quilting, quilting, realizations, and more quilting

 isn't this a pretty pile?

can you tell what it is?

it's my three most recent quilt top finishes fully sam'iched (backed and basted), ready for quilting.

they've been added to the last pile of backed and basted quilts i put together not too long ago, bringing my total of "needs to be quilted" projects to eight.

to some quilters, this might seem like a tower of pressure and a lot of behind-ness. but not to me. i've discovered in the last few years (here and here) that i rather like batch processing quilts through the post-piecing-a-flimsy stage along to a finish. it works really well for my "start all the quilts" mentality. piece a whole bunch with abandon for a while, then finish them off all together. 

this time around, i've realized that it is actually helpful to my quilting skills to do more than one quilt in a row. when i only bust out the walking foot or fmq for one quilt at a time, i feel like i'm just getting in the groove of it again when i'm suddenly done. then i don't do it again for several months and i'm back to relearning as i go again.

not this time.

let's see what i got done in one week. not only did i complete most of that stack, i had several learning moments and realizations along the way. it's a lot of quilting and a lot of information! maybe you just want to scroll the photos and get a general idea.

first up, was my original treehouse crossroads quilt. i looked at several of these online to see how others quilted them. i was partially inclined to figure out how to do a citrus peel (aka dogwood) pattern on the rectangles, but i couldn't decide how that would work with the roads and squares. i was also partial to handquilting this, which looks so great. but i am already a few years behind on those projects and didn't want this quilt to have to wait forever to be finished.

so i went with easy.

i echo quilted along the block-joining seams and outside the road strips. it's a medium density choice, which leaves the quilt pretty sturdy, but also soft and drapey. 

and even though the walking foot requires me to sew on the turtle, it was really fast!

except when this happened ...

the walking foot (or, as juki calls it, even feed foot) broke.

well, that was unexpected.

and completely inexplicable. nothing happened to signal a problem. earlier on i did have one of those moments where the bobbin case isn't fully inserted correctly and the needle won't go down, but i quickly readjusted and moved on. well into the quilting, i look up and see that the bottom prong on guide fork part of the foot is completely bent down. it literally looks like it was made this way. it's not thinned at all, nor was it hot. it doesn't look warped. it's just pointed down now instead of being parallel with the upper prong like it should be. 

how could this happen without making a noise or parts exploding everywhere? i spray basted this quilt, so it's not like i hit a pin or anything, which my machine has always taken in stride, anyway.

it's a complete mystery!

i've contacted juki and we're in talks because this was a very new walking foot, purchased less than a year ago, and has only been used twice before.

it's a good thing i had a spare since our household now owns three juki quilting machines. i was able to walk my way through to a finish of the first crossroads and move on to the low-volume crossroads quilt right away.

i zipped right through the quilting and had it finished in a day.

shortly after completing these two, i came across the ideal quilting pattern for a crossroads quilt! it's handquilting and it's perfection. see it here on instagram. i love it so much! i still have one more treehouse crossroads quilt in the works, so maybe i'll try this on the next one.

but as for the quilts i'm quilting right now, here's what was next:

i needed to add the rest of the machine quilting to "liberty holly hobbie quilt" so i can finish the handwork. i've decided that for added stability, i should stitch-in-the-ditch between strips in addition to handquilting down the center of each strip. i initially did half before beginning the handquilting.

this was my original idea when i quilted my first liberty + crossweave quilt, but after putting the first few lines of machine stitches in, i decided i didn't like it.

now i've changed my mind again because of practicality and wanting to increase the stability of our beloved sunday church lap quilts.

but back to my quilting marathon.

i was done with the walking foot and moved on to fmq, which was a little scary since i haven't done it in a while.

i started with "aunt bet's mother's day quilt."

and here i came to terms with something about myself as a quilter: when it comes to the multitude of skills involved in making a quilt, the quilting part is not my strong suit (wheelhouse? i keep hearing that term lately).

i still think it's so confusing that we call the collective process of making a quilt "quilting," and call the part where we stitch the layers together "quilting," as well.

but here's what i realized about myself;

i heartily admire people who can do intense, varied, fantastic quilting. i think it can add so much to the beauty and style of a quilt. i own a few books on the topic, about both walking foot and fmq methods. i like quilting my own quilts and have no desire to outsource this part of the process.

