Giverny Kaleidoscope Quilt Finish + Big Birthday Surprises: A Bernina Q24 is Coming Next Week (APQS Millennium + IntelliQuilter For Sale)!

Today's post is a long one; I have three things to share with you.  

1. Graduation Quilt Finished Early!

First things first, my lovelies -- I put the final stitches in the binding of Anders' high school graduation quilt last night.  I finished it EARLY, y'all -- graduation isn't until Tuesday, and Quillow Sunday at church is on June 6th.  Woo hoo!!  This was my One Monthly Goal for May, and it feels good to hit the finish line with several days to spare!

70 x 90 Giverny Teleidoscope Graduation Quilt for Anders

I really love how the ombre backing fabric came out, too:

Giverny Teleidoscope Ombre Backing

I ended up doing a 1/2" finished width binding on this quilt because it seemed more proportional to the oversized kaleidoscope blocks than my usual 1/4" binding.  As for the size, it came out right at 70" x 90" before washing it, and I used 100% cotton batting so I'm bracing myself for some shrinkage to happen in that first wash.  I had intended for the quilt to be a little larger, but it will be fine.

LAL#3: The One Where Rebecca Finally Finishes a Quilt, but Doesn't Love It Anymore

 Happy Tuesday, friends!  Welcome to another Long Arm Learning linky party!  I actually have a finished (long arm quilted) quilt to share with you today, my FIRST finished quilt of 2020 -- and yes, I do know how pathetic that is to be finishing my first quilt of the year in mid-August.  My Sermon Scribbles quilt is FINISHED, as in quilted, labeled, bound, washed, and photographed!  

I started piecing this in November of last year, and loaded it on my frame for quilting in April, just as this crazy pandemic lockdown was settling in.  From beginning to end, this silly quilt has taken 9 months to complete.  Like the gestation of a child, for crying out loud.

We were taking these photos just past 6 o'clock, with the sun sinking in the sky, and the light was kind of electrifying -- the quilt doesn't look quite so fluorescent in real life!  Here's a shot of the same quilt indoors, spread across the bottom of my bed with morning light flooding in from the window:

See?  Not nearly as bright as it looked outdoors.  By the way, I'm disappointed by the extent to which my custom quilting was minimized by the shrinkage and crinkling that happened in the first washing.  A single layer of Quilter's Dream Cotton Select batting was not enough to do justice to 5 months' worth of custom quilting.  For your reference, here's what this quilt looked like prior to washing, fresh off the frame:

And now I can understand more clearly why quilters use a batting with more loft, or even a double layered batting, for heavy custom and heirloom quilting.  Live and learn!  This quilt lost approximately 8% of its length and width from heavy quilting takeup and from shrinking in the wash.  On the positive side, any wobbles or wiggles in my quilting that I wasn't happy with certainly aren't going to be noticed now.  And I still got the benefit of practicing all of those different quilting motifs, even if you can't really see them in the finished quilt.  This would have been an excellent candidate for an edge to edge pantograph quilting design, IF my objective in making it hadn't been furthering my free motion quilting practice.

The truly weird thing is that I don't know what to do with this one, now that it's quilted.  The colors are all wrong for it to live anywhere in my house -- it doesn't go with any of our bedrooms and, at 54" x 70", it's not bed sized anyway.  It's all wrong for my traditionally decorated living room and family room.  It wasn't meant as a gift for anyone and it's too big to be a baby quilt for a shower gift.  So this is my first Completely Useless Quilt Going Straight Into Storage!

54" x 70" Sermon Scribbles

Nothing But the FAQs, Ma'am:

Ah, well -- here are the stats we quilters always want to know about a quilt:

Name: Spirit Song Sermon Scribbles

Size: 54" x 70" Throw

Pattern: Traditional 8" Airplane blocks, no pattern used

Fabrics: Mostly from stash, with a Kaffe Fassett border print

Batting: Quilter's Dream Cotton Select

Thread: Superior MonoPoly for SID; everything else is Superior So Fine #50 in the needle with Bottom Line in the bobbin

It took me three days to bind it, and yes, I'm happy with how my binding came out.

Here's what the back of the quilt looks like, post-washing:

If I Had This Quilt to Do Over?

What would I do differently, if I were to make this same quilt again?

