Happy Valentine's Day! Y'all, I have been holding onto photos of this quilt for over a year because I wanted to use it for a timely Valentine's Day post, and then I forgot all about it last Valentine's Day. Then I forgot about it again this year, until I was drinking my coffee this morning and realized that Valentine's Day is already NOW. No time like the present, no day like today, and here we go --
My friend Marybeth made this sweet 36" x 36" Valentine's Day table topper quilt and I quilted it for her in September of 2024 using Karlee Porter's "I Love You More" edge-to-edge quilting design to really lean into the holiday theme and make the quilt feel like a Valentine.
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| 36 x 36 Valentine's Day Table Topper Quilt Made by Marybeth, Quilted by Moi |
This is one of those quilting designs that looks scary busy when you're looking at a black and white line drawing of the design, but as you can see here, the quilting can still be quite subtle if you use the right thread. I used one of my favorite "supporting actress" quilting threads here, So Fine 50 wt matte polyester thread in color Blizzard from Superior Threads (this blog post contains affiliate links). Notice in the photo below that even though Blizzard is a bright white matched to Marybeth's white background fabric, the thinness of So Fine thread causes the stitching to "take on" a lot of the color from the other fabrics. So on those pink triangle patches, the white thread looks like it's the exact same shade of pink, and even where the white thread crosses dark red fabric, the contrast isn't drastic because the white thread looks more pink there than pure white.
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| So Fine Thread Disappears Into the Fabrics |
So Fine is a matte (not shiny) polyester thread that resembles cotton. In fact, in lighter colors, the look of So Fine is indistinguishable from cotton in my opinion. However, polyester is a lot stronger than cotton thread of a comparable weight would be, so even though this is a very fine, skinny thread, it's still plenty strong even for quilts that will be heavily used and frequently laundered. These qualities would also make So Fine thread a great choice for English paper piecing or for hand or machine appliqué projects.
Here's a photo of Marybeth's lovely quilt top before I quilted it for her:
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| Marybeth's Quilt Top Before Quilting |
Meanwhile, fast-forwarding to the present, I've been stitching away at my little hexagon rosettes for my Stonefields Quilt border. I have thirteen finished rosettes up on my design wall now and several more sets of hexies basted and ready for stitching. Bernie's colonoscopy is scheduled for this coming Tuesday and I wanted to have hand stitching ready to take with me for the three hours or however long I'll be sitting in the hospital waiting room.
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| 13 Finished Hexagon Rosettes for Stonefields Quilt, 155 More Needed |
The colors of my fabrics are not nearly as bold and saturated as they appear in my photos, by the way. My iPhone must have a setting turned on somewhere that is "enhancing" all of my photos automatically but I can't find where it is in the settings to turn it off. Very annoying. My collection of Tilda fabrics was the jumping off point for this quilt, supplemented by scraps and complementary fabrics from my stash, and the colors in real life are slightly muted and subdued.
My experimentation with EPP notions and methods continues. My Sewline glue pens, recommended in Tula Pink's EPP tutorial, arrived and I've been glue basting hexies for the past few days instead of thread basting them. My verdict is still out.
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| Glue Basting Hexies With Generous Seam Allowances |
By the way, in the photo above you are looking at a fabric hexagon that was cut with the AccuQuilt 1" EPP Hexagon die, basted around the edges of a 3/4" commercially purchased hexagon template. That's why the seam allowance is closer to 1/2" than 3/8" that I would normally use on fabric patches that I'd cut with scissors or with a rotary cutter. When I've thread basted my hexies, that extra-generous seam allowance has not been a problem at all. With the glue basting, though, I'm thinking 1/4" or 3/8" seam allowances would be easier to control with smaller amounts of glue. I feel like I'm gobbing the glue on and hoping I won't regret using the glue someday far, far in the distance when it comes time to remove all of these glue basted templates. I mean, I have removed the center hexagon's paper template once each rosette is finished and I'm not having any trouble removing the templates that were glue basted rather than thread basted, but that's within an hour of applying the glue and without any heat having been applied. I know that, when the time comes to remove the rest of the paper templates and arrange the rosettes on my border fabric, I'm going to want to press the rosettes with an iron first to ensure I have nice, crisp fold lines around the outside edges. I'm nervous about what that will do to the thick gobs of glue that are supposed to be "temporary." Worst case scenario, little bits of paper might be stuck behind on the back of those hexagons. I predict that I will survive.
Another thing about this Sewline glue pen -- gosh, I just dislike using glue pens, PERIOD! The blue glue sticks that came with my glue pen (they dry clear) definitely show up on the fabric and on the paper template when the glue is applied. I don't know why the glue is coming out so thick and goopy, though -- I feel like the other glue stick (Collins?) that went on clear came out thinner so I could apply it more sparingly. Should I refrigerate the Sewline glue pen in between use? I doubt it's ambient heat and humidity in my environment that's causing the glue to mush up like that because it's been absolutely frigid here for the past few weeks.