all that said, i'm also not very skilled or creative when it comes to the quilting part. right now, i don't want to put the time in to improve. currently, i'm competent at about three patterns. i have zero desire to up my game here.

and i'm totally okay with that.

i'm owning this about myself and my quilting.

at first i was feeling a little embarrassed about this, then realized it's completely fine. i can be myself, which means basic & mediocre at quilting, and still make quilts i love. i don't have to do it all and be amazing at all the parts. my quilts won't be known for their lovely feathers or fantastic curves or fancy script.

alright.

i've made my peace with myself about where i stand on quilting and can get back to it.

i also recalled that on previous projects, once washed and crinkled, a lot of the minor flaws disappear.

thank goodness.

this is when i decided to do simple modern loops on "aunt bet's." i'v done them before and the quilt had a lot of existing horizontal lines, so marking would be minimal. although i decided later i should have marked more. i now know i like my loops to be between 1" - 2" high and should take the time to mark accordingly. there are a few rows on this quilt that are too high for my preference. they get lanky and strange looking, lose their pleasant proportions. so from now on, i mark! 

i learned before that i definitely like to have the center line marked, and now i know about my personal height preferences, too. marking a quilt for quilting is one of those time-consuming, used-to-feel-wasteful parts of the process that i now accept and just do. (like trimming hsts and, occasionally, pinning.)

i did the non-interlocking/non-overlapping loops in rows horizontally across the quilt, and i'm happy with the results. it looks pretty good on the back all together in a photo. nothing to see here when passing on a galloping horse, as my aunties say, so we're good. denser would have been more crinkly, but i wanted to maintain drape. this is a happy medium loop.

this is also where i started to have needle issues. (honestly, it might have happened once with the 1st quilt, but i can't remember for sure. this is definitely when i started taking photos.) i know i don't change my needles as frequently as is probably prudent, but i don't usually have problems. one snapped completely out of nowhere. coincidentally, the bobbin was empty. i changed it and moved on.

 this is also when i got to try out a super-cool (really, it's the best thing ever) method i'd just seen on IG for burying thread ends. you use a contrasting thread to pull the ends into the quilt for burying. pure genius! see the demo here. jackie gillies is pretty brilliant. for added security, since there is no knot, i like to reinsert the tails at a new angle at least once, preferably twice. and when i start sewing the new thread again, i sew over the last few stitches where the other thread ended.

i now keep a needle loaded with red thread permanently in my pin cushion for this purpose. i've reused the same thread over several quilts and it's going strong.

i got nearly done with these loops before i sewed the corner of the backing to the quilt. haha. i haven't done that in a long time, but i've done it plenty. it's one of my more common "home ec moments."

for the record, i used a light silvery blue thread for this quilt, aurifil 2846, solely because it was already on the machine from when i quilted "liberty holly hobbie quilt" together. fortunately, it also coordinates well with the palette. i like to keep track of my thread choices in case i need to know in future, and since i can never remember without recording it.

i started "aunt bet's" around 7:30 in the morning and, even with stopping for all the things all day, was done by dinner time. modern loops are wonderfully fast. (note: denyse schmidt calls this quilting pattern "modern loops" in her book "modern quilts, traditional inspiration" and you can see a beautiful example of them on the cover. i've also seen this pattern referred to as "wishbone" or "figure eights," and "ribbon candy" is also closely related.)

are you still here?

good. i'm still quilting!

after dinner, "melonaide brightside quilt" was next. i chose a beautiful aqua shade, aurifil 2830 from a camille roskelly collection, for my thread and opted to do a tight, dense modern loops pattern, running vertically along the quilt.

it might sound like i just copied my previous choice, but they actually turned out quite differently, as you'll see.

at this point, i was humming along when it came to the loops. i can sew them pretty fast. until the needle breaks! dang it. this didn't used to happen to me and was driving me batty. almost every single time it happened, i found the bobbin empty, and had to wonder if/how they were related. or was there something about all the friction from the super-fast needle motion that was loosening it and causing problems?

i was moving through quilts fast and not taking time to clean out the machine as well as i normally would. this is bad because fmq make a ton of fluff and fuzz. just look at the needle and foot area. i was getting oil spots on the quilt in a few places because all that fuzz collecting there attracts oil, and then rubs against the quilt when it brushes past.

