quilting, quilting, realizations, and more quilting

 isn't this a pretty pile?

can you tell what it is?

it's my three most recent quilt top finishes fully sam'iched (backed and basted), ready for quilting.

they've been added to the last pile of backed and basted quilts i put together not too long ago, bringing my total of "needs to be quilted" projects to eight.

to some quilters, this might seem like a tower of pressure and a lot of behind-ness. but not to me. i've discovered in the last few years (here and here) that i rather like batch processing quilts through the post-piecing-a-flimsy stage along to a finish. it works really well for my "start all the quilts" mentality. piece a whole bunch with abandon for a while, then finish them off all together. 

this time around, i've realized that it is actually helpful to my quilting skills to do more than one quilt in a row. when i only bust out the walking foot or fmq for one quilt at a time, i feel like i'm just getting in the groove of it again when i'm suddenly done. then i don't do it again for several months and i'm back to relearning as i go again.

not this time.

let's see what i got done in one week. not only did i complete most of that stack, i had several learning moments and realizations along the way. it's a lot of quilting and a lot of information! maybe you just want to scroll the photos and get a general idea.

first up, was my original treehouse crossroads quilt. i looked at several of these online to see how others quilted them. i was partially inclined to figure out how to do a citrus peel (aka dogwood) pattern on the rectangles, but i couldn't decide how that would work with the roads and squares. i was also partial to handquilting this, which looks so great. but i am already a few years behind on those projects and didn't want this quilt to have to wait forever to be finished.

so i went with easy.

i echo quilted along the block-joining seams and outside the road strips. it's a medium density choice, which leaves the quilt pretty sturdy, but also soft and drapey. 

and even though the walking foot requires me to sew on the turtle, it was really fast!

except when this happened ...

the walking foot (or, as juki calls it, even feed foot) broke.

well, that was unexpected.

and completely inexplicable. nothing happened to signal a problem. earlier on i did have one of those moments where the bobbin case isn't fully inserted correctly and the needle won't go down, but i quickly readjusted and moved on. well into the quilting, i look up and see that the bottom prong on guide fork part of the foot is completely bent down. it literally looks like it was made this way. it's not thinned at all, nor was it hot. it doesn't look warped. it's just pointed down now instead of being parallel with the upper prong like it should be. 

how could this happen without making a noise or parts exploding everywhere? i spray basted this quilt, so it's not like i hit a pin or anything, which my machine has always taken in stride, anyway.

it's a complete mystery!

i've contacted juki and we're in talks because this was a very new walking foot, purchased less than a year ago, and has only been used twice before.

it's a good thing i had a spare since our household now owns three juki quilting machines. i was able to walk my way through to a finish of the first crossroads and move on to the low-volume crossroads quilt right away.

i zipped right through the quilting and had it finished in a day.

shortly after completing these two, i came across the ideal quilting pattern for a crossroads quilt! it's handquilting and it's perfection. see it here on instagram. i love it so much! i still have one more treehouse crossroads quilt in the works, so maybe i'll try this on the next one.

but as for the quilts i'm quilting right now, here's what was next:

i needed to add the rest of the machine quilting to "liberty holly hobbie quilt" so i can finish the handwork. i've decided that for added stability, i should stitch-in-the-ditch between strips in addition to handquilting down the center of each strip. i initially did half before beginning the handquilting.

this was my original idea when i quilted my first liberty + crossweave quilt, but after putting the first few lines of machine stitches in, i decided i didn't like it.

now i've changed my mind again because of practicality and wanting to increase the stability of our beloved sunday church lap quilts.

but back to my quilting marathon.

i was done with the walking foot and moved on to fmq, which was a little scary since i haven't done it in a while.

i started with "aunt bet's mother's day quilt."

and here i came to terms with something about myself as a quilter: when it comes to the multitude of skills involved in making a quilt, the quilting part is not my strong suit (wheelhouse? i keep hearing that term lately).

i still think it's so confusing that we call the collective process of making a quilt "quilting," and call the part where we stitch the layers together "quilting," as well.

but here's what i realized about myself;

i heartily admire people who can do intense, varied, fantastic quilting. i think it can add so much to the beauty and style of a quilt. i own a few books on the topic, about both walking foot and fmq methods. i like quilting my own quilts and have no desire to outsource this part of the process.

