THE DISAPPEARING NINE - PATCH QUILT 🌼 🌼 🌼

This Disappearing Nine-Patch Quilt was featured in Modern Patchwork Magazine.  It was designed by Lisa Swenson Ruble.  I made this quilt for my great-niece, Karli.  

I have made this quilt before for my nephew's wedding with one big difference ... I quilted his quilt at my local quilt shop using their longarm and Q-Matic computer.  Since then, I have gotten my own longarm, although without the Q-Matic computer.  I honestly just love the art of quilting and doing it myself, not relying on a computer to do it for me. So, this time around I quilted this pattern myself.  

The trick to a disappearing nine-patch is to stitch three rows of three squares into a block.  This is called a nine patch.  Then you cut that block into four equal squares leaving you with something completely different than what you started with.  This is why they say the nine patch disappears. It adds a little twist to one of the quilt world's most basic blocks.

This quilt starts with 190 five inch blocks. This fabric line is called Morning Walk and is designed by Leah Duncan for Art Gallery Fabrics.

First you sew nine fabric squares together to make a nine patch block. And then you cut that square into quarters.

Then you take those quarters and randomly arrange them.  I did this with all twenty squares.  Then I added sashing in between the quarters to create ten rows. 

I added sashing between the ten rows and then sewed on the four borders to complete the quilt top.  

A word about random placement.  I never do things completely randomly even when a pattern calls for random placement. What I do is to try to locate the stand out colors and make sure that they get represented in all parts of the quilt top.  I think that this is more pleasing to the eye.  And I make sure that no color is next to itself.  Just that little bit of interference makes a nice difference. 

Once the quilt top was together I loaded it on the longarm.  I floated the quilt top instead of rolling the top onto the bar.  I used my Grace Company Quilt Clips to give the top some tension as I quilted it.  

Do you know what I do?  I take large pieces of fabric, cut them into tiny pieces of fabric and then stitch them back together into a large piece of fabric.  Hmmmm.  Sounds counterproductive, right?  But actually it's a little bit of magic ... 

I hope Karli enjoys her quilt!  Remember to pick up a needle and thread and sew some love into your world ❣️

  

EMMY'S WEDDING QUILT 🌸 🌸 🌸

I made this Divided Blooms quilt for my niece, Emily for her wedding. This pattern was designed by Carolyn Muffitt of Free Bird Quilting Designs in Melbourne, Australia.  Carolyn does the most beautiful free motion quilting, which inspired some of the designs that I used on this quilt. 

This quilt is perfect for a longarmer because it has all of that negative space built into the pattern.  Negative space is the empty space on the fabric which gives you room to put in all sorts of free motion quilting.  

In the case of this pattern I stitched in more of those divided blooms in that negative space to mimic the fabric blooms that are appliquéd onto the top by hand.  This was my first appliqué quilt.

Fussy Cutting the fabric.

Getting ready to appliqué the petals on.

The fabric I used for this quilt is Lecien Memoire a Paris, which is a gorgeous floral lawn fabric.  The background fabric is a yarn dyed linen from Lucien.  All of the petals were fussy cut and then sewn on by hand using an appliqué stitch.  Stitching all those pretty petals onto the fabric took almost a month, with a lot of life happening in between all those tiny stitches.  I will always remember watching the last episodes of The Game of Thrones while I sat and did the hand stitching.

Having spent a month making the quilt top, I was more than a little leary of just putting it directly onto my longarm and stitching it without some sort of practice first. I haven't done much free motion quilting and, in fact, this is only my third quilt with FMQ in it.  What I did was to take a whole cloth and load it onto the longarm and trace petals onto it and then quilt it out to decide which designs I liked and to get some experience in stitching them.  

Doing a practice piece first gave me the confidence that I needed to go forward with the actual quilt.  Also, the practice piece turned out nice enough that I put binding on it and packed it up along with the wedding quilt to send to my niece.  You can never have too many quilts, right?

Then it was finally time to put the wedding quilt onto my longarm!

I always love the way a quilt looks
all tucked up on the longarm!