• I would rotary cut my HSTs instead of using the AccuQuilt GO! HST triangle dies
• I would quilt this with a much simpler design since the heavy piecing and dizzying array of prints makes it hard to see the quilting anyway.  This would be a great candidate for an edge to edge (E2E) pantograph design
• I would have used a single thread color for the whole thing, something like a pastel pink or yellow Glide, to reduce the hassle of thread color changes -- and so the quilting would show up better when all is said and done
• I would have used either an 80/20 blend batting or a wool batting, something with minimal shrinkage and more loft to show off the quilting design better
• I would have made sure all of the fabrics in the quilt had been prewashed and preshrunk prior to using them in the quilt, because the use of so many unwashed precuts surely factored into the amount of shrinkage and puckering that happened with this quilt as well.  Again, not a bad thing necessarily -- I like the crinkly shrinkage with certain quilts, but it's working against my quilting in this particular quilt
• I would have done the more elaborate quilting designs in the background fabrics, where they would show up better, rather than on the busy pink and orange print fabrics, where they disappear

But I won't be making this quilt again, because I've fallen a bit out of love with it, now that it's done.  What I can say is that I'm very glad I decided to make a quilt top out of fun, cheerful fabrics for the sole purpose of practicing quilting on it.  It's been far more fun than endless practicing on muslin, and I've learned a lot with it!

And Now, Tuesday's To-Do List:

Last Week's To-Do List:

• Finish that 15" orange block with the flying geese for Anders' sampler quilt
• Trim the edges of my Sermon Scribbles quilt
• Applique my label to the back of Sermon Scribbles
• Make binding for Sermon Scribbles, machine stitch to front of quilt & hand stitch to the backing
• Wash Sermon Scribbles and take that quilt out for a photo shoot!
• Piece backing for tumbler outreach top (next in line for quilting!)

Wow -- I actually did pretty good with my list last week, didn't I?!

This Week's To-Do List:

• Piece backing for tumbler outreach top pictured above (next in line for quilting!)
• Load tumbler quilt on frame
• Select pantograph and thread (Do you have suggestions for a thread color and/or a good beginner-friendly pantograph design for this quilt?  If so, please comment away!)
• Quilt tumbler quilt

I'm linking this post up with the To Do on Tuesday linky party over at  Home Sewn By Us.  I'm also linking up with the following "finish!" parties, since I finally have a finish to share:

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

·       Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

·       TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: http://tgiffriday.blogspot.ca/p/hosting-tgiff.html

But I'm also inviting YOU to link up, right here and right now, with your latest machine quilting post for Long Arm Learning!  This linky will be open until midnight on Friday, with a new linky opening up every Tuesday morning.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Tuesday To-Do List: Finish All the Stuff I Didn't Get Done Last Week

Good morning and Happy Tuesday!  My post for today's Long Arm Linky party got awfully long, so I thought it would be best to put my To Do's and Ta-Done's in a separate post this week.  Without further ado:  

Last Week's To-Do List:

Stay on top of the linky party and continue to spread the word to other machine quilters.  Get the linky post written and scheduled to publish in advance.

Finish the three remaining in-progress blocks for my MMBB quilt before I clear off my cutting table.

Trim excess batting & backing from Spirit Song

Digitize, machine embroider & attach a label to the back of Spirit Song

Make & machine stitch binding to the front of Spirit Song

Start hand stitching binding to the back of Spirit Song

Order a new ruler base for my Millie (because my current ruler base will no longer fit, once the thread cutter has been removed)

Well, I got SOME of that stuff done!  My linky party post was finished and scheduled for publication by mid-afternoon yesterday (you can find that post HERE if you'd like to link up with us!).  I finished two of the three in-progress blocks for Anders' MMBB sampler quilt, and I got well into the piecing of the third block last night:

I also got my 2" binding strips cut for The Quilt Formerly Known as Spirit Song (binding strips are at left in the photo above), decided to rename that quilt Sermon Scribbles instead, and digitized and machine embroidered my quilt label:

A few words about that: I know some of you will be disappointed that I changed the name of Spirit Song, but it just didn't feel like the right name for this quilt.  "Spirit Song" sounds like there is some deep, lofty meaning to the quilt, but it's just a lot of HSTs and a LOT of custom quilting.  It's not some crowning achievement that speaks to the world about any song in my soul, it's just a quilt I made to practice long arm quilting, a quilt that happened to be in the colors that our contemporary choir at church (Spirit Song) wears frequently.  However, I did furtively sketch out the quilting designs for this quilt on my iPad over the course of several weeks' worth of sermons, while sitting up at the front of the church with the rest of the choir and fooling no one into thinking I was taking notes on the sermon...  So the new name "Sermon Scribbles" feels like a better fit to me, since this one is really all about the quilting designs -- my sermon scribbles -- anyway.  

