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The Wool Chicken… and the Rest of the Story!

July 31, 2016 3 Comments

Last weekend Mike and I decided to run away. We stayed at the Inn on Hillwind, a lovely Bed & Breakfast near Plymouth, WI.

It was charming, relaxing, and the breakfasts – superb! I enjoyed walking through the gardens each morning, as did this friendly kitty.

Plymouth has a wonderful Main Street for wandering. One of the shops we stopped into was called Fibbermcgee’s.

As we entered we were greeted by another kitty. This one was made of wool!

At each turn another fascinating, original wool creation greeted us. From critters to flowers, they were each unique and wonderful:

In the last room the previously pictured chicken clucked my name. I looked at the tag and discovered all of these wonderful hooked wool pieces were made by someone I knew!!! Joanne Zahorik traveled with Wendy and I to Ireland in 2010! She told us upfront she was not a quilter, but she traveled with a friend who was. She was a delightful addition to our trip, and even gave me a wool pumpkin pin (it was an Autumn tour of Ireland). What a small world! I contacted Joanne and she was happy to have me share her work, and spoke very highly of Sue, the owner of Fibbermcgee’s.

My new chicken friend (complete with hog scraper “feet”) is enjoying keeping company with the rest of my collection:

Thanks Joanne!

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Another Spin Star

July 24, 2016 3 Comments

You may remember a post I wrote last January. I was hosting a “Tie Dye” baby shower for my niece Brianne. Well, Tessa Grace made her arrival later that month, and I needed to make her a quilt! I decided I was in the mood to make another “Spin Star” (my version of a fussy-cut quilt – click here for more on my technique), and I found a bright and pretty print fabric that was just right. I cut my identical repeats from the fabric, and stitched together 12 unique stars on a yummy butterscotch color background.

When it came to the quilting, I wasn’t sure what would work best in the open areas. I decided to cover one with Glad Press n Seal™, and audition a variety of designs using washable markers, erasing and redrawing until I found the pattern I liked. Then I just quilted through the Press n Seal™ and tore it away.

I found a beautiful turquoise blue “Minky” fabric for the backing and turned it to the front, to give it a soft outer edge. For instructions on this technique, click here!

The Minky had a lovely texture, and the free motion quilting made it even more fun.

Here are Scott, Brianne and Tessa with the quilt.

It took me a few extra months to complete the quilt, but I don’t think Tessa minded the wait. What a blessing to give a gift of hand-made love. I hope she enjoys it!

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And just a little FYI 🙂 ! Click here for all the information!

Rust Dyeing for Novices

July 10, 2016 5 Comments

You may remember that I awarded my judges choice ribbon at the Evergreen Quilt Show to Kim Frisk’s quilt – “Wherever the Wind Blows”, which was made with rust dyed fabric (click here to read about it!).

I mentioned that I wanted to give rust dyeing a try – and I did! I watched a few Youtube videos, hunted for some rusty stuff, gathered up the supplies – and found it to be easy and fun. I’ve never been into fabric creating – I’d rather buy from others who are good at it, but I enjoyed this so much – I did it twice!

The first effort yielded 4 fat quarters of rust dyed fabric. The two in the center were done with steel wool. The one on the left had nails and screws scattered across it, and the piece on the right was twisted and wrapped around a rusty horseshoe:

Would you like to try it? If not, scroll down to see the other pieces. If so, read on 🙂 !

You’ll need fabric, vinegar, rusty stuff (or steel wool, which worked great and started out “not rusty”), rubber gloves, plastic bags, water and salt. Here’s the basics (google “rust dyeing” for more specific instructions):

Soak fabric in vinegar and wring out.
Tear open a large plastic bag and lay the fabric on it (manipulate if you like).
Put on gloves and arrange rusty items on top. If using steel wool – pull apart and spread across the fabric, then put vinegar in a spray bottle and spray away.
Cover with more plastic, or another piece of fabric, and then more plastic. It should be wrapped in plastic to keep the warmth in, but loosely enough to allow air to get in and cause the rust to form.
Leave in a warm place for at least 12 hours (it was recommended not more than 72 – I got great results in 24)
When done, fill a 5 gallon pail with 4 gallons of water and dissolve 1/2 cup of salt in the water. Rinse items in the salt bath and then rinse with more water.
Hang out to dry, iron and enjoy!

