Backings revisited

So remember in the last post where I said I'd talk about other backing topics? So here are some of my thoughts that aren't related to just figuring out the math.

T-shaped backs

I'm talking about backings that have two pieces of fabric running in one direction and another running perpendicular. Thusly:

 

I can tell you that longarmers hate T-shaped backs. This is because of the warp and weft (or crosswise vs. lengthwise grain of the fabric). There is a little bit of stretch in the weft (crosswise, that is, selvedge to selvedge) grain of the fabric. When a longarmer is loading a quilt onto the frame, she has to work against gravity. That gravity is pulling down on the backing, which isn't actually attached to anything but a couple of roller bars on her frame. This means that the backing may sag and if it's sewn together in a T shape as illustrated above, it will sag weirdly. So, if you're sending your quilt to a longarmer, skip the t-shaped backing. In fact, if I were sending mine off, I would piece the back as little as possible.

Wide backings

Wide backings are a popular choice, but keep in mind that they are often not made from the same high quality greige goods your regular quilt shop fabric is made from. So, wide backings can also be hard to square and they can be squirrely.

Sheets

I also understand that longarmers aren't fans of using bedsheets as backings. this is because the thread count on sheets is often too high to easily quilt through.

Minky/Cuddle

This is the super soft, furry stuff that is so wonderful to touch. Longarmers don't seem to mind minky fabric on the back of quilts. Remember that quilting stitches will really disappear into your quilt if you use minky fabric on the back, so if you're wanting to highlight the quilting on the back, minky might not be your best choice.

Quilting at home

So all of the things above that I mentioned that longarmers aren't fans of? Well, they're often more do-able at home. If you're basting your quilt on a table or the floor, you don't have gravity working against you. And though I haven't used a sheet as a back before, once I scored a used duvet cover from Crate and Barrel for under ten bucks and used that as a backing and it was just fine. But, it wasn't really a sheet, and because it was Crate and Barrel, it was of reasonably high quality. 

A note about using minky: please don't use the yucky stuff they have at the discount fabric stores. That stuff feel okay (not as good as quilt shop Cuddle) but once you wash it, yuck. And contrary to popular belief, it isn't too bad to quilt with, as long as you use basting spray and not pins to baste. 

Happy quilting!

t-shirt commission

I completed another t-shirt commission this month. This one was for the brother of the person I did it for last time. I think I like this one better! The backing is the same red fabric as the background.

New, new, new!

Lots of new things have been happening around here. Some of them good, some of them not good.

Not good? My dad. He's been having major health issues. So much that we know we're going to Michigan (for this third time this year) next week. And we may be going a lot more in the next several months. We couldn't see the logic in spending so much on hotels, etc. Plus, as you may know, we love to camp. Oh, and since RT passed his exam, he got a bonus. So all of this lead to us trading his old car, which was this:

The smallest car GM made that year.

for a new (to us) car, which is this:

Don't think they parked it there accidentally. Clever CarMax!

All so that we can tow this:

It's a popup trailer.

We tow it closed, of course.

Oh, and we're fostering this guy:

His name is Ollie. He is super sweet. He is 100% blind. In fact, he has no eyes, but he gets around just fine. If you know of anyone who might want to adopt him, let me know! He is next to no work. Unlike sighted dogs, he doesn't need lots of exercise or attention. But he loves people! We are still considering keeping him. We'll see how the Michigan trip goes!

I also tried out my gathering foot. Awesome! Who needs a ruffler? Not me!

And last, but certainly not least, I have tried a new pattern. It's Meg's Garden from Don't Look Now. It's part of a bee through the Richmond Modern Quilt Guild. I am close to being ready to fuse it. I have tweaked it here and there since this photo was taken, but you get the idea.

 

Now, I've been told that I am a show-off. That I am a "big spender" and that I parade it around in front of people just to make them feel bad. I would hope that's not the case. RT has worked his ass off to get his Fellowship and he got rewarded for it. That went to the camper. The new (to us) car was a trade-in, and we didn't put extra money down, and now have a sizable payment to make. Rest assured, we are not drowning in money. We are FAR from rich. Our income is probably in the lowest 5% of RMS families. Anyway, I lost a friend over this, but I don't feel that I've done anything wrong. If you think I have, please let me know. I try very hard to not be a braggart.

