Machine Quilting Class #3

Admittedly, I will still need lots of practice with machine quilting before I actually become relatively good at it. I don't aspire to greatness, at least not in the field of machine quilting, but I'd like my stitching to be at least passably good. 
The lessons for this class were using freezer paper, stencils and tracing paper.

The large hearts and the rabbits were done by cutting the pattern out of freezer paper, ironing it onto the fabric and then quilting around it. Unfortunately, the white freezer paper did not show up very well on the muslin background, so I ended up tracing around the patterns. The poppies in the upper right and the pumpkin were both made with  stencils. You can still see the residue of my fabric marker that I have yet to remove. The "feather" and the heart circle on the left were made using tracing paper. I filled in the inside of the feather with some rather jerky-looking stippling after removing the tracing paper. But I'm learning. Each of the methods has it's advantages and disadvantages. Our instructor cautioned us about the use of fabric markers. On certain dyes, especially those in the red family, they can interact with the dye and become permanent. Tracing paper can be a bit of a pain to remove, especially if you have to double back over your stitching and don't place the second layer of stitches exactly on top of the first layer and you end up with a tiny "bubble" in between. Getting that tiny piece of tracing paper out of the bubble can be challenging. The instructor is quilting dragons on a quilt for her daughter. She says that she can quilt a dragon in 45 minutes, but it takes her nearly 3 hours (I think that's what she said) to remove all of the tracing paper. Freezer paper is great for shapes that you just want to outline, and then maybe fill with free motion or echoing. As you can see above, I was just beginning to echo the one heart. With stencils as well as with tracing, you have to be able to figure out how the stitching will go for it to be continuous. I got a little mixed up when I was doing the poppies and ended up going where I shouldn't have. But it's all a learning process. Even the instructor showed us a stencil that she'd purchased that she has never been able to figure out how to do continuous line stitching on. I believe free-motion would probably be the best method if I were any good at it. I've never been a doodler, which is what it's compared to, so I don't know if I'll ever get proficient at free-motion. I'd be happier with a pattern marked out for me somehow. That's why, so far, I've stuck with pantographs when I'm longarming a quilt. 

Acrylic Painting Class #4

Finally! I have been able to produce a painting in class that I am reasonably pleased with:

It was a lesson in perspective. And no, it's not perfect, but it is just a lesson. And it actually looks like something. And I think the difference was that she allowed us to use a pencil to sketch it in beforehand. Honestly, who made the rule that you're not allowed to sketch the picture before you paint it? If it makes your painting better, why not? 
Anyway, remember last week's post, when I told about the instructor trying to teach us how to draw cubes using vantage points? Well, we all had to do that first in this class and we all ended up with envelopes. With a strange-looking cube in the middle. I decided this was one painting I was not taking home. My cube looked like Salvador Dali had painted it. I didn't want that stupid thing in my house. However, when I think about how much a Salvador Dali painting is worth, maybe I should have kept it. LOL!
Each week, I debate about whether or not I should go to class. And so far I keep deciding to go back. We'll see what happens next week. Meanwhile, I need to go get my stuff together for tomorrow night's Machine Quilting class.

Wild Mustangs of the Painted Desert

This past week has been a pretty intense week. Sunday, I had great plans for catching up at home. Since I work full-time Monday to Friday and Sabbath (Saturday) is my day of rest, Sunday is my day for everything else. Monday was my scheduled day off and I had booked time at Sparrow Studioz to long arm this quilt. One of the things I had to do on Sunday was get the backing and batting ready as well as iron the quilt top. Once I got started on that, I decided to see if I could try to finish the Law School quilt as well so that I could quilt it on the long arm after the Mustang quilt since I was making the trip into the city anyway. I did manage to finish it, but that took me almost until bedtime. So much for catching up at home. On Monday, I did the two quilts on the long arm, stopped off at Fabricland to pick up some bright green batik for binding the law school quilt and headed home. The evening was spent trimming the excess batting and backing off both quilts. On Tuesday, I realized I was getting desperately low on cat food, so had to stop off at the grocery store to replenish the food supply for the Quilt Inspectors. Got started on the binding on the Mustang quilt and then went to my acrylic painting class. I had to take off work in the middle of the day on Wednesday to take Mystery in to the vet's for his follow-up appointment for the eye infection he was diagnosed with last week. Yippee! No more eye infection, and no more eye drops! I'd been giving him eye drops twice a day for a week and giving him treats after each treatment. Of course, Tinker usually showed up so she'd get treats as well. Which, of course, depleted the treat supply and I had forgotten to buy them Tuesday after work, so had to do it Wednesday. Wednesday evening was the only time I had left to bind both quilts if I wanted to give them to the recipients on Sabbath. The Mustang quilt especially had to be done as the recipients are moving to BC next weekend. So October 4th would be the last time I would see them. Very dear friends who have been like parents to me and it grieves me greatly to have them move away. <sigh> Yes! I was able to finish the binding on both quilts, plus pack up my sewing machine and gather supplies for Thursday's quilting class. On Thursday, I had to leave directly from work to make it to my Machine Quilting class in Edmonton on time. On Friday, I had to leave work early for my last follow up with my hearing aides. I stopped off at Value Village and bought 3 quilting books and at WalMart to buy a salad and a cake for the potluck dinner on Sabbath. Who has time to cook? On Sabbath, I gave this quilt to my friends Bob and Neva. And had a good cry. And gave the Law School quilt to the grandmother of the recipient, but I'll tell you more about that one in a separate post. 
This quilt is based on a free pattern, Wild Horses, available from Quilting Treasures, though only the border print in my quilt is Quilting Treasures Fabric. The remainder is from Windham Fabrics. The horse print is from the Sierra Trail line and the rest of it is from the Painted Desert line. 

