Stripes & Solids

Diary of a Vintage Raleigh Restoration: Part Two (Cleaning)

2011-08-08T06:03:00.000-07:00

The first thing you must do when you purchase a vintage bike--particularly if you basically unearth it, as we have done with many bikes--is give it a good cleaning. This Raleigh Sports didn't need as much cleaning as some others we have purchased since. Whether that says that we are foolish or that people just don't take care of their bikes remains to be seen.

Some trial and error, as well as significant help from my wonderful friend Jessica, has given me a specific process for cleaning a bike. Some may disagree with my methods, perhaps vehemently, but this is what I do; and hopefully my bicycles will not crumble beneath me while I'm careening down Commonwealth Avenue.

You will need the following supplies: rubber gloves (the kind you use for doing dishes, not latex gloves), Barkeeper's Friend (an abrasive powder available in most grocery stores in the cleaning section), copper wool pads, a bowl with about a cup of water in it, baby wipes, alcohol, Q-tips, and steel wool pads.

Wipe down the entire frame with baby wipes soaked in alcohol. On older, steel bikes that are covered with rust, using alcohol is essential because it dries quickly and does not contribute to any further rusting. Clean the hard-to-reach spots with baby wipes dipped in alcohol. Some people use popsicle sticks to do this; I haven't tried that yet.

If you have a Raleigh, wipe down the surface of the shifter as much as possible so you can see what year your bike was made! You will find the last two numbers of the year under the Sturmey-Archer logo.

Gross.

Wipe down the components the same way you cleaned down the frame. Then dump some Barkeeper's Friend in your bowl of water and don your gloves. Take your copper wool pad, dip it in the bowl, and pick up some of the cleaning powder that's settled on the bottom. Scrub down the components, not the frame or anywhere that is painted. The rust should start to come off fairly easily. Not all of it will come off, but you should be able to create a noticeable difference. Don't use either copper or steel wool on areas where you can see the chrome plating peeling off, either. When the water gets dirty, replace it. Don't be stingy.

Dirty.

Clean(er)

Dirty...

Clean!

You could precede this initial cleaning phase with a powerwash or a strong wash with a hose. If the paint on the frame is chipping heavily, please don't point your hose head directly at the sensitive paint areas. While powerwashing has its dangers, it is very helpful in cleaning around the shifter and mechanical components.

If you are lucky enough to have a Brooks saddle on your Raleigh (you won't find them on other vintage bicycle brands), go to your local bike shop and purchase some Proofide, which is Brooks' own saddle conditioner. Even if your saddle looks like it might not be salvageable, spend the $12 and put the Proofide on it. Just don't waste the money if your saddle looks like this:

I believe it endured an old-fashioned flaying.

Anyway, we thought the saddle on our bicycle was too dried-out and misshapen to be ridden. But one dose of Proofide later and we had this beauty, which our friends at Harris Cyclery have assured us needs no additional treatment:

Once you have given your bicycle a full cleaning, you will be able to determine which, if any, parts need to be replaced or fully restored on the basis of cosmetics alone.

For example, although the fork and brakes cleaned up nicely, we will have to sand down and completely repaint the fenders:

Next up: removing and cleaning components!

Light-and-Dark Log Cabin/Amy's Quilt

2011-07-31T21:01:00.000-07:00

I started a light-and-dark log cabin in early May, following a huge fabric-buying spree at Keepsake and Marden's (a discount store in Sanford, Maine. Don't ask, just go.). I described the motivation and process for the quilt in this post, but it's been so long that I'll go over it again. I felt a sudden compulsion to attempt to use up my (albeit meager) scrap stash and make a Log Cabin quilt when I returned from the NEMQG retreat. I cut up all the scraps I had into 2" strips (for 1.5" finished "logs") and pulled out a stack of 2.5" squares that I already had sitting around from a failed project that I never posted about. (Don't you love when that happens?) I cut three yards of KF Shot Cotton in Blush into 2" strips, calculated some basic measurements, and went to town sewing a mockup block. Happy with the first attempt, I chain-pieced 48 more.

...not so fast, of course. There was a period during block construction where I just could not believe that the project would ever be finished. You know the stage: when you realize you're only about 60% of the way through the blocks and you find it all but impossible to imagine that your hours of slaving away at the machine have resulted in such a meager pile of fabric. "How many more seasons of Will & Grace must I endure before I finish this mother%^&$%?," you ask yourself as you try to remove the chocolate stain you left on the last block you ironed.

Anyway, the blocks took me more than a month to sew. Once I finished them, I realized that the blocks together measured nearly twice the size of my entire living room. I considered renting space in the library or resorting to other bizarre venues for laying out my blocks. Luckily, my friends Rachel and Piper very generously agreed to allow me to use their dining room, even going so far as to remove almost all of the furniture in the room to accommodate this behemoth.

I'm so glad I went to a friend's house at this stage because the diamond layout I had originally planned just wasn't working, and if I hadn't had another person there to corroborate my negative feelings about my chosen layout, I might have plowed ahead. But neither of us liked it, and finally I settled on a variation of the Barn Raising variation (haha): an off-center diamond.

I am just so happy with the layout we chose, the way the fabrics are working together...everything, really! It's all solids except for one old gingham shirt of Amy's (which you can't tell is a print unless you are six inches away from it) and a few strips of Yuwa Honeycomb in black. The top measures about 95" square.

Once I had the layout set, I sewed the top together within a couple of days. I also whipped up a backing using Kona Light Jade and as many scraps from the project as possible. I have to admit that I can't conjure up the love for pieced backs that most quilters seem to possess. I think I'm going to start using Fat Backs, even though the fabric selection leaves much to be desired. By the time I've finished a quilt top, I'm ready to quilt it, bind it, and enjoy it. Sewing a backing just frustrates me. I have "sew-cried" my way through many a pieced back. Now I just need to find an inexpensive source for Fat Backs...and, of course, quilt this monster!

I hope you all had a productive weekend!

American Folk Art Museum, Part Two

2011-07-28T06:04:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the radio silence over the past week...I've been taking advantage of a spate of cooler weather to quilt a gigantic quilt! So without much further ado, here is the second part of my writeup about my visit to the American Folk Art Museum (part one is here).

The best part of the exhibit by far was the selection of Log Cabin quilts. They didn't have many Log Cabins in the show, but the ones they did were just beautiful. All except for one were light-and-dark variations, and the remaining quilt was a lovely Courthouse Steps variation. I learned from their placard that traditional Log Cabin quilts were foundation-pieced, not batted, and not quilted (though they were sometimes tied). I was very surprised to learn that! I will definitely use that method for the next Log Cabin I make.

I started working on a Log Cabin about two months before I went to the show, and I thought I wanted to lay mine out in the variation above. The fabric contrasts in the quilt above and the one following were so stark that the quilts almost glowed.

In the quilt above, the blocks were smaller than usual--probably only 6" or 7". I had never seen such an unusual Log Cabin block arrangement before. You wouldn't just stumble upon this arrangement; it was clearly carefully planned out. The corner blocks have a pink center square, but are completely black, whereas the rest of the blocks have a black center square and contrasting black and pink "logs." There are also tiny squares of yellow integrated into the pink side of eight blocks. Finally, the pink sides of the blocks feature a maroon strip that lends a lattice-like appearance to the finished quilt.

This Courthouse Steps quilt was one of the best I've ever seen (and my favorite quilt in the show). Its maker was a retired tailor who gathered up his satin, silk, and velvet lining scraps for several years and finally made this quilt. I took at least ten pictures of it, but the lighting was very harsh and they didn't all come out. This one made me want to make a Courthouse Steps quilt ASAP. My last quilt generated enough scraps that I think I may be able to do a small one.

The museum also displayed a beautiful quilt in the Barn Raising variation (some people today call this variation a "Center Diamond" instead).

I loved the border that the maker added. It gives the quilt more movement and dimensionality, I think.

So there you have it! Although they only displayed four or five quilts, I loved them all and thought they were the best in the show. I had been working on my own Log Cabin quilt for about two months when I went to the show, which I think is why it struck a chord with me. I'll show photos of the layout process for my Log Cabin tomorrow. But now, I'm back to quilting. Enjoy the weather, everyone!

