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A Rotary Blade Changing Aid

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While in Paducah this Spring Eileen and I stopped by a vendor booth owned by Cynthia Ellis. She is not a quilter, but she does beautiful wood turning. I already have a lovely turned seam ripper and pen, but what caught my eye were her magnets – they’re beautiful:

I wasn’t sure why I needed one and then she made it clear. Changing the rotary blade in my cutter is always a nervous time – I don’t like to bleed! With her Magne-Dots (magnets with handles) there’s nothing to worry about. Let me give you a quick step-by-step:

Begin by taking your cutter apart. I like to lay each piece out in order, with the part closest to the handle piece facing up, so it’s easy to put back together.

Pick up a Magne-Dot and grab the old blade.

Lift it off the cutter screw:

And dispose of it in your sharps container.

Pick up the new blade from its case. If it’s a multi-pack, pick up the stack. You’ll notice the lubricant on the blades. This often makes them stick together.

To separate the blades, place the other Magnedot on the bottom blade and slide them apart.

Place the new blade on the cutter screw.

I find it helpful to use the top of the second Magne-Dot to hold the blade while releasing the first Magne-Dot.

My fingers never came near the sharp edge of the blade and I’m ready to reassemble my cutter!

I love it when artists come up with great ideas for using their work and I feel it’s an honor to purchase from them. I’ve ordered a number of pairs of Magne-Dots from Cynthia’s website to give as gifts. To visit her site and get your own Magne-Dots click here!

And remember – they work best in pairs!

Trey’s Modular Log Cabin

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Last week I showed you my latest “modular” style quilt, where the blocks are each finished as individual small quilts and arranged and rearranged on a background quilt through the magic of Velcro™. This week I have one special arrangement to share.

While I was working on the background quilt my grandson, Trey, was very interested. When I noticed this I asked him if he’d like to create his own pattern. He nodded his head in glee, and was happy to help me pull the blocks from my current arrangement on the background quilt. He then began placing a few blocks:

pulling some off:

and starting again:

All of a sudden it seemed a lightbulb went of in his head! He pulled the latest blocks off and quickly began again.

And this was the result:

He’s 4, he’s learning his letters, and T is definitely his favorite!

We smile a lot when he’s around!

My Modular Log Cabin Quilt

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The Madison Quilt Expo has a challenge every year and I entered it a few years back when the theme was Autumn in Wisconsin. This was the quilt I made for that challenge. I call it “Which Way Does the Wind Blow?” because of the mariner’s compass leaves.

This year’s theme is log cabin. Participants are to make an innovative quilt with this very traditional block, 30″ x 40″. So ~ what can you do with the log cabin pattern that hasn’t already been done?

Well, since I’ve been absorbed in my latest quilt-venture: “Modular Memory Quilts”, it became obvious to me that I should make a background quilt and attach “individual log cabin block quilts” to it through the magic of Velcro™. It was great fun to make all the blocks ~ and quite a challenge to figure out how to get it all to work (the black stripes on the background quilt are the Velcro™, the back of the blocks have Velcro™ strips also):

When piecing the blocks, I decided to change the width of my logs to create a curved effect, and I alternated the placement of the green background and the scraps to add even more interest.

Now I have the parts made and I’m trying to decide on my favorite set. Since log cabin blocks can be put together in a myriad of ways, I’d love your input.

Which is your favorite?

Straight Furrows
Alternating Circles
Straight Furrows and Circles
Curvy Pinwheels
Barn Raising

Please let me know your choice in a comment to this post.

And now for my true confession. I got so into this project, and was having so much fun, that I never even thought about reading the fine print in the challenge rules. Once it was done I discovered this in rule #7: “Quilts in multiple pieces or in frames are not accepted”. UGH!!!

I’m grateful the challenge got me to make this quilt and annoyed with myself for not reading the rules. But even if I had, I would have made this quilt for the sheer fun of it! Since it can’t get into the challenge at the Madison Expo, I think entering it in the actual quilt show there is a great option. I’ll let you know if it gets in :-).

And a quick follow up to last week’s post…

Mary Margaret responded to last week’s post with a few photographs of her quilts.

