Quilt Finishes for Mike, Kim, Jane, and Carrie + Halo Progress

Happy Sunday and Happy Spring!  I have four clients' quilts to share with you today and then I'll wrap up with a couple photos of how my Jen Kingwell Halo Quilt is coming along.  Lots of ground to cover and I know you're all here for the eye candy anyway, so I'll try to keep my comments brief!

Mike's Thank-You Quilt: Cherrywood 9-Patch with Amoeba Quilting

Detail of Amoeba Quilting on Cherrywood 9-Patch Quilt

This first quilt I'm sharing began as a very traditional pieced top that was donated to our guild from the estate of a former guild member.  The quilt top and backing are all Cherrywood hand dyed fabrics, with a suede-like look and rich but muted colors (this post contains affiliate links).  The Cherrywood hand-dyed fabrics are fabulous; I've heard of this line but never worked with them before.  I love how understated they are, and the quilt top reminded me of Amish quilts.  I could have played that up by quilting a traditional feather design in an inconspicuous blending thread.

However...  I was asked to quilt this top so that it can be gifted to Mike, the young man who sets up the room for our monthly meetings at the Tyvola Senior Center and stays late on the first Wednesday each month for our meetings.  Mike doesn't give off an Amish vibe!  Given free reign, I choose Karlee Porter's Amoeba edge-to-edge quilting to inject some youthful, modern energy into this quilt.  I love it and I hope Mike will enjoy it, too!

60 x 60 Cherrywood Quilt for Mike

Not sure what batting is in this quilt as it was provided to me along with the quilt top.  I used King Tut 40 wt variegated cotton thread in Saint George for this quilt, with shades of caramel and rusty coral that were perfectly matched to the Cherrywood fabrics and the matte luster of cotton that I am loving lately.

Quilt Finishes for Ramona and Steffanie: PacMan and Pussy Cats!

Good morning, quilter friends!  I have TWO fabulous clients' quilts to share with you today, both of them stitched in yummy variegated cotton quilting threads.  Since I babbled on and on for way too long about my Kaffe Fassett Skirt Squirrel in my last post, I'll try to be more concise today.  (Famous last words...)

Ramona's PacMan Quilt

Ramona's PacMan Quilt

I finished quilting this for Ramona of Doodlebugs and Rosebuds several weeks ago and I have been dying to share it with you.  Ramona's quilt is a strikingly modern reimagining of the classic Drunkard's Path quilt pattern, and although "PacMan" wasn't the kit name, that's what she and her husband nicknamed the quilt while she was working on it.  

PacMan Detail, Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut Quilting Design

Ramona used Moda Grunge fabrics for her quilt (this post contains affiliate links), and she used this AccuQuilt Drunkard's Path die to quickly and accurately cut out all of those curved pieces.  

Thread Pairings for Long Arm Quilting: What Are YOUR Favorites?

My "quilting time" yesterday was spent cleaning, oiling and warming up my long arm machine so I could do 10 minutes or so of practice scribble quilting, oiling my maple butcher block cutting table with Boos Oil (haven't done that in a LONG time, since the table has been completely covered with piles of fabric!), and winding an assortment of bobbins for my long arm machine.  

Practice Scribble "Warmups" and Tension Testing

One of the things that feels newfangled to me about longarm quilting (as opposed to domestic sewing machine best practices) is how many professional longarm quilters routinely pair different threads in the needle and bobbin rather than sticking with the same thread top and bobbin as is usually recommended for domestic sewing machines.  If YOU are a long arm quilter reading this, please let me know in the comments what YOUR favorite thread pairings are.  I am all in favor of learning from other quilters' experience when possible!

When I was struggling with a variegated 40 weight cotton King Tut thread last Fall, someone somewhere told me to try using 50 weight matte polyester So Fine thread in the bobbin with my King Tut, and although that sounded very risqué to me -- polyester with cotton!  50 weight with 40 weight! -- but I gave it a try and my stitches looked MUCH better front and back with that combination.  Who knew?!  

