Quick DIY Apple Pencil Holder + Progress on 1984 Sampler Custom Quilting

 Oh my gosh, you guys!  I completed a whole sewing project from start to finish last night in under an hour!  This is what it must feel like to own a sewing machine but NOT be a quilter!!  

A Sewing Project Completed Start to Finish in Under an Hour!

This is something I’ve been “fixing to do” for a couple of years now, just “waiting to get a round tuit” that never arrived…  No pattern; just eyeballed an old, stretched out elastic contraption that needed replacing and replicated it with some purple elastic from my garment supply stash and a little piece of jacquard ribbon to make it pretty.  This elastic strap slips on and off over my iPad case quickly and easily and has a channel stitched to securely hold my Apple Pencil.

I even used one of the high tech gizmos on the new B 990 sewing machine.  When top stitching my ribbon in place with Edgestitch Foot #10D, I turned on the laser that shows exactly where my needle is positioned to stitch on my project; see that red dot below on the black ribbon?

B 990 Laser Helps Position Edge Stitching

On previous machines, I would have tried out different out of center needle positions one click at a time, lowering the needle to see how far I was about to stitch from the edge, but it was faster (and more fun) to just turn on the red laser dot.  One, two clicks to the left, looks perfect, GO!  I only turned the laser on to select my needle position; did not leave it on for sewing.  I used two different utility stitches, the three step zigzag stitch to overcast the raw cut edges of my elastic to prevent fraying with use, and the triple straight stitch around my ribbon flower and along the edges of the long, skinny pocket for holding the Apple Pencil.  I used Mettler Metrosene all-purpose polyester thread and a Schmetz Stretch needle in size 90.  I wish I had a closer thread color match to the color of my elastic, but I wanted a strong poly thread for durability and I don’t have anywhere near the stash of colors in all purpose poly that I have for quilting, appliqué, embroidery etc.  This was an impulse project chosen primarily so I could procrastinate packing for my trip.  

Maybe I should do more projects that don’t take 6 years to finish?  

Speaking of projects that take years to finish…  I did get a bit more quilting done on Marybeth’s 1984 WIP sampler quilt this week.  I added some hand guided ruler work quilting to the three blocks that I quilted with computerized designs the last time I posted about this project:

Continuous Curves Ruler Quilting Added Around Digital Block Design

My hand guided quilting is nowhere near as nice as the computerized design but the block looked unfinished to me before.  I’m doing the best I can but it’s a learning process and if I keeping stopping to rip out quilting and redo it, I’ll never get the quilt back to Marybeth!  

Spirit Song Update: The Borders and Blue Triangles Have All Been Quilted

I am finished with the borders of my Spirit Song quilt!!!  I am finished with the blue thread!  I am so EXCITED!!  I rolled the quilt back up to the top last night -- for the last time.  Today I'll do some experiments off to the side of my quilt to decide whether I'm rethreading with So Fine or with the lighter weight Bottom Line thread in the needle as well as in the bobbin, and then I get to start quilting background fills in all of those white/neutral HSTs.

With the skinny inner blue border, where I'm quilting a 1/2" string of pearls design, I had previously been marking the circles with a stencil and then trying to stitch my circles freehand, following the marked line.  Last night, I decided to try the Quilter's Groove ProPebbles template in the border that I'd been using for my "lollipop flowers" on the blue HSTs all along.  And OH, MY GOODNESS, what a difference!!  Here is my best effort at quilting half inch circles freehand, following perfect circles marked on the quilt surface with a stencil:

...And here is what my circles looked like when I skipped the step of marking them with the stencil and just quilted them with my Quilter's Groove ProPebbles template, scooting the template along the border as I quilted one cute little circle after another:

Can you believe these circles were quilted by the same quilter, on the same day?!  And it was so much FASTER, too!  Oh my gosh.  I'm never going to make these any other way.  And next time I quilt a string of pearls, I'm going to use thread that makes sure EVERYONE can see it!

