Fabri-Quilt New Block Blog Hop & Giveaway!
Some Thoughts on Community – Tula Found Her Sketchbook!
I’m sure that almost everyone has already heard, but for those of you prefer WordPress Reader to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, today’s big news in my corner of the sewing world is the safe return to Tula‘s sketchbook.
Depending on how much you use social media, and who you follow, you may have noticed that talk about the missing book greatly increased over the weekend, after Kat offered to increase the reward for it. I like to think that it wasn’t the fact that a greater reward for the missing book was much of a motivating factor, but that this one piece of news just brought people’s attention back to the issue and reminded them that it was unresolved. And really, what are the chances that someone reposting from Australia, would have a connection who was at the show, and might be in possession of the book, without knowing what it was? Highly unlikely.
Regardless of people’s motivations, this weekend just served to remind me what a great bunch of people quilters are. I know how many people viewed my post about it, and how many times it was directly shared from my site, and suffice to say, I’ll likely never write another post that popular, or at least not one that gains so much momentum so quickly. It was great to see so many people take an interest and reignite the conversation.
The book was ultimately found by a custodian at the school where the show was hosted, and returned earlier today. Is it coincidence that the book was discovered so shortly after all the online chatter about it? It’s certainly possible, but I’d like to think that the many people who read about, shared information on, and discussed this topic over the weekend had something to do with it.
Until next time, I hope we all have a little more faith in the world.
Jane
P.S.: in the event that it’s not immediately clearly obvious, I did pinch these pictures from Tula’s Facebook page.
Can the Quilting Community Please Help a Girl Out? – New Reward for Tula’s Sketchbook
As many of you have likely already heard, Tula Pink misplaced, or lost, or had stolen, a sketchbook at Sisters, Oregon, approximately three weeks ago (second weekend of July). Unfortunately the book has not yet been found, despite Tula’s generous offer of one yard of Owls in each colorway from Full Moon Forest and no questions asked policy.
Obviously Tula is upset, as the book is very dear to her. It is white, 6 x 8 inches, with the above two stickers on it. She describes it as being very “obviously” hers, which to those not overly familiar with her style, probably means that all the sketches look half completed. If you don’t know her style, please take a quick peak at her website.
A group of friends and I were having a conversation about this on Facebook earlier today, when Kat joined in to tell us that the book was still missing, and she was upping the reward, and I promised her I’d share the news with all of you. Kat’s a darling: I shop at her site from time to time, and she’s always lovely and personally responds to my emails, even when they’re ridiculous. I’m not sure whether she’s discussed with Tula, but here’s the screenshot for anyone who doesn’t believe me:
I know, it’s tiny, but to save your eyes, it says the reward is now a complete bundle of Full Moon Forest (and if you’re not in to Tula’s fabric, you’re free to donate it here) signed by Tula if desired. Still no questions asked. It’s a very generous offer, plus, it comes with all the goodness of knowing that you’ve helped an artist maintain her intellectual property rights.
Please forward this to anyone you know who was at Sisters (including partners, children, friends, etc. who got dragged along) or who was working there. Kat’s hoping it’s been picked up by someone who doesn’t know what it is, and I can see how it would be very attractive to a child.
If you have any information, please contact Kat or Tula via their websites, or DM either of them on Instagram. I know how incredibly diverse the quilt world is, so fingers crossed that we can get this book back home.
I feel that I should point out that I have no particular affiliation with either Tula or Kat and am receiving nothing material in return for writing this post.
Many thanks to all of you who read this, and to those who reposted.
– Jane
Update: As of Wednesday, August 5th, the book has been located and returned to its owner.
Athena Big Scroll
What’s a girl to do when she needs to make a quilt in a hurry? Why not by a quilt kit from a machine quilter who admits that she’s not crazy about piecing, and better yet, why not buy fabric that tells you how to quilt it? That was the thought process that resulted in my buying Angela Walter’s Athena Big Scroll kit. If I’d been brave enough to try and quilt it immediately, it would have been the perfect emergency quilt.
As it was, it sat around for about a month – all the while Angela’s “finished is better than perfect” motto echoing my head – before I worked out what to do with it. It turns out that follow the line quilting is a lot more difficult than it looks. Fortunately for me, Christa was working on something very similar with another of Angela’s fabric lines at about the same time as I was finishing this up, and came along a lot of the same problems, so I don’t feel remotely bad about mine being somewhat less than perfect.
The hardest part of this was working out how to follow the lines without too much backtracking. After all, it’s a print of a continuous line, quilting motif that Angela uses often, and one that I’ve played around with time and time again. I think I eventually got it though.
