost wish I could keep it for myself. Sometimes I think I like quilts that I make for others - they are better planned than ones I make for myself (not to mention the fact that they get finished quickly). There are several mistakes on this quilt, but it does take some looking at to see them. No handmade thing is perfect - isn't that kind of the point?

I don't have a good way to get photos of big quilts. I really need to figure something out. So here is the "Hey you guys, hold this for me" picture.


I did the quilting using my Swiftquilter frame and Juki TL-98P machine. After it was pinned and ready to go, I would guess it took me 4-6 hours to do the quilting. I admit that I tend towards dense quilting, so a more open pattern would have been faster. I used a free-hand spiral turned flower petal motif. It was easy to do and required no starts/stops and little concentration.


I had some soft sandy-colored variegated King Tut thread. There is no question that this is my very best favorite thread to use for quilting. This particular color just melted into the quilt. I used some pre-wound bobbins of Superior's bottom line in a pale grey. I've never used the pre-wound ones before and they were super convenient. Given the 8 bobbins that I used, it's nice to grab one from the bag and drop it in.

I can't be sure that they were 100% trouble free. I noticed on the back a few minor flaws and I suspect that the bobbin might have been the culprit. However, I also found that the bobbin case tension was too loose because some fluff was caught up in it and this too may have been the cause.

Of course none of this is important to the recipients of the quilt. All I hope is that they have many years shared together snuggling under its warmth.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Quilting the wedding quilt

I spent most of last weekend sewing. DD was off to camp with girl guides (scouts) so I had no excuses. Friday night was a disaster - I had cut all of my setting triangles earlier to make sure I had big enough pieces of fabric and I cut the remaining squares for the blocks from what was left.

When I went to lay out the blocks I realized that the setting triangles were all cut too small. The was the result of a miscalculation (I forgot that the sashing would effectively make the blocks bigger) and some incorrect cutting. I was determined to come up with a solution to my problem before I went to bed - how could I use these triangles?

After more calculations, a double check of my numbers, and the cutting of one test triangle I came up with a fix: add a strip of the sashing to each triangle and then trim it to size. I had run out of sashing and I was nervous about cutting any more off of the backing fabric (I am known for not making the backing big enough). I realized that if I cut the 1-1/2 inches off along the salvage it would be okay. It was about 1:30am when I finally turned in.

The end result is a 1-inch border around the quilt. I admit, I like how it's turned out. (Sorry, no good pictures now that it's mounted on the Swiftquilter frame.)


I'm about half-way though the quilting. I'm using an all-over design which is a spiral-feather-flower thing. It's going well and I am sure that I will finish it with plenty of time to do the binding.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Back from Craft & Quilt show in Christchurch

I spent the past few days in Christchurch attending the Craft & Quilt Show. We had our Juki machines and Swiftquilter frame on display. Poor hubby had to drive down with the 4x4 packed to the ceiling and I had the luxury of flying in and back out with only my carry-on bag.

The stand looked a lot like the one we had at the Auckland Festival of Quilts. Hubby did all the unpacking and setting up so I did not have the heart to ask him to move the quilts around so that my most recent creation had pride of place. Instead, my scrappy warm/cool diamonds were covering a trestle table in the corner with the PC and accessories on top of it.


I spent the three days doodling on my 'short-arm quilting machine' (my new name for the Swiftquilter setup). One can only do so much stippling before it gets very old. After a few questions about using a template, I thought I would create my own as an experiment.

I drafted a little bird and when I was happy with it, I did some paper folding and layering. I took the stack of paper to the sewing machine and without any thread I sewed around my sketch. When I unfolded it all, I had 4 birds in kissing pairs. I used a marker to trace each one following the perforations made by the machine needle. Not perfect by any standards, but I figured it would give me an example of how the templates can be created. (Sorry, they are upside down in the photo)


To use the template, I drive from the back of the machine and use the stylus to follow the template. My biggest problem is taking my eyes off of the stylus to take a peek at the stitching - this only leads to disaster!

I admit that I prefer to do everything freehand from the front of the machine, but acknowledge that there are times when a template like this is useful. I have even made a promise (to myself) that I will use this technique on my next quilt.

The end result was fine, although if this were a real quilt, and not a demo on the cheapest cotton fabric I could find, I would have tweaked my design a bit. I think that they came out much better after I filled in the background. Here you can see one set filled in with some swirls and the back of another surrounded by stippling.


Other than hours of demonstrations, I have done no sewing this week. The Monday Moderns had a sewing day on Saturday that I missed (bummer) and all the sewing machines including mine were packed up last Monday. I will hopefully see them again tomorrow night.

