I Decorated my City's Quilt Shop, with City Quilts

I decorated my local quilt shop! We have a new/old quilt store in Pasadena, CA, thank heavens, after a seemingly infinite interval when there was none.

Quilt'n'Things Fiber Arts, which used to be in Glendale, was sold and moved to Pasadena, on upper Lincoln Ave. The fabric and yarn collection is primo. Lana Norton, the new owner, has a fabulous eye, although I'm biased because she asked me to teach a class there. Also, because two of my skyline quilts are hanging there (they won't be there much longer, since the class is over).

Hi, Lana! The quilt above her head is my Los Angeles quilt, which she challenged me to create: 

Plus I had a hand in the following: Four pillows that I did NOT instigate, imagine, or design, but I did sew up for display. 

They're made from ultra-smooth, ultra-wide, ultra-luscious Kaffe Fassett fabrics...

If you're in Pasadena, do not miss this shop! If your mother or father is a stitcher, this is the place for Mother's Day or Father's Day gifts. They also sell Eversewn Sewing machines, which are getting rave reviews from people I trust for quality at a reasonable price. 

And if you're nowhere near Southern California, you can sample the store's merchandise at their Etsy site, here. 

Blue Cross Jeans Quilt, (Part II): Quilting Tips, Suspense, Fluffy Pets and a Baby Mid Arm

In last week's episode, the name of a health insurance company got stuck in my head, so I was compelled to make a quilt out of it. The name, of course, is "Blue Cross, Blue Shield." The tutorial  shows how I pieced the blocks and attached the pockets. 

When you last saw it, it wasn't quilted. But now it is: 

 I like the way the white thread comes into and out of view, depending on the shade of denim. Blue and white is so soothing. 

This was a historic quilt for me, because it's the first largish quilt (37" x 57") that I've done on my new baby, ie, my Babylock Tiara III (which, incidentally, is the same as the Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen). When I  my DH bought it a couple of months ago for my birthday, and the nice people from Kingdom Sewing set it up, it looked like this:

While quilting the Blue Cross quilt, it looked like this:

You may be asking: What the (bleep) are those purple poles? Aha! I deduce that you don't show dogs or cats! Neither do I! But those, I learned, are pet grooming arms. I bought them because - one never knows - one might someday adopt a pair of fluffy pets which - one never knows -  one might wish to blow-dry while freemotion quilting!

Just kidding! I added the grooming arms because Katie of Katie's Quilting Corner wrote a persuasive blog post stating that they could be used to reduce the weight of the quilt while freemotion quilting! [2021 update: Katie's post has vanished. On her recommendation, I purchased two Master Equipment Dog Grooming arms very much like the ones sold here. To place on the ends of the cord, I purchased heavy duty muslin clamps - you only need two, but I had to buy extra, here; and two  aluminum caribiner clip hooks to attach the clamps to the cord, here. My total cost was just under $100.)

In fact, overhead suspenders of some kind are all the rage in the quilt world, I learned from my new Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Yahoo discussion group.

I'm pretty sure that quilting legend Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry is responsible for this trend - she has a fascinating DIY system hanging from her ceiling - her instructions (in PDF form) are here. More suspension ideas include:

• The Jennoop system. (2021 update: I can't find this product for sale anywhere, and the website seems to be down - let me know if you find it!)
• A repurposed garment hanging rack, here.
• Leah Day's permanent ceiling system, which costs less than one grooming arm: See it here.
• If you or a family members is good with PVC piping, you can figure something out, cheap.
• 2021 UPDATE: A new product is the DIME Weightless Quilter Frame, which sits on the ground but extends above the table Sold various places including here, but I haven't tried it.)

We are not very hardware-handy in our home, so I sprung for the grooming arms (about $36 each). Although I was a skeptical, they worked beautifully. Clipping and unclipping the quilt for major position changes turns out to be MUCH easier than shlepping around the dead weight of a quilt on a table. Suspension also eliminated the need for me to surround my sewing table with vast mesas of similar-height tables.

