Fabric Storage – IKEA KALLAX Bolting

During my last fabric run, I thought you might like to see how I have been bolting and storing my fabrics. Have any of you seen pictures from my “Not a Cleanroom…” tour of my sewing lab?

While this isn’t really an “Ikea Hack”, I have found something better than comic book boards to wrap my fabric on, at least for the IKEA shelves. I use acid free chip board. This can be found in many sizes at art supply stores for a reasonable price. They typically come in stacks of 25.

The two sizes that worked for my IKEA KALLAX shelving and drawers are;
12″ x 12″ and 4″ x 4″.

I write or put a sticker of the fabric code and title on the chipboard if available, and then wrap the fabric around the board, folding and pinning the open end. Let me know if you have any questions. All of my small piece stash is stored in containers behind my shelving drawers. I love having order, and ability to quickly asses if something in my stash will see my needs.

12x12

4x4

Old Glory – On The Farm

My 8 year old son helped me piece “Old Glory” on Independence Day. ♥ I love it when he comes down and asks if he can help. ♥ He sits on my lap and helps control the pedal and guide the fabric. Fabric selection takes the longest when picking from an aging stash. All but the “word” fabric was from Grandma Sylvia’s stash, and the word stripe fabric was picked up on my latest trip to Missouri Star Quilt Company. It is from the line called “Hometown Girl”, by Pat Sloan and perfect for our symbol of America!

Happy Quilting!

Ladies of the Lake

I mentioned that last weekend was very productive for sewing. Long weekends filled with rain will do that. While I finished quilting “Farmer’s Market”, I also pieced a few blocks that staged and waiting for direction.

Two of these were the Lady of the Lake blocks. They are part of the Two Sister’s series. My color selections here were an effort to mix colors that I might not have in some of the others to give the quilt more variability. I wish that I had selected prints with more contrast, or at least the same color print for the center as I did for the half square triangle borders. If you make these, be careful which direction you place the center half square triangle, or you won’t get the continuous negative space in the center. (I had to frog and re-piece the borders of the blue block.)

Here is what a traditional, two fabric, “Lady of the Lake” block looks like. Do you see what I mean? The block looks stunning with vibrant batik.

So, without more interest in my fabric, what makes this block interesting? I am not a poetry buff, but know that the name of this block is the same as a poem by Sir Walter Scott. It is easy to learn a little more with internet research.

“The Lady of the Lake” poem, by Sir Walter Scott, was first published in 1810. The epic Scottish narrative lent itself well to opera. An opera loosely based on the poem (translated in French!) was created by Gioachino Rossini, called “La Donna del Lago”. A beautiful lass, a King in disguise, civil warfare, rescues, romance, and death. It certainly sounds like the stuff of opera to me! When it premiered in 1819, it was not a success. However, since it is still being performed today, I don’t think you could call it a failure! Joyce DiDonato, of Prairie Village, Kansas, even performed the role of Elena in this opera with the Met in 2015. Maybe, someday, we will have the opportunity to see it at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts with the Kansas City Lyric Opera. The new facility is really wonderful!

(This reminded me how much I missed the opera, so I hopped out and picked up some value tickets to see the 2016 – 2017 season with Hansel & Gretel, The Marriage of Figaro, Dead Man Walking, and the Pirates of Penzance! Now I will need to find a good Opera buddy to have some fun with me!)

“The rose is fairest when ‘t is budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;
The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew
And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.”
― Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake

Farmer’s Market

The holiday weekend has proven to be sew wonderful! While my children (and husband) chose to swim at the city pool, I stayed home to quilt. It was only 70 degrees, for goodness sake. They are doing good to get me in the pool when it is 90 degrees!

I managed to finish quilting my Mother’s new “Farmer’s Market” quilt that she did as a BOM, in 2015, with Prairie Point Quilt and Fabric Shop. I think that the top may be made with Kansas Troubles, Sunflower Song Fabrics. I have to say,I LOVE IT. I really love how the blue in this line, used in the borders, helped set off the blocks. The backing was a cotton sateen. I have never used this as a backing before. It has a shiny finish.

I was nervous to quilt the shiny cotton. When I was selecting thread, nothing seemed quite right. I was playing around, and found one of my Floriani embroidery threads that matched perfectly. Believe it or not, it was called “Harvest”. Right now, my favorite thread supplier is Red Rock Threads. I wasn’t too worried about using a polyester, as I used a Poly Cotton batting. The Floriani also had more sheen than my other quilting threads, so I decided to take the plunge. I am so glad that I did. I quilted it using an E2E pattern by Nancy Haacke, Wasatch Quilting called “New Beginnings”. I love her description of how she selected the name. She said she chose it as a symbol that change is inevitable in our lives.

