Lemon Tree Tales

Friendly Round Robin Revision

Ah, I've ripped out the old black border with the one off center 3D origami flower and have now replaced it with a solid black border. It's much, much better now. Sometimes simplicity is best.

Friendly Round Robin Update

Before we moved out to Cheyenne, my doll friends and I decided that we wanted to have our own quilt round robin. Since just three of us were interested in quilts we opted to just make flimsies and the person who made the center would then do their own quilting. As you may remember, I started out with this center block of a peacock applique'. It went to Laurie for the 1st border and is now with Valerie for the final border:

 

I got Valerie's center block, a landscape and added this border to it ... I need to work on my piecing precision because some of the points don't match up .. maybe next time I'll paper piece it instead? I do like the hourglass blocks that help to expand the landscape past the thin outline. I also did the raw edge stitching on the applique' because they were lifting up. It's now on its way to Laurie for the final border and then back to Valerie:

 

I also did the final border on Laurie's flimsy. I felt that it needed a bit of solidness so I added black borders with the four square in a square corners. That seemed too plain to me so I added a red 3D origami flower for texture and color. It does seem a bit lonely but I was thinking that a bit of fancy red quilting in those black borders will give it a bit of balance and more texture. I don't know, maybe I should just rip it out and make it plain solid black instead? 

 

Okay, there's a bit of time for me to replace that red flower with just solid black. Do you think that I should do that? The more and more I look at it, it bothers me ... off center is fine when other sections are asymmetrical but the rest of this top is symmetrical. Okay, I'm going to replace that. Be back in a jiffy.

Any Longarm Quilters Have Advice

While I was at the Denver Quilt Festival a couple weekends ago, I tried out quite a few of the longarm quilting machines. I've been thinking about getting a longarm both for working on my own quilts and also as a way to earn a supplemental income for the household. Of course I'd have to save money to get one since they are the price of a good used car.

The first machine I tried was the Tin Lizzie. My stitches came out very nicely but there's no dealer nearby so I don't think that I'll go with them. Here's a picture of my sample spiral stitches ... see, not bad for a newbie:

 

Then I played with an Innova ... more spirals, my name and I also got to try out a ruler with that one since they had the extended ruler base on it:

 

I didn't snap pictures but I did try out a Nolting FunQuilter 20" that was on a Hinterberg Stretch Frame which had the plus of being expandable so it would fit in a smaller area. I have seen a few of these machines for sale online for a reasonable amount. The stitch quality was good but once again no nearby sales rep.

Next up was a HandiQuilter Avante' ... sadly the threads kept breaking. The sales rep told me it was because the spool of thread was almost out. If so then I wish she would have changed to a new spool so that I could see how it really stitched. The good thing about them is that there is a relatively close dealer (within a couple hours) that has a quilting store that has classes on the HQ and will rent time on the machine. That's a plus for me so that I could get used to it while saving money to buy one. No pictures on this one either, although to be fair I wouldn't have shown them because of the thread breakages ... if it truly was due to end of spool I'd want to give them a fair chance.

Finally was the APQS family of machines which I've heard such great things about. I started on the smaller ones, Lenni and Lucey but after hearing about the bonuses of having a longer arm length I tried out the Freedom and Millenium machines. Wow, they are a bit heavier but since they were on the new Bliss system they just glided along without any problems. They too have a sales rep within a few hours and a quilt shop that has classes and rental time ... yay! My stitches came out very nicely too.

 

So far I've logged into the APQS forum and have been reading lots of info. I've also joined the Yahoo groups for HQ, HQ Fusion (the 26" throated machine), Nolting, and Machine Quilting Professional (which is also open to wannabees who don't have a LA yet). Basically I'm just trying to absorb as much info as I can. I know that I'd be interested in doing FMQ, ruler work as well as pantographs and E2E. As much as the CAD systems sound interesting I don't think that I'd want that (too expensive) but perhaps it's good to know that you could upgrade to it later. I do know that I'd want a stitch regulator because I did see the difference of stitch quality with and without it. The only certainty is that it'll take at least a year or so before I can earn the money to buy one of these. It'll probably be a used model so that's a consideration in choosing a brand/model.

In the meantime I'll be signing up for the APQS class even though it's in Colorado Springs, CO which is a 3 hour drive. Maybe I can talk Steve into driving the 8 hours to this Saturday's MQS show in Wichita, KS so that I can test drive the machines again.

So for all those Longarm Quilters out there, what would your advice be? Any longarmers near Cheyenne, WY or the Ft Collins and Denver CO area that I can talk to?

Denver National Quilt Festival 2013 Part II

Here's a few more quilts from the Denver National Quilt Festival the other weekend that I really liked.

Autumn in Yellowstone by Linda MacDonald ... beautiful colors, a lovely tribute to our favorite national park.

 

It's Risky Being a Beer Drinking Mantis by Carol L. Fletcher ... this one is hysterical ... the background quilting includes words that tell the story of this beer drinking mantis who's afraid that his wife will bite off his head for coming home drunk. 

