Exploding brains and disks.

Well, I'm back from South Dakota, and stuffed full of new ideas, inspiration and of course, not nearly enough time to implement and practice all these things. I always wish when I take a class bursting with information that I could go to class, pause life, quilt for a couple hours, go back to class, pause, etc... Well, wish in one hand, as they say.

It was a very different experience to take classes with a group (there were 6-7 of us, depending on the day, 2 machines) versus my one on one lessons. I'm hoping between Myrna Ficken (teacher of my classes this weekend) and Karen Parker(the gal I took lessons from) and I can get a cycle of longarm classes going here at the shop for those of you who rent my machine or own one of your own. They have different styles and teaching flavors and they're both so much fun, I'd love to have both of them come to teach, so I'm getting that in the works.

Unfortunately, driving for 7+ hours twice in one weekend wreaked some serious havoc on my back. I have a slipped disk and sitting for that long just irritates the crap out of it. By Saturday evening I was finally feeling a little better, but then I got to get back in my car Sunday afternoon, and now I'm in agony again. Ibuprofen and I are becoming very good, frequent friends.

Meanwhile, I've been reading copious amounts of dog training literature, though I did drag my sewing machine along to SD and did quite a bit of sewing while watching HGTV, to which I'm now addicted, but fortunately do not have cable or satellite, or I would quickly atrophy into a Jabba-the-Hut-like-blob.

I did find out that I'll actually get my new pooch on October 16th. She's growing like a weed and in my latest pictures looks about twice the size of the one I posted last week. I confess that I can barely stand the wait and my every thought is consumed by puppiness. My mom keeps asking me what I'm going to do when I get pregnant since three weeks is a significantly shorter wait than the 9 months of anticipation I'll have to endure then. Maybe people who thrive on instant gratification shouldn't have babies. I don't know, I guess maybe someday I'll find out. But for right now I'm just trying to distract myself for three weeks of puppy countdown. Great Dane proofing the house is going to be an ongoing process as she will be much more capable of getting into trouble than a smaller pooch.
She's already bigger than my brother's full grown beagle.


I do have my fall quilt retreat coming up (YAY!) next weekend, so that will keep me occupied most of next week, and then only one week after that. Quilting seems like a distant thing that I might be able to do someday if things in the shop ever calm down and I stop running around all the time. It seems like I'm home so infrequently I can't even find my way around the house and my husband and I need pictures just to remember what the other one looks like.

Someday, hopefully, I will go back to happy quilting!

Who's a quilter?

Not this girl. All I've managed is binding, but I have, in my defense, bound three quilts in the last week. I'm getting ready to go to three days of long-arm lessons in Hill City, South Dakota this weekend and things have been pretty hectic as one of my employees is also gone for three weeks. Tonight is also the convening of the first meeting of Big Timber's newly formed quilt club and we're meeting at the shop.
The other bit of excitement is that my hubby and I are preparing for a new arrival at our house! But not a baby! Gotcha! We're getting a puppy!
Poor miss Elli, our "borrowed" black lab (my mom's dog) is just not adjusting to her shop-dog lifestyle despite us trying for over a year. For whatever reason, she has been unable to conquer her fears in the shop (she's started barking at random people, with no discernible pattern or reason and has even growled at a few) and she destroys stuff if we leave her home alone. So she's going back to my mom's house where she has a huge fenced in yard and two other doggies to play with. The upside is that I still get to see her and play with her and she'll still be joining me for some of our old routine.

Our little girl should get here mid to late October and I will be taking a week of "maternity" puppy leave. She's a Great Dane from Illinois and this is her latest photo:
She's exactly a month old today and we get her at 8 weeks, so we're pretty excited but also trying to get the house ready for a puppy that might weigh more than me by the time she's full grown.
For Friday I'm off to South Dakota, but I'll be back next week with details.
Happy quilting (eventually!)!

Just kidding!

Ha, you thought that I might actually quilt something? Well, you were wrong. I've been trying to get our house in some sort of liveable condition and our yard and extensive landscaping that had gone to ruin before we moved here is badly in need of attention so I've been trying to get that under control before the snow flies. It just seems as though the months are flying by waaaay to fast. As a wise magnet on my mom's fridge says: "Life isn't passing me by, it's running me over."
Happy quilting!

