Update on Des Moines Teaching

I am sorry to report that due to injuries to my hands that  I sustained earlier in the week in rescuing my cat Oliver from a very serious household accident I will be unable to teach at the AQS Des Moines Show this week. 

I apologize to all the quilters who have signed up and were looking forward to time with me to improve their quilting.  ER doctors as well as my internist have assessed the damage to my thumbs and hands and said I must rest them until healing is complete or risk further damage to nerves.   I am on a strong antibiotic cocktail of several meds and the side effects are also giving me some serious symptoms.

Travel would be too difficult and I can't use my hands normally now.  No scissors, picking anything up, much less actual quilting at the machine are in my future for awhile.

Oliver is doing well after surgery.  I hope you all understand that accidents just jump out at you from nowhere and happen to all of us despite our best intentions to fulfill our obligations. 

AQS has found another teacher, Joanie Poole,  to fill in at very short notice and she will do her best for you.  Take a look at her work at www.heirloomquiltingdesigns.com  Her students have given her excellent reviews. 

Please send some healing thoughts my way, and thanks for understanding.
Diane

Classes at AQS Show in Des Moines

"The Fine Art of Echo Quilting" ~ Warm-up exercise

My classes in the upcoming AQS show in Des Moines Oct. 3-6 are almost filled.  Thanks everyone for signing up, and I hope you will love what I have to share with you about machine quilting on a home sewing machine.

The photo above shows one of our warm-up exercises for echo quilting to get you comfy and ready to do some more challenging quilting.

Sometimes these warm-ups turn out so well students have gone on and used them in quilts, with pretty threads, as focal point quilting.  Some have expanded them to fill entire spaces around other designs as wavy, lyrical background quilting instead.  Once you get the hang of even echoes and even stitches, it's fun and easy to do this.

Remember, don't "lazy susan" or turn your quilt sample, even if it is small enough to do so.  You'll be at a loss when you quilt a larger quilt in a home machine and cannot turn it.  It's best to learn right from the start to quilt in all directions, deal with the visibility problems you face in a home sewing machine, learn to adjust machine speed so you don't overshoot or make mistakes in blind spots.  And there will always be blind spots.

This little sample is not perfect, lines are not perfectly spaced, it was done in a class as a demo. You don't have to have perfection to create something beautiful and unique. Instead of making a new sample to show you here that would be a bit better, I used this one so you will feel confident about class, and look forward to coming and exploring quilting with me.

There are a few openings left in "It's Bananas," a 3-hour class that will focus on this design, below, that many have tried from my Quilt Savvy book.  If you want to perfect it, get it to look its best, this class is for you. 

Beautiful Bananas

However, it is also for those of you who simply want to improve all your quilting designs, as much of what I will share with you is what I've learned over the years working with so many talented quilters who have taken my classes.  These important things will be included in all my classes to help you improve your own free motion quilting, be more at ease and more confident.  I want you to love your own quilting.

To register for this class, go to this weblink at AQS.

Fall is in the air here finally and quilting is as well.  I'm packing my teaching samples, preparing handouts, and planning my trip to Des Moines.  I hope to see many of you there, even if you aren't in my class, please say hi.

Keep quilting!  Your work gets better every day,
Diane

Taken Aback

Last winter I retrieved a "never finished" quilt top from the year before, fixed some piecing errors, added a border and skipped anything more I had planned.  I wanted it DONE, kept it simple, layered it, and quilted it.  I pride myself on no UFO's.

The quilting was a chore.  The fabrics fought me.  The metallic/silk thread sounded bad when I quilted and did strange things right before my eyes.  It was distracting and I didn't enjoy it.  The background fabric with tiny piecing added huge knots of seams underneath.  The sewing machine broke, a spring fell out as it tried to get over the lumps.  I kept quilting.  I didn't need the presser lifter, I had the knee one to use.  The lever kept falling off and landing on my quilt.  I kept going, I wanted this thing DONE.

Knowing it already had problems, I spent way too much time quilting it. 