I LOVE THIS LITTLE GADGET!  So of course I had to order the other sizes...  I'm becoming quite the ruler junky.  

I know it's only Monday, but I'm thinking ahead for my To-Do List on Tuesday.  It would be awesome if I could get ALL of the background fill quilting completed on this quilt in the next 7 days, but having never done this type of quilting on an actual quilt before, I don't really know how long it will take me.  Also, I haven't pieced anything in forever, and I think it's time to show my domestic sewing machine a little love!  With that in mind, here are my goals for this week:

1. Experiment with different background threads, pick one, and rethread my machine
2. Spend at least 30 minutes quilting background fills every day
3. Figure out the code for my Long Arm Learning linky party button
4. Cut and piece the next block for Anders' Beware the Ishmaelites sampler quilt
5. Make binding for Spirit Song and set aside

I'm linking up today's post with:

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

·       BOMs Away Katie Mae Quilts  

TUESDAY

·       Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at Clever Chameleon

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

Good Times "Under the Stars" Quilt Kit Ordered, as Spirit Song Quilting Progresses to the Borders

I know, I know -- I was trying so hard to be good and not shop for new projects until finishing my Spirit Song quilt, but Green Fairy put the Under the Stars kit (using fabrics from the Good Times collection from American Jane) on their clearance sale for half price.  I have always admired star quilts similar to this one and I am so looking forward to making this quilt!

Under the Stars is designed to finish at 88" x 95" and the pattern description says it's "easier than it looks" due to strip piecing construction.  I was not able to find a photograph of an actual sample quilt for this kit, just the graphic rendering image above, so I don't know whether there are Y-seams or anything else about it.  I've never made a quilt from a kit before, either, so that makes me a little nervous.  I'm not sure how stingy they are with fabric in a kit, you know?  When I purchase fabric for a quilt, I always pad the yardage to allow for my inevitable cutting mistakes, and sometimes I still have to run back to the fabric store (or scour the Internet) for more fabric when I run out.  I wonder whether I should purchase additional fabric from this collection just in case, but who knows which one(s) I'd need more of?

By the way, I blame Karen of Quilts... etc. for this NewFO.  If she had not told everyone about the sale at Green Fairy Quilts, and I hadn't clicked her link out of curiosity to see the kit she was interested in, then I would never have even seen this quilt.  Once I fell in love with it, and found out that Karen had ordered hers, that was the end of my will power to resist.  Of course, Karen is WAY more productive than I am, and she will probably whip up her version of this quilt in the time it takes me to cut the fabric -- but maybe seeing her progress online will help me stay motivated!  :-)

So, as I'm looking at that image of the Under the Stars quilt, the only thing I'm not 100% in love with is the borders.  That could be an opportunity to "tweak" the kit and make it my own.  I'll have to think about that more when my kit comes in the mail and I can see the fabrics in person.  An appliqué border would look great with the stars, or maybe just a larger scale border print fabric if I could find one that coordinates with the fabrics.  Changing up the border would also give me the opportunity to make this quilt larger if I wanted to. But meanwhile, back to the quilt on the frame!

I actually AM making progress on my Spirit Song quilt.  I finished all of the ruler work and FMQ using peach thread last night, and rolled the quilt back up to the beginning to begin the next thread color.  At first I thought I'd do the background fills next in all of the white/off white/neutral fabric patches, so I rethreaded my machine with white thread last night.  But this morning I'm reconsidering.  It might be a better idea to quilt the wide outer borders first before adding more quilting to the center of the quilt.

And what will I quilt in this border?  I'm leaning towards a blending purple thread and a design similar to this one that I found on Pinterest by Rose City Quilter:

I just have to figure out how to mark the main triangle outlines, but then I should be able to quilt the straight lines without marking (hopefully!), either using the straight lines on my regular rectangular ruler, or I could try using my ProLine 2 ruler from Quilter's Groove to quilt those lines without marking them first.  I'm definitely experiencing some Quilt Marking Fatigue at this point!

