Applique

I love applique. I don’t care if it is hand applique, freezer paper, needle turn, fusible machine or anything else. I just love the pictures you can create. Don’t get me wrong I love traditional piecing and foundation/paper piecing, but I really love applique. About the only quilty thing I don’t care for is art quilting. I love looking at those art quilts, but they are so far out of my box that I can’t seem to do them.

I took an art quilt technique class once. Yikes! It was a two-day seminar at a local store. Great teacher! Betty Blais from Embellishment Village teaches a fabulous class and is very entertaining and informative. Worst weekend I ever spent. I loved Betty, but the painting and stenciling and working with Angelina, eeks, I shudder just to remember it. Everyone else had a great time, but it was all I could do not to run screaming from the store.

Don’t ask me why, I just felt like someone was shoving splinters under my nails. I stuck it out and really learned a lot of new techniques. That said, I don’t think art quilting is for me. I’m much more traditional than that. Of course, I am trying to teach myself thread painting right now, but don’t hold your breath waiting for huge successes in that avenue. I enjoy doing it, but man do I suck. I’ll plug away and see what I can come up with. They say practice makes perfect, but I’m not sure it doesn’t make for plain old irritation.


Calendar Critters



I think what I really need here is a drawing class. If I could learn to draw what is in my head, maybe I could transfer those images into fabric. It takes me hours and hours to create the images for my applique patterns. Calendar Critters was a long time coming. Drawing those animals was very difficult for me. Which brings me back to applique …

When I do fusible machine applique, I prefer Wonder Under for my fusible web. It is lightweight, flexible, simple to use, and doesn’t gum up my needle.



Things to consider when choosing your fusible web include, flexibility, melting point, cost and final usage. Steam a Seam Light is great. It is flexible and does not gum up your needle, but here in Calgary, it is costly. I don’t like the heat and bond products for things I plan to stitch on, but love them for crafty purposes. Heat and bond is great for fusing fabric onto plain craft paper bags to make Christmas gift bags, but it is low temperature melt and when your sewing machine needle gets hot, it gums up really badly.



Remember that these are heat-activated products and your dryer produces heat. So, if you EVER plan to wash that project, you must stitch around the appliques or they’ll come off in the dryer. Just ask me how I know! Oh yeah, one more thing. Read the fusible web’s directions carefully. If you overheat them, most webs will lose their grip and will not ever stick on.

My advice to you is to purchase a small amount of as many fusible webs as you can find and test drive each one. I found about 10 to try. One had no label and no instructions. It was plastic backed and it was almost impossible to get that plastic off. Some don’t have backings such as Misty Fuse, but I prefer a product I can trace my shapes onto.



QUESTION OF THE DAY: Do you have a favorite fusible web? Why do you prefer it?

Fall into Fall

So the blog hop continues. It is great to have you all popping in, and wonderful to hear from new visitors and from old subscribers alike.

Check out the last two postings for September for details on how to enter to win! Fat quarter bundles, patterns and …

Love those fall colors.

Fish Creek Park

Hubby and I try to walk in the local park a couple times every week. I love the fall. I find the pretty colors, the crunching of leaves and the rustle of dry tree branches very peaceful. I’m busy blanket stitching a fall table runner. It is fairly small, but then my coffee table is small. And, I don’t want anything too large on the kitchen table as that just encourages the cats to sleep there.

I finally heard from APQS. The computer boards from my longarm are finally back in the mail. It is only two weeks late. I guess there was some trouble with the servicing of them. But I am glad they are coming back. I’ve got stacks of customer quilts to get finished. The Christmas quilting rush is due to start any day and I want to fit in the projects I finished while the machine was down. I might be putting in some long days in the studio. But, that’s okay. I love my work. It is time consuming, occasionally frustrating, the pay isn’t all that I would like it to be, but I love it. It allows me to be creative, to set my own hours. I can work early or late as I choose. Really, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Tonight I shall hit the studio (after a day of fence building) and work on my fall table runner.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Do you like applique? What is your favorite technique? Hand? Machine? What is your favorite edge stitch method? If you had to choose a season, what season would you choose and what types of things would you applique onto a table runner to celebrate that time of year?

Late Summer Flowers and Fencing

Wow. I cannot believe the great suggestions for organizing my studio. Jars, plastic bins, shoe-boxes, hangars to hold partially completed quilts and fabric. They are all such wonderful ideas. I love that so many of you have the dedication to clean every day, or after every project. I don’t even clean my house that often. Is it bad that I bought a new mop and it took me four months to get around to using it. I was using the dirty dish-rag, dropping it on the floor and ‘foot scrubbing’. This in is part because I have a lot of irons in the fire and keep pretty busy, but mostly its because I’m lazy. You will be pleased to know that I’m back in the groove and scrubbing about once a week. There’s only my hubby and I living here, and we generally can clean up after ourselves.
The fencing continues. It rained yesterday, so I baked a birthday cake for hubby. I’ll ice it today. Dinner with the kids tonight. Gonna paint some more pickets in the garage, as it is still raining this morning. With luck, it will dry out soon and we can get back at it. We don’t dare take too much time off from the fence building, as one of the pitfalls of living in the north is that snow often comes early. We would like to get this infernal fence finished before the snow flies. That could be days, hours or weeks.