After it was finished and I dipped and swirled it in tepid clear water to remove marking, I had more problems with a hand dyed fabric that bled.  Then there were some skewed tiny triangle pieces from the quilting process so tips went in all directions.  Generally I thought it was not the best, would keep it for a class sample maybe.  I haven't even given it a name.  It is a Delectable Mountains pattern, about 43" square.  Detail of quilting, below, and from the back.

Last week while doing some photography I needed a warm neutral backdrop, and saw the back of this quilt rolled up in the corner on the floor, in total rejection.  I picked it up, pinned it to the wall, backside showing. 

I was so taken aback!  I love the back as a wholecloth and I have left it hanging on my wall and enjoy it so much.... from the back.  I think this fabric might work for a wholecloth design and might give that a try on another quilt. 

Meanwhile I'll enjoy the lumps and bumps of thread here and there on the back, lots of traveling where the thread build-up is a bit much, but the look of it is very pleasing.  Somehow the feather fronds look so elegant "in reverse." 

Lesson:  Try to make the back look as good as you can.  You never know when it will be the front!

Hope your Monday brings you a tiny bit of quilting time, and maybe some fresh veggies.

Diane

Oliver was actually yawning here, after I woke him for his birthday photo, but he does look extra fierce!

Oliver is 3 Years Old!

We made it!  Oliver turns 3 today, despite eating thread, escaping to the wilds of our yard once, eating tape, eating styrofoam, eating whatever isn't normal for cats to eat.  Oliver is our dear adopted cat from the Wisconsin Humane Society, and he has finally figured out we are his forever people.

Last year we celebrated with a delicious fudge cake and a #2 candle.  This year it is all about Oliver, so his favorite food (he is a cat Vegan) is Brussels sprouts, so I hollowed them out, added candles (his Dad wanted to light them, NOT!) and woke him up from a nap for the photo op.

He looks tired and crusty, not his usual pink-nosed self, but he perked up immediately when the delightful aroma of fresh sprouts wafted about him.  Tuna?  No way.  He loves his veggies and dry cat food and lots and lots of water from any faucet in the house. 

What a wonderful cat he is, and how happy he made us, two retirees who were worried we were too old for a cat.  He keeps us young and gives us love and fun and joy. 

Happy, happy birthday, Oliver.

Diane

Oliver at WI Humane Society

One Year Old

Oliver at Two !

Observations while quilting.....

Hello everyone, it's nice to be back on the grid, although there are always changes at Blogger and now I have to re-learn a few things, and remember my password too, eeeek.

We've had severe drought, over 100-degree temps, miserable miserable summer days here in Wisconsin and most of the Midwest.  It is a temperate 80 today and a bit of green coming back from a recent rain.  A failing AC finally died and we had to wait for repairs during some of the hottest nastiest times ever, wondering how we ever survived in the past without it. 

We LOVE our wonderful repairman who had it fixed within 20 minutes, cool lovely air flowing in again.  Oliver didn't know why he was so miserable, but soon he was bouncing around again.  We were too.

After that, a deadline for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative and their celebrity auction fast approached, so I closeted myself in my sewing room with Oliver settled on the comfy chair stacked with my old quilts, and made a small quilt for this event.  I shall post links and info when it is all online, as the quilts will be amazing by fabulous quilters you know and love. 

The quilt, above and detail with a penny below, is a version of an old one called "Joy," and this small 17 1/2" square quilt is titled "Joy Remembered" and is in honor of my mother, Erma Hinterberg, who died in 2008 from Alzheimer's.  I miss her every single day.  I began the quilt on July 9, her birthday, and quilted a bit each day until it was done.  It was a joy to do. 