If you don't have a mid arm like my new baby, you can still benefit from suspension. The systems work equally well with regular (aka 'domestic') sewing machines. If you have a different approach to suspension, I'd love to hear about it. And most importantly, if you use the same brand of dog arms that I did (from Master Aluminum, no financial affiliation), you can choose hot pink instead of purple. Hey, I didn't think of it til just now - I could have bought one in each color!

Back to the quilting details:  I cut the vines out of folded kraft paper, then adjusted them to fit the available spaces....

Once pinned in place, just because I'm lazy, I tried freemotion quilting around one - but, of course, the brown paper lifted up when the foot hit it. So I traced around the vine onto three more sheets of freezer paper - then cut out the shape, ironed those into position, and stitched around.

I would have much preferred to mark the quilt, but I have yet to find a marking pencils that shows up on denim. The blue washout pens are virtually invisible on denim, and my half-dozen motley crew of white marking pencils don't make a strong enough line. (Suggestions welcomed!)

For the back, I used a cotton sarong purchased in Thailand in the 1980s. .

I hated to trim off its lovely selvege, but it was too big for the back. So I  appliquéd a piece with identifying information to a lower corner. Thai is such a beautiful language! (Does anyone know if Emchit is the name of the company?)

Disregard the sausagey binding. Argh! Doubled denim, I learned, is heavy, thick, and hard like concrete, 2 1/2"  was not wide enough, and the handstiching was a lack of fun. I used strong buttonhole thread, but it may well break over time, given how ferociously it's straining towards freedom. In hindsight I should have bound the quilt with a regular quilters' cotton, or maybe just one layer of denim.

Although I love to kvetch, by the time I finished my quilt, I was counting my blessings. First, that I now have a mid arm - a luxury item for sure. Second, that I found lots of information about suspension systems. I think the suspension  made as much or even more of a difference in ease of quilting than the new machine (at a tiny fraction of the cost of a mid arm.)  And finally, gratitude to whoever invented pet grooming arms. Now all I need a pair of smallish fluffy pets who don't mind being groomed practically on top of a sewing machine.

The piecing and appliqué tutorial for this quilt, in Part I, is here.

UPDATE: My quilting friend Roz in Montreal just told me about a friend who quilts next to a set of bunk beds. When quilting a heavy quilt, she suspends bungee cords from the top bed's coils to hold up the quilt! Gotta love it!

The 'Elvis' Altered Toy Sewing Machine

A long time ago, in the early days of the Internet, I started reading about toy sewing machines online. This was a mistake. TSMs are worse than crack. Just a few pictures, and I was hooked.   

Collecting toy sewing machines is the wrong hobby for people like me who love flea markets, thrift shops, and garage sales. In the real world (outside of cyberspace), TSMs - especially the old and charming ones - are rare. Maybe 1 in every 75 visits to a flea market. Years go by between live sightings. When I do meet one in the real world, if it is old, interesting and in decent condition, the price is usually quite high,upwards of $200. Strangely, vintage toys cost much more than vintage full-size sewing machines.

Novice desperation explains why, early in my addiction, when I saw a plain white plastic chainstitch machine at a flea market, I bought it. Though completely devoid of charm, it was small, clean and MIB (mint in box). I think I paid less than $20.  

I brought it home, popped in some batteries, and it didn't work. Total buyer's remorse.  

Then it occurred to me: I could alter it! Correction - this was long before I'd heard the terms 'altered book,' or 'altered art.' So what I actually thought to myself was probably along the lines of: "I'll Mod Podge it!" 

I pulled out my rare, high quality Elvis-themed cotton quilting fabric, and went to town with the Mod Podge, the glue gun, the trim and the tchotchkes (little sparkly things). 

Though the front image shows young Elvis, I went more with the mood of late-Elvis-in-sparkly-white-jumpsuit ("one of the most recreated costumes in history"). There's a dangly pearl ball trim around the base, silver sequins, and shiny buttons and button covers.  

I created a spool of iridescent sequins for the top of the machine. Along the top edge of the machine, there's silver-embellished blue rick-rack. 

Elvis is adoringly gazed upon by a 50's princess/debutante (Ann-Margaret?), in white gloves and gown. His crown is a former button cover.

In all the background areas, there are more clear iridescent sequins. 

Now the machine is no longer 100% completely useless! See those three pins? The machine base is covered with silver-dot-embellished-white tulle, with batting underneath, so it actually functions as a pincushion. 