Diary of a Vintage Raleigh Restoration: Part One

2011-07-21T06:59:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, we journeyed to the famous Grafton Flea Market. I was really hoping to find some old bike parts or a basket; instead, we came home with a 1954 Raleigh Sports bicycle.

I spied the dilapidated bike from the corner of my eye while looking at some weird canoe furniture, and couldn't believe our luck. And by "our luck," I mean Amy's luck, because I am one of the unluckiest people you'll ever meet. My Irish luck is canceled out by French-Canadianness, perhaps. Anyway, what got me most excited was the rear rack and the light post (a piece that clamps below the handlebars for you to attach a light to). I needed a rack for my bike, and it is my understanding that only one type of rack fits these bikes: the Pletscher rack. I had purchased one new from Harris Cyclery, but much preferred the version with the rear reflector that originally came on some models of the Raleigh Sports.

The stall where we found the Raleigh featured many interesting odds and ends, as well as a large collection of leaf blowers. "How much?" I asked the skinny, balding dude lurking around the stall with the look of a used-stuff dealer about him. "Twenty bucks," he replied. Amy and I conferred between ourselves while wandering around another booth and buying tools (from a lady who claimed to be offering us a deal because she "liked seeing girls buy tools").

What I really wanted was the rear rack, and although we had talked about getting a vintage Raleigh to restore for Amy soon, this one seemed like it needed a bit too much work for us. We knew a bit about cosmetic restoration, but not enough about bicycle repair. I knew the bicycle had to be from the 50s or very early 60s, when Raleigh Sports featured the full chaincase. But five minutes later, we were back at the booth. The rack would pay for itself, and the rest of the project would be fun, right?

"How much for just the rear rack?" I asked.

"Twenty bucks for the rack, twenty bucks for the bike. Ya gotta take the whole thing. I gotta get rid of it," he responded. He then proceeded to inform us how valuable each part of the bike was. It did have a Brooks saddle in fairly good condition, as well as some other unique features. We didn't need him to sell us on it, though. We could have sold the saddle alone and made twice what we paid for the bike. And also, the dude knew nothing about bikes.

I tried to play it cool while we stood there having a whispered conversation about how we would get it home. We really wanted the bike, but we had driven there in a 1996 Geo Tracker, and they're really too small to accommodate two adults and a full-size bicycle. Finally we just said, "We can figure it out." We bought a 50-cent ball of twine at a neighboring stall, gave the man his $20, and "rolled" the bike away. The tires were so rotted that we more or less dragged it out of the market while people gaped at us. Whatever. I had brought exactly $20 to the flea market, so it was serendipitous, and we had a new project!

Now here comes the silly part: us strapping it into the car, trying to ignore the ogling of strangers and small children.

We had to pull off the front wheels to get the bike to fit, which was no easy task...this bike was made long before the days of easy-off front wheels. And we didn't even know how to get the top off of the car, so we had to spend some quality time with the instruction manual.

Eventually, we got it loaded securely into the car, picked up some Dunkin' iced coffee, sped down I-90...and made it safely home. And that's when the real fun began...

American Folk Art Museum, Part One

2011-07-18T06:23:00.000-07:00

I'm having a health issue right now that requires me not to spend time in the heat and sun, and because I don't have AC in my apartment, that means no sewing! Last week I tried to sew, ended up heating my apartment to almost 95, and made my condition significantly worse. So this is the perfect time to post my photos from my trip to the American Folk Art Museum in NYC.

I had wanted to go to this show with my friend Yahaira, but Amy and I ended up needing to visit the city for something during the last few days of the show, so it was the perfect opportunity for me to see it (the show closed on July 8). I took a non-quilter friend, and yall know how that can be, but she was a good sport about the whole thing.

(Excuse the glare, through which you can see my legs and feet!)

Like all quilt shows I've attended, it was organized by type of quilt, which roughly corresponded to periods of years (though not always). They also displayed a few total outliers. I plan to write a separate post about the Log Cabin quilts, but here are some of my favorites from the other portions.

The museum grouped together the applique and signature quilts from its collection. It displayed one gorgeous Baltimore Album quilt, which was by far the best example of such quilts that I have ever seen in real life:

Here is my favorite block, which depicts the Capitol building:

What struck me most about this quilt was the very modern color combination. It reminded me of a few Moda fabric lines from the last year and a half or so.

A few other images from this portion are below. Many of the quilts featured writing or images drawn directly on the front of the quilt. In this particular star signature quilt, each block contained a very detailed image, like the bird below:

The messages drawn on the following quilt were faded from wear and difficult to discern. I wish I could have read them, but they probably were never intended for the prying eyes of the public anyway! I loved the following block in particular; most of the work you see is embroidery. I've noticed many more quilts with surface embroidery recently.

This whitework quilt was the best-preserved quilt I've ever seen at a quilt show. It dates to around 1800, if you can believe it. There wasn't a tear or stain in sight.

I particularly loved this quilt, which featured a stunning likeness of our 22nd and 24th President, Mr. Grover Cleveland:

Since President Cleveland was not married when he entered office, I like to think that some young woman was pining away for the strong and handsome Grover during the making of this quilt. I'm pretty sure it was the work of a quilt guild, though.

This Dresden Plate quilt represented the entire 30s. I appreciated the work that went into it, but I didn't feel very drawn to it, even though I love repros. I guess it didn't help that some irresponsible parents were allowing their three young children to grab at it and pull on it while I was trying to take photographs. (My friend, who has been a nanny in NYC for years, didn't help matters by muttering angrily about the childrens' poor behavior.)

The show also featured a section on African American quilts, with a lovely writeup about how few African American quilts have survived, out of an unknown number that were created. I left wondering how diverse the African American quilting tradition really was and is, and if what we think of as the style of African American quilting is even wholly accurate.

Of course, there were many other quilts at the show. I hope you got a chance to go to one of the two exhibitions the museum hosted. I thought they did a beautiful job. They chose wonderful examples from their collections, and I am so happy I had the opportunity to visit. But the best is yet to come. Stay tuned for the second part of my writeup!

And Now for Something a Little Different...

2011-07-14T06:09:00.000-07:00

As I prepared to move out to Michigan, I realized I would probably need a mode of transportation besides my feet, which have been perfectly sufficient for getting around Boston for the last four years. I would, at the very least, need something that would enable me to buy groceries at a store not within walking distance...and something that would help me haul home all of my goodies from the fantastic antique store down the street. So it came down to an electric scooter or a bicycle, and the bicycle won (for many reasons).

And that is how I stumbled into a very unlikely hobby: bicycle restoration.

I purchased this 1972 Lady's Raleigh Sports Limited III from Menotony Bicycles in Cambridge. After fooling around with Craigslist for ages looking for a vintage (50s-70s) Raleigh bicycle in good condition, I finally headed over to Menotony, and I bought one on the spot. I had many reasons for preferring a vintage to a modern bicycle. Today's bicycles are not the same quality and not made with the attention to detail I wanted at a price I could afford. Vintage bicycles are built to last: fully lugged, steel frames, and the works. You can learn more about that here and here (and if you are AT ALL interested in buying or restoring a vintage bicycle, this site is one of only two you will ever need).

The frame of my bicycle was in near-perfect condition. There were no dents or others issues in the fenders, and very little rust on the handlebars and seat post. I even had the original reflector on the back fender and the original sideview mirror!

But of course, I had a great deal of work to do. My bike needed a significant cleaning, as well as new brakes, new pedals, new grips, and a new saddle. The standard-issue grips, pedals, and saddles were unbearably uncomfortable. I slipped on the worn-down pedals and killed my palms the first time I took it for an hour-long ride, and the saddle left me sore for days.

The first and easiest-to-install purchase was the saddle. I ordered a new model of a Brooks saddle that existed in the 1930s, with adorable floral embossing all over the seat. This saddle was made for upright-style bikes such as mine:

Here it is fully installed on the bike:

I purchased MKS Sylvan Touring Pedals from Harris Cyclery, and I absolutely love them. They're grippy, economical, and they match the look of the bike perfectly.