While I was working, I thought of the classes I will be teaching this fall and pondered what I have learned over the years, observations, things I might not remember unless I am at my machine and working:  

• Sometimes I get too impatient and find I run the machine too fast, and my machine runs very fast indeed.  For the first time ever, I used the option it has to slow down the motor speed, and took it down a notch to 75% of power.  It was wonderful, and I did not even notice it after a moment or two, but it kept my speed in excellent control.
• One thing I forgot to do is stitch in the ditch between the center panel and border with water soluble thread to stabilize this seam before quilting the designs and backgrounds.  Instead I used a neutral silk thread that was a permanent line of stitching, and that was fine.  However, there were many times I quilted up to this ditch from both sides and traveled on it, ending up with just a tad too much thread in that ditch.  The initial line of stitching would have washed out had it been water soluble, top and bobbin.  I use this thread for a lot of stabilizing quilting and ditch work.
• If the music is too loud you can't hear the machine and get a nice rhythm.  Turn it down.  Darn.
• Wind extra bobbins.
• Use the same color top and bobbin, never mind what the backing color is.  I used gold in the bobbin and top for the gold border, and the back of the quilt was a deep murky green/gold Fossil Fern fabric, and the gold quilting looked beautiful on it.  In the past I would have used one thread in the bobbin, a deep murky green or neutral tan to match/blend.  It was easier to get a balanced stitch using same color top and bobbin, plus the back looks really, really pretty.
• I added a row of quilting around the motifs using YLI Sparkle thread to add a soft halo and definition, and some richness.  I like just a touch of this, but go ahead and play with threads and colors to tailor your quilting to the ideas and images in your head.  I quilt slower with specialty threads with better success.
• Don't let cats NEAR your thread trims.  Oliver loves to eat silk thread and I have to be ever so careful.   He also likes to eat any kind of sticky tape, from painters' tape and masking tape, to packaging tape that is very sticky.  He gets way too happy when he finds any on incoming packages.  And now.....the excitement of fresh corn and corn silk, just like thread, oh no.
• I've never had the need to use gloves or hoops or any aids to move my quilt smoothly and evenly.  My machine bed is not sticky, and I use the Supreme Slider with extra tape on the corners just to be sure it doesn't move with the quilt, and make sure the choice for backing fabric will move smoothly too.  Some are sticky and don't move easily, so check that out before you layer your quilt.  I pre-wash my fabrics and that helps immensely.
• If you have issues with getting good thread tension, try different bobbin threads.  Sometimes switching from one fiber to another, such as from cotton to poly, poly to cotton, silk to cotton, cotton to silk - will help!
• Different designs require slight tension adjustments.  When I was quilting bananas as background on the border, I switched every now and then to groupings of circles or "froth," and did remember to lower the top tension for these.  Otherwise the top thread pulls too tightly, and stitches become tight and distorting on top. 
• I used 3 upper tension settings in the gold border, one that was tighter for the Diane-shiko and feathers, a bit looser for the Bananas, and the least amount of tension for the Froth.  Don't start quilting without checking tension and making sure it is set where YOU want it.
• Remember to check the back of the quilt every now and then and make sure all is well there too.  Bad things can happen in the basement.
• Love my magnifier.  And yes, I need an eye exam soon.
• If you are using #100 silk in the top, BEWARE the fan blowing on you as you quilt.  My thread actually blew out of my machine guides a few times.....
• Do a more difficult type of quilting after you've done something that is easier for you.  I did my tiny circles or "pearls" in the spines of the feathers when I was warmed up and feeling confident.  I did them all with short breaks to keep consistency.
• If you've always done one type of background, try something new.  Alas, I wanted to use one of my new backgrounds but the border area was too small for it to work.  It was a partial section of what should have been a fully developed design, so it simply didn't work.  I switched and was happy with the result and it was easier.  Don't be afraid to change plans.

Hope everyone is enjoying all the things summer can bring, despite the unprecedented heat.  I hope to see many of you this fall in Des Moines at the AQS show, Oct. 3-6 and in Septemeber at WI Quilt Expo.

Meanwhile, stay cool, and keep quilting!  Your work gets better every day...

Diane

Teaching at AQS Des Moines Show in October!

"Podflowers, Froth, Diane-shiko, Pearls...."

After taking some time off from travel and teaching, I have signed on to teach at the AQS Show in Des Moines, IA this October 3-6, '12.  I know many have emailed me regarding my schedule, so I am hoping to see some of you at this event.  You can get all the information at www.americanquilter.com under the "Quilt Shows" menu. 