 Here's the head-on view.

 

In conclusion, my friends, do you have a useless, broken, charm-free, not-worth-repairing, sewing machine? Consider altering it! (And send me pics!)

PS More creative quilt/art oriented ideas are at Nina Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Fridays:  http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

A Great Grandma Gift: Hand Quilts

Way back in 1997, there was an awesome quilt exhibit at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, curated by renowned quilt scholar Barbara Brackman. It was called "Patterns of Progress: Quilts in the Machine Age," and looked at quilts from before to long after sewing machines became commonplace in homes. A fabulous book accompanied the exhibit.

At the time, I'd been  quilting about four years, and was mostly self-taught. I was transfixed by many of the exhibit quilts. One that I couldn't tear myself away from was the red-and-white one here:   http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/224272 .

(Momentary pause while you contemplate it.)  The quilt was made in Indiana or Kansas, by Amanda Elizabeth Garman for her daughter Bertha, born in 1878,  presumably from a tracing of Bertha's little hand.

On the red-and-white quilt, look how uneven those 'flying geese' triangles are.  Check out the upper left corner of the borders, where there's a fragment of a triangle. The improvisational quirkiness brings the quilt its charm and life, though it might peeve today's more traditional quilt judges.

Something else that annoyed 20th century quilters about this quilt is the machine quilting, according to Brackman. The 1878 quilt is machine quilted with straight lines. Some quilters looking at it 100 years later were disappointed that it wasn't hand quilted.

 (Ironic or confusing: machine quilting a hand quilt vs. hand quilting a hand quilt?)

To see the white quilting lines, click on the red-and-white quilt image. The lines are on a grid, putting an 8-line intersection at the center of each hand -  an emanating asterisk. It's waaaaaaay cool, like a palmistry diagram or Spiderman spraying web in all directions.

The quilt world's disapproving attitude toward machine quilting pre-1990 has completely transformed into an enthusiastic embrace by most. (The turning point, historians say, was Caryl Bryer Fallert's spectacular machine-quilted Corona II: The Solar Eclipse claiming top prize at the American Quilter's Society show in 1989.)

At the time of the Autry show, my mother's birthday was coming up. Amanda's quilt inspired me to make a blue-and-white hand quilt from my 3-year-old son's hand.  That's the quilt at the top of this post and below. As the pregnant mother of a toddler, I was way too impatient, busy and tired  to do all those hundreds of triangles, so I skipped the sashing, and the upper and lower borders became squares. For more movement, I had the geese on the left border fly north, and on the right, south.  The hands are raw edge applique (meaning I cut them out and stuck them on, without turning edges under).  I'm pretty sure I used fusible web behind the hands, and stitched a tiny zig-zag to catch the edges.  (I wonder if future museums will do exhibits about how quilts changed before and after the advent of fusible web. You think?)

The quilt was machine quilted, with echo quilting around the hands, then spirals in-between. Half spirals are at the edges. Here's a photo that shows the quilting:

I do wish I'd done the Spiderman  thing. Maybe it's not too late to stitch an asterisk into each one of those hands.

It's one of my pet theories that making things wonky is harder than making them precise... unless you're a beginner, which I was. On my quilt, the border spirals are bizarre, many geese points were cut off, and most mysterious of all of all, the  top horizontal border is 25 little checks across, while the bottom one is only, uh, 24.  How did I do THAT? (Thus the quilt measures 19 1/2" across on bottom, 20" across on top, and 21" high).  It took me years to learn how to make borders the same size. (Hint: Measure both borders, cut to the same size, and THEN attach them. The day I read that tip, my world shook.)

The finished quilt hung in my parents' stairwell  for 14 years. We hung it low, so the kids could reach it. Thus it has a big smudge where one of my babies tried to fit their hand into the outline, so it needs a good washing.

My baby boy is now in college. When we finally closed down my parents' house last year, I took it off the wall and brought it home with me. It is poignant in so many ways.