In the borders and sashings I free motioned some leaves. This is the very first design I taught myself to make when I got my longarm last summer. Here is a short video showing how I make them.  If you don't know anything about a longarm this will show you how I move the sewhead with my hands to "doodle" as I go.

For this quilt I used Quilter's Dream Wool Batting to give those pretty petals some dimension. Originally I was going to  use a double batting to give them some serious loft but after doing some research I found out that a double batt would have made the quilt heavy and I wanted a "snuggly" quilt.  

I used Isacord 40 weight thread in #02922 - Muslin for both the top thread and the bobbin and I used a Schmetz Topstitch 90/14 needle.  

I took some individual pictures of the quilt squares as I stitched them out.  I have enough fabric left from the fat quarter bundle to do two more of these quilts and I wanted to remember my designs for the next time I do one. I over exposed the pictures so that you can see the stitching lines.

The free motion quilting got much easier as I went.  The part that I really enjoyed was planning out the designs for each square.  I would free motion the larger elements in first and then go back and stitch around them to fill in all of the space.

My FMQ is certainly not perfect, but I'm really proud of it!  And curiously, I discovered that I do FMQ with only one hand.  I'm used to doing ruler work with one hand because you use the other hand to hold the ruler and I guess I just got used to that.  Does anyone else use one hand for FMQ?

I choose a pink background and binding for the quilt. I've already sent away for a blue fabric for my next one.  

The binding rolled up on a "Binding Baby" to hold it
while I stitch the binding onto the quilt.

I was kinda nervous in the beginning of this process because although I knew I could do well on appliquéing the quilt top; I just didn't know if I could do it justice on the longarm because I'm so inexperienced with free motion quilting.  I'm really glad that I thought to do a practice whole cloth first.  It gave me the confidence that I needed to do the wedding quilt.  

The Love Birds ❣️

I hope my niece loves it and gets to snuggle with it and her new hubby for many, many years to come!

Remember, to pick up a needle and thread and stitch some love into your world❣️

THE WEDDING QUILT 👰🏼

This wedding quilt is a Disappearing Nine Patch Quilt and was featured in Modern Patchwork Magazine.  This is the first quilt that I did using a longarm.  I quilted this at my local quilt shop after taking their class and becoming certified on their longarm.  The quilting was done with Q -Matic, which is a computer that you program the pattern into and it stitches that pattern out by itself. 

Soon after doing this quilt I purchased my own longarm but did not get a Q - Matic computer with it.  Quilting on a longarm by hand is an art form.  I like to do the design work myself and not have a computer do it for me. Plus, the computer is $13,000.00.

Quilting the quilt at the local quilt shop.

This quilt was fun to make.  It went together well and I loved all the vibrant colors.  I chose this quilt because the joyful colors reminded me of my nephew's girlfriend.  When I met her I just knew she was "the one" so, I ordered this quilt and made if for their wedding because I knew that my nephew would ask her to marry him.  And he did ...

My nephew proposing!

I took some photos as I made the quilt so I could show them how it went together. 

At the quilt shop they gave me Quilter's Dream 100% cotton batting to purchase because that's what they prefer to use on their longarm.  That particular batting is supposed to have a 1 to 3 percent shrinkage factor.  I had pre-washed all my fabrics before piecing the quilt top and then washed the quilt after quilting it and it shrunk 3 inches all around.  This was way more than it should have shrunk and so I contacted Quilter's Dream.  They went over all my measurements and everything that I had done to the quilt, then apologized and sent me out free batting, but I was so disappointed to lose the look of that beautiful quilting.  It still looks okay, just not as nice as it looked before washing it and having it shrink up too much.  For that reason, I never use their 100% cotton batting now. I just don't trust it.

Top part of photo is before washing and the bottom part is after.

I used a 40 weight 3 ply Aurifil thread on this quilt in Natural White on the top and a 40 weight 2 ply thread in Natural White in the bobbin.  The tech at the shop said they had had trouble using the 3 ply in the bobbin so they suggested using the 2 ply.  I also used a Schmetz 90 - 14 Top Stitch needle. Since this was my first time using a longarm on an actual quilt the tech at the shop set the tension and when the quilt came off the longarm I was disappointed to find that the tension was loose on the back. The tech had checked the tension on the back periodically as it stitched and said it was fine.  Nothing I can do about that now.

