Into the deep blues

I don’t get many quilts made using mostly dark colours, so these deep blues were rather refreshing.  All quilts do have lights, medium and darks but then the darks wood mostly be only one colour.  In this quilt the darks were predominant, still giving a pleasing outcome.

I continued with my quest to conquer pantographs by choosing something different and yes, I still struggle with spacing between the advances but taking note of what exactly could cause this and hoping to rectify it with each quilt I do.

For now, once the pantograph is taken off the frame, only I know where my blunders are and the overall motif still looks good.

This was the 10^th quilt by the same quilter for this year and I think we are all way past the point where we ask “how does she do it” and just accept that she does.

I had terrible shoulder spasm after this but it may be just because of having to adopt a new position to follow the little laser light, hopefully, it will get better.

For years we’ve been celebrating New Years’ with the same group of friends but this year our plans were cancelled due to a curfew as a result of rising Covid numbers.  I already bought everything needed for the carnivore platter I had to make and seeing that small groups of the family may still get together I’ve invited the older kids for a ‘last-day-of-the-year’ late lunch. I might as well give my shoulder spasm somewhat of a break by prepping the platter and spending time with the kids.

It’s all about those blocks

Another fun coloured 16-patch quilt for a little girl.  This came from the quilter, mentioned in yesterdays’ post and she got the motif she wished for.

This was then the first pantograph done on a customer quilt.

Trying my hand at pantographs

I have read about pantographs the moment I bought my machine and even got the rear handles for my machine to do this at some stage.  However, when I put my rear handles on, my machine quilt working.  The handles were returned to be repaired which was almost a year ago.  At that stage, I had so many customer quilts that I didn’t want to risk putting the rear handles back on, in fear that my machine will quit again.  So without rear handles, I continued.

I, however, have this one quilter; I know she reads my blog, so she might just recognise herself.  Whenever she brings me a quilt, it comes along with a picture of a motif she’d like me to stitch.  Sadly most of these are digitised or pantographs and in the past, I’d try my best to do this free-motion by practising on a whiteboard or paper.  The last motif she showed me was just a bit too much of a challenge to get a good rhythm and get going free-motion style.  So I thought what the heck, it is the end of the year and my practice time; I might just give pantographs a try.

I saw a video by a lady who had even less space than I to get to the back of her machine (where pantographs are generally done from) so she improvised to do pantographs from the front.  I watched this several times and decided to give it a go.

Bought a self-print motif from Urbanelements.com, cut some old fabric and started with this.  It went much easier than expected and the best part is, I don’t have to think about the spacing or next move, I just follow the little laser light.  Self-print pantographs are rather expensive and the sad part is that a quilter might only use a motif once.  Now I have a new expense on my list ever since I got my long arm.  People complain about paying for quilting but I, as a novice, has already spent a small fortune just to be able to deliver a fairly decent end result and even if I quilt two quilts per week, it will still easily take me more than 10 years to pay off my initial, let alone continuous, expenses.

One must seriously check your spacing when advancing and I still need to figure out how to measure once I only have a tiny bit of top left at the bottom and need to repeat the motif one last time but I guess practice will make perfect.  This is the reason pantographs take a little longer to stitch, not so much in stitching time but time spent adjusting the motif for every advance.

Before this horrible 2020 runs out, I at least can say I have learnt more than just washing my hands and wearing a mask.  My first pantograph quilt is done.

Flower petal fill

Remember the practice fabric I loaded before my guests arrived for the festive season?

I cut this fabric after watching a video by Adria Good called Flower petal fills over HERE.  Now I know Adria is a ‘pro’ who has the ability to make everything look easy but I was adamant to give this a go.  The thing is, I get to see so many amazing things but hardly has the time to practise anything as I most always have a customer quilt on the frame and I have to admit some of my attempts are done on customer quilts.

So I cheated a little by starting before the first guests arrived but didn’t get to do much more than half of the first row.

Brother-in-law was the final to leave but on that day I simply sat just to gather my own thoughts and enjoy my own space ALONE.  I am really not much of a social animal, let alone visitors for long periods of time.

With everyone gone, it was playtime!  I experimented a lot, using different modes, testing the speed I could work with but in the end, slow is the way to go in order to get a good result.