So yes, glue basting for EPP is faster than thread basting. Yes, it's easier to keep the paper template precisely positioned while basting fussy-cut shapes with the glue pen because you have to hold and manipulate the fabric and the template to thread baste, allowing the template to shift position, whereas the fabric and template remain flat on your work surface for glue basting. And yes, glue basting for EPP streamlines your portable hand sewing kit because the glue pen takes up less space in the sewing kit than a separate spool of basting thread and a package of larger needles for basting in addition to the needles and thread used for whipstitching the hexagons together. However, I need a flat surface in my lap for glue basting, which I do not need for thread basting. Carrying a lap desk around with me when "stitching in the wild" negates whatever space I've saved in my sewing kit by leaving the extra thread and needles at home! But there is no reason why I can't mix thread basting and glue basting in the same project. I'm continuing to alternate between the two methods for now.
Speaking of hexagons... Check out the hexagon mosaic floor that greeted us as we walked into a new-to-us restaurant for our early Valentine's Day dinner last night!
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| Hexagon Mosaic Flooring at Copain Brasserie Restaurant in Charlotte, NC |
In other news, quilter Tara Faughnan's newsletter this week reminded me of my Deco Bed Quilt project that I removed from the frame and packed away before I'd finished quilting it. Remember how I was thinking about completing the quilting with hand quilting in heavy weight thread instead of reloading the quilt to finish custom quilting it by machine? Tara's photo of her Diamonds quilt (see screenshot below) is helping me to envision what that mix of hand and machine quilting would look like on my quilt, and I like that idea even more. The only thing I'm still considering is that I can really only be "slow stitching" one thing at a time, whether that's English paper piecing my hexagons, hand stitching appliqué, hand stitching binding on a finished quilt, or a hand piecing project. My Deco quilt is huge and hand quilting is definitely SLOW stitching... I just need to gauge how long the hand quilting would take to complete on that quilt and then decide whether I want to invest precious hand stitching time on Deco quilting or if I'd rather be spending those hours/days/weeks/(months?) working on Stonefields or one of my other hand stitching projects.
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| Screen Shot from Tara Faughnan's Newsletter Showing Her Diamonds Quilt |
By the way, Tara is offering a 10-lesson on demand video course on her hand quilting method that you can learn more about here. If it was a book instead of a video class I would have purchased it immediately, but I absolutely loathe video classes. I want to read through the material at my own pace in a comfy reading chair, not stare at a computer screen watching videos for hours. I want my material organized into chapters, with an index at the back of the book, so I can skip to just the information I'm looking for instead of having to scroll and skip through a video and waste time trying to find the right clip. I want to highlight the important bits, take notes in the margins, and not have to worry about accessing my information in the future if the video platform company goes out of business or I lose my login password or just plain forget which platform the class was even hosted on. Anyone out there feel the same way? And yet I understand the many reasons why more and more quilting teachers are putting out video classes instead of publishing books.
I can glean from Tara's web site that she currently favors 12 weight cotton Wonderfil Spagetti thread for her hand quilting. I do have some hand quilting experience using the smaller needles and more traditional waxed cotton quilting threads, and I took a hand quilting workshop in person with Dierdre McElroy years ago. If I DO decide to proceed with hand quilting on my Deco quilt, I will probably just give it a go and hope that what I already know will work with the thicker thread and longer stitch length. If any of you readers have done "big stitch" hand quilting and have suggestions or tips, please share them in the comments.
Looking forward to the week ahead, I am dragging my husband to QuiltCon with me in four days! Yippee!!! We are just going for one day, to see the quilts and shop the vendor mall. No workshops. I am really looking forward to this as it will be my first time attending QuiltCon. I had tickets and a hotel room booked for QuiltCon in 2024, but had to cancel because we ended up moving to Florida that weekend. Now that we're back and (not quite) settled in North Carolina, it's just a 3-hour road trip to Raleigh for the show. It will also be nice to have a break from living in a construction site for a couple days.
Okay, time check: it's now 12:02 PM, and I started writing this post at 10:22 AM. Today's blog post gobbled up 1 hour and 40 minutes, not including the time I spent editing and resizing photos. Hmmm... Food for thought. Have a great week, everyone! I'm linking up with my favorite linky parties:
MONDAY
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Monday Musings at Songbird Designs
TUESDAY
To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt
WEDNESDAY
Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter
THURSDAY
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation
FRIDAY
Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts
Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre
Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty
TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday
SUNDAY
Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué
Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts
Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework
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