DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog » Quilting

Flannel Design Wall Tutorial

Nadine — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:22:18 +0000

I’m still “moving in” and getting settled in my new sewing area (as well as the rest of the house, if the truth is told), and of course, I want a design wall of some sort. There is not a lot of room or empty wall space, but there is one wall that will do (ignoring the electrical socket and pass through right in the middle of it that I would never use anyway):

Looking back on my design wall solutions in the past, I didn’t really want to repeat either of them. The Portable Design Wall was an utter failure for me when I bought it, and still doesn’t get used for the same reasons (and I can’t bring myself to put it up on ebay and try to fob it off on someone else since it’s just that bad).

In our Matchstick Manor house in Germany, I put up Block Butler on one wall in the studio, but honestly, I’m really glad that wasn’t my house (for many reasons, not just this one of course) because when I took it down as we were preparing to move out before the house fell down around us, (...)
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Post categories: Featured, Quilting, Tips
Tags: design, tutorials

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Horn MultiLift 6000: 252 Pounds of Pure Quilting Bliss

Nadine — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:28:15 +0000

For many years–okay, for all the years that I’ve been quilting–I’ve wished for a table that was specially made for sewing machines, where my machine would sit down in the table so that the machine bed was level with the table top. I think this can be so much better for machine quilting, though obviously, I’ve been getting along just fine without this table for 20 years! Still, most of the reason that I didn’t ever invest in such a table was because we were living in Germany, and that kind of furniture wasn’t all that readily available there, and what there was seemed a lot more expensive than what you could get here in the US at the time.

As soon as I was partially settled in the new house though, I started thinking about that table, and looking around to see what was available these days. Of course, the first thing I found that I was really excited about was a bit bittersweet.

Awesome table, but when I called the local Horn of America dealer to check on pricing, the conversation went something like this:

Me: Can you tell me the price on the Horn MultiLift 6000 please?
Dealer: Sure, just a sec. Hmm, yes, the MSRP on that is five thousand—something something something (she said exactly what the MSRP was, but I quit listening at the five thousand part).
Me: Oh, okay. (rather weakly…)
Dealer: However, we always sell for 25% off the MSRP so that would actually be three thousand, eight hundred—something something. (yeah, I quit listening again…).
Me: Ah, hmmm.(...)
Read the rest of Horn MultiLift 6000: 252 Pounds of Pure Quilting Bliss (403 words)

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© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments
Post categories: Favorite Things, Featured, Machines, Quilting
Tags: machine quilting, moving, studio

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An Interesting Place

Nadine — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:27:34 +0000

By way of a little “touching base/checking in” type post, I find myself in an interesting place at the moment, both literally and figuratively:

Augusta is an interesting place. So far, we really like it here, high pollen counts and high temperatures notwithstanding. We’re not actually in Augusta, but in a smaller town just outside of it. It’s a nice area, and most things I need or want to do are within a few minutes from the house, and I very quickly embraced the idea that anything over ten miles away is “too far” and even five miles is pushing it. The Augusta area is big enough to have a nice mall with a Dillard’s and a Macy’s (which is almost “too far” it must be said), but not big enough for a Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus, and I’m okay with that. If it was that big, it would be too big like Atlanta, and I don’t think I’d like living there. Augusta seems just right.

Our house is an interesting place. For that matter, so is home ownership. You see, I’ve never owned a house before, and it still feels a bit…strange…somehow. It’s all ours, and we can do what we like with it, and we don’t have to put up with strange landlords or worry about what issues or faults might become evident as time goes on that perhaps weren’t apparent when we moved in or that the landlords didn’t want to tell us about. The house itself is wonderful, and I’m still amazed that I found it. I think I fall in love with it a little more as each week passes. We love the neighborhood, all three streets of it, and our neighbors are nice and quiet and nearly invisible, just the way we like to be. Every once in a while though, I still stop and think about how weird it is to have our own house, and maybe have a few roots starting to set themselves into the ground finally.(...)
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Post categories: Featured, Life, Musings, Quilting
Tags: creative spirit, Inchies, just life, moving