all that said, i'm also not very skilled or creative when it comes to the quilting part. right now, i don't want to put the time in to improve. currently, i'm competent at about three patterns. i have zero desire to up my game here.

and i'm totally okay with that.

i'm owning this about myself and my quilting.

at first i was feeling a little embarrassed about this, then realized it's completely fine. i can be myself, which means basic & mediocre at quilting, and still make quilts i love. i don't have to do it all and be amazing at all the parts. my quilts won't be known for their lovely feathers or fantastic curves or fancy script.

alright.

i've made my peace with myself about where i stand on quilting and can get back to it.

i also recalled that on previous projects, once washed and crinkled, a lot of the minor flaws disappear.

thank goodness.

this is when i decided to do simple modern loops on "aunt bet's." i'v done them before and the quilt had a lot of existing horizontal lines, so marking would be minimal. although i decided later i should have marked more. i now know i like my loops to be between 1" - 2" high and should take the time to mark accordingly. there are a few rows on this quilt that are too high for my preference. they get lanky and strange looking, lose their pleasant proportions. so from now on, i mark! 

i learned before that i definitely like to have the center line marked, and now i know about my personal height preferences, too. marking a quilt for quilting is one of those time-consuming, used-to-feel-wasteful parts of the process that i now accept and just do. (like trimming hsts and, occasionally, pinning.)

i did the non-interlocking/non-overlapping loops in rows horizontally across the quilt, and i'm happy with the results. it looks pretty good on the back all together in a photo. nothing to see here when passing on a galloping horse, as my aunties say, so we're good. denser would have been more crinkly, but i wanted to maintain drape. this is a happy medium loop.

this is also where i started to have needle issues. (honestly, it might have happened once with the 1st quilt, but i can't remember for sure. this is definitely when i started taking photos.) i know i don't change my needles as frequently as is probably prudent, but i don't usually have problems. one snapped completely out of nowhere. coincidentally, the bobbin was empty. i changed it and moved on.

 this is also when i got to try out a super-cool (really, it's the best thing ever) method i'd just seen on IG for burying thread ends. you use a contrasting thread to pull the ends into the quilt for burying. pure genius! see the demo here. jackie gillies is pretty brilliant. for added security, since there is no knot, i like to reinsert the tails at a new angle at least once, preferably twice. and when i start sewing the new thread again, i sew over the last few stitches where the other thread ended.

i now keep a needle loaded with red thread permanently in my pin cushion for this purpose. i've reused the same thread over several quilts and it's going strong.

i got nearly done with these loops before i sewed the corner of the backing to the quilt. haha. i haven't done that in a long time, but i've done it plenty. it's one of my more common "home ec moments."

for the record, i used a light silvery blue thread for this quilt, aurifil 2846, solely because it was already on the machine from when i quilted "liberty holly hobbie quilt" together. fortunately, it also coordinates well with the palette. i like to keep track of my thread choices in case i need to know in future, and since i can never remember without recording it.

i started "aunt bet's" around 7:30 in the morning and, even with stopping for all the things all day, was done by dinner time. modern loops are wonderfully fast. (note: denyse schmidt calls this quilting pattern "modern loops" in her book "modern quilts, traditional inspiration" and you can see a beautiful example of them on the cover. i've also seen this pattern referred to as "wishbone" or "figure eights," and "ribbon candy" is also closely related.)

are you still here?

good. i'm still quilting!

after dinner, "melonaide brightside quilt" was next. i chose a beautiful aqua shade, aurifil 2830 from a camille roskelly collection, for my thread and opted to do a tight, dense modern loops pattern, running vertically along the quilt.

it might sound like i just copied my previous choice, but they actually turned out quite differently, as you'll see.

at this point, i was humming along when it came to the loops. i can sew them pretty fast. until the needle breaks! dang it. this didn't used to happen to me and was driving me batty. almost every single time it happened, i found the bobbin empty, and had to wonder if/how they were related. or was there something about all the friction from the super-fast needle motion that was loosening it and causing problems?

i was moving through quilts fast and not taking time to clean out the machine as well as i normally would. this is bad because fmq make a ton of fluff and fuzz. just look at the needle and foot area. i was getting oil spots on the quilt in a few places because all that fuzz collecting there attracts oil, and then rubs against the quilt when it brushes past.

something about the bobbin running out of thread seemed to be causing the needle breaks, and since this quilt was needing a bobbin replacement after every two rows of the denser quilting, it was getting old fast.