She said: “I like to take my quilts out to photograph them in fun places. I took some of the photos up at the clearing in Door County, but most were from old Falls Village in Menomonee Falls. I put quilts on doorstops, hanging over barn doors etc.” 

What a great idea. When my friend Di designed my original website she photographed a number of my quilts out in our woods. Click here if you’d like to go to my Gallery page, then scroll through the quilts. You’ll be able to tell which photos were taken by Di :-).

I think I need to photograph my quilts in unique ways like this. Thanks for the inspiration Mary.

Oak Leaf and Swirl – Part 2

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I had a number of readers ask about the thread/machine I used to do the quilting in the background of this quilt. I have a Handi-quilter Sweet 16, sit down mid-arm machine, and I used polyester thread. Now I have a confession to make, I continue to have problems with tension and breaking when I use thinner threads in my mid-arm. I get the best results with Gutermann polyester thread in the top and bobbin.

Since the background was quilted in part one, it’s time to share a bit about my appliqué technique. But I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, so I’ll begin with the design process I used to create the twisted Oak Leaf and Reel patterns.

I know this border is actually vertical in the quilt, but it fit better horizontally here for explanatory purposes. Do you see how the block on the far left looks like a typical oak leaf and reel block? Then, as you travel to the right, each subsequent block has a little more “twist”?

I created this effect in Photoshop using filters. I selected “distort” followed by “twirl”. Then I typed in the percentage of twirl and here’s what I came up with:

I hope you can see the gradual change from zero to 100% rotation. The 100% drawing was what I used to create the quilting design for the center of the quilt. My hope was to portray the wind swirling the leaves around.

To make the appliqué border blocks I began by layering a piece of the brown plaid border fabric, right side down, with a silk square of men’s necktie fabric on top, wrong side down also, and lastly the paper pattern – pinned at the corners:

Next I free motion stitched on all the pattern lines:

When I turned this block over to the fabric side I was able to see the stitches (I used white thread for demonstration purposes – in the actual block I used a matching thread so it wouldn’t be obvious):

I free-motion stitched over these lines a second time, slowing down my hands to achieve a short stitch length, because this will be left raw edged and I don’t want things to come apart. Once the stitching was done I trimmed away all the extra plaid fabric and – voila – a raw-edge repliqué block!

This is the same way I created the windswept tree!

Once the left border was added I had a minor surprise. I made the quilted background 2″ longer than needed to allow for shrinkage when quilting, but the length was now 1/2″ too short for the contest!!!

What to do? Don’t panic! Simply add triangles along the bottom!

I raw-edge appliquéd these triangles too and I think they add a lot of interest. What a fortunate mistake! It’s all about attitude :-).

I hope you enjoyed learning about my creative process and the techniques required to get ‘er done. I know some quilters have everything planned before they begin, and I’m sure that’s a good way for them to work, but I love to fly by the seat of my pants and wait for the “what ifs”.

How do you work? Intense planning? or “let’s see what happens”? Please comment and let us all know.

Oak Leaf and Swirl – Part 1

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As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have a quilt hanging in the National Quilt Museum in Paducah! Praise the Lord!

During Spring Quilt Week the museum held a “Meet the Artist” event and eight of us were there. As an unexpected bonus to all that fun, each artist was asked to do a short interview about their quilt, and I now have the link to those interviews. To view the videos click here!

I hope you find them as interesting as I did :-)!

When I enter a contest such as this, I not only enjoy creating something according to the contest rules, but I love to challenge myself to try things I haven’t done before. This quilt was no exception.

I began with an idea I’ve heard about, but never tried – quilting the background first and then adding the appliqué. I knew I wanted to achieve a trapunto look in the unquilted areas, so I used a double layer of batting: an 80/20 cotton first, with a washable wool on top. The fabric was a beautiful silk/cotton blend called Radiance. I only had a yard and they no longer make this fabric. Since the minimum size for the contest is 50″ x 50″, I knew this wasn’t going to be big enough, but I tend to worry about things like that later.

