Over the years, I’ve used many different methods, so I thought I’d share some of them here over the course of the next few posts. I can’t tell you how many parts this will have, as I’m just going to start with a couple of the methods I used way back when, and work my way through my bag of techniques and tools. Some of what I’ll share I haven’t used recently for one reason or another, but that’s not to say I won’t ever use a particular technique again, and of course someone else might find it useful.

When I was fairly new to quilting, my goal was to not actually mark on the quilt at all if it could be avoided since I was petrified that the marks wouldn’t wash out, so I spent a great deal of time figuring out how to get the quilting pattern on to the quilt without ever touching an actual marker to the fabric. (...)
Read the rest of Quilt Marking Roundup: Stitching Through Paper (628 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Featured, Quilting, Tips
Tags: machine quilting, quilting paper

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I purchased a couple of wonderful preprinted blocks for free motion quilting from The Quilting Connection in their booth at the Des Moines AQS Quilt Expo. Their newest blocks are printed on lovely batik fabrics, instead of the more common, plain ivory and white fabrics (though I did get one in ivory as well). I’m contemplating using one of these preprints as a kit for my machine quilting class, so of course I wanted to test it out!

(...)
Read the rest of In the Groove, Sort of… (483 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 15 comments
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Featured, Quilting
Tags: creative spirit, free motion, free motion quilting, machine quilting, thread

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So today I prepared step-by-step samples for making Inchies to use for demos, and then as I was edge stitching the Inchies, I got this crazy idea to make a video tutorial of the process! Talk about a complete derailment! Shooting the video was a piece of cake that took less time than writing this post will (despite the fact that it’s a brand new camcorder that I’d never used before), but the whole “how do I put this video on the web” thing took five hours! Seriously! Sheesh! (...)
Read the rest of Inchie Quilts: On the Road and YouTube (244 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Quilting, Tips
Tags: AQS, Houston, Inchie Quilts, Inchies, Patchcom, tutorials, workshops

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I drew a loopy little quilt design to coordinate with the border stencil I chose, and then only used part of it! I decided the middle part was okay since it was just four little loopy bits, but the side parts were just too strange looking, like some alien spider thingy maybe. My oh-so-excellent drawing skills were hard at work again!

I found the perfect thread in my stash! Superior Threads Rainbows #808. Just look at it, the perfect combination of colors to go with the Swanky fabrics! I’ve used this type of thread for machine quilting a lot lately, so I was expecting it to be easy to quilt with. It wasn’t, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Hobbs Thermore has been my batting of choice since Hobbs Bonded Fibers was generous enough to donate a queen-size package of it to me when I was at Quilt Market last October. Did you know that Hobbs also makes fibers for industries other than quilting? One of their newest products called Fibertect is “A three layer, inert, flexible, drapable, nonwoven composite substrate for decontamination that is effective in neutralizing and adsorbing toxic chemical agents potentially used in chemical warfare, toxic industrial chemicals, and pesticides.” Wow! Interesting…next time I need to clean house, I’ll know where to go for my outfit!

Anyway, Thermore is my favorite batting right now. From Hobbs: “This unique and patented product was developed as a thin, drapable, migration free polyester batt. ” Yup, that “migration free” part is why. After I tried Quilter’s Dream and it was bearding like crazy, I switched to Thermore and found that Hobbs doesn’t lie. Thermore just doesn’t beard, period.

But like all battings when they come out of the package, it’s a bit wrinkly and crinkly, so I’ve just been laying it on the ironing board and steaming it before basting. Just float the iron over it, not actually touching it, with the steam function cranked up to high and then smooth the wrinkles out with your hand as you go. Flip and repeat for the other side if necessary. You can also pop it into the dryer on low heat for five or ten minutes, but my dryer is two floors down so I use the iron on small pieces.

Since all the quilts I’ve been making lately are pretty small, I’ve been pin basting (with straight pins, not safety pins) instead of my usual trick with the tagging gun. I really like the pin basting because the holes are smaller! It’s also just quicker to pin it than get out the gun and the tags on something smallish.

I think I’ve also solved the “human pincushion” issue when using straight pins. I call these my Basting Buddies! They’re little caps that fit on the ends of the straight pins, so they keep the sharp ends from putting holes in me and they keep the pins from slipping out of the quilt as it’s moved around during machine quilting. It’s just as easy to get these on and off the pins as it would be to close and open safety pins, maybe even easier, and the point quality is much higher on a straight pin than it is on a safety pin, so it’s better for your fabrics.

