Little Houses in the Big Woods

One of my favourite things about free-motion machine quilting is how the designs seem to take on a life of their own. The line designs for this quilt began simply as chimney smoke. But as the smoke cleared the houses the design morphed into a much looser windblown version. And as it fell to the ground the design melted into a misty ribbon-like vapour.

I didn't start out with this in mind, but as I played with the designs on paper and later with my sewing machine on the frame, the tightly curled chimney smoke opened out into a variety of much looser designs. The relatedness of the designs gave the quilt continuity, while the variations gave interest. It was fun and quick once I got to the actual quilting. Best of all it was finished for Christmas.

The red schoolhouse blocks for this project were gently resting in a basket for about ten years. My friend Rosemary Titley-Bayes kindly offered to put the blocks together and add the borders so it would be ready to feature in our new DVD. Little Houses in the Big Woods was machine quilted using a JUKI TL98P on the New English Quilting frame using King Tut#920 Sands of Time on top and Bottom Line pre-wounds in the bobbin. It was featured in the UK Popular Patchwork 2007 Christmas issue.

Going Out of the Lines

This little quilt took years to piece. I was piecing it when my children were quite small. As the Christmas season approached I'd get the urge to find my stash of Christmas fabric, get it all out and ponder about what project to work on. I think the first year all I finished was the star in the centre. The following year I made it through the first border. There were probably a couple of years when I only managed to get it out, look at it and put it back again. But one year I found some great stripy fabric that went perfectly and I was able to finish the piecing.

By this time I was machine quilting on a SuperQuilter frame. I'd recently upgraded my sewing machine from a 30 year old school's Bernina 808 to a JUKI TL98P and I was loving those extra 2 inches. This quilt presented me with one of my first opportunities of 'going outside the lines.' I was fed up with stitch in the ditch. I wanted to try an overall pattern. Many hand quilters do this to great advantage. Look at some of the Amish quilts we all love so much, and you'll see that the quilting has a life of it's own and often ignores the piecing pattern completely.

I used a gold shade from the MasterPiece range, Wheat Fields #157. I choose this fine thread to blend in to the pieced fabric underneath, giving me texture without drawing too much attention to itself. The quilting pattern is one that I stumbled on myself. It's a looser, more flowing version of a smokey spiral pattern that I'd used earlier to come out of chimneys. I called it Filigree Scroll work. It's a free flowing pattern, easy to move with in any direction.

Well, it took years to piece, but it was quilted in an hour. It did take a real effort of the will to ignore the piecing and cross over the lines. But I'm glad I did. Standing back from the finished quilt, I realized that an overall quilting pattern could hold the quilt together visually as well as practically. I also like the way a curvy pattern helped the quilt to hang more gracefully. Now I use this quilt each Christmas. But I keep it handy all the rest of the year as a teaching tool to demonstrate the value of going outside the lines.

Lines and Spaces

Here's a fun table runner project, quick and easy enough to still finish in time for Christmas.

Find some Christmas fabric that you may already have in your stash. Fabric with a prominent motif, as in the picture, works well. You'll need about a half yard or even a bit less. Use a rotary cutter to get it to a useful size, one that fits on your table, dresser or sideboard. Then add a contrasting border. This project is small enough to work well on or off a frame.

Choose one of the flatter needle punched waddings and a backing fabric. I like to use a patterned backing fabric because it hides any mistakes. For the quilting, I've chosen a top thread that blends in with the background fabric. Here I've used a thread from the So Fine! range of Superior Threads #434 Misty Blue. For the bobbin, I used a BottomLine thread that disappeared into the backing.

As you can see, the quilting design is a simple free-motion combination of loops and squiggles. I've imitated the wire hangers of the wooden ornaments on the fabric. My only aim was to miss the motifs. In machine quilting the unquilted spaces are every bit as important as the quilted ones. Quilting around the 'images' on the fabric makes the un-quilted spaces pop up. This is easy to do and creates a great look. Start to finish it only takes a couple of hours.

Life is alot like quilting. Simplicity is powerful. We often try to cram far too much into this Christmas season. Doing less will allow us to appreciate what we do even more. Quiet and creative spaces can serve to frame the more active times in the next few weeks. Sometimes it is what we don't do that makes all the difference.