I’ve shied away from long overall feathers as I never knew how the thread build-up at the back would look like and I was surprised to see that it is not nearly as bad as I imagined.  While doing the binding I was constantly aware of it but moving the quilt just a little further away, only the motif remained visible and the thread build-up could hardly be seen.   Here is the back which should show the build-up clearly and it is barely visible.

This was some of the cheaper extra wide fabric I purchased earlier this year and once completed it fitted our huge round bed with a diameter of 96”.  We now have new bedding to start the new year.

Starting the festive season

Our office has officially closed for clients and the admin staff on the 11^th.  The fitters however still continued to work as we just couldn’t fit everything in.  This meant I too had to work more seeing that I transfer their salaries and work out their leave due.  The nice part was that I didn’t have to attend to customers or even answer the phone.  I went in, did what needed to be done and then be it 9 am or 11 am, once done, I could return home.

This freed up some time to set up the Christmas tree, buy and wrap most of the gifts.

A while ago I also cut a practise piece of fabric but this sat on the guest bedroom bed and I just never got around to it. When I had all customer quilts out, this was the only obstacle preventing me from getting the guestroom ready.  With no other space in the house to neatly store cut fabric, I only had one solution and that was to load it on the frame, out of people and harms’ way. Oh, the temptation…. Not to quilt while having guests!

O really, who did I think I’d fool by loading a quilt and not touching it, once up on the frame, I simply couldn’t resist.

Then a quilter fetching my ‘last’ quilt for the year came around and left yet another quilt to be done but I might only get around to this one next year, so maybe that was my last customer quilt. She, however, did bring me a gift for Christmas and she is aware of how much I like my wine and decided to buy me a bottle, not because she knows much about the wine but because the bottle was so pretty and I have to agree.  I might just keep the bottle long after the wine is finished.

Finally, the day came when our first guest arrived and we had our first lunch. Way too much food according to everyone but little were left over.

The kids were back in the pool like we are used to this time of the year.

The time where we all just let go and sadly overindulge way too much.  Even the smallest one caught on quickly.

And with this, I wish everyone that took time to read a wonderful festive season and hope for all of us that 2021 will be slightly less disruptive.

Quilted ex-duvet cover

One of my co-workers is just as short as I am and for those tall people, something you might not understand is exactly how hard it is to get a duvet inner into the cover when short.  It is a struggle!  So finally being fed up with suffering, she unpicked the sides of her cover, bought batting and a sheet for backing and asked me to quilt it.

Not being a quilter but having seen some of my quilting, she requested ‘just an all-over simple pattern’ and after having done 6 quilts in 6 days I could think of nothing more simple than meandering.

Using manual mode again this took no longer than 2½ to finish this 83” x 88” quilt.  I already sent her pictures and she loved it. Although the office is officially closed for customers and the admin staff, I still have to go in to do our financial obligations and she'll come by this morning to pick it up.

Now I do believe I am done with client quilts for the year and good timing too as I need to clean my guest room (where I keep the quilts to be done) for our visitors coming on Wednesday.  In the meanwhile, I started planning meals and making a couple of dishes in advance.  No harm in being organized.

Camouflage quilt

We were invited to supper at a friends house last night and it was lovely to take a break from literally quilting day and night.  I've just finished 6 quilts in 6 days and I can feel it.  My thoughts just needed a break.

This quilter wanted to make a camouflage quilt but couldn’t find all camouflage fabric, so she improvised and I think she did great.

She then showed me a picture of the swirl hook; she would like to have on the quilt and big mouth me, immediately said “I can do that”.  It was the truth but I haven’t done it in a very long time and the picture she showed me was obviously either digitised or a pantograph for all was in dead straight lines and my memory recalled mine did not go in any line.

Believe it or not but this straight lines confused me terribly to such a point where, when trying to sketch it out, I even wondered whether I have really done this before. I practised on paper, in the air, in the dust on the garden furniture and the whiteboard but just couldn’t get my head around not going in a straight line.

I do sympathise with my parents for never having had Google or YouTube as just as I was about to give up, I remembered:  “Angela Walters and her video Swirl hooks”.  Poured me a tall glass of ice-cold wine, pulled my whiteboard closer and started the video and when Angela said, it basically consists of 3 steps, all the memory returned.  Swirl, hook, return and echo until you get to the point where you want to be next.  Breath in, breath out, the quilt was loaded and me, ready to start.

This motif took slightly longer to stitch out than the previous one (Pringle pointer) to stitch out but turned out great.

