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I can’t believe it’s finally finished! Yay Me!

The quilt top and most of the hand quilting was actually finished quite a while ago, but then I was stumped as to how to quilt the setting triangles and corners. Eventually, I turned to Marsha McCloskey’s 1995 Feathered Star Quilts for ideas and found feathered stars with straight lines radiating out from the feathers. So that’s what I did.

The piece is 23″ square. The pattern is Feathered Star II from Marsha’s Feathered Star Quilt Blocks I (Really Hard Blocks That Take a Long Time to Make).

See more of Marsha’s work at marshamccloskey.com.

Onto the next UFO.

Are you a pre-washer? Or not?

I’m looking forward to being a pre-washer once again. My nice front-loaders are still in Ohio with the rest of the household, but I’m getting a hand-me-down washer and dryer this weekend for my apartment. Yay! I’d forgotten how exciting the prospect of being able to do laundry whenever it suits me (or wash fabric – which is the really important part can be.

One evening last week when I was not home, my husband called me to see what my ETA was. “Oh, around 10pm,” I said. Then I noticed he was breathing a little heavily. “What are you up to?” I warily asked.  “Oh,” he replies, “I thought it would be nice if I organized and straightened your sewing room so your brother and Beth (sister-in-law) would have their own room to stay in while they’re here next month. We had our own room when we went to visit them–I want to extend them the same courtesy.”

What?!  For the record, they will be here for not quite three whole days, and they have a five bedroom, 100 year old brick home, on five acres.

“Okay…. that’s nice, but don’t you want to wait until I get home?”

“Well, I thought I’d get a jump on it.” (They’ll be here in three weeks, the sewing room is 10 x 12)

I’m desperately trying to remember even having a conversation about this–and failing. Needless to say… I went home a little earlier than I had planned. Good thing, too, because he was not “organizing”, nor cleaning. He had gathered some shipping boxes and was THROWING stuff into them willy-nilly, taping them up, and hauling them off to the GARAGE. Quilts in pieces, quilts that need binding, UFO’s. No need to label the boxes, apparently intelligent people just open them up, and look inside when they want to find something!  Oh man, my slice quilt is out there–somewhere.

I think that was when I started to foam at the mouth. I may have even considered widowhood. I do know that’s when the world got very fuzzy, and I grabbed the dogs and went for a stomp around the neighborhood. Yes, at 10 o’clock at night, in the dark. Not to worry, I could have probably tackled a grizzly bear–and won–at that moment.

I know his heart is in the right place, and I want to believe he approached this wonderful idea from an innocent mind-set. After all, he does not have any hobbies. It’s not as if I could go straighten his tools in the garage, or box up his model airplane mid-construction to help him understand.

So… I’m giving myself time to calm down, and asking for advice. How would you handle it? What are your tips on training your husband in regards to your sewing room? Can it be done? Are there horror storries out there, like mine?

So I did something practically unheard of this weekend: I finished a UFO. Yay me.

However, what I didn’t do was look to see how I’d done the done part. I picked up where I’d left off, forging happily ahead. But then I realized nothing was the right size and nothing was fitting together. Enter the stitch ripper. Sigh. Luckily there was a Doctor Who marathon happening on the SciFi Channel (now the SyFy Channel…what’s THAT about?), so I ripped and picked and pressed and started over. And I have to say that the extra time I spent was worth having another finished project.

Go forth, QN-ers, and finish a UFO!

Love,
Angie

I’ve been doing a good bit of hand quilting lately. It’s perfect on those nights when all I have the energy to do is sit in front of the tv – I pop in a movie or watch something on the dvr. The hoop is right there, my tools are right there, the excuses not to quilt – well, they are not there. So, I thought I’d share a couple of my favorite tools for hand quilting. One is old and one is new.

The old favorite tool is my Roxanne thimble. It was a serious splurge when I bought it, but it’s been worth every penny. My new favorite tool was an impulse purchase last summer, one of those tools you aren’t sure exactly why you need it, you just know you do. It’s  tweezers that works like scissors that I picked up (I think) at a gem show. I use them as a needle-puller so no more tendon twinges in my hand as I pull the needle through.

Roxanne thimble

Scissor Tweezers

Scissor Tweezers open

One of the great things about working for a quilting magazine is that it’s practically mandatory that every office have a quilt hanging in it. Usually, the quilt on the wall was made or designed by the office’s occupant–a quick and easy way to lend our personalities to our work spaces.

Until today, the quilt hanging on my wall was “Cinco do Mayo,” a wall quilt I designed for the 2008 issue of Quilt It: More Two Block Quilts. This quilt has lots of bright, paper-pieced, spiky triangles on a background of dark blue. Very dramatic. But, alas, I had to take it down today, and for good reason–the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum is getting ready to hang its new show of work by QN staffers, and, as far as I know, “Cinco de Mayo” made the cut.