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Auf Wiedersehen to Germany

Nadine — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 09:49:32 +0000

Yep, we’re finally saying it. The packers are here, and though it will shortly be in boxes, my studio now looks like this:

Yes, I know, this doesn’t look much different from the last time I checked in with all of you readers oh, so many months ago (if any of you are still here after months of radio silence). But you’ll just have to trust me that it did look different in the interim because I did organize and arrange my studio so that I could use it, though it was never really “home.” How could it be, when it was a sardine can compared to what I had before? Sure, there was a very small bit of quilting going on in the last few months, but my heart wasn’t in it for various reasons. One of the biggest reasons was that I had a hard time finding anything when I needed it, and I’d get irritated when creativity stopped because I couldn’t find whatever it was I needed at the time, and I’d turn the lights off and head down the stairs to do something else. There’s only so much organization you can do in a sardine can with low slanted ceilings…

Anyway, enough about the past few months and onward to the exciting part! We are finally moving back to the United States! Honestly, it’s well past the time that we should have been headed for the next chapter of our lives. ITMan has a new job in Augusta, Georgia, and we’ll be there in less than a month. Things happen fast when they finally happen, especially when the Army is involved.(...)
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Post categories: Featured, Life, NOT Quilting, Quilting
Tags: family, moving

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Getting in Touch

Nadine — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:32:26 +0000

with:

My gamer side. Yeah, like you couldn’t tell from my absence what I’ve been doing for the last two months! The addiction to World of Warcraft rages on. My Night Elf Hunter promptly took a back seat to my Death Knight at level 55, and I’m working on the slow journey to level 80 with the Death Knight. And along the way, I’ve made a few more characters, so I have my own small case of alt-itis. I don’t have the veritable army of alts that my mother has, but still, if I make more than two more new characters, I’ll have to make them on a new server since I can’t have more than ten on the server that I play on now. Then they’ll be the poor relations, since there won’t be any of my other characters over there on the other server to share gold. Gold makes it all so much easier…big surprise…
My family more often, both the immediate members and the ones far away, as we play WoW together. I see my youngest daughter and husband more, since we all play in my studio together on separate computers. Sometimes we adventure together in-game, or help each other kill the difficult monsters. I talk to my mother, aunt and cousin more, though it must be noted that the conversations are mostly game related and take place in the in-game chat window!
The taxes. Ugh. Big UGH. But it’s not like you can just not do them. (Though at the moment, it’s tempting to make a try for the “not doing them” technique, and see how long I can stay under the radar on that.) And I have all that business stuff to make it 150% more complicated this year too. Yes, I’m whining. It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to!
My chauffeur side. I spend way too much time driving lately. GuitarGirl has graduated from high school, gotten a new job at the Commissary and started college classes, so my taxi duties have quadrupled (or maybe quintupled) in the last few weeks. Not that I don’t enjoy driving my car as I’m still in love with everything about it even though it’s over three years old. It’s just an awesomeness that I’ll never get over probably. In fact it’s the only thing that makes the taxi duties tolerable at all, but I still would rather pass on it and never leave my house unless I felt like it and there was good shopping on the other end of the journey, tyvm. On top of all that, it’s a bit freaky to have a child in college. I’m just sayin’.

But not in touch with:(...)
Read the rest of Getting in Touch (507 words)

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© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2010. | Permalink | 22 comments
Post categories: Creativity, Featured, Life, Musings, NOT Quilting, Quilting, Shows & Contests
Tags: AQS, Inchie Quilts, Inchies, moving, vidcast, World of Warcraft, WoW

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Absenteeism and Admissions

Nadine — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:42:22 +0000

I’m just popping in to say hey, and sorry for my absenteeism. Actually, “absenteeism” isn’t really a very accurate term either. “Totally and inexcusably lazy slacker” when it comes to anything I should be doing would be more to the point to be completely honest. I’ve had a sickness since, oh, along about Christmas Eve or so. I don’t want to eat or sleep, I haven’t read blogs (since long before that actually), haven’t posted anything myself, my email inbox is crowded with over 100 emails (it’s been down under 30-40 for months up until now), I haven’t done anything remotely related to quilting and think only of XP, gold, spells and quests. I have managed to feed my family the requisite Christmas goodies and meals at least, but other than these two huge must-dos, I have been completely out of touch with reality as it has been for the last few years.(...)
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Post categories: Featured, Life, NOT Quilting, Quilting
Tags: gaming, World of Warcraft