I'll be teaching some 3-hour classes, and two 6-hour classes geared for home machine quilters. 

There is always a bit of repetition in all of these if you do sign up for more than one, so be prepared to hear some of the info each time.  What we quilt will be different in all of them.  If you want to learn some tips on good free motion quilting, any of the classes will be fine, so don't stress about which one to take.  If you register early you'll be able to choose which one will work best for you.

In the "It's Bananas!" class I'll show you how to quilt this beautiful design, and we'll try some different threads, combine with them with other motifs (if there is time).  In a short class like this I try to spend time with each student so I can give you some individual help, and the rest is instruction for the entire class.   Because the size of the class is large and time is so limited, there is only a short time to be spent with you individually.  I believe because we will have provided machines there will be reps from the company there to help everyone with the machines.

One six-hour class is  all about Perfecting your Machine Quilting.  We'll problem solve, get good stitches, and work on some pretty motifs.  I think it will be a great day.

The other day class is  all about learning to quilt free motion freehand echo feathers.  We'll start easy and work up to some more intricate designs.  These are organic but can be made to look very formal, so it works for both styles of quilting.  Again, we'll also talk about stitch quality, consistency, tension, thread choices, etc. 

Come prepared to dive right in, take some notes, quilt on a provided machine (I think I'll have Berninas but that can always change).  Then you go home, relax, do it some more on your own machine and use the class materials as your reference. 

If you practice some more at home before the class info fades away it helps so much to reinforce what you learn.  Then go ahead and use it in a real quilt. 

Sometimes it's a good idea to prepare something ahead of time to quilt so when you GET HOME there won't be any wasted time.  Also, think of it as a "sacrifice quilt," don't worry if there will be mistakes made in it.  Feel free to experiment on it as you learn to improve you quilting. 

If you have questions about the class, what to bring, your experience, etc., email me ahead of time:  dianequilter@sbcglobal.net

I'm so looking forward to a lovely fall drive to Des Moines, and meeting many quilters I've not had the chance to work with so far.  And of course, seeing a splendid quilt show too.  Oliver says, "Be there!"

Stay cool in this scorching heat,

Diane

Pincushions!

After cleaning my sewing room last month I discovered many pincushions here and there, all hidden away since the arrival of Oliver on the scene, with his penchant for eating pins, threads, sticky tape (don't ask.....).  I keep two in the drawer of my sewing machine cabinet and am careful to keep those drawers firmly closed, and I tried displaying the other ones with no pins in them, but alas they became fabulous cat toys.

Beads were especially attractive and could be eaten.  The antique metal rabbit clunked to the floor but survived, so these had to be put away for now.  I love looking at them and miss seeing them, but when Oliver matures and can appreciate Mom's things, they will be brought out and enjoyed again.  Oh there are many more, this little group is just the tip of the collection.  I still have my old tomato from years gone by when I did garment sewing.

Many of these were gifts, including the new black one with the delicious pearl/bead trim at the top, from the recent Lake Geneva WQI retreat.  I attended Show and Tell there last Saturday night and had a wonderful time, saw some amazing quilts, and laughed a lot too.  Check out this event for next year if you want to get away for a quiet, peaceful weekend of sewing/quilting, delicious food, friendly people, and a beautiful location.

Oliver immediately was black-eyed excited over the new pincushion, realized it was from an exciting foreign (not our house) locale, and full of mystery and possibilities.  I had to put it away immediately. 

It is Memorial Day weekend coming up, and I hope to do some quilting, even if it is only "playing at my machine."  I am busy setting up some classes for October, and will post those as soon as they are finalized. 

My grandma used to call this holiday "Decoration Day" and the graves of not only fallen soldiers but family members too were decorated with wreaths, freshly planted flowers, flags.  Take a moment to remember on this special day those who have given their lives for their country, and those we no longer have with us but miss so much.

And try some quilting!  Warm weather is a great time to quilt,

Diane