Stairway to Cat Heaven Quilt Complete!

Finally, my quilt is done!  Actually I finished it a week ago but didn't have anyone around to help me take some good outdoor shots.  Below is the winning one.

Here she is!

Here is the backing.

Close up...you can actually see some of the quilting stitches!

And a close up of my "label."  I had a couple of leftover stars from the borders, so I thought this was a perfect use for them.

It's been a fun journey making this quilt.  When I started it I was killing time during my final quarter of college.  I had to rent a car just to get to the quilt shop to pick out my fabrics.  This was the first quilt (and really first project at all) that I made with my own sewing machine, which I received as a graduation present when I got my bachelor's degree in 2010.

I drew out this very shoddy version of the design on my computer to test out different color and border ideas.

During this period I was in a teeny tiny graduate housing apartment.  My room was a little hovel with this horrible slanted roof, like a bad attic room.  It had no overhead lights.  (And this was in the brand new dorm!  What they were thinking not putting any overhead lights in the bedrooms I just do not know).  I actually sewed many of these nine-patch squares by sitting on the floor and placing my machine in front of me on a crate.

Here is the background assembled.  I had to lay it out on a sheet because the floor in that apartment was not to be trusted.

And here it is with the borders being assembled. (This time I think I vacuumed really well before putting it down).

I finished the quilt top shortly before graduation, then set it aside while I dealt with finding a place to both live and work.

Now, pretty much a full year after the quilt top was first assembled, I have my own sewing area in my own apartment, and a car to take me to the shop whenever I want.  I've worked very hard on my FMQ and was able to free motion quilt this entire piece, something I absolutely wouldn't have been able to do a year ago.  It's been a fun journey to make this quilt and to think back on how much I've grown as both a quilter and a person since I first started it!

Fat Quarter Placemats

The pattern

On Tuesday I had my monthly "sewing club" class where we do different fun projects.  This month was a placemat pattern called "Take Four" by Cary Flanagan.  It's a pretty cute and clever idea to make coordinating but unique placemats.  Unfortunately my local shop doesn't sell Fat Quarter bundles and for this one I really just wanted someone else to do the fabric matching work for me.




Enter...Fat Quarter Shop!  After reading so much about them I had tons of fun shopping the site and selecting my Fresh and Tasty bundle.  (Almost went for this adorable Crabtastic bundle, but this is for a bunch of guys so I figured the crabbies might be too cute) My only complaint is a) expensive and b) I only needed four fat quarters but all of these bundles were much larger than that.  So since I ended up with 11 fat quarters, I made two sets of these "Take Four" placemats.

isn't this fabric adorable?

set of four fabrics #1

set of four fabrics #2

Since the class is really a "club" we all work at our own pace and the teacher is just there if we need questions.  She showed me how to oil my machine (apparently it was being noisy...oops) and gave me a lot of great ideas for easy ways to finish the placemats.  I was going to bind them like a mini-quilt but honestly that's a lot of effort, so instead I quilted the top directly onto the batting and then sewed the backing on like a pillowcase and edgestitched to make it look nice.

The greens

Of course, the first time I made my little sandwich I didn't but the backing and front right sides together, and didn't realize this until I went to turn it right sides out.  Insert forehead slap here.

the reds

Because these fabrics are already so busy, I decided not to do any free motion quilting on them.  Instead, I am using all of the decorative stitches on my machine that I otherwise never get an excuse to try.  I have to say, the decorative stitches are really boring to stitch because they go slowly and you can't really touch the fabric since the machine is off doing it's own thing.  But if you can sit through it they do indeed look cool. (below: shots of some of the decorative stitches)

Now that all eight of these are done, I think I would have chosen the two sets of four fabrics different.  I have experienced this in other projects as well, where I select the fabrics that look great together but don't give enough thought to how they'll actually be used in the project.  In this situation, my green fabrics were lovely together but the placemats would have been much more interesting with greater contrast, say if I had used the red striped fabric instead of the green.  The nice thing about buying from a fabric collection is that you know whatever combination you go with will look good together.

all together now!

Well, learning is what any craft is all about.  I haven't surprised the new owners with their placemats yet (and a matching apron!) but I hope they appreciate them.

$6 Book Sale at Martingale

Just in case you haven't heard, Martingale is holding a $6 book sale for a ton of great looking quilt books!

I just bought three for literally less than the price of one, including shipping.

The books I bought were Beautiful Blooms, Exploring Embellishments, and Fabric+Paint+Thread=Fabulous. 

I am really looking forward to getting into a new style of art quilting where I create some cool landscape wallhangings with lots of embellishments and thread painting!  I think these books, combined with my embellishment class this coming Sunday, will get me on the right path.  :)

Binding Apps and Rippling Trouble

Well today I finished quilting my "Stairway to Cat Heaven" quilt, and it was time to start on the binding.  (more quilt photos once I can get some outside shots in the sun)

I wanted to use the leftover fabric from my border on the binding, but wasn't sure I had enough.  I decided this was the perfect time to try out some of my quilting apps.