I'm not an affiliate for Quilter's Groove rulers or anything like that.  I just really like them, after taking Lisa Calle's Rulers for Rookies workshop where she taught us how to use them.  Like all of Lisa's Quilter's Groove rulers, the ProLine series has lots of helpful reference lines etched into each ruler so you always have a way to line it up with a seam line or previously stitched line of quilting to maintain accuracy -- without extensive marking of your quilt ahead of time.  The way the ProLine rulers work is hard to explain, but pretty easy to use if you watch the videos and follow Lisa's instructions.  The width of the groove in the middle of this ruler is how you "measure" the spacing of the straight lines, so the ProLine 2 shown above is designed for 1/2" spaced lines.  She also has versions of this ruler available for spacing straight lines 1" apart, 1/4" apart, 1/8" apart, and 1/16" apart (for stitching straight line fills).  The ProLine 2 was included in my class kit when I took the Rulers for Rookies workshop at Paducah last Spring, and I just now ordered the other sizes.  I didn't think it was a big deal to mark all of my lines first when I was just quilting practice blocks on muslin, but now that I've been slaving away with all of the ruler work on my Spirit Song quilt, I'm singing a different tune!  The ProLine 8 might have helped me keep my squiggle width more even in my ruler work design:

I might use the ProLine 8 or the ProLine 16 for some straight line fills in the neutral background fabrics, too.  Can't experiment with rulers that you don't have, you know what I mean?

I do know what I want to quilt in the narrow blue border.  Half inch CIRCLES!  Also known as "string of pearls."  I'm planning to mark them with my Building Blocks Full Line Stencil and Pounce Chalk.  I am hoping that I can quilt rounder circles if I have them marked first.  Maybe the Pounce Chalk will adhere to the blue border fabric better than it did to the heavily starched fabrics in the interior of my quilt.

I'm linking today's post up with the following linky parties:

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

·       Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

Happy Birthday to Me! 47 Is Gonna Be My Year of Fearless Free-Motion and Ruler Work Quilting

I am finally having fun with free motion quilting on my long arm machine!  Yay!  The chalk pounce stenciling is imperfect, as it smudges and disappears while I'm quilting, but all I really need is a vague guide anyway for spacing and the angle of the curls.  If I mark just one motif with chalk at a time and then quilt it right away, it serves its purpose -- and I have zero fear that the chalk won't come out of my quilt, since it's all bouncing right off the quilt without settling into the fibers in the first place.  

Not Perfect, But Not Hideous, Either.  I Like It!

After being punished for my impatience the other day with a tension tantrum on the back of my quilt that took hours to rip out, I resumed my practice of slapping fabric scraps down "in the margins" of my excess batting and backing, to test my stitching before I start quilting and after every bobbin change, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Extra Wide Margins of Excess Batting and Backing for Tension Testing

I have approximately 9 1/2" of excess batting and backing on both sides of my quilt top.  That gives me plenty of room for these little warmup/test stitching scraps on both sides of the quilt, and there's one additional bonus.  Having that much extra batting and backing on both sides means my side clamps are well out of the way of my ruler base, so I don't need curtain rods, yard sticks, pool noodles, or any other contraptions to lift the clamps out of the way of the machine.

Hobbs Tuscany Wool Batting, My Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties Quilt

Speaking of the batting...  Compare the batting in the photo above (my Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties quilt from 2018) to the batting in the previous photo of my Spirit Song quilt.  Spirit Song's batting is Quilter's Dream Cotton Select, much thinner than the Hobbs Tuscany Wool batting I used for the Disco Kitties.  The Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly blend that I think of as my "basic" go-to batting has a little more loft than the 100% cotton batting, but not nearly so much as the wool.  If I had an 80/20 batting under my Spirit Song top right now, I would have better definition and dimension to my quilting designs so you could see them better, and I would also have a little more leeway with tension fluctuations because of the thicker batting allowing more room for the stitches to lock together inside the quilt sandwich.  However, the 100% cotton Quilter's Dream Select batting will probably shrink and pucker more in my Spirit Song quilt, giving it a nice crinkly texture and helping to camouflage the wobbles and bobbles of my developing skills.  Every batting has its plusses and minuses, and it all depends on what you want for each quilt.