i gave up for the evening - two quilts in one day was a lot anyway.

in the morning, i tackled it again and finished up "melonaide brightside," then moved on to my scrappy strings fall quilt.

and had the same issue. ugh.

at this point, i made two shot-in-the-dark decisions:

- clean the machine & bobbin again whenever i changed bobbins

- be very careful and intentional about replacing the bobbin properly.

it worked. or at least i had no more problems from there on out.

i was feeling like i could do something a bit beyond loops at this point and tried to freehand a sort of leafy vine pattern running in vertical columns like the strips. there is a similar doodle i used to do in school all the time, which is what i had in mind for this. 

it sort of worked.

the strips in this quilt aren't of equal widths, so a few times i got off course when trying to guess where my line should be going. when starting a new column, i would just move a handspan over from where i had previously started. it mostly worked, but marking the quilt would have been a lot more accurate. always mark the quilt! it's worth it.

and that's how i quilted five quilts in one week.

binding is one of my favorite parts of the quilt process.

i can't wait to get these trimmed and worked up!

(of course there are still two from that first pile i didn't get to and another one from before that. shh!)

so maybe i need to put my quilting gloves back on for a few more days.

covid quarantine era quilting

My goodness, the world has certainly turned upside down since I was last in this space. For a lot of people, quarantine in the Covid Era seems to have meant lots of project time and profuse productivity. Not for me. But I have had a few bouts of quilting time over the last few months. Here’s the update on my quilting during Covid so far. 

I finally got myself into gear and unpicked a lot of tension-issue problems on this Étoile de Patisserie quilt for my 2nd daughter. That was a nasty chore that had me avoiding a finish for several months. Once I got the messy stuff removed, I was able to requilt those areas. Soooo much knot burying. Glad that’s behind me!

Then I finally quilted this other Stella Grande quilt called Guys and Dolls. More Aurifil 12wt chunky big stitch machine quilting for this one. 

While my husband spent some time camping with our youngest daughter in early June, I got to spend some quilting time at home with D4. She pieced her first project in a long time - her first baby quilt in a basic 4 square pattern. We enjoyed working in tandem after I rearranged my sewing area to accommodate a second machine.

I was on a quilting roll at this point and got Cheery (Easter) quilt echo quilted around all the boxes. I’d like to add some handquilting to this one, too. 

This Fall Log Cabin quilt also got some quick, zippy straightline quilting In chunky Aurifil 12wt. I chose Brass (top color), of course, because it seems to go with everything. 

My coins quilt, which I’ve named “Collins” after the design inspiration Megan Collins, was a quick and easy quilting finish in modern loops. Oh, I do love this one.

D4 had so much fun working on that baby quilt that we took advantage of a sale at our local shop and got her some more fabric for another baby quilt and a few stash items. I’m happy to see this girl sewing again. She used to be my quilt buddy, always helping me with anything she could do. Her interest waned for a while and her younger sister stepped in as my quilting companion. It’s nice to have her around the sewing room again. 

Once I got quilting, there wasn’t any stopping me. I knocked out a bunch of straightline quilting for my Guys and Dolls Improv quilt, adding my 5th quilt to the Ready To Bind Pile. I used several colors of thread on this quilt, which shows up nicely and makes for interesting effects in person. If you look closely, you can see a thread I laid out on top of the blue and pink squares on the left; same thread, different look depending on the color its with. And on the right you might notice the white thread that shows up clearly on the navy square but basically disappears in the stripes. It worked that way over the whole quilt which adds so much visual interest, I think.

Would you believe that I trimmed all 5 of these quilts in 24 hours? Once I had the cutting mat set on the floor, I just kept at it until these were all trimmed. That was quite satisfying! I think I like batch processing multiple quilts at the same time. 

On to batch binding next. 

I was a very good girl and pushed through all those chores towards several finishes, but that didn’t stop me from starting one more new project. I was inspired by a couple of yellow-and-low-volume-HST projects on IG. I’m making a simple Flying Geese layout for my 4.5” HSTs.

