And the Tweaking Goes On: Design in Progress for Anders' Pineapple Log Cabin Quilt

In my last post, I showed this EQ7 pineapple log cabin project that I am planning as a second quilt project for my 11-year-old son, Anders, to make:

 

Once I had selected one of the simplest (fewest pieces) pineapple log cabin blocks and set up the layout and sizes, I let Anders play around in the software to come up with a color scheme for his quilt.  He decided on a black background with red and blue:   

 

 

Then I talked to him about what he wants to do with this quilt after it's finished.  With his first quilt project, he started to get discouraged about how long it was taking when he did not have many of his blocks finished, and he wanted it to be DONE so we made it pretty small -- but then he was disappointed that it wasn't big enough for him to snuggle under.  I originally set up his pineapple log cabin to be a 3 x 3 layout of 12" blocks, for a finished size of about 36" x 36", but Anders decided he wants his quilt to be twin sized to go on his bed.  Hmmm...  I have a feeling Mom might end up making a lot of these blocks if my junior quilter loses interest before it's finished!

 

I like Anders' color scheme, except that the lighter value reds and blues read a little too pastel raspberry pink and aqua from a distance.  That's due to which fabrics were loaded into the project sketchbook for him to choose from and him not knowing where to look to find more choices.  Knowing that he likes mostly batiks and wants reds and blues, I went back through those fabric stash add-ins and pulled lots more red and blue fabrics to add to the project scrapbook, and decided to mix in reddish orange fabrics with the reds for variety instead of lighter reds that would read pink.  I ended up with this:

 

 

...And here's what the whole twin sized quilt would look like, with a 6 x 8 layout of 48 12" blocks:

 

Before we start cutting any fabric, I'll let Anders play around with the colors and fabrics a bit more in EQ7 to make sure he likes it.  Once he gives the design on screen a thumbs up, we'll root through my ACTUAL fabric stash for close matches and maybe pick up some fat quarters of anything I don't have so he can make up a test block.  Two purposes to the test block, by the way:

 

1. Once the block is finished, I can import an actual photo of the block into EQ7 to get a much more realistic preview of what the finished quilt would look like using that combinations of fabrics, to be SURE it's what we want.

 

2. More importantly, Anders will get an idea of how long it takes to make a paper pieced pineapple log cabin block with 37 patches in it, and he will either be excited and want to make 47 more of them -- or he will realize that it's a bigger commitment than he is ready for.  In which case I'll guide him towards an easier block like a square in a square, or suggest making the quilt throw sized with fewer blocks, or even a table runner.

 

One more thing I wanted to share before signing off -- I got a photo of my Uncle Merle with his new grandson all snuggled up in the Amish Baby 54-40 or Fight quilt that I made for him! 

 

 

How sweet is that?  THAT'S why I wrestle with Minky backing and satin binding.  :-)  I'm linking up with Design Wall Monday at Stitch By Stitch and Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts.  Then I'm off to Anders' Spring orchestra concert.  Have a great afternoon!

Yay! I Finally Finished a Quilt! Can I Get a Parade, Please?

Drumroll, please...

Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight, 50" x 50", with Minky Backing and Satin Blanket Binding

IT IS FINISHED!!!  Arm slings, thumb splints, frozen shoulder, surgery, and uncooperative satin blanket binding could not defeat me.  My Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight quilt is finished, and I like it!  I even ended up loving the double row of zigzagging on the satin binding (a functional necessity since I did not manage to perfectly align the inner edge of the binding in a couple of places on the first pass).  I think it looks decorative, almost like another skinny border coming off the edge of the quilt.  Yeah, on second thought, I MEANT to do that.

Detail of Free-Motion Quilting and Double Zigzagged Satin Binding

Freshly washed upon completion to remove quilt markings, water soluble basting thread, starch etc., the quilt is everything I hoped it would be.  With 80/20 cotton/poly batting and Minky plush backing, it has a terrific weight, body and drape that are perfect for a comforting baby blanket to drag around, hide under, and love.  The cotton fabrics of the quilt top have a pleasing soft, bumpy texture from extensive quilting that shrunk up slightly in the wash.  The back of the quilt is unbelievably soft, furry Minky fleece.  And the satin binding is silky smooth, ready to rub a brand-new little nose with.

Snuggly, Cuddly, Baby Friendly Textures Ready for Gifting

This is why, even though I grumble and gripe about it every time, I keep coming back to the Minky and the satin binding when I make baby quilts.

