New Techniques

I didn't get around to any quilting today. The day was filled with running errands and doing laundry. Monday's are usually house-cleaning days, but today that was pushed aside. I did get the bathrooms cleaned, but that's all. Tomorrow is another day.

My landscape quilt digest is having a challenge where we all work from the same pattern and create a landscape quilt. The challenge just started today and we have until September 1st to complete our quilt. I'm anxious to get started.

In the meantime, I'm trying to learn new techniques in embellishment as well as gaining perspective in landscape quilts. I'm reading everything I can find on the web, looking for instructional and inspirational videos on youtube. Viewing work of other landscape artists is also helpful. I have a long list of websites in my "favorites" folder on the computer to look at anytime day or night. Most of my landscapes are not realistic looking. I chose fabrics for color and texture and I don't have a lot of detail in my quilts. That is what I want to learn to do - add the details.

I have a couple more of Joe's quilts to finish before I can dedicate much time to this challenge. Then there is the redecorating I've got planned for our house. I haven't done much to this house since we bought it and feel now is the time to do something. I have painted 2 of the bathrooms now and hung up a couple of quilts for wall art. Today I bought a gallon paint to paint the kitchen. It's a golden yellow color. I'm hoping to rid this house of some of the brown paint. It's everywhere in this house! With the kitchen having hardwood floors, oak cabinets, brown countertops and brown walls, it really needs some color! I think the yellow will work - I hope it will work anyway.

Susan

One More of Joe's Quilts

This one is a one-patch quilt with Christmas fabrics and a snowmen border.

Joe's Quilts

Here are Joe's quilts that I have finished so far - except for the binding. My plan is to do all the binding once all the quilting is done.

Double 9 Patch

Pinwheel

Log Cabin

Trip Around the World

Bird One Patch

I still have 4 more of Joe's quilts to complete :)

Susan

Pinwheel

Today I'm working on Joe's Pinwheel quilts. It's made with cat themed fabric and solid blues and black. This is a large quilt - 108" x 102" - so I had to piece the batting. I'm quilting it with a large meander so I can avoid those dense intersections where 8 seams come together! Those are impossible to quilt through without breaking or bending a needle, and I definately don't want to have to deal with the problems that causes my machine again!

I really need to photograph Joe's quilts so I can post them here!

Susan

More New Landscapes

Spring Mountain Range

Utah Sunrise

Both of these quilts are hand appliqued and machine quilted. They both use Hobb's 80/20 batting. Most of the fabrics are commercial, with a hand-dyed fabric in the sky of Spring Mountain Range.

New Landscapes

Autumn Mountains

Rocky Mountains I

Rocky Mountains II

Rocky Mountains III

Serenity Beach

These are small landscape quilts from 8"x10" to 30"x35". All are machine quilted. Serenity Beach is machine appliqued, and the other quilts are all hand appliqued. I used Hobb's 80/20 batting.

Trip Around the World

This afternoon I finished Joe's Trip Around the World quilt. It's a lap-sized quilt in pinks, purples, and beiges. It's really pretty. I quilted a freehand victorian feather in the outer border. I made sections in the quilt with some straightline quilting to showcase the center diamond where I quilted a victorian feather wreath. I also quilted sections out to the corners where I quilted more victorian feathers. The spaces between the other straight line stitching I quilted some stipples.

Photo to come.

Susan

Sunrise

I was up at 3am yesterday morning and tossed and turned for an hour before finally giving up the idea of sleeping. So, I sat at the dining room table browsing the web while waiting for the sun to come up.

It's been a while since I was up early enough to get a good sunrise photo, but that morning I got some good ones. The back of our house faces north-northeast, so we get some beautiful sunrises in the summer.

Yesterday I spent the day painting my master bathroom. It's done and everything is put back into place. Now it is a restful green instead of the gaudy, bright yellow. I really do like yellow, but this hue was just way too harsh for a small room. I like yellows with a hint of gold in them.

Susan

Progress!

I did lots of quilting this past week after fixing the machine. I finished Serenity Beach as well as several other smaller landscape quilts. I'll post photos after I have the binding finished on them.

I also finished a full-sized quilt of Joe's. It's a bird theme quilt made with squares of different types of bird fabric. I quilted a feather vine alternating with a ribbon all the way down the quilt.

Today I tackled the wallpaper border in my master bathroom. It took 2 hours to get it off the wall, but it's done! Our master bath is a bright yellow that makes you get in and out of that bathroom just as quickly as you can. That may have been the plan for the previous owners, but I wanted something a bit more restful in there. So, I bought a gallon of "fresh aspargus" green paint that matches the green stripes in my bath mats. I'll get that painted in a day or 2. I washed the walls down today, so I should let them dry for 24 hours before painting.

