Tag: baby quilt

Making the Leap: Free Motion Quilting

December 18, 2016.Reading time 5 minutes.

I started quilting this baby quilt I call Dragon Ball Baby as a gift for a Round Rock High School Graduate, in the usual way: walking foot on, not many curves, feed dogs up and fighting me every stitch.  The results as you can see in the photos is okay.  Not horrible, somewhat creative, following the dragon design on the fabric but still a little stilted for what I am trying to achieve.  Sometimes I feel like I am trying to paint a landscape with a hairbrush or perhaps fighting a ball for fabric for my very identity.

I am quilting this with clear monofilament thread and pre wound embroidery bobbin.

I must reposition and shift the whole quilt frequently using this method if I want to go around or echo the design elements of the quilt.  Using the walking foot and traditional sewing techniques works fairly well if you are mostly quilting straight lines.  I use this technique and frequently try to quilt curvy lines.  I call it quilt frustration.

At some point in this process I became disgusted with myself and said “This is ridiculous!” I have a machine (actually several machines) that will lower the feed dogs and have a free motion foot (or two). I have been practicing doodling free motion designs for 3 years or more (since I took that class on Free Motion Quilting and decided that not only was I NOT a natural but I actually was horrible at this particular sewing skill) and the only hope I had was to muscle train my hands to make the designs.  I have all the equipment, hell, I even have a machine with a stitch regulator! (lets not discuss that fact that I am scared to use it at the moment)  I decided at 10:30 in the evening in early November, I am running out of time, the baby this is for is 2 most old already and I have to get it to her in New Zealand. I am tired of trying to quilt this way, this is stupid, JUST DO IT ALREADY!

So I took off the walking foot and the standard A foot of my Viking Diamond machine.  I loaded up the free motion foot, figured out how to turn on the free motion setting , quickly picked ‘floating’ vs ‘free motion spring action’ (I have no idea which is better but if I overthink it I will chicken out) and the open toe foot.  I don’t remember if I practiced briefly or not but I put the quilt in position and started.

Now, my experience as a seamstress, craftswoman, and quilter have yielded mostly results that I felt were acceptable but often a tad disappointing sometime downright awful and discouraging. I can honestly say this was an exception.  I was blown away by the results! Only in design/color/arrangments do I ever find such satisfying results in my work.  I guess that is the payoff for staying with sewing for over 30 years.  You might actually become proficient or in my case miracle of all miracles, good.

 

I guess I can comfortably add free motion quilting to my list of sewing and crafting skills.  It was actually a stated goal of mine to achieve proficiency at quilting my own quilts above novice.  Quilting my own quilts that I would be comfortable to sell and to replace the long arm service that I have paid for over the years in many  of my nicer quilts.  With my dearly loved and appreciated long arm quilter retiring, I was faced with the hated situation of establishing new relationships (that might or might not be satisfactory)  OR establishing a new skill.  Looks like the skill was the lesser of two evils AND a big punch off the goals list.  That retirement was just the kick in the pants I needed.  It looks like my long armer will be building houses for Habitat for Humanity and I will be quilting my own quilts.  Not a bad arrangement I think.

Sweet Stripes Baby Quilt: II

December 13, 2016.Reading time 4 minutes.

I have made two of the Sweet Stripes baby quilts, using the same design premise and many of the same fabrics for two separate sweet babes in two families.  This one was for my niece whose name is Lia Kaliani and I am thrilled to say that she loves her quilt!  She will be two in a few months and so I completed her quilt quite late. I did give her a quilt I bought at the Austin Area Quilt Guild show when she was born.  The joy of giving her a quilt made with my hands was significant.  That she loves to sleep with it and pulls it up over her head every night is the icing on the quilting cake!

I have had a policy to send my large quilts to be quilted on a long arm professionally, but the many baby quilts I make to give to friends and family I have quilted myself. My quilting on this quilt is unsophisticated and looks somewhat stilted to me now. It was one of the last made before I decided to stop being scared of free motion quilting and JUST DO IT already!  I have entered a new era in my quilting journey and started quilting with a free motion foot and the feed dogs down and I am truly on my own!  I will track that process in another blog post.  I am not apologizing for the simple quilting here because learning to quilt and really being at the stage you are at is part of the process.  We cannot all be expert level when we begin and too many people deny themselves the joy of crafting and the arts due to feeling they must be perfect or at least good. I say that is nonsense.

It is the process that is a large part of the joy. I have loved learning to quilt over the last 21 years and much of it did not come naturally to me. I was not great at it. I came to quilting from a design standpoint ( I loved the design process of  a quilt) and my crafting ability was mediocre at best, my attention to exact detail nonexistent.  Designing, choosing fabrics, and sewing quilts is a difficult process with multiple steps and a dozen or more skills.  Especially if you are not using a pattern but are designing your own.  So many skills to learn, so many abilities to master. I did it even when I was not sure I could or I felt the outcome would be crappy. And sometimes it really was.  There are new studies that show doing something creative helps humans be happier and healthier even if they are not good at their chosen craft.

And it did make me happy and it did improve the quality of my life, as creativity does every single day. So I have keep on doing it and it makes me happy still, even when my quilts are not perfect. I am enjoying the process, being exactly where I am in this creative journey. I am pleased to say that little Lia seems to enjoy this quilt with all its imperfections that are so lovingly stitched.

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Delicious ‘Sweet Stripes’ Baby Quilts I

December 12, 2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

I feel a deep and satisfying compulsion to make baby quilts, so many baby quilts!  I wish that I could make one (or more) for every couple or young woman/baby I am connected to. It is somehow an extension of mothering; almost as though I can reach my arms around that baby in a baby quilt hug.  I have been known to say ” I don’t think I will ever finish a masterpiece because I stop every few months to make a baby quilt!”  I word it like a complaint but truly I think it is more fun and more satisfying to finish and give a baby quilt than any masterpiece.  I cannot really make that comparison yet due to not completing any such masterpiece. When that day finally comes I will describe the comparison properly and blog it dutifully  right here. For now my masterpiece is  a “mommy piece”  and I think that baby quilting is the perfect bridge in my efforts to transition between full time mommying and full time art/crafting.  It is somehow a little of both.

This was my first “Sweet Stripes” baby quilt pulled together from random and close at hand scraps and a few carefully chosen prints and batiks from the shelf. I was completely winging it, as I like to do when making a quilt for daily use. I try to create that professional quilt look from the random fabrics I have and sometimes I like the result and sometimes I am not sure…

That spray bottle in the foreground is 505 spray to baste the 3 layers together that makes the quilting process SO MUCH EASIER!! I learned that little trick at the Ricky Tims seminar I attended and blogged about here An Open Letter to Ricky Tims.  It cuts the time it takes me to make a quilt by a half to a third.  It also cuts out one of the least fun parts, involving all those safety pins and pulling, taping and worrying!

I think the best best thing about making these quilts is seeing the mommies that I gift them to, wrap their little ones in them and carry them around until they fade and almost fall apart.  It is kind of a funny response when so much of quilt work is quilt preservation and careful handling so that they last the longest!  The sweet mommy that I gave this to carries it everywhere she goes and it simply warms my heart.

It is not perfect and as I wrote to the mommy who thanked me via Facebook the picture below,  “I enjoyed making it! It isn’t perfect but that is never my goal in a baby quilt–snugly, colors that work and lots of love in the stitches!”