Festival of Quilts - F49

School is finally finished! And the Festival of Quilts is just around the corner! We're busy gearing up for our favourite quilt show. The Festival of Quilts runs from Thursday August 11th until Sunday August 14th. You can find us at Stall F 49 near the European Quilter's Cafe.

As usual we will be featuring the JUKI TL 98 P on our New English Quilter frames. There will be an exciting selection of the large cones of Superior Threads ideal for machine quilting.

If you're looking for something small and portable, try our new Art Quilter 4 and 6 foot frames. We've used quintessentially English deck chair fabric for the leaders on the 4 foot Art Quilter.

If larger quilts are your passion we have our new updated NEQ2 built longer and stronger to accommodate the bigger king sized quilts. Martha and Emily and Trudi Wood will be on hand to demonstrate and answer any questions. We're hoping that NEQ owners will pop round with 'show and tell' projects to inspire us all. We look forward to seeing new and old friends at the Festival stand F 49!

July Retreat

We just finished our 3rd machine quilter's retreat today. Trudi, Martha, Anne, Jan and Jan! One of our activities was to make a practice piece to audition various threads and line designs. We wanted to have lots of time on the frame and this gave everyone the chance to practice new designs and audition threads at the same time.

At the end of the weekend, we cut up the practice piece and everyone got a slice. It was good to have something to take home to remind us about the different threads. It was a good sample of our different styles of quilting too! Here we are pointing to our favourite bit of the slice.

Here's Trudi - "Speak to me only with thine eyes." These were her favourite bits.

Jan took a swirly design and elongated it until it looked like a water lily! We liked her version better than the original.

This is Jan too, it was her very first time ever machine quilting on a frame and she produced this lovely flower. What a great start! I'm going to post about Anne tomorrow.

Leftovers

I love art quilters! They tend to think outside the box and come up with quirky ideas. Personally, I'm fond of quirky! My art quilter friend Anne was visiting a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about recycling demo practice pieces. I mentioned that I cut them up and pass them out at shows so quilters have something tactile to walk away with. Anne suggested making cards. So I gave her some scraps from my basket, and Anne made me some cards and told me to go make some of my own.

So I did. I had a practice piece left over from a demo so Emily and I spent twenty minutes filling in the un-quilted spaces. We scaled down the design so small pieces would look interesting. I've put a pin on this one to give you a sense of the scale.

This was fun. I can't wait to cut it to bits and make some cards of my own. I just love leftover recipes!

Happy 4th of July

We took these photos while Emily and I were window shopping on the last day of our trip to Parma, Italy. I loved the flag on the back of the polo shirt. I'm going to try to create something similar on the frame.

The shop windows were gorgeous! And I couldn't resist this clever American flag made from Converse shoes. Happy 4th everyone!

Waiting for the serve

We're not huge sports fans in our family. But we do enjoy the tennis, especially Wimbledon. We were enjoying the men's finals today. Watching the games I notice this moment of tension waiting for the serve. The crowds get quiet and the player gets in position rocking slightly back and forth, poised to go in any direction to return the serve. Now I realize that quilting is not a sport! But sometimes we forget that it is a physical activity. We can certainly learn from the pros to get the most out of our own performance.

I like to use this 'waiting for the serve' to illustrate a good technique for machine quilting on a frame. When we are standing at the frame concentrating on our quilting it is easy to get tense. Our bodies stiffen up and our feet seem to get rooted to the floor. All the tension can make us stiff and our movements jerky. Then instead of moving with the pattern we lean until we just can't reach any more. We can correct this fault by adopting a 'waiting for the serve' position. Gently rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet loosens you up. The tension just disappears. When that happens your line of stitching becomes noticeably smoother. This rocking movement also makes it easier to move with the pattern up and down the length of your quilt. Next time you're at the quilt frame give the 'waiting for the serve' position a try. It's a winner.

I didn't want to love you

I made a sample thread demo piece for the thread talk in our April Retreat. I wanted to show just how different thread looks actually quilted on fabric as opposed to on the cone. It was a fun exercise. I used the same mussel shell line design so everyone could see how different threads played out with the same design against the same fabric.

Although I had some Kimono silk thread in stock I'd never actually quilted with it before. So this practice piece was my first try. To be honest, I didn't want to like it! Using silk thread seemed extravagant. Although it came highly recommended by famous names like Diane Gaudynski, I just wasn't convinced that it was an option for the ordinary quilter.

I was certainly taken by surprise! This thread went though my machine like butter on bread. It just glided - no breakage issues even though I was in a hurry to finish the project in time for the start of the retreat. I didn't want to love it but I do! So now I'm building up the Kimono Silk stock. Let me know if you want to try it too. Superior Threads new line of Kimono Silk is available here in the UK for £15.95 for a 1,090 yd. cross-wound mini-cone... a little extravagance goes a long way!

It's not yet up on the website but we can order whatever you fancy. You can view the colours on the American Superior Threads site and give us a ring on 01526 378057

Custom Job

Sometimes we get asked to do a custom job. A quilter in Canada needed a frame for her Handi-Quilter Sweet 16 sewing machine. But she was short on space and only had room for a 6 foot table. Our challenge was to create a frame big enough to accommodate the 16 inches on the arm of that whopper sewing machine and strong enough to bear the weight yet small enough to fit comfortably in her home.

To give some perspective, I put the JUKI TL98 P on the carriage to show just how big this carriage is. It has been reinforced to bear the weight of the 53 lb sewing machine! But it still glides effortlessly along the tracks at the touch of a finger. The carriage has enough front to back movement to take advantage of those 16 inches of throat space.

This frame is heading off to Canada but we'll be making more. I think we're going to be needing bigger frames over here too. There's a rumour that stretch JUKI's are coming to the UK!