Back in the studio

And it feels good!

A string block became the center of a new pillow sham

A whole chain of diversions had conspired to keep me out of the studio for about three months, but in the past couple of weeks I've gotten back in the studio and am having a great time.

The first evening I went back in to work I turned on the new air conditioner and just looked around. I didn't even know where to start. I spent a couple of evenings just taking stock, seeing what projects were in progress, and what I needed to finish them. I still wasn't ready for anything too challenging, so started by taking a string block, setting it on point and quilting and finishing it as a pillow sham for our new apartment. Along with that, I pulled out some already quilted string and crumb blocks, which I took to the apartment and finished as potholders.

These string block pot holders add a colorful touch to the
kitchen and are useful

Then it was back to my art quilts. I do a lot of my pieces in components, preparing backgrounds, and making other parts separately, then applying them to the background. I had quilted this lighthouse, plain white fabric layered on felt and heavily quilted with variegated thread, but it didn't work with the background I originally planned. So my first project was to create and quilt a background. I love this orange fabric with stars and it worked perfectly with the bright threads of the lighthouse. The original background, pieced and painted with a sunrise, became the background for a palm tree.

This lighthouse is closely quilted
using colorful variegated thread.

With those done, I went through the stack of nearly finished pieces and picked out and cut binding fabric for each one, and this weekend did a marathon binding session. Not my favorite part, but now I have a stack of handwork I can work on while watching TV or visiting with friends.

With several of the quilts nearly finished, I decided it was time to start some new work, sea turtles! Here's the first herd of turtles. For these I fuse the top fabric to felt, using MistyFuse, then quilt and paint. After I cut them out, I paint the edges to seal them. More on the turtles soon, but for now I have other work to do.

More later!

This palm was appliqued to the painted
background

A herd of turtles! I fuse fabric to felt, then quilt and paint. After cutting out, I paint the edges to seal.

New month, new start

September! There's something about September that makes me think of new starts. The beginning of the school year, of course, and the change in weather. It's been a little cooler at night the last few days, though it's still in the 90s during the day. And the sun has moved so the light "looks" like fall.

Since it's kind of a mini-New Year, I've decided to renew my efforts on a couple of things that have fallen aside during the heat of the summer – my effort to organize/clean up/clear out my house and to get in better shape through healthier eating and exercise.

I've also taken advantage of the back-to-school sales and bought new notebooks, paper, pens and pencils for my office and have been going around the house throwing out dried out pens. Who needs the aggravation of hunting for working pens when you need them?

One thing we seldom think of is office supplies in the sewing room or studio. Yesterday I dug out the decorative tape dispenser (shaped like a sewing machine) and put it out where I can get to it. I have a pair of scissors just for paper, some Sharpie pens in different colors, and a hand-held pencil sharpener. I just need to bring in some new pens (maybe the fun colored ones?), pencils and note paper, then set up a little area to keep all of them.

I'm still deciding on the quilting pattern to use for my bow tie quilt, so worked on some other projects last night. I did the applique for my palm tree – stitched the trunk using a handcrank and fused the leaves, then did the main decorative stitching. The palm leaves still need a little work but they are coming along. I can only work on intense projects for a while, so I moved on to the pillowcases I'm making for our guild boutique and got two more in progress. I would have finished them, but I misjudged while cutting and got the tip of my finger with the tip of the scissors. Ouch! When I start making painful mistakes, it's time for a break.

Thanks to Loreen Leedy for the instructions on her blog to put your own background on a blog. I followed her very good instructions yesterday to put the images from one of my works into the background of my blog. It's really nice to be able to make it personal, even when using a basic template.

More later.

The miracle of the sewing machine

One of the things that always amuses me (sometimes annoys) is the "experts" – usually self-proclaimed – who insist you have to have a fancy, new, usually expensive, sewing machine in order to quilt.

Last weekend at our guild workday everyone else had their new sewing machines. One person was using the computerized embroidery machine to embroider some Christmas motifs, another was using decorative stitches to finish a crazy quilt ornament. Everyone else was straight-stitching. So when someone said about my Featherweight, but all they do is straight-stitch, I just shrugged and said, that's all I really need to make a quilt.

And that's true enough. But the fact is that a woman of 1900 with her straight-stitch sewing machine and box of attachments could probably do more than most people today with their computerized machines. Think about the clothing of the day, tucks and ruffles and plackets and eyelets. And there was a way to do them all on the sewing machine.

Machines of the day came with a basic set of attachments, like the puzzle box I've shown, which would have come with a Singer 27. Basic attachments included a ruffler, tucker, various hemmers and a quilting foot. The angled wire piece in the top right corner is a quilting guide. Very handy when you want to make parallel lines of quilting, whether they are straight or curved. The machine's instruction manual would have information on how to use all these basic attachments.

The really fun thing, to me, is that this is just a start. All the modern ideas, free-motion quilting, thread painting, and so on, were done 100 years ago, using straight-stitch sewing machines.

I was recently looking for something online and found the1911 Singer Instructions for Art Embroidery at the Internet Archive site. This is a book I've wanted for years, but never had the money when one came up for sale. Thanks to the wonderful people who share resources online, I can now try it out.

While I was looking around, I found another treasure, the Domestic Handbook of Art Needlework, a similar book written even earlier, in 1896, by one of Singer's competitors.

These two books have some wonderful ideas and techniques, and I'm looking forward to trying them out.

I thought this was a good day to share, as I didn't do a lot of sewing after work yesterday. I did decide on the thread I'll use to quilt the bow tie quilt and wound a half-dozen bobbins. And I started putting together a background for the little art piece I'm thinking about.

Now, time to get back to work, more later!

A whole lot of sewing going on

Actually, not so much sewing as pinning and cutting and all the things that make sewing possible, but I had a good day yesterday. My primary focus right now is finishing up several quilts that I want to put in our guild's show, all traditional quilts, but the creative switch has finally turned back on and I have a couple of ideas for art quilts, including one "reboot" of a theme I tried earlier but didn't come out quite right.

So yesterday I finished a little piece I'd started earlier in the year. I had been walking on the beach and was intrigued by the patterns left by the seagulls walking on the dry sand. I wanted to see if I could recreate the pattern in quilting, so did this little piece. Originally I was going to quilt in a human footprint, but didn't like it, so I covered it with a flipflop. It has some composition issues, but I'm pleased with the effect of the quilting.

If there is one part of making quilts I can't stand, it is pinning them. Lots of reasons, primarily that I don't have enough room. But over time I've found a system that makes it less awful. It's based on Sharon Schamber's basting system, using two pieced of wood to wrap the top and backing, opening up a section at a time. I modified it to use two 1x6 pieces, wrapped in batting, and, of course, I pin rather than hand baste. I had been using a small crochet hook to close the pins, but a couple weeks ago I got a Kwik Klip and that really helps.

So, yesterday I got the backing assembled, found some batting the right size (love it when a leftover is the right size!) and got the bow ties quilt mostly pinned. I'll be finishing pinning today and testing out some quilting ideas, though I don't know if I'll get started on the actual quilting.

One more little project yesterday. Last year a member of one of my groups showed us how to make some cute little sewing kits. I couldn't find the instructions, but found my kit and figured it out. I made one up as a test, then cut out several and started putting them together. These will be great for our boutique at the quilt show.