Old Yeller

This much white space cries out for showy quilting, and I had a field day on this huge quilt. I thought double cross hatching the background of  the applique blocks would be really good, but shortly after I started, I was intoning, "What was I thinking?" It was an unbelievable amount of work! It's a rare day when the client says I can mark her quilt top, and I was eager to try out Blue Line Eraser. The directions say not to mark heavily, and I didn't think I was, but it took repeated applications to get the marks out. And the fabric miraculously didn't bleed. I opted for Hobbs wool batting so I'd get a trapunto effect without all the work. And gosh, this was so much work. But it's a wholecloth on the back, and that's always worth it. And here is a detail shot of the border.  

Engraved invitation for trapunto

Recently, a fellow longarm quilter told me she could not imagine using trapunto on any of her customers' quilts, nor has she ever been asked to do so.


Well, I see such opportunities all the time! No, my clients have never asked for it, but consider: People who don't quilt focus only on piecing, not on quilting, so why would they ask for it? It's up to the quilter to point out the possibilities.

 When this quilt crossed my path, trapunto was the first thing that came to mind. To my eyes, this is a wholecloth with applique and a couple of borders. The background is pieced, but it's still one big background that I needed to fill up with something. And the quilt is so simple, it literally needed another dimension.

So I set to work freehanding flowers like those depicted in the border print in various sizes. For this quilting, I used a tan cotton thread. The color was going to contrast somewhere no matter what color I used, so I picked a medium tone. And I trapuntoed the actual flowers in the border, with a shiny bronze polyester.

I quilted veins in most of the appliqued leaves with green thread. I quilted pumpkin seeds (also called orange peel or teacup) in the inner border.
For background quilting, I put tiny crescents in the body of the quilt, and I meandered in between the border flowers with black metallic thread, to catch the light. In the center of the applique, I quilted little flowers.

The idea for the quilt came from a book called Pick-A-Pattern Applique. Bonnie, my client, cut one applique piece to simplify the design and save herself the work of cutting individual stems and leaves. Look for her quilt in the Trinity Valley Quilters' Guild show in late September.

Yes, trapunto is more trouble, more time-consuming and more costly than typical quilting, but any effort that is really imaginative and sets your work apart from the herd is worth it.

Pretty in Peach and Brown

 

A light, solid backing produces a wholecloth -- true back art. 


This beautiful carpenter's star is one of those quilts that is intended to be a gift, but we'll see if it actually is given. Sometimes clients change their minds after they see the quilting. I love the way this turned out, my client Janice just loved it, and so did everyone who saw it at guild. One of the perks of my job is the ensuing hug from a happy client upon seeing her quilt.

Part of what makes this quilt is the absolutely gorgeous design in the background. It's the Feathered Fan in Irena Bluhm's book, Blooming Background Designs. The Feathered Fan works equally well as a tiny background fill and as a large overall design. I tried it a few months ago on a large quilt with really simple piecing, and it was done in no time. So for this quilt, I thought I'd do a fast, freehand, no-big-deal quilting scheme. On a smaller scale, here as a medium meander, it was more time-consuming. And I had more stops and starts fitting it into triangles, squares and the border, as opposed to a large and open field. Love it.


In the diamonds, I freehanded flowers and leaves, changing the thread color to a darker peach on the brown fabric.



Janice and her husband, David, make a lot of carpenter's stars. The piecing method they like uses half-square triangles, which makes for quick assembly. At the Arlington show this month, I found a similar pattern minus the center LeMoyne star. Hmmmmm, wouldn't that be a wonderful place for some really showy quilting?

So I came home and flipped through a coffee table book of 19th-century quilts and found wonderful inspiration for a new quilt. It features broderie perse applique in the center, surrounded by 25 little carpenter's stars and about as many alternate blocks: ample room for lots and lots of showy quilting, like a wholecloth with some piecing. I didn't need another idea for another quilt, please, but I'm not complaining. I'm already pulling fabrics (it'll be really scrappy) and pondering trapunto designs, and I'm cutting true diamonds. By the time it's done, I will have mastered Y-seams.

 

Fair isle fun

 I don't see this kind of quilt every day. It looks like a fair isle sweater! And I'm a big fan of red and white. It came during the winter, which was also a creative dry spell for me. I had no ideas. I put straight, radiating lines and continuous curves in the white fabric and came to a screeching halt. My client, Betty, wanted the quilting to look like intricate knitting and she suggested various interwoven straight-line designs, which I rejected. (I have a few achilles' heels.) Finally, she ran across the idea of creating "ribbing" at the top and bottom by stitching lines 3/8" apart and doing tiny, dimensional quilting in between every other row. See the detail shot, below.



 





In between some of the large snowflake blocks, I quilted little snowflakes with white heavy decorative thread.

I sprinkled snowflakes around either side of the quilt in various sizes. Some are partials. I used some stencils, which I marked with chalk. For the rest, I used cookie cutters, and I freehanded some based on crochet patterns. I've been collecting snowflakes for some time now.





For the rest of the quilt, I still had no ideas. But when a quilt doesn't talk to me, that means it wants straight lines. I know, it's weird, but there you are. I follow my intuition. I learned early on to go with the first idea that pops into my head -- or else. When I didn't, I always had a lot of ripping to do. And when no idea sprang forth, straight lines were the way to go. Now, I'll do almost anything to keep from crosshatching, but that seemed to fit here. It took forever, there were a zillion stops and starts, but it looks wonderful, front and back. And if custom quilting was ever worth it, it was in this quilt.  