Woo hoo! Over here!

Yes, it's been too long. I admit: I suck at updating this blog. Oh, who am I kidding? I suck at updating the RMQG blog, too. I guess I was not cut out to be a blogger. Oh well. But photos!

First is my new cutting table from IKEA. It's supposed to be for the kitchen, but it works great as a cutting table because it's counter-height. And look at all the drawers!

 Here's an in-progress photo of a small quilt I made for a high school friend that I reconnected with on Facebook. It makes me happy.

 Over the holidays, I realized I needed another gift for my father-in-law. So I took a photograph that he had taken and printed it out on fabric. Then I quilted it. Here, the binding is taking up too much of the photo (this is from before I had done the hand-stitching), but you get the idea. I think it came out pretty fantastic! I may try this with other photos in the future.

Stems!

I finally have something to show! I have been working on a class sample for my "level two" class. The pattern is called Stems and it's by Fig Tree Quilts. This one is quilted fully, but the class doesn't actually cover that part of it. We'll be covering 45 degree angles (i.e., triangles), sashing, and borders. If we have time at the end of class we'll also go over basic stitch in the ditch quilting.

Photos! I used a Kaffe Fassett strip roll for the leaves. I used King Tut for the quilting. I seem to not be able to quilt loosely. In fact, you may be able to see where I started if you zoom in and look closely at the full quilt photo -- it's the loosest part! I used two whole spools of King Tut (500 m each!) and actually had to quilt the last little corner in plain red Mettler. You can't really see it, though.

Today I...

...finished hand sewing a binding on a commission quilt and delivered it. Any day you can check something big off your list it's a good day!

The Auction is Tomorrow!

The 2010 auction is tomorrow. I even bought a new dress! Molly is having a friend over whose parents are also going to the auction. Wonderful Monica is going to watch them and they're having an all-out girly night.

Here are final photos!

Back:

All backgrounds done!

Here's the auction quilt so far:All the background (white) is quilted. The little + signs are disappearing ink, so I'll make them go away, of course, before it's really done. Tomorrow I will go into school and have the kids pick a quilting pattern for their blocks. Then I'll quilt it in front of them. It's nice to be on the home stretch. Then, I just have to hide a few threads, make the binding, apply the binding and sew the binding to the back by hand.

Finally back!

I am so sorry it's been so long since I've posted. My days lately have been so full, leaving before 8 am and getting home close to 9 pm. I've been sewing at the shop nearly every morning (and this week I have been teaching a class each morning). The afternoons have had anything from Molly's gymnastics or ballet, to meetings with her teacher (I'm the room mom this year), grocery shopping, dealing with dog issues, doctor appointments (for me or others), you name it. More on the dog issues and doctor appointments in a later post. I have too much show and tell!

First I have the Molly quilt. It's from the Fat Quarter Fonts book by Atkinson Designs. It's a smaller version of the name quilt. I know I've mentioned how much I love Terry Atkinson books and patterns before. This is great because the letters are machine appliqued on but have no fusible.Next are some Christmas pins I made for the gift fair at the shop a few weeks back. They're all quite small, maybe 2.5 by 3.5 inches or so. There are pin-backs sewn to each one. They could be ornaments or pins to wear.
And closeups. First is the reindeer. One of the antlers has gotten broken off.
Next is the holly.
Last is the tree. I don't like the green outlining, but I felt it needed something to make it stand out. Oh well, live and learn. At least it's small!
Last, my favorite project, Rudy. It's a pattern from Melly and Me, out of Australia. (Speaking of Australia, I recently had a dream that Simon Baker, who is the guy on The Mentalist, was asking me to help him pick out quilt fabric. Rowrrrr!) This little guy is the cutest ever. His feet are wool. I think the pattern wants wool scraps for the eyes, but I used buttons.

Brittany's quilt

I'm making some real progress on my niece Brittany's graduation quilt. What? Yeah, so graduation was a few months ago. I know. But in quilting time, I'm doing fine. Early, even!