I love winter. It’s the perfect season for my favorite sport. Quilting! I can spend as much time at it as I want and the only yard work worry is an occasional shoveling of the sidewalks. I would be inclined to skip that if I could, but the snow police would give me a ticket and my clients might slip when they stop by to pick up their quilts.

 

Look at this last little flower of summer. Found this ‘volunteer’ pansy growing along side the garage in a crack in the sidewalk. Doesn’t it look like a wee little face?

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is your favorite winter ‘sport’? And, why do you love it?

Quilting Weakness

Fall into Fall Blog Hop Continues. Wecome all you new readers. Good to have you with me.

My weakness is quilting. I love it, I live for it and I can’t live without it. A day doesn’t go by without me stitching away at something. A couple of years ago I even burned the potatoes on Christmas day. The family was busy playing games and I was puttering away in the kitchen. I decided that I had a few minutes while I waited for the spuds to start boiling. So, I snuck into my studio. My studio door is beside the kitchen as my studio is the old formal living and dining rooms of our house. I popped into my room and resumed stitching on my current project. I was sewing away, listening to the ruckus sounds of everyone playing and before I knew it I could smell something hot. A flew back into the kitchen and darned if the potatoes hadn’t boiled dry. I caught them in time that they were usable, but it was a real close call.

I love when I get lost in my work like that. Time flies away and I’m having nothing but fun. And really, is there a better sound than your family having fun and playing together? I’ve learned to be more disciplined now, and don’t allow myself to sneak into the studio while I am cooking. Well, unless the timer is set anyway.
Even over the past few days I’ve found time for a bit of hand-work. We’re building a fence between us and the neighbors. We’ve had a fence on two sides ever since we moved in eight years ago. The final piece of fence had never been built. But, as the neighbors (three different ones) didn’t really care, we didn’t either. Our new neighbors are great, but they have two wee little dogs. They don’t like chasing them to keep them in their yard, and we don’t like the puppy presents they leave behind. As much as we like the dogs, the compromise seemed to be a new fence.


Our fence is much more complicted
than this one. But, I'm too lazy
to haul out the camera. I'll
post pictures when it
is finished.

 This fence is the most complicated fence in the universe. Holes and grooves, pickets, cross stringers, headers, caps, pickets and more. We wanted to match the existing fence, but underestimated how complicated it is. It took a full day to build the first section. We’re faster now and hope to have all but two sections finished today. These sections will require some engineering as we have to go around a transformer and a window box.

Back to the point of this. Hand stitching. I love it! I’ve managed to slip in a few minutes of work each evening after it is too dark to fence. I am working on a hand applique wall hanging. Its about 36 inches square and all Baltimore album style blocks. I’m hand stitching the appliques onto the borders now. It’s slow work, but relaxing. It relaxes me and helps me unwind. I think I might even hand quilt this one.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What is your favorite type of quilting?
Don't forget that you get one entry for our prize draw for every comment you post.
See my September 30th posting for details on how to enter the draws.

Storage and Distractions

Plastic Storage Bins, the two stacked
closely togethe with no lids
are full of batik scraps. Mmmmm.

I talked briefly about organization yesterday. I loved the idea one reader posted yesterday about an over the door shoe organizer. Sadly, I have French doors and they wouldn’t work for me. I would be worried about breaking the glass if I closed the door too hard.

Ikea bins.

I store each of my projects in clear plastic tubs. They stack neatly on my shelves and I can see what is inside. I'm not saying that inspires me to work on old projects, but I can see what I’m not doing. I have IKEA bins in my cutting table that are easy to pull out and dump allowing me to find that perfect piece easily. I have them color coordinated.

I find that I have "Magpie Syndrome" and am easily distracted by bright, shiny or colorful objects. I hop from one project to another and back. I’ll be busy working away on a project and I’ll see the perfect fabric for someone I know, and I’ll snatch it up and start designing their quilt. Last week I went shopping with a friend and found the perfect fabric for Cousin Anne. I know she has at least a double bed, so being wise I bought enough fabric to make her a queen size quilt. Yes, there is logic there; I hate getting half finished and discovering I’m six inches short of something. Anyway, Anne stopped by for hubby’s 50^th birthday. She loves the fabric, but only wants a wall hanging. She wants something small that she can easily show off. While I’m flattered that she thinks my work is worth showing off, what am I going to do with all the leftovers? I’m trying to reduce my stash, not build it. Maybe she’ll get both ... Ha ha ha, like I would ever get both finished. I would be distracted first.

Sometimes, I’ll see something I love and in almost no time it has a new home in my studio, just waiting for me to use it. Worst of all are new designs. I’ll see something and it will flash into my brain as a new idea for a quilt. First chance, I’m on EQ7 planning a new design. That design in turn morphs into half a dozen more before I now it, its time to cook dinner and I haven’t accomplished a darned thing.

My project bins are slowly being emptied, but when I get frustrated, I’ll drop a project sometimes for an extended period. Eventually I get back to them. Sometimes I’ll trade UFO’s with a friend. It’s like a whole new project. My Magpie likes that!



My queue for quilting.



Now, if only someone would quilt all the tops I have hanging in my studio waiting to be quilted. I always have great plans to fit one or two of my tops (or my daughters’ tops) into the queue each week, but it never seems to work that way. A client top will take longer than I expected, I’ll get lost in EQ or someone will invite me for coffee or fabric shopping. My discipline isn’t all it has cracked up to be.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: What distracts you the most? And how to you inspire yourself to get back to quilting?