I also bought a set of new drawer pulls for the main bathroom and a matching towel rack with a brushed nickle finish. I still need to find a new light fixture, but that can wait. Before I install the knobs, I have to paint the vanity. It's original to the 18 year-old house and has lots of wear on it. I don't like the dark oak either, so I'm going to paint it a cream color. Once that painting is done and the knobs installed, I'll tackle the new floor. I chose a peel and stick vinyl by Crystel called "Sandstone". I was debating between vinyl and ceramic tile. So far I haven't found any ceramic I like, so I think I'll do the vinyl for now and keep searching for the ceramic. The vinyl is inexpensive and a good do-it-yourself project that I can handle on my own - without hubby's help :) He'll appreciate that-ha! I've installed ceramic tile before at our last house, but I had someone else do the tile cutting. This time I'd have to do it on my own and I'm not certain I want to tackle that job just yet.

We went to a BBQ on Saturday for my nephew's high school graduation celebration. My brother and SIL had just returned from a vacation in the west and had lots of photos to share. I asked my SIL for a copy of her CD so I could make some landscape quilts from the photos. Now I have lots more inspiration for future quilts :D

Susan

Crash!

I've spent the past 2 days working on my machine! My machine works great 99.9% of the time. When it doesn't work well, it's because of operator error :(

I was quilting on the Serenity Beach quilt (the one in the header of my blog) and quilting away through the palm fronds, loving the way it was turning out when all of a sudden:

PING! CLUNK! RATTLE - RATTLE - RATTLE!!!!!

I was quilting through the center section where all the leaves come together and the needle refused to penetrate all those layers of fusible web and fabric! HOW RUDE!!!!!!!

The needle didn't break - it bent into a fish hook shape-ugh! Of course that knocked the timing on the machine completely out of whack. That took an hour to fix, but the machine still wouldn't work right. I had 1/8" loops of thread on the underside of the quilt with every stitch!

So I took everything apart.

I cleaned every moving part, retimed, retimed, retimed! Still no luck.

Changed the bobbin, the thread, the backlash spring - no luck.

Now it's 5 1/2 hours later and my family thinks I need to cook dinner!

Machine waits until morning to be looked at again.

I send a message to my longarm list asking for HELP!!!!

This morning I get suggestions - some of which I've already tried, but finally found one I hadn't. Check the rocker arm!

So I take the machine apart again - the bobbin section that is. I had retimed the sewing hook, but not the rocker arm. Of course if you don't know anything about how a sewing machine or quilting machine works this makes absolutely no sense to you, but believe me this has nothing to do with music!

But, retiming the rocker arm is a pain in the neck, so I try a few other things just in case, hoping that the machine will work with these few fixes.

I change out the check spring on the rotary tension - it's old so it could use a rest anyway. I change out the thread guides above the cone of thread. Actually I just switch them from one side of the machine to the other. One gets used more than the other so it's tired too ;)

Of course, these changes don't help :(

There is nothing left to do but retime the rocker arm. I test it out and of course it is out of sinc :(

SIGH

I take a deep breath and dig in.

It only takes 30 minutes!!!! Yippee!!!

Now why didn't I try that first?

I let the machine rest the remainder of the day. I'm exhausted, I can only imagine the machine is too.

Tomorrow I'm tackling that palm tree again. Only this time, I staying away from the center of the palm fronds :D And I'm never using that many layers of fusible web again!!!!

Susan

Catching Up

On rest that is! This week has been very draining for me. Vacation Bible School ended last night with Parent's Night. It was a good night for the kids. We've had 14-16 kids in the kindergarten class each night this week - all full of energy! With me still healing from surgery and my energy level being low to begin with, I barely made it through. Today I catching up on laundry and being a couch potato.

Thursday, I managed to attach labels to 3 of my quilts, but I still have 6 to go. Perhaps I'll get those done today while I'm sitting on the couch watching reruns of Matlock and Perry Mason.

Susan

Slow Progress

This week has been filled with VBS so quilting has taken a backseat. I do have the Serenity Beach quilt on the machine and it is outline quilted. This is the quilt that is in the header of this blog. I'm using Hobb's 80/20 batting and the backing is a water/waves commericial print fabric that I've used to back other quilts with.

I did bind the Sunset Beach quilt on Saturday and it is now hanging up in my living room. I have yet to make the label for it.

Valerie Hearder, a major landscape quilt artist just had 2 suitcases filled with her quilted landscapes stolen this week. All the quilts are published and will not be able to be sold easily because if it, but it is still a tragedy. Hopefully she'll be able to recover her quilts. This is a good reminder to me to document and label all my quilts. I'm not the best at doing the labeling unfortunately. I do document with photos as I'm making my quilts, but I often forget to attach a label.

So guess what my project for the week is?

Susan

Sunset Beach

This little quilt is 30x35" and was made by my glue basting method. It includes hand-dyed fabrics as well as commercial fabrics. I machine appliqued the background pieces - the sky, sea and sand - and hand appliqued the palm tree and leaves. Machine embroidery was used in the palm fronds. I have yet to bind it.

The batting is Hobbs 80/20. I used a gold metalic thread by Signature for the rays in the sunset after marking the lines with a water soluble pen. The pen came out easily by spritzing the fabric with water.

The quilting in the remaining parts of the quilt is done with 100% cotton thread by Signature in various colors. All quilting was done on the longarm machine.

Susan