by Sherri Sylvester | Jun 21, 2013
Today is the LAST DAY to enter the giveaway from Fridays Off Fabric Shop. Click on the blue banner above or this link to read about Alanna and her shop and post your comments to win a sweet Valori Wells fat quarter bundle!
I started my youngest daughter’s quilt a while ago… and then I finished the quilt top… and then I stopped. Mostly because I was not sure how to do the quilting. And, of course I was getting a bit ahead of myself as usual, because I hadn’t finished the backing yet! Thankfully I have a friend who has been doing some free motion machine quilting for her baby quilts. She suggested watching this video tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Company. Thankfully (again) the tutorial is really good. I was able to feel confident enough to finally try my hand at a real project!
I had been eyeing the Herringbone Hot Pad tutorial ever since it popped into my email box from Sew Can She, so I figured this was a good project to start with. Unfortunately for me I suppose, the stipple pattern I quilted into this lovely straight line modern looking hot pad just doesn’t make sense. I would have loved to quilt the straight lines like Melanie does in her tutorial, but I needed a project, and I do still like how mine turned out.
For all of you who are seasoned quilters, I apologize for posting my beginner work! This is by no means a quilting blog – if it was you might see a post every 2 or 3 months, and it would likely take years to finish a quilt, I might not have any readers left by then! I admire everyone who can make quilts so quickly and I wish that were the case with mine as well. I will have to be patient for now I think. What tips and tricks do you use when you quilt?
I started out on a few (large!) test quilt sandwiches and then pieced my herringbone pattern and quilted it. The tutorial is great and has lots of photos. The self binding option is really nice for this size of project and I used this method on the Plays-Mats tutorial I posted a while back. I got to cut into my blue Oh Deer fabric and use some pieces that I have left from the year that I subscribed to the Pink Chalk Solids Club. I wish I had chosen an uneven number of colours though, my herringbone pattern looks a bit more like angled stripes.
I am super excited that the stipple pattern looks so great! I watched the half hour video and practiced for about an hour before I started, and it really does make a difference if you take a deep breath and slow down and try to “draw” your stipple with the needle. I did try to draw the pattern on and then stitch over my lines, but that was more nerve wracking than doing it freehand. I think that the truth about why it looks alright (for a beginner!) though, is that the pattern is super forgiving when it is seen all together. You don’t tend to focus on the bad spots. See if you can find the (at least) seven places I made a “corner” where it should have been a curve, and the one place I stopped and had to start again at the edge because I got stuck. See, bet you didn’t notice them all the first time round!
Have you tried free motion quilting on your home machine? What are your experiences? If you do it all the time, what tips can you (please!) share with the rest of us?
By the way, if you want to access the tutorial it is also pinned to my Sewing Tips and Tricks Pinterest board, just in case you want to follow!
by Sherri Sylvester | Mar 27, 2013
So, on Sunday I was doing a little of this…
Which turned into a lot of this…
Which (when finally finished with the seam ripper, thankfully!) – turned into this…
I have finished the quilt top – hooray! I am so excited. All of the things I dreaded (mentioned here and here) haven’t happened and I am done! (Sorry for the super predictable “clothespin the quilt on the fence” photo. I’ll do better next time.)
I bought Denyse Schmidt’s Proverbial Quilt pattern a few years ago and have been waiting for a good quote so I could use it to make her pattern. Since you might be wondering why the quilt says what it says, I will tell you! When I was small my mom made myself and my siblings each a cross stitch wall hanging that said “Jesus Loves You” along with our name. That cross stitch hung on my wall for all of the years I lived in my parent’s house – as far as I can remember. I dug it out of our crawl space (quite a feat – trust me!) so I could show it to you.
Since my family’s faith is very important to us, and I am a bit sentimental (!) I decided to make the same quote into something for my girls. As each stitch goes into the quilt I hope my girls someday understand how much I care about them, and how I spent so many hours making it just for them. The same, I imagine, as my mom felt when she was making our cross stitch hangings. Hopefully they will keep their quilts as long as I will keep my mom’s handiwork.