Meanwhile, I have cut out the next border for my tea towel challenge and am expecting the first round of the Cotton Robin round robin any day now. Check out the centre blocks here. I don't know which one I will get and it's all secret squirrel until they are all finished and sent back to their owners. Try to (secretly) guess which one is mine.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Hot and cold quilting

This quilt top was set aside a few months ago. I finally setup the Swiftquilter and am ready to go. The problem is, I really didn't know what to do. I had a few false starts and had to unpick what I started twice.

My problem is that I need to think about the quilting (or at least the area I can work in) when I start designing a quilt. As usual, I want to quilt a motif bigger than my working area. I am sure that if I had a full-size longarm setup, I would still want to do something an inch bigger than I can.


I finally decided to do some ferny feathers within a smaller diamond. Then I started adding a squiggly line border (times three) around it. This is working okay, but I have to wind up/down the quilt because it's still bigger than my working area.

Somehow my heart just isn't in this. I think I have too many other things going on. I know that I will like the finished piece, but maybe I just need to do something else for a few days. Too bad the frame (with extension) is taking up my living room and half the dining room.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Getting ready to quilt the hexis

I finished piecing the quilt top last week and have been trying to figure out how I will quilt it. (The photo looks a bit odd because I have to 'glue' two photos together into one.)


Because this quilt was made from bee blocks made by the Monday Modern quilters, I wanted to do 'modern' quilting. But, I can't come up with anything modern except for painful stitch in the ditch or carefully-marked diagonal cross-hatching. Neither of these appeal.

So, after staring at my quilt hanging on the wall for the past week, I can't help seeing flowers in a field of grass. And when I think hexagons, I think bees.

So, some doodling has resulted in this plan.


Not a great rendition - it will be easier to do on my Swiftquilter than using my right-handed mouse (especially because I am left handed). The bee will take some practice, but I only plan on including a few.

This quilt is the largest of the ones I've done on my Swiftquilter and is just slightly (2 inches) too big to fit on the un-extended frame. Hubby helped add the extension on and I now have a 9-foot contraption sitting in my living room. It seems like overkill for the extra couple of inches, but from experience it's better to have a lot of room on the edges as a staging area for the machine. The last quilt I did maxed out the space and I had to reach under the quilt to change my bobbins.

Speaking of bobbins, how many will it take to quilt this? It's a problem to stop and refill them and I go through a lot. I am guessing 10-12. But, it's impractical to fill up so many (do I even have enough), so I do them in batches of 4.

Hubby and daughter are away skiing next week, so this will be my opportunity to stay up late and get this done. It needs to be finished by 5 August, so I better get moving!

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Busy, busy, busy

There seems to be so much going on in my quilty and non-quilty worlds. Sometimes the two merge and other times they clash. July appears to be a month of deadlines - the contract work that I am currently doing is scheduled to end on 31 July. I also need to have at least 2 quilts finished for the Monday Modern exhibit that we are having in September. Meanwhile, I have started a new business (see the Sew Frisco button on the right) and am gearing up to do some concentrated work on that in August.

After giving up all hope on the final round of the Cotton Robin, my last round arrived in the mail late last week - it took 11 weeks to get from Canada to New Zealand. On close inspection, I realised that it was sent surface mail (a lesson to everyone to always specify air mail).

Because the round robin was finished and all other quilts had made it home in June, I committed to doing a rush job and get it home safely to its owner. So, I spent some time quilting it this weekend. Luckily, it was small (24 inches on the longest side). But, perhaps because it was small, I thought it needed more quilting. The busy black and bright colour scheme led me to choose a black metallic thread with subtle variegated colours that I found lurking in the back of my closet. I also decided to keep the quilting simple, so I ended up doing some stitich-in-the-ditch, some randomly spaced parallel lines, and some outlining. All of it was with the walking foot - no FMQ this time.


I mulled over the binding for a while and ended up previewing several of them and taking votes from hubby and daughter. Hubby was surprisingly helpful and I took his advice (unprecedented).

Next up - the small grey quilt that I am doing for the exhibition (it's still a secret, so no too revealing photos). I loaded it onto the Swiftquilter and thought that I'd wizz through the quilting in no time. But, my haste was my mistake because I did not take the time to make sure everything was set up correctly and I had to unpick the first few rows because I discovered a tension disaster was brewing - this was because I did not thread the machine correctly.


The quilting is almost done (after having to run up the road for more bobbin thread). I took it off the Swiftquilter and decided it needed a bit of ditch stitching. This is best done on my other machine with the walking foot. I should finish it tonight.

