Final Concert! & The Beast

My daughter came home last night to go to her brother's last band concert.  So of course we had to get a photo of her playing with the Beast as well.  I think she was more than a little surprised at how complex it is and how "BIG it is.  The machine I have is the Innova, I have linked to their site if anyone is interested in the Beast.  I haven't had it long enough to give any type of critique and I don't really have a frame of reference but I like it so far.  I don't have the computer system and at this point I don't know if I would ever want it but it's nice to have options.

Last summer I made a t-shirt quilt for my daughter with all of her softball shirts.  She played from Kindergarten thru high school with her dad coaching most of the way.  Now she plays on a team for her job.  I added parts of some of her caps and photos of her playing to some of the shirts.  I think I should stitch over the writing on the one shirt from her senior year in case the writing washes out.  I just need to get it quilted for her but didn't want to attempt it on my domestic machine. Here are a couple close ups of a few of the squares.  I was also playing with the long-arm trying to make a design for quilting.  Here is the softball I made (circles are harder than they look).

Here are a couple of photos from my son's final concert.  (Insert tears here)  No, I didn't cry but I've been going to concerts for about 20 years now so I'm not sure what I will do with all of my free time! (Just kidding) He of course was in the middle so it wasn't easy during the concert.  They do clean up pretty well!

Have a creative day everyone! Janet

Long-arm adventure begun!

Yesterday was a wonderful Mother's Day for me.  My son and I are greeter's at our church about every other week.  Yesterday was one of our days.  I saw a friend I haven't seen in quite awhile.  Even though we live in the same town and go to the same church we seldom see each other any more.  Our daughter's are the same age and were often involved in the same activities throughout their school years so we saw each other frequently through our children.  Now that our girls are grown women and out in the work force our lives have changed directions and don't cross often any more.  It was nice to touch base again.

After church my husband and son took me to IHOP for a brunch.  It was the plan for many families but the wait wasn't too long and the omelet was delicious!  The restaurant even gave roses to every mom.  Isn't it pretty!

Saturday my husband and son helped me finish getting my new long arm ready to launch into service.  We put the leaders on.  Since we go to the 11:00 a.m. service on Sunday morning, I had plenty of time to load some fabric before we went to church.  (I'm usually up by 6:00) I couldn't wait and started playing with it right away.  I used up an entire bobbin before church (I have to admit we were a few minutes later than we normally are because I was having too much fun and didn't pay attention to the time!)  I've learned a lot already.  I know I will find a different way to attach the first quilt I do.  Right now I am playing with some inexpensive muslin just to get the hang of how things work.  

After IHOP we came home for a short time and I managed to get both my son and husband to try The Beast too.  I bought a couple of pantographs about a year ago because some one told me they are able to use those to sew designs on their quilts with their domestic sewing machine.  I of course never managed to figure that one out.  I pulled out the pantographs and was trying one.  My son thought that looked like fun so here is a photo of him giving it a try.  And a photo of him instructing his dad how to do it since he was an expert by this point.  

We all need a little more practice, especially with the points on the pattern but we were all intrigued by the possibilities.  Now I want to buy a few rolls of paper and design my own pantographs to fit what I need to quilt.  Always something more to try!  I can make flowers and stars on my own without a pantograph but need practice with feathers and would love to be able to "McTavish" on my quilts some day.

 Next we went to the new Star Trek movie.  It was really good.  I watched Star Trek on tv but don't consider myself a trekkie.  I couldn't answer any of the trivia but I know the main characters and this was about their origins on the show.  

Tonight is my sons last band concert.  Possibly forever, as he doesn't plan to do band next year.  He wants to take other electives his senior year.  It will be very strange for all of us.  He has played in band since 5th grade and had private lessons since 7th grade.  He is very good, so it's a shame he can't take band along with the other classes he needs and wants.  This photo is from their winter concert in December.  I'll have to get some more photos tonight.

The rest of the week I will be finishing my quilt with a sense of humor for our guild challenge, going to my fitness program, planting flowers, Art-a-Whirl in Minneapolis on Friday and than to my mom's for the weekend as she has a birthday soon.  Here is a photo from Thanksgiving two years ago at my brothers in Davenport, Iowa.  I think there were 50 people at his house that day.  This is my mom and two of my sisters.  Have a creative day. Janet

New fabric

I'm trying to recreate a photo of myself.  It's a photo of me from the 80's with the "Big" hair and shoulder pads.  I really want to make the jacket in the photo like the one in the photo.  Call me crazy but I did like that jacket.  Didn't think I would be able to unless I happened upon some fabric somewhere that looked similar.  Well, today I sat down at my embellisher and started to play.  At first I thought it wasn't going to work, it was too linear and the colors weren't quite right.  Than it accidently flipped over and guess what!  The back of fabric was very close to what I needed.  And even better, I like it!!

Here is what I did.  First I alternated black and pink yarn on the maroon fabric.  Like this, don't forget you can click on the images to enlarge them.

I covered it all with black tulle, which is to me magical.  Black tulle just disappears into the fabric when you place it on top of almost anything.  I pinned in the squares to keep it from shifting.  Like this

Than I took it to my embellisher and started to attach the yarn to the background fabric.  Like this

As I was embellishing, I was a little disappointed thinking it wasn't going to work, when a part of it flipped over and I saw the back.  That's when I remembered one of the best things about an embellisher is both sides are open for use.  The back of the fabric was perfect for what I wanted.

Always fun to have a surprise ending that turns out for the best.

The first photo shows the front, the second shows the back.  which would you use?

