QuiltNebraska 2009

Janet, Shirley, Lynn, Fay

QuiltNebraska, the Nebraska State Quilt Guild convention, was fun again this year. Here are the 4 of us that have roomed together for many, many years at convention. We don't live close to each other so enjoy catching up when we are together.

I had a class on Brazilian Embroidery in an all day class on Friday. I didn't really know what it was or how it differed from regular embroidery before I walked into the class. It is done with Rayon threads of various weights and the flowers are really 3-D and stand away from the background fabric. One example of a 3-D flower is the pansy that looks like it has been crocheted and stitched onto the background fabric but it is all constructed from embroidery stitches as you work on the fabric. It didn't look like we got much done by the end of the day but the instructor, Christine Hause, from Denver, had us work on a practice cloth to learn the stitches. This was great for me as I don't really do embroidery so needed a good instructor. She could tell right away if I was doing something wrong and demonstrated all the stitches until we got it - good teacher!

Christine Hause

Brazilian Embroidery Kit that all purchased as part of class.

The entertainment on Friday was a couple from Canada that sing, mostly folk type songs she had written and all the songs were about quilts and quilt makers. Cathy Miller and her husband John Bunge are from Canada and have entertained at lots of quilt events and were very fun to listen to. You can listen to the clips of some of the songs from ne of her CDs on this web page.

Cathy Miller and John Bunge

Cathy Miller

The second all day class I took this weekend was on Saturday. It was a needle turn applique class taught my Suzanne Marshall of Missouri. She also was an excellent teacher and I learned a few things I didn't know and really like her method of marking the background called "Take Away Applique". You only have to trace the design once and use that drawing after it is cut out as your pattern.

Her quilts are beautiful, each more special than the last and she has won numerous awards on her quilts. I got a chance to visit with her more as she sat at our table for dinner on Saturday night. She was really fun and had some great stories to share.

Suzanne Marshall showing some of her quilts.

Suzanne demonstrating the steps she takes to do her exquisite applique.

Saturday night we had a presentation by Jodie Davis, the host of the internet quilt program "Quilters News Network." She was going to show one of the new shows they had put together but the sound wouldn't work so she kind of narrated it. It turned out kind of a dud - she did talk about the show quite a bit so it was more like a big advertisement for us to subscribe to her show.

Jodie Davis

The live quilt auction went well with a total over $10,000 collected on Saturday night. The silent auction the day before netted around $2000 and sale of old books brought in another $300. The president presented a $150,000 check to the director of the International Quilt Study Center to satisfy the pledge the Nebraska State Quilt Guild made 4 or 5 years ago. My quilt brought $150 and I even know the quilter that purchased it so know it will be taken care of.

I was so tired when I got home yesterday afternoon I couldn't wait to get to bed last night. I knew I was tired as I slept about 2 hours later than I usually do. Am embarrassed to tell you how late I slept so will just let you imagine a time!

Better get to bed now as I want to drive out to see my mother tomorrow - a 2 1/2 hr. drive. It is her 88th birthday and I am going to take her out for lunch. My brother and his family will come in too. I called him today and he ordered a Dairy Queen ice cream cake we will pick up to take back to her apt. after lunch. YUMMMMMY!

Happy Quilting,
Lynn

Bamboo Batting

I have had this roll of Bamboo Batting by Fairfield for sometime but had not used it until now. I love it! It is so soft and machine quilts great too.

I did find some shrinkage after I washed the Linus quilt I used it in but in this project it didn't matter. If you didn't want the shrinkage I would preshrink the batting according to the manufactures instructions. Something I found interesting was that they don't recommend putting the batting in the washer to pre-shrink it but have you soak it in a laundry basket in the bathtub, press as much water you can out of it and then lay it outside to dry. May take a piece I have left and try washing it this way but want to put it in the dryer to see how that turns out.

The quilt I used it in is very soft as well so will be buying more of this batting. Mine was purchased at Hobby Lobby and a friend bought hers at Hancock Fabrics (Not the one from Paducah). Hobby Lobby usually has a coupon you can print off for 40% off anything not on sale so you can get a pretty good deal on the batting that way.

Today is my 38th wedding anniversary and yes I am not with my husband today to celebrate. He is always so busy on the farm with irrigating the crops we never have a chance to do anything special on our anniversary. I go to QuiltNebraska the Nebraska State Quilt Guild convention every year and sometimes it falls on our anniversary. I have a very understanding husband, he says go and have a good time!

Pasting this after I am gone to quilt convention - I am sure I am having a wonderful time!

Lynn

Widening or Lengthening Backing Fabric to Fit Quilt

One of the things that I forgot to tell you in the last blog entry is why I sew the strips in the backing on an angle to lengthen or widen the fabric to fit the quilt. There are two reasons I do it this way instead of perfectly straight across or vertically.

The first reason is because if you do it my way you don't have to be so careful when layering the quilt to get it straight on the backing. With my method you can be off a little and it will never be seen but with adding a strip parallel to the sides you need to be much more exact and keep that strip you added very straight and parallel to the top and sides as you layer the quilt.