 

Song of the San Juans by Amy Bright ... lovely machine embroidered birds, piecing and quilting ... overall beautiful.

 

Samurai, the Archer by Wendy Knight .. this one also has background writing but I wasn't able to read all of the story. Great details.

 

Triple Play by Teresa Rives ... great colors!

 

Soaring by Kim Loar ... I just love this one, the colors, the flying geese and the quilting. It's graphic and perfect!

Denver National Quilt Festival 2013 Part I

Last weekend I drove down to Denver so that I could see the Denver National Quilt Festival. It's sponsored by Mancuso, the same show managers of the Pacific International Quilt Festival that I normally go to see at Santa Clara, CA in October. It's still a nice show but so much smaller than PIQF. I was able to comfortably visit all the vendors and see all the quilts in one day. Of course next time perhaps I'll go a second day so that I don't feel so rushed when viewing the last quilts.

These are some of my favorite quilts.

 

Not Your Grandmother's Nine Patch by Sherry Pryor ... I love the embellishments and the leaves that are connecting the nine different quiltlets.

 

Colorado's Northern Lights by Barb Gardner ... some of my favorite colors!

 

Birds in Flight by Barbara Yates Beasley ... gorgeous colors and quilted textures on this one.

 

Beauty of the Beasts by Barbara Yates Beasley ... lovely use of colors and prints, very graphic.

 

Red Ravens by Judith A Roderick ... this is painted silk that has been quilted and embellished with buttons.

 

Lots of fun colors and embellishments .. more art quilts than traditional although there were a few amazing traditional quilts. More to come later.

Fabric8 Design Contest

A few weeks ago I entered a design for this year's fabric8 design contest sponsored by Robert Kaufman and Spoonflower. The theme was Geek Chic. At first I thought of funky glasses but after quite a bit of sketching decided that wasn't good. (Thank goodness I didn't do that because there were a lot of designs submitted with glasses.) All I could think of for the theme was computer related. When I was in high school I took a computer class and learned how to program in Basic and Pascal on a Machintosh IIe desktop. (Yes, I was an 80s teenager.) That did it, I had to figure out something interesting with computer code. Whenever you learn a new code there's a program called "Hello World" that you do so that you'll understand the differences between the old and new codes. That's what my design is all about ... I even included the binary code for "Hello World".

This morning I found out that my design didn't made it to the semi-finalist round. Too bad, I would have loved to make the coordinating fabrics to go with it. Perhaps I still should and then I could make a Geek Chic quilt.  At any rate, go take a look at the semi-finalists here and vote for your favorite.

Comment Spam

I've had to turn on comment moderation for a little bit and close out comments on posts one month and older due to the very high volume of spam comments that's coming in. Hopefully Typepad can get their spam filter fixed soon.

Fab Little Quilt Swap 3: Quilts At Home

Well another round of the Fab Little Quilt Swap is over because my quilt finally arrived at its new home yesterday. Also I received a beautiful quilt last week.

 

This is the lovely quilt that I received from Ellie@CraftSewCreate ... the colors are perfect and I really admire star quilts so it's just right all around. It's going to look marvelous in my new studio.

 

And I love the way that she signed the back of the quilt along the zigs and zags of the backing:

 

Spiced Coffee received her quilt last night and is very happy with it. In fact she hung it up on her stairway landing near the front door. Her picture is much better than mine so here it is again:

 

All in all this was a spectacular swap ... I'm very happy that I was invited to be a member of this group. Now it's time to finish two different round robin quilts.

Related articles

Fab Little Quilt Swap 3 progress

Fab Little Quilt Swap 3: NY Beauty Circle

Fab Little Quilt Swap 3: Flying Geese Ribbon

Fab Little Quilt Swap 3: Background Choices

Fab Little Quilt Swap 3: Finished Quilt

New Sewing Cabinet

Look what I found on craigslist ... yes, a new-to-me sewing cabinet. I only paid $50 and when I got home I realized that it was an older model of a Roberts sewing cabinet. Excellent! The insert that came with it is for a smaller armed machine. I'll ask around and find someone with a jigsaw to make it bigger. In the meantime I just raised my machine on a couple books and then set up my wooden extension table minus the legs. So far it's working just fine.

 

 

 

 

I'm not keen on the dark laminate wood finish but I've found a few links to directions on how to paint laminated furniture here and here. If I do that I'll post progress photos on how it turns out. It pays to watch and wait for good bargains on craigslist. Plus I helped out an older couple who are retiring and moving to Germany. She was so pleased that the cabinet was going to a good home and I was happy to be getting such a nice one.

Now the other half of the studio is still a mess. I'm waiting to get some bookcases but in the meantime I'm just getting my supplies out of the rubber totes that I packed them in. The chair was new from Office Max ... it's too important to find the right fit to look around on craigslist for that.