I came up with a basic pattern using a windblown tree I’ve played with in other quilts, adding copyright free leaves from the internet, and a twisted traditional oak leaf and reel block I created for the central design (more about that later).

I marked the areas where I wanted to place these motifs, and then quilted around those areas to mark them.

From there I added large spirals to mimic the wind (plus a little bit of stippling around the central image to see how the faux trapunto was going to look):

Once the swirls were done, more stippling and mini-spiraling could commence:

and more:

Until the quilting was completed:

You may have noticed I added a bit of matchstick quilting along the top and right edges. I like the way the curvy and linear designs play together:

The oak leaves were made from men’s silk necktie fabric. Each one was made by sewing 2 pieces of the same tie fabric, right sides together, in the shape of a leaf; then turning this piece right sides out and stitching it to the quilt along the vein line:

The tree was done using a technique I call raw edge repliqué. I used the same technique for the blocks in the border on the left, but this post is getting a bit long, so I’ll save that information for next week’s post.

Have you ever quilted the background first and then added the appliqué?

Did you enjoy the process? I really did and I hope to play with it more in the future :-)!

Bartering: Quilting for Technology

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Nine years ago my neighbor Di and I worked out a barter. I taught her how to make a Lone Star quilt and she built my website. She also got me into blogging!

Well, last Fall she informed me that my website was due for an update and we worked out a new barter. I posted about this when the barter began, and you can read about it by clicking here.

The quilt top is done and I’m thrilled to have brought it to completion. This is one of the blocks the quilt is made from:

and here’s the king sized quilt top ready for Aunt Susie’s Long Arm Quilting!

Jenny didn’t want a pillow tuck, so the border doesn’t go around the top of the quilt. The pieced center just fits her king sized bed and the plain cream colored border/final pieced border drop off the quilt sides. It’s a very bright and cheerful quilt.

Any guesses how many pieces are in it?

1796!!! I think that’s a record for me. What’s the most number of pieces you’ve put in a quilt?

The other half of the barter is coming to fruition this weekend! Di has uploaded my new website and I think it is lovely! Please go to: https://www.chrisquilts.net/ to visit my homepage,

and feel free to navigate around a bit (i.e. click on whatever looks interesting) to see all that it has to offer.

Today Di is completing the uploading of the blog. I think you’re going to like the new format. It’s visually crisp and clean, and should be easy to use. But please be patient if a link doesn’t work – or something doesn’t look quite right yet – we’re still in the final stages of the upload.

Thank you Di, for all your knowledge and hard work. It’s really appreciated.

It certainly is fun to have friends with different talents to share. Have you done a barter with your quilting skills that you’d like to share? If so, please send me an email about it: .

My Dear Friend Margaret, and a New Friendship Quilt

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I met Margaret 8 years ago when she joined my church family. She is an amazing woman. She was born deaf, but was able to have her hearing in one ear restored to 80% of normal when she was 9. She has a number of other disabilities, but she hasn’t let them keep her down. She is one of the most encouraging people I know, and her love for God and sharing His word is huge. She is a blessing to me.

So when she decided to move to Mt. Pleasant, WI to be nearer to her adopted family, we were all saddened to have her move away, but grateful for the new adventure she has ahead of her.

Last week our mutual friend Ann was planning a Sunday School lesson focusing on how much Margaret means to all of us. She asked if I had a small quilt or table runner we could give her to go along with the lesson. My first thought was “why didn’t I think of that?” My second “I need to make her a lap quilt to snuggle up in when she wants to feel the love from her Calvary family”. So, I dug through my UFO bin and found a stack of “25 patch” blocks I’d collected in an exchange at Patched Lives Quilt Guild.

I squared them up and sewed them together. It was a joy and they went together effortlessly. Then I made the quilt sandwich and had fun free motion quilting spirals in the dark squares,

leaving the light squares for signatures! I signed first and here’s what I wrote:

Everyone in class signed it and this week we had more of Margaret’s church family autograph her friendship quilt as she said here good-byes.

We had a wonderful Mother’s Day brunch and took the opportunity to have a picture taken of our Sunday School class. I’m blessed to have all of these wonderful sisters in Christ in my life.