So, to recap:  This is the first quilt I've made that I designed in my EQ7 software from start to finish, and I absolutely love it.  Here's the computer design I created back in late December of last year:

My EQ7 Design for Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight

From conception to completion, this baby quilt took me four months to complete.  The intended recipient waited so long past his due date, it was almost like he was refusing to be born until his quilt was finished!  (He was expected near the end of March, but was finally born on April 19th).  It's not like I worked on the quilt nonstop on a daily basis, but still -- this is why, when my husband asks whether I'm going to make a baby quilt for some work colleague's wife whose wedding we went to several years ago, the answer is NO. 

I'm especially pleased with how I did the quilting on this one, pushing myself beyond my comfort zone and trying out some new things for the first time on a "real quilt."  And you know what?  I didn't ruin it!  I'll have to remember that the next time I'm afraid to "ruin" a quilt top by trying a new quilting design!

And now, back to my paper pieced pineapple log cabin blocks.  I'm linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Link a Finish Friday at Richard and Tanya Quilts, Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and TGIFF (Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday).

New Titanium Shoulder Jewelry and The Saga of the Satin Binding



Satin Binding In Progress!

Hello, Internet!  I'm three days post-surgery and my arm is out of the sling for the first time today.  I did take the prescription pain meds this morning but they should have worn off by now, and so far I'm doing okay.  Let's hope it's onwards and upwards from here on out!

14 Screws Later: My New Titanium Shoulder Jewelry

I started binding my Amish Baby 54-40 or Fight baby quilt yesterday.  You'll remember that I stitched a placement line for the inside edge of the satin binding with water soluble basting thread.  That turned out to be a great idea.  The idea of how I was going to use temporary fabric glue stick to position the satin binding on the front and back side of the quilt didn't work out. 

The glue stick adhered okay to the cotton fabric of the quilt top, but did not want to stick to the plush Minky backing fabric at all.  Also I am cramming a little more quilt into the binding to give it sort of a padded effect, and the glue stick just doesn't hold strong enough for that.  So instead, I'm using extra-fine, long silk pins in a three step process, one side of the quilt at a time.  First I pin the satin binding just barely covering my placement line on the front of the quilt:

Pinning the Top Edge Only to Basted Placement Line

Then I pin the opposite edge of the satin binding on the back side of the quilt, again just covering the line of basting stitches:

Pinning the Back Edge of Satin Binding to Basted Placement Line

Finally, I place pins on the front of the quilt going through all three layers, perpendicular to the edge of the satin binding.  I remove the parallel lines of pins from the top and bottom of the satin binding as I'm going along:

Perpendicular Pins Added Through All Three Layers

Only the Perpendicular Pins Remain for Stitching

I actually missed a few pins from the underside of the quilt when I stitched the first side of the satin binding down, and they caused my presser foot to get stuck.  I also had to be careful to slide the pin heads out of the way just before my presser foot came to them (as you see me doing in the above photo).  I'm using my walking foot on my Bernina 750QE with Triple Zigzag Stitch #7.  I'm using a size 80/12 Microtex needle and Mettler Poly Sheen 50 weight thread, and I did not need to make any adjustments to the default settings of stitch #7 in order to get good results.

First Corner Miter, Back Side

In the past when I've bound baby quilts with satin binding, I think I pinned it in place all the way around the quilt, miters and all, but this time I'm doing it one side at a time.  Since I've got so much quilt crammed tightly into my satin binding for that padded edge effect, I just couldn't control the miter until I had one side of the binding stitched all the way to the edge.  So I started the binding in the middle of one of the sides, went all the way to the corner, folded in the miter and pinned the next side of the quilt binding.  Then I was able to start stitching from the outer point of the mitered corner and continue down the entire side of the quilt in one pass.  Another benefit of stitching it this way is that I won't have any hand stitching to do to secure the mitered corners, and I can't do any hand stitching with a broken left thumb!

Rounding the First Corner

I'm trying to take it easy, but so far nothing is hurting my arm or shoulder so I'm going to see if I can't get another side of my satin binding pinned and stitched down today.  Enjoy your weekend and happy stitching!

Of Fractured Bones and Other Annoying Quilting Delays... And PROGRESS!!

Greetings from the Land of Humpty-Dumpty, in which Rebecca goes for a bike ride, has a great fall, and is still waiting for all the King's horses and all the King's men to put her bones back together again.    This happened exactly three weeks ago today, and in addition to the broken and displaced right clavicle bone that has disabled my right arm, I also broke my left thumb and smacked my head hard enough to crack my bike helmet and give myself a mild concussion.  So I have not been sewing for the past couple of weeks.  Or brushing my own teeth, dressing or showering myself...  But not sewing stinks the most, especially when my cousin's baby is coming any day and the quilt is SO CLOSE TO BEING FINISHED!  (Also, it is a surprise, so if you know my cousin, DON'T SPOIL IT).

