Kitten Britches

Dresden Plate Drama!

One of my first posts was about this quilt - the post was two years ago, and I got the dresden plates a few years before that.  And these plates are at least 60 or 70 years old.  I think they have been waiting long enough to be made into a quilt. 

I got the blocks out the other day, determined to figure out how I wanted to lay them out and then finish the darn thing!

I'd kind of like it to have a scalloped borders, so was thinking about how I could set them to acheive that.  Here's my first try:

No.  Second try:

Well, maybe, but excuse the black batting on the design wall... The lay out is kind of sloppy, I'm late for work and don't know what I would do with the corners.

Here's layout #3:

Another maybe, I like this, but I was hoping to make it bigger, to lay on my queen size bed...

Option #4, with a little rick-rack inner border and fans around the outer edge:

hmmm.... what if I took the middle part (already sewed together) and did this??

#5:

It is just me, or do those 3/4 plates on point look like Pac-Man? 

By now I feel like I am rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!  One more try...

#6, with a little more rick-rack.  Still with me?

This one seems a little busy, but I can't tell any more.... I have been looking at this too long, my arms are tired from re-arranging the blocks on the design wall, I'm so confused!  What do you think?  If you look at this, please comment and let me know if you like any of these, or maybe you have another suggestion?  Help!

Useful tools #1 - Pounce & Stencil

Sorry, I am not able to come up with witty titles right now.... but I have been wanting to post about some of the tools I use to help with machine quilting, so I will try to number them as I go along.

I am careful about marking customer quilts.  First, I (almost) ALWAYS ask if it is OK to mark someone's quilt before I do it, and second, I make sure that the marks will come out easily. 

One of my favorite marking tools is the "Pounce".  I mentioned this to someone and she had not heard of it before, so here it is.

You put chalk powder (blue or white) in through the red plug.  The bottom of the pounce has a terry cloth surface,

so when you rub it over the rough side of a stencil, the chalk powder comes through like this:

Then I can use the lines to guide my quilting.  I find this especially useful for the borders.  The stencils and pounce come from Pam Clarke's website and book.  I highly recommend these products for beginning machine quilters, whether you are quilting on a longarm or domestic machine.  Great ideas for designs and block fillers.

So here's what I did in the black & white borders:

The chalk powder comes off with a quick wipe with a damp cloth.

Here's a look at the quilt, pieced by Kay Larson of Anacortes, Washington.

I had a hard time getting a straight photo, I like to take pictures outside but the wind kept blowing!

Close up:

I used Hobbs 80/20 batting and Superior Sew Fine thread.

One shot of the back,where you can see some of the quilting details.

 

Hope you get time to do some quilting today!

Border Patrol

Hi There, I am back to blogland.  Over the past few months I have written many blog posts in my head, but none have quite made it to the computer.  It feels like it is time to get back to it.  I was thinking about giving it up, because I am so inconsistent at it, then someone would comment on something and remind me of the reasons I started this.

First, thanks to all who asked about my daughter.  She is doing great.  She finished her radiation in August, had a few months of recovery time - feeling really tired and all, but has bounced back to good health.  She's had two CT scans since finishing her radiation, and is totally cancer free.  This is not a surprise since we knew they caught the tumor early and were able to remove it all, but it is very reassuring.  In January we took her over to Honolulu where she started college at the University of Hawaii.  She is having the time of her life, loves school & living in Hawaii, and we are so happy for her.  It's a long way from home, and I really miss her, but I think it's good for her to get away.

And now back to quilting and the topic of this blog.... borders!  I recently got a quilt to machine quilt from a repeat customer - someone whose piecing and quilt tops are always very well put together - nicely pressed, precisely pieced, back big enough, etc.  This quilt was pretty big - about 95" x 115.  She handed it to me folded in a bag, with the usual  "quilt it however you want", so I didn't look at it too closely at the time.

