My Top Ten Quilting Tips

1. Spray starch and press all of the washed fabric you will be cutting, your accuracy will increase greatly.

2. Rayon thread is great for machine quilting, it buries itself in the fabric and looks more natural. I like Sulky Rayon. You can still use cotton in the bobbin too.

3. Curved lines look more flowing and natural in machine quilting than straight lines, so I gently curve my grid lines randomly as I go along with my walking foot. Just gently wave the line along. You can see an example in my older post called Plaids and Stripes.

4. I wash every completed quilt. The washing evens out bad stitching and even small puckers and hides your errors. Plus you get the benefit of the "old quilt" look. I use almost no agitation when washing a quilt. More of a soaking cycle with maybe one minute agitating. Then rinse and spin out. I put mine in the dryer for about five minutes. Then lay out flat to block and dry.

5. Pieced bindings look great. Connect the sections with bias seams and the connections will disappear. You can easily find YouTube videos on pieced bindings.

6. A binding done in a completely different fabric from anything in the quilt looks wonderful if you pick a great color that sets the quilt off. For example, in my green and white quilt, I used a light blue print binding. It looks great and makes the green pop.

7. When you get tired of the fabric in your stash, group color families together and the fabric will look new and exciting again. Grouping in color families also helps when you are indecisive.

8. For the authentic 1930's look, be sure and use old clothes in the mix of fabric. 100 percent cotton, of course. They used clothes back then and you can't get that look without doing the same thing.

9. I use striped fabric for making labels for the back of the quilt. The stripes help my writing look straight. I use an archival permanent pen made for fabrics.

10. For free motion quilting, if you do not have a machine that will let you drop the feed dogs, all you have to do is set your stitch length to "0". The feed dogs will not move. I do this all the time even though my machine has the drop the feed dog feature.

Finally

After several years, I finally finished my huge flying geese quilt. I made the mistake of hand quilting it. I used Dream cotton batting, which was supposed to be easy to hand quilt, but I still found it difficult. I will never again be able to hand quilt a large quilt. I am sooooo happy this one is finished. I did my best to make it look like an antique quilt. I used reproductions and fabrics that just looked old. I used brown quilting thread in the brown parts, and couldn't see it, so I turned it over to the back and quilted it from the backside. It is approximately a queen size. I designed this version of a strippy setting.

Filet Crochet Design

Here are a couple of pictures of my efforts in designing a filet crochet pattern based on an antique sampler pattern. I have decided to re-work some of it, so will unravel back to the letter "A". I haven't done any filet crochet for several years, but for some reason have gotten enthused about it again. I love the simplicity of it, its just so easy to do. Only two stitches involved, chain stitch and double crochet.

Wow, a Long Time

I just realized how long it has been since I posted. Time has really flown, I can't believe it. I have been doing a lot of sewing recently, also doing some filet crochet. I have been designing filet crochet patterns based on old time samplers, the type with sayings such as "I am the Good Shepherd". I have almost finished one that says "Love one Another", but after crocheting it decided I want to rework some parts of it.

Also, I cleaned up my sewing area, which now resides on one side of our guest room. I have been doing some things with old blue jeans, and am making a slip cover for a worn out ottoman with some jeans, it looks really great. I found this great pattern for free on line here:

http://www.crochetpatterncentral.com/directory/filet_crochet.php.

There is a mistake on the right hand side border, but it is easily fixed. I really enjoyed making this little guy. I added the picot edge to the pattern.

This Spring

I have been in the garden lately, the weather has been very cool so I have been able to get some things done. Pansies are a favorite of mine, they are on their way out now, but we really enjoyed them and talked to their little faces everyday when we walked out on the front porch.
The corner garden in the back yard was something I did a few days ago, it had been the ugliest place in the yard til I got some inspiration. The Garden Lady is my solution to hiding a very ugly pole. You can see some more of my garden at my Flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12202528@N07/

A Gift of Love

I knitted this from an old favorite pattern of mine that I call Zig Zag Lace. I have had the pattern so long that I don't remember the source. I think it might be a Barbara Walker pattern. It looks complicated, but becomes brainless after a while. I can do it from memory. I used Caron Simply Soft for this, which is a yarn I love for childrens things, it holds up very well.

Click on the picture so see a larger image.

Pinwheel Craze

Wow, it has been sooooo long since I have posted. I have been on a Pinwheel Blanket craze lately. I got both of these patterns as free Ravelry downloads. They are both great patterns, I don't know which one I like the best. Check out my project list on Ravelry (Susan in North GA) for the link to the patterns.

After my grandson saw the one on the right he insisted I make him one in black, red and white.

Thrifted Fabric

These are some of my favorite fabrics I found at the local thrift store. They are being used in various quilt blocks. The top floral is my absolute favorite, I am crazy about that fabric. I have about 1/2 yard of it altogether.

Another distraction, but worth it.

Just a little something I got sidetracked into. But these tiny projects give a great sense of having accomplished something. Have made several other fabric postcards in the past week. I used very stiff artist canvas as the middle instead of cardstock.
The background was left over from some quilt I made a while back, then I put the little houses on top of that.

Procrastination

Will I ever get back to this Na Craga? Its been months since I worked on it. It is an experiment using different brown yarns. I love cable knitting, I find it very relaxing to work cables.

Creative Disorder

My old sewing room, before I had to dismantle it temporarily. I am sewing on the dining room table for the time being.

String Quilt with Triangles

This is a string quilt I made a while back that I am very pleased with. I heavily starched some fabric and laid the strips across my 12 inch square up ruler until they covered it, then sewed them together. There was no foundation used. When I got a bunch made, I put them together with some large squares and cut them into large half square triangles. Wound up with twice as many blocks to use!