The Unhappiness That Is My Collar Bone

I'm getting my collar bone screwed back together again surgically on Wednesday, but over the past week I've been sneaking up to my sewing room to work on my Amish Baby 54-40 or Fight quilt.  With one arm in a sling and a thumb splint on the other hand, I'm not making great strides or anything -- I can get in about 15-20 minutes before the shoulder pain is unbearable, but every little bit gets me closer to the finish line!  A little bit of sewing is better than NO sewing.

In this post, I wanted to document some of the things that have worked for me in the final stages of this project so I can refer back to it in the future and save myself some trial-and-error:

Marking Stars for Free Motion Quilting

To mark the stars for free-motion quilting on the blue fabric squares, Don Linn's hooped tulle and Sharpie method wouldn't work because I couldn't see the faint black line against the blue fabric.  So I cut out an exact template of the star shape from a junk mail postcard, cutting just INSIDE the marked line, and used a Clover white marking pen to carefully trace the stars onto the blue squares.  The white pen works great on dark fabrics.

"Wave Stitch" Controls Fullness in Unquilted Border Perimeter

Once I had completed that last bit of quilting, I still had 2" of my teal border unquilted because that's the width of the satin binding that I'm planning to use.  I saw that the quilting stitches had drawn up the body of the quilt so that there was a faint ripple to the unquilted outer edge, and I did NOT want a ripply-edged quilt looking like I don't know how to measure for borders properly.  I considered stippling the border to flatten it out, but decided that I wanted to retain some of the loft and puffiness inside the satin binding.  So I scrolled through the decorative stitches programmed into my Bernina 750QE sewing machine and selected one that looks kind of like a wave stitch, and stitched that around the perimeter of the quilt just inside the raw edge using my walking foot.  It did the trick of shrinking the outer edge just enough without flattening out the loft that I wanted to keep.  Also, I think it makes kind of a fun quilting stitch, don't you?  I'll have to remember that one for another quilt -- it would be a great alternative to just straight line quilting.
My next trick when I am doing a Minky-backed quilt with satin binding is to enlist my serger to trim and clean up the edges of the quilt before binding.  That wave stitch also enabled me to remove the remaining safety pins from the quilt before they went anywhere near the serger blades... 


Two Thread, Left Needle Serger Overlock Before Binding

Why didn't I just trim the excess batting and backing fabric and get on with binding my quilt?  Well, Minky is an unruly pain in the butt whose edges like to curl up and shed all over the place.  I didn't want to deal with that when I was trying to attach the slippery satin binding.  A serged edge is much, MUCH more stable and easier to work with.  Moreover, when you see a well-loved tattered blanket, the satin binding usually shreds and disintegrates long before the rest of the blanket, and it is easy enough to give new life to a cherished blankie by replacing the satin binding.  My overcast quilt edges will be protected from fraying when the satin binding wears out, and will make it easier for whoever gets the job of replacing the satin binding.

One big, HUGE thing to remember as you're setting up your serger is that MINKY STRETCHES, but ONLY IN ONE DIRECTION.  It's important to test your stitch settings across both the lengthwise AND the crosswise grains before you start in on your quilt.  Otherwise the stitch that looked great on your sample might get wavy on the two sides of the quilt where the Minky wants to stretch on you. 

Test Your Stitch Settings on the Lengthwise AND Crosswise Grains!

On my Bernina 1300MDC serger I got a nice, wave free edge with differential feed set to 1.5, stitch length 3.5, cutting width 2.0, and the tension settings recommended in my user manual.  I used a size 80/12 Universal needle and YLI Elite serger thread.
Here's one more serger trick that I always forget when I'm trimming away the excess batting and backing fabrics as I overcast the edge of the quilt.  Just before reaching the corner, I cut away a couple of inched of the excess fabrics on the side I'm about to stitch with a scissor.  Then I can serge right to the edge of the corner, sink my needle just off the edge and raise it to the highest position, pull the work backwards to clear the stitch finger, and then turn the quilt to begin stitching the next side of the quilt right at the corner where I left off.  I always mess up the first corner before I remember the scissor trick.  If you forget, you try to turn the corner but the bulk of the untrimmed batting and backing is in your way so you can't get the quilt back under the presser foot far enough.