Those little Saran Wrap-looking bits inside some of the lettering are washaway embroidery stabilizer, by the way -- they will dissolve in the first washing of the quilt.  I used 60/2 cotton embroidery thread to stitch the design, same hot pink thread in the needle as well as in the bobbin, with one layer of water soluble stabilizer on top and one layer of tearaway stabilizer underneath.  I used my Bernina 750QE's hoop basting feature to stitch that rectangular box of basting stitches around the label before embroidering the text, and then I trimmed 1/4" away from the basting stitches so I could use them as a guide for the edges of my label.  

This Week's To-Do List:

• Finish that 15" orange block with the flying geese for Anders' sampler quilt
• Trim the edges of my Sermon Scribbles quilt
• Applique my label to the back of Sermon Scribbles
• Make binding for Sermon Scribbles, machine stitch to front of quilt & hand stitch to the backing
• Wash Sermon Scribbles and take that quilt out for a photo shoot!
• Piece backing for tumbler outreach top (next in line for quilting!)

My new acrylic ruler base was shipped from APQS in Iowa yesterday and should be here by the end of the week.  It looks just like my old one except that it's not quite as wide and it's designed to fit machines without thread cutters:

I'm also planning to order a different type of ruler base from Donita Darlington's Lakeside Quilting that I found out about through the APQS forum, one that is designed like an extended aluminum stitch plate that screws into the needle plate holes of the machine and has beveled edges that are supposed to slide under the side clamps better without getting hung up on them, but the small business that makes them needs me to mark my machine's needle hole on their cardboard template so they can drill the hole in my ruler base plate in exactly the right spot.  I still haven't gotten their template in the mail yet, so it will be awhile before I actually have that RulerMate base for my machine.  

I'm looking forward to trying both ruler base styles to see which one I prefer, and I suspect that there are going to be certain quilts where I want the Hartley base that goes on and off quickly, and others where I prefer the low profile, smaller footprint, and stability of Donita's screw-on RulerMate design.  By the way, Donita quilts on Gammill machines herself and she sells versions of this ruler base for most major long arm machine manufacturers.  

Alright, that's it for today!  I'm linking up today's post with To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us.

LAL#2: The One Where Thoroughly Modern Millie Gets a Little Work Done

It's Tuesday again, and time for another round of Long Arm Learning.  We had thirteen quilters linking up with us last week for our very first linky party, quilters ranging from brand-new beginners to seasoned professional long arm quilters, just as I'd hoped.  I enjoyed checking out each one of your links, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to share again this week.  Remember that the Long Arm Learning linky party stays open from Tuesday morning all the way through midnight on Friday, so if your post isn't ready just yet, you still have time.  We'll wait for you!  (The link up is all the way down at the end of the blog post; click on "Read More" if you don't see it!).

I've quilted absolutely nothing in the last week, because I decided to schedule Thoroughly Modern Millie (my 2013 APQS Millennium) for some exciting elective surgery!  My husband has the perfect combination of skill sets to be my in-house Tech Support, because he works in information technology and electrical engineering, but one of his hobbies is tinkering with classic cars, taking them apart, swapping out parts, and making them work better.  Whether it's mechanical, electrical, or computerized, this man of mine can take ANYTHING apart and put it back together again, better than it was before!  

Tuesday's To-Do List: Quilty Goals for the Upcoming Week

Good morning and Happy Tuesday!  Here's the view from my studio this morning:

Just to recap (and to keep myself honest!), these were the weekly goals I set for myself last Tuesday:

Last Tuesday's Weekly To-Do List:

1. Write and schedule publication of my first linky party post for next Tuesday
2. Continue to spread the word about the new linky party 
3. Trim excess batting & backing from Spirit Song
4. Digitize, machine embroider, & hand stitch Spirit Song label to back of quilt
5. Make binding for Spirit Song, machine stitch to front of quilt, & begin hand stitching binding to the backing

Hmmm...  To paraphrase the iconic ballad by Meatloaf, "...two out of five ain't bad!"  I haven't touched Spirit Song since I finished quilting it, because I had blocks in progress for my Moda Modern Building Blocks/Beware the Ishmaelites sampler quilt and I wanted to at least finish cutting fabrics for these blocks before I cleared off the cutting table to make room for trimming Spirit song.  I DID get my inaugural LAL (Long Arm Learning) linky party post written up and published on time, featuring an interview with quilter Cheryl Degan, and I'm delighted to see that readers are already linking up.  Yay!  The LAL post will be open for linking up until Friday at midnight, with a new linky party opening up again the following Tuesday.  Please join us by linking your machine quilting post here if you haven't done so already.  And now, back to my goals for this week.