Dear Margaret, May God bless you in your new home. We are all so glad to call you our friend!

Just a short message to quilters in southeastern Wisconsin

I have been teaching at Waukesha County Technical College for over 23 years, and it’s been a wonderful ride. Recently the college announced they will be discontinuing the adult enrichment classes. These include Quilting, Sewing, Reupholstery, Drapery, Clock Repair, and many more.

I feel it is sad that these classes, which are really important to the retired members of our community, will disappear. 

SEW – WHAT CAN YOU DO???

Well, the college will be having a hearing concerning these classes this Tuesday, May 14th at 5pm, at the Richard Anderson Center on the Pewaukee Campus. In the past these types of decisions have been overturned if the outcry from the community is big enough.

PLEASE CONSIDER SHOWING UP! You don’t have to say anything, but we’re hoping for a huge crowd to show support for our classes. So, bring your friends and be there :-). Thank you!

Paducah 2019

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We helped to hang the quilts on Monday. As always, the plethora of quilts was awe-inspiring. To see photos of the top winners click here!

I usually look for one quilt where I either say “I wish I’d made that” or “wow – I could never do that”, and sometimes both. There were many that grabbed me this year, but the one that stopped me in my tracks was called Celtic Migration. Here it is from a distance and it is lovely, but wait till you see the close-up!

All of the flying geese were 1/4″ x 1/2″ and there were a lot of them!

The National Quilt Museum is always a “must do” at Quilt Week and this year was especially delightful – they had the Best of Show quilts from the last 35 years. The first time I went to Paducah was in 1989 and the winning quilt was Corona II – Solar Eclipse by Caryl Bryer Fallert. It set the quilt world on it’s ear because it was machine quilted. I was new to quilting and I LOVED it.

It’s still one of my favorite quilts!

I was thrilled to be a part of the Museum’s Oak Leaf and Reel contest this year. It’s an honor and a privilege to have a quilt hanging in the museum. My entry is entitled “Oak Leaf and Swirl”. I’ll share more about it in a future blog post.

This year’s contest contained a great collection of art quilts and they were all put into a book available at the NQM gift shop. To see the top 5 winners in the challenge click here. The artists were invited to a “Meet and Greet” on Friday and they had a very good turn out. What a talented group – I’m humbled to be a part of it.

I had a lovely surprise while walking through the opposite gallery. There was an exhibit of quilts recently acquired by the museum and as I came around a corner I exclaimed (to myself) “That’s Roberta’s peacock!”

My friend, Roberta Williams, was an extremely talented woman in so many ways. She has been gone for a number of years, and I believe this quilt was her crowning achievement. I’m so pleased that her family was able to have it selected for the museum’s collection.

One other very exciting opportunity presented itself to me at the museum. A few month’s ago Bonnie Browning, the executive show director for AQS, contacted me to ask if I’d like to be interviewed by the Tri-State Christian Television network because they were looking to do a program about Christian quilters. Praise the Lord! I was thrilled. I brought a few of my quilts and it was a delightful experience. Thanks to Amanda and Kelsie! They said they’d let me know when the program is complete and I’ll be sure to share it on my blog.

Another unique opportunity this week was to spend a little time with my friend Judy Berry. She is the travel planner who has invited me to lead a quilting tour to the International Great Quilt Festival in Tokyo, Japan, this January. She had a booth to advertise the trip and I helped out a bit.

To read all about our upcoming adventure please go to: https://www.chrisquilts.net/trips/. There were many Japanese quilts in the AQS contest and I’ll be including some of them in next week’s post.

In conclusion I need to thank my dear friend Eileen for accompanying me on this wonderful adventure. We laughed, we shopped, we studied God’s word, we took classes, we hung quilts and we rolled them up for shipping home. It was truly a joy-filled week!

As I type we’re on the way home. They got 3″ of snow back home in Wisconsin yesterday, but it’s supposed to reach 50 degrees today so we’re hoping it’s already melted.

This was my 30th year in a row to be a part of Spring Quilt Week in Paducah. I am truly blessed!!!