Thread Pairing Possibilities: So Fine, YLI Machine Quilting Cotton, Bottom Line, Glide, and King Tut

Although I know that a 40 weight thread isn't ideal for dense quilting or for designs requiring backtracking, I do own quite a bit of those delicious variegated 40 weight cotton quilting threads in my stash, both large cones of Superior's King Tut as well as YLI's 40 weight cotton Machine Quilting Thread, which looks and behaves the same in my machine as the King Tut.  I am considering using a few of these threads on my Spirit Song quilt, but I only had black, white, and neutral So Fine on my shelf, and none of those options are very good for blending with the top threads.  Superior's web site said that they were not currently shipping orders due to the pandemic situation (and I did not even think to look on Amazon, duh) -- so I went to APQS dealer Quilted Joy's online store to see whether she carried So Fine.  She didn't, but she had Bottom Line 60 weight polyester and I know that thread is another favorite staple thread of many longarm quilters, so I ordered some Bottom Line cones that would coordinate with my 40 weight cotton variegated threads and that's what you see in the photo above.  [From left to right, the 50 weight matte polyester Superior's So Fine is the off-white thread cone in the back row, the horizontal spools in front are all the 40 weight cotton YLI Machine Quilting thread; the pink, peach, light blue, and solid periwinkle cones are all the 60 weight polyester Superior's Bottom Line, the darker blue cone at center back is 40 weight trilobal polyester Fil-Tec's Glide, and the two cones of blue and purple variegated thread are 40 weight cotton Superior's King Tut.]

Glide 40 wt Trilobal Polyester on Left, Bottom Line 60 wt Polyester on Right

I was delighted with how quickly my package of Bottom Line threads showed up after I'd ordered them from Quilted Joy, but I had mistakenly believed that Bottom Line was a matte polyester thread like So Fine when I ordered it.  I was surprised by its slick surface ( as opposed to the "grabby" texture of a matte thread) and slight sheen, and not sure whether the Bottom Line would be a good pairing with my 40 weight cotton threads, after all.  As you see in the photo above, Bottom Line is not hyper-shiny like Glide thread, but it's definitely not matte like So Fine, as shown in the photo below:

So Fine 50 wt Matte Polyester on Left, Bottom Line 60 wt Polyester on Right

Here's an example of two threads I was hoping to use together, the variegated King Tut in the needle and the solid periwinkle Bottom Line in the bobbin:  

40 wt Cotton King Tut on Left, Bottom Line 60 wt Polyester on Right

There is a HUGE size difference between these two threads, for one thing.  The 60 weight Bottom Line is a LOT skinnier than the 50 weight So Fine, and WAY, way skinnier than the 40 weight King Tut.  I know a lot of longarm quilters like to use a slightly lighter weight thread in the bobbin for a variety of reasons (more thread fits on a bobbin so bobbins last longer before running out, and lighter weight threads not creating as much buildup and stiffness with dense quilting, for instance), but is heavy 40 weight combined with hair-thin 60 weight too extreme of a combination?  

Then, about that surface texture thing.  I know that a matte thread with a microscopic roughness to the surface can be kind of "grabby" -- grabbing at the top thread when the two threads lock together in the needle hole to form a stitch, grabbing at Minky backing or batting and pulling it up through the needle hole, in some instances.  What I'm not sure of is whether, all else being equal, is it best to pair a grabby top thread like King Tut with a grabby bobbin thread like So Fine, or would I get better stitches if I paired the grabby top thread with a slick bobbin thread like So Fine or Glide?  After all, the visual impact of two different thread sheens is nil since the bobbin thread is only on the back of the quilt and the needle thread is only on the front.  One combination that I did NOT think to try with my 40 weight cotton thread is putting 40 weight Glide (slick, shiny polyester) in the bobbin.  Hmmm...

Anyway, while my longarm machine was warming up (running for 10-15 minutes with the bobbin removed and the needle unthreaded past the takeup lever, to distribute the drop of oil I'd placed in the hook race and to wake Millie up from her long winter's nap), I wound a bunch of bobbins and organized them in plastic bobbin cases so I'd know what kind of thread each one was.