The final project actively on the go is the green & black hexi-in-a-hexi quilt. Yesterday I started piecing the second half of the front. I'm using a different machine now - the Juki Exceed F600 - and am loving the feature to automatically backstitch and cut the threads at the start and finish of each seam. Very handy when doing these y-seams.

I also finished binding on other quilt last night. Will post some finished pictures soon.

Linking up to Freshly Pieced WIP.



Sunday, June 23, 2013

Quilting feathers on plaid

A few months ago I finished the first plaid quilt from blocks I won on Block Lotto last April. After piecing the second one a while ago, I have pulled it out as my first victim to quilt using my Swiftquilter.

Inspired by Angela Waters' Craftsy class, I have leaped in and started quilting some feathers as a random meander on this quilt. Here's the quilt set up and ready to go.


I actually tried to start it last night, but could not get enough light. This morning it was much better - even between rain showers the natural light is so much better. Unfortunately, we are on the shortest day of the year, but with some fast work, I'm almost done and probably have 45 minutes left before I can't see any more.

I'm planning a scrappy binding, which I will hopefully get started on tonight.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Two quilts for exhibit

At the Monday Modern meeting this week we started planning our exhibit. This is very exciting except that the quilts need to be done in 2 months, about 6 weeks earlier than I thought. Our exhibit is in mid September but we need to submit the quilts at our August meeting. I understand the reason for this, but it's so soon.

I have progressed on my grey quilt and the flimsy is finished. Here's a peek.


My hexi bee blocks are now on the design wall with the (second) green solid that I have purchased. At first I thought this green was wrong too, but it's growing on me. I need to make a few more and cut some more solid hexis and some partial ones for the edges and then I'll be ready to start sewing.


Originally I planned a pattern that would allow me to avoid having to y-seam everything, but it was too busy looking. This layout is good but it will take me a while to piece them together. Usually I see this as the home stretch of the flimsy construction, but not this time.

My experimentation on the Swiftquilter continues. I signed up for Crafty's "Free Motion Quilting with Feathers" with Angela Walters. It's been really helpful, but no class can replace practice, practice, practice. Here's a sample feather and some surrounding doodling.


I will be moving my blog soon to sit under my business web site. Not much will change, only the location. Stay tuned for details.

Monday, May 27, 2013

A new toy to play with

On the weekend I picked up a new toy that I purchased on Trade Me (the NZ equivalent of eBay). For those of you that read about my experimentation with the borrowed Handi Quilter a month ago, you will know that I had some problems. So, I went looking for a better (I hope) solution.

This solution comprises a NZ made Swiftquilter frame, a Juki TL98 machine, and integrated handles and speed controls. You may be aware that I recently took over the agency for Juki domestic machines - the man who was the agent designed and manufactured the Swiftquilter as well. We may be adding it to our product line, so I wanted one to play with.

I enlisted my hubby to put it all together. This turned out to be quite straight forward. The frame goes together easily and sits on top of a trestle table. With the help of a spirit level and some bits of wood and cardboard, DH had it leveled and ready to go within 45 minutes (trestle tables and old floors are never straight).


I decided that it would be prudent to create a test quilt made up of a scrap of batting and some unbleached muslin (calico) that I had lying around. I also used 'any-old' thread (maybe not such a great idea - I had some breakages).

Loading the quilt layers is a little fiddly, but I had to remind myself that pin basting even a small quilt can be very time consuming and the results are rarely perfectly smooth. Once loaded, it was ready to go.

Having two sets of handles - one on each side of the machine - made it possible to stand on either side of the table. The controls can be used to switch on/off the machine or I can hold down a button to run it. There is also a speed setting on the controls. This means I don't have to use the foot pedal which was pretty tricky to do the last time I tried this.


The Juki TL98 is a domestic version of an industrial machine - it is heavy, fast, and only goes straight. An ideal machine for this application because FMQ is seriously hard on sewing machines. The speed is a bit daunting (it goes twice as fast as any normal domestic machine). At first I shied away from the speed, but after practicing for a few minutes I cranked it up and found that the stitches were much more even at higher speeds.

This setup, like any similar setup (including a 'true' longarm) does limit your quilting designs. I suspect that I will eventually sort out what works best and perhaps use a combination of the frame and my usual FMQ techniques to customise my quilting. It is obvious to me though, that if I want a repeated all-over design, this setup would allow me to do that in a fraction of the time it usually takes me.


One drawback - my living room is now a quilting studio. My daughter was away this weekend, but when she came back she complained that she could not hear Adventure Time on Cartoon Network over the machine. Heaven forbid she misses out on the intelligent commentary of Jake the dog!