I purchased standard-issue cork grips and then spent three days staining and lacquering them until they matched the color of the saddle as closely as possible:

My only concession to cosmetics alone was the tires. The black tires that Menotony Bicycles installed were perfectly sufficient, but I absolutely had to have cream tires. I paid dearly for my Delta Schwabe Cruisers, but I love them.

Phase 1 of the restoration (structural components) is complete. Phase 2 will involve the addition of accessories. I am trying to buy as many period-appropriate and vintage accessories as possible. For example, I hope to find the original rack that came on these bicycles.

Restoring my bicycle has been a tremendously rewarding and exciting project! My enthusiasm for this project inspired Amy, and we managed to find an even older version of this bike at the Grafton Flea Market last weekend. Her bike was in considerably worse condition than mine, and I'll be detailing the entire restoration process on this blog, including photos of us strapping it into her Geo Tracker and flying down I-90.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Oh, and my friend had her baby--a girl, which is great news for me since the quilt I made for her was decidedly NOT gender-neutral :)

A Break in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

2011-07-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

I wonder if any of you remember a time when I told a story on my old blog about how my aunt once informed me, upon seeing my lone Double Wedding Ring block, that the DWR is "a quilt ya make when ya got absolutely nothin' else to do...a quilt ya make when ya retiahed."

Needless to say, my aunt (who is actually my GREAT aunt, but we call her "aunty") was a big quilter in her time. Since nobody else in our extended family ever really took to quilting, she is quite enthusiastic in her support of my hobby. She never threw away any of her old quilting books, and instead passed them onto me. I have been the proud recipient of many Georgia Bonesteel books, patterns, and templates over the last year and a half...all of which I plan to save for the next sixty years and foist onto my own great-niece someday.

My aunt was diagnosed with a severe form of lung cancer in December 2010. The doctors gave her between six and eighteen months to live. But they, in their ignorance, did not realize the great force they reckoned with. Eighteen months to live if she stopped smoking a pack a day? No, thanks. Nineteen months later, this 87-year-old force of nature is still kicking, after driving herself to and from her chemo appointments the entire time.

So naturally, when the one-year mark came and went and she was doing pretty well, I decided to make her a quilt. Being 87, she has very traditional tastes, and I wanted the quilt to be as traditional as possible while still reflecting my own style, which I thought she would appreciate. I made a 14.5" string block out of fabrics from the first lines of Amy Butler fabric, and then mixed in some of my own printed scraps. I bordered the center block with an inch of Kona Bone, 2.5" of Olympus Cherry Blossom, and 8" of Kona Bone. I bound it with the Olympus fabric as well.

I did not machine-quilt it, but instead tied it by pulling the ties through to the back, a method that my friend told me her grandmother taught her. I did piece the back, but I do not have any photos of it because when I was reviewing the photos I took before I sent the quilt, I hit "delete" instead of "back" on most of them on the computer (it was early in the morning). Only these three remain.

It's just a lap quilt for when she has her chemotherapy treatments, so it isn't too large...maybe 50" square. But I really hope she likes it and uses it!

A Long Time Coming

2011-07-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

I've had this quilt finished for a month and a half, though I've neither sent it to the recipient nor blogged about it (I'm even sitting on it as I write). I have, however, brought it to one BMQG meeting...and that counts for something, right? The colors are difficult to capture, but they are most accurate in the photo below.

I made this little quilt for a dear friend, who was the first in our group of friends to get married and is now the first to have a baby. She is deeply religious and traditional, and I tried to make something that reflected her life and family.

The quilt is based on the Amish quilting tradition in several ways. The first and most obvious is the geometry and color patterning. As in many Amish quilts, nothing is random. What looks like a tossed-down array of triangles is actually very deliberately and evenly laid out, which you can see if you study the first and last photos in this post.

The second is the quilting. When I initially set out to quilt this (my first quilt on my new machine, btw), I tried to draw in lines with chalk so my triple-quilted triangles would look somewhat even. I had to use chalk because teal is the one color that the water-soluble pens I use to quilt will not wash out of.

The first few lines got erased when this quilt traveled with me to the NEMQG retreat, and I decided not to reapply them. The Amish have a concept that nothing is perfect except God, and this concept extends into their quilt-making. Their quilts may look perfect in books, but there is always at least one thing (albeit small) deliberately "wrong" with the quilt. I chose to keep my quilting lines organic to reflect this.

One major departure from the Amish quilting tradition was the addition of written words to this quilt. My friend is a big romantic...even her wedding invitation had an entire page of quotations about love (and yes, they were very cheesy, as befits a wedding invitation!). I quilted a few lines from an e.e. cummings poem into her quilt in a triangular pattern to echo the geometry in the quilt. The "love" you see above is the first word of the poem, and it is in a chartreuse triangle in the top-middle of the quilt. I placed all of the words in the chartreuse triangles, and I free-motion quilted all of them on there. I didn't use transfer paper or anything like that.

I backed the quilt in one color, FSDS Chamois. I used KF Shot Cotton in Sprout and Sky, Moda Crossweaves in Flamingo, Bella Solids in Teal, and Kona in Violet (I think? I don't have my color card with me right now) and another shade of Kona blue-green. I think I'm careless when it comes to recording my color choices when I use Kona because I know I have the color card, but it's never near me when I need it...

All in all, I love this quilt because I love what it illustrates about quilting: the ability to make a completely personalized gift for someone you love. What could be better than that?

Back from vacation!

2011-05-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

Hello, friends! I've returned from my vacation! I didn't sew for almost two whole weeks. I really missed it, but Disney was fantastic! I didn't bring my phone with me anywhere or check e-mail at all...it was so liberating.

I do have two FOs to show you, but they're awaiting the perfect photo op. In the meantime, I have two blocks to show you. The first is my bee block for my wonderful friend Meaghan. She asked us to make a 12.5" block using a Ting Tong and Things tutorial. I loved the process of creating this block, and I also loved the colors she chose. I selected the ones I liked best to make a block that I think combines both of our personal styles very well. Meaghan, I hope you like it!

The second is the starting block for a very special quilt I plan to make throughout the summer. I think I swore off log cabins a while back, but I suddenly had an urge to do a log cabin quilt. After a huge fabric-buying splurge during the BMQG retreat (when I acquired 18 yards of fabric...but at least it was all on sale...), I felt so wasteful that I decided I had to make a scrap quilt. A log cabin seemed like the perfect thing.

I don't have enough solid scraps to make an entire queen-size top, so I cut into several of my newly-purchased fabrics as well. I made a significant dent in my scrap wall, and I don't have any scraps left in a few colors. See how economical I can be?

I hope you all have a fantastic Memorial Day weekend and get a lot of sewing time in!

Has it really been so long?

2011-05-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

My apologies for the radio silence! My work schedule has been extremely hectic, to say the least, and I've been working on the same very small baby quilt for several weeks now. And it isn't very exciting! We had so many rainy days in a row that I couldn't get a photo of the top when I finished it, but here's a preview of the quilted and unbound quilt:

Since I took this photo, I made my binding using Yahaira's bias-binding tutorial, and I completely mucked it up. I think I have some sort of mental defect when it comes to bias binding. Yahaira described the method to me when I was visiting her, and I just COULD NOT understand it (not because of her explanation, but because of my own inability to comprehend 3D space...if you remember those tests you had to take in elementary school about spacial reasoning, perhaps you will appreciate that I regularly scored in the bottom 5-10%).

She explained that she used to belong to a very traditional guild, and some of the older/very experienced quilters showed her this method. They always have the best tricks, don't they? Anyway, the tutorial is great--detailed pictures and explanatory text--but I am an idiot when it comes to bias binding, and I ended up only being able to use about half of what I made. A lot of Moda Crossweave went into my trash can. By the grace of God, I ended up with about 3" remaining after I sewed it on.

Attaching it was followed by an attempt at the invisible join, which (somewhat inevitably) resulted in tears. But then I invented my own method of invisibly joining binding, which does not involve trying to line up unmatchable diagonal lines and sewing through your finger, so I will use that forever. When I have recovered from the trauma of the first invisible join attempt, I will post a short tutorial of my modification.