#&@^*%*

Yes, that's what I spent my afternoon yesterday doing. I got new wheels for my longarm that are supposed to much smoother and easier to roll. Well, that they may be, but that's about the only thing about them that's easy. I spent three or four hours yesterday and three this morning trying to get the damn things on and while I finally did manage, I was near madness, my back was a throbbing nest of slipped disk pain, and really just pissed off.
Enough about that though, just wanted to apologize for the lack of bloggery yesterday. I'm hoping to quilt at least a table runner or something for instructional purposes before Friday, but life has been quite chaotic.
Happy quilting!

The crappiest blogger.

Well, I won't pretend I have a good excuse for not blogging on Tuesday, because I just forgot due to Labor Day "what-day-of-the-week-is-it?" confusion. Husband and I are still running up to Bozeman on Tuesdays to enjoy the last few blissful days of warm enough to play soccer weather and then I had a meeting on Wednesday night that was longer than I'd planned. All in all, I just had one of those weeks where I didn't get anything done in the evenings.
I've also been on a binding tear--yes, yes, screech in confusion, gasp with disbelief, I know I do. With the help of my wonderful staff, I've been making a couple "magical binding trees"--which are actually just empty fabric bolts which we wrap the binding for my quilts around. This is helpful for two reasons: the first is that having them piece and iron my binding means that I can spend more time quilting and piecing in the evenings to keep my shop bedecked in lovely quilts and I can continue doing the work thing at work and it makes a great thing for them to do while it's slow. The second reason is that piped binding (sew all by machine) which I like to put on my quilts, never seems to happen for me if it isn't made prior to quilt finishing. The piecing and ironing is a very minor step as you have to put in the piping and then attach the piping to main binding. So, with my magic binding tree in hand, I've been working to create the piped binding so that it's rarin' and ready to go when the quilt is quilted.
I'm finding that if the binding is ready to go, I'm not only WAY more likely to finish my top, but I also don't hate it, which is a big step for me.
Anyway, someday I'll get back to pictures, lessons, etc...but right now I'm in all sorts of frenzies. We've had soooo much new fabric coming in it seems like I can't even keep up putting it online. The binding is also a frenzy. Then there is the "I-only-have-free-use-of-my-longarm-for-a-little-while" frenzy. That one is probably more along the "panic" lines as I so desperately want to be caught up and free of an endless stream of unfinished tops. The goal is noble, though not to be achieved, if I could even put a good healthy dent in my numbers, that would greatly improve my stress level.
Happy quilting!

Thread, glorious thread!

You've got your top. You've got batting. You've got backing. You have one last product to choose to continue your quilting journey: thread! Now, many people just use some boring neutral cotton to quilt so it either blends away or stands out in all its blandness, but this quilter, she is a THREAD JUNKY! Most people make a quilt just for a fabric or a pattern--I make a quilt just for the thread. I have an enormous stash of thread which probably will be passed down to my great grandchildren because even if I quilt every day for the rest of my life and never buy another cone or spool, I'll still have leftovers. I should have insurance for my thread collection.
So, now that you know who's talking to you, you will probably understand my passionate pleas for consideration of thread type, color, weight, etc...The first thing I will say is this: you have spent a lot of money already on fabric, pattern, sewing machine, batting, backing, etc...Do not cheat yourself with cheap quilting thread. It will be linty, ugly, break more often, and look, well, cheap. For light quilting, you'll rarely use more than one spool. One good spool costs in the range of $8, one cheap costs in the range of $3. You're saving yourself $5 and making your life miserable.
Okay, onward. The main factors to consider with thread are: material, weight, color, and any processing that the thread has undergone.

Let's start with material. Cotton is the most common material used for thread, but there is also polyester, nylon, rayon, silk, and blends thereof. I will say that in general, threads that are a blend of materials are blended to be cheap, not to create any quality. I'll start by addressing the qualities of each material, pros and cons, etc...