I love the way the quilting turned out on this little quilt! Simple and easy quilting designs, but totally effective! But the quilting itself was NOT easy. I think this spool of Rainbows thread is some of the original version, and Superior Threads changed the thread slightly a few years ago and made it better. The newer spools that I have are quite easy to machine quilt with; I’d even say as easy as quilting with cotton, but the thread on this particular spool shredded and broke a lot during quilting. It happened so often that I was getting really frustrated with it, and I usually don’t get that way! Well, not about machine quilting anyway! I did get through it, but if I need this color combination of Rainbows thread again, I’ll probably just buy a new spool.

All in all, this was a really fun little quilt to make. I still have some more pictures that I took of the process, some while fitting the border quilting design (since Joyce asked) and some while hand stitching the binding down with a ladder stitch. I’ll share these in the next week or so!

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 6 comments
Post categories: Creativity, Eye on the Machine, Featured, Quilting
Tags: basting, batting, free motion quilting, machine quilting, pin basting, quilt designs, Superior Threads Rainbows, Thermore, thread, tools, variegated threads

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And I do mean “treat myself” when I talk about machine quilting. It’s my favorite part of quilting, hands down. It’s just so cool to see a flat piece of fabric take on texture and dimension and life when it’s quilted. I love playing with all the cool threads I’ve collected over the years, like this variegated one:

Which looks like this when quilted:

How fun is this? For the curious, the thread is Superior Threads Rainbows, which is a Trilobal Polyester, 40wt., color #801, with 50 wt. Mettler Silk Finish in a blue that matches the fabric in the bobbin; the fabric is an old Nancy Crow design that looks like crushed suede, with a scene from a Laurel Burch Fanciful Felines panel; batting is Quilter’s Dream Poly Request Loft; the quilting stencil is the continuous line 4″ Dancing Flowers by Judy Allen.

Another thing I like about small quilts is that I can quickly pin-baste on the cutting table with flower head pins and they don’t get caught up in the free motion foot since the heads are flat against the quilt. With large quilts, I spend hours crawling around on the floor basting with the basting gun, and then I’m just wiped out for the rest of the day when it’s done. You can pin-baste just about anything up to a certain size, as long as it’s not so big that you become a human pincushion while trying to push it through the machine. Heck, if you’ve been sewing all your life and a few pinpricks don’t even faze you anymore, you could pin-baste even larger quilts this way.

I realize that not everyone feels this way about machine quilting, and some folks don’t find free motion quilting to be relaxing at all. So let’s have a chat about that, shall we? What don’t you like about machine quilting? What’s the part that you feel like you just can’t get right? If you do like machine quilting, and you have wisdom or a fabulous tip to share, let’s hear about that too!

I’m going to send a copy of the Machine Quilting—Master the Basics Workshop on CD to one lucky reader. To enter the drawing leave a comment on this post and share some of your machine quilting wisdom and great tips, or if you need help with machine quilting, leave a question that you’d like me to discuss in a future post. A winner will be chosen by random drawing this Saturday. Luck to all!

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2008. | Permalink | 14 comments
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Quilting, Tips
Tags: basting, batting, CD, fabric, free motion, free motion quilting, fun, machine quilting, shop, show quilts, thread

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This is really all about machine quilting until the wee hours (when I haven’t been machine quilting at all for a while!), and having my body complain vociferously the next day. I have these wimpy forearms that don’t like too much repetitive motion or stress, and then I abused them badly. Not only that, I was sitting at a table that was too high so that didn’t help either. So the forearms are botched for a bit until they recover.

The other problem is the neck and back, which probably caused the headache too. See, the biggest issue is the machine itself. These machines are just not made for people like me, with a long upper body. I’ve looked for solutions before, but the tilt table idea didn’t work well for machine quilting with the Bernina. The Bernina has the same problem as the Pfaff: the machine head is so big that it obstructs the view of the needle and surrounding area when my chair and table are at the right height for machine quilting. I end up hunching down in the chair so that I can see the needle area better, which is no good for the back. This is what I see if I’m sitting up straight(er) in the chair when I machine quilt:

Heh, you see that? (See what?) Exactly. I can barely see the free motion foot, much less the needle, and anything behind it is a total loss. This is why I usually sit too low so I can see better, and hunch down as well, which places even more stress on my arms and back than machine quilting does to begin with. I finally got frustrated with the whole thing between the back pain and the arm pain and all, and removed the cover from the machine head to get all that white plastic out of my way:

Oh look! There’s the needle! And I can even see some of the space behind it! Okay, it’s still difficult because of all the parts in the way, but it really did help some to remove the plastic cover from the head of the machine. Maybe I won’t have to hunch down quite so far in the chair to see where I’m going with the quilt. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this and it’s not the perfect solution by any means, but it was better than the alternatives that ran through my head, which would have required more than a screwdriver and probably would have been more permanent. I will put the cover back on when I’m not quilting to keep the dust out (and also keep the cat from sticking his nose in there), and perhaps I’ll be in a little less pain. At the end of the day though, what I really want to know is when the heck are machine manufacturers going to get it together and build a better mousetrap machine?