The steel wool pieces in the picture above were made like a plastic/fabric/steel wool/fabric/plastic sandwich, that then rolled up jelly roll style. After my first attempt, I read that putting bags of rice/beans on top of the plastic will help hold things closer to the rust.

A few days later the Fiberistas met at my home to join in the fun. We gathered our buckets of rusty stuff and headed to Mike’s shed (wish I’d remembered to take pictures 😥 ). This time I decided to put a piece of plastic in the bottom of a bin. I layered these pieces, with rusty stuff between, on top of each other, and covered the pile with plastic and weight bags (the rusty stuff used is listed beneath each photo):

rusty-nails,washers,star,chain, steel-wool — Nails, washers, a star, steel wool in patches, and a heavy chain that gave the look of a tire tread!

rusty-metal-sheet,-nails — Pieces of rusty sheet metal and nails.

rust dyed fabric — A doily given to me by Barb. This one was at the bottom of the pile!

I did one additional piece that night, using a chunk of rusty chicken wire. I started with a yard of fabric and folded it in half with the chicken wire in between. This was weighted down with a bag of top soil (remember – we were in the barn 🙂 ).

I think it’s my favorite. Wouldn’t it make a great honey bee quilt?

Have you done any rust dyeing? Please send pictures of any exciting pieces you’ve made. I’ll share pictures of the other pieces made that night in a future post.

Sixteen Square Feet

June 26, 2016 5 Comments

A few weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity to judge the Everygreen Quilt Show in Ashwabenon, WI. They put on a terrific show – with over 300 quilts! We had a great team of judges, and the judging coordinator, Lindi, is very well organized, and a delight to work with.

In fact – everyone at the show was great!

One of the categories I was asked to judge was the guild challenge. This year is was “Sixteen” for the year 2016, and each person had a challenge fabric that needed to be visible in the quilt. The ingenuity and talent of the participants was amazing. They were all such fun to view. But I just had to share the first place quilt. It is called “Sixteen Square Feet”!

and here’s Carol’s description:

Not only does Carol have a delightful sense of humor, but she has the skills to put her thoughts into fabric in an amazing and technically successful way. From the cuffed/creased pants with loafers, to the satin “polish” on the flip-flop wearer – her attention to detail blew me away!

Thanks for letting me share your quilt Carol!

The other fun story from the show concerned the Best of Show winner. At the end of the day of judging, we put our heads together and give the “big” awards: creativity, best workmanship, judges choice and best of show. Then, and only then, do we get dinner 😉 . Lindi took us to a restaurant for a delicious meal. This is where we met Sheri, our lovely hostess for the night. Sheri graciously offered her home to Margaret, Carol and me, and took very good care of us. The next morning we all returned to the show for our judge’s tour and Lindi informed me that she hadn’t realized the night before, but Sherri’s quilt had won Best of Show! What fun it was to find her and give her the good news!

Sheri is a very talented long-arm quilter and she does quilting for hire 🙂 .

I’d like to close this post with the quilt I awarded my “Judges Favorite” ribbon. Kim Frisk made this lovely work of fiber art, called “Wherever the Wind Blows”, from rust dyed fabric she’d created using steel wool. She said the fabric reminded her of a map, and that was her inspiration. The appliquéd ships and pieced mariner’s compass came together in a beautifully balanced and intriguing work.

Kim’s quilt won the show’s creativity award also. I can’t wait to try rust dyeing myself!

It was a great show! Thanks to Lindi and all of the Evergreen Quilters for allowing me to be a part of it!

Buildings, Strawberries, and Couching

June 18, 2016 5 Comments

I’ve written before about the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts in Cedarburg, WI, and that’s where the second completed UFO I spoke of last week is right now.

WMQFA had it’s beginnings in the Wisconsin Quilt History Project – documenting quilts in Wisconsin. Then a farm was acquired and the fundraising was begun to turn an old barn into a museum! Before the barn was renovated, I was at a fund raising event there, and took pictures of some of the buildings. While on a teaching trip to Alaska (click here to read that post), I stayed with quilting friends and had time to Repliqué two of the “building” blocks.

