Quilt a motif

I’d like to share how I got a quilting stencil onto a felt Kindle cover that I recently made from items in my stash.  I love when everything I need to create and finish an item is located in my already-on-hand sewing supplies!
First thing you have to have is a motif.  You can trace them, you can draw them or can get one my favorite way – from Electric Quilt’s QuiltMaker Stencils.  I have Volume 3, a stand-alone program. You don’t have to have a version of Electric Quilt to use it.  But, if you have a version of Electric Quilt, you can position the motif in EQ on a drawing of your creation.
Even though I am not making a quilt, I made a “quilt layout” in EQ the size of the area that I had to put the motif in.
When I need to place a motif in a certain area, I like to work on  a “grid”, makes it much easier to center.  In the Block Worktable, I drew a 7.5” x 5” grid and placed it in Layer 1(in the Quilt Worktable) and placed the butterfly in Layer 2.  I could size the butterfly and move it all around that area until I was pleased with the placement.  It was easy to get the placement on the actual article cuz I had that grid to reference to.
That is one of the butterflies from the “Animals & Bugs” section. 
I determined that I needed a butterfly motif that was 4” x 3” and that is what I printed out from EQ.  I traced that image onto some “Stitch & Ditch Stabilizer by ThreadPro”.  It is heavier than tissue paper, very pliable and the back of the paper is soft & grippy so it doesn’t slide around the fabric.
Looks like a lot of pins. There are pins to mark horizontal and vertical centers and pins to hold the stabilizer in place.  I also drew lines on the stabilizer, for the horizontal & vertical centers – and matched those to the pins marking the horizontal & vertical centers of the fabric.  I then stitched the butterfly thru the stabilizer & fabric.  Tore the stabilizer away when stitching was complete.
The fabric is a textured felt square that I found at Joann’s a couple of years ago.
And here’s the finished Kindle Cover --
I decided to have the seam allowances on the outside of the Kindle Cover.  It was easy to construct that way and then found out it gave extra protection to the edges of the Kindle.
I had to make the inside of regular felt, cuz I had made 2 other Kindle Covers and ran out of the Brown Textured Felt.  Maybe one day I’ll make a more durable cover, but, I think this one will last a long time and I like it.

Radiator Cover

It all started with this article in Quilters Newsletter Magazine, dated October 2003.

The fabric above was bought specifically for the making of a wallhanging.  The fabric at top is a panel print and there are 4 fabrics below it.

After cutting the pieces for 1 block, I decided I didn't want to make a whole bunch more – a little too much fussy-cutting.  So, I set the fabric and the block aside.

Then, came the winter of 2010. It was cold.  More days in a row of cold than we've ever experienced living in South Florida for 38 years. We bought a portable room radiator and used it more times in January thru March than I care to think about.

I knew just by looking at that radiator that it was going to be a dust-catcher! It needed a cover. I remembered that fabric and the lonely block.

I went into my EQ7 with my measurements for the radiator cover and started to design.  I even scanned my fabric so I could use it in the design in EQ7.  In order to make what looks like the panel print, I took a digital picture of the actual fabric and brought the image into EQ7.  If you do that, make sure the image is “square” so that the proportion will be correct.  You end up with some real silly looking images if you use rectangle-shaped images.I took a screenshot of the upside-down back portion of design and brought it into MS Paint. I am delighted with Windows7 version of MS Paint. I can manipulate images with ease and it doesn’t have the learning curve that the high-end graphics programs do.

Here’s the layout, in progress, on the design wall.

Here's all the layers pinned together, ready to be quilted.

After a couple of movies on the Hallmark Movie Channel, the "bones" of the cover are quilted and now the "fun quilting" begins …

I used Sulky Blendable 12 wt cotton thread for the quilting.  I like the heaviness of that thread.  Makes the stitching stand out.  I use a 90/14 Topstitch needle for the 12 wt. thread.

I find I get a better fit if I wash & dry the piece after quilting and before sewing the sides together.  Especially if I use cotton batting as I did in this project. 

Finished cover – front

 
Finished cover - back

Dolphins on a radiator?
In South Florida - but of course!

Reading Pillow Cover

Read on and you will see what I did with the fabric that gave me the scraps in the previous post.