I also ordered some perle cotton because I'm hoping to hand-quilt my Ocean Waves quilt. I feel like the quilt wants to be hand-quilted, and since I've wanted to try big-stitch hand-quilting forEVER (since Lisa B. explained it to me at a NEMQG meeting early last year), it's serendipity. I'm using Anna Maria Horner's fantastic hand-quilting tutorial.

Now onto piecing the back and finishing the binding of my baby quilt...

The Search for the Perfect Machine, Part Four: Purchase

2011-04-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

...And then we came to the end.

Before I reveal which one I ended up buying, I want to insert some information about one more machine: the Juki TL2010Q (formerly 98Q).

The amazing (AMAZING!!) Joanna of Applique Today e-mailed me and suggested I think about purchasing this one instead. She also gave me some very important machine-buying advice. I asked her if she used her Juki for both piecing and quilting, and here was her response:

Monet, I do EVERYTHING on that machine! It is amazing for piecing. I use it for piecing, quilting, making clothes, curtains, you name it I make it on it! I have a Janome with all the fancy stitches, but as a quilter, I never ever use them. It's sat in the garage for the last 5 years collecting dust.

The speed thing would be an issue for you for all of about 15 minutes. I've had so many people use my machine, even children, and they get used to it very quickly. You get a feel for the pedal and can go slow, a stitch at a time, or fast, 1500 stitches per minute. I know it seems counter intuitive, but it really is easier to get smoother quilting lines the faster you go. All it takes is practice...

Even if you don't go for the Juki, still check out some of the other semi-industrial straight stitch machines - you would never look back! I really really recommend getting a machine with a knee lift. It was life-changing to me! You never ever need to lift the foot by hand which is HUGE when you are machine quilting. And the automatic thread cutter is something I can't go without now either. And I don't mean a button on the machine - it's on the foot pedal, so you tap your foot. When you are quilting (and piecing!) the more your hands can stay free, the better.

...I think the people who benefit most from Berninas are those doing beautiful heirloom sewing. People who actually use all those lovely stitches...If you think you will, then great! If not, you need to get the best quality machine you can get with the LEAST amount of stitches! For me, that is one, the straight stitch. I think a zig zag would be nice, but honestly, I have never needed to use it bad enough in the last 4 years to pull my Janome out of the garage!

Also, you are not going to want to keep the same machine forever. Our mothers did because all they did was make clothes in the 70's. I remember! They weren't making works of art like quilts. Quilts require different things than clothing...

If you want to quilt your own quilts, and they are bigger than a yard square, you NEED an amazing dedicated quilting machine. So here is my list of what you should look for, regardless of the brand. They are things that in my humble opinion are the only things you need for quilting:

Big throat space
Big flat bed
Needle down
Automatic thread cutting
Fast stitching
Easy to lower feed dogs (flick of a switch)

So there you have it, from a truly amazing quilter who has really put her machine to the test! I thought about what she said and even found a dealer in this area (Reliable Sewing Machines in Stoughton).

But in the end, I had to go with...

The Janome 7700/Horizon. It was my mom who convinced me. I haven't even finished the draperies, shower curtain, etc. in my apartment, and my mother told me that she didn't think I should buy a machine without an automatic buttonholer when I still have home decorating to do. Did I need a machine with 11 buttonholes? Probably not. But they sure are nice to have...

I'll admit that the most convincing feature was the 11" of harp space (11 must be Janome's lucky number). Once you have sewed with that much harp space, you won't go back. I would recommend not trying it unless you are prepared to pay for it. I could stick my head under that thing. Not that I would. I'm just saying.

In the end, it came down to a feeling. People tell you that you will "bond" with a certain machine, and they're right. It just felt right to me to sew on the Horizon. I didn't feel that way on anything else I tried.

I haven't had much time to play with it yet (although I did watch the hilarious instructional DVD while I set it up), and I'll post as soon as I do. For now, I have to finish up my work so I can go pack for the BMQG retreat!!

The Search For the Perfect Machine, Part Three: Post-test-drive

2011-04-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

(The first and second posts in this series are here and here.)

The machines I test drove were at a dealer about thirty minutes away from me. The dealer sells the Bernina 350PE and 440QE, as well as the Janome 6600 and 7700. Four of the six in one place not far from home…hooray.

I brought the following things with me:

1. Four kinds of fabric I use frequently, including one type that my machine hates (KF Shot Cotton)

2. Four small quilt sandwiches (with single layers of cotton fabric and cotton batting) for testing free-motion quilting

3. One large quilt sandwich for testing how much the harp could accommodate and how the quality of FMQ was affected by having a great deal of fabric jammed into the machine. My sandwich was not an actual quilt top since it was being sacrificed to the quilting gods, but I did use a thick broadcloth fabric on one side and wool on the other to approximate the thickness of a pieced top

(Wild turkeys in the driveway this morning! I love them!)

Step 1: straight stitching/tour of basic functions

Bernina 350 PE. I eliminated this almost immediately because the machine seemed too basic for me (although I’m sure it is a very good machine). This is a great machine for someone who can afford to spend quite a bit of money to learn quilting, but it was obvious that its narrow range of functions and capabilities meant I couldn’t take my sewing much further than the level I’m on now. Next.

Bernina 440QE. I did a few rows of straight stitching with the saleswoman sitting less than an inch from me, which was nerve-racking. Does anyone else feel like quilt shop employees are always judging you? Then don’t ever sew in front of them. Anyway, I used the patchwork foot and did see that amazing Bernina stitch quality that people rave about right away. The 440’s stitches were perfect. The machine was remarkably quiet and soothing. The harp space didn’t seem quite as small when I was piecing on it, and I liked the attached extension table.

Janome 6600. This machine looks like you expect a solid sewing machine to look: parts poking out everywhere, huge stitch guide on top, large throat, thick foundation. It was a nice machine and I got to try it out for approximately thirty seconds before the saleslady pulled me over to the Horizon.

Janome 7700. As I said in my earlier post, I wasn’t excited about the Horizon when I began looking at machines. If it had been list price, I would not have even tried it. But when I got there, the machine drew me like a moth to a flame. It was animal magnetism. I tried some basic stitches with the ¼” foot (yeah, the original one that everyone hates, and it did skew to the left, for the record), and then stitched with the dual-feed function turned on. If you were drowning and you happened to be holding onto the end of a quilted tablerunner that was under the Janome Horizon dual-feed foot, it would save your life. There's some horsepower behind that.

Step 2: free-motion/advanced functions

Janome 7700. I asked the lady at the shop to put on the FMQ foot so I could try it out. She put on a standard, clear plastic foot, and I grabbed one of my quilt sandwiches and sat down. The top thread broke after five seconds of quilting and the stitches were barely distinguishable (see image above).

The fabric was difficult to manipulate, and the thread continued breaking…four or five times in a few minutes’ worth of quilting. One of the other saleswomen actually heard it snap from several feet away. The foot was bouncing up and down so much that I could barely see the fabric and it made me dizzy. I decided to open the manual and make sure it was the right foot. Of course, it wasn’t. The 7700 has a special adjustable, two-spring foot: a foot that could not be located anywhere in the shop. Here's another shot of how awful it looked (and yeah, I had to write on the fabric to keep track of the samples):

Bernina 440QE. It took the woman a good ten or fifteen minutes to figure out how to put the BSR foot on. I sat patiently…this was my moment! And the BSR foot, as has been said many times before, did not disappoint. Damn. That thing was amazing. My stitches looked professional [image]. Happy joy. But as I moved the large quilt sandwich around, I realized that I was quite uncomfortable. My worst fears had been realized: the small harp space was an insurmountable issue. I was not bonding with this machine.

Janome 6600. When I sat down to try FMQ on this machine, I also spent more time playing around with its other features. There is something so nice about using this machine. It’s very easy to use, the screen selections are more intuitive than other computerized machines, the stitch quality is great, etc. etc. The saleswoman (one of those people who has five or six different machines at home for different purposes) said she had one and she “would NEVER get rid of it,” which I highly doubted after seeing her stroking the Horizon gently when I wasn’t looking. So anyway, I had a hard time achieving proper tension when FMQ on this machine, but I’m sure I could have worked it out…and even with the poor tension on the back, it looked great from the front. I felt so comfortable working on the 6600:

Janome 7700, round two. I unearthed a proper foot for sale at the store, so I forced them to open it and stick it on the machine. I achieved MUCH, MUCH better results with the two-spring foot. The tension was off no matter what I did, though. The machine repairman came out and talked to me about it at length, trying to convince me that it was easily remedied. I felt concerned about it. I know that tension is an issue with every machine, but I still felt like such an expensive machine should be able to achieve proper tension after fifteen adjustments.