Fiddling around with all that negative space was fun. It wasn’t something I’d gone in to with much of an idea of what to do, although I knew I wanted to fill it with very fluid designs.
This is off in the post this week, along with a few other gifts I’ve finished recently, which will be popping up when I have time to write. I hope the recipient likes it. It will be a complete surprise, I hope.
I think it bears mentioning, for those of you who don’t know her, what a lovely person Angela is. I mentioned previously that I’d taken a few classes with her at HMQS back in May. I arrived to one class rather early, and saw her sitting alone, and decided that seeing as I didn’t know anyone else there, I may as well say hello. Well, she’d just been to Sydney; I’m from Sydney, we both like quilting; there was a lot to talk about. I’d very much expected a polite “Hello, nice to meet you. I’m busy, I’ll see you in class,” but instead had a very lovely conversation. Perhaps I’ll eventually stop being surprised by how willing established quilters are to share their time and experience with those of us who are newer in the field. I doubt it happens in very many other industries.
It turns out that Angela recognized my name when I placed my order on her website, and my fabric came with a lovely hand written card attached. Dear mystery gift recipient, Angela hopes you love your new quilt just as much as I do. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to send us some photos of it in its new home (if you want to tag Angela in she’s @angelafmq just about everywhere).
In other news, last night, I noticed that I was getting an unusual amount of blog traffic coming in from Japan. It turns out that an Instagram acquaintance of mine, Red Coconut Shop, gave me a bit of a shout out on the shop blog, so I’d like to do the same, and of course, hello to everyone who’s come to visit me via their link. Unfortunately I don’t read Japanese, but I asked my Facebook friends for help, and Weeks (who seems to have an almost unending supply of hidden talents) assured me that this most probably meant that the people at the shop liked my work. They do run a lovely account on Instagram, which you do not have to be fluent in Japanese to enjoy, so I highly recommend taking a moment to have a look. Those Tokyo trade markets look very interesting.
In continuing news, the website is still under development. It turns out that trying to build a site with someone in a different time zone is incredibly challenging, and that I’m much more technically challenged than I realized. I’m really hoping I’ll be able to get it running properly in short order, but I still have a lot of content to create for it.
I’m linking up again with Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and TGIFF at From Bolt to Beauty, because everyone should be excited when they finish a quilt, even a very simply pieced one.
Until next time, happy quilting!
– Jane
I finally join in on the 2015 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop.
This blog hop has absolutely flown by! It seems that it was just days ago that I was signing up for it, but nearly two months have gone by, and here we are in our final week. Welcome to all readers, new and regular; thank you for stopping in to visit as we wrap up our 2015 New Quilt Bloggers hop.
It’s been such an adventure for those of us who’ve been involved. We’ve all learned a lot about the technical aspects of blogging, joined a wonderfully vibrant quilting community, and (for many of us at least) really stepped out of our comfort zone and migrated, at least temporarily, from the comfortable obscurity of our small blogging circles, and reached out to a much wider audience.
Before I go any further, I’d like to acknowledge the debt of gratitude all of us 2015 New Quilt Bloggers owe to our hive leaders/organizers/the ladies who’ve devoted a ridiculous amount of time to helping us all out. Please feel free to stop by and visit Terri Ann, Yvonne, Cheryl, and Stephanie: they all run wonderfully creative blogs. They’ll also have some lovely prizes up for grabs. I’m particularly grateful to Terri Ann for organizing our hive, Sewcial Swarm.
A little about me:
I’m Jane Victoria, an Australian who now lives in Las Vegas, NV – a proud member of the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild – fighting my never-ending wanderlust, and wondering whether I might be able to settle down here. I live with my husband Nick, our miniature Schnauzer (or moving mop, depending on how long it’s been since he’s had a haircut) Jolly, and our two Siamese cats, Merthin and Delilah. I really did try to include them all in my blog name, because when I started quilting I didn’t have a dedicated studio; I was working on the dining table, and all three of the pets added their own unique personal touches to my quilting experience. It’s just so difficult to make the name Merthin (that one comes from Ken Follett’s World Without End, which I’d read just before adopting him) sound… well, like that name of my cat, and not a word that I’d be constantly receiving requests to define.
I started quilting in late 2012 when I was living in Boston. It was initially predominantly a mental and creative escape from my studies, and something that I could do completely from home, which is a huge bonus during those frightfully cold and miserable winter months. I didn’t expect how quickly I’d be completely hooked. This craft needs to come with a warning label! It wasn’t long until it became completely consuming, and to many grumblings from Nick, the house quickly became filled with fabric. It would have been advisable for me to attend a few classes in those early days. I spent so much time working on projects that were utter failures, which in itself is fine, but if I hadn’t been overconfident in my ability to work things out myself I would have at least started with some fabric that I didn’t absolutely adore, and was easily replaceable – and a public apology to a certain section of the sewing community for what I did to some vintage Tula back when it was affordable, and I didn’t know any better than to prewash all of my fabrics.