I have some things that help to keep me "on track" when I quilt. Sometimes I use little patterns drawn on Freezer Paper and ironed on to the piece being quilted. Let me show you how I make ‘em.

I am using a block I found in Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting magazine, Jan/Feb 2010, page 92, Star Rosette block by Nancy Mahoney.  I drew the block in EQ6.  I like to draw interesting blocks in EQ6, it gives me practice.

I use EQ6 to create quilting stencils --

Since I like to draw the stencil directly on the block, I need to bring the block back into EQ6 as an image that I can trace on. Use the "Export Image" tool and save the image (block I drew) to a Directory where you can find it. I created an IMAGES directory right off the EQ6 directory and put images in there that I will be using for tracing, etc.

Make a new block for drawing stencil motif
Block > New Block > PatchDraw Motif
Block > Import image for tracing (the quilt block I drew)

Using the Freehand tool on the Appliqué layer, draw out a design directly on the block. You will probably need to tweak it up some. Save to sketchbook.

 Here's block with tweaked freehand
design drawn on it

Saved drawn appliqué without
the block image underneath it

If I were using multiple quilt blocks in a quilt, I could then place the saved drawn appliqué onto each block in the quilt, to see how it would look on the finished quilt.

The repeat in the  drawn appliqué is 2 sizes of teardrops.  Convert the drawn design into guides – Block > Convert to Guides and then draw a template of a teardrop for each of the 2 different sized loops
Save to sketchbook.

I then printed a 10" block of those 2 teardrops
Print > Templates

I could've printed the 8 teardrops templates onto Freezer Paper, but I was being conservative and find it easier to print one of a needed repeat and then trace it, staple it to layers of Freezer Paper for additional copies, having only to cut the template shape once.

Plus, I get to use up scraps of Freezer Paper.

Smaller teardrop traced to Freezer Paper
and stapled to sheets of more Freezer Paper

 Teardrops cut out

Teardrops ironed onto quilt sandwich,
ready to be quilted around

Another favorite guide for quilting lines
is Contact Paper.  It is repositionable
many times

And here’s my completed Reading Pillow, waiting in my Reading Chair.  I use the pillow to prop up my book.

FYI, I always have a book in progress.  I just finished “Just Take my Heart” by Mary Higgins Clark and will be starting “Promise Me” by Harlan Coben.

Monday is one of DH’s & my movie nights.  We will be watching “The Painted Veil” from Netflix this evening.

To pitch or to keep

It’s always a tough decision for me when it comes to the smaller pieces of fabric left over after all the patches for a project have been cut.  Do I throw them out?  Do I keep them?  What’s considered small enuf to throw away.  When you do PaperPiecing, the decision is more difficult as you can use really small pieces of fabric.  How small?  Now, that’s the question.

The scraps in the pic above are from a project that I will be blogging about in the next post.  The spool of thread is there to show scale.

I already have a small drawer with small scraps of fabric in it.  I don’t go into that drawer very often, so that should tell me something. 

I have made a decision that I will no longer keep small pieces.  Anything under 2-1/2” hits the trash.  Starting with the scraps in the above pic.  And also the scraps in the small drawer.

Now, watch – next week I will be needing one of those scraps that I threw away this week!  Don’t you hate it when that happens?  Well, if it does happen, I’ll just have to take a trip to the fabric store!  ;-) 

They’ll be Tweeting from Houston!

Twitter is really good for some things and the Houston Quilt Market & Festival is one of them. I just found out PlanetPatchwork was tweeting from Houston’s Quilt Market last week and will start tweeting again for Quilt Festival which starts Wed. Oct 14. They really did a good job of sharing a lot of pics they took at Market of things they found interesting. Their Tweet Home is http://twitter.com/planetpatchwork. You don’t have to be a member of Twitter to read the tweets.

I liked the “Zipper Mouth Pillow Creatures” from Indygo Junction - http://znl.me/L048S

For those of you who are not familiar with Twitter, here’s a few hints – On http://twitter.com/planetpatchwork page, you will see a list of very short comments (tweets), usually having a red “http://…” link. Click on that link and you will see a photo for that tweet (comment).

Near the top of the page, you will see #quiltmarket in red, click on that link and it will take you to a page of tweets from different people from all over.