Each Spring Cedarburg has a Strawberry Festival, and each year the WMQFA has a strawberry challenge. When I got the entry form for this year’s Strawberry challenge, I knew the time to finish those blocks had arrived. I completed the third “building” block, added patches from a “fruit” fabric, bordered, quilted and bound it all in time to drop it off at the Museum – 4 hours before the deadline.

Sew, what does this have to do with couching? Well, when I’d completed the quilt top, the black fabric was overwhelming.

I didn’t have much time to come up with a fix, so I did a bit of quick noodling, and decided to couch red yarn inside the black border. This is a “go to” technique I’ve used before and it’s a goodie.

To begin, I thread the machine with a color thread to match the yarn, and set it for a zig-zag stitch wide enough to cover the yarn. I leave a 3″ tail of yarn at a corner, lay the yarn in the ditch of the border seam, make one stitch in the yarn at the corner to anchor it, and zig-zag it in place – pivoting at the corners.

When I reach the end, I thread the yarn tails into a large needle and bury them in between the quilt layers. I had a great time quilting the border with words. Then I needed a name. When nothing clever came to mind, I asked Sommer who said, in matter of fact 4 year old fashion, “Buildings and Strawberries”.

My friend Sonja created a fascinating piece of fiber art for the contest also.

My quilt, Sonja’s, and all of the entries, will be on display at the museum in Cedarburg the weekend of Strawberry Festival – June 25 and 26! Please let me know if you see it there 🙂 !

I Love Winter!

June 11, 2016 2 Comments

In the past few weeks I’ve finished two UFO’s – talk about feeling virtuous 😀 ! As I’m writing this blog post, temperatures in Wisconsin are in the high 80’s! It is an odd, but appropriate time to share this quilt and it’s story:

In 2013 the special projects committee at Patched Lives (the traditional quilt guild I belong to) came up with a fun idea for a “round robin” type of challenge. Here are the rules:

Around the Square Challenge – groups are made up of 6 or 7 participants. A list is made of the members of each group so the projects can be passed around in order.

1. Each participant picks a theme for their project (examples could be: Noah’s ark, snow people, up north, a day at the beach, etc.).

2. Draw a 4″ grid 8 x 10 on a piece of flat quilt batt – orientation is your choice. 4″ is the finished size of all the squares in the quilt, so pieces will need to have seam allowance added.

3. Create a block in the chosen theme to cover a 16″ x 16″ square or a 12″ x 20″ rectangle (plus seam allowances). Safety pin in place somewhere on the grid. Once begun, this block may not be moved.

4. Place in a traveling container along with any fabric or embellishments that can be used in the quilt. A “travel journal” and/or ready-to-sign label may be included also.

5. Projects are passed to the next quilter on the list and they are to make blocks to cover 12 squares on the grid. This could include an 8″ finished block, two 4″ x 8″ blocks, and four 4″ blocks, or other combinations, but no additional block can be as large as the original. These blocks are safety pinned over squares in the grid and may not be moved.

6. The projects are passed until all participants have worked on each one. The traveling containers are then returned to their originators who will add blocks to fill any open squares, and finish the quilt. They may move the blocks around on the grid if desired.

My theme was “I Love Winter” (I really do – when its cold outside I can stay inside and quilt guilt free!). Here’s my main block:

I received a delightful variety of blocks back, with some empty squares. I had fun rearranging them and filling in the spaces. Most of my additions ended up being a light blue, tone-on-tone fabric that gave it all a checkerboard effect. I then added borders, and layered it all with a sweet snowman fabric on the back:

The quilt needed a lot of “in-the-ditch” quilting. This is my least favorite way to quilt, but a few of my friends had mentioned using an “in-the-ditch” foot on my sewing machine. It turns out I had just the foot, and it helped. It isn’t perfect, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked.

The rest of the quilting was done free motion and that was much more fun. Binding was added and now it’s done – in plenty of time for winter!

Here’s the label that traveled with the project, and is signed by all the talented quilters who made it such a wonderful quilt.