It wasn’t that I was a fabric snob back then, it was simply that I found that Riley Blake and Free Spirit produced much more exciting prints than the lines Fabric Place Basement stocked did, and that Kona produced more vibrant colors than those cottons I could purchase in Joann. I still wouldn’t call myself a fabric snob; my preferences simply lean in certain directions. If you fall in love with the fabrics in a big box store, by all means, by them, create with them, and adore what you’ve made. Just note that there may be differences in quality between these and the types of fabrics you find in dedicated quilt stores that may affect the accuracy of your piecing, and the longevity of your quilt.
I felt as though I outgrew the Singer that I started piecing on very quickly. There was nothing particularly wrong with it, only that it’s not designed for quilting, and didn’t have an automatic needle position button. I gave up quilting on the domestic very quickly, but still decided to upgrade to a Bernina 580, which has made my life much easier. It’s much quieter than it’s predecessor, runs more smoothly, and tackles the binding with a relative amount of ease. I recently purchased the Bernina 350 special edition for travel and classes. I was very sure that I wouldn’t need one, but I admit that I got sold on the convenience that came with it being smaller and lighter than my 580. Plus, it’s so pretty!
I started longarm quilting in 2013. I wasn’t under any illusion at the time that I’d ever be able to replace my quilter, Mandy, but I was curious about the process. I found a rental shop not too far away from me, and after Laurena taught me how to use her Gammill I dived right in. There was a huge learning curve, during which I felt incredibly frustrated by seemingly endless parade of professionals consistently telling the world “if you can draw it, you can quilt it.” It takes time to learn how to manipulate those machines, but I stuck with it, and eventually started producing quilting that wasn’t horrible. Plus, Laurena was just a lovely person to work with, and we both learned so much from each other.
I now own an Innova 26″ longarm with Lightening Stitch, and after some teething problems, I’m now creating quilting that I’m proud of. I’ve been doing a lot of work in manual, because I felt as though it was something that I should learn, but honestly, the regulator on this machine is so sensitive, the manual option is almost redundant.
I swear: it wasn’t my intention to remain hidden in the shadows of the blog hop until the very end. Unfortunately, between the time that I signed up for this, and our getting our groups together, my designer suddenly found the time start work on my site. There had been a lot of back and forth about what we were going to create together – all right, mostly about what Nila was going to create on my behalf – and I wasn’t aware that she was going to start work when she did. It’s been a little frustrating to find my site shifted to a strange domain, but in a way, the timing was almost perfect. It’s been very convenient to be able to update her with design ideas as our group discussions progressed. It’s so close to being ready to go – as in it’s mostly built, but I need to create a lot of content for it – but unfortunately I don’t have it completely set up at this time. Stay tuned. I’ll definitely be doing something fun when we officially launch.
That said, holding out until the last week has some advantages. It’s been wonderful to see how everyone else has introduced themselves and what questions they’ve asked the community.
I apologize if I’ve done the textual equivalent of talking your heads off; it’s a slight habit of mine. So, let’s get down to some of my favorite quilts.
Chatterbox was the first quilt top I made, although not the first quilt I finished. It was certainly an adventure, and I learned a lot from the experience, a lot of it falls in to the “things not to do” category, but it turned out very well.
Kite Flight was a quilt that I really enjoyed making because of the wonderful colors. At the time I started making mine, it was simply a free pattern by Better Off Thread lurking on the Robert Kaufman pattern site. Since then, Craftsy has released several kits in multiple colorways, and it’s taken on something of a life of its own. It’s touching to see how many people still make their way to my site when they’re researching this quilt, although how they find it, I have no idea.
Shoreline is a free pattern by Tula Pink, and I tweaked the math a little, and turned it in to a queen-size quilt. It was wonderful to finally have a quilt that fitted on my bed and I could sleep under.
Now we’re down to the part where I have to try and impart some advice on the quilting community. I feel incredibly under qualified for this.
A general tip: take all advice with a grain of salt. Some things work for some people, but not for others, and if something isn’t working for you, consider ditching it. I spent a month wondering why I couldn’t tension my machine properly, and it simply came down to me assuming that everything an expert told me was going to work perfectly for me.
A blogging tip: be yourself. Don’t stress yourself out trying to tick boxes that don’t fit your style, or take up too much of your time. People will love your work for what it is, and you for your authentic self.