Squares with cars

Off to take the parrot to the vet for beak and nail trimming this morning and then serious shopping for my guests need to be done.

A while back I quilted a quilt for a little girl and mom promised to make her son a quilt too and she kept her word.  She used fabric with cars printed on it and combined these with all the colours in the printed block.

With this being for a boy, we decided not to have anything floral or girly as quilt motifs but the quilter trusted me to do my thing.

Way back, when I still quilted on my domestic machine, long before words like ‘edge-to-edge’ or continuous line quilting’ had any meaning to me, I needed an all-over motif that I could simply start at the top in the centre, work my way down and repeat until I had the quilt done.  I was so over meandering and wanted something with a similar flow but a different look.

I played around with pen and paper and finally got an idea and because I’ve never seen this anywhere else I credited myself by calling it the Pringle-pointer.  This stitches out fast has no direction and is suitable for both men and women.

This was, therefore, the motif I decided to do on this little boy quilt and even though I loved it on my domestic machine, I’ve never used it with the long-arm.  Now I am quite convinced this is my new favourite motif on the long-arm too.

All about modes, a ‘no-picture’post

Every long arm has different modes (settings) to choose from.  Most new long-armers choose to use ‘cruise mode’ when starting.  The reason for this is that your stitch lengths are controlled by the machine, so no matter how slow or fast you go, your stitch lengths will remain exact.  You then have the option to decide on how many stitches you want per inch (SPI).  This allows the newbie to focus on the motif and not worry about perfect stitches as it happens automatically.

The downside of cruise mode is that there is somewhat of a drag on the machine and if you go too fast the machine would sound an alarm warning you to slow down.

Then there is baste mode which is self-explanatory and here too you can decide whether you need small, medium or large basting stitches.

The third mode is the precise mode and ideal for ruler work.  The stitch lengths are still controlled but the machine would stop dead in its track the moment you stop moving it, not necessarily with the needle in the down position.  This allows you to quickly move your ruler to a new position and the moment you start moving the machine, it will simply continue stitching.

The last mode is Manual mode.  This mode does not control your stitch lengths and just as with a domestic machine you have to check that you don’t go too fast (long stitches) or too slow (small stitches) but it has one lovely advantage that I am starting to like all the more.  There is absolutely no drag on your machine and it glides over the rails like a hot knife through butter.  It also eliminates having to hover at any point where you suddenly turn in a different direction without causing a long unsightly stitch.

In the past, I’ve only used manual mode when doing pebbling to micro quilting but recently with frequent request for larger-scale all-over motifs, I started to play with this mode and the more I use it the more I love it.  The machine absolutely glides from left to right, no alarms going off when you pick up speed and I get faster through a take than in any of the other modes. Yes, I can see variations in the stitch lengths but these are so minor that it should not hurt the eye of anyone looking at the quilting.  It took me a full 3 years to discover how wonderful this mode is even though renowned quilters like Adria Good, does all her quilting in manual mode.

So now I have something ‘not so new’ to play with but my first festive season guests arrive on Wednesday and I still have some preparations to do.  Quilting, for a while at least, will have to be put on the back burner.

Fabric dress up dolls background quilting

Remember those backings I recently quilting for a lady who makes dress up fabric dolls?  She came to show me one completed backing with borders and even two pockets at the bottom in which the extra outfits can be kept.  Is this not adorable?

On this backing, the little doll was not attached yet but just look at the outfit, even I feel like playing doll again.

The little doll is made separately and attached to the backing and would look something like this.

More of the outfits she made

Each quilt with doll comes with 5 outfits and if you look at all the detail that goes into the outfits, I find these reasonably priced and I am sure one can always ask her to make more outfits.

She also brought me another backing to quilt and I chose to do echoed paisleys.

This is what a completed dress-up doll, fully dressed, will look like and what you can’t see is that this little girl even has a belly button ring!

A complete set would look like this.

A quilt for a friends’ wife

After the intense drought, over most parts of our country, we still did not get the rain we are used to for this time of the year but we are grateful for what we get anyway.  This little rain turned hubby’s garden (I don’t garden, so I can’t take any credit) into a sight for sore eyes.

I know seeing quilts done by men is not that strange anymore but it still leaves me in awe.  Not sure whether I’d like my hubby to take up the hobby, I am sure we’d constantly fight about the fabric, machine and tools but I do admire men who take the leap and do the not so familiar to them.