So anyway, my dealership ended up offering me a great deal on the Horizon. I decided to go home and think about it for a few days. I had made various people promise that if they knew I came home with a sewing machine on the first day I looked, they would force me to return it. I had discussed the issues people were reporting with the Horizon to the ladies at the dealership, and I was then subjected to numerous lectures that started with phrases like “You know, I just don’t trust the internet. Those people are probably lying, you know.” In the Janome 7700 Yahoo Group? “You just shouldn’t listen to the people on the internet.” Okay.

I’ll be back soon with the rest of my saga. Until then, I hope yall are having a nice Easter, if you celebrate! If you're still reading, you are a champ and have my eternal devotion!

The Search For the Perfect Machine, Part 2: Pre-test-drive analysis

2011-04-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

(The first post in this series can be found here)

In this post, I’m going to describe the features of each machine, share some reviews and my initial thoughts, and explain how I am testing them all out!

Before we begin looking at the machines, I want to mention that my gut reaction is to get a Bernina. I want to have my machine for 40 years like my nana had her Elna and my mother her Viking. Bernina has a great reputation and their machines seem to last a lifetime. They are expensive, but people say they are worth every penny. However, some features common to the Bernina machines that don’t cost 10K+ don’t fit with my needs; hence my broader search.

Two great sources for machine reviews are Pattern Review and the Sew, Mama, Sew machine review. Check them out if you're in the market!

The machines

1. Janome 6600

Price range: $1100 to $1400

Reviews: The reviews of this machine that I have read are universally positive, and a few of my friends own it and love it. There are too many reviews to list, so just look in the two sites above and you will find great reviews aplenty. I’ve heard that it could be better at free-motion quilting. However, a brief perusal through the catalog of submissions for this year’s MQX shows how many national-level quilters are using this machine for just that, so I’m a bit skeptical!

Pros: dual-feed system, large harp area (9”), presser foot pressure adjustment, number of stitches (very large for a machine in this price range)

Cons: none so far

2. Elna 7300 (Quilting Queen)

Price range: $1100 to $1500

Reviews: Every review I’ve been has been very positive, but I don’t know anyone who owns one (see here and here; Pattern Review reviews in this thread). This is exactly the same machine as the Janome 6600, according to one reviewer who actually contacted Janome to ask about this (Janome makes Elna now), except for a few modifications: there are two or three extra decorative stitches on the Elna and the Elna has a more powerful motor. Everything else I the same, so the same pros and cons above apply!

3. Bernina 350 Patchwork Edition with Bernina Stitch Regulator (BSR)

Price: I was quoted $1149 for the machine, and I know the BSR function costs an additional $900 (yeah, I know…that’s one expensive foot!), bringing the grand total to just over $2000

Reviews: This is a new machine, so there aren’t any reviews yet, which makes me nervous. But it is a more budget-friendly option for me than the 440, so I will seriously consider it.

Pros: Comes with all of the quilting attachments I need, is a very sturdy machine with fewer bells and whistles (and thus fewer opportunities to explode on me and leave me machine-less) than others

Cons: Small harp space, small number of stitches, isn’t really a lot of machine for the price

4. Janome Horizon

Price range: All seem to be at about $3000.

Reviews: Mixed, but skewed toward the positive (see blog reviews here, here, here, and here). Most forum posts about this are very positive. The negative reviews are almost exclusively from the first production of the machine, which Janome admits had some issues (and they subsequently fixed the issues). There is one lady who got one of these machines, hated it, and has since spewed as much vitriol as possible about the Horizon all over the internet. I’m not posting any of her sites here, but it should be easy to find if you’re curious. People have had problems with their dealers in relation to these machines, especially if the dealer is located outside of the US. A few of the negative reviews I read ended with the person getting a 440 instead and loving it (score one for 440).

Pros: automatic single needle plate converter (my machine has made me terrified of my fabric getting eaten, so this is a big plus for me), 11” of harp space, built-in organizational spots in the machine (I’m obsessed with organization), dual-feed system, automatic thread cutter, GIGANTIC extension table

Cons: the mixed reviews (I have bad luck and if something is going to break on someone, I guarantee it will be me)

5. Elna eXcellence

Price: $2500

Reviews: none yet…yikes!

Pros: 11.5” of harp space, wide range of stitches and functions

Cons: seems to be more geared toward garment sewing, though I wouldn’t say that is necessarily negative

6. Bernina Aurora 440QE

Price range: $2800-3500

Reviews: there are too many good reviews of this machine to list, but here are a couple. The reviews I have read for this machine are universally positive. Owner after owner calls it her “dream machine.” Nobody has even complained about the small harp space, which is my biggest concern. If I wanted to buy a machine on reviews alone, this is the one I would choose. But I don’t want to do that, obviously.

Pros: BSR, comes with great quilting attachments, and has a range of stitches I think I will actually use

Cons: small harp space (this is the biggest con for me as harp space is one of the main reasons I began looking at getting a new machine to begin with), price (absolute top of my range), small extension table, and it seems to be not very much machine for the money…I’m worried I’ll regret buying something this small

Now onto the test drive...

The Search For the Perfect Machine, Part One: Background

2011-04-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

If you aren’t at all interested in purchasing a sewing machine (or in the intricacies of the machines on the market these days, or in my personal quest for one), then ignore this post and I’ll be back with sewing projects later. But I have benefited so much from the online sewing machine reviews out there (though I haven’t even bought a machine yet), and I hope to help other people who are looking to buy make an informed decision as well. So here goes: the story of my quest for a machine.

I received my first sewing machine for Christmas about a year and a half ago. It was a mid-range Kenmore from Sears and in most ways, it is a very good machine—so good, in fact, that I had taken to saying that I was very “utilitarian” when it came to sewing machines, and I didn’t anticipate buying a new one anytime soon. Mine seemed to perform the basic functions that I needed: it sewed a straight stitch (if not very well), had the needle up-needle down function (which I love and now cannot live without), and I could free-motion quilt if I really wanted to and had lots of time to unpick lines of stippling. My mother, who sews professionally, told me that it was a good starter machine, and I could upgrade when I figured out what I loved doing and what features I needed to accomplish my sewing goals. I was like, “Whatever, Mom. Who cares about sewing machine features, as long as the machine works?”

It is an excellent machine for the casual sewer or quilter (check out the reviews here). Less than a year after I got the machine, however, I pebble-quilted a quilt that was less than 46” square. Quilting that pattern broke the machine, as well as did considerable damage to the quilt that took me days to fix. I also watched Criminal Minds the entire time I did it and had nightmares for weeks. I learned two good lessons that day.

My machine was deemed irreparably damaged by the terrifying Sears technician lady, and the company gave me a new one (after a LOT of arguing…NEVER EVER buy anything from Sears. They have the worst customer service on the planet). The “issues” that I did not realize were issues in my first machine are very problematic in my second one: the tension is horrible (I can’t ever achieve correct tension), the machine constantly sucks the fabric down into itself, I get nests on the back of every line of stitching, the bobbin winder doesn’t work, the harp is extremely small, etc etc.

And yet, I still wasn’t thinking about getting a new machine. My machine is special to me because it was my first real sewing machine and the best gift I’ve ever received (thanks, Mom!), and it does feel like a bit of a betrayal to get a new one.

But then one day I got to thinking about quilting either of my two recent (and large) projects on my machine. I knew it wouldn’t work. And I started to get so frustrated by the bobbin thread nests on the back of every piece of fabric I sew. And I realized it is somewhat sad that my machine simply cannot sew through more than four or layers of fabric without creating teeny tiny stitches that are impossible to rip out. And also…I should be able to sew through Shot Cotton or any slightly shreddy fabric without the machine eating it and trapping fibers in the bobbin race.