Anyway, that left my wall very bare and very white. So off I went to pillage the QN sewing room.

I was pleased to find “Buttercream Icing” (see the June/July 2009 issue of QN for the pattern), which was designed by Liza Prior Lucy and Kaffe Fassett, using Kaffe’s new–and rather uncharacteristic–fabric collection. It’s a lovely quilt, but sooooo not my palette. I’m a darks, brights, hots, and neutrals kind of gal.

I hung the quilt up anyway, and not only did my office feel transformed, but I felt transformed, too! (Insert the Tinkerbell-waving-her-wand sound effect.) I felt, well, kind of like a princess. The soft, cool pastels suddenly had me thinking I was eight years old again, and I wondered, “Hey, why don’t I ever choose these colors? They’re gorgeous!”

So thanks, Kaffe, for designing such fabulous fabric and for making me feel like a pretty, pretty princess. I doubt you were thinking “girly girl” when you were at the drawing board, but it sure is fun to feel a little girly again!

Last week, I had to take my husband to the hospital so he could get his L4-L5 shot up with cortisone. Good times. The poor guy can’t seem to keep that disc from bulging, but the injections are helping, so that’s good news. Anyway, these trips to the hospital are not quick. Check-in is at least an hour before the “procedure” (a.k.a. the five-second needle poke), which leaves me in the waiting room with time to kill. The solution? Q.I.P.-ing!

Q.I.P.-ing, or “quipping,” if you like, doesn’t have anything to do with sitting around and spouting off witty remarks, as the term would suggest. No, quipping is short for Quilting In Public. Ever done it?

I have to admit, this was my first time. I had to hand stitch the binding of a small art quilt–my contribution to the QN staff slice quilt that will be on display at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum later this summer. Working on a quilt in that busy waiting room, I caused quite a stir. Nurses, doctors, patients, patients’ friends and family members–tons of folks asked what I was doing and requested that I show them my work. And when I did, their eyes lit up! Everyone has a story about quilts, or about someone they love who quilts, and they were eager to connect with me over this simple little project. How cool!

Now, many years ago, before the quilting bug sank its needle-like fangs into my fingers, you would have been very likely to find me “K.I.P.-ing”–knitting in public. Besides a few sideways glances, there was no real personal reaction to my knitting. The contrast amazes me. I just love how quilting–especially quilting in public–invites conversation, connection, and the sharing of memories. It just proves to me that quilts have a power that other forms of fiber art are missing. Don’t you agree?

What’s your Q.I.P. story? Email it to submissions@qnm.com and write Q.I.P. in the subject line. I can’t wait to hear from you!

One of the changes to our website allows us to ask for submissions for the magazine through the website. We’re trying out this new tool by asking for submissions for Readers’ Quilt Show. We’ve also added another category for RQS – In Honor of Those Who Serve – realizing that ’serve’ will mean different things to different people. We’re looking forward to seeing what it means to you!

The submission form is available here or by going to QuiltersNewsletter.com and selecting Submission Guidelines under the About QN tab.

I’m happy to report that my slice quilt is coming along beautifully. I’ve got the top layered. There are so many little pieces that I didn’t want to take the time to back each one individually with fusible web. After all, I’m up against a deadline! And why I seem to work so much better under pressure is a whole different blog post.

So, how to keep all those little pieces in place while I stitched them down? Pinning like crazy didn’t seem the best answer, so here’s what I did. First, I numbered my pieces in the order I was going to layer them, starting with the background. Second, since I had traced the pattern onto a muslin foundation, I decided to take a large piece of TransWeb fusible web–it comes on a bolt–and fuse it over the muslin. TransWeb is lightweight, and I could easily see my drawn lines underneath. After removing the protective paper from the fusible, I proceeded to carefully put my backgound pieces into place, and subsequent details over that. Once everything was in place and to my liking, I carefully moved it to my ironing board and fused everything down.  For the very top layers that would not touch the fusible underneath, I used a bit of fabric glue to temporarily hold them until I could get them stitched. I don’t know if this idea is original–probably not– but I can tell you I felt pretty clever when it worked.

Here’s the top taped up on my wall, next to the inspiration photo (right).

Now it’s time to get the top, batting and backing layered and start quilting. I’m going to stitch down all the pieces and quilt at the same time. Again, just trying to save some time.

A closer shot of the unfinished top.

Finally, we decided that a traditional binding would be distracting to the finished look, so this will be faced instead. That’s another technique I’m new at, but fortunately for me, Irene wrote out excellent instructions and I’m confident it will come together smoothly. Wish me luck!