 The possibilities for hand quilts are infinite. You've probably seen some, and maybe even made one or more. They're particularly popular for children's quilts, because children grow!  Here are some interesting hand quilt ideas I found online:

• Hands don't have to march in symmetrical rows. Toss them across the surface helter-skelter. Or set the blocks askew, like this 1980 African American quilt  in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  
• Make them into tree leaves, like here and here.
• Zentangle (advanced doodle) inside a hand, and translate that to freemotion quilting on fabric (Scroll down on this page)
• Set them into intersecting rings, on a satin background, for a wedding chuppah (like quilter Ruth Harris' chuppah on one of my webpages, here. Third photo down.)  
• Add names, on or below the hands. You embroider them, for an old-timey look. 

And much, much, much more. If you do an image search on Google for "hand print" quilts, you'll have more ideas than you know what to do with! If you've made a hand quilt, I'd love to see it!

PS I shared this on Nina-Marie Sayre's Off-the-Wall Fridays, with lots of wonderful art quilts: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Sit Less, Sew More

And speaking of healthful quilts....

Did you catch the recent spate of  medical studies which show that sitting is killing us? Long hours in a chair are linked to increased risk of diabetes, cancer and plain old death . (If you want to make a quilt about the dangers of sitting, inspiring yet sobering infographics are here.)

I recently finished A.J. Jacobs' recent bestseller, Drop Dead Healthy, in which the humorist addressed the sitting problem by buying himself a 'treaddesk' - I don't recall the brand, but something like this:

The idea is to walk veeeeeeeeery slowly, while working on a laptop. It's not nearly as difficult or distracting as it sounds, Jacobs says. By the time he finished writing the book, he had clocked 1100 miles and lost an impressive amount of weight.

Two more testimonials are on this video. Summary: Two lovely ladies who work in hotel reservations switched from regular to treadmill desks, over their boss' doubts. They  lost 35 pounds each, and continued to do an excellent job booking rooms. They look incredibly fit and happy - you'd think they were park rangers who spent their days hiking through beautiful wilderness. Even the boss is thrilled!

The scary studies, glowy women and anecdotal evidence set my friends and me abuzz. Should we buy, or even build, a treaddesk? How about a cycle desk ?  (Same idea, but on an exercycle).

 Or maybe a  wee under-the-desk stepping machine, like this and this (one of many brands, not an endorsement). Could they possibly work?

That, naturally made me think about how to get more exercise while quilting. After a few moments of thought, it struck me that sewing machine designers invented treaddesks more than a 100 years ago...

Ta daaaaa! They're called treadles!

I'm not much of an oracle, but now I'm ready to predict that handcrank and treadle sewing machines are going to make a huge comeback. Not only do they provide exercise, but they're also about as "green" as you can get. (Plus, they have really cool bobbins.)

The antique treadle above is from Germany, with nautical detailing, and it has served for years as a  tchotchke-display dust-catcher in my house. The ironwork underneath features several elaborate, hard-to-dust anchors and chains. (Why would a 19th century German sewing machine have a nautical theme? Was this machine intended for use on boats?)
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The goldwork on the machine itself is glorious. There's a Botticelli-esque long-haired woman holding an anchor on the top right of the machine - sorry I couldn't quite capture it with the photo. The ellipticals at my gym don't have anything like it.

While I'm in a prophecizing mood, I'm also seeing a day, in the not too distant future, when antique treadle sewing machine bases will be added to ordinary desks and tables for a shabby chic, vintage approach to exercise. At the dinner table of the future, everyone will treadle as they eat. Even La-Z-Boy recliners will bow to the overwhelming medical evidence, and install pedals in its reclining foot rest. People will be able to watch tv, recline AND exercise, all at the same time.

Research about the hazards of sitting suggests another important health strategy for quilters. Quilters should squat, lift, carry to the garage, and toss in the trash barrel all those lovely magazines and books about making our sewing space more efficient. Next,  rearrange everything in the sewing room in the least efficient manner possible. That ironing surface that you strategically placed right next to your machine? Set it as far away as possible. Your rotary cutting setup should, of course, be in another distant corner - better yet, of another room. If your sewing area is in the basement, store your fabric in the attic, and vice versa.

OK, so you'll be perpetually annoyed, and get less done, but you'll also become more fit! The energy and the years you add to your life will doubtless outweigh the extra time it takes to finish anything!