Also near the top of http://twitter.com/planetpatchwork page, you will see #quiltmarket in red, click on that link and you will see the beginnings of which I’m assuming will be a long list of tweeters at the Houston Quilt Festival starting Wed. Oct 14 thru Sun. Oct. 18.

Ami Simms will be tweeting from Houston, too. She said she will try & put up pics of the new owners of the ALZ Quilts that they will be selling and auctioning off.

Here’s Ami’s Tweet Home -- http://twitter.com/aaqiupdate
Here's a list of all the ALZ Quilts in Houston -- http://www.alzquilts.org/hoinqufeo15.html

The tweets are just so easy to read from my iPod Touch and a nice comfortable chair.

Do you know of anyone else who will be tweeting from Houston? I will put links at the end of this post.

Portable Design Area

My Feathered Star wallhanging is coming along nicely.  I thought I'd let you know about the small design area that I made that I find very useful with smaller projects such as this.

In the photo above, the pieces of my wallhanging are either adhered to or pinned to the design area which is white. I've pinned some of the pieces to the design area cuz they have little pieces of paper that need to stay with the them cuz they are labels which tell me where the pieces go.

Most times when I use this design area, I just put the fabric pieces on it, no pins needed, cuz they adhere like magic. I also use this as a background when taking pics of items for the internet.

I got a piece of foam core board, 30" x 40", from the office supply store.  I made a "pillowcase" for the foam core board of white sweatshirt fabric and brown broadcloth on the reverse side.  I purposely made a light side and a dark side which enables me to use the side that shows up the items more clearly.

When cutting the fabric for the "pillowcase", I allowed 2-3" more at the top so that I could close it up.  Be sure to cut ample fabric for the seam allowances.  The 3 sides of the "pillowcase" are sewn on the sewing machine. Have the wrong side of sweatshirt fabric facing out, as items will adhere to the nice, soft, napped surface. 

After the 3 sides are sewn, slip in the foam core board and then slipstitch the opening closed, remember, you’ve allowed ample extra fabric to do this.

Another thing about having the pinnable foam core board is that when taking pics of items, you can pin them to the board in a nice pleasing manner for a photo.

Project gone wrong!

Did you ever have it in your mind to create something and then as the sewing progressed, you realized it just wasn’t working out?

Well, I had another one of those “project gone wrong” things happen to me.  Yep, there’s been more than one!  I wanted to make a couple of “Bah Humbug Bags” and I didn’t want any raw edges in the bag.  Thought I’d like it to have a layer of batting.  Well.  That just didn’t work out.  Tried Traditional Batt on the larger bag and it was way too bulky.  Tried Cotton Batt on the smaller bag & it was still too much.  And the added bulk of the batting made sewing thru some of the seams with all those layers a bit much.

I don’t have a pattern for the Humbug Bag, but I had made the bag years ago after seeing it on a “Sewing with Nancy” program that featured the bag.  I made several of those, at the time.  They make nice gifts.  And also a nice cover-up for a gift.  Had made one for myself, too.

Well, my 2nd try (bags 3 & 4) turned out better.  There are no exposed raw edges anywhere in the bag.  Got back to basics and used denim for its durability.  No batting.  Nice fabrics for lining and decorating the handle.  The fabric & denim are quilted together with some deco stitches on my new sewing machine.

The bags look just a bit different, cuz I found that I had lots of bulk when stitching the handle in the same place with the zipper insert as on the smaller bag.  So, I moved the zipper insert away from the middle on the larger bag and that did the trick – the zipper insert & the handle are sewn thru separately, rather than all on top of each other.  I even made each end of the handle to be sewn side by side, rather than on top of each other, again, less bulk.

This was a good project to choose for sewing on my new Janome 6600p.  Lots of practice on many techniques, including using the zipper foot.  Even the original idea with the green bags that didn’t work out gave me some nice practice on quilting with the AccuFeed Foot.

The old dog IS learning new tricks!  LOL

The denim bags are a gift for a niece who will be starting college in the fall.  I know Holly will put them to good use, transporting any manner of goodies in them.

The original green bags I will finish up and know I will find some use for them around here.

Quilt Magazines in Spanish?

Someone emailed me saying that her daughter is studying in Costa Rica and the local women love quilting and yearn for American Quilting Magazines but do not read English. 

Does anyone out there in the Land of Blog know of a Quilt Magazine for Spanish speaking/reading quilters?