Design Wall Monday 7-18-2011

Been a while since I did a design wall Monday. So I will jump into it again. I am the worse blog writer. I do quilting things for teaching and personal projects, but when it comes to telling about them. I feel that they are not anything worthy enough to write about, a snip here or a one seam here kind of thing. My quilting projects are mostly teaching samples for my classes at the present time. I get so wrapped up   into getting the project done and to the shops that I forget to take pictures of them.  I have about 5 projects going at the present time, and only one is at the stage to be on the design wall. This current project is a class sample for the Quilters’ academy book number 3. It is a wonderful book to learn different techniques for half square triangles, flying geese block tricks and basics about sewing on the bias. I started out with a plan to make the sample quilt that has 9 different blocks that consist of 16 half square block that are arranged in different configurations. I sewed one block together and thought that my students would get frustrated with getting the points aligned. So I modified the blocks to incorporate flying geese and s2s blocks. Sixteen 2” blocks are a pain to put together, let alone teach it to others. Some of my students are somewhat beginners and I want them to feel like they can do the quilt without getting frustrated and quit.

This morning as I was sewing the sashing to the blocks and trying to keep everything square with the star points I made a decision that this quilt will be to difficult for some people. Since I already have one row sashing sewed on I decided to make a small table runner out of it. The other blocks I rearranged to make a modified table running that is in the book. The bottom line I will teach the techniques and the students can arrange the blocks as them want later.
I will try to post about my new sewing machine baby that I simply love for free motion quilting tomorrow. Till then, jump over to Judy’s blog and see what others are doing.

Design wall Monday 2-21-2011

I finally have something different on my design wall. Though I am still working on the opportunity quilt for my guild. I will show pictures of that also later. This quilt is my class quilt for the Quilter’s Academy class that I will be teaching in March.  It is the first quilt in the second book. A fairly simply quilt, more nine patches with solid blocks in between them. The fabric is some of my hand dyes that I did last summer in playing with a kit that I ordered from Pro Chemical and dye, to learn how to do hand dyed fabrics.  It totally is not my colors, but I like the change from blue and yellow for now. If I don’t like it when I get finished I will put into the pile for charity.
For the other quilt that I am working on, you may be interested to know that I have all the blocks together and working on the pieced border now. I hope to have the top completed by the end of the week and ready for someone to quilt it. The only problem is that I am not sure if I should use the gold, yellow or orange accent border. I would love to hear what others think. I will show the complete quilt next week.

If you want to see what everyone else is doing, hop over to Judy's blog and see what is going on.

Where does time fly off to!!

I can not believe that it's been two months since I blogged. I really need to do it more often. I think the last thing that I left off with was having a FMQ (free motion quilting) class to teach. Both of the classes that I taught went very well. They all said that they enjoyed it and learned a couple of things. In teaching any class the one thing that I want a student to leave with is the satisfaction that at least they got what they paid for and to learn at least one new thing. I have another FMQ class scheduled in November.
The other class that I taught was the beginners quilting class that I used Quilters' Academy book by Harriet and Carrie Hargrave. With 5 students it went very well, resulting in another class in October that will continue with parts from the first book. It is almost impossible to cover a large percentage of the ideas and instructions from this book in only 8 hours of class. To do it right it has to be done in about 16 to 20 hours. It is better to learn the basics and in short increments than having student that are overwhelmed by massive piecing instructions. I believe that some quilters have not learned to think more than what a quilt pattern says to do. The ability to understand and create a pattern is far more rewarding than to just copy something that someone else has done before.
I hope to make time to show tutorials on my blog with step by step instructions on doing basic concepts. Like how to get perfect points and having a nine patch be the right size when you get finished. One of the things that I showed my students in the Quilters' Academy class that when they finished the center block in the sampler, to know how to fix the seams so that is comes out the correct size. Just because the nine parts are the same at the beginning does not always come out the correct size at the end. Knowing the size of the blocks and using the ruler you can figure out what seam is off and correct it from that point. Without ripping the entire block apart.

Till later
Cher

Late night problems

In all the years that I have sewn, you would think that I would have learned to not sew precision piecing late at night. Last night I thought I would relax a little by sewing, so I sewed a few strips together to make the nine patches for the quilter's academy sampler. Things seem to be going OK, got the first set done and then sewed the second set. Pressed all the seams OK (hind sight is that I did not check the seams and sets for accuracy, before I cut the segments). The pieces did not come together at the seams. Now the nine patch is not a hard block to do, but it does require the piecing to be precise so ALL the seams intersect properly. At first glance I thought that the set with the blue, pink, blue set was the wrong size. But in examining the sets the culprit was the pink, blue, pink set. In the pictures you can see that the 'pbp' set in an 1/8" short and the center strip in not an inch like it is suppose to be. So I had to re cut the strips and resew the pbp set again. A good example that veteran quilters make mistakes.

At first glance it look like the bottom set is the wrong size. But the top set is the pbp set and it is the one that is 1/8" short. The little loop or bump on the bottom is the result of the set being longer that the top set. there is no way that these two sets are going to lay flat and match the seams.

This picture shows the seams when I lay the sets flat the right seam is an 1/8" off. I have the left set of seams butted up exactly the way it would be sewn.

Here is the pink, blue, pink set under the ruler. It only measures 3 3/8" it should be exactly 3 1/2".

This is the blue, pink, blue set. If you look at the 3 1/2" mark you can just see the color difference between the background and the blue piece of fabric. The important thing is that it is exactly 3 1/2" long and the center strip is exactly 1".

Till later

Quilters Academy sampler

Just want to show that I started working on class samples for my class that I'll be teaching in July. The color is a little off. I really have to learn how to edit photo with adobe photoshop element. There are two more parts that I want to work on this weekend. The sampler is from the book Quilter's Academy by Harriet and Carrie Hargrave. It really is a great book for beginners and quilt veterans alike. It teaches the basics and tells you the reasoning behind why you use a specific thread and needle. And why thing come out one way and they are suppose to come out a different way in the piecing process. In doing the series, a quilter can learn and also enjoy the process of piecing with very little frustrations.

Classes at LQS

Just want to pop in and say that I made arrangements with one of the LQS to teach two classes this summer. One is the Quilters Academy series book #1 by Harriet Hargrave. It will consist of four classes that hopefully will be just enough to make things clear but not to fast for a beginner quilter to understand the basic concepts. I plan on teaching from the book doing a couple of projects. Mostly giving the students the guidelines and hold anybodies hands that are not sure of things. I 'm really looking forward to teaching this class. I have always felt that something in the quilting community has been missing. After scanning the book I realized what they were.
The basics, in making quilts to clothing or even craft items, you can not make a good fit with poor or wrong size pieces. Understanding the reason why fabrics lay a certain way and the proper size thread and needle mix together is what results in a good to excellent items. The type of items that everyone wants to win a blue ribbon with. I see several quilts shops that I have visited through out the United States give a quilting class on one project. Telling the quilter to cut this many pieces and seam together this piece to that piece to make one quilt. This logic is OK if the quilter knows the correct way to lay the fabric and cut to achieving the correct seam. Or better yet how to change something to get the correct answer to have the perfect block. I hope to write in the blog the process of me sewing the samples for the classes to some pics and ideas that results in the classes.
The other class is Free motion quilting that will hopefully result in making quilters to believe that doing free motion quilting on a home sewing machine is not any harder than drawing on paper, but you need PRATICE to achieve the results that are so worth the effort.
With luck this weekend I will be cutting and sewing the first project together. Maybe I can have something to show on the blog soon.