What I did this weekend - 9-6-2014

I'm thinking I'll switch between my two blogs for a while. Blogger has such a nice mobile app that it's easy to do a quick post from my phone and indiemade has the blog for my website. You can check it out at INEEDlefabric.com

So this weekend i worked on the wedding quilt for my nephew and new niece and made a couple more shorts for this cute little peapod. Isn't he a great model! 

I used the curve it up ruler from sew kind of wonderful and their metro rings patten for the center of the quilt. I've never tried a double wedding ring block and with the ruler it worked out nicely.

For the shorts I'm using the pattern from dana made it. She's got great tutorials and now that I know what I'm doing they're super easy. I even did one pair with pockets. So cute!

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Check out my new website at ineedlefabric.com.  Here's my beautiful logo designed by Katie at reddragon233@hotmail.com.

I'll be sharing quilts and fabric creations, tips and tutorials, reviews and how to's.

Maybe you're looking for a longarm quilter or a one-of-a-kind handcrafted gift. You'll be seeing these on the Store page.

Or maybe you're looking for a first time project you want to create yourself. We'll be offering beginner kits and patterns in the future. What would you like to learn about?

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2 GREAT Tips for Attaching Your Quilt Binding!

Last weekend I was working on attaching the binding to a quilt and thought it might be helpful for you to see my setup for doing this. I also had a few ah ha! moments to share.

What's on the longarm; shhh it's a secret!

A beautiful quilt for a beautiful young woman!  This will be my first one with mostly ruler work and I did stitch in the ditch on all the blocks first.

I really like how it's looking. More detail later.

LAQ#25 Still Learning and Quilting Encouragement

At our LQS sewingroomtucson.com, folks gather monthly to make quilt tops for charity and then have Longarmers volunteer to do the quilting. What a great way to practice your quilting! You can test out different techniques and designs you've been wanting to try and the customer is always happy.

This is only the 25^th item I ever did on my Longarm, and I wanted to be brave and try some fancier quilting. So I made a quilting plan to do separate designs in the blocks and inner and outer borders.

I did a wavy paisley “vine” along the large outside border and half feathers in the inner border.

I had recently watched Pam Clarke’s Designs with Lines DVD, homestitches.com and thought this was a perfect quilt to try special designs in each block. (They would probably have looked better if I had chalked some lines using Pam’s stencil, which I bought later.)

Encouragement:
·         You gotta start somewhere or you’re never gonna get better.
·         Nobody was born a perfect longarm quilter!
·        You WILL get better with practice

• Keep previous quilting samples so you can see your improvement (don't compare your quilting to others)

Ewww, maybe I shouldn’t show you the back, but I'll share my bobbles; everybody bobbles.

Here are the half feathers I quilted on this charity quilt:

And here are half feathers I did on a top about 40 quilted items later:

Hopefully, they look more consistent and like I have better control of the machine! I do get frustrated with my slow progress, especially when I look at the work of Judi Madsen of www.greenfairyquiltsblog.com or Angela Walters at quiltingismytherapy.com. Man, oh man, do they do aMAZing work!!!  (Oh yeah, don't compare your work to others, pout).  But I have to remember that they've done hundreds of quilts, i.e., tons of practice; and I'm not at 100 yet.  Your quilts will always look better after you wash them and put away the magnifying glass! lol.

You just have to keep trying :)

Longarm Quilt 27 Tomato Basil: A problem and a question.

For this quilt, I used a pattern called Streakers by black-cat-creations.com. 

I love the colors on this and looking back I seem to use orange in a lot of my quilts – who knew?

Problem: towards the bottom of the quilt I ended up with wrinkles in the back L!

a big wrinkle

I basted down the sides & did stitch in the ditch down all the columns on the entire quilt first, then went back and quilted the details. I used my ruler and extended base to do the SID.  During the detail quilting, as I got towards the right border, I noticed I was getting some pleating in the back. I was able to rip out some but part of it was forming between the rows that were already sewn down by SID. Thankfully, this quilt was for me so some of the wrinkles stayed in; but it was really upsetting and I still don’t know what I did wrong.

I think I left the extended base on while I did the detail quilting. I had used it to do the SID and just left it on. Was the extended base too close to the quilt back & pushing the backing into wrinkles?

Normally I quilt my way across and down the quilt. But if I’m using 2 different threads, I’d like to quilt with 1 color all the way down, roll back to the top and quilt with the next color. Does that increase the chance for wrinkles in the back?

Question: When using a Longarm, what order do you quilt your tops?

I did a different quilting design in each wide column and a wavy line in the skinny rows using So Fine thread in Hawk.

quilting designs from the back

curly leaves and half feathers

a wavy leaf  border

I'd like to use this pattern again with a bolder print broken up by the narrow streaks of color. Fun!

Longarm Quilt 29: New quilting techniques

This is a cute panel I got from my local quilt store that is now closed. L  See my post on 3/26; that’s where I took my first quilting class.

Besides taking classes at local shops, I have learned so much about quilting from the internet. I often stay up too late on a work night drooling over all the fantastically creative people who are willing to share their ideas. The net is where I first heard about McTavishing and ordered a couple of Karen’s books, designerquilts.com. I practiced a lot on paper, saw this cute panel and decided it would be a great place to try some McTavishing.

A panel is really a great place to test quilting designs on something useful. They’re usually pretty small so it doesn’t take as much time to complete some intricate quilting; and they make a nice finished piece to give as a gift or to decorate your home. This panel is 24x43.

I also tried out micro stippling and pebbles:

 I love the texture the McTavishing added to the background. One more look:

Great texture!