My local quilt shop had the Painted Desert fabric on sale. I love the southwest, Navajo style prints and I was looking for a project to use it in. Though I did use the red fabric as backing for the Blue and Cream Pinwheel Quilt, I wanted to be able to showcase it on the front of a quilt. I bought the horse print separately for another project and never ended up using it. Then I found the horse border print. I tried googling all three of these fabrics to see what I could find for a pattern. And that's when I found the Wild Horses pattern and decided that's what I would use the Painted Desert fabric in. Bob and Neva are both horse-lovers, so when I found out they were moving away, I knew this had to be their quilt.

When I use a large print fabric, as I have in this quilt, I like to use large pieces in the quilt so that it can really showcase the fabric. So I modified this pattern and instead of using a lot of HST squares, I opted for parallelograms for the star point sections and full squares for the background. And yes, that meant a LOT of Y-seams, but that's okay. I'm not intimidated by Y-seams any more, though I don't plan on doing another quilt with this many.

I had to make sure that the parallelograms were leaning in opposite directions for the two fabrics (made that mistake before). If you choose to use my method, you need to cut 5-1/2" fabric strips for these pieces. Then cut 45 degree angles 5-7/8" apart. I chose to use a 5" finshed-size square as the basic unit rather than the 4-3/4" square that the pattern calls for. The four larger squares between the points of the centre star are 7-5/8" and for the triangles along each side, I cut 4 squares 7-7/8" and cut them in half on the diagonal. 

I sewed the parallelograms together in pairs. 

Then I realized that four of the pairs needed to be joined differently than the rest, so had to do some seam-ripping. 

I assembled the centre star.

Then attached the background squares. 

Sewed together and attached the side pairs.

Then worked on the corner units.

And attached them.

Finally added the side triangles and borders, quilted, binded and voila!

And here's the backing. 

Every quilt is a learning experience and one thing I learned from this quilt is the importance of value. When I selected the fabric for this quilt, I assumed that there was enough difference between the horse print (mostly browns), the red Painted Dessert print (mostly red) and the background print (mostly beige). However, when I assembled the quilt top, I was disappointed that the pattern didn't stand out as distinctly as I would have liked. And it puzzled me. Then I used my Ruby Beholder to look at the quilt top. Both the horse print and the red print came out as medium, with some dark and light parts. The beige is on the darker end of light. So all three fabrics are relatively close in value, and not enough significant contrast in colour to make it work really well. Although I still think it's an attractive quilt, and I'm sure my friends will really appreciate it, I think it could have been a better quilt with greater contrast in value. 
Oh, and by the way, I really don't know if there are any mustangs in the Painted Desert, but it sounded good. :-)

Second Machine Quilting Class - 02/10/14

I'm so thankful I'm taking this class. Not only am I learning things, but it helps to counter the not-so-enjoyable acrylic painting class I'm taking. I only wish it was here in town instead of over an hour's drive away in Edmonton. And, with the class starting at 6:00, I have to leave direct from work and contend with Edmonton's rush hour traffic. However, it's only 4 sessions, so I'm halfway through. Tonight we experimented with some free motion, using different threads and needles to see what works best. I had an open-toe darning foot on hold for me, which I purchased before the class. My machine came with an embroidery foot, but it has a closed toe, which is a little frustrating to use for quilting. I like the open toe much better. I started with a topstitch needle and some 40-weight cotton.

My bobbin does not like 40-weight and I had some "eyelash" problems on the back (not shown), but mostly was relatively successful with this. Yes, I will still need LOTS of practice for it it actually look good, but it was fun and I actually felt like I was catching on to the idea.
Next, I switched it up and started playing with some fun threads.

I've got rayon, viscose, polyester, metallic and 28-weight cotton. Gutterman, Mettler, Superior, Aurifil. I was really "playing the field" with threads. For the lighter weight threads I used a 60-weight polyester in the bobbin, and a 50-weight poly for the heavier threads. I didn't have any eyelash problems with these weights in the bobbin. The instructor said to use the same weight in both top and bobbin, and I have heard that before. But I have to use what makes my sewing machine happy. And I am NOT changing my bobbin tension. 
Next class, we'll be using stencils and tracing paper. 

