Be My Valentine

February 24, 2012February 12, 2017 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Okay, I know I’m late. Late for Valentine’s Day. But better late than never, right? Another entry into Friday Finishing School. In fact, today I have two!

I finished sewing down the binding on my LOVE mini quilt–here it is! Okay, on to the red and white.

Be My Valentine, Quilt #94

I threw a color catcher into the washer to catch the red dye–obviously I needed two, judging by the fact that the little ladies now have a light pink background instead of a white background. It’s interesting how some of the whites were tinted pink and others were not. Go figure.

The back.

I wanted something fun for the label, so I cut out a piece of fabric from the front, and printed onto that. It really is squared up. Ignore the photo.

Beauty shot of the quilting on the front. I used a thicker thread–King Tut, because I wanted those circles to stand out. I have to say I really like quilting with Superior Thread’s King Tut. And I buy my thread from them, just like everyone else does. No, they are not a sponsor. Yes, we are having a giveaway but only because I like their product. I also use the Guterman that I get on a 50% off coupon at the big box fabric store, but I’ve only really been happy with that for piecing, not for quilting the top. (And no, I don’t buy into that myth about polyester thread “cutting” the cloth.) I have also used Sulky on occasion, but sometimes I don’t like the shiny look of the polyester, and head back to the cottons. Some quilts call for one kind of thread, other quilts call for other threads.

And on the back I used Superior’s Bottom Line thread in white. How did I ever start using this? It was when I was sewing my Empty Nest, Full Life quilt, and I just couldn’t get the threads to balance properly with their locking of the stitch in between the front and the back. I think I had purchased a spool of Bottom Line at the last quilt show I’d gone to and in desperation, wound it onto the bobbin to try. It’s a lighter weight thread, and I think Heather (Mother Superior, as she is known on the website) told me that a lot of show quilters used it because they could more densely quilt their quilts. That fact didn’t sway me at all (you know how much I hate densely quilted quilts), but the fact that I didn’t have loopy loops or pulled threads to the front did convince me it was something to have around. I loosen the tension on the top a little, sometimes a lot. Then I write that on a post-it note and keep it near the machine for when I have to come back to it. Generally, with a thicker thread on top, I lower it by one full point–from a 4.0 to a 3.0.

So I tend to use it always in the bobbin. I’ve always wanted to try it in hand piecing, as it is as fine as silk. Some day. There you go–two Friday Finishes!

Doll Quilt

January 18, 2012April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

The girls watch a movie under their new quilt

Last night I pulled out some Moda Candy Bar stacks, fed up as I was with convalescing. Sometimes you just have to sew something.

I was thinking about that Sticks and Stones pattern, so cut some of the 2 1/2 x 5″ strips into half, then sewed them onto the existing strips. I tried to count so it would come out somewhat even.

I decided to flip them: every other row would have the “stone” part on the bottom. I sewed them together, trying to be careful of my gimpy leg (which I’m tired of being careful about. Let’s just say I am not a very good sick person.).

After sewing the top together, I did the pillowcase method of layering backing (face up), top (face down), then the batting, then sewing around the edges. I clipped the corner at a diagonal to get rid of the excess, then turned it and stitched the opening closed. Quilting just off the seam vertically, with a couple of crosswise quilting lines finished it off.

One doll quilt for a granddaughter–done. I have six granddaughters still in doll-playing mode. Five more to go. But not until I recover a little more, according to the doctor today. Lay around more, he says. Rest–stay on the bed. So I guess I’ll do as the dolls above are doing and watch a few more movies.

Or better yet — I’ll go and read all your fabulous WIP projects on today’s linky page, hosted by Lee of Freshly Pieced Fabrics. See? I feel better already, knowing I have an adventure waiting for me. Many thanks to Lee for hosting us all on WIP Wednesday.

100 Quilts · Creating

Light in the Crook of Shadows

October 25, 2011July 23, 2012 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Fall’s come to the bedroom.

I like to change up the quilt at the bottom of my bed every once in a while away from the standard blue one-patch that usually resides there. And the fall colors really create a different mood in the room.