Approaching the Corner, Next Side Scissor Cut 2-3"

So the whole time I'm quilting my blue stars, stabilizing and overcasting these quilt borders, I'm stewing about the satin binding.  I have made a number of these Minky backed, satin binding baby quilts in the past, and the only reason I subject myself to the hassle of it all is that babies LOVE satin binding.  If you give a baby a blanket with satin binding, he will reward you by rubbing the satin binding on his nose while sucking his thumb and making sweet little baby gurgling noises.  So it has to be satin binding.  But it is nearly impossible to get the inside edge of that satin binding lined up perfectly on the front AND back side of the quilt.  Anywhere the edges are NOT perfectly aligned when you stitch the zigzag from the front of the quilt, you will get something that looks like this:

Stitched Right Side Up, so the Front Looks Good...

...But the Back Is Not So Hot!

Very annoying!!  So I had an idea of what I could do to get better results this time.  I decided to stitch a placement line for the inside edge of the satin binding using YLI Water Soluble Basting Thread in both the needle and the bobbin.  I'm going to use that stitching line to either glue baste or pin (haven't decided which) the satin binding in place prior to stitching.  In hindsight, I should have stitched that line before I quilted my curlique olives in the border, since I drew a chalk line there anyway to make sure my quilting design remained outside of the area to be covered by satin binding.

Water Soluble Thread Placement Line for Satin Binding

Water soluble thread is very cool because it just dissolves and washes away when your project is rinsed or laundered, but it is more fragile than ordinary sewing thread and it requires special care.  It is very important to store water soluble thread in the airtight ziplock bags it comes in, and handle it with very dry hands so you don't get it sticky.  It's probably also a good idea to store your bobbin thread right in the baggie with the spool of water soluble thread, clearly labeled.  It would be very sad to get caught in the rain in a dress you accidentally constructed using water soluble thread... 

Settings for Water Soluble Thread

I sew successfully with YLI Wash-Away Water Soluble Thread on my Bernina 750QE sewing machine using Straight Stitch #1, but I increased the stitch length to 3.50 and reduced the tension all the way down to 1.0.  I also reduced the speed considerably when winding the bobbin, and because I'm working on a 3-layer quilt, I used my walking foot.

I've decided on a triple-stitched zigzag stitch to secure the satin binding to my quilt.  I'll be using Mettler Poly Sheen thread for that, for reasons of strength, matching the color and the sheen of the satin binding, and because both the satin binding and the Minky backing fabrics are polyester.  I'm using a brand new size 80/12 Microtex Sharp needle to stitch the satin binding without any snagging or pulls (which are also possible pitfalls of pinning, which is why I'm considering gluing the binding in place).

Broken Thumb with Splint

But none of this is happening right now, because my thumb is sore and my shoulder hurts from all of this typing!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend.  I'm linking up with Esther's WIPs on Wednesday linky and Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Amish Baby is ALMOST Finished: Continuous Curves, Olive Loop Border and Free-Motion Stars

Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight: In Progress, Nearly Complete

This baby is due to be born within weeks, and it looks like the Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight quilt will be finished right on time.  I wanted to do a quick post about how I did the continuous curve quilting on the square patches, the olive loop border, and the free-motion stars in the lime green blocks, mostly so I can refer back to the post someday when I want to dust these techniques off and use them again.

In my last post, I was struggling with how to get those free motion continuous double curves to look relatively even on the red and white square patches.  I ended up making myself a little template out of gridded template plastic, 2" square to match my patches, with little tiny holes punched out a quarter inch in at the center of each side. 

My Template for Marking Continuous Curves

That made it really easy for me to mark my quilt with dots (the Bohin mechanical chalk pencils are the perfect diameter for marking through these holes with just a twist).  I found that when I had those dots on the quilt it was a lot easier to quilt the continuous curves because I had something to aim for to keep the arced stitching lines about the same depth and with the arc center in the correct spot. 

Free Motion Olive Loop Border

Next, I quilted olive loops in the outermost border.  I first saw this motif in Judi Madsen's long arm quilting and I have been doodling it on my bulletin during the sermon at church...  shh!  Because I'm planning to use 2" wide satin binding for this quilt, I marked a chalk line indicating where the edge of the satin binding would be to ensure that none of my olives would end up under the binding.  And I just stitched this one freehand, trying to deliberately include some olives that were larger or smaller than others (because I knew they were not all going to come out identical).  I think this came out really good for my first try.  Definitely going to use this one again!

I could have just done the continuous double curve quilting in all of the square patches, but I wanted to bring in a little smidge of whimsy.  So I found this little squiggle star motif -- it's actually part of an embroidered outline quilting design from a collection I bought ages ago.  I resized the squiggly star on my photocopy machine until it was exactly the size I wanted it, 1 1/2" to nestle nicely inside the seam allowances of my 2" squares.  Then I used a marking method that I learned from Don Linn's April 2012 tutorial for the SewCalGal FMQ Challenge.  In Don's tutorial exercise, we used wooden embroidery hoops, bridal tulle and an extra fine point Sharpie marker to create a mark-through template for transferring quilting designs (you use either the purple disappearing marker or the blue water soluble marker to draw the design on your quilt, NOT the Sharpie!).  Since my motif was pretty tiny, I asked my husband for a small plastic ring from his Garage of Handy Manly Stuff.  I just wrapped a piece of tulle around the plastic ring and held it in place with a ponytail elastic.