something about the bobbin running out of thread seemed to be causing the needle breaks, and since this quilt was needing a bobbin replacement after every two rows of the denser quilting, it was getting old fast.

i gave up for the evening - two quilts in one day was a lot anyway.

in the morning, i tackled it again and finished up "melonaide brightside," then moved on to my scrappy strings fall quilt.

and had the same issue. ugh.

at this point, i made two shot-in-the-dark decisions:

- clean the machine & bobbin again whenever i changed bobbins

- be very careful and intentional about replacing the bobbin properly.

it worked. or at least i had no more problems from there on out.

i was feeling like i could do something a bit beyond loops at this point and tried to freehand a sort of leafy vine pattern running in vertical columns like the strips. there is a similar doodle i used to do in school all the time, which is what i had in mind for this. 

it sort of worked.

the strips in this quilt aren't of equal widths, so a few times i got off course when trying to guess where my line should be going. when starting a new column, i would just move a handspan over from where i had previously started. it mostly worked, but marking the quilt would have been a lot more accurate. always mark the quilt! it's worth it.

and that's how i quilted five quilts in one week.

binding is one of my favorite parts of the quilt process.

i can't wait to get these trimmed and worked up!

(of course there are still two from that first pile i didn't get to and another one from before that. shh!)

so maybe i need to put my quilting gloves back on for a few more days.

fall-ing for log cabins

fall's here! in theory, at least. most days we still hover in the 90's for now. i feel like it doesn't actually reach us until december. that's desert living. however, now that it's october, i feel safe making seasonal changes inside the house no matter what's going on outdoors. after practically two months of no sewing, on a complete whim i've started a fall log cabin quilt inspired by one i pinned ages ago:

something about this color combination and the log cabin layout really appeals to me, which is kind of funny because i'm not a purple lover. somehow the purple-loving chromosome got left off my X gene. (or is that the gene got left off the chromosome?) i consider myself a girly-girly, but that has never included liking purple. but here i like it!

yesterday i was picking up a sewing machine from servicing and decided to get some purples for my stash so i could make a fall log cabin quilt. then i stopped at my other local store on the way home and got even more bits and pieces.

$$$xxx later, i'm ready to make a fall log cabin quilt! so bad.

interestingly enough, i must have mashed up all the low-volume log cabins i've been admiring lately with the memory of the fall log cabin, because when i looked up the original quilt i had in mind, once i was home and had bought all that fabric, i was really surprised with what i saw. i didn't remember the dark colors at all. but i like both ideas!

i got mostly 1/4 and 1/3 yard cuts of fabric. i really wanted the quilt to be scrappy, so i got a lot of different little bits. obviously, even with small pieces of fabric, there was going to be a lot of leftovers, which was totally fine by me. there are some other layouts i want to make with the same color scheme anyway. so i plan on having a couple of fall quilts when i'm done making with all this fabric.

i decided to work with 2.5" cut strips to get the size of blocks i want quickly. at first i was just cutting one or two strips, but then i realized it would be much easier to just cut each piece into as many strips as i could get from it at once. that way i would have lots of strips for any other quilts i want to make with this fabric pull. almost all were 2.5'" friendly, anyway, so why not?

i've never bought 1/3 yard cuts before, but i was feeling like i might want just a bit more than 1/4 yard and not as much as 1/2 yard with some printss. i like the extra few inches i am getting out of them.

cutting into this heather ross unicorn fabric from stash was nerve-wracking. the unicorn was bigger than the strip i needed and i didn't want to make it look funny or have a lot of waste after i cut. i know it's "only fabric," buuuutttt . . . heather ross out-of-print unicorns!

after making the first few blocks, i realized it is much faster to work on two blocks in tandem. that allows me to let a pressed block sit under some floppy books and get flat without wasting time waiting on it. also, moving from machine to cutting table to pressing board with each addition takes a lot more time than other types of piecing do. the log cabin block is pretty straight forward and simple, it's just time consuming. maybe there's a better way to go about making log cabins, like precutting everything. but i'm just deciding what to add on in what order as i go, only working with strips and trimming once they are on the block.

the process goes something like this:

1. sew the new piece on the block. 

2. trim the strip.

3. press open the strip and leave sitting under some floppy books to aid flattening of the block.

(sometimes i press and then trim.)

