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What’s a Land Cruise?

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In previous posts you’ve read about the Sew We Go cruises Wendy and I have led in the US and Europe, but you may not have heard about the Land Cruises (click for web site) we’ve been involved in.

Barbara Vallone and her crew put on a delightful and imaginative “trip” in Racine, Wisconsin every March.

2011 will mark their 15th year of great classes, fun events, delicious food and much more at the Radisson Inn, Racine, on March 4, 5,  & 6! The philosophy behind a Land Cruise is that some quilters can’t take a traditional cruise, but would still like to participate in a “cruise-like” getaway. Barb’s group provides a fun conference where quilters are pampered while having fun and learning new things.

The theme this year is “Landscape Quilts” and Natalie Sewell, Wendy Rieves and I are just some of the teachers involved. I’ll be teaching my Repliqué technique for turning favorite photos into quilt blocks as well as a child’s version (with a Repliquéd playground scene) of the backpack made from placemats and men’s neckties which was our project on the Irish adventure.

You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced Barb’s chocolate salad, so please make plans to attend!

Visit the website: www.quilterslandcruise.com or contact Barb at: 262-639-8185/  for more information.

Project Creep

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After posting the pictures on Monday I pulled everything off the shelves/counters and decided to really clean and organize. In class yesterday at WCTC, Cindy shared the expression “Project Creep” (referred to as PC from now on :-). She said this is when you begin doing something small (fix sewing table) and it escalates step by step into lots of work and, usually, a fair amount of unplanned expense. BINGO! She hit the nail on the head. Then Jean added that the good part is we feel so virtuous once it’s done. I’m almost there :-)!

Mike did a wonderful job repairing my table. We took the old tv to the recylcing center and in it’s place I now have a 19″ flat screen that weighs almost nothing and has a great picture, but it needed to be elevated. So Mike and I had to go antiquing (one of our favorite pastimes) and we found a great “explosives” crate with dovetail joints. It was only $25. Do I hear “project creep”? Its a handy place to keep all the essentials close at hand and provides space under the tv I didn’t have before.

But the tv was still too low, so I raised it up on an old wood case my dad (a retired dentist) inherited with his first practice. It was meant to hold the plastic teeth used to make dentures, but I discovered its a perfect place to keep my button collection! Now the tv is at the right level and I’m much more organized!

Next………threads!

My threads had been in “Matchbox Car” cases and I used to love the organization they provided, but I found I was always opening, closing and flipping boxes to find what I needed. Thus, I had to hit the store for a plastic drawer unit that went where the microwave had been. I love the ease of finding threads now! More “PC” expense, but that virtuous feeling is making it all worthwhile.

The microwave is now at the end of the counter, the counter and shelves are dusted and organized and I’ve only got that small (relative term) pile of stuff left in the middle of the room I really don’t know what to do with.

I plan to have that gone by lunch. I wonder if it’s going to cost me any more “PC” cash??? 

Thanks to Cindy and Jean for their input. Anyone else have a great organizing/storage tip they’d like to share?

(a 2pm addition to the original post)

Eureeka!!! The pile’s gone, the carpet’s vacuumed and it’s only 2 hours past lunch. Talk about feeling virtuous. I think I need a cup of tea and a piece of dark chocolate :-)!

Housekeeping

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While taking the photograph of my “3 Pin” technique for last week’s blog, I broke the gate leg on my sewing machine cabinet. My dear husband was kind enough to attempt a repair, but that required pulling everything out and flipping it over in the middle of the room.

This allowed me to view all the dust bunnies that were hiding behind the machine and a new adventure began. Here’s the way my studio looks now:

And another angle with Mike hard at work :-)!

Now don’t you feel better about the condition of your space?

The problem with projects like this is that one thing leads to another and there are some cleaning/reorganizing things that just need to be done. Like…………….

 

The tv that sits next to my machine is old, big and still has a dial that clicks when you change channels. It has to go! So now I need a new, small flat screen tv and I’ll have to find some sort of extra storage to go beneath it (reorganizing always seems to have a price tag attached). While purchasing the tv I was informed that the microwave (just to the right of the tv) shouldn’t sit next to it, so I’m pulling everything off the counters and shelves and hope to come up with some great new studio set up ideas. Hopefully Thursday’s post will prove quite interesting.

Any suggestions while I’m at it???

 PS This really isn’t helping the fact that the latest Milwaukee Art Quilter’s challenge deadline was moved up and I’m only at the designing stage. That’s what keeps life interesting :-)!

Pucker Less

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I hope the puckers in my last post made you smile. But, I must admit, puckers in my quilts never make me smile.

Even if you safety pin baste your quilt sandwich together well (every 3 or 4 inches) and use a walking foot, those pesky puckers still tend to sneak in. So what’s my favorite tip for avoiding this frustration? I call it my “3 Pin Technique” and it’s actually quite simple.

1.  Put the needle down at the beginning of the line you wish to quilt (I plan to quilt between the light and dark purple areas on my fabric).

2. Place a straight quilting pin (mine have yellow heads in the picture) perpendicular to the quilting line and about 1  1/2″ from the needle. Place the second straight pin 1 1/2″ further down the line and repeat for the third pin.