Basically, you trace your quilting design onto the tulle with the Sharpie.  Then you can place the hooped tulle over your quilt and use the temporary marking pen to trace right over the design on the tulle.  I could have used my embroidery design software to resize the embroidered quilting motif and stitched the stars out with my embroidery module, but it would have been overkill for something so simple and it would have taken a LOT more time to hoop and rehoop over and over again for every single star.  It's actually a lot easier to FMQ a SMALL quilting motif than a large one, and these stars were quick and easy to quilt last night.  Anders was hanging out in my sewing room watching Tom & Jerry while I quilted the stars.  :-)

Free Motion Stars!

Finally, since I was all threaded up with the lime green thread, I snapped on my walking foot and quilted some straight(ish) lines in the green border.  I placed them approximately 1/4" from the seams, which framed the embroidered text nicely without crossing over the stitching, and I think that the straight line quilting is a nice contrast with the curvy olive loop border and the curvy stippling in the black background fabric.

I think I want to leave the green star triangles unquilted and puffy, but something needs to go in the royal blue square patches.  I am leaning towards more squiggly stars.  Lastly, I might do some really random quilting in the outside of the green border, where it will be covered by satin binding, just to shrink it up and flatten it out a bit.  If I leave it totally unquilted and just attach the border, I'm afraid the border will look wavy.  Once all of the quilting is complete, I'll trim off my excess batting and backing and serge the quilt edges (I always do that with satin binding quilts, to protect the quilt edges in case the satin binding wears away over time and needs replacing).

Meanwhile, I am taking a break from quilting today so I can hem my new choir robe and personalize the fit a little bit.  (The sleeves are too long and the hem is crooked).  Happy weekend and happy stitching!

Continuous Curve Quilting on the Amish Baby Quilt

Amish Baby 54-40 or Fight with Continuous Curve Quilting

I finished the stipplish quilting throughout the black background areas of my Amish Baby 54-40 or Fight quilt (I say "stipplish" instead of "stippling" because I intentionally mixed in some pointy little horns and flames along with the smooth jigsaw puzzle curves.  The Quilt Police say you're not allowed to put any points or corners in stippling).  I tried to keep my stipplish quilting as open as possible because I don't want this baby quilt to end up too stiff.  With the stippling and ditch quilting completed, I could have declared the quilting finished from a stability standpoint, but I wanted to add some quilting that I could see, and I wanted to try a new-to-me quilting technique.  So I decided to quilt double continuous curves inside the square patches of the quilt.

Theoretically, this should be easy, but the first attempt looked so bad to me that I debated ripping out the quilting. 

First Attempt at Continuous Curves, Without Marking

After leaving the quilt overnight and coming back to what I'd done the next day, I could still see that it didn't look like "professional quilting," but I decided it looked good enough for a beginning effort.  The thing about free-motion quilting is that you need to build the muscle memory for every design you want to quilt, and that takes lots of repetition.  The best, and really the only way I can get better is to quilt a new design all over a quilt.  That's how I learned to quilt the paisley motif on Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt, and that's how I learned to quilt stippling on the school fundraiser quilt.  I'm using quilting thread that is color matched to my fabrics for the continuous curves and the wobbles and inconsistencies that look so glaring under the bright lights of my sewing machine with my nose 2" from the quilt are going to be difficult to discern on the finished quilt, and will add to the handmade character if they are noticed.  The great thing about baby quilts is that, when they are wrapped around an adorable baby, everyone will be so excited about the baby that no one will be scrutinizing my quilt for mistakes!

So I went back to my quilting books and found that Harriet Hargrave's book Heirloom Machine Quilting and Diane Gaudynski's book Guide to Machine Quilting both describe this quilting technique, and they both suggested making little guide dots about 1/4" in from the seam in the center of each side of the square.  That way you have something to aim for when you're trying to quilt that smooth arc. 

Curve Centers Marked with Chalk Dots, Ready to Quilt

Since my fabrics are dark, I made my dots with a white chalk pencil that easily brushed off after quilting.  This did help me to quilt smoother, better continuous curves, but it was annoying to have to fuss with marking all those dots.  Since I have a lot of squares left in the quilt that I want to quilt this way and they are all the same size, I might just make myself a little template to trace around for the rest of them.  Ah, well -- everything is difficult before it becomes easy, right?