But I digress...  Back to the quilt at hand.  This is one of my DIY 24 pound vellum paper stencils, traced with ultra fine Sharpie marker and perforated along the drawn lines by sewing with an unthreaded domestic sewing machine.  I've tried multiple different brands and colors of chalk powder for transferring the stencils and none of them would work if my design was super intricate or required a great degree of accuracy, but the regular white Pounce Chalk with the pounce pad is working best on most of my colored triangles, and on the fabrics that were too light for the white chalk to be visible, I used the Pounce Chalk in blue that is supposed to need to be washed out of the quilt.  Ha, ha, HA!  I WISH it stayed on my quilt long enough to need washing out, instead of bouncing right off the quilt surface immediately.  Your mileage may vary, though (especially if you're not a starch fiend like I am), so please do your own testing before using colored chalk on your quilts.

DIY Vellum Stencil, Ready for Pounce Chalk Transfer

It is definitely not perfect, but each one gets a little better.  This is where it pays off to be "practicing" by quilting a real quilt.  If I was doing this design on muslin with contrasting thread, all I would see would be the shortcomings.  On these gloriously cheerful fabrics, those oopses are less noticeable and it's a lot more FUN!

Ta Da!  Even Though the Orange Ones Look Like Snakes...

After quilting those free-motion curls around the center triangles, I move to the ruler work in the outer triangles, all of which is marked with the washout blue marking pen.  It's too humid where I live for the purple air erasable marker to work for me; that one disappears faster than the chalk powder.

HandiQuilter VersaTool (with Pink Glo Tape Added)

I'm able to use the etched lines on my Quilter's Groove ProMini 2 1/2" x 6" ruler for most of my ruler work on this quilt, lining up the 90 degree and 45 degree angle etched lines on the rulers with my piecing seams in the quilt top.  But, for this little boomerang shape, it's not a 45 degree angle so there's no reference line to match up on my ProLine ruler.  The ruler needs to be positioned 1/4" away from where I want the stitching line to end, because that's the distance from the outside of the hopping foot to the needle.  With time, quilters are able to eyeballthat distance fairly accurately, but I'm not there yet.  Enter the HandiQuilter VersaTool ruler!

HandiQuilter VersaTool with Glow Line Tape 

They call it the VersaTool because each side of the ruler can be used for something different, but so far I've only used this ruler for the straight edge on the left that has notches for quarter inch alignment on either end.  Instead of guesstimating that your ruler is 1/4" from where you want your stitches, you match up the etched line on the ruler with where you want your stitches to end, and that automatically puts the straight edge of the ruler right where it needs to be.  I couldn't see that etched line very well with the bright lights and glare off the ruler, though, so I added little bits of low-tack adhesive fluorescent pink Glow Line Tape to the back edge.  I love that stuff -- bought it originally for marking where a quarter edge seam would be on one of my sewing machines, but end up using it all the time to clearly mark lines on rulers -- especially rotary cutting rulers, because sometimes when I'm cutting strips on autopilot I accidentally line up my fabric with the wrong ruler line and waste fabric due to miscuts...  It took me nearly an hour to find my Glow Line Tape in a messy pile in my studio, but it was totally worth the hunt.

The two donut-looking clear stickers at the top of the ruler are TrueGrip non-slip ruler grips.  They work well for preventing rulers from slipping, but they are pricey and they are a little on the thick side.  The long, clear, textured piece of tape along the left straight edge of the ruler is 3M's Nexcare Flexible Clear Tape, a super cheap solution for slipping rulers that you can find in the first aid section of your local pharmacy.  It tears easily, sticks to the back of your ruler, and prevents unintentional sliding of the ruler without giving it a death grip, making it perfect for a ruler like this one that you may need to slide on purpose to stitch a longer line.  It's also thin and transparent, so it doesn't obstruct my view of what I'm quilting like some of the other nonslip products do.