So it was time for a new machine.

Luckily, MQX took place two days after this resolution, and the very first machine I tried was the machine that had become my Ultimate Sewing Machine Fantasy: the Aurora 440QE. The Bernina Stitch Regulator feature was mind-blowing (see a great review/instruction guide on it here). The 440, however, is extremely expensive, and the harp space is narrower than I would like it to be.

Which brings me to now.

I have looked through every sewing machine forum and review and joined every Yahoo group imaginable. I have narrowed my search down to several contenders, which I have grouped together Final Four-style (matched in groups of two by price). The contenders are:

1. Janome 6600

2. Elna 7300 (Quilting Queen)

3. Bernina 350 PE with BSR

4. Elna eXcellence

5. Janome 7700 (Horizon)

6. Bernina Aurora 440QE

Come back tomorrow for a list of reviews and the features of each machine. I will do a side-by-side comparison of all of the features pre- and post-test-drive! Now off to the dealership to try a few of them out...

Mountains Beyond Mountains (with apologies for harsh lighting conditions)

2011-04-15T18:18:00.001-07:00

Sewing has been on the backburner over here lately, owing to my incredibly hectic work schedule, but I sewed the final seam on this quilt top yesterday during my lunch break, and I am JUST. SO. HAPPY with it.

When I finally stepped away from the completed top and stared at it spread across the living room sofa, I felt like I had just scaled a mountain. Which doesn't really seem to require much, if you've been watching the Discovery show Everest, where people with terrifyingly little climbing experience (or common sense) pay vast sums of money to scale the mountain with the help of 43 sherpas and a team of yaks.

But back to the quilt.

There are one thousand and thirty-five triangles in this behemoth, which measures an acceptable 73" square. Not as big as I'd like, but still a usable size. This quilt would definitely not win any quilt shows; there are three or four (or ten) areas where the points just didn't match up, but the Quilt Police don't live near me, so I think I'll be okay.

Quilting, as always, is stalled...this time because the backing fabric I bought from Fabric.com (in my last ever purchase from them as their customer service is abominable) just doesn't seem to be very high-quality, and I would hate to ruin a quilt I love so very much with a poor-quality backing fabric. I know it will destroy my machine to do this, but I really want to use Minky on the back...is that so bad?

Have a great weekend, everyone! I hope you'll all spend it sewing. I'm spending it making room in my sewing area for my new sewing table...

Stripes & Solids--the top and back

2011-04-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought I would never have the chance to photograph this lovely top and back, we had a sunny evening in Boston and Amy left work early to help me hang them on the fence in the courtyard of my building (definitely a two-person job).

This is the second in my Amish quilts series. It was inspired by a quilt in an excellent book on Amish quilts, Amish Abstractions (you can see my review of it in that link. I'm trying write enough reviews to become a member of Amazon Vine so I'll get free quilt books. So far, I've written two).

Attaching the large borders to the center square in my incredibly small sewing area was difficult, but I persevered and am just so happy with the result. All I did was cut down the middle of several yards of fabric and attach it, so the borders are 22" and the center square is 44", for a grand total of 88" square.

Constructing the back was much more frustrating than piecing the top. As I said in my earlier post about this quilt, I got a little rotary-cutter happy and cut strips from three yards of fabric for the top. Of course, you don't use that much fabric in a 44" square, so I had quite a few leftover strips from which to piece the back.

Sewing them up was a complete nightmare. There are two parts of quilting I don't like: cutting (in general) and sewing long, thin strips. I bought an Accuquilt to deal with the first issue, but the second is unavoidable. So I created a battle plan and plunged in. Twenty 1"x88" strips later, I was finished...but I never wanted to sew a strip again. When we were photographing this yesterday, Amy (unprompted) said it looked hard to sew so many thin strips together. I informed her I was still having flashbacks about it. Luckily, I had had three seasons of Vicar of Dibley to get me through. Someone tell me I'm not the only person besides my grandmother who is obsessed with that show.

I do plan to quilt this on my own machine (gasp) and am actually in the process of looking for a new sewing table right now to make the quilting process easier on myself (in general...not just for this quilt!). I don't know if quilting it myself is crazy or not. Of course, I am considering going back to Laurena's to use her Sweet Sixteen because she has (much) more table space. But it's also free to do it at my own apartment.

I think I want to quilt it with concentric circles. I was planning to do a diagonal grid, which I do enjoy, but I've seen several quilts quilted that way in blogland over the last few weeks, and I'm already starting to get a little tired of the pattern.

I'm in Philly for the weekend doing something very exciting with a special friend of mine! I can't wait to tell you all about it when I return. Happy sewing!

Kindle case 3.0

2011-04-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

I swear this will be the last Kindle case I post (even though I have a fourth in the works, haha). What can I say? It's an adorable and practical gift, and a good way to highlight some of my precious fabrics. The exterior fabric I used for this one was purchased as a special treat for myself (though isn't everything?) at the New England Quilt Museum shop. It was very expensive, but very worth it. I bought two fat quarters in different colorways. The interior fabric is a KF shot cotton, and I have no idea what color it is because it is at least a year old.

I used regular batting and lightweight interfacing this time, as well as exclusively cotton fabrics, and those choices made all the difference in the world. I really struggled with getting good points on the last ones, for which I used wool fabric, heavy interfacing, and wool batting. For the record, I also used the same pattern and made the same modifications for this one as for the last two.

This one is going to a good friend of mine who is in her last weeks of pregnancy and spending a lot of time sitting around at home (I am, of course, in the process of making a quilt for her baby). My only concern is that this case might be a little more muted than she would want, but hopefully she will pretend to like it.

And finally, I am really hoping to get some good photos of my Stripes and Solids quilt for my brother soon. It's difficult to find a space to photograph an 88" square!

WIP Wednesday...with images this time!

2011-03-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I am visiting law schools/quilt shops for the next several days! I arrived this morning, dropped my belongings off at my hotel (chucked my bag into my room), and immediately went to (ran and then sped to) what I had heard was the mecca of quilt stores: Ann Arbor Sewing Center. To give you an idea of its size and selection, the store has a 32' long wall for thread alone. AASC is about twice the size of the house I grew up in, with a room for just notions that is larger than my current apartment, though that probably doesn't say much to those of you who have been there. I actually managed to leave without breaking the $100 mark, but only because they couldn't guarantee that a sewing machine accessory I wanted would actually fit my machine. Thank God for small miracles. I'd rather buy fabric than eat, but I have to impose limits on myself once in a while (or have them imposed on me...whatever).

Before I left, I did take pictures of my Ocean Waves quilt, on which I am slowly and steadily progressing. I love this quilt, but I can only do so much at once. Each square has almost 150 triangles. It can be a bit overwhelming, and the last block I did was completely disastrous (at least in terms of my ability to match points). Some of my cut triangles must have been very misshapen. It's a feat of willpower to cut ~1,000 triangles over two nights (so much so that I just had to buy an Accuquilt so it would NEVER, EVER happen again).

The as-yet-unnamed Ocean Waves quilt is the first quilt in a series I am doing of Amish-inspired quilts. The Ocean Waves pattern was very common among the Amish from the late 1800s to early 1900s, though I'm not sure if it is anymore. I developed the "pattern" for my quilt myself, and although the blocks are slightly larger than I expected (and larger than how they usually appear in Amish quilts), they are not larger than I generally prefer. I think they're very bold and graphic, which is exactly the look I wanted to attain. The Amish almost never used whites or beiges for their background fabrics, but I felt that my fabric choices were so...hmm, in-your-face?...that they required a "blank" space for the background.

Hopefully sewing them together and matching all of those points will not be horribly traumatic. I have four blocks so far, and I only need one more full block and four half-blocks to finish the top. The blocks are ~24" across when square, but ~36" across on point (which is how they are assembled), so it will be a ~70x70 finished quilt. Not quite as big as I'd like, but you can't have everything.