M-Class Bobbins, Organized and Ready to Go

I wound those two bobbins with King Tut during an earlier, unsuccessful experiment -- but I can't bear to just waste the thread, so they stay wound with King Tut until I run out of empty bobbins!  I've got one case set up for matte threads (I am planning to try Aurifil 50 weight cotton in the top and bobbin at some point, since Lisa Calle told us in class that's her favorite quilting thread), and the Glide 60 and Glide 40 sections in the other case have been labeled in anticipation that I'll be trying those threads in the bobbin in the future, too.  I did use Glide 40 in the top and bobbin successfully previously, but not since I switched my machine from the L size "Smart Bobbin" to the bigger M-Class bobbins.  I also have an assortment of Magna-Glide and SuperBob prewound bobbins in my stash, so I feel like I'm ready to play now.

Possible Quilting Plan for Spirit Song, 59 x 75

...Meanwhile, I've been thinking about how to quilt Spirit Song.  (See iPad doodle above).  I like the secondary design created at the block intersections and want to emphasize that with the quilting almost as if the quilt had a diagonal setting alternating two different blocks rather than a straight horizontal setting of all the same blocks.  That means I won't be doing SID (Stitch In the Ditch) quilting of the horizontal and vertical seams between my 16" blocks.  My green lines represent where I will be doing SID, and the pale blue lines are where I will be doing additional straight lines to emphasize the diamond effect -- those are the quilting lines that I thought would look cool in the variegated 40 weight cotton threads, by the way, with no backtracking involved.  The off-white areas will be quilted with denser fills in the off-white So Fine.  Then in yellow, I started thinking about how to quilt the borders.  I sketched in some feathers first, but that was too fussy and too traditional.  But I think I'm liking the idea of extending those straight lines from the interior of the quilt out through the borders, like an echo or a ghost.  The purple variegated King Tut looks really pretty against that border print fabric, especially if it's just going to be straight line ruler work there.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking at the moment.  All is subject to change.  The most important thing I wanted to work out was which seams should be SID since I'll do all of the SID on the entire quilt first before going back to do the ruler work, and finally the fills.  I'll be loading this 59" x 75" top sideways for quilting so I can see as much of it while I'm working on it as possible, and also to minimize the downtime of stopping to advance the quilt to the next section.  

Again, those of you who are longarm quilters, please let me know in the comments about which threads you keep the same, top and bobbin, and which threads you like to pair with a different bobbin thread.  I'm especially interested in learning what folks like to use in the bobbin with monofilament thread in the needle or with metallic thread in the needle.

I'm linking this post with ·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  .

Silk Serendipity and Skirt Stymied, Stagnating

FrankenWhiggish Rose Meets YLI Silk Thread

Happy Friday, everyone!  It's been a mixed week in my sewing world, so let's start with the good, shall we?  After breaking my left thumb and right collar bone in a bicycle accident on March 22nd, I was able to resume my FrankenWhiggish Rose needleturn applique project this week.  Yay!  I still can't bend that thumb normally and it hurts too much if I try to use my left thumb and pointer finger to precrease the applique shapes along the stitching line, but I can do that with my right hand.  A mere fourteen weeks after breaking my thumb, I can finally use it enough to manage hand stitching again.  I never before realized how important it was to be able to pinch and hold the folded fabric edge with my left hand in order to successfully stitch with my right hand.  And it feels really good to have a relaxing slow-stitching project in my lap again in the evenings and when I'm away from my sewing room.

Oren Bayan Mercerized Cotton Machine Embroidery Thread

However, what has NOT been fun or relaxing is the way-too-frequent thread breaks I've been experiencing, and that was happening before the accident, too.  For my first needleturn applique blocks (for my not-yet-finished Jingle BOM quilt) I was using spools of Oren Bayan, a Turkish mercerized cotton machine embroidery thread collection that I bought by mistake on eBay several years ago.  That worked pretty well for me, but I have not been able to find that brand in the U.S. and I didn't have good color matches for my FrankenWhiggesh Rose fabrics.  So I purchased Mettler 60/2 fine cotton machine embroidery thread instead, which looks pretty much the same as the Oren Bayan to my naked eye.  But, for whatever reason, it's breaking and snarling ferociously on me despite generous applications of Thread Heaven conditioner, and the thread breaks are really slowing me down.

