Quilting
A Journey’s End…
It started about 8 years ago. I was at Camp Calumet and saw a poster on one of the bulletin boards that was a picture of a mural that artist David Hetland created at the 2003 ELCA Youth Gathering in Atlanta, GA. It was love at first site. I kept thinking, I want to reproduce that in fabric! I even dreamt about it! Finally I got up the courage to ask for the poster…and it was MINE! Fast forward to 2006…my husband (a Lutheran Pastor) accepts a call to Messiah Lutheran Church in Amherst NH. After a while of settling… Read more »
Smart Phones and Quilting
Okay, I admit it. I. am. a. geek. I love technology! It probably takes me away from sewing/quilting WAY too much, but I still love it! This weekend it made my life just a little bit easier! I have a droid smart phone. It’s an older one but still quite a step up from my Krazer! I couple of weeks ago I downloaded and app from the App Store that is put out by Robert Kaufman Fabrics and Quilters Paradise. It’s called QuiltingCalc. QuiltingCalc has an assortment of quilting calculators to help you figure out all sorts of problems encountered… Read more »
A Word (or two) About Quilt Backings…Part III
Squaring up – what exactly does that mean? Well when you load a backing onto a longarm frame, if the fabric isn’t’ a nice square shape, there will be areas that droop and as I quilt your quilt, these can and will cause puckers in your quilt backing. If I catch it in time, I can sometimes pull and yank and get it to work, but if I don’t catch it there will be a pucker in your backing. The easiest way for me to square you backing (which you can do yourself) is to tear it. There are some… Read more »
A Word (or two) About Quilt Backings….part I
Recently I’ve had a couple of quilts show up at my doorstep with backings (linings some call them) that have issues so I thought this might be a good place to discuss it. Now keep in mind, if you use another machine quilter you may want to check with them for what they require – this is based on my requirements. Your backing fabric needs to be at least 5″ larger than your quilt on all four sides. That means if your quilt is 80″ by 90″ your backing fabric (at the very least) needs to be 90″ by 100″…. Read more »
A Fresh Start!
I recently moved my personal sewing stuff to our basement. Wasn’t much to look at, your typical semi-finished basement…white walls, cement floor, washer and dryer set up. Then my friend René said, why don’t we paint it…René loves to paint! I mean LOVES to paint! So I went to the paint store and picked out one of my favorite colors…almost, but not quite, lime green! It is a color that gives me great joy! I don’t care if it’s going out of style, I still love it! So we checked our schedules and found a day to spend painting together… Read more »
What Inspires You?
Recently I was out shopping and came across this piece of furniture that made me want to make a quilt. Now the piece wasn’t quilted, there were no carvings that made me think of appliqué, it was just something about the piece that made me say, “I need to design a quilt!” I wish I knew what that something was exactly, because sometimes quilt making inspiration is few and far between! So what is it that inspires you to make a quilt? Is it a magazine photo? A piece of fabric? What makes you say, “this is it!”
Creative Mojo with Mark Lipinski!
I’m going to be a guest on Mark Lipinski’s internet radio show! Tune in on Wednesday, October 6th between 3pm and 5pm (eastern time). We’ll be talking about why I prefer my smaller quilt guild to the larger one I joined when I moved to New Hampshire. Mark is always a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to it! If you’d like to listen go to Creative Mojo and click on “Listen Live”. If you get a chance to listen, please let me know what you thought!! See you then.
Quilt Retreats!
Does your quilt guild offer retreats? Have you gone on one? From my own experience, I highly recommend you attend one! Our guild retreats are held twice a year – once in September and once in February. They’re not too expensive ($110 – $240) and if you’re well enough prepared, you can get a LOT done! What do you do on retreats? Well, here’s what we do: our retreat center allows us to show up at 10am on Friday (and the majority of us do), we move tables around and set up cutting and ironing stations. We’ve had as many… Read more »
Getting ready…
There are two kinds of people…the organized kind and the unorganized kind. Unfortunately, try as I might, I fall into the later category. I’m trying to get ready for my quilt guild’s retreat this weekend and it’s bordering on ridiculous! I do okay up until the last minute and then I start chucking everything in the car for fear I might forget something, so I wind up with a huge bunch of stuff I really don’t need which in turn makes it even harder to focus on one project at a time! Today, I cut strips and squares for a… Read more »