I loved the pattern because it meshes classic feathers with some wild whimsy. Peaking through the feathers is a flounce of pearls and wild grasses or cat tails! I used to love picking and running my fingers over the fuzzy cat tails that would sneak out before mowing, or around rocks and railroad ties that didn’t quite get “weed wacked”. After all, I was pretty terrible at mowing my parents yard. I’m so grateful my husband does all of that at our home now!

I hope my Mother loves her quilt. This one didn’t get custom quilting, but the design, which took an hour per pass, really looks great with her extraordinary piecing! She pays such close attention to detail. I’m glad she made this one for her home. The picture here won’t do it justice. Maybe, once it is bound, we can get a better photograph. It was raining and wet all weekend, so I had to take a picture inside with my extra special quilt holders in the background!

It looks like the rain will give us a day off, so I imagine we will be playing today. I have a few more blocks to show you, but might post those later this week.

PEACE and HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Note: The cotton sateen is more difficult to “Frog” if you find you have any stitches that need corrected. Be extra careful not to snag it and ruin the pretty sheen.

I am not an affiliate of any of the companies linked above. I am simply sharing some of my favorite suppliers and manufacturers to date.

Patched Strawberry

I finished this block from Farm Girl Vintage on the last day of June. (Do you believe me?) Call it a late harvest.

One of my childhood memories is Dad’s garden. He always tilled and fertilized, seeded and watered. We loved helping plant seeds, but I especially liked picking strawberries with Mom and Dad. We would bring in the small ripe strawberries (The ones that we didn’t eat right off the plant) and rinse them in our stainless steel sink full of water. They smelled almost as good as they tasted. Strawberry shortcakes and on ice cream were the best! I don’t remember how many years we kept our small strawberry patch. Eventually we didn’t have it anymore. The story goes that dad become allergic to strawberries, even the artificial ones… Too much of a good thing?

This patched strawberry is the only harvest I had this year. I pieced it from 2 1/2″ squares cut from my grandma’s stash… again. I love that I am able to carry fabric elements from her stash across so many quilts. This strawberry is pink, so not completely ripe. It was fun to scavenge the fabrics, so I might have to make another one in reds.

My secret for managing small scraps of fabrics is my Sizzix Bigz dies. I have basic squares in several sizes. It allows me to select scraps and then stack them to cut squares for my patterns all at once. I can cut 6 – 8 layers at a time with the die. Sometimes I have to trim a few strings that didn’t finish cutting, but it is faster than rotary or scissor cutting them individually. I think, if I starched the scraps, they would cut more smoothly.

This block would be great in a table runner or top. It might even be fun to change-up the colors to show a strawberry ripening, white / light green, pink, then vibrant red.. The only think we are missing is the dark green leaves and white flowers of the plant. That would make a good quilting design!

My block for July will be the patriotic flag. My stash of reds is not very big, so I might be adding some new fabrics that I picked up on my weekend road trip to Hamilton Missouri and MSQC with my mom! It was a great way to spend a rainy day. We shopped every quilt store, picked up some souvenir quilt T-shirts, fabric for projects, picked up our first Row-by-Row for the year, and ate at the local restaurant called “Blue Sage”. I was surprised to see that a new bed and breakfast, Home Inn Hamilton, opened up there too. It might be a another great place to arrange unofficial retreats with some of my new quilting friends!

Skew 2 – Pro Stitch Quick Fill

I promised that I would post a quick step-by-step tutorial for one of my friends using the Skew 2 feature in Pro-Stitch. I learned this in one of the HQ Academy classes. If you want to try it on your own, I used the files I linked in my last post, HQ Elevate – At Last. They can be downloaded there.

Step 1: Download the Chevron and Rounded Piano Keys files to either your computer with HQ Simulator, or your Pro-Stitch USB drive.

Step 2: From File, open the Chevron file in Pro-Stitch. This is a stitch file you can use as a template. Pretend this shape is your quilt. Normally, you would use your quilt to create your area.

Step 3: Choose the Area function. Create a closed complex area (Chevron in this case) by using Multi-Point area, tracing the chevron points.

Step 4: Close the Chevron file. You should still have a chevron area (In Pink Normally) on your screen.

Step 5: From File, open the Rounded Piano Keys file. The piano keys will open much larger than the chevron. This is OK.

Step 6: In the Skew/Align function, select SKEW2. The design will stretch to fit the width and height of the Chevron area. This doesn’t look very impressive. Wait for it…

Step 7: Now, from the Repeat Main menu, increase your horizontal repeats until you like the density of the fill lines. In this example, the design is repeated 8 times.

Step 8: If you want a different look, you can try increasing the vertical repeats too.

If you are still with me, then I know you are one of those “over achievers”, or like the idea of Skew2 as much as I do!

Extra Credit: Now, from History, go back to where you originally opened the piano key file. Rotate the design 90 degrees and try skew and repeats again.

I personally can’t wait to try this technique out on some different shapes on my quilts! It seems very versatile. Something like this would have been so much faster than the manual ruler fills I used on my last wall hanging!