I know that some people do use Mettler 60/2 cotton thread successfully for hand applique, but I also know that I tend to make really tiny stitches when I get my groove going (some have told me that my stitches are TOO small) and that means that my length of thread might be pulled through the fabric twice as many times as it might be for someone else.  I'm pretty sure that my thread breakage is due to my Mettler thread not being strong enough to withstand that repeated stress and friction.  I briefly considered that my needle might be the culprit, either due to a microscopic burr in the eye of the needle or friction at the eye from a too-small needle eye for the thread diameter, but if either of those scenarios were to blame I would be seeing thread breaks happening right at the eye.  I'm using a length of thread roughly the length of my forearm, and I'm having my thread break approximately halfway to two-thirds of the way in after I've taken at least a hundred tiny stitches without a break.  The kinking and snarling tendency happens throughout stitching.

My Successful Applique Combo: YLI #100 Silk Thread and Size 12 Bohin Applique Needles

I'm not about to go to a heavier thread like a 50/3 cotton, because I want my stitches to remain invisible.  Instead, I decided to try YLI Silk #100, which is the preferred thread of Jeanne Sullivan and many other (though not all!) applique experts.  As with the Oren Bayan thread, no one carries the YLI Silk thread locally, but there are a lot of online sources for YLI.  I ordered a selection of colors from Uncommon Threads, which is located right around the corner from me in Rock Hill, South Carolina, so I got my thread pretty quickly via USPS.  After experimenting with a lot of different needles for applique, I've settled on the Bohin applique needles (thin enough to leave tiny holes and precisely placed stitches, but stronger than the milliners or straw needles which constantly bend and even snap on me).  The size 12 Bohin applique needle is a perfect match to the YLI Silk #100 thread, and when I tested this combo last night I was in stitching heaven.  It feels very different to stitch with silk thread because it is SO slippery smooth -- I'm used to the way the cotton thread kind of grabs the fabric with each stitch.  However, I had zero kinks, zero knots, and zero thread breaks -- which means zero profanity and a happier household.  One annoyance with silk thread is its tendency to slide right out of the needle and unthread itself constantly, but I used a trick that I read about somewhere, threading the eye of the needle and then looping around and threading it again from the same direction.  That worked really well for me. 

So, one sewing problem solved for me this week.  Hooray!  I'd love to tell you that my skirt project was coming along just as nicely, but...

Tracing Skirt Pattern onto Pellon Sew-In Interfacing

The first thing I did was to carefully trace all three of my OOP (Out of Print) New Look #2708 skirt pattern pieces (in what I THOUGHT was my size) for my skirt onto nonfusible Pellon interfacing.  I did this to avoid cutting the original pattern in case I wanted to make a different size after sewing up the muslin, or in case I want to make the pattern in another size several years from now.  I'm glad I took the time to do that -- the interfacing pattern is a lot sturdier than the flimsy pattern tissue anyway and if I like the finished skirt, my traced pattern will easily stand up to repeated use for multiple projects. 

Traced Pattern Pieces, Ready to Go

I traced the pattern pieces with pencil, by the way.  I considered using fine point Sharpie or another ink pen so I could see the lines and markings more clearly, but it bled right through the interfacing and the underlying pattern tissue, and the last thing I need is Sharpie marks all over my butcher block worktable surface!  Then I used those pattern pieces to cut out my skirt from cheap cotton muslin fabric.  I started sewing the mock up skirt together according to the pattern instructions, and I panicked when it came time to sew the waistband to the top of the skirt because the two fabric edges did not seem to be matching up. 

Yikes!  Why Is There Extra Fabric???

