Printed circles for grandbaby – Completed

We had a public holiday on Thursday (Heritage Day) and being a routine freak these midweek public holidays throws me off totally.  I felt disorganised, without my routines and useless.  I so badly wanted the following day to simply be Sunday and although most businesses closed for the Friday, we had sub-contractor wages to pay and they surely wouldn’t appreciate me taking a long weekend.  Best I could do was to grab the bull by the horns on Friday, get up earlier, left for the office just after 6 am and noticed this beautiful sunrise just as I left our driveway.  Surely was a sign of a positive day and I kept it that way, getting everything and more done that I had to.  Then finally it was weekend, where one day off would lead to another.

Early Saturday morning I loaded this quilt back on the frame and with my zipper system and the fact that I basted the whole quilt before taking it off, everything just fell back into place and one would never even know it was taken off and put back again.  However, with having to share my quilting space, while entertaining a parrot, everything isn’t always smooth sailing.  I forget to press resume on my timer when starting to quilt as she gives me a mouthful or tries to destroy something and worst of all when the timer does go off after an hour, I forget to tick off another hour.  Fine with this quilt but I’ll be losing out terribly when having to charge a customer.  My space always doesn’t look as neat as I’d like it with this lady around.

By Saturday evening I’ve about had it with circles and ruler work doesn’t get any faster even after outlining hundreds of these circles twice!  A couple of times where I thought to go faster I veered off the line totally, so slow was the way to go.

This afternoon we will be attending the 60^th birthday of one of the very first friends I made when we moved here from Kimberley in 1987 and it disheartening to accept I have such old friends and I am there with them!!

Finally done and time to add the binding but this will be a pleasure while watching the French Open tennis for the next two weeks.  As much as I love to quilt I would not mind having these two weeks off to follow the tennis from beginning to end.

Here is a little close-up of the motifs front and back.

The quilt measures 86” x 86” and I trimmed it in such a way that the stripes could go horizontally or vertically on the bed and as for the front (at least) what will be on the left will be on the right with the thick black line in the centre.  This took a full 18 hours to quilt, give or take the couple of times I forgot to resume the timer.

I have two more pieces of the same fabric in different colours but you can bet your bottom dollar I won’t be outlining the circles on these.

Silky table runners

I got 2 silky table runners on Monday.  The fabric is from a fabric sample book and the quilter used these to keep herself busy during the lockdown.  I felt scared stiff to work with these, apart from the movement in the fabric, I wasn’t sure what damage the needle would do to the fabric.

I thought I’d have to change to a much thinner needle which obviously meant changing to a thinner thread too.  Furthermore, the backing was way too skimpy and I had to improvise.

The older kids asked me to babysit their newly adopted kitten while they were off to take the oldest granddaughter to see a medical specialist in another city.  This too was such a scary thought with our own cat, 3 dogs and an African grey as apparently this little kitten has somewhat of an attitude towards other pets.

Kitten arrived but we keep her closed off in the downstairs TV room as she is not even impressed seeing the dogs through the glass window but otherwise, she adapted quickly.  Having to sit with her to give some attention I get to watch all the tennis I want.

I had the table runners loaded before kitten got here and while taking breaks from babysitting I worked on these and was pleasantly surprised with the fabric.  It behaved well and I didn’t have to change anything.

The camera on my new phone has all these amazing features that I still know very little about but one I discovered when taking this photo is taking a full picture without me having to climb onto a ladder to get it all.  It simply zooms out.  I think I will use this feature a lot especially when taking photos of quilts.

These measured 16 x 55” and the longer one was 16 x 87”.  The quilter will fetch it this afternoon.

Printed circles for grandbaby – Part 1

This is 90” wide fabric that I purchased to make the youngest granddaughter a quilt for her bed.  I barely have time to piece lately, so whole-cloth is the way to go when I need something done.  The fabric arrived just as I was about to finish the last of the 3 customer quilts I did and I looked forward to do something for myself without a deadline or an eager customer waiting for me to finish.

Well, as the saying goes, life happens while you are making other plans and just as I had this fabric loaded, I got a call from another quilter in need of my services for her quilts she’d like to bring today.

Stepping back a bit….  I was grateful for the quilter who brought me 3 quilts at the same time.  I’ve been contemplating changing my pricing system.  Up to now, I’ve charged per square inch but soon realised that it is not really fair to some.  One quilter might bring me a full sized bed quilt but request simple meandering or overall edge to edge quilting which may only take 3 hours while the next would bring a small wall-hanging or table runner and want this to stay flat against the wall or on the table therefore they need dense quilting and often ruler work and this can easily take 5 hours for something really small.

So with the 3 quilts received at once, I checked the timer on my machine which only calculates the time the needle moves, the timer on the phone which adds up all the time I actually spend time behind the frame, thought what I’d like to earn, should this be a full-time job without being ridiculous, and then compared the new hourly rate to my previous square inch rate and now I feel much more comfortable.  Sadly the quilter receiving intense quilting with plenty of markings and ruler work will have to pay more but the quilter only wanting meandering won’t have to pay an arm and a leg to have it done.

So with this quilt, I wanted to test the time for ruler work on a larger quilt.  I decided to outline every printed circle twice, inside and out and only free motion the areas in between and this again proved how time-consuming ruler work can be.

To ruler one take (roughly 12 inches) full width twice around all the circles took up a full 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Filling the open areas between the circles with free motion loops, again full width, took less than 20 minutes.

I got this top to where it lifted from the floor but guess, after work, I will have to baste the rest to keep all intact in order to load the customer quilts. Only almost halfway and this already took up 8 hours.