This male quilter (married to a quilter too) made this quilt for a friends’ wife.  I hope the friend realises the value and time that went into this.

He requested a larger scale all over motif, something I did on another quilt made by his wife and with all the colours, no use trying to do custom quilting as it would simply get lost in translation.

This quilt, however, had a catch or 2.  He wanted fleece as a backing, not a problem as I’ve worked with fleece backings before, no batting and then what turned out to be the biggest obstacle was that the size of the fleece was exactly the same as the quilt.

His wife added poly-cotton strips to the 4 sides to give the clamps on the long-arm machine a place to grip.  This did NOT work. I don’t think one can accurately measure fleece to add strips to it and after loading it, the sides slacked so much it seems these strips were added with the slap and stitch method and not measured at all.  While the fleece backing was taught on the frame the sides were a big mess.

Then as I attached the clamps the stitching between the fleece and side fabric came apart on some places, meaning no tension on the fleece backing at all.

Once I started quilting, wanted to advance where I have to unclip the clamps one can clearly see how the fleece shrunk back pulling the top fabric to cause bubbles and the seam between the fleece and strip caused my stitching line to be horrendous.  The stitching line can be hidden in the binding but the bubbles definitely not.

The more I advanced I also noticed that the fleece turned out not to be quite as square as it might have been advertised as I simply had less fleece showing up at the sides.  Attempts to pull or stretch this a little, lead to undoing the seams of the strips sewn onto it even further or even worse make the top form more bubbles as the fleece relaxed.  At one stage while trying to stitch a quarter-inch inside the side of the top, I luckily checked and noticed that apart from the side strips having come apart (again) I’ve been sewing through nothing and the backing was not caught at all.  I had to sew in much deeper just to keep the layers together.  It looks awful.

There was just no way I planned to unpick this lot and luckily I warned the quilter that I cannot guarantee I’d stay on the fleece but little did I know what a big problem the side strips would turn out to be.  I am really not sure how the quilter is going to fix this apart from cutting at least 1 inch off both sides but I’ll leave it up to him.

When done, I had to admit that the fleece backing at least looked fine.

This is my 50^th customer quilt for the year but sadly what I thought would be a celebration turned into utter frustration but so I learn.  Never again on fleece with seams of any kind.

Flower trucks

There…. I came up with a name for this quilt.  Even though these trucks are filled with flowers the recipient will be a little boy and I didn’t want to quilt flowers all over and noticed the saying on one of these blocks.  It says “Live simply” and I opted to keep the quilting simple too.  Less can be so much more.

I then just repeated the motif used in the borders and sashing for the small print blocks and simply outlining the words and trucks on the other blocks.

At one stage I thought of pebbling around the trucks in the empty space but with this cream background and a grey backing, I didn’t want to mix the thread colours as thread poking would definitely appear on either side.  This is the reason I prefer a printed backing, it allows me to chop and change thread colours to get the perfect match for the top.

Dolly hearts

Sorry about the title but I am really not very creative when having to think up a name for a quilt.  The next one up will be even more of a puzzle but not a problem for today.  I SO enjoyed working on this.  I saw a similar quilt from a fellow long-armer and instantly realised the one I had on my waiting pile is so alike and the competitive gene in me, wanted mine to look better…. ‘Are you saying meow, meow’?  If you don’t challenge yourself and occasionally compare skills, how will you ever get better?

So more time was spent marking and planning than actually quilting but I wanted it to be really pretty.  Now with dolls and hearts as the focal point, I stuck to feathers and hearts for the quilting.  Luckily this quilter loves dense quilting, so I could play all I wanted to.

A couple of individual sections of the quilt

I think I like mine more than the other one I saw.

Frozen

It was fun to do the 4 small background fill quilts but all fun things come to an end and the next quilt was back to serious quilting.  This quilter likes full custom quilting and needs the quilting to show up properly on her work. Needless to say, my kind of quilting.  She even prefers I use variegated thread if her fabric seems a little dull.  Seeing that she doesn’t mind paying for my time, I don’t mind doing what she requires.

It felt a little strange though to see how my timer runs past an hour as none of the previous little quilts even got to a full hour.

These are pictures from the movie Frozen alternated with coloured blocks and I am quite convinced my granddaughter would have loved a quilt like this.

I was rather quiet with receiving quilts in the latter part of November but it suddenly flared up and I have to keep my wits end not to mix different quilters’ fabrics.  This one is done though.