Cotton will be duller in sheen than say, poly, rayon, or nylon, and because it's spun cotton fibers, will necessarily have lint. The amount of sheen and lint will be related to the quality of cotton. Extra long staple is the best type of cotton--don't be fooled by labels like "Egyptian" or a lack of staple length. If it's ELS, it will say so, if it isn't, it will not say anything. Extra long staples mean that the thread will be stronger, smoother (lumps on thread are called "slubs"), and less linty. Other terms you will see on cotton thread are "gassed", "mercerised", "waxed", "double-gassed", or "lint-free". Gassing and mercerising are both standard procedures for almost all cotton, not just thread. Gassing is the process of passing thread over flames to burn off stray fibers and make the thread look smoother. Almost all cotton threads undergo this process and it's nothing to brag about. Mercerising is a chemical treatment that causes cotton fibers to swell, be more receptive to dye, and unfortunately to be a little lintier. It also prevents decay in the fibers. Again, standard for cotton, nothing to brag about on your label. Double gassed just means their thread was so fuzzy and lumpy they had to burn off stray fibers twice, again, really not a bragging point. Waxed or lint-free should both be huge red flags to the machine quilter. Lint-free cotton is an impossibility without coating it with something, and if you coat it with something and put it through your machine, it will leave residue in your machine, and your machine will be sad. Do not use any COTTON labeled "lint-free", "waxed", or "glazed" through your sewing machine. These threads are designed for HAND quilting. Glazing (or waxing) makes thread stronger and slicker to hold up and be easier for pulling through the quilt over and over as you do with hand-quilting. Therefore, you should also never put anything labeled "hand-quilting thread" through your machine, it is undoubtedly covered in something.

Cotton is grabby so it will sink into your quilt a little more than some threads and create nice texture, the dull nature of the fibers also gives a more subtle, sometimes old-fashioned look. A variegated (ie changing colors at regular intervals) cotton that matches your quilt top can virtually disappear. Cotton is very soft and supple and fairly easy to machine or hand quilt with, the downside is the lint that it produces and that it can be weak, depending on the brand. Overall though, cotton is a great choice, two of my favorite cottons are Superior's King Tut, and Sulky's blendables. Sulky's tend to be a little weaker and harder to work with, but they have alternating lengths of color rather than regular intervals. Cottons tend to be the #1 choice of hand quilters because they don't fray.

Polyester is my other favorite quilting fiber--but let me be clear: you should only quilt with HIGH quality polyester thread. If you get bargain bin poly, it's fit to garrote someone with and nothing more. Using a cheap poly that wasn't designed for quilting is liable to tear your quilt. High quality polyester isn't going to tear your quilt. Polyester comes in two main forms: spun poly, which is designed to look like cotton but be stronger and lint free, or extruded poly, where the fibers are long polyester fibers spun together, which has a high sheen and no lint. Extruded poly is often referred to as "trilobal" because the strands are triangular in shape, giving them the lovely sheen they exhibit. If you want a little shine without going to metallic (which are also poly), a trilobal is very nice. So Fine! the thread I like to piece with is also a poly, but a spun poly and it's fantastic for the bobbin when quilting because it just blends away and you can fit a ton on the bobbin. A very fine poly will also be stronger than a very fine cotton, and is perfect for getting a hand-quilted look on your machine. My favorite polys are: Superior's So Fine!, Rainbows, Lava, and Brytes, Mettler's Poly Sheen, and Signature's Pixelles. The advantage is the sheen, they tend to break less than cotton, and they have no lint. The cons are the sheen (if you don't want sheen) and that they will melt if exposed to an extremely hot iron. They also fray easily when over handled so they are not necessarily the best choice for hand-quilting, but they are very slick.

Rayon and nylon are not suitable for quilting, even if they are pretty. Some invisible threads (clear monofilaments) are nylon, but they do not age well and you're better off getting a poly monofilament. Rayon is very soft and shiny, but very very weak and designed for machine embroidery. I've quilted with rayon in the past and it breaks often and my quilting didn't hold up well.

Silk, while more expensive, is available in finer weights than other thread because of how strong silk fibers are. 100 weight silk is common and very strong. Silk has a beautiful lustre, but can also melt away into a quilt. 100 weight silk is extremely fine and perfect for doing extremely dense background quilting. Silk has no lint either and is very strong. If you want your stitching to really show, you should use something heavier as most silk is very fine.

This brings us to weight. Thread weight is counter intuitive, the lower the weight, the fatter the thread--a 30 weight is very heavy, a 50 average, and 100 is extremely fine. There are multiple ways to express a thread's diameter, but the most common is weight, which is often combined with ply (the number of strands twisted together)--eg 50/3 is a common sight on cotton piecing thread and it means 50 weight, three ply. There is one simple rule with quilting thread: heavy to show, light to blend. If you want your actual stitches to disappear, leaving only texture, use a 50, 60, or 100 weight thread. If you really want the actual stitches to show, use a 40, 30, 12, or even 8 (8 weight will only go in your bobbin, which requires quilting upside down). 12 is about as fat as you can go through a needle. Don't be afraid to use more than one weight on a quilt. Say you're going to do a fancy motif--birds, feathers, vases, boa constrictors, who cares--you may want to do those in a big fat 30 and then do some dense fill to pop them up, using a 100. That's not to say you can't use a heavyweight for a background, it's just a different look.