Putting all this together in one place makes it look as if my quarantine time was quite productive after all. That’s not really true when it comes to my quilt life, but I’ll take it. 

some groovy quilting

this old friend (also here) finally got quilted last night, and it only took a few hours. why didn't i do this before now? life, i guess.

since i've been working my way through finishing wips this year, i knew i would be getting around to this sooner or later. i just hadn't gotten there quite yet.

yesterday afternoon i sat down to have some "quilt time" with my younger girls. (this is when they all get out a quilt to lay on and i read aloud to them.) i decided to match my quilt i was snuggling under to the book cover i was reading from. our current read is the borrowers by mary norton, an old childhood favorite. i'm not sure how many times i read through the adventures of arrietty, pod, and homily as a child, but it was many, many times.

the cover reminded me of the colors in "groovy summer love letters", which has been waiting, basted, in the "to be quilted" pile for over a year. after reading under it, i decided i might as well put it under the fmq foot and get it done.

i chose the pretty peachy-pink aurifil #2415 to quilt it with in modern loops.

modern loops and i are still getting acquainted. it's a very easy, repetetive pattern to do. i just don't do it consistently the same.

i'm still deciding if i like the loops skinny or rounded, and how far apart to put them. and how high or low to do the crossover part. there are a surprising number of ways to vary this pattern.

i was extra careful on the quilting done on the light, bone-colored solid portions of the quilt. they show up a lot and are quite noticeable. 

the last time i did this pattern, i didn't have the rows intermingle with each other like i did this time, so that took a bit of getting used to. i wasn't prepared for how much the spacing of the very first set of loops i did would affect all the rows that came after.

i didn't even realize as i made that first row that i was varying my spacing that much. but i did. some are really widely spread and others were squished together so close it was hard to get the next set of loops inbetween them. after a few rows i began to adjust that by either making just a tiny loop when the spacing was too narrow or doing two loops in a row to fill in a too-large space.

this is definitely a very organically quilted quilt! it has lots of personality in the quilting.

my biggest goof came when i didn't start a row off in the right direction and the two rows didn't overlap the way they were supposed too.  oops.

i accommodated this by making a unique set of swirls between the two rows. i'm calling it a special design feature and leaving it at that.

i had a few chocolate truffles along the way to help out, as well as first the soundtrack to "into the woods" playing, and then some jane austen on audible. lately, i really enjoy listening to stories as i work. and listening to a musical soundtrack is rather like listening to a story with the added benefit of being able to sing along. by the end of the evening i was done with the whole quilt, which isn't small.

i'm looking forward to revisiting this quilting pattern again very soon as i think i will use it on "maude's chevron peaks" next. as soon as i have it's backing made and get it basted, of course.

even though it's taken me a few years to get this plus quilt done, it was actually a very quick and easy make. i'll try to get the method/pattern for it posted sometime soon-ish. i actually have another one planned for a special fabric pull, so that shouldn't be too hard to get done.

maybe.

and maybe this time i'll get it done quick as a wink like it can be done.

at the end of my spool

i have been working with the yummiest fabrics in shades of peach, red, sand, cinnamon, petunia, and navy on this "mary, mary star contrary" quilt. i bought the prints for the backing separately, at different times, but i think they are all cotton + steele prints. originally, i was going to use only the two florals, but they fell short of the size i needed, so i added those adorable raccoon and circus prints.

something about the stripes on the border ends makes me think of chocolate wrappers and gets me drooling! the two border sets are in slightly different colors, with 3 stripes chosen from the center star selection of eight, and a flying goose block out of the other two colors set in each border. i really should have used the two blues, which i used as highlights not full colors in the center star, as a thin strip to separate the border from the peach background, but it seemed like too much work at a time i wanted to be finishing a quilt top. i think using one as the binding color was a good second choice.

 i chose to quilt this one in chunky 12wt auriful thread in Brass, at a larger 3.5 stitch length. i love how it resembles handstitching and stands out so nicely on the simple quilt design.

this is the 3rd "stella grande" quilt i've used brass on, so i wasn't too sure how far i'd get with what remained on the spool. surprisingly, i got almost to the end of my quilting on just the one spool! i had to guesstimate how much bobbin thread to spin on three different times at the end. you can see in the middle photo above that i got nearly done with my last complete bobbin, with just a few inches of the border left to go. i could have stopped quilting there completely, but i wanted to do a few more vertical seams for added stability. the last photo shows where i was when i finished one of those lines! talk about cutting it close.

after searching for more brass at the two places i normally get my aurifil 12 wt and not finding it stocked anymore, i was able to locate some at hawthorne threads. thank goodness! i got a few spools, which allowed me to complete the rest of this quilt and leaves me enough for several more in the future.