Sentiment aside, (though a bit teary eyed), I’m excited to get the backing finished, since it is not quite as involved (thank goodness!). Then I can get to the really scary bits – like trying to machine quilt and bind it! Anyone have any tips I’d love it if you would leave a comment!
Now the old meets the new – and the legacy continues – wouldn’t it be great if my girls decided to love sewing and make something like this for their kids… hmmm… their kids?! What am I thinking!
I will be taking a bit of a break to spend some time with family over the weekend – but I’ll be back on Monday with another great project to show you! (And of course, you can follow me on Twitter to see what I’m up to even when I’m not here. Oh, and if you follow me on Twitter – put a comment on the giveaway post for an extra entry!)
Have a really great Easter! And, of course – take some time out to enter the giveaway! Enjoy spending time with your family! Sew something… maybe a shirt or two? I know a few good tutorials for that!
by Sherri Sylvester | Feb 21, 2013
Hooray, I have finished a ton more than I had done last time. I’ve been lacking motivation since the last progress post. Thankfully a friend came over to sew with me last night and I was able to finish ALL of the lettering for the front of my youngest daughter’s quilt.
The pile of lettering in the back corner of the photo has 14 characters in it. To document the time I’ve taken on this – 14 characters took me about 5 hours to make. Now I have to figure out what to do with the letter spacers, line spacers and the rest of the front of the quilt.
I have to admit, I am a bit terrified to start that part. The lettering is (thankfully) painfully straightforward. The creative part has me actually trying to decide how to make a quilt top when I haven’t really made one before! Ooops… maybe I should have made something a bit less complex for my first real quilts! Ah well – as my husband reminds me – he’s rarely seen me mess up something sewing related (though it happens – Trust me!). His confidence is about all that is keeping me going at the moment! I’m off to spend some quality time – just me and Pinterest – seeing what I can come up with.
by Sherri Sylvester | Feb 7, 2013
I have the “stuff” to make 3 quilts right now. I am working on these quilts using this pattern by Denyse Schmidt for my kids, and a t-shirt quilt for my husband. He has a bunch of shirts he doesn’t wear but can’t get rid of, so this quilt has been in the works for about 6 months now. I think I will post the progress of these quilts as I go so I feel as if I am getting somewhere!
Since I posted the fabric for my girls’ quilts I have found the last few pieces of fabric for my oldest’s quilt, followed by a photo of the fabric palette all together.
In the meantime I am working on the quilt for my youngest. I have three letters finished so far. I’m not crazy about the florescent green stripe on the top of the “E” – but I’m hoping it will blend in, or I’ll have to make another one.
Since I am a bit of an organizer (read – perfectionist, logic nut, order freak) I have decided on a method for making the lettering that won’t make my brain hurt from lack of order and also saves me from having to make creative decisions while cutting out the seven-zillionth tiny piece for the lettering.
I have created 2 fabric stacks, one green one for the letter backgrounds and 1 purple one for the lettering itself. I am then using the fabrics (in stack order from top to bottom) to cut out each numbered pattern piece for the quilt in order before sewing them together. The pattern pieces are numbered in the order you should sew them in, so you can see how the logic saves my brain a lot of work.
The whole process just requires that you follow the rules, and when your fabric stack is finished, flip it over and start again. (I know – perfectionist, logic nut, order freak!) It is saving me from going crazy thinking about how I might accidentally use one fabric more than another or piece two things together that look too much the same. (I will note here that anyone in my family or who knows me well is on the floor laughing by now at how ridiculously true this is of me. I really, really like to be organized!)
Fabric Stacks.
Cut out letter pattern pieces.
That’s all for now. I did think that if I made one letter every day I would be finished by the end of March… I should really start that!