A piecing tip: shorten your stitch length. My machine has a default setting of 2.5. Turning it down to 2.0 adds so much stability to the ends of my seams. They no longer pull apart when I go to match them up, and the edges don’t pull apart when the quilt is on the frame. It also helps to run a line of stitching about 1/8 of an inch from the edge around your entire quilt top to hold everything together.
A quilting tip: don’t be afraid to try new things. Just set up some muslin and a scrap of batting and play around. It’s amazing how often I’ve come across people either at shows, or in my online quilting communities, who are just plain afraid to experiment.
There’s been a lot of discussion on the hop so far about what people like to watch and/or listen to while they work. My friends and I got together and decided that English drama was the preferable choice for most fabric and yarn based craft types. Or maybe we all just really like English drama.
It’s really tough to come up with a question for you all that hasn’t already been asked by at least one hop participant… What is the your oldest active (as in, you plan to finish it and haven’t given up on it yet) UFO, and when do you think you’ll get around to working on it again, or dare I say finishing it? I’ll be honest: I donated a ton of UFOs to my guild. I hope that someone will be able to turn them in to something great, but I knew that I just wasn’t going to get around to them. I do have a few paper pieced hexie projects from 2013 that I’m yet to finish, but have vague ideas as to what I’ll do with them.
Thank you again for reading. If you have the time, please stop by and visit some of my fellow 2015 New Quilt Bloggers. As usual, Yvonne has been kind enough to compile a complete list.
Until next time, happy sewing!
– Jane
A Slight Change of Plans
I’ve changed my mind on the color scheme for my Wiggle Me Colourful quilt – and also remembered that Sandy is Canadian and we can spell things correctly together. I was going to make it with a more varied palette, but there were too many repeats in the Elizabeth Hartman bundle. Fortunately, I had this Sunset jelly roll in my stash, so now I’m just going to have to try and find a backing that’s not brown, and, of course, something else to do with my more rainbow precuts.
I’m hoping I won’t end up with Sunset overload. I have my Radio Way quilt top on the frame at the moment and am figuring that I’ll be spending the bulk of the next several days on it.
For anyone interested in following along on Instagram, I noticed that there are two tags for this. One being the American English version #wigglemecolorful and the British English version #wigglemecolourful. I’m not sure that I particularly see this one getting resolved any time soon.
Until next time, happy sewing, happy quilting, and happy whatever else you may be doing.
– Jane
2015 New Quilt Bloggers: Week 3
I know you’ve all been patiently waiting over the two week break to see who you get to meet in the next in the blog hop. The wait is over! Pop on over to Yvonne at Quilting Jet Girl for a list of this week’s participants. I’m sure you’ll come across some fascinating new people.
Sunday Stash #6 – Elizabeth Hartman for Kona
I’ve had this fabric sitting around for a few months. If I remember correctly Craftsy had it on sale, and as always I couldn’t resist picking up a few bundles of these wonderful colors. Elizabeth Hartman‘s collection is one of my favorites from Kona‘s blogger’s choice collections.
I’m still not sure what i’ll do with the fat quarter bundle, but I’ve settled on a project for the jelly roll.
I signed up for the Wiggle Me Colorful quilt-along at Upstairs Hobby Room. It’s such a cute quilt, and seeing as I’d never ventured in to the world of the quilt-along, I thought it was about time. I have absolutely no idea when I’ll be able to squeeze this in, but I’ll get it done eventually.
This may be where I draw the line at works in progress. There’s just too much going on at this point, and I can’t keep up with everything. Fortunately I’m not on a deadline for any of this piecing.
On the upside, I’ve been finishing projects off, so be prepared to see some completed quilts soon. It happens so rarely that I thought it was fair to give you warning.
As usual, I’m linking up with the fabulous Mr. Molli Sparkles.
Well, I’m off to the studio. Until next time, happy sewing!
– Jane
Gravity – Ultraviolet
It feels like such a long time since I’ve really had the opportunity to sit down and do some sewing, and it was nice to be able to get back to my Gravity quilt and knock out these Ultraviolet blocks.
This week has been a week full of houseguests, so I feel as though I’m being somewhat rude by sitting down and writing this.
I was a little nervous about the seams in this one, because it involves sewing a partial seam, and returning to it later. I was sure that it would never match up, but once I’d gotten the directionality of those half hexagons down, everything came together very well.
Now there are only six blocks remaining. I’m hoping to get them all finished shortly, maybe in the next month or so, but we’ll see. The backing seems like quite a monumental task, but I know that I can get through that in a couple of days if I can only find the time to book myself in to the studio.
Fingers crossed that after Saturday when we have the house to ourselves again, I’ll be able to get some solid sewing done.
Here’s my progress so far:
Until next time, happy piecing!
Jane
Jolly and Delilah Quilts 