i don't like playing it so close with my threads, but it can be a little exciting, too.

in a "quilter home on a weekend night by herself" kind of exciting way.

loops and crinkles

 when it came time to quilt "bloom where you are planted" i decided to do modern loops, al a denyse schmidt style. i remember thinking when i had seen this done elsewhere before that i wasn't very partial to it. however, when i got one of her patterns, i immediately noticed some amazing texture in the quilting. "what is this amazing texture and what quilt pattern made it?," i thought. on closer examination i was surprised to find it was the modern loop pattern i had seen attributed to her. (see it here and here)  i have to say, done by denyse it looked much different than when i had seen it somewhere else. and my version of it here is going to look different, too, than denyse's masterful editions, partially because i didn't take the time to go back and look at her quilting before i did my own. true to fashion, i just sat down and started doing it without any real practice.

therefore, this quilt became a study in the different styles of the modern loop, aka "wishbone", quilting pattern. you can do it with the loops skinny or fat, narrow or wide, squat or elongated, circular or ovoid. really, there is a ton of room for interpretation here. i'm still deciding which way i like best.

 some of my loops appear more like circles because they are so fat and round.

 some of them are more vine-like, such as those in the red strip above, because they are so spaced out.

on the very first row, i was making loops across just one strip. before that row ended i decided to do the rest over two strips for two reasons: one, it would be a lot faster; two, having a center line to work off of would give me more reference points for making the loops, presumably aiding my consistency in shape and spacing.

some are more teardrop shaped and others more like eggs.

i didn't intend to do more than one set of loops on a single strip, but found i had disrupted the flow of evenly spaced pairs, so i had to do two more single-row loops, which i randomly spaced out to the left and right of the first row. this gave a little more variety and interest to the quilting, as well.

 here you can see some of the variety i ended up with and how i chose to stipple-quilt the green accent strip across the middle of the quilt.

 in the accent block, i outline quilted the layers and then bravely did a micro-pebble in the skinny gingham strip. i've only ever done pebbles once before, a few years ago, when i practiced them in a fmq class i took. i definitely need more practice or at the very least should have looked in a book to review the technique, but, nope, not my style! i just went at it and probably retraced my steps a lot more than necessary because of it.

i considered tracing the butterfly in the center of the block, but wisely recognized the high likelyhood of my chances for error there and let it be.

i was quilting this baby on a deadline, which, after doing twice in the same month, in succession, i realize i never, ever want to do again. somehow it just sucks a lot of joy out of and inserts a lot of guilt into the process. but that said, i am glad i got both of them done in time for my intended deliveries. no regrets, just renewed determination to make well in advance.

i finished up the quilting late on a saturday night. sunday morning i threw the quilt in the washer. because of all the red, i put two color catchers in with it. that must have been a good idea since they came out pink. i chose to wash the quilt on the gentle cycle, extra water, with dreft baby detergent. i figured the dreft was good and gentle for babies, it would be nice to my quilt. there are probably even better detergents for washing quilts, but this is the gentlest thing i had on hand.

normally, i would lay out the quilt on my tile to air-dry overnight. however there was no time for that in this case. so into the drier it went, on low-heat, gentle cycle. when i opened the drier door less than an hour later, i got a thrill i've never had before. the crinkle on this quilt was so glorious, and the light scent of the dreft baby detergent smelled just like my newborns' clothing, coupled with pleasantly warm heat to make me burst with sensory joy. i ran to get the camera, wanting to capture the vision in the drier. unfortunately, there wasn't enough light to do it properly, so i moved the quilt to the family room in the sunlight.

 even with the aid of the sunlight, i don't think i really captured the texture very well. i've never had a quilt crinkle like this before so i just didn't know what all the fuss was about. but now i do!

 i couldn't stop touching it even though i was afraid of ruining the crinkle.

 i thought this was definitely as happy as this quilt was going to make me.

but then i gave it to jill and her reaction topped everything. that'll be my next post. the crinkle deserved a whole post of it's own.

i wanted to use the darling selvage from this quilt in the backing very badly, like i did for "paris daydreams." but as you can see, it was printed right on the very edge of the fabric and would have been mostly eaten up in the seam allowance. so i opted to use those cute ladybugs and the print to tie up the quilt for gifting instead.

tune in again later this week to see it unwrapped.

linked up with lee's wip wednesday over at freshly pieced.