Maryjane was kind enough to bring hers to the last guild meeting, and let me take a picture. Her theme was angels – and it is lovely:

Thanks ladies! I love winter, and I love my winter quilt! Admit it – how many of you out there love winter too?

Stay tuned, next week you’ll get a peek at my other recently finished UFO!

A Spandex Quilt, part 2 – “40 Wonderful Years”

June 5, 2016 6 Comments

Welcome back to my spandex quilting adventure!

Sewing on this non-traditional fabric presented a number of problems. Not only did the copper spandex fabric show pin holes and drag when satin stitching with a walking foot, but I couldn’t find any way to mark it for quilting. I could mark on the black, but that wasn’t good enough.

Then the real problem came when I tried to free motion. It would go smoothly for a while, then the spandex would begin to drag and pucker under my hopping foot. What a DRAG!!! When free motioning, there is no way to place paper under the foot, as I did when satin stitching. What to do??? Well, I was able to do a lot of straight quilting first to anchor everything.

Next, I free motioned in the black fabric (where there was no drag).

Eureka!

Here’s the exciting part: the straight line grid quilting I’d already done framed in where the free motion quilting would go. So I flipped the quilt over and free motion quilted my spirals from the back. It worked great!

Some areas were quilted heavily and others weren’t quilted at all. The effect was what I was hoping for, and here’s the finished quilt!

So Why is it called “40 Wonderful Years”? Well, when creating the design, I needed a focal point for the center. I wanted to use Art Deco lettering, as that was very popular during the Art Deco period. But what “word”? You may remember that my husband and I just celebrated a landmark anniversary (click here for that post). On our first date (in 1972), we went to dinner and a movie, and then we walked along Bradford beach on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, and this romantic man drew our initials in the sand. I decided to return the compliment 🙂 !

I hope you enjoyed my spandex adventure. Any questions?

A Spandex Quilt

May 28, 2016 4 Comments

While at the Sister’s Quilt Show Expo in Oregon this past Summer, l happened upon the Babylok™ booth and was intrigued by a sample the rep had made using swimsuit material. Because the fabric was shiny and stretchy, the machine quilting was dimensional and dynamic. Then, on our way back to Portland, we stopped at a huge fabric store and I found a piece of metallic copper spandex knit – on a clearance rack! I went home with 2 yards.

When the Milwaukee Art Quilters chose “Art Deco” as their large challenge theme this year, I knew I had the fabric and the quilting idea, I just needed a design. I did a bit of web-surfing and found a site with instructions for creating “Great Gatsby Style Patterns” in Photoshop. (in case you’re interested it’s: http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/how-to-create-a-great-gatsby-style-art-deco-pattern).

After a bit of trial and error I chose a design. Next I made a few small stitching samples with a variety of different batts and stabilizers, so I could try stitching on this very non-traditional fabric and see what worked best.

I decided to create the quilt top using my Silhouette Appliqué technique:

I drew my design, with a sliver of soap, onto a black cotton fabric,
I then layered it on the copper spandex fabric, both right sides up. Next I placed this on the wool batting and stabilizer I had chosen. I pinned in areas where the black fabric would not be cut away, because the copper fabric shows pin marks.
In black thread, I stitched on all the soap lines using a walking foot.
The black fabric was cut away, close to the stitching, everywhere I wanted the copper to show.
Next, all of the raw edges needed to be satin stitched. When satin stitching, the spandex would begin to drag under the toe of the machine foot while the toe on the black fabric moved fine. This sheering effect was not working at all, but I was able to slip a piece of paper under the spandex side of the machine foot and then it stitched quite well.

Once the appliqué was done, I layered everything over a piece of flat cotton batt, and the quilt backing fabric, re-pinning in the black fabric areas once again.

Stay tuned, in my next post I’ll cover the trickiest part – the quilting!

The Wool Chicken… and the Rest of the Story!

Another Spin Star

Rust Dyeing for Novices

Sixteen Square Feet

Buildings, Strawberries, and Couching

I Love Winter!

A Spandex Quilt, part 2 – “40 Wonderful Years”

Eureka!

A Spandex Quilt

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