Here's a shot of all of the sewing/fabric apps on my ipod.  I recently downloaded all of these and haven't tested any besides the Joann app (which lets me save virtual coupons because I always forget to bring the paper ones to the store with me!)

To calculate the fabric needed for the binding, I used the Robert Kaufman "QuiltCalc" app.

Here is the binding data entry screen.  It is one of many things the app will calculate for you.  If you scroll down it explains how it is doing the calculations.

 Here is the results screen.  It calculates cutting on the grain and bias cutting for your binding.  I realized I had entered the data wrong and for "width" I had just assumed the short side but it really wanted the width of the bolt, which for this fabric was something like 48".  Once I fixed that, I was happy to see that my piece of fabric was large enough and I  knew exactly how many strips to cut!

In conclusion, the QuiltCalc app gets a thumbs up from me.  I haven't tried the other apps yet but I don't think any of them do binding calculations.

Now I have the binding all sewn down and it's time to hand stitch it onto the back.  However, I always have problems on every quilt I do with rippling on the binding, whether I pin it down before I stitch or not!  It's very frustrating so I thought I would see if anyone had tips on this before I get too far on stitching down the binding for this quilt.

Here are some shots of the worst rippled binding I have.

See the criss cross indents on the binding?

This is a vertical shot looking down upon the edge of the binding.  This is an extreme example, on this quilt it's so bad it almost looks intentional, but I always get some slight areas of rippling on every binding.

I would love any suggestions or ideas!

Quilting Progress

Today I finished the entire main quilt.  All that is left are the borders....and the cats.  Right now the cats aren't quilted because I wanted them to stand out, but I am nervous about leaving such a large space unquilted.

What to do about those kitties?

I checked the batting and it says up to 10" apart, so I am okay there.  But I dunno if it throws the texture off too much to have those spaces with no quilting at all.  I went ahead and quilted the moon with a wavy texture that I like, but I just don't know what I would quilt onto those cats if I did quilt them.  Thoughts?

Texture on the moon (also that whole sky is quilted even though you can't tell)

Lessons learned from quilting this:

-If you pick thread the exact same color as the fabric you are stitching onto, NO ONE can see it.  I don't think you can see my stitching in the sky at all in these photos!  I even tried to take a shot of the backing but it blends in too well there too!  On the plus side, no one can see my mistakes, because honestly my quilting wasn't stellar :)

This is the back of the sky area, which has stars and swirls

-I tend to make my FMQ narrower as I go along.  So I started out doing the sky with big loopy spirals and by the end was doing much smaller spirals.  This has been a problem I've had on a couple of pieces, and I'm not sure how to combat it except to always quilt really small from the start!

Needlepoint Finish

Well I've been avoiding my sewing machine lately.  I'm just not in love with the quilting design I chose for my quilt.  But I've promised myself to finish it in the next two weeks, so I definitely will!  Especially with Monday set aside as a full day for sewing.

I also have two classes in the next week, both of which will be really fun.  One is our monthly free "sewing club" class, this month we're making fat quarter placemats.  Photos after the class, but I wanted to note here that I made my first order with Fat Quarter Shop after hearing so many great things about them online and I was not let down.  I got my fabric about two days after I ordered it!

The second class is an introduction to embellishments, which I am SO excited about, but the supply list is reallllly long and contains some strange items, so I'll have to do some shopping for that in the next week.  I already borrowed 22-gauge wire from my electrical engineer friend and everyone was very confused that I needed it for a sewing class!

Anyway, while avoiding quilting I've been working hard on my needlepoint, and I'm pleased to say my first canvas is *actually* done, unlike my last post when really just the fish were done.

Here is shot #1, there are some lovely teals in the water that you can't see, so below is a second one that's under very yellow light but highlights the teals.

Okay, now I have no excuse not to quilt!

May FMQ Challenge

While I  was taking a break from quilting I thought it would be a good time to knock out this challenge.  The tutorial this month was from Leah Day, and involved two variations on an easy stipple method.

Honestly I didn't love this pattern.  I think I've been trained to not let my lines cross so it's hard for me to accept this design that involves crossing back over your previous work.  It was also hard to know how to space out the guide line well, I had some gap spots that needed to be filled in.  I got really stressed when I realized there was a gap that needed to be filled in!

I stitched these on some placemats instead of just on a practice swatch, might as well knock out two projects in one!

Boxy version

Making the jagged lines of the boxy version was very hard, and I think the final product came out like a giant scribble.  Also I think I've been trained to stitch smooth lines and never have those abrupt points.

I thought the wavy version would end up like a giant scribble too but it actually looks okay.  I still would probably do actual stippling instead though.

curvy version

It's always fun to try out new designs and get some practice time in on the machine!  Also, if anyone has tips on how to photograph so that the quilting is really highlighted, please let me know.

ALSO:  I didn't leave the feed dogs up because I'm not sure how that works with a stitch regulator.  Does anyone have experience with this?  I was afraid to try!