I am struggling with the weight and bulk of this quilt, despite the large throat space on my Bernina 750 QE, the Supreme Slider Teflon sheet, and the relatively manageable size of a 54" square baby quilt.  I'm not sure if it's the extra bulk and weight of the Minky or static buildup with the polyester, or what, but I really have to push and "scrub" the quilt to move it under the needle at times and it makes my neck and shoulders sore.  I am really questioning whether I'll be able to quilt my king sized pineapple log cabin when the time comes.

I won't get any more quilting done on the Amish Baby until next week, though, because I'm headed to Atlanta this afternoon for the Sewing & Quilt Expo.  Yippee!  I'm mostly going to take pattern alterations and fitting classes for garment sewing, but I did sign up for a 3-hour hands-on background filler workshop in the Gammill Longarm Studio.  The class description says it is for "Advanced Beginners," so hopefully having spent a total of about 15 minutes playing on a demo longarm machine will be enough preparation for me to get something out of the class.  My primary goal in taking the longarm workshop is to get a feel for what it is like to quilt on a frame with a longarm machine where the quilt is stationary and you move the machine to draw your quilting designs, versus quilting on a domestic sit-down machine where the machine is stationary and you draw your quilting designs by moving the quilt around under the needle.  I don't have unrealistic expectations about mastering longarm quilting in a day, but I should be able to get a better idea of whether that mode of quilting would suit me. 

If any of you will be in Atlanta for the Expo this weekend, I'd love to hear from you!  Have a great weekend and happy stitching.

I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, and with Esther's WIPs on Wednesday linky party.  Grab a cup of coffee or whatever gets you going in the morning and check out what everyone else is working on this week!

Minky Loves Monofilament Nylon!

Quilting Is Magic!

I'm finally free-motion quilting, untethered by feed dogs and walking feet!  Hooray!  I quilted "in the ditch" around all of the colored patches on this quilt -- the squares and the turquoise half rectangle triangles -- using my walking foot, constantly turning and stuffing the quilt back under the machine while dreaming of a long arm machine on a frame and thinking about how backwards it is to try to draw anything by moving the PAPER beneath a stationary PENCIL, which is essentially what you are doing when you quilt on a domestic sewing machine.

I used SewArt Invisible Monofilament thread in Smoke with a size 60 Microtex needle and 50/2 Aurifil Mako thread in the bobbin for my ditch quilting, because my ditch quilting never stays 100% in the ditch and I didn't want anyone to notice my oopses.  I reduced my needle tension to 2.0 as usual for sewing with monofilament thread on my Bernina 750 QE sewing machine, and put the monofilament nylon on my regular horizontal thread spindle with no net or anything.  All nice and lovely, beautiful stitches, boring quilting:

Wretched, Boring, Invisible Ditch Quilting with the Walking Foot

Speaking of the walking foot -- on the Bernina 7 Series Yahoo users group, there is often discussion about whether one "needs" a walking foot for quilting on a sewing machine that has integrated Dual Feed like mine does.  There are always some who claim to have great results quilting with their dual feed and no walking foot, but there is NO WAY I could do this kind of quilting without a walking foot.  I was twisting and tugging and stuffing that quilt all over the place, and my Minky backing is hellishly slippery and shifty, and the basting spray was probably not holding things together as securely as my violent ditch quilting continued.  Maybe you can quilt straight lines across a table runner, but I can't imagine risking a large quilt that I've put a lot of hours into.  The walking foot is my friend.  It's just really boring to quilt along all those seam lines, and you don't feel like you're accomplishing anything since the quilting really is invisible unless you mess up!

Once I finished the ditch quilting, I planned to switch to using Aurifil cotton thread in the needle for the background fill quilting, but when I tested it on a sample of my black fabric, batting, and Minky backing I discovered that the cotton thread is "grabbier" than the slick monofilament, and no matter what size needle or tension settings I tried, I kept getting some of the Minky backing pile pulling up through the needle holes to the front side of my quilt. 

Cotton Thread Grabs the Minky Pile and Pulls it to the Front

Yuck!  Those white tufts in the stitches are not batting (I'm using black batting for this piece), they are the pile of the zebra Minky backing fabric.  I am so glad I started out with the monofilament, because I don't know if I would have thought to try it if I was having the problem with the pile pulling through right out of the gate.  Anyway, I'm just going to continue on with the monofilament thread, at least for the black background areas.  The monofilament doesn't pull the Minky through AT ALL.  So, note to self -- MINKY LOVES MONOFILAMENT NYLON THREAD!