Sometimes I lay quilts out on the floor or pin them on the wall to look at them before I quilt them, but this one was so big, I didn't really have a good spot to lay it out, and had a good idea of how I wanted to quilt it, so I just loaded it on the machine.  I quilted the top border with not too much trouble, but as I came down the sides, I just couldn't get them flat.  I decided to quilt the center of the quilt, then come back to the borders.  Sometimes with a really big quilt I will actually take it off and turn it to do the long side borders, so I don't have to stop & start as I advance the rollers.

By the time I got to the bottom of the quilt, I had a serious problem.

This is way beyond something that can be "quilted out"..... It was too wavy to even consider pleats - it would have taken several of them, which would have really distorted the sides of the quilt.  Of course by this time it was late at night, and I was facing a deadline.

I made the decision to take the quilt off the frame & fix the three borders that were not yet quilted.  Measuring the quilt across the center, it turned out that there was about five inches of extra fabric on each side.  I took the borders off, measured, pinned and re-sewed them.  It took me about six hours to do this.  Then I had to re-load the quilt back on the machine to finish quilting it.

Here's a shot of part of the finished top.  I quilted sunflowers and a little pebble background.

Lesson learned.  As a side note, I did talk to the quilt maker about it.  I asked if she measured her borders before she sewed them on, and she said she didn't.  She had seen that in the instructions, but didn't know what they were talking about so just ignored it. Yikes. So she learned something too. 

Do you measure your borders???

Thread Color.....

Whew, quite a summer.  Lots going on with a very sick kid, and a new job.  I am still doing lots of machine quilting, but felt like I also needed to bring home a regular paycheck, so won't bore you with the details of that, but get to what has been a big issue for me lately... figuring out what color thread to use!

It started with this quilt....

and the question of what color thread to use.  Changing thread colors can get to be a hassle on a long arm.  It doesn't really work to do all one color then go back to do the next color.  I like to do one section, then advance the quilt and do the next section.  So if I am using three different threads I have to stop, re-thread and load a diffrent bobbin too.  If by chance the threads are all not the same brand, I may have to re-adjust my tension too!  This just equates to time, which equates to cost, and I really don't like to feel rushed when I am quilting, because as soon as that happens I make mistakes that have to be picked out, which means more time, but NOT more money.  Anyway, for this quilt I made the bold decision to quilt the whole quilt with red thread.

On the blue batik it looks fabulous:

On the white fabric, however it is not so great.  Most of the white fabric is that white-on-white type of print, which is hard to quilt.  The thread just does not want to lay as nicely as it does on softer fabrics.  And, this is a row-robin quilt.  The quilt maker's friends had signed the blocks, and I didn't want to quilt over the writing.  This made for some wobbly-looking feathers.

Most turned out pretty good, but the whole process was nerve-wracking for me.

The hexagons were my least favorite row:  I don't know about you, but I am so close to the stitching, I want it to be perfect, and nit-pick every detail.  Some things you might not see if quilted with white thread really stand out to me.

I love this row with fire crackers, made by my friend Colleen Lynch:

And on the light blue, the red looked terrible, so I gave up and switched threads for this row.

This quilt was made by Susan Kenyon of Everett, Washington.  Her quilt group had a great display at out guild's quilt show of all their row-robin quilts.  Of course I forgot to take pictures of them!

Since this quilt, I have had several more that I have had to make a similar decision about. I'll try to post more pictures to show how they turned out.  Let me know what you think!

Making Kitten Britches

Saw this in the funnies yesterday.  Just couldn't resist. 

Or make a new pair of kitten britches!  My niece Diane is a talented knitter, I bet she could knit a cat.

Love and Quilting,

Pam

Detour.....

Last time I checked in I was happily getting ready for my little girl to go away to college, on a big adventure to Hawaii.  Getting ready for her to go meant a checkup, making sure all her shots were up to date, etc. No big deal.  While at the Dr.'s office, Libby complained about a small lump under her jaw that was sore.  I thought it was probably a lymph node, and told her to quit poking it.  The Dr. thought it was something with her saliva gland, and that she should get it checked out by a ear nose & throat Dr.  Well, long story just beginning, it was a tumor, and it is cancer.