 

3.  Stitch along the line to the first pin, and then remove it. Continue this way to the second and third pins.

4.  Repin ahead of the needle as in step 2 and continue along the entire line.

Although this may seem a bit tedious, you can really get into a rhythm and the “easing” action of the pins will make pucker problems a thing of the past. The feedback from my students has been great!

 

Puckerless

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Happy New Year! The tradition of kissing your sweetie at midnight on New Years gave me the idea for my topic of the week :-).

A kiss involves puckering and that can be a good thing:

But sometimes its better to pucker less:

This is especially true when machine quilting! Even if you use a walking foot those pesky puckers have a way of sneaking in on the top and on the back too.

Puckers appear when the 3 layers of the quilt sandwich shift under the pressure of the presser foot. Free motion quilting is one way to avoid some of the problem as the foot is not pressing down and thus things aren’t as apt to shift. But free motion quilting is not the answer for everone. So what can be done?

I’ve come up with a number of ways to minimize this problem. The first comes in on the pinning step. When layering your quilt, be sure the back is taut but not stretched. I’ve found the best way to do this on a small quilt is to use masking tape to secure the back to the table or floor (clamps along the edge of a table work well too). Once the back is taut, the batting and top may be smoothed on top and the pinning may begin. I’ve found this very helpful, but be careful not to stretch the back since this can cause the quilt to shrink up when the tape is removed and will lead to puckers on the front.

When pinning a larger quilt I prefer to use a simple frame made of 2 x 2’s, 4 chairs and 4 clamps. The frame is a great back saver. I may have to share pictures and directions for that in a future post, but if you’ve been in my open lab classes you already know how well this works :-).

Using a walking foot (sometimes called an even feed foot) for machine guided quilting is a must. This foot moves the top of the quilt along while the feed dogs move the bottom and this prevents a lot of the shifting, but it’s not always the complete cure.

I’ll share my favorite pucker prevention technique in my Thursday post. Until then do you have any suggestions to share?

PS Thanks to my family for humoring me in my pucker contest. I’m not telling whose pictured above, but it did provide a few giggles on Christmas Eve.

Quilting, Kids and Giggles

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Thanks to everyone who sent me advice concerning picture quality on my blog. The general concensus was that I need to get a better program to work on my photos and so I’m asking Santa for Photo Shop. Jan’s suggestion about visiting:   http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/ was especially interesting.

I have a number of quilting technique topics I’ve been wanting to share, but will wait until I’m able to send clearer pictures. That being said, I would like to share a delightful moment in pictures. I think they’re clear enough to make you smile.

One day when Hanna and Willy were here I needed a bit of quilting time and they, of course, wanted to help. I took down my fish bowl full of scraps and put it in the middle of the floor in the hope that it would entertain them. Hanna began picking out 1 piece at a time and sorting them into piles while Willy just watched.

 

I told him he could take things out too and that led to a joyous explosion of fabric.

 

Then they got a little carried away :-)!

Even the dog got into the act! And grandpa couldn’t resist grabbing the camera once the commotion started.

These kids loved rolling in fabric! Their grandma must be a quilter.

Admit it – you’d love to roll around in fabric too :-)!

I’ve decided I’m going to take a break over the holidays and my blog will hopefully return new and improved in 2011. Have a blessed Christmas everyone.

Christmas Quilts and Photography Questions

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This was the post I intended to upload last Thursday:

To keep with the theme of quilting for Christmas, I’d like to share some of my students projects. In my Open Lab class at WCTC this past week Marie brought in a very cheery tree skirt.

 

The past few weeks I’ve been sharing some Christmas project patterns with the students in this class. Here are the coasters Judy brought in for show and tell:

 

Last week in class we printed favorite photos onto fabric and made ornaments. Here are just a few of the ornaments made by this talented group:

Making Christmas gifts for family and friends can bring us such joy. Since it’s snowing again here, I plan on staying home and doing just that for the next 2 days. What a blessing to have the time to do what we enjoy. I hope you’re finding some joyful stitching time too!

But I didn’t post it then because I’m so disappointed with the quality of the pictures I upload to my blog. I’m hoping some of you technologically savvy quilters might have a suggestion or two.

When I download pictures from my digital camera to the computer – they look great and I can print them out with very good results. In the beginning of my blogging I just uploaded them, was disappointed, and let it go because I’d rather quilt than deal with techy stuff, but recently it’s really been bugging me. Since then I discovered that I can save the photos in a web ready format using Microsoft Picture It Publishing. It allows me to save a picture at 320, 440 and 600 pixels. I’ve tried all three, plus the way they come from my camera and the results are crummy every time. Any suggestions??? I think I may need to break down and take a class.

Christmas and Quilts

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What a beautiful season! Christmas is my favorite time of the year and I so enjoy all the lovely quilted projects made to decorate our homes at this time. My favorite Christmas quilt is a lone star I made as a class sample, with fabrics from my stash, many years ago. I ended up liking it so much that I hand quilted it with the names of each family member in the corners and I can’t wait to hang it up every year! 

A while back I designed a small Holy Family quilt using Clover Quilt Bias™ for a stained glass look. I taught it as a class many times and it was quite popular :-).

Recently I saw a lovely photo that I just had to recreate in fabric. I contacted the owner for permission and made one of these small quilts for many in my family:

Do you have a picture of a favorite Christmas quilt you’d like to share? I would be happy to add it to my blog so others can enjoy it too. Please send it to me via email: .