4. move back to machine and work on the other block, repeating steps 1-3, while first piece is flattening and cooling.

i keep building both blocks at the same time in this way. without having everything precut (which would also take a lot of time and thinking and prep), it's as close to chainpiecing as i can get. having to press each strip once attached before adding the next one is what takes so long.

i'm pretty sure i would like the look of the blocks even better with thinner strips, but that would take ssoooo much longer! and i'm really hoping that this will be a quick-ish finish. for this fall, not next year.

how many mistakes can you spot with this attachment? at least two. i got everything wrong at once! which also meant i could fix it all at the same time. hand me the seam ripper, please.

both of my unicorn blocks turned out well. i will lose a little of the horn in the seam allowance, but not too much.

six of the 12 needed blocks are complete.
it's time to get back to the other machine.

building a c

 quite often when i'm in the middle of a project, i'll take photos of the process as i go, with the intention of making a blog post out of it at some point. and sometimes, much later, i find those photos when i'm looking for something else. such was the case with these photos of when i decided to make letters to spell my son's name for his blue and orange wonky quilt using the letter patterns in denyse schmidt's "proverbial quilt."

the letters could either be patchwork pieced or paper pieced. i chose to trace the pattern and patchwork it together. you can watch my letter "c" quickly come together.

there are 4 pieces to letter "c." i cut apart the paper pattern, then selected a fabric scrap for each component. when i cut the fabric, i added in a 1/4" seam allowance on all sides by pinning the paper the the fabric and using a ruler to gauge 1/4" outside the pattern piece. all the letters in this patter have all straight lines to each piece, so this is quite easy to do.

next i sewed  pieces 2 and 3, the top and bottom segments of the "c," to the center background piece 1. once pressed, there was only one more bit.

piece 4, the long left side of "c" was last to go on.

setting the seam.

then pressing open.

and there you have a letter "c."

this process was very quick and quite enjoyable! i do plan on doing an entire quilt of a favorite quote someday.

next time, i'll just need to make sure i can see the pins so i don't accidentally sew one into the letter.

this quilt is now in the binding phase, by the way. it should be a finish quite shortly!

home ec highlights

what's wrong with this picture?

 i've had several people tell me they enjoy when i share all my sewing debacles, or what i call "home ec moments." apparently it's amusing and maybe even comforting to see things go wrong for someone else. i like to keep things real and honest here, which is why i share the mishaps. no way am i a quilting expert who turns out flawless finishes. my quilting experience is a study in mistakes! but i think i am living proof you can continually make mistakes and still turn out usable, maybe even likable, quilts.

here are a few gems from when i quilted "bloom where you are planted" over the course of a weekend. i'm still not sure if i had an unusual number of problems occurring or if it just seemed that way because i sewed a lot more in a shorter space of time. i documented them as i was going on instagram, much to the amusement of several friends.

here are photos i took with the real camera as i went along:

somehow i managed to move my fmq foot under the thread of a very large stitch and then sew over that thread, by one stitch, before i stopped. in effect, i sewed my foot to the quilt top. genius! if this was a required technique, i'm sure i'd never manage it.

in a fmq craftsy class i took from leah day, she said if your stitch wasn't big enough to catch your toe in and trip on, then you should leave it. i wonder if being able to fit your sewing foot under it counts as big enough for catching your toe?

don't you just loathe when you barely get started quilting and then your bobbin thread runs out?! right after i had fixed a messed up spot, i got moving again only to have my thread run out three loops into the row. and when i wound the bobbin, i accidentally wound the thread under the bobbin on the spindle rather than on the bobbin. that was a big mess and further delay, too. (the photo didn't turn out so you'll just have to imagine it.)

my biggest trick i pulled off may have been sewing my foot to the quilt but sewing this tail of fabric to the back of the quilt took a lot of untapped talent, too. see, the backing had three vertical strips sewn into it and one of them was about a foot longer than the rest. i was too lazy to cut it off before i started quilting. this is a reminder why you should always trim the back properly before attempting fmq.

well, that particular loop there was looking flat on the top anyway so it was a good excuse to have to unpick and resew that portion. i considered leaving it on the back for a "design feature," a sort of raw-edge ruffle on the back, but decided that loop really needed to be redone. so out it went. and the tail got trimmed immediately.