There seemed to be a LOT more fabric along the waistband edge (or the "yoke," as the pattern instructions call this piece) than there was along the edge of the skirt to which it should be sewn.  Could this be a pattern drafting mistake, or something I did wrong in construction?  All I had done so far was sewn the side seams on the skirt and on the waistband, and I sewed those seams at a precise 5/8" as per the pattern instructions.  When I texted this picture to my mom, she said that it was possible that my stay stitching at the top edge of the skirt pieces had drawn that layer in imperceptibly.  But I did not see ANY visible puckering when I was stay stitching.  Well, part of the reason for the test garment was to figure out how to construct the skirt, so I decided to pin the two pieces together within an inch of their lives, sew the seam, and then evaluate it afterwards.  I am familiar with sewing a concurve piece to a convex piece from my Drunkard's Path quilt blocks, but quilt piecing uses 1/4" seams instead of the 5/8" seams in this pattern.  It made sense to me that even if the opposite curved pieces matched perfectly at the seam line, the wider seam allowances could cause it to look like one piece was too long for the other at the cut fabric edge.  So I pinned the two layers together very closely, matching the notches, right side seam, center front and center back, and I carefully sewed them together.

Pins, Pins, and More Pins

Now, I pinned these pieces together and sewed them according to the pattern instructions, with the waistband piece on top, like this: 

However, when I sewed those drunkard's path blocks together, I put the convex outer curved piece on the bottom and then pinned the concave inner curved piece on top.  I think that was a lot easier to pin and sew accurately.  Does anyone know of any reason why I shouldn't sew my skirt the same way -- with the contoured waistband piece on the bottom, next to the feed dogs, and the concave curved top edge of the skirt pinned to fit along the edge on top of the skirt?  I'm going to pin it just like I did in the photo above, and I do have Dual Feed on my Bernina 750 sewing machine, if that makes a difference (I know some people like to sew with any fullness on the bottom so the feed dogs can help ease it in).  The curved seam came out just fine regardless, but when I tried on the muslin skirt to check the fit --


Custom Fit?  Hah!

UGH!  YUCK!!!  It is so big that it's in danger of falling off -- unless I wear it with suspenders.  Keep in mind that the skirt is supposed to sit 1" below my natural waistline, even higher than I was holding it in the photo.  Yes, I remembered to press the edges of the skirt opening in 5/8" on each side, and it's still ginormous. 

So, half hoping this was evidence that I had lost weight since I'd measured myself, I grabbed my tape measure and measured my waist AGAIN.  I still got 30", the same as last time, which is a size 16 according to the pattern sizing chart.  So why is the skirt so HUGE??! 
Obviously this means I should make the skirt in a smaller size, and it's a good thing I made the muslin first, but it still bothers me that the skirt is so big because now I have zero confidence in my ability to use a tape measure.  If I had chosen a pattern size by my hip measurement instead of by the waist, I'd have made the skirt in a size 14.  But I don't know -- this test skirt is SO big.  Will a 14 be that much smaller?  Should I make a 12?  I did pull the tape measure snug when I measured, but does the pattern company expect you to suck in your gut and hold your breath, and pull that tape measure as tight as a tourniquet?

The only good news from this muslin misfortune is that I'm pretty sure the skirt has enough fullness for my cotton voile fabric to hang nicely.  I wasn't sure based on the pattern photo and I was a little concerned that my lightweight voile might hang too limply if there wasn't enough fullness at the bottom of the skirt.  I think the length will be good, too, when the top of the skirt is up where it belongs and the hem is turned up at the bottom.

SO...  I'm going to wait until my Mom comes over tomorrow to find out what size SHE thinks I should make.  Mom to the rescue yet again!

Meanwhile, back to my hand stitching!  I'm linking up Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts, Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, as well as with Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, because Sarah is a sweetie and she understands that sometimes we need encouraging feedback (and advice!) even more when we're struggling than we do when we finally hit that finish line with a completed project to show off.  For those of you in the United States, happy Independence Day weekend!