Sunday Spirit Song Quilting

Background quilting is coming along on Spirit Song!  I'm now about 25% of the way finished, and I'm learning a lot along the way.  For instance, I quilted the wrong fill pattern in several patches while I was talking to a friend on the phone, but I'm leaving it because I doubt I could rip out such dense stitches without ripping the quilt fabric, and probably no one but me will notice in the finished quilt.  I am enjoying seeing how the quilting designs transform the flat, smooth surface of the quilt top with an "embossed" texture.  I don't remember whether I shared which thread I ended up choosing for the background quilting -- I went with So Fine #50 in the needle and Bottom Line in the bobbin, the same combination I've been using throughout the rest of the quilt.

Always Gonna Be an Uphill Mountain; Always Gonna Wanna Make It Move: Of Small Victories in Custom Quilting

I finished the background quilting in the first row of 4" blocks and moved down to the second and third rows yesterday.  This is VERY slow going, and I'm so glad I bought that adjustable height saddle stool on Amazon so I can sit at my long arm frame while I work on the tedious background fill quilting.  I've been using the stool when I need to unpick stitches with a seam ripper, too -- but hopefully there won't be any more of that with this quilt!  Hope I didn't just jinx myself!!

It's so exciting, though, seeing my quilting design start to take shape on the quilt  in front of me.  

I'm trying to figure out pathways for quilting that minimize stops and starts as much as possible.  I'm also really glad that I decided to add those 1/4" unquilted channels around the background fills, because I love how they define the overall diamond shape that I'm trying to bring out of the piecing.  But, for those who thought maybe I'd get this completely finished by the end of this week, that is definitely NOT going to happen.  Still hopeful for finishing the quilting by the end of July, but I'm not going to stress about the deadline.  As Miley Cyrus once sang, "It's not about how fast I get there, it's not about what's waiting on the other side.  It's the CLIMB!"  ;-)

One more mystery of long arm quilting has been solved for me, this time by a helpful member of the APQS Owner's Forum.  I posted this picture of how, when I was quilting my ruler work border, I was getting gorgeous stitches in one direction that would turn into almost flatline on the top of the quilt when I had to quilt back in the opposite direction.  It was infuriating me, and I couldn't figure out why it was happening.  So this other APQS owner in the forum responded that my problem might be caused by tension that was balanced, but was too loose overall, top and bottom.  He suggested that I set my bobbin tension to around 200 with the TOWA gauge and then adjust my top tension to rebalance the stitch.  Well, I had my bobbin tension set at around 160 before.  I tightened my bobbin tension to 200, bypassing the little pigtail guide on my M class bobbin case, and then increased my top tension accordingly until the stitch looked good top and bottom.  Well, this completely solved my problem, and it never would have occurred to me if it hadn't been for the advice of a stranger.  Gotta love the Internet!

Since I have so little to share with you today, I'm throwing in a bonus: Behold, Samwise the Brave and Snuggly Rottweiler Puppy, 8 months old and about 98 pounds:

I would be getting so much more quilting done if I wasn't busy playing tug and throwing tennis balls all over the house.  This is why we can't have nice things anymore... but having nice things is totally overrated!

Happy Friday and happy weekend, everyone!  I'm linking up with:

FRIDAY

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

·       Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

SATURDAY

·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

Spirit Song Progress: Blue HSTs Nearing Completion + Tentative Plan for Background Fillers

Good morning, and Happy Thursday!  I have been doing a pretty good job of squeezing in at least an hour or two at my long arm machine each day, so my Spirit Song quilting is progressing.  

I am starting to really enjoy this little motif in my little blue HSTs that I think of as a "lollipop flower."  Of course, the first couple I quilted didn't look this cute, but every time I start a new design I see it progress from "Oh, ick" to "maybe it's okay from a distance" to "meh" to "hey, NOW it's starting to look like how I drew it on my iPad!"  Note to self: Don't ever give up on a quilting design just because it comes out icky the first time I try to quilt it!