Here I am working away at the quilting, at the shop with Amy. I had to buy new gloves because I left mine at home.
Here is the back. I love the back, maybe even more than the front! I know, it's a lot of white, but I've really been drawn to this look lately. And Brittany's a responsible kid. She'll take good care of it. You can see my loopy quilting on the right side. This is the biggest quilt I've quilted so far, so I wanted to use my most comfortable fill pattern. The label is near the top right, at the end of one of the strips of blocks. These were the leftovers from the front squares.
And here is the label. I embroidered it myself. I've decided I love embroidering labels. This is the wave of the future for me, I think. The metal you see in the "with" is from a safety pin on the front. It will be gone when I'm done quilting it.Today it was over 90 degrees so I contend that it's still summer.

Safari quilt

This is one of the quilts I'm entering into the state fair. The other is the auction quilt, which you've probably seen before. Tomorrow morning, Amy and I will drive up to deliver them (she's entering a couple quilts as well). This quilt, which I call the Safari Quilt, was made for a friend who was having a baby. We fell out of touch (but have reconnected thanks to Facebook). Anyway, I had it nearly done except for one missing line of quilting and the binding. So it still fits the rules of being finished in the past year. I actually only finished the binding a few days ago! The design is mine. I took the safari pictures and cropped them. The giraffe's head sticks out of the frame because if I had cut a rectangle, a predatory animal would have been in the bottom right corner, looking at its lunch. So I took another giraffe image and appliqued it onto the brown border and green fabric. It was needle turn applique, and those horns are small! That's why there is blue fuzz showing a little. I may need to break out the brown Sharpie before tomorrow morning.
I was really anal about the layout. If you look carefully, you'll see that no predator is looking toward prey. I'm such a softie!

Another blast from the past

This is the quilt I refer to as "Molly's quilt." I made it in a class that I took while I was pregnant with her. I finished it while we lived here in Virginia. I didn't really intend it to go to her, but I haven't made her a quilt just for her yet. I know, bad mom. Now that she's in school, maybe for Christmas. Or perhaps I should say Winter Solstice. I'm starting to get a little more sensitive about the religion thing. I don't want her to be confused. We're Humanists, you see (which in Virginia is a Big Deal). I'm not anti-Christmas, but I think she's going to start hearing more and more about the religious aspects, and I just want her to understand. We still do the tree and Santa and all of that.Closeup! There are hearts, flowers, wavy lines, loops and straight lines. It's not a twin, but it's the biggest thing I've made.
I have gotten something done in the past few days, but it's just the top and I want to wait until it's quilted to show it off. Stay tuned!

Baby quilt from before

I feel like I haven't been posting as regularly as I should. Partly this is because it's summer and I just don't have that much time to sew. This will end next week, but for now, I thought I'd do a little show and tell from my pre-blog days.

Today I'm showing you my favorite baby quilt. This was for my friend Sandy's baby, Cassidy. She was born in January of 2008. The quilt uses something like 58 fabrics and came entirely from my stash (except the borders and backing). I had shown Sandy some quilt magazines and she kept saying things like, "I like this one, but with a little more red and yellow." It's a pretty big quilt for a baby quilt. Those are my husband's feet and he's slightly over 6 feet tall.It was really quite a challenge to lay out. I separated blocks into ones with red, yellow, both and neither. I don't have a big design wall so this was done on the family room floor.

When I decided to just do straight lines for the interior quilting, I thought it would be a piece of cake. It ends up that I was able to quilt just two lines for the entire inside (they bounce off the borders). The difficultly was in that at some corners, I ended up having to shove the entire quilt through the space in the sewing machine. If I had meandered or done some other kind of free-motion quilting, the most I'd have to deal with would be half the quilt under the machine at once. But I am happy with the way the quilting came out.

progress

Here's some photos! I know, I need to not post more than once a day, but I have so much to take photos of!

First is a pencil roll that I'm making which is very much (though not exactly) like Amy's.












Also, some photos of the quilting I've been doing on the second round robin I was involved in. I think this quilting will take a while, it's so dense.

My first post!

This is my first post. I guess it's a test post. Here's a photo of a quilt that my sister Marie and I made for my dad's 80th birthday. The colors are very different from what either of us use typically.