By the way, I know it's very fashionable these days to diss the meandering/stippling quilting pattern as overused, but frankly this Scarlet doesn't give a damn.  I can quilt that pattern on autopilot and I think it will look good on my baby quilt and play nicely with the Minky batting.  I am also putting little horns and elf booties in my stippling even though stippling is not supposed to have any points, just to annoy any quilt police out there.  ;-)

That's enough typing for today.  Back to the quilting!

Stipplling Like No One's Watching!

Basted Badly, and Basted Again. On To the Quilting!



Basted... And Basted Again

Several hundred safety pins later, my thumbs are sore, but my quilt is FINALLY basted and ready for quilting!

The internet is rife with tutorials instructing quilters to crawl around a hardwood floor on their hands and knees to accomplish the basting procedure, but I don't do hands and knees.  I prefer to baste my quilts on a standing height worktable, without inflicting any agony on my hands and knees, and I've done this successfully in the past -- but not on tables that were pushed up against the wall like this one is.  I opted to move the worktable back up against the wall when I remodeled my studio in order to economize space.  Since my worktable base consists of kitchen cabinetry and wooden cubby units and my butcher block work surface weighs over 700 pounds, it's not like I could just scoot the whole thing out a few feet from the wall temporarily, either.  I thought I remembered that I had somehow managed to baste a similarly sized kiddo quilt with Minky backing on this new worktable two years ago, but I could not for the life of me remember how I managed to do that. 

So I decided to wing it.  I spray basted with 505 and then I pinned like a madwoman.  And then I flipped the quilt over after a couple of hours of pinning and discovered THIS:

Backing Side Up, The Wrinkle Of Doom

Ugh, right?!  I had worked with the top 2/3 of the quilt that fit on the table first, then spun it around to do the other side, but that slippery Minky formed a crease all the way across the quilt where it had been hanging over the side of the table.  If I left it that way I would have horrible pleats and puckers all over the back every time my line of quilting stitches crossed over the Minky Mountain Range on the back of my quilt.  So today I had to take all of the pins out of the bottom third of the quilt, pull that Minky taut, and repin.  I think it's good now, but note to self here -- next time I baste a quilt, I need to have Bernie get the folding utility table out of storage.  We can set it up in  the middle of my studio temporarily and raise the legs to a comfortable height with pieces of PVC pipe.  That way I can tape or clamp the backing in place to the table edges on all sides, do my pinning from the center out, and when I'm working on the outside edges the weight of the pinned areas of the quilt will help to keep the backing taut and wrinkle free.  Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that's how I basted the last quilt I completed, the raffle quilt for the kids' school.  It's probably how I did the Dresden plate Minky quilt, too, and I'll bet I'm hallucinating this whole idea that I managed to do it on the new work table.

(In case you're interested in the CORRECT way to baste your quilt on a table surface rather than the floor, there are excellent instructions in the book Quilts! Quilts! Quilts! by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes). 


Essential Basting Supplies: Curved Safety Pins, Kwik Klip Pin Closer, and Pinot Grigio

Meanwhile, I'm just excited that the basting is behind me and I get to start quilting tomorrow!  I am not 100% sure how I'm going to quilt this one, but I do know that I'm going to start by stitching in the ditch along all of the non-black patches and along the borders.  I haven't decided whether I'm going to do that with black thread or with monofilament nylon "invisible" thread.  My new Westalee ruler foot and quilting rulers finally showed up a few days ago, so I'll probably want to test out some ruler work on this quilt.  Stay posted!

I'm linking up with WIPs on Wednesday at Esther's blog.  Have a great week.

Dilemma du Jour: In Which Rebecca Gives Up Brain Cells -- and Spelling -- for Lent

Embroidery Finished, but Needs Fixing!

So after seventeen long days of procrastination, I finally touched the Amish Baby 54-40 or Fight quilt again yesterday.  I finished adding the borders on January 31st, and then I digitized (for machine embroidery) a Dr. Seuss quote that is special to the baby's parents and agonized over where I should embroider it on the quilt that would be visible, but not look like "what is that doing there?"  I also digitized the quilt label information to embroider on the front of the quilt, because I don't like to add a separate label on the back of a Minky-backed quilt.  I really dislike doing machine embroidery, hence the delay in actually stitching all of this out, but last night I decided to JUST DO IT and get it over with so I could get to the fun quilting part!