I purchased this quilt kit after meeting my nephew's fiancée and then pieced it back in April of 2018 and quilted it on the longarm in May.  In August my nephew got engaged and they'll be married in September!  I can't wait ... I LOVE weddings ❣️ My Grandma Nellie always made us all quilts when we got married and I wanted to keep that tradition going. I hope they enjoy their quilt ... it was stitched with lots and lots of love.

Remember to pick up a needle and thread and stitch some love into your world❣️

 

SECRET STITCHES AND AN aLiEn EMBELLISHED CLUTCH 👽 FOR THE BERNINA CHALLENGE

Shhh!!! Lots of secret stitching going on here.  I'm making my niece's wedding quilt which means that I can't show any of my work on here until I gift it to her.  Hint: Lots of tiny hand sewn stitches, gorgeous lawn and linen fabrics, appliquéd blooms of every color and me just hoping I can do the free motion quilting that it deserves.  Fingers crossed ...

So, what to blog about while I'm sitting here secretly stitching away, hmmmm ... well let's see ... I'm entering a BERNINA contest!  

The contest is in celebration of the brand new BERNINA 435 sewing machine which will be arriving in stores soon.  The best part?  They are giving away one of the new machines in this contest!  (Have I mentioned that my sewing machine is a 46 year old Elna?)  All you have to do to win the new BERNINA 435 is to sew a creative, embellished clutch using Tiffany Pratt's pattern.  Tiffany Pratt is a whimsical MAKER associated with BERNINA. You can check out her Instagram at "TheTiffanyPratt" to see what I mean.  With her crazy cool kind of creativity in mind I challenged myself to step outside the box, or in this case, hop, skip and jump right over it to make something that screamed WHIMSY. 

The new BERNINA 435 sewing machine

We have an aLiEn thing in our family (Trust me, that's a whole 'nother blog.) so I decided to take one of my aLiEn designs which I created from scratch using the graphics program in Adobe Photo Shop and put it on some fabric from Spoonflower!  The only drawback?  It takes forever to get the fabric so I had to pay $15.00 in shipping to get it by May 26, leaving me only five days to enter the contest.  Here's hoping it comes on time!

The fabric arrived early!

The fabric arrived today!  I put it on the longarm and quilted the back panel in crosshatching with Superior Threads Nitelite Extraglow Pastel Green thread. It glows in the dark!  I'm trying to layer the WHIMSY on here!  

Quilting the back panel on my longarm.

I embellished the front fabric panel with some glow in the dark Night Glow Star Beads!  Yet another layer of WHIMSY! Then I constructed the bag on my 46 year old Elna sewing machine.  I could really use this new BERNINA 435.  Just saying!  

Glow in the Dark Star Beads!

My 46 year old Elna sewing machine.

All that was left was to figure out what I was going to do for the fringe. I grabbed a handful of little aLiEnS (These things are all over our house.) (I swear they multiply.) (I don't know how they do it ... I've tried to catch them in the act but those little guys are sneaky.) and asked my husband to drill holes through their teeny tiny little aLiEn heads. Once the screaming stopped he gave them back to me.  I strung them on some thread along with a row of jet black seed beads to give them some swing and some bling and used these little outer space wonders for some whimsical fringe.  

The aLiEn troops!

Did I mention that the aLiEnS also glow in the dark.  Remember, I'm going for that WHIMSY here!  

Hard to capture the GLOW on camera.

The good news is that I finished it by the deadline.  Now, let's just see what the judges think! Okay, so it's not your everyday clutch.  Maybe not even your little black dress clutch.  But you have to admit it's pretty whimsical.  I'm thinking I'll carry it to church.  Yep.  I think every life should have a bit of WHIMSY in it.  Let's hope the judges think so too!

Remember to pick up a needle and thread and stitch some love (and whimsy) into your world❣️