Pink Glo Tape Makes Etched Ruler Line Easier to See

Maybe you can see this better against my cutting mat.  The Glow Line Tape is exactly a quarter inch wide, and I believe the Nexcare tape is 1" wide.  Both of these tapes peel off acrylic rulers very easily when you want to remove or reposition them, leaving no sticky residue behind.

My VersaTool Works Even Better Now

At some point, when I get around to using that 90 degree angle or the curve on the left, I'll probably add a couple more pieces of the Nexcare tape near those ruler edges as well.

Feathery Swirls Look Better From a Distance

Aside from that little boomerang detail, the only other ruler I need for this design is my 2 1/2" x 6" Quilter's Groove ProMini.  I don't need to worry about eyeballing the quarter inch because the Quilter's Groove Pro rulers have clearly visible white markings that I can line up with seam lines, stitched lines, or drawn lines on the quilt surface to ensure the ruler is properly positioned to put my stitches where I want them to go.  You can tell these were designed by a long arm quilter, because when I want to quilt a straight line on a quilt, there is almost always a reference line etched into Lisa's rulers that matches up with some kind of reference line on my quilt.  

The One Ruler I Can't Live Without: 6 inch Pro Mini from Quilter's Groove

Here's what it looks like once I've finished quilting over all of those lines that I so carefully marked on my quilt:

Design Stitched Over Blue Marked Lines

That always looks kind of ugly to me, especially on this triangle where I accidentally set a wet scrap of batting on top of the marked design.  Whoops!  But then I paint over the stitched lines with water, using a cheap watercolor paintbrush, and voila:

It Looks So Much Better After the Lines Disappear!

I see some blurry blue in a couple spots in the photo that I missed in person, so I'll hit them with some more water and make sure all the blue is gone before I advance the quilt.

Last but not least, I have to show you guys the View from Underneath the Quilt Frame!  

I Crawled On the Floor to Take This Picture For You 

Oh yes, I did mention a birthday.  I turned 47 yesterday, and it was a relaxing rainy day at home with no one trying to force-feed me cake.  My favorite kind of birthday!  My mom and one of my sisters got me some quilting books that were on my Amazon wish list, my other sister got me a fabulous new Nest reed diffuser for my studio, and my husband got me a grownup coloring book full of birds and flowers that contains all kinds of inspiration for quilting designs and appliqué.   

Birthday Goodies!  They Know Me So Well!

My sons bought me a Henry VIII coffee mug that has all six of his wives on it -- but they disappear when you fill it with hot liquid, and then it tells you how each one died.  Love it!

If This Had Been From My Husband, It Might Have Made Me Nervous...

Bless their hearts -- they know their mama likes her hot tea, her coffee, and her history -- and they spotted Margaret George's book, The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers. A Novel on my bookshelves.  :-)

Well, one more "quick blog post" that ran on longer than I intended it to!  I hardly know what day it is anymore.   If today is Thursday, then tomorrow my oldest is headed to Hilton Head Island for the summer.  He will be working at the grocery store and working on his independent living/adulting skills by balancing fun time at the beach with having to get up and get to work on time, and hopefully he'll save up some money for when he goes back to college in the Fall.  My younger son has his last full week of his high school junior year before we can all take a break from this hell that is "online learning."  

Stay safe, y'all, and happy stitching!

I'm linking up today's overly long post with the following linky parties:

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

·       Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

·       Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

SATURDAY

·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

Spirit Song Ruler Work and Free Motion Fills

And the beat goes on...  Here's what I accomplished in my studio after dinner last night:

Quilting Progress as of Last Night

I'm feeling a little better about it than I was a few days ago.  As you can see in the photo above, I decided to fill in every other rectangle in that "piano keys" design with bacd-and-forth scribbles.  That makes my diagonally oriented quilting design stand out more, like I wanted, and I'm also finding that I like the way the 50 weight So Fine thread looks better when the quilting stitches are denser rather than spaced farther apart.  The photo below shows that same piano key design before I filled in every other rectangle with the squiggles:

Piano Keys Without Fill Work

I had to rip out those two diagonal lines of stitching that I quilted in the wrong direction a few days ago, and restitched them correctly.  I will be marking those lines in all of the other blocks going forward -- it's a lot faster to draw two quick lines with the marker than it is to rip out two lines of incorrect stitching!  I'm also following Judi Madsen's tip of placing a dot in the rectangles that need a fill, so I don't mess up that pattern as I'm moving around the quilt.