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Quilting
Tags: Bernina love, machine quilting

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I’ve decided to try to just keep quilting on this quilt until it’s finally done, and maybe have it done in time for it’s 11th birthday, sometime in January! Yes, it’s a UFO that really is THAT old. I started this quilt in January, 1996, which I think (hope??) makes it the oldest UFO in my collection. It’s a queen size quilt from a pattern in McCalls Quilting magazine called Dresden Plate Drama and it is quite dramatic! I used my favorite fabric ever, a wonderful holiday print with roses in burgundies and pinks, green leaves, tiny purple-ish pine cones and metallic gold highlights. I bought a whopping 18 yards of that print, and used 13 yards for this quilt! I also bought 5 yards of the same print on a black background which is stunning as well.

So, why has this quilt been a UFO for so long? Well, it was a labor of love from the start, because every petal on each Dresden Plate had to be cut by hand with the same motif as all the rest of the petals for that plate to get the kaleidoscopic effect. Think Stack’n'Whack the old-fashioned way. Then of course, the Plates had to be hand appliquéd to the background. Even after I got the whole thing put together some years ago (not sure how many, but most likely pre-millennium) I thought I would hand quilt it, since it is such a fabulous quilt, and I really thought hand quilting was the only way to do it justice. I think I got one block quilted, and then it languished in my studio for another few years because hand quilting isn’t exactly my favorite thing to do.

At some point in the last couple of years, I decided that my machine quilting skills were certainly good enough to quilt this quilt the way it should be quilted, so I ripped out the little bit of hand quilting, and started to machine quilt. Other quilts got in the way of course, so it’s still here. I’ve no idea what I’ll do with it when I get it done, but I really need to get it done! And when it gets done, I’ll need to break out the champagne, and firmly restrain myself from putting crystals on it (though it would be pretty cool)!

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2006. | Permalink | One comment
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Quilting
Tags: crystals, machine quilting, Swarovski, UFO's

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This quilt has been an interesting exercise in following the line, but not quilting on the line. Let me explain. See, I’m quilting right on the edge of all the appliqué pieces, so that means following the edge of the piece, but not quilting on the line that I’m following, which requires a bit of an adjustment. When you’re used to watching a marked line just ahead of the needle to machine quilt, it’s a bit weird to have to watch to the side a little to get the needle to go where you want. I think my quilting could be better quality-wise, but it gets better as I go. Of course, I’m just about done with the “on the edge” parts anyway now, and ready to start the background quilting, so hopefully I can have this done by October 1st. Always a deadline…

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2006. | Permalink | No comment
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Quilting
Tags: appliqué, Grasping Reality: Fifteen, machine quilting, needle

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I was looking forward to using many different colors of thread on this quilt, since I wanted to match or coordinate with the appliqué pieces for the quilting. I have been collecting threads for a while (variegated threads are just as hard to resist as fat quarter bundles for me!) and getting to actually use them on something was exciting. So, all that being said, changing the thread color every few minutes is somewhat painful, as is winding a bobbin with every different thread. I’m running out of empty bobbins! I used a white Fairy Frost fabric for the backing, and I wanted to see the quilting on the back in all the different colors. I’m hoping the back will look sort of like a line drawing of the front when it’s done.

I really didn’t even consider using just one color of thread on the back (which would have taken care of the bobbin problem), because I would have had pop-throughs of different colors of thread on the back, as well as bobbin thread on the top, no matter how well the tension was adjusted on the machine. That’s just the way of it when free motion quilting in all directions, you’re always going to have a spot where the tension doesn’t behave just right, and it has nothing to do with how good your machine or your technique is. My standard rule is to always match the threads on the top and backing to avoid this problem.

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2006. | Permalink | No comment
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Quilting, Tips
Tags: free motion, Grasping Reality: Fifteen, machine quilting, thread, variegated threads

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As you can see, this quilt is quite a walk on the wild side, for me anyway. As I said in a previous post, I used Glue-Baste-It to glue the appliqué pieces down, and then stitch basted some of the larger ones with water soluble thread before basting the quilt top, batting and backing together. The round dots you see in this picture are just glued, and appliqué-ing and quilting at the same time is working just fine. The glue holds them in place perfectly so they aren’t trying to move around. More pics soon!

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2006. | Permalink | No comment
Post categories: Eye on the Machine, Quilting
Tags: appliqué, machine quilting, thread

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