Wholecloth workshop offering

If you've ever wanted to learn the basics of making a wholecloth quilt, I have an opportunity for you.

I will be speaking to the Granbury Quilters Guild on Monday evening, April 15, 2013, at St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Church, 2301 Acton Highway in Granbury, Texas. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. My topic is Quilting With Imagination, which is what I try to do every day on the job. I will also be teaching a workshop the following Saturday, April 20, from 10 to 4 at the same venue. A sample of the 25x25 project is shown at right. We will be doing trapunto, and I will just be guiding you through the process. The class is $40 for members, $50 for non-members, and the kit is $15.

I don't think trapunto is difficult; it just involves extra steps, a little audacity and the courage to cut away batting without slicing into the top fabric. Be brave, for the payoff is huge: Trapunto can enhance a quilt and raise its appraisal value, it can keep applique from appearing deflated, it can help gorgeous border prints stand out, it can help a quilt win ribbons, and the dimension can take up the slack in a wavy top. This kind of thing is what I love most about custom quilting -- all that light and shadow, depth and drama.

The center is a stencil design, the flowers, leaves and feathers are my own freehanded designs, and the background quilting designs are negotiable -- this way everyone can have a customized project. This class is for quilters who already know how to do free-motion work and want to stretch their abilities. It's not a longarm class per se. Bring a really good domestic machine. To sign up, contact Mary Beth Miller at www.millersmountainretreat.net 

If you can't make the class, but you'd like to learn how to do this, get copies of Trapunto by Machine and Exploring Machine Trapunto, written by Hari Walner.

When a straight line is the answer

This is the first of what I intend to be a series on straight lines. Early on in my quilting career, I vehemently avoided straight lines at all costs because they were difficult, but one day I realized that if I never did them, I'd never be proficient at them and I'd be limiting my design choices.

Fortunately, the eye sees what it wants to see, rendering my crooked lines straight. They don't have to be good! They're still a pain, they take a lot of time to do, but sometimes they're just what a quilt cries out for. 



This quilt, Sara's 1940's sampler, is a fine example. I love double- or triple-line channel quilting as a background design. Originally a 19th-century design, it looks good on any quilt. 



Look how great it is going in different directions and note the wonderful contrast with the feathers. 

Thread tension

I am back from my long absence from this blog, inspired to talk about thread tension and another kind of tension: specifically, deadlines.

I ran out of clear thread, which I use sometimes for ditch quilting, and I decided to try Superior Thread's MonoPoly. As is the case any time I change the equation on my longarm, I had adjustments to make. But this time was ridiculous.

It all worked out in the end. I appealed to Superior for help, because I've been quilting professionally for more than 10 years, and I thought I had tension figured out. There is always something new to learn, and in this case it was that I needed a larger needle and almost no tension at all.  And I put Superior's Bottom Line thread in the bobbin. A stronger thread can snap the top thread.

Now I adjust the tension all the time, the top and the bobbin tension. You change brands, thicknesses, color, etc., you have to adjust the tension. Thinking you can machine quilt without these adjustments is unrealistic. Your machine vendor and/or repair people undoubtedly have warned you never to go near that bobbin tension screw, but it has to be done or you'll drive yourself crazy and you'll hate machine quilting. (Suggested reading: pages 50-53 in Diane Gaudynski's Guide to Machine Quilting, AQS 2002)

Then I quilted with metallic thread. Hadn't done that in a while, which sent me digging through files for the long e-mails from the friendly people at Sulky whom I asked for help years ago. Put in a new and bigger needle and loosened the tension. A lot. Skipped some of the tension guides. Quilted more slowly.

I used a silver and gray metallic, a twist, to do threadplay over black Fairy Frost fabric. It looks sensational. I forgot to take a picture, so look for that down the road. And I did more threadplay on a handbag I'm making. Fun.

Then I called Superior again because I needed a really light gold with shine, but not a metallic. They sent me a spool of Kimono Silk, my new love. That was so much fun! Again, put in a big needle and loosen the tension. (Some lessons have to be learned over and over and over ...) It's like spun sugar. Yummy.

I won't be using silk for everything; it's expensive. But I like it, and other thin threads, like Superior So Fine, for quilting veins and creases on leaf and flower applique, for threadplay, and for dense background quilting so it doesn't over-stiffen the quilt.

My own tension levels can throw my machine's performance off, which brings me to the dire deadline situation. Early in the year, I had a tiny waiting list, typical for January. Then the calls began coming, and by spring, well, swamped doesn't even begin to describe ... By June, I was afraid I wouldn't finish quilting all the quilts in time for a show. I did indeed meet that deadline, and now I'm on deadline for other shows.

I have learned a lot this year:
1. I need to say no more often.
2. Each day really does have enough time for a dip in Lake Me.
3. I can get on my own list.
4. Life is too short to squander time in ways that don't bring me joy.
5. I must loosen my tension.

My vehement advice for anyone who takes their tops to a machine quilter: Get on the waiting list 3 months before you need it. Don't wait till the top is done. Really. Quiltmaking is a marathon, not a sprint, and another quilt show is always just around the corner.

And, good custom quilting is worth the wait.