The ruler work with squiggle fills is taking a VERY. LONG. TIME.  But I've discovered that the Quilt Glide feature on my APQS Millennium works really well for the little squiggles.  Love!!  Quilt Glide is a hybrid between stitch regulation mode and manual mode, giving you the best of both worlds -- the machine is speeding up and slowing down as necessary to keep your stitch length nice and even as you move the machine, but the needle keeps cycling up and down when you pause, which gives much smoother operation overall for the little detail quilting.  Kind of like a power mower or a self-propelled vacuum cleaner, the Quilt Glide feature eliminates that little bit of resistance you get with the pure stitch regulated mode every time you pause in your quilting.  

Fixing Diagonals and Adding Scribble Fills

After fixing the incorrect diagonals and filling in the piano key border on the previous day's quilting, I started in on this next section.  Ruler work is marked in blue washout marker and the swirly-cue design is faintly marked in chalk.  

This Section Marked, Ready to Quilt

I quilted the ruler work in that top left triangle first, the coral fabric with yellow lemons, and then I moved to the swirly-cues that i'd marked in white chalk powder.  Those free motion swirls go so much faster than the ruler work, but I like the contrast between strong, straight ruler lines and softer, curvy freehand designs.  Both are needed to get the look I'm after.  I was just surprised to discover how much longer the ruler takes, with all of the starts and stops to reposition the ruler, and the careful backtracking along previously stitched lines.

Curly Lines Completed, Now Ruler Work Quilted Along Blue Washout Guide Lines

I'm almost exclusively using my 6" Pro Lines ruler from Quilter's Groove.  It's just long enough for the lines I'm quilting without being too unwieldy, and those handy, perfectly placed perpendicular and 45 degree angle reference lines make it so much faster and easier to line up correctly each time I reposition the ruler.

This Section Finished (Except for Background Fills to be Stitched in Off White Last)

At this point, I was feeling pretty gleeful.  Doesn't that look CUTE?!  Just like my drawing!  I'm so glad I decided to add the squiggles in my piano key border.  Like all of my free motion work, those squiggles are kind of irregular on close inspection, but I love how they look from a distance.  The goal is to get as close to the straight line boundaries without crossing them,  to keep the turns rounded rather than boxy or pointed, and to maintain a relatively even spacing between the squiggle lines and from one block to the next.  I know these things will improve as I work my way through the quilt.

The View From Below the Frame

At the end of the evening, I had to crawl under the frame and take this picture of the light coming down through the needle holes.  

But, in order to check stitch quality, I had to cover the needle holes with a few sheets of paper to block the light coming through.  I did discover a tension problem where I began quilting:

AAACK!!!  EYELASHES OF DESPAIR!!!

I'm not REALLY in despair, but those stitches will need to come out and be requilted.  What looks like eyelashes on the curves is the top thread being pulled WAY below the quilt surface.  If I left that alone, the thread would be hanging loose on the back of the quilt after the first wash.  More practice, that's all!  I probably should get into the habit of checking the tension every time I start quilting and periodically as I'm working.

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

Anyway, that's what I got done yesterday.  This would be EVEN PRETTIER in gold metallic thread instead of the matte, pale peach So Fine, but then my wobbles and oopses would be more obvious, too.  Metallic thread has its own challenges, too, so I'll save that for another quilt on another day.

I'm linking today's post with:

TUESDAY

·       Let’s Do Some Ruler Work at The Quilt Yarn

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

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