Sweet Dreams

Ok, I have finished one of the three baby quilts.  I must admit, this is a pattern I did before, but once I saw the now 8 yr old with her quilt, I knew it was something that had to be made again :-).  Plus it is a relatively easy pattern from Jane Davila's 'Sew Simple Quilts' series, Book Two.

As it did the first time, I made it in soft cuddly, flannels in soft pastel colors.  The one change from the pattern that I kept in this piece, is the addition of  corner stones in the borders, vs classic solid boarders.

The quilt finishes at 43" x 56", which means that it also didn't take long to quilt.  I used the same YLI variegated thread in soft pastels that I used 8 years ago (same spool and I still have some left :-)) in the top center and a Superior Art Studio pastel pink for the boarders.  I used Superior BottomLine in white in the bobbin.  The quilting was all done free motion.  No marking the top at all, not even the spine of the feathers.

As you can see from this close-up, the thread worked wonderfully.  No need to play with the tension.  My normal .5 top tension worked wonderfully.

My curves were all smooth and the feathers just flowed around the corners with no issue.  I did not have to adjust the tension, as I switched threads between the YLI and Superior.

I hope Baby Bailey likes it.  Delivery date is set for Oct 26th, but I will be giving the quilt to the Mom to be on the 3rd, while in Virginia for my other nieces shower.  I made good progress on her quilt as well last weekend while at Quilt Retreat, but I will post those pics in the next day or so :-).

A first for me....

I had been asked by one of my good friends to machine quilt a piece for her.  This friend is primarily a hand quilter, although she will stitch in the ditch from time to time on a small wallhanging.   She knows that I had been toying with the idea of quilting for others and as life has added a few years, as it tends to do, hand quilting just isn't as enjoyable for her as it used to be.  Especially when the piece measures 92" x 81"...  hey not small by my standards either :-).

Anyway, I finally said yes.  I reminded her that most of my quilting lately has been small tight decorative quilting, not the type of quilting I would do on a bed size quilt...  but that if she let me do what I thought I could do, I would give it a try.  I figured it would be a win/win for us both.  I would see, if I enjoyed quilting for someone else and all the mind games that come with that and she would have her piece done.  I told her I wouldn't charge her, as I didn't know what it would look like in the end.  Fair enough....  right?

Well I quilted it and when I called to let her know it was done and that I would bring it by the next day, she said 'Ok, how much do I owe you?'.  I reminded her of our conversation and she said...  "Oh no, I wanted you to see that you could do this, so don't bring it over unless you have figured out how to charge for your work.'  Well what do you know, I had been duped!  She had been telling me for quite some time, that I should make some money off of my quilting, and now she got me.  So thanks to some quilty friends on Facebook, I put it out there and they help me figure out a fair price, given all the facts above.  First quilt, not perfect, etc....

I delivered it the next day and she was thrilled...  she loved my feathers and said the person it was going to would love it as well :-).  So here it is....  my first commissioned quilting job, if that is what you call it...

Since it is a busy quilt, with lots of pattern in the fabric on the front.  I did a loose swirly all over pattern in the center, using a green cotton Aurifil 50 weight thread on the top and Superior Bottom-Line, almost white thread on the plain white backing. 

The quilting shows much better on the back.

As you can see I did free motion feathers in the boarder.  This is the first time using the 'hump' method and they were real easy.  I just marked the boarders with a curvy line to serve as a guideline for the spine and went from there...  even wrapping the feathers around the corners.  I was so happy when I had gone around both sides that the beginning and end came together so easily....  whew! 


I was pleasantly surprised in the end to see that the feathers did indeed show up on the front, almost as well as the white on white on the back.  I had expected that they would really disappear as the thread color was so close to the fabric color.  My friend really loved the feathers, she said they looked very graceful....  Whoo Hoo!!!

As I left her house, she said she would have more for me soon.  OMG...  am I really going to do this?  Yeah, I think so, but only for friends at this point.  I have not the time or inclination to do it as a real business just yet.  Don't think I am 1) good enough, or 2) ready for the pressure of, will they like it.  At least my friends know what I can and can't do and are able to make an informed decision when they ask me to quilt something for them.

So, as I said, another first for me...

Thanks to my Bernina 830...  I wouldn't have been able to do it without her :-).

There must be something in the water...

