Bunting

What is it that makes bunting so jolly? Today I've been making bunting from the same deck chair fabric that we use for leaders on the 4 foot Art Quilter frames. We'll be using the gorgeous strippy bunting to decorate our stand at the Festival of Quilts. At the show we like to give away 'goodie bags' with each frame sale. It's a useful collection of needles, threads and pre-wound bobbins that will get machine quilters off to a good start.

This year we're giving away a deck chair apron with each Art Quilter. See you at the show, stand F49. Drop by and give the new Art Quilter a test drive.

New Slant

Our Nifty Grip speed control handles have a new slant. Working from the back of the sewing machine, we need to stand slightly to the left so we can see the needle easily. Our handles help you to stand in just the right place for optimum visibility. The handles are low so they won't block your vision.

They won't make your shoulders ache either. The ergonomic design enables you to work from your centre. Many handles are attached to the carriage in a way that causes you to reach up. After a while the reaching makes your shoulders ache and gives you a pain in the neck. Our Nifty Grips are so easy and comfortable to use - you'll forget they're there. They leave you free to concentrate on your quilting! Come and try them for yourself at the Festival of Quilts next week. Visit stand F 49 and you'll see just how nifty our grips are.

Seeing what you're doing

The Festival of Quilts is a great time to shop around. If you are considering getting a machine quilting frame, this Birmingham show is a perfect opportunity to test drive all the frames on the market. I'm going to devote the next few posts to considering what makes a great frame. What important features should you consider when you're shopping around for a frame? Let's consider visibility. First and foremost, while we're machine quilting it's vital to be able to see what we are doing!

One of the assets of machine quilting on a frame is the viability. Machine Quilting while sitting at the sewing machine limits what you can see to the 6 X 8 inch rectangle of quilt sandwich between your hands. Upgrading to a machine quilting frame immediately opens up your field of vision. Now instead of a little rectangle you can see an entire section of your quilt, which is really helpful in executing a design. Being able to see where you've been and where you are going makes a big difference in the quality of your quilting.

There are many things that can get in the way and block our vision while quilting. One culprit is the structure of the frame itself. Sometimes the handles get in the way, the scaffolding can make it difficult to see what you're doing. Sometimes the frame is designed so that your own arms block your vision as you move the carriage. This is particularly true if you are working from the front of a frame. So as you try the various frames at the show, ask yourself "Can I see what I'm doing?"

Another culprit is vibration. This is perhaps the most frequent problem. The up and down movement of the needle on the sewing machine creates vibration. A good sewing machine is designed to limit the vibration. But no matter how good the sewing machine, there is still going to be a certain amount of vibration. The question to ask is, "Is the vibration interfering with my vision?" A good table will limit the vibration as will a good frame. The materials a frame is made of will affect the level of vibration. Wood dampens vibration while metal amplifies it. So when you try the frames think about the vibration. Some frames vibrate so much that you just can't see what you're quilting. So while you test drive the frames next week make sure that you consider the vibration and make sure that you can see what you're doing.

Christmas in July

I know it's August. But Christmas in August doesn't have the same ring to it! And I did practice the 'Christmas lights' line design yesterday, when it was still July. It began with a doodle. The design started as a retro telephone handset that I'd seen on a T-shirt while shopping last week.

But as I was doodling the design on paper it morphed into Christmas lights. The loops made it easy to 'travel'. And I thought it would be fun to scale up and down. Then I had to try it out with thread and fabric. The 4 foot Art Quilter is just right for this sort of thing. I loaded some black fabric and some fleece and tried out some different kinds of thread.

The luminous qualityof this Rainbows Northern Lights #803 worked well.

Then I tried a glow in the dark thread, which would look great in winter!

This photo is a bit more in focus. And to finish, I might as well include the reason for those cat hairs!! The cats do think the frames are special hammocks! I've got plan to use this line design on a Christmas tree quilt. So wait and see, or better yet make your own.

Thread Wise

This post is about thread choices. I could have called it thread 'whys' as I'll be explaining which threads I used in this last quilt and why I used them.

I pieced the top with MasterPiece thread on top and in the bobbin. Why? Masterpiece is 100% extra-long staple , really grown in Egypt cotton. I like to match the fibre content of the thread and the fabric here in the piecing process. The pieced seams in a quilt are the weight bearing seams. Think about hanging up a completed quilt or shaking the wrinkles out of a quilt. What seams are bearing the most weight? In a house not all walls are load bearing walls. In a quilt not all stitches bear the same stress. Lots of people get their knickers in a twist about various types of quilting thread. But it is the pieced seams that are the stress bearing seams. And if we want to match the thread fibres to the fabric fibres, it is most important to do this for the pieced seams. MasterPiece will bear up well against the various stresses in the life of a quilt. With 75 gorgeous colours it's easy to get a good colour match. MasterPiece is a fine weight thread, not too heavy or bulky so it gives nice flat seams and sharp points. I find MasterPiece an ideal piecing thread.

MasterPiece comes in pre-wounds! I love pre-wounds because I hate winding bobbins. Pre-wounds can hold 3 times as much thread as the bobbins that you wind yourself and they work great in most sewing machines, my Janome Memory Craft 6600 work great with pre-wounds.