looking back at these photos, it doesn't seem like much at all. in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't. that's the point. it took me some extra time, but everything got fixed and the quilt got finished, even on deadline to be delivered to it's owner.

so when you mess up, just fix it and keep moving on.
think of me and laugh a little, too.

some fmq tricks and blips

 for anyone that was unduly impressed with my dogwood/orangepeel fmq on my penny patch quilt just examine this photo a bit. i'd like to say this is from the begining of the process, but it's actually from nearly the end, when i should have had the pattern perfected, right? or from when i started getting tired of the dang thing and became frantic and sloppy.

 in case you missed the obvious, just look at that dented/deflated petal in the orange on the upper left there. if you're really perceptive, you'll see another flat petal in the orange/white/blue katie jumprope  floral, too.

a view of the back shows that one more clearly:

people always wonder when to unpick and when to leave a mistake alone. really, it's a personal decision based on what you'll be able to live with later. in a quilt with hundreds of these petals, this is rather insignificant, but these two did not pass muster. out they went. sure, it was a pain, but they crossed the line. when i have blatant gaffs, i always think, "well, i've put this much effort into it already, i might as well spend just a little more time and make that correction." it's worth the extra effort to not be forever taunted by the mistake when you use the quilt later. without fail, that one spot will always be staring you in the face.

it seemed every time i did make a mistake like that, it was always in the most obvious squares where the thread contrasted strongly with the fabric, yelling out the mistake as loud as could be. that may simply be that it was noticeable because of the contrast and the squares where there was no contrast weren't really any better, just better hidden. it didn't feel that way, though.

something i learned along the way was this handy trick: you can still use your auto thread cutter even when you need to leave a tail for tying off and burying. this photo, thanks to the shallow depth of field in macro photography, is not as clear as i'd like it to be, but it still demonstrates my technique. that bent black line in the lower left corner points to where my quilting ends and where i need to tie off and bury the thread. normally i would lift the needle, pull the fabric to the side, and manually cut the thread with my snips. this required me then lifting the quilt and awkwardly snipping on the underside, too. the threads were never the same length this way, which made for further snipping. somewhere along the way i realized i could just lift the needle, pull the quilt to the side until my thread tail was the desired length, and then press my auto thread cutter button. voila! equal lengths of thread each time and no searching for the bobbin thread under a mound of quilt.

i also realized after a while that when finishing off one area and moving to start in another, instead of cutting the thread before moving, i could cut after. as long as the two points were within reasonable distance of each other, this worked nicely. again, looking at the above photo, if i left off quilting at the upper corner of that blue chevron square and wanted to start next in the blue and green square, i would lift the needle when done and then lower it in my next starting point. after making a few stitches in place to secure the thread, i'd be off quilting. later, when i was ready to knot and bury, i'd just cut the thread half way between the two points, pull the bobbin thread to the top, and then finish off.

both of these tricks saved me a bit of headache and time.

sewing my supreme slider to my quilt (for a second time, no less!) did not save me any time. what a mess. this time it happened not because my slider was linty and un-tacky. rather, i was messing in the bobbin chamber with the slider put out of the way to the side, bottom side up. i simply forgot to put it back into position when i got back to sewing. it slid right along with the quilt. poor slider is rather scarred now after all the accidental sewing. it may have to be replaced after this last fiasco.

and the last "we can laugh about this later" moment of the fmq experience was literally the last moment of the entire quilt. i noticed when putting on the binding that i'd stopped two petals shy of where i was supposed to with the fmq. that was annoying, but fixable. i got those two petals completed and was tying off my thread to bury it when my darn knot went awry. this seems to happen a lot lately. i use the wrap know method, but sometimes the knot tightens before the tails pull through and you're left with a knot too high up and no room to get your needle buried. it can be worked out, but it usually takes several minutes and sometimes the thread breaks, which is the worst case scenario. so there i was, literally trying to put my last stitch in the quilt, with the thread stuck in a position that was too short for burying. i was thinking, "seriously?!!! can't i just finish this once and for all?" nope. the thread snapped and i basically gave up. i always do stabilizing stitches in addition to knotting and burying my thread, so i just let it go. if it comes undone at some point in the future, i'll deal with that later.

reading this one might wonder why i do this quilting business. yes, it has it's moments of insanity and supreme frustration, but in the end, there is a quilt. and that's worth it to me.

really, how many more new mistakes can i make?