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A New Appreciation

Nadine — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:00:27 +0000

My current project is sorely taxing my creativity and definitely making me question my otherwise good judgment. ITMan and I will be married 20 years on December 28, and I have something very special planned as a gift for both of us, but it’s not exactly something that fits in a box and is easy to wrap. (And no, I’m not telling what it is yet just in case he decides to do something completely out of character all of a sudden and read my blog!)

I wanted to make a small scrapbook-type presentation for this gift so that I could give it to him a few days before. For this particular gift, he does need a little bit of advance warning, and I didn’t want to just tell him about it. So I went searching for a handmade journal or small scrapbook thing online and could only come up with one thing that really spoke to me and it was a whopping $160! Um. No. Beside the cost, it was a full journal with 50 pages and all I really needed was about a dozen, if that. I don’t want to write a novel, after all!(...)
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Post categories: Creativity, Featured, Life, NOT Quilting, Quilting
Tags: papercrafts

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The Problem with Precuts

Nadine — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 10:02:05 +0000

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have already seen a bit of grousing on this subject, but I have to elaborate further here. You see, I had this sort of half formed plan (I won’t say half-baked, since that implies that it’s done but unsuccessful; this plan was just in it’s infancy) for a show quilt incorporating scrappy batiks, Inchies and machine embroidery. Don’t ask me to tell you how that was going to turn out with all of those seemingly disparate elements because I hadn’t yet figured that out completely, but it’s a moot point now anyway as you’ll see despite the fact that the Bali Pops look so pretty:

While the plan was still forming though, I spent a lot of time searching around the Internet looking for the best price on Hoffman Bali Pops, and was really happy when a 20% off coupon from Fat Quarter Shop showed up in my inbox at just the right moment. (...)
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Post categories: Creativity, Featured, Quilting, Shows & Contests
Tags: Bali Pops, batik, fabric, precut fabric, show quilts

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Head to Head: EQ Printables vs. Jacquard Cotton Sheets

Nadine — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 19:39:47 +0000

I’ve been doing some printing on fabric off and on lately, using EQ Printables Premium Cotton Satin Inkjet Fabric Sheets. I picked up a 6 sheet package at Quilt Market in Houston in 2008 so that I could try it out. The results with the EQ Printables are okay, but I haven’t been ecstatically happy with them, so when I was ordering from SoftExpressions.com recently, I decided to order a package of Jacquard Cotton Ink Jet Printing Sheets to see if it was any better.

I actually wasn’t planning on doing any sort of really scientific side-by-side comparison when I ordered the Jacquard, but after I printed an image on the EQ Printables and was pretty unhappy with the way the ink ran and spread during the rinsing phase, I decided to print the same image on the Jacquard to test it out. And okay, it’s still not a terribly thorough analysis since it’s not like I’m going to burn through three or four more sheets to test different kinds of images on each of these brands, but I think the results are worth sharing anyway.

Here’s the head to head, brutal comparison:(...)
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Post categories: Creativity, Featured, Musings, Quilting, Tips
Tags: ink jet fabric printing

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Patchwork Tree and Half-Rectangle Triangles

Nadine — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:35:59 +0000

Here’s a little peek at a new quilt I’m designing:

Mmmmm, green. If I had to choose a favorite color, it would have to be green. I love, love, LOVE greens! And I had such fun just pulling these few fabrics together, some from my stash, some from the quilt shop, and some I ordered online.

I wanted to have a tree as the center piece of the quilt, and the tree block that I liked the best had half-rectangle triangles, which caused me some issues. I was thinking that you could just make them the same way that half-square triangles are made, by cutting the rectangles, drawing a diagonal line across the middle and sewing ¼” to each side of the drawn line then cutting apart. (...)
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Post categories: Creativity, Featured, Quilting
Tags: cool tools, creative spirit, design, fabric

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