Attic window quilt

This is the last of the 3 quilts received on 9 September and although I thought I took a good look at all the quilts when I got them, I didn’t recall this one to be as big as it is.  I was under the impression the first quilt with circles was the biggest.  Anyhow the order doesn’t really matter as long as all got done.

I’ve also realised that in my 20 years of quilting, I’ve never made an Attic Window quilt.  This quilt also gave no hints or tips regarding the motifs I could use for free-motion quilting. 

I ran into some problems with the borders being wavy, warned the quilter that I can do nothing but use large overall quilting to somehow try to manoeuvre the fabric so it wouldn’t bunch up at the end and she was fine with it.

All is well that ends well and this quilt finished at 71” x 72”

Horse panel

This is the second of 3 quilts the same quilter dropped off on 9 September and I have to start by showing the backing.  Is this not the prettiest fabric?  I am almost sad to think it will be hidden on the back of a quilt.

I basically had 2 blocks to work with, the first larger blocks had multiple horse related images and no matter which colour thread I’d choose, it would simply show up on any other colour, so I stuck to black thread but kept the free motion to the minimum by doing a large meander.

The second block was a centre picture of a horse and the neatest square print fabric to frame it and the quilter pieced so perfectly that I could use these lines simply to sew a grid around the picture.

The quilt finished at 55” x 56” and I do believe it will become the property of her grandson.

 

Quilt with circles

Last week went by so fast when I tried to recall it on Thursday; it was simply one big blur.  That, however, meant that I’ve been busy which is much better than being bored.

On Wednesday I received 3 quilts from the same quilter and I chose to start with the largest one which had circular applique as the focal point.  These circles basically gave me a guideline on what motifs I should use.

To make the applique circles pop I quilted a dense paisley echo around the circle and I think it turned out well.

For the squares in between, I stuck to a string circle motif alternating the direction.

The only different motif came in the blue border where I followed the printed lines on the fabric to make a beadboard or piano key border.  In the brown skinny border, I still kept to the string circles.

For the outer border, I repeated the paisley echo just in a larger scale.

The wonderful part about this was that the quilter gave me a multi-coloured backing which allowed me to change the top threads to match her fabric as closely as possible without having to worry about thread pokies on the back and having to constantly adjust the tension.

We had all the kids and grandbabies over on Saturday, so while hubby played golf Sunday, I took a day off, stayed in my PJ’s and got educated with some Vimeo long arm quilting videos.

This quilt finished at 77” x 77” and took 4 hours 25 minutes actual stitching time. This should be doubled to get the idea of the time spent behind the frame, loading, snipping thread, changing bobbins and advancing the quilt.  I use the timer on my machine to get actual stitching time but have used both this and the timer on my cell phone to compare.  No wonder quilters wonder why someone with a long-arm cannot finish their quilt the same day.

 

Train panel completed

We had a wonderful restaurant supper yesterday evening even though there was load shedding just after we arrived and the electricity only came on as we were about to leave.  Luckily the restaurant had a generator and gas appliances, so we could still eat.  We realised, with these friends too, we haven’t been out together in 6 months!

After work, I finished up the last bit of quilting on this train panel and forcing ill-feeling hubby to stay indoors this weekend, I can sit by him while doing the binding on this quilt.

The backing used was one of my cheaper printed poly-cotton sheeting that I recently purchased.

And this says it all, the time and the number of stitches that went into this little panel.

A little experimenting

A quilter phoned me last week booking quilts for this week Monday.  She then ran into a problem in not being able to find wide backings and had to order these, so no quilts on Monday.  Turned out to be a blessing in disguise as a friend whom I haven’t seen since lockdown end March said we should have some cake somewhere. It was just wonderful to sit, chat and not worry about cleaning up afterwards.

Tuesday, miserable windy day, turned out just as good as I had wine and snacks at another friend’s house. None of these is quilters so it was good to hear news from other angles and not just stay in my own little quilt world.

I ordered even more extra-wide poly-cotton fabric for quilt backings and I have a neat stack by now.  I guess I’ll have to start making quilts to be able to use these.

The booked quilter still hasn’t received her backing fabric and I decided to load and baste the train quilt.  By basting a quilt beforehand it can be easily unzipped and re-zipped onto the frame.  So if the booked quilts arrive I’d have no problem taking this one-off, knowing everything is in place and will stay that way.  This can also be done for quilters not liking sandwiching the layers but prefer to do their own free motion quilting. The basting stitch is around 1” long and will easily unpick.

After basting, being at the bottom of the quilt, I decided I might as well work my way up, changed to green thread and started quilting all the green bits.  This quilt has no recipient in mind, so I can take as long as I want to finish it and simply play with all the modes on my machine and motifs, I can do.

Done with the green and back at the top it was time to change to blue thread and work my way down again.

I’ve used the option of using lock stitches at the beginning and end of a motif for the first time on this quilt.  Previously I would tie knots in the thread and bury these between the layers.  This takes up a lot of time.  The other way I did it was to backstitch as one would do on a domestic sewing machine but I’ve noticed that when using different colour threads, the top thread would show up on the bottom, now not any more although I did not use harshly contrasting thread colours.

I’ve also used manual mode (not regulating your stitch lengths) for most of the motifs and only used regulated mode when having to use a ruler for straight lines.  I am beginning to like manual mode as the machine seems to move with much more ease than in regulated mode.

Hubby is not feeling well at all and a friend came over this afternoon and promised to send me pictures of medication she’d suggest.  She’s married to a doctor, so I might as well take her advice. I have reached the bottom of this quilt using blue but will roll back to double-check that I’ve caught all the blue areas and then we’re off to a restaurant dinner with friends.