Against my better judgment, which seems to have abandoned me, I did not stitch out a sample of either design.  It was just simple lettering, right?  As long as I stabilized properly it would be fine.  Hah.  Okay, so here's what I did right: Organ embroidery sharp needle in size 75/11, black OESD PolyMesh cutaway stabilizer, and I very carefully measured, marked, and hooped the quilt to ensure that the lines of text would stitch out straight and centered in the 1" wide light green border.  I found the little hoop clips that came with my Mega Hoop and even figured out how to attach them to the hoop:

Mega Hoop Clips Properly Positioned

I made sure the center of the design lined up with my centering marks on the quilt, and I used both auto basting options -- the hoop perimeter and the tight basting right around the design -- to guard against distortion during embroidery:

Auto Basting Completed, Ready to Stitch Design

But once my design started stitching on the quilt top, I saw that the tension was off -- black bobbin thread was showing at the edges of the satin stitched lettering.  I suppose I could have stopped, picked out the stitches, and started over after testing and trouble shooting, but I decided to proceed anyway, lowering the top tension ultimately from the default of 2.0 to 1.25, which was better, but still not perfect.  I wonder whether any of the 7 Series sewing machine updates made changes to the default embroidery tension?  The first time I ever embroidered on my 750 QE I had problems with the top thread looping and I resolved those issues by putting the embroidery thread on a stand behind my machine, putting a thread net on the spool, and passing the thread through a couple of additional thread guides, all of which increases tension on the upper thread.  I'm going to need to experiment now and see if I don't get better embroidery tension with the embroidery thread on the regular spool holder on the machine itself, either the vertical or horizontal spool pin.  But that's an adventure for another day.

Meanwhile, I decided that the bits of black thread don't bother me enough to try to rip the embroidery out and redo it, since it gives kind of a mottled look to the lettering that is similar to the mottled, textured look of the fabrics I used in the quilt.  Those stitches are so tiny and so close together that it would be a miracle if I could remove them without accidentally ripping a hole in the quilt top.  It would almost make more sense to remove and replace the borders (ugh!)  But next time?  Not only should I STITCH A SAMPLE FIRST, DUH -- but why did I even need to use black bobbin thread in the first place?  After all, I have lovely 50/2 Aurifil cotton Mako thread that matches every fabric in this quilt, that I bought for my quilting thread.  There is absolutely no reason why I could not have used the royal blue Aurifil thread in the needle AND bobbin for stitching these designs instead of Isacord polyester embroidery thread in the needle and OESD bobbin thread in the bobbin, and the tension perils of tiny satin stitched letters would have been invisible if I had matching thread in the bobbin. 

Bobbin Thread Showing On Top :-(

So, first design stitched, and aside from the tension I'm pretty pleased -- it's legible, it's centered, it's straight, and it didn't pucker my quilt top one iota:

On to the easy part, the embroidered quilt label info for the bottom right corner of the quilt.  I did not make further adjustments to the tension because I thought it would be better if both lines of embroidered text had black dots instead of one line black and blue and the other line all blue.  My label info design fit nicely into my Large Oval hoop, but other than that I followed the same procedure as before.  I did float an additional layer of the PolyMesh cutaway stabilizer beneath the hoop during embroidery.

The design stitched out great, once again perfectly straight and positioned exactly where I wanted it...  But there was one little problem:


Stitched With Love by a Nincompoop!

Do you see my mistake?  Here I'm so concerned with picking the perfect font and thread color, and where I'm going to position the embroidered text on the quilt, and which stabilizer will support the stitches without making that area of the quilt noticeably stiff, and making sure everything is straight and centered -- and I don't even notice that I only put one T in Charlotte! 

Oh, the Shame!

GROAN!!!  This is pretty bad, folks.  The new momma-to-be is a college professor, and I'm pretty sure she knows how to spell Charlotte.  It can't stay like this.

After sleeping on it, and looking at it again this morning, I think I need to carefully rip out just the "t" in Charlote.  Then I will write two "t"s in its place with a disappearing fabric marker, and use a satin stitch on the sewing machine (with the same width as the embroidered font) to manually stitch over the letters that I have marked.  Wish me luck!  If I botch it up royally, I can always take the borders off.  Actually, it just occurred to me that there's no reason I couldn't have embroidered the borders prior to attaching them to the quilt.  I cut them wide and then trim them to size after attaching them anyway, but if I embroidered the border before stitching it on I could have just hooped the stabilizer, drawn a straight line on it for positioning, and stuck the border in place with some 505 Temporary Spray Adhesive.  It would have made hooping easier.  Maybe next time!

Happy Ash Wednesday, everyone!  The kids are home again today because of ice on the roads in some parts of the county and more cold temps and precipitation expected this afternoon.  I just hope the weather doesn't get bad enough for Ash Wednesday service to be canceled at church tonight -- I like both of the anthems and I want to sing them!