I will list the fabrics again once I finish the top, but I'm posting them here now so I don't forget. The triangle/focus fabrics are: Amy Butler Solids in Periwinkle; FSDS in Grape, Red, and Olive; Moda Bella Solids in Turquoise; Kona in Cerise, Rose, and Violet; and Quilter's Linen in Orange. The center square/background fabric is Moda Bella Solids in Antique White. It is my understanding that Moda no longer produces this color, and now I must obsessively hoard the 3.5 yards that remain (I reallyreallyreally love this neutral).

Back soon with photos of my recent completed quilt top and back!

Stripes and solids!

2011-03-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have a new quilt in progress, this time for my brother Taylor (forget what I said about gift quilts, heh heh...he's been begging for one, and this is for Christmas). The inspiration for this quilt came from one of my favorite Amish quilt books.

This is the 44" center square of what will, I hope, become a quilt of 84"-86" square.

I cut out 8.5" square pieces of paper and string-pieced 1.5" strips of three color ranges of fabric (green, cerulean, and plum) with one gray and one black fabric. This 44" square went through several iterations on top of my duvet cover (downside of paper-piecing: paper doesn't stick to my makeshift design wall).

The gray is FSDS Dogwood (which looks remarkably similar to Ash...I had to sub Ash in one of the blocks because I ran out of Dogwood, and now I can't even remember which one it was), and the black is Moda Bella Solids in Black. I am hoping to find a richer black for the border. The colored strips are FSDS Emerald, Hummingbird Blue, Red Plum, and Oriental Blue; and Kona Cactus, Plumberry, and Pacific.

Naturally, I got slice-happy with my rotary cutter because I was distracted by the television, cut about three times as many strips as I needed, and now have a bunch of 1.5"x 44" strips I must use to piece the back.

I have big plans for how I'm going to quilt it, which do not involve the longarm...I've discovered I don't love it as much as I thought I would! Not being able to see the quilt while you're working on it is so frustrating.

I hope to have a completed top to show you soon. It will be my first completed quilt top since October or November, eeek!

B is for...

2011-03-15T09:20:00.000-07:00

A butterfly block for the NEMQG bee (ah, I couldn't resist). This one is for Aimee, who is making a butterfly quilt for her daughter. Aimee gave us more leeway in design and sizing than anyone else in the bee has so far (though she did ask for no applique). She only showed us one pattern as an example, and after I saw a few of my bee buddies use it, I decided to look around for something different. I searched high and low, and eventually found this pattern on Quilter's Cache, a website I love.

We were free to use some of our own fabrics. I ended up using only one of the fabrics she sent. I included a large chunk of a red floral print I bought from Cottage Industrialist. Her fabrics are fantastic...organic, sturdy, and shiny. I thought the flowers were reminiscent of butterflies, so I included that print. Gotta keep the theme continuous.

I admit I was a bit nervous about this block because I've never made anything representational or figural before, but I'm happy with how it turned out. As I was making it, I thought that this might end up being my last bee/swap for a while. I had only four hours to sew for the entire week, and this took a little over two...leaving me with very little time to focus on my own projects. Like everyone, I have a million ideas in my head, but very few hours to execute them.

I hope you like it, Aimee!

Work in Progress Wednesday

2011-03-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

I'm jumping on the WIP Wednesday train at freshly pieced...here's my current (and only) project:

One day, it's going to be an Ocean Waves quilt. For now, it's just 700ish triangles waiting to be sewn up.

NEMQG at LLQ

2011-03-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

Long ago, back in the early days of NEMQG, our friend Alice told us about a longarm rental studio about a half-hour outside of Boston. After spending most of the year talking about how much we needed to go to the studio every time we saw each other, we finally bit the bullet and enrolled in an intro class at Laurena's Longarm Quilting in Burlington, MA.

We had to wait about five weeks for the session because there were enough of us to constitute a full class and Laurena is so popular! Laurie anticipated that it would be the highlight of 2011, and it was fantastic. Laurie showed up even though she and her son both had the flu all week.

I had used a longarm once before, for just a few minutes. This was a full lesson on using the machine, plus hours of practicing different styles of quilting. Predictably, I was the worst of everyone, by far. I felt like the machine was completely dominating me, like a cartoon robot that comes to life or something.

Laurena said she could "sense" that we were a "free-motion group," and she was right. We tried out the pentograms (which I liked) and the rulers (which we all thought were tedious), and then went crazy in the free-motion session...some of us more than others.

Isn't this a good likeness of Rebecca?

Rachel is a natural.

I am in the process of making the World's Ugliest Quilt out of all of the print fabrics I never liked to practice on when Rachel and I go to Laurena's next week. I think my learning curve will be steep.

Renting a longarm isn't appropriate for every quilt project, but it will be a huge improvement over my tiny machine on quilts larger than 50x50. But I've also been investigating frames for machine quilting at home. If any of you have any recommendations, please post them in the comments!

Mini-quilt madness

2011-03-02T08:59:00.000-08:00

I whipped up this mini-quilt the other day to practice combining solid colors (though I had to let one perfectly-matched print slip in, and I'm glad I did) and straight-line quilting. I love the color combination, although it looks a bit different in real life than in the photos.

I used Moda Bella Solids in Antique White, Free Spirit Designer Solids in Red and Toast, Amy Butler Broadcloth in Mango, and a Kona color I had in my stash that doesn't look like anything on my (newly purchased) color card. The lone print is Metro Dots in Turquoise.

It turns out that I absolutely love straight-line quilting. My walking foot is a bit finicky, but it was smooth sailing once I got going.

This mini-quilt has no intended purpose or recipient, and will probably become a mat on my sewing table. I just really needed to start and finish a project...hopefully you all know the feeling!

In other news, we had an honest-to-goodness sew-in at our last NEMQG meeting and actually sewed! It was amazing. See some photos from our meeting here (thanks, Laurie!).

Lesson learned.

2011-02-23T09:33:00.000-08:00

When I came back from my trip, I had almost nothing to work on, and I also had nothing I was excited about in my (very small) stash. I was completely uninspired, and I had to sit down and think about why I was feeling that way. I had had a gnawing suspicion over the last year that the way I was quilting wasn't really working for me. I lost enthusiasm for almost all of my projects shortly after I started them. I loved other people's finished quilts, but never my own.

Most of my friends and the quilters in blogland that I admire have very strong personal aesthetics, and I didn't think I had that. Over the course of the year, I thought I had developed a style that I called "vintage modern," but that didn't really speak to me.

So I went through all of the photos in my quilt books that I had tagged with post-its. The one book I knew I returned to again and again was actually the first quilt book I ever owned, which my great aunt gave me when I first started quilting: "How to Make an Amish Quilt." This is not an attractive or eye-catching book (it was printed once in the eighties, and has long been OOP), but I had turned to it almost nightly. Then I went through my Flickr stream and made a mosaic of my favorites. What did I see?

1. A Wedding Quilt for Joseph and Annie Pattern, 2. Yellow, Gray, & White Mini-Quilt, 3. Willy Nilly's Values Quilt-Along, 4. cross quilt, 5. Chaos Quilt, 6. Ouch!: piecing done?, 7. Amish Impressions Zigzag, 8. Inspiration from Gee's Bend, 9. d.o.n.e., 10. TDF quilt (aka floating squares) 03, 11. Work Quilt #2, 12. American Folk Art Museum, 13. ZigZag Quilt blocks, 14. 1000 Pyramids, 15. stalled, 16. Paletas Quilt - mussed, 17. squares!, 18. City Fair, 19. any way you slice it - ready to assemble, 20. "A la manière de Vasarely" : job done, 21. New, 22. PMC1: Adrianne Ove - Quilt, 23. Circle Side of the 'Circle of Life' Quilt by Morgan Wills, 24. Liz's Blocks - "Triple B" Bee, 25. Blue Maize Quilt - Side View

That's right: all solids. I realized that I am most drawn to very simple shapes and bold colors (hence the name of my new blog).

So I set a goal for myself that I would begin working with solids as much as possible, and I felt completely rejuvenated and creative again. I bought enough solid fabrics to triple the size of my stash within two days (whoops). I even considered doing the Project Modern Monochromatic Quilt Challenge.

