Picking up where you left off

Bunting Quilt on the 6 foot New English Quilter frame

One of the great features about our New English Quilter frames is the ability to pick up right where you left off. I was working on this quilt over a year ago. I needed to make room for a Demo so I took it off the 6 foot frame and put it to one side. I used it as a teaching tool to show how important it is to add side-sashing strips on the quilt top so that there is a place to get the tension working right before launching into the proper quilt.

on the left is the side-sashing strip where I sort my tension

But last week I decided to finish the Bunting quilt. So I loaded it back on the frame. Our frame tensions each layer of the quilt separately so there will be no rucks or wrinkles on the top or backing. I can pick up just where I left off whether it's 5 minutes or 5 months.

notice the undulating shape of the scalloped mussel shell background filler

 This red, white and blue Bunting Quilt began as a machine quilting sampler project. The top was easy to assemble with the bunting flags raw edge appliquéd by machine to a solid piece of fabric. the idea was to machine quilt something different in each flag giving the opportunity to try out a variety of patterns.

Each flag was outlined in scallops, then I used a scalloped mussel shell filler.

machine quilted with Kimono Silk from Superior Threads

I used Kimono Silk thread for machine quilting the various line designs and Bottom Line pre-wounds in the bobbins, all from Superior Threads.

an echoed ripple stipple line design

 This echoed ripple stipple design worked well with the blue crabs.

machine quilted with a JUKI TL98P Lockstitch machine

It was very satisfying to finally complete something that has been a WIP (work in progress) for a long time.

Mille Miglia

Here's another story from our Italian trip. When the Textile Show ended, we would drive back to our hotel, collapse for an hour and then meet up and walk through the park into Parma to get an evening meal. One evening as we crossed the bridge into the town center, there were crowds of people lining the streets waving flags and cheering.

.

Really retro classic cars were zooming up and down the streets. We had stumbled upon the Mille Miglia.

Mille Miglia is a thousand mile endurance race across Italy. The first Mille Miglia races ran from 1927 to 1957. Restarting again in 1977, the drivers always compete in cars from the 1927 to 1957 era, in honour of the original races

Mille Miglia is regarded as the most beautiful automobile race in the world. We watched Alfa Romeos, BMWs, Ferraris, Bugattis, Austin Healys, Bristols, Lamborghinis, Fiats and Mercedes-Benzes mostly driven by eccentric men in goggles and leather caps. This was so cool! Our Italian hosts enjoyed it just as much as we did.

JUKI Italia Spa were our hosts for the Italian trip. They were also one of the main show sponsors, providing sewing machines for the workshops and prizes for the winning quilts. Keen to promote Italian patchwork and quilting, JUKI invited us to demonstrate how the JUKI TL 98-P sewing machine performed on our new Art Quilter frame. In writing about the Mille Migulia, I am struck by what this race has in common with the JUKI sewing machine. These cars are some of the most finely engineered vehicles in the world. Designed for speed and endurance, they are beautiful to watch and a delight to drive. The JUKI TL 98P sewing machine shares these same qualities.

Many people, particularly here in Europe have never heard of JUKI sewing machines. Yet JUKI is one of the most successful industrial sewing machine companies in the world. The JUKI company channels its extensive industrial technology into creating the best domestic sewing machines on the market. The Italian Textile Show provided an opportunity for many people to test drive a JUKI TL 98 P on a machine quilting frame for the very first time. The speed, ease of handling, the simplicity of design that makes it easy to tension, the sweet purr of the powerful engine going 1500 stitches per minute...

These final photos show Dr. Dario Belloli, the CEO of JUKI Italia Spa, test driving his JUKI TL 98 P on our Art Quilter machine quilting frame. He loved it!

A New Line Design

This is a post about ... process. One of the best things about the Machine Quilters Retreat is the creative process of bouncing ideas off each other. Throw 5 or 6 people in the same room, approaching a similar task with similar tools. Add differing personalities and diverse areas of expertise and 'et voila!' interesting things begin to happen.

At the end of the retreat Emily was showing Trudi her 'Rachet' pattern and Trudi suggested using a heart shape, which then morphed into 'pengin feathers' and a new design was born. It probably already exists somewhere else. But is was really fun watching Emily and Trudi discover it together.

I asked Emily to doodle out the process for us. The following images describe how the design came to be.

Emily began with her 'rachet' pattern which is inspired by the rachets on our frame!

Trudi suggested adding hearts to the spiral.

When Emily copied the pattern she made a mistake. And they both liked the mistake better than the original pattern.

The wonky heart reminded Trudi of 'penguin feathers' and so they went on to incorporate 'penguin feathers' into the design.

They both played around with how to move from one design to the next.

Trudi is already machine quilting this pattern ! Perhaps she'll show us what she's up to on her blog.