The second reason is that it takes less fabric to add more width to the backing. Yes - I said exactly what I meant. I will show you an example using orange copy paper. This first photo is of the copy paper before I cut it. (Pretend it is a piece of fabric you want to use for a quilt but it is too narrow to fit the quilt.

First you make a diagonal cut lengthwise across the fabric (orange paper). The cut can be at any angle but make sure each end of the cut lands somewhere on the top and bottom of the fabric like the cut on the paper below.

The next photo shows a ruler laid on the space (pretend I stitched a strip of fabric in this cut area.) It measures 1 1/2"

Now comes the interesting part, remember I said it took less fabric to widen the backing if you put it on an angle? Well look at the next photo with the ruler laid on the area that would have the strip stitched in. It measures 1/8" less than the first measurement. This isn't much but remember this is a small piece of paper and not a large piece of backing for a quilt. Think in terms of a backing to make a large quilt and a larger strip could be stitched in and it would be a bigger difference in measurement.

Another thing to note is the longer the cut (stretching it out and starting closer to the corners farther apart) the larger the difference in the two measurements will be and the more width you will get out of your strips. Look at the two photos below for this example. How you might interpret this into a real quilt is if you need a bigger amount to make the backing wide enough you might want to make your cut longer and cut almost corner to corner. I would caution you with this though, try not to make your cut the same difference from each of the corners and you won't have to be so particular on how you layer your quilt. (My examples are a little too even for my tastes.)

Notice the ruler above measures 1 1/2" and the one below is 1 1/4" so it is a greater width gained by making the cut at a bigger angle. Does that make sense?

The above examples are how to make the backing wider and the one photo below is how to make it longer to fit the quilt. You just cut from the right to the left sides. The same thing applies as to the longer the cut, the more you will gain in width from your strips.

I hope this explains some of what I did on the Linus Quilt backing. I cut both ways on that backing. First I inserted the blue strip. I cut some of the length I added off so that is why it isn't placed exactly on the left side or right side. After stitching that strip in I re-cut it the other direction and added the white colored strip. Makes an interesting back and made my red fabric big enough for the backing of this quilt.

As you can tell I didn't have enough of any of the light fabrics so they are pieced and I had to piece the length of blue too to make it long enough to fit in my cut. If anyone asks about this interesting back I will just tell them it is a design element not that it was necessary to make it big enough. I like to use a contrasting fabric from the main backing fabric to make it look like I intended to do it that way. You could use backing fabric to insert but the contrasting fabric is more interesting I think.

Any of you math whizzes out there probably already know this and I am sure there is some geometry theorem that explains all of this but it has been too many years since I studied geometry. It works for me and that is what is important!

Have most of my stuff ready for convention now - can't wait until Thursday.
Lynn

Linus Quilt

I spent the entire day yesterday working on this donation quilt for the Linus Project. As I said in my last post, the challenge project this year for our annual QuiltNebraska convention is to make a quilt for the Linus Project.

Of course I wait until the last minute to get started but piecing and quilting this quilt went pretty quickly. I decided to use what I had on hand and thought I would use up a lot of my bright fabrics. It really doesn't look like I used any at all when I put that box away this morning. Think the fabric must have reproduced at night when I wasn't looking.

Back to the quilt...I did a simple quilting design of loops, with a daisy like flower or butterfly every once in a while. Was just quilting along until after I filled my bobbin for the second time, OH NO, I was going to run out of thread before I finished. Like a dummy I used the same thread on top and bottom and the spool didn't have enough for both sides, although the spool had a lot on it.

What to do, what to do, as I didn't have anymore of this variegated thread?

Well, I got this brilliant idea after looking at the back of my quilt. Notice it is pieced too. Well it isn't pieced just to make a design statement but it is pieced because I didn't have enough fabric. Did you know if you split a piece of fabric on an angle and insert a strip you can make a piece of fabric bigger for backing? If you split it one way it will make it longer and if you split it the other it will make it wider. Try it with a piece of paper and check it out.

This red fabric was not long enough nor wide enough so I split it both ways. Kind of has a modern funky feel doesn't it?

Well back to the quilting....I decided to stop quilting with the variegated thread in the bobbin at the blue stripe then changed to red bobbin thread. I thought that would give me enough thread to finish the quilt and not look so much like I ran out of bobbin thread but that I did it on purpose.

I was wrong about having enough thread! I had one corner triangle left, about 12" on each side, when I ran out of top thread. Looked through my thread stash and found a variegated one with red, blue, white and pink so finished using that. It didn't have the yellow or green in it but I can hardly tell and I know where it is so don't think anyone else will even see the difference.

If I wouldn't have waited until the last minute to make this quilt I could have gotten backing wide enough and more quilting thread. But, and this is a big but, it wouldn't have forced me to be creative. I live about an hour from the nearest quilt shop so usually use what I already have on hand as I hate to wait until the next time I go shopping to finish a project.

The quilt is all washed and dried and ready to go so now I need to get my supplies ready for the classes I am going to take.

Lynn