My ultimate advice for choosing a thread is that if you have doubts, take some of your scraps from your quilt, a little extra backing and batting, make a wee sandwich, and practice quilting using different thread candidates, choose the ones you like and then you can rest assured that you like the effect on the fabrics of your quilt. Test squares are a common part of many a famous quilter's repertoire (I'd never thought to do such a thing until Ricky Tims told me to).

Get your thread and get ready, next time we're basting and discussing design possibilities.

Happy quilting!

More finishing!

Well, I finished a quilt that I have never been very fond of, was horrible constructed (both problems with pattern and piecer were involved) and vastly improved by quilting in my opinion. I'm not sure if anyone can get a feel for the flavor of this one, as the beauty of it is really the sparkly white fabric post-quilting is fabulous. I enjoyed the challenge of the odd shapes in this and I avoided quilting the stars because they were so puffy I just thought I'd let them live in all their puffy glory. I also used alpaca batting which I have been eager to try. It quilts beautifully--my tension is fantastic. And holy buckets, it is SOOOO warm. I have been sitting under it in my basement while stitching the binding on and my basement is pretty cool and I've been roasting. I think we may be able to skip the heat in our bedroom if we put this puppy on the bed. It's a 60% alpaca 40% wool and when I washed a sample it neither felted, nor shrunk, but the fibers which have no scrim, resin or needle-punching, did drift pretty badly. I think one of the problems with alpaca batting may be that alpaca wool is extremely fine fibers (part of the reason it's so soft and warm) and they just squib right out of the weave of even fine quality quilting fabric. The batting packaging recommended only hand-washing, but I had to do my own little experiment. So now I know, I should listen to the packaging. I have a few other brands to investigate, as well as a paca/cotton blend, so I will keep everyone posted.
Now, onto the pics! (Don't worry beginning quilters--I haven't forgotten you--thread lessons on Friday)
Here's the whole monster--I bought the fabric to do this years ago, when I first started quilting. Well, I should say my mom bought it for me. I only made it about a year ago though and now, finally, it's quilted and even has three sides of binding on--one more movie and it'll truly be finished--I've even embroidered a label. I called it "Fiery Stars" because of the colors, but also because I did flames coming out of the stars on the yellow (variegated thread made it just subtle texture). I used my leftover red to create a chunked up, random border, which seems to deeply offend some quilters, but I liked it and was happy to use up all the fabric. I think I had about 10" of leftover fabric. It's about 93"x100", hehe, depending on where you measure. Like I said, not my best work, finished, hands washed, etc...
Here's a chunk of the border (my favorite chunk--I love that fabric). I used a ruler to make the curly spine of this feather and really botched the corners, but I was quilting like that machine was a Harley and I had a death wish, so that's what I get for speed. I used a vari red/yellow thread and I love the peekaboo effect it has of really showing in some spots and not in others.
Here's the curly wurly freehand feather contraption I did in these weird white shapes. The picture really doesn't do it justice. The sparkly fabric just came to life once quilted. I used a very soft yellow variegated and I just loved how it turned out. Initially I was going to micro-stipple around the feathers, but I loved the negative space that they created, so I left that. I think half of quilting for me is not just where and how one quilts, but what one leaves unquilted. There, that was my deep thought of the day, but I really do think that sometimes the texture of quilted/unquilted is the real beauty of quilting.
And finally a little close-up. It's not even close to perfect, nor would I feel comfortable doing it on someone else's quilt yet, but I love the effect and I think I've improved so much just in the past two quilts. My little tiny circles (which are harder than you'd think moving that big machine around) are gradually improving if I remember that I'm at a quilting machine, not on the interstate (this is a very hard thing for me to remember--I'm very impatient and I like me some instant gratification). You can sort of see the glitz a little in this photo.

Anyway, I'll get back on track with my lessons on Friday. Last Friday I was helping someone literally all day and just didn't have the will power (or brain power) to say anything productive on a blog.

Happy quilting!