This coming fall, I have two nieces and the wife of one of my nephews who are expecting babies.  One in October and two the first week of November.  So I figured I better get started on baby quilts.  The good news all three of these nieces/nephews and their spouses are really into my quilting and have treated previous quilting gifts like gems.  My nephews first born, has not gone a day in 8 years without her quilt by her side.  It goes to school, play dates...  everywhere :-).  Her mom treats it like gold, washing it with fine washables, etc... (that is when she can get it away from her).  One of my nieces husbands is always drooling over the quilts I design myself and has asked for a quilt with a drum based theme, as they know they are having a boy.  So needless to say, I am thrilled to be making them quilts, there will be no 'cheater' panels on these!

Last night I finished drafting the 'drum' quilt.  I choose the fabrics and even created the pattern for the drum applique.  I had thought that was all I was going to do for the night, but when I stopped it was 1 a.m. in the morning and believe it or not, I had 3 drum appliques all fused down, ready for their satin stitching.  No quilting tonight, but after looking over my applique work with my 20 yr old son, he came up with a great idea.  They were going to need to be texturized....  soooo I decided to trapunto them.  Make those drums pop right out off of the quilt top.  The drums are basically 10 inches in size, on a 12 inch square, so they will give the baby plenty of area to touch and feel, especially with the 'flags' on the side, plenty of places for stitching....  I am sure a picture is worth a thousand of my words, so as soon as I do the satin stitch on one and get the trapunto behind it, I will post a pic.

As you can tell I have gotten back into my quilting mood...  after an endless summer running around in the sweltering heat.

Hope to see you guys here in blog-land more once we take my son back to college tomorrow.

Enjoy and sweet dreams :-)

Quilting for charity...

I have 3 baby quilts to make for nieces and nephews, but before I could start, I had to finished 2 charity quilts I committed to do this summer.  One was for my guild to donate to a local nursing home and the other was for a guild member who is traveling to Africa with a quilt tour group this fall.  They are bringing quilts for the babies, so I promised I would donate one for the trip.

Well, I am sure I am like most quilters on 2 accounts.  One, I usually work in similar colors and two, I save all the odd left over pieces from quilts I make.  So I was fortunate enough to look in my scrap basket and find some treasure.  Earlier this year I made two quilts for nieces, both with purple as the main color.  Since both also used turquoise, I was able to pull enough scraps with coordinating colors from the basket to make both tops....  talk about pay-day.

The first was real easy, as I had quite a few left over squares from one of the quilts, where I just didn't like some of the colors or fabrics for the look I was trying to acheive....  but since I took them all out whole, they came together to make the quilt for the African orphanage....

Nice bright colors, where strip sets and squares made a nice 46"x42" baby blanket.  It has almost a scrappy feel but still cohesive :-).  For the quilting, I just did a continuous line design, joining swirls and leaves.  It has been such a long time since I quilted large graceful work, I had a hard time getting into the groove.  My rhythm kept wantingto take me back to my small intricate quilting of late.  But, I managed and am happy I was able to finally free motion quilt with my Superior Rainbows thread.  I just lowered the top tension to .5 and the stitch length to 1.0 and off I went!  No snagging, breaking or spit up on the back, like I had been experiencing with the Rainbow thread.  I guess practice and learning your machine, really does pay off :-).

I then took the left over purple and turquoise strips and half square triangle blocks and put them together with Kona Black for the second top. 

This piece measures 42" square and they mustn't be any larger. as this is safe size for use with a wheelchair.  Otherwise, it can get caught up in the wheels of the wheel chair...

The top came together really quickly.  I did some free motion feathers in the black sashing and 6 other designs in the 'blocks'.   I decided to practice doing quite a bit of my filler patterns on this piece, except making them about 10 times larger. I decided to practice doing quite a bit of my filler patterns on this piece, just making them about 10 times larger. It was interesting seeing which filler worked or was easy to do on a bigger scale, and which ones didn't.  I will let you be the judge, but here is the one I like the best....

I realy enjoy what I call 'leaves on leaves'.  I love the way you can change directions and they look as if they were layered one on top of each other.

I used the same Superior Rainbow thread in this piece.  Again using Bottom Line in the bottom, with a 90/14 Sharp needle. 

All ran smooth as can be.  Just have to do the piping, which I do by hand, usually as I travel up and down the road.  Now I can get started on the 3 baby quilts that are joining the clan this fall :-).

The first will be drum themed.  I just have to design it first :-)...

Nite....

Progress against to do list...