Because the cotton fibres are matched in the piecing thread I am free to use whatever threads suit my fancy for the machine quilting. For this project I've used Rainbows, a variegated trilobal polyester from Superior Threads. All the fibres that make up this thread are light reflecting which gives Rainbows a lovely shine to it. This particular thread is #803 Northern Lights.

I've used a pre-wound Bottom Line in the bobbin, a soft blue which disappears into the pieced backing fabric. Rainbows and Bottom Line are a machine quilting marriage made in heaven. They work beautifully together!

Finally, for sewing the binding by machine, I've used Sew Fine on top and a pre-wound Bottom Line in the bobbin. Then to hand sew the final stage of the binding I used a red Bottom Line to match the binding colour. The Bottom Line is just wonderful for hand sewing - it disappears into the fabric and it never knots up. I find it a real pleasure to hand sew with.

In summary, I've used a mixture of cotton and polyester threads in the quilt. The choices have to do with the piecing and quilting process as well as the look and durability of the end product. I'm confident that it will wash and wear well and I'm delighted with how it looks.

Retreat Feedback

Meet Jan! She’s emailed me some feedback from our July retreat and is happy for me to share it with you. Jan has been machine quilting with a JUKI TL98-P sewing machine on a New English Quilter frame for a couple of years now. She’s recently started a City & Guilds course and came to the retreat hoping to improve her machine quilting skills.

"I have enjoyed my weekend with you, Trudi, Anne and Jan immensely. I am finding it rather difficult to put into words how I feel about the weekend, so my thoughts are a bit random....I came along not really knowing what to expect. Knowing that Trudi was going to be there, and being an avid reader of her blog, I had in the back of my mind, the hope that I could improve my quilting skills. I needed to move on from loop-the-loop, loops and daisies, stippling etc, into something a little more complex. Maybe not the 'famous feathers' that Trudi produces, but moving that way.

Finding Anne there with her artistic background was an unexpected bonus. Anne's art-quilt opened up new directions for me. It gave me ideas to progress for my City & Guilds course, and made me think about how I could use my frame in other ways. I enjoyed the amount of time I was able to play on the frame. And the paper roll is essential (imo), in order to make a start, and see where you are aiming. And equally essential is having a little piece of something to bring home. My husband was fascinated to see what we had been up to, so it was great being able to show him our slice of sampler.

I came along with very few expectations - as we all agreed, part of the treat was simply being away and being looked after. I hoped I would improve my quilting skills - I have. I now feel confident that I can get on and produce some quilting of a higher quality. I can also quilt right-to-left. I learnt how to roll the fabric whilst leaving the needle in position. I learnt how not to over-tighten the top. I learnt how to look after my Juki. And I learnt about the qualities of thread.

I think that the amount of time on the frame was just right for me. If it had been less, I think that I may have got bored. As you know, I am very easy-going, but I do like to 'get on'. Maybe not in the same realm as Trudi and MadBird Anne, but my nick-name of Miss WhizzyKnickers is not for nothing! So, do I think I got VFM (value for money). Yes I do.

Where to go from here? I think that if you are going to offer more Retreats, then maybe you should offer a similar retreat to the one's run so far as 'Stage One'. And then maybe you could develop a 'Stage Two' retreat, maybe tackling a small, simply pieced project that could be used as a sampler for a variety of quilting techniques. Anyway, I do think there is room to go forward. Hope all this rambling helps!"

Jan from East Yorkshire

We are planning to continue our retreats next fall. We're keen on offering a stage 2 retreat on feathering. Let us know if you have any other suggestions for retreat topics and we'll post some upcoming retreat dates when we get back from Birmingham.

Art Quilter in residence

We were very fortunate to have an art quilter(textile artist) attending each of our first two Machine Quilter Retreats. Art Quilters are so much fun, quirky and creative, they think outside the box and kept us in stitches! We decided that having an 'art quilter' on retreat was going to have to be mandatory. So when a space opened up for the July retreat, I invited Anne Smithies back as our 'art quilter' in residence.

Anne, having attended the May retreat, decided she would use the weekend to get on with her own projects. She brought some paints and a white piece of fabric. Just after breakfast in the morning sunshine , Anne created a simple colour wash with acrylic paints as the backdrop for a beach scene. Then she used simple objects, bits of card and wood, the tip of a paint brush, the cap of a marker to stencil flower shapes on the fabric with blue paint. Anne let it dry in the sunshine, then ironed it to set the colours.

Next, Anne loaded the top with some backing and wadding on a 4 foot Art Quilter frame. Anne used the frame just like as easel, to support her 'canvas'. Now the sewing machine needle became a brush which Anne used to paint with thread.

It was amazing watching the beach scene evolve as Anne added texture shape and colour with the various threads. Then Anne moved on to the 'still life' flowers, adding detail with line and colour and texture to the background. The incredible thing was just how quickly and simply it came together. As the rest of us more traditional quilters watched Anne work throughout the day we felt liberated. We felt confident that we would be able to put into practice what Anne had demonstrated for us. Anne's creativity is infectious! I'll be posting more about her in the future and we hope to have some of her textile projects on show at the Festival of Quilts!