I chose a berry/plum shade, Kona Cerise, as my "base" fabric from which to build out on either side of the color spectrum. I bought a bunch of fabrics online, hoping that they would match in person as well as they did on my monitor (they didn't), and got to work. I knew I wanted to do a Thousand Pyramids quilt because it is one of my favorite patterns, and it lends itself so well to solids. I made a template, and then I sliced off the top 1.5" of that template and made a baby template to plan my quilt design. Yes, I know I need a design wall. I cut out tiny triangles and glued them all down painstakingly. I came up with this:

I patted myself on the back for achieving such good balance and cut into all of my precious new solids to create 9.5" tall triangles. I sewed up a quilt top quicker than ever, stood back, and...hated it. REALLY hated it! The balance was completely off, and the Moda Grunge fabric I used looked awful in the larger triangles, though they had added some good dimension in the small ones. Someone even looked at it without her contacts and said it was "blobby." Okay, the last thing you want is a blobby quilt, right?

I thought of a million and one ways to fix it without picking it apart, including appliqueing triangles on top of those I didn't like (I even measured and made another template for that)...but ultimately, I decided that I'm going to try to salvage whatever fabric I can and call it a quilting lesson. I only "wasted" about $2o worth of fabric, and it's probably the best $20 I ever spent.

And even though I failed in this challenge, I feel more inspired than ever before. I started on a mini-quilt that I absolutely love. And I'm wondering: have any of you ever had a similar "aha!" moment? Has your aesthetic developed over the years? Or are all quilters (knitters, crocheters, etc) born, and not made?

I Hate Technology

2011-02-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

But I love my Kindle. I received it as a gift at 10 PM one night and had chosen a pattern for a Kindle case by nine the following morning. I knew I could figure the pattern out myself, but it was just so nice to be able to mindlessly cut the fabric and sew it together while watching True Blood (or whatever, just saying).

I still had all of my scraps out from the burrito pillow, so I dug into my stash for the perfect neutral fabric for the body. I had about two yards of this charcoal wool that I bought at Sewfisticated nine months ago for $1.75. I had dreams of making a bag that looks like a large version of this case. Gotta start small.

I made two of these in about three hours, while talking on the phone, watching television, and eating leftover V-day cheesecake. For the internal fabric, I used a purple polka dot that I bought to back a baby quilt a few months ago, but never used. So I used about 1/4 yard of a fabric I really don't like and still have 1 and 1/4 yards left over (at least I'm making progress!). I also used wool batting, which I thought would be a bit more protective because of the higher loft, but I wish I hadn't because it feels a bit too thick...like those little stuffed books that you give to babies.

I modified the closure strap and sewed on a snap, but think I should have used Velcro instead...I will probably rip it off tonight and replace the snap the Velcro, which is much better when you're in a rush to get on and off the train!

I also omitted the pockets the pattern includes...both to speed the process up and because I couldn't think of anything I would need to put in the pocket of my Kindle case.

I'm looking forward to having some time to sew this weekend. Happy President's Day, everyone!

Because the world needed another Spiderweb tutorial.

2011-02-17T09:08:00.000-08:00

For my inaugural post (on this blog, anyway), I present you with a tutorial for the adorable and increasingly popular Spiderweb block! There are several other Spiderweb tutorials available online that employ the two primary methods of creating this block: templates and foundation piecing. Mine differs from them all slightly in that 1) it produces a larger finished block than usual (18.5"), which I prefer, and 2) the foundation pieced area is a bit more stable in my version (or at least I think it is).

A tutorial using the template method can be found here, and a popular one using a different foundation-piecing method can be found here.

Head to your scrap bin for A LOT OF coordinating scraps that are at least 6" long and various widths (the longer, the better...you'll just cut them down as you go). As with any string block, you can make your "strings" all the same width or all different widths, depending on the look you want to achieve. Mine vary from 1.5" to 2.25"...not a huge variance, but enough to provide some interest and dimension. There is also a roughly even quantity of light and dark fabrics in my block.

Step 1: Gather your materials and prepare your triangles

You need a ruler, a cutting mat and board, a pencil, a rotary cutter, and your background and string fabrics. White is used as a background fabric most often, but it is not necessary to use a neutral! I think this pattern looks great with a brightly colored solid as the background. I am using Kona cotton in Cerise, one of my favorite colors.

Cut two 13.75" squares. Cut them down the middle to produce two big triangles.

Take one of the triangles, your ruler, and a pencil. Fold your triangle in half and crease it with your nail. You want a sharp crease.

Open it out. Do you see a thin, sharp crease going STRAIGHT down the middle? Okay, good.

Step 2: Mark your triangles

Take your ruler and measure 4" from the top point of the triangle. Mark that point with a pencil or pen. There is no need to use an impermanent or disappearing marking tool here. You are going to sew a full 1/4" away from this mark when you begin assembling the block.

Repeat on the other side.

Now you will mark the bottom of the triangle, which is where you will see the importance of having a straight crease right down the middle. Place your ruler along the bottom of the triangle. Mark 1/4" on either side of the creased line.

The final stage of the marking process is connecting the dots on either side of the crease to one another to form a fabric placement line. Connect the top and bottom lines on the right side of the crease.
Repeat on the left side.

Now you can move onto the good part! Your triangle should look like this:

Step 3: Sew!

Place your first strip of fabric right-side-down along the drawn line on the right side of the crease, making sure the fabric edge aligns with the inked line. This is very important because it will determine whether or not the points of your web match up when they are all put together! The fabric should be closer to the middle of the triangle than to the far right point because you are going to iron it out to the right side when you move onto the second strip.

Sew that strip down and iron it out.

Place a second strip of fabric on top of the first strip, right sides together, and sew it down. Sew through the base fabric. You will not cut the background fabric away at this stage (this is where my method differs from others). Not cutting away will obviously waste a lot of fabric, but it will also prevent the base triangle from distorting while you are working with it, which is a potential hazard in the other foundation-pieced methods. Sewing the strips directly to the base fabric will keep it stable as you work with it. I am willing to sacrifice fabric for accuracy; if you're not, you can keep going, just push the background triangle of fabric out of the way as you continue!

Open it out and iron. I iron after I sew down every strip, and I advise doing so as well, just so you don't get any lumps or wavy fabric in the finished product.

Continue until you reach the end of the block. You will notice that I trim the fabrics as I go instead of letting them hang loose over the ends. This is much easier than waiting until you trim up the triangles and then trying to pull apart pieces of fabric that are attached by a few stitches.

When you reach the end of the block, I think it is better to sew on the last strip by laying a piece of fabric horizontally instead of vertically. Just make sure it covers enough of the background fabric:

One side complete!

Repeat on the other side and you have this:

Lay it upside down on your cutting mat and trim it up, using the background fabric as a guide:

Now you have one lovely triangle!

Sew three more in exactly the same way. Experiment with different layouts. I move them all around and look at every possible arrangement. I try to avoid letting any of the same fabrics touch each other. It's inevitable that it will occur once in a while unless you really obsess over it when you're sewing, which I admit to doing sometimes. The most important thing in a quilt like this is to prevent the same fabrics from lining up together if they are both a very dark color. That will create "stripes" in the finished product that will draw the eye in. Eek!

Divide them into two sets of two and sew the pairs together. I line up and pin the web points first, and then pin out on either side from there. Press these seams open. There is too much fabric in there to get lazy about this.

At this point, lay the big triangles out to ensure that you don't have any skew--ie, the long side of the triangle isn't perfectly straight and is skewed along the straight edge. Skewing will make it very difficult to square up your block after you sew the pairs together. Skewing will look like this:

See how the bottom part of the triangle slants to the right? You want to trim that off. Here's another shot of the skewed triangle:

Yuck!

Now that you've ensured that your two triangles have straight edges, sew them together into one large square. Again, I line up the web points first, then I pin the area between them and ensure that the star is centered, and then I line up and pin the rest. Sew. Press seams open again. It is fiddly because of the strings, but it's worth the effort!

Square off at 18.5". Et voila! A beautiful Spiderweb block.

The one frustrating thing about this block is that you have to make four of them to start to see the webs appear...but making them doesn't take as long as you might expect. Each one of the blocks has only taken me about 75 minutes total.

Send me the link to your Spiderweb if you make one!