 
Here she is back in May, before prom with her nephew Gavin.  She is an absolutely lovely girl in every way.  I call her my cheerful child, always happy, cooperative, super smart, organized and helpful.  I could go on.

Anyway.  The tumor has been removed, and last week we met with oncologists at UW Medicine.  If there's anything good here it is that we live in Seattle.  The specialists that treat this rare cancer are here.... If we lived anywhere else in the U.S. we would be coming to Seattle for treatment.  Libby will have to undergo 4 - 6 weeks of radiation treatment, and then will have about 4 weeks of recovery and not feeling so great after that.  College in Hawaii is delayed until January.  So disappointing for Libby.  I feel like we have been sent on a very long detour, far away from my hopes and dreams for my little girl.

Meanwhile, we are in a waiting game of more tests, waiting for results, and lots of other crap like getting any and all dental work done because the radiation will really mess with her mouth's ability to heal and her dental health for the rest of her life.

She has a lovely smile.  Loves her niece & nephew.  Has a large collection of Betsey Johnson dresses, and looks amazing in all of them.

I feel so powerless.... just waiting to see what's next.  To keep myself from going crazy while waiting, I have pulled out this hand quilting project.

I made this quilt back in the late '90s - it's from a pattern in the Oct. 1997 American Patchwork & Quilting.  Maybe I will finish it now!

I also have a pretty quilt on the longarm now too... I couldn't do anything with it last week, but hope to finish it today or tomorrow.

Sending this out to the universe, keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Love & Quilting,

Pam

 

Finding my favorite fabric

I woke up at 4:30 this morning wondering if I was crazy!  I was thinking about the quilt I am making for my daughter to take to college.  Basically spending hundreds of hours (and dollars too, probably) buying, washing, ironing, and cutting up pieces of fabric, then sewing them back together, ironing more, etc. etc. etc. to make her a blanket for her bed.  Then I got up, and remembered that a quilt is so much more than a blanket!

My first memory of a quilt is the one that was on my Mom's bed.  It was a Boston Commons, pieced in the 50's as a wedding gift for her.  I loved laying on it and trying to find the row with my favorite fabric - tan with a little brown motif that looked like safety pins to me.  Not sure why I remember that - the quilt is long gone, loved and worn to tatters.

But that memory fuels my love of making scrap quilts, using as many different fabrics as possible, so the recipient can have the experience that I had, snuggling with a quilt, and finding their favorite fabric.

Here is the quilt that my daughter Libby chose for her graduation/college quilt - from Kaffe Fasset's book -Spectacular Quilts from Simple Shapes.

 

There are 480 3 1/2" squares with a million tiny snowball corners plus the middle panel.  Libby is going to Hawaii to study Marine Biology, she loves humpback whales.  So her quilt will be blues and greens like the ocean, with a whale in the middle - like this:

 

Here are some of my favorite fabrics so far, plus a sneak peek at what it will look like with all the squares together:

funny dolphins - they look like they are looking out from the quilt.

 

Blue & green parakeets - we have two like this - Blueberry & Mango.
 

Tiny turtles with a little red japanese stamp design.
 

The overall design so far - I've added the corners to about 100 blocks so far.
 
It brings me so much happiness as I choose each fabric and sew them together knowing that Libby will look at it, and search for her favorite fabric, thinking of home and her Momma. Spend some time today finding your favorite fabric, or whatever makes you happy! 

Words of Wisdom....

Here is a quilt I made last summer (2010), commissioned for a wedding present for my best friend's son & his new wife.  When I started this quilt,  the only instructions that I got were that they loved everything western, and the colors purple and brown.  I love writing on quilts, so I asked her if she had something she wanted to tell them, words of wisdom for their married life or something.  She came up with the "Code of the West" - and that gave me some great prompts for what I wanted to include in the quilt.

Here's the quilt - it ended up being so big I had a hard time taking a picture of the whole thing.  I had the phrases that I used done in machine embroidery by Moondog Embroidery, Bothell Washington.  Pamela Hanes did a great job on the layout and font choice.  I gave her the fabric to use and then pieced the sayings into the quilt.