Have a creative day. Janet

Cottage stones

Several people have asked how I made the stones for my Red Door quilt.  I'll do my best to explain how I did it. I'm sure there are many ways to accomplish the same thing and you may look at what I did and think  "Well, if she had just done this instead it would have been much simpler!"

I sometimes make things harder than they need to be.  However, the end result is, I love the finished quilt!  And that is good enough for me.

I mentioned in my previous post that I used about six different batiks for the stones.  I took about a twelve inch square of each and matched them with a square of thin batting.  I took one square of batik and one square of batting, and placed the batting on the wrong side of the batik.  I took this to my machine and put a corner of the 'sandwich'(just 2 layers the batik and batting) under my presser foot with the needle down.  I lifted the foot a little and scrunched the fabric and batt all around the needle from the front and the side.  I put the foot back down keeping the fabric scrunched and began to meander my way over the bumps and valleys I had created.  I kept scrunching the fabric and sewing until the entire square was sewn.  You could do this with even bigger pieces at a time.  I have disc problems in my neck and manipulating fabric always makes me tighten those spots in my neck that I shouldn't tighten up, so shorter sewing times with breaks are best for me.  I had to repeat this process several times for each fabric.  

I'll back up a minute here because before I started to make the stones I made a pattern for my quilt.  I used my Tracer projector and made an outline drawing of the door and the stones from a photograph.  Here is a photo that shows my outline drawing with some of the stones placed on top.

I made a pattern for each stone individually from my larger pattern.  Did I mention this was a little time consuming.  I took my individual stone pattern and traced around the outside edge of it with a marker on top of the scrunched fabric.  I used a disappearing ink marker, but since you will be cutting along this line it doesn't matter too much what you use.  After tracing the outline, I took it back to my machine and sewed about an 1/8 inch inside the drawn line.  I just used a small zig-zag stitch.  I found it best to draw and sew all the stones on one of my scrunched fabrics before cutting any of them.  Otherwise you might lose some of your stitching that holds the hills and valleys in place. After they were all drawn and sewn for that block I cut them along or just inside the drawn line.  I placed them in the matching spot on my design board and kept repeating this process until I had them all complete.  They are almost finished in this photo, I just need to even out the edges a little.

Next I made my door.  I wanted it to tuck under the stones on the one side so it needed to be in place before the stones were added.  I made a couple of versions of the door before I decided I liked it and not sure if this is the final version. You can see I am now placing them on my background fabric.

Than I transferred the stones to the background fabric and just sewed, with a straight stitch this time, to attach them.  For a few of the larger stones I also sewed across along some of the scrunched lines. (Is this clear as mud)

For the final quilting, I sewed on the black fabric between the stones.  Hope this was helpful.

Have a creative day! Janet

New Space! part 2

My sewing space before was our family room.  That worked fine until the recent addition to my sewing arsenal.  My son and his friends have moved all the gaming equipment to the basement, so they spend most of their time down there.  My daughter moved out several years ago after graduating from college and getting a job.  So, it is just my husband and I rattling around up here most of the time.  We decided the best choice was to make the livingroom/diningroom my new sewing space.  So now I have two rooms.  One room for my new long arm and the other for my sewing machine and 'stuff.'  My son was a little concerned when the lights were added to the long arm frame and my husband commented, "Now you can sew all night!"  We all laughed but than he realized his bedroom is right above the room my longarm is in, and what if I really did sew all night!

Here are some photos of what was my dining room.  The first photo is my wall of cubicles.  The drawers and doors are labeled (we added those last year) because when I put something behind a closed door well, I'm like a toddler 'out of site, out of mind.'  It helps me remember what I have and where it should be.  You can see my folding table for cutting/ironing in front of the window.

If you swing to the right you can see my Bernina.  I still need a better table for this, but it works for now.  There is another storage shelf in the corner.  This one has a lot of recyclable materials on it.  At least I am hoping to recycle them.  Every year the Textile Center has an exhibit of art made from recycled materials.  That's one of the challenges I hope to enter next year.

Swing a little farther to the right.  Now you can see my old sewing cabinet with my almost 30 year old Kenmore tucked inside and my embellisher sitting on top.  Did I mention I have a lot of toys.  The embellisher was a Christmas gift.  I'm excited that I have room for it now.  I plan to use my Kenmore for some of my experimental sewing techniques.  I really like the work that Maggie Grey does and want to try some of her techniques.  Two of her books I have are Raising the Surface with Machine Embroidery & textile translations: mixed media.  One of my recycled items to make is a purse.  I've saved heavy brown packing paper for this.  I have the book Bags with paper and stitch Innovative Surface Techniques for Embellishing Bags by Isobel Hall.  One other book I want to experiment with is The Art of Stitching on Metal by Ann Parr.  I just got some very light weight metal to play with from Joggles.  I can't wait to try it looks like so much fun.

The shelves hold my paintsticks, paints, inks and pencils,  glues and foil, stamps and stencils, shibori tools, brushes and other tools.  The three boxes below hold ribbons, yarns, bits of wool, and anything else that I think might work for my embellisher.  The file cabinet has class print outs and other notes that I wanted to save for reference.

Swing one more turn to the right and you can see into the other room where my new long arm is still in the assembly stage.  You can also see my tv on a stand with wheels.  I can swing it to be watched in either room.  Notice my Quilt Show DVD's waiting to watched.

Last turn in the room shows you my corner with a few more cabinets and a light.

Here is one last shot of the room as a whole.  I'm sure there is still some tweaking to be done and once I start creating it will never look this neat again but I hope you enjoyed this look at my new sewing space.  Have a creative day. Janet