Third Acrylic Painting Class - 30/09/14

This class's masterpiece: 

Actually, this came at the end of the class and I had to add the coloured spots ("flowers") after class. Our class started with this:

The instructor calls it gesturals. Gesturals? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the term, but fruit and vegetables can't gesture. I call them charcoal sketches. She actually had the nerve to take my charcoal and add lines to my apple on the right. Grrr!. I don't think that's very good art instructor technique. Tell me how to do it, or demonstrate on your own paper how to do it, but don't touch my drawing. Anyway, I still think I'm better at sketching than I am at painting. And  maybe I will take a drawing class, but not from her. 
Next, we folded our "gesturals" in half (hence the smudges you can see in my picture) and did this on the other side:

My purple looks more purple in real life than it does in this picture. She called this a colour wheel. How it qualifies as a wheel when it's a rectangle is anyone's guess. And didn't we cover mixing colours in the first class (as well as in kindergarten)? Why am I doing this anyway?
Next we did this:

Ah, now this makes sense. It actually is an art lesson. Except that, as usual, she didn't go into detail on exactly how we should blend our colours to make them gradually fade from light to dark. And you should have seen how she was trying to teach us to draw a cube. She started going on about vanishing points and drawing in different vanishing points - I think there were three of them. I was just watching in mostly stunned silence and then picked up my brush and made my own cube, while everyone else in the class was trying to follow the instructor and they ended up with what looked more like envelopes. Or something that didn't at all resemble a cube. Then she had to go around the class and take each person's brush (except mine) and draw a cube on their papers for them since she had helped them all mess it up so badly. Her remark to me: "Oh, you drew one freehand?" Amazing concept that I could actually draw one freehand!
And then, with 15 minutes left in the class, we began the painting that's at the top of this post. She said she would teach us how to do a quick flower painting. This is certainly not what I expected when she said that. Oh and she took my brush and was marking lines on my painting for me to show me where each different shade in the foreground should begin and end. I had to grit my teeth as she got muddy coloured paint in my purple strokes. Well, it took longer than 15 minutes and I wasn't having so much fun that I wanted to stay that late. That's why I added my coloured blobs afterwards. And I really don't think they look great. And here's my facebook post from after class:
Leaving my third acrylic painting class tonight, I was carrying two large pieces of art paper that I had painted on plus a small canvas board painting, in addition to my box of art supplies, as well as a bag for the supplies that didn't fit in the box. And my purse. None of the paintings were completely dry. As a result, they shared the paint among themselves and generously bestowed some on my purse as well.
The next morning when I went to get into my truck, I discovered that I had also gotten paint on the side of the seat. So not impressed. I haven't had a chance to try to clean it off yet, but I did manage to clean my purse. You can also see some of the resulting mess on my paintings. I did manage to keep the front of the canvas board clean, however, not that this picture is anything I intend to hang anywhere. Maybe if I had an outhouse... 

First Machine Quilting Class - 25/09/14

As life has been incredibly busy with working full-time and taking two night classes a week, I haven't gotten a chance to post this in a timely manner. And it will be a shorter post, comparatively speaking.
Our first machine quilting class was relatively easy for me as it was on using the walking foot and I have done quilts using mine before. Here's my practice project:

 

Yes, I admit it. I didn't get the whole project done in class. And while I had good intentions of finishing it at home (not sure when I expected to get the time), when I emptied my bag, I could not find my class handout that had all of the designs to practice... <sigh> Hopefully, someone in class picked it up for me and I'll be able to retrieve it at the next class. It had all of the basic information on needles, threads, tension, etc, that I don't want to be without. 
Amazingly enough, when we were discussing long arm quilting, our class instructor said that she has a long arm, but doesn't use it much. Seriously??? Why would you take days (weeks) to do your quilting when you can do it in a few hours on a long arm?
This class is much more fun and much less messy than acrylic painting. 

Who Was Here?: Children's Book Review

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic preview edition of this book from Net Galley. I have not received any compensation for reviewing this book.
I love nature and animals and want to share that love with my grandson. While as a toddler, he's still too young for this book, it will eventually contribute to sharing that love. Who Was Here? is an introduction to animal tracks for children. The book starts by showing an animal's prints and gives a little detail to aid in detecting what the animal is, then it asks "Who was Here?" Turning the page produces the answer and gives a brief sketch of the animal. The artwork, done in watercolours, gives a much more accurate presentation than most comic/cartoon-based children's books. That's something that I really appreciate. The text is written in rhyming verse, which is usually attractive to young children. The book finishes with some guidelines for determining what animal left what tracks and some links to resources, both electronic and print, for further discovery. While I felt that the author should have mentioned the bactrian as well as the dromedary in her treatment of the camel, all in all, I consider this an excellent children's book and will gladly add it to my grandson's library.