I began this quilt in a class about plaids, taught at Road to California by Roberta Horton. One thing she said always stuck with me, and that was not too worry too much if the grain line was perfectly straight. Part of that is because you could lose your mind trying to get it perfect on these ikat and plaid fabrics. But, she said, slightly off-grain plaids give an energy to the quilt, and so to worry over them also deprives you of some motion within the design.

I chose a simple block design of a smaller square bordered by two triangles, all sewn to a larger triangle. You can do a lot of things with this block.

I had fun adding that orange checkerboard as an inner border.

Here’s the crazy-pieced back.

And the labels. The title and blurb come from my love of two words at the time: crook, meaning in the corner of something, like a “crooked elbow,” and illume, a variant of illuminate. Click to enlarge if you want to see someone get carried away with fancy words, although I still like the title of the quilt very much. I’d just change up a few things in that description tag. At that time I was in the final years of my undergraduate degree in Creative Writing, and was awash in fancy words — not only my own, but those of my classmates and visiting writers and seminars and all the books I was reading. But I’ve decided that our quilts are as much a creation for all times as they are a record of who we were when we made them. Fancy-schmancy words and all.

100 Quilts · Quilts

Lyon Carolings

August 5, 2011July 11, 2019 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

The mad summer of sewing quilts has come to an end. I found the list of quilts I’d made at the beginning of my time away from the classroom, and “French Quilt” was on the top. I’d remade this–or as I like to say–I made this twice, just trying to find the right way to show off these fabrics from France.

I just couldn’t decide what to quilt in the center of the yellow squares, but went with a floral motif from the border. I had to rip out one block when it turned out I hated that particular thread. I have picked out a lot on this quilt. I’d originally stitched the green borders with a swirling design from that same outer border. Wrong. So I unpicked that, and channel/echo stitched it to mimic the blue X’s in the center of the quilt.

I chose to quilt one of the flowers in the center of the yellow blocks.

Does anyone else hate marking? I don’t want pencil, although that is the easiest. And since I don’t plan to wash this quilt (it’s for display), I don’t want something I have to wash to get out. I don’t trust the disappearing markers, so that only leaves me with chalk and my ragged eye to get the job done.

And the back, with its four colors of toile. Make that five if you count the hanging sleeve at the very top.

How did I come by all this fabric? Like Miss Carrie of Schnibbles fame, we had traveled to France. The first few days were touring around the south of France before we were headed to Toulouse for his scientific meeting. We’d traveled far that one day, arriving at our B & B late (8:45 p.m.) just outside the town of Aix-en-Provence, after getting lost. They did serve us our dinner, and the part I remember was having a chilled melon soup in the dark in their courtyard. It was lovely, and served in a hollowed-out cantelope half that had been frozen. The French do food right, I must say.

Aix-en-Provence, painted by John Horsewell

The next morning, we ate breakfast with the white mountain in view, an oft-painted mountain, then glancing at the darkening sky, checked out and drove to into Aix-en-Provence. We were hoping to catch a market day. As soon as we parked the car (in the carpark on the outskirts of town), the skies opened up and a huge torrential downpour kept up trapped in a deep doorway for ten minutes. Of course we had only one umbrella between us (!), so we ran from doorway to doorway to the center of the town. The market was closing up, even though the rain was ending–it was still quite drippy. We caught a few photos of the newly washed melons, berries, tomatoes, when the downpour started up again. We dodged into a shop that ringed the market square, peering out at the rain. We were pretty discouraged.

Then my husband leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Turn around. I think you’ll be happy.” I turned and looked. We had ducked into a fabric shop and although tiny, it was filled, floor-to-ceiling with glorious fabrics printed in the traditional manner of old France. Those were the days when an extra suitcase was no problem and weight limits had not been heard of yet. I had brought along a soft-sided suitcase and between my purchases here–and the ones the next week in Toulouse (for they had a lovely fabric shop as well)–I filled that suitcase full.

I have purchased these fabrics in other places, but this shop, found while dodging the pouring rain, was the genesis of my collection.

If you want to start your collection, I can recommend French Connections, here in North Carolina in the US of A. They have a wide range of choices (that’s where I bought that fabulous yellow border) and I think given the cost of importing, the high price of cotton and the weak dollar against the euro, they have reasonable prices.

Happy Sewing!