So I finished the top and back of the quilt for the Pelham Quilter's outgoing President....  Thanks to the 19 other members who contributed squares.  It is funny that the yellow and blues were all so similar in value, that it made it pretty easy to create a cohesive piece.  The greens were different, but since greens remind us all of nature and leafs and such come in so many different shades of green and live together so wonderfully in nature, they still worked well.  I ended up using a very simple setting method, with a basic inner/outer boarder as not to take away from the beautiful blocks.

I was heading out of town, and ran out of time, so my DH delivered it to Mary Anne who will quilt it for us.  Our meeting is the 13th of September, so I wanted to make sure she had enough time to quilt it on her George.

Lorriane has been president for almost 20 years...  yes we are bit unconventional as a guild :-).  I hope this quilt will be a fitting tribute to her years of service.  I will post pics once we present it to Lorraine in September.

I also spent some time quilting a small piece for a friend, Donna Chambers, to take with her on her trip to Africa this September.  She is going with a quilting group and they will stop by a children's orphanage.  She has asked members of the guild to make baby quilts for her take with her.  I should finish this next weekend.  Will post pics of this as well, once finished.

I have broken a golden rule...

When I first decided to blog, I new that I would not do so daily, but felt that if I was going to be a blogger, than I had to do so at least once every 10 days.  Well, it has been almost a month!  Not good.  Seems as the stretches have gotten longer and longer.  Maybe it is because it is the summertime and we have so much going on as a family...  jazz concerts, trips to the local parks and pools, a great family vacation in Cancun, hosting a family re-union for my husband's family.  Yes, I have been busy this month.

I have done some quilting as time and the weather permits...  (It has been one hot July in southern NY.  We had 17+ days over 93, without the heat index and quite a few over 100!)  But back to quilting...  I made two charity quilt tops that will need to be quilted (pics once quilted, promise).  Had a wonderful quilty day with my girlfriend Ashley in my studio.  I have made some progress on the African dancer I started at retreat this spring, adding detail and embellishments on his neck, arms and legs.  He is now ready to be quilted, so I played with different quilting stitches and threads to determine what combination I like best...  right now a flame stitch with matching cotton 50wt thread, so that the quilting doesn't detract from the dancer....  at least that is the thought for now.  And this week, I will be pulling together squares made by members of the Pelham Quilters into a top for a quilt to be presented to our out-going President.

Now the real reason I wanted to post today is I am thinking about making a small wall hanging to Thank the pediatrician that has taken care of my children for the last 23 years.  At the end of the month, my 20 year old son will be going for his last yearly physical before he turns 21 (and is no longer able to see a pediatrician :-)).  My oldest was this doctors first newborn, so on her last visit they sat and chatted and cried for over an hour.  She has seen my kids through Juvenile Arthritis, a screaming, streaking kid who would run at the first sight of a needle, Asthma, ASD (or a hole in my then 16 yr old daughters heart that required surgery), and a  totally broken - not torn - meniscus that will have to be replaced in a yr or so with a transplant from a corpse.  She has done all this with a smile, patience and heart of a saint.  For some things, calling just to check in on them to see if they or I, needed to talk.  So....  any ideas on patterns or shapes I should use would be welcome.  I thought of a Heart, but it seems so literal and I wanted something with more meaning, to show just how special she really is.

All suggestions are welcome....  now back to work :-)

830 Update

So I had thought I would get some quilting in today.  And although I did sit down at the machine, I didn't work on my dancer as I had hoped.  No, instead I loaded the latest software update on my Bernina 830.  Almost had a heart attack, as it seemed to take way too long, after the 'successfully installed' with restart, to the 'update complete' message.  But it went on without a hitch, so I was able to play.

One of the things the update was supposed to address was tension problems with a wide range of threads. So I am hoping that it solved some of my problems with all my different threads.  I played with my Superior Metallics, Sew Fine, Tinsel and Rainbows today. 

Guess what?  I tried both free motion quilting and free motion with the BSR.  NO problems...  no faulty 'thread breakage' messages, no thread spit up on the back, no pebbles on top or bottom because the thread is being pulled to the other side..........  ahhhh, NICE!

So I played with a couple of metallics trying to decide on the color to use on my dancer.  I think I am going to go with the gold, although the cooper will allow the dancer to take center stage vs the quilting.  Hmmmm....  maybe the cooper.  The cooper Sew Fine just fades into the background, so maybe the copper mettallic will add just a tad bit of sparkle when the light hits it just right, adding a glowing effect to the dancer.  Maybe the copper mettalic is better.  Decisions, decisions.....  guess I am going to have to sleep on it.

The good thing is I am on vacation this week and don't head out of town for a couple of days, so I still have time to play.