This is the brand from their ranch - and symbolizes loyalty to family.

The idea for this corner came from a book called "Buttonhole Stitch Applique" by Jean Wells.  Dennis & Rebecca live in Colorado, so this scene is perfect for them.

Perfect words of wisdom for any married couple.

This is the fertility block.... I have included something like this on other wedding quilts, and it has worked great so far!  Pink and blue bunnies, birds and bees, a little picture of the happy couple, and happy thoughts for babies!

I used several different classic blocks to make this quilt.  I started out thinking it would be something pretty basic, but then the middle got turned on point and it just grew.  The quilting designs are all freehand, done on Stretch, my most excellen A-1 machine.  I had a hard time finding anything purple to go with the western fabrics, but finally ended up with some eggplant fabric that I used in the inner border and on the back.

I had a great time making this and only wished I could have gone to the wedding to watch them open it!  I also had a great time collecting and using my stash of western fabrics, and also my friend Suzanne's western stash which she generously shared with me.

Keep on stitching!

 

Is "camo" a color?

A good friend of my husband was getting married in December. They go fishing and do "guy" things together.  Before he got married I told him I would love to make a quilt for him and his new wife, and asked him what his favorite color was.... So this is a guy who we thought should have his bachelor party at Cabela's.  Why should I have been surprised when he told me his favorite color was camo - as in camouflage???  What the cuss color is that anyway?  A combination of the most ugly greens, browns, and something like baby poop?  Ha Ha. 

Well, it started out as a joke, but here's what I came up with.  I used the classic Broken Dishes pattern.

 
I started out using the ugliest olive greens, and browns with a little black thrown in for good measure, but you need some lights and mediums to make this pattern work, so I added a few golds and yellows for contrast.

 
I actually had this border fabric in my stash!  I can't tell you what I was thinking when I bought it about 5 years ago, but I swear I was not on drugs at the time. 

It all came together quite nicely - I used some flannel on the back, some with pine trees and some with fish.

 
 
I used my favorite color of sew-fine thread (#426, sort of a gingery-golden-brown) and a pre-washed wool batting.  Sew warm and cuddly!  Pat & Heidi love their wedding quilt, Heidi says now Pat makes the bed every day! :)

 

Sharing the Panto-Love

Mostly my machine quilting has been in the free-hand style.  That's cuz it's what I know how to do.... Do you ever act like you don't like something, when really you just don't know how to do it?  That's me with pantos.

Then I met my alter-ego good twin.  OK, my name is Pam J. Cope, her name is Pam J. Cole.  We live fairly close to each other, and both are long arm quilters.  I have a daughter who is a senior in high school named Libby, she has one the same age named Lilly.  We also both have 20 year old sons, mine is Shea and hers is Sam.  Our birthdays are within a few months of each other (same year, which is probably true for everyone named Pam, it was a really popular name for a very short time, I think.)  Freaky Friday, huh? 

Well, one of the differences between us is that she loves pantos, and she is really good at them.  She very graciously invited me to her place so I could see how she works with them, and to learn any tricks about quilting from the back of the quilting machine, where you can't really see what you are doing.  Check out her work here.

So, I came home and tried it - easy peasy, lemon squeezy! Here's my first shot at it...

 

Maybe kinda hard to see, dark thread on dark fabric.  This is a Project Linus charity quilt from my quilt guild.

 
Here's another one, a pretty pastel jelly roll quilt made by Susan Kenyon, Everett Washington.   

I'm not sayin' I'm only doing pantos from now on, but they do have their appropriate time and place.  If a quilt has simple piecing, or busy prints, the quilting doesn't show much anyway.  A lot of the new so-called "modern" quilts seem to lend themselves to an all-over design.  Then they are washed and crinkled up.  A lot of them just look like mattress pads to me, but I like them anyway.  What do I know?

Whatever your style, the main thing is to have fun and make pretty quilts!  What are you waiting for?