This little motif is a hybrid between total freehand for the two curly leaves and ruler-guided quilting for the "lollipop" -- the little 1/2" circle on a stick stem.  I'm using another of the rulers that I got in the kit for Lisa Calle's Rulers for Rookies class (I took this class in person at AQS Quilt Week in Paducah, but the ruler kit, panel, and instructions are available for you to learn at home via Lisa's web site here).  This ruler is the Quilter's Groove ProPebble, which comes in several different sizes, but the one I got in my class kit is designed to create a perfect half inch circle when you slide it over the hopping foot and the edge of your hopping foot moves around the inside of the big circle.  I am loving this ruler so much, I had to stop just now in the middle of writing my blog post, to order the other sizes!  (And no, I have no affiliate relationship with Lisa; I'm just a happy student/customer who is very grateful to have had the opportunity to take classes from her).  

I've added a couple strips of my NexCare Clear First Aid Tape to the back side of this ruler to reduce sliding, but I might try some of the stronger gripping HandiGrip tape from HandiQuilter instead to hold this little guy in place even better.  The hardest thing about using acrylic rulers/templates for machine quilting is making sure the ruler doesn't slide out of place when you're quilting around the edge of it.  Anyway, once again, I've discovered that Lisa's rulers have nifty little etched reference lines exactly where I need them so I don't have to do any marking at all.  I'm using the outside straight edge of the ProPebble ruler to quilt my perfectly straight stem, lining up the straight etched line in the center of the ruler with my block seam.  Then I slide the big circle around my hopping foot and line it up exactly as shown in the photo above, with the little line on the opposite end of my ruler right at that intersection of triangle points, to quilt my little circle away from the stem.  Slide the ruler off the foot, and use the straight edge to quilt back down the stem, and then I finish by quilting a free motion curly leaf on either side of my lollipop.  Voila -- cuteness!

Yes, it takes longer to slide this ruler on and off my hopping foot, stopping and starting my machine, than it would to quilt the whole motif freehand, but I am finding that mixing in some perfectly straight lines and circles here and there really elevates the look of my free motion work and makes ALL of the quilting look better to me.  Interesting!  Also, perfect circles look so cute on quilts that they are worth a bit of fussing.  Now I am thinking that, the next time I want to quilt a half inch string of pearls border, I might use this little template rather than marking the pearls with a stencil and then trying to quilt perfect circles freehand the way I've been doing on my skinny blue border for this quilt.  This matching blue thread is hiding a multitude of sins; trust me!!!

I am nearing the end of quilting everything that is getting quilted with blue thread -- both quilt borders and all of the little HSTs.  So now I'm looking forward to the next and LAST phase of quilting, which will be the background filler designs in all of the white/off white/neutral background HSTs.  As usual, I've been doodling my options on my iPad and once I came up with ideas that I liked, I printed them up, stuck them into plastic page protectors, and brought them upstairs to my studio so I can refer to them to remember which design goes where.

Although my Spirit Song quilt consists of nothing but 2" and 4" HST units and only one 16" straight set block, my quilting design was planned to emphasize the secondary design that emerges at the block intersections, creating the illusion that my quilt top is a diagonal setting that alternates two different block designs.  Those little lollipop flowers I just showed you go on the blue HSTs within Quilting Design A (above), which is the illusion block created where four of my actual blocks come together.  

In my EQ8 rendering above, you can see the actual 16" blocks that I pieced for this quilt.  My Quilting Design B is for the diamond shaped center area that is left after the corners are "removed from the equation" by Quilting Design A.  Here's how I'm quilting these areas of my quilt:

Of course, the pale aqua "thread" color was only chosen on my iPad so I could see what I was sketching.  I'll be using a blending thread color on those background fabrics, an off-white So Fine #50 or else an off-white Bottom Line #60 thread.  Haven't decided on that yet.  I might just stick with the So Fine in my needle since that's what I've been using throughout the rest of the quilt, but the lighter weight, thinner Bottom Line thread might be more appropriate for the dense, heavy quilting I'm planning to do in these areas.  I suppose I could do a little sample off to the side of my quilt to make my final decision, but often I like to live dangerously -- make a rash decision and then commit 100%, full speed ahead!

I'm linking up today's post with:

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

·       Free Motion Mavericks at Quilting & Learning Combo OR at Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing

FRIDAY

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

·       Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

Have a great day, everyone, and happy stitching!