Showing posts with label custom quilting. Show all posts

Go Hoosiers

Were you able to watch the NCAA game between Indiana and Miami Monday night? We don't normally watch sports, but we purchased a one-day Sling pass so that we could watch. It took most of the first quarter to get it to download and install, but if we would have planned ahead a bit better that could have been avoided. Anyway, football has changed quite a bit since I last watched it, especially the clothing and helmets (hope these helmets are way more protective than those of yesteryear). I felt the refs were not wonderful, but I guess that's nothing new. 

Mendoza! Wow! What a game.
Image borrowed from the internet. 

In other Hoosier news, my son finally received his IU acceptance letter last Thursday. We went out for dinner to just off campus to celebrate and then ran up the street to Sample Gates to grab a photo. It was so frigid outside that we got a picture with no other people in it. 
I haven't managed much personal sewing this week. I have one seam sewn on each of the 60 HST I need to make for the Magnificent mystery. 
Over the weekend I decided that it's time to pull out the paint by numbers kit I bought a few years ago. Actually I had purchased one each for my daughter and me, but there are four total kits and I don't remember why. I do vaguely remember that the company sent the wrong one, so that would account for one, but not sure why there are two spare. 

Anyway, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and read different discussion forums and decided to start with the canvas that has the biggest shapes. This one is not mounted, so I decided to follow someone's tutorial on dry mounting it to an adhesive foam board. She recommended staying at the 16" x 20" size so that it is easier to frame. 

I measured and trimmed the canvas. It was difficult to mount to the board. If I use this method again, I would work from the bottom up rather than the top down as was shown in the tutorial. I think it might be a bit easier to keep everything aligned. I used my seam roller to smooth everything out. I had to add some painters tape to the bottom edge where the canvas didn't cover the sticky.
My next step will be to put some clear gesso over the canvas--hopefully tonight. I did take lots of photos of each part of the canvas so that I have a reference and can enlarge areas if needed. A lot of the areas to be painted are pretty microscopic. 
I'm still making progress with my knitting. I'm now in the eighth skein of 10. 
Over on the quilting front, it's been pretty slow. I spent three days last week doing the custom quilting on Sara's quilt. This is similar to the quilt she made before her daughter was born, but different colors and different orientation. She wanted it to be quilted the same, so that saved a lot of design time for me. 


For reference, here is the original one from last January. 
Each of these was quilted free hand on the owls and branches and had the Midnight Sparkle pantograph quilted in the background. Last time I buried all the panto threads at the end and this time I buried most as I went along, which was a huge time saver.

I also quilted Windswept on Susan's quilt.
And Star Pop on Linda's quilt. 
One final thing--I was bored the other day and clicked on "Amazon Haul". Have you ever looked at that? There's some weird things there. I found this and just had to buy it. 🤣😂 The pink cast is a reflection of my shirt. Side note: I am allergic to cats, so this sign was a completely frivolous purchase. We don't do indoor pets other than fish.
Look at this review I found. 

I know we're supposed to be avoiding Amazon as much as possible, but when you live somewhere where not much is that close, it can be inconvenient to bypass. And they deliver relatively quickly, right to your door. That being said, many times when I'm at the UPS store doing quilt drop offs, there are people returning HUGE amounts of things to Amazon. Like multiple heaping laundry baskets full, or multiple large shipping boxes full. The UPS store usually has a large shipping crate on a pallet sitting next to the registers, full of Amazon returns. 😳 Maybe it is too easy to buy and return things. Also, some of the things have they are returning have clearly been used, like Halloween costumes, soft home goods, etc. I don't think that is right. Anyway, the sign is a hoot and we will have a great white elephant gift should we need one. 

That's all I have for this week. I'll be back Sunday with the OMG link up. Hopefully I can get all those HST sewn, trimmed, and assembled before then!

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The One in Which I Voluntarily Did Custom Quilting

Once again the week has just flown by. I don't have a ton of progress on anything, mostly because I voluntarily chose to do custom quilting on one of the quilts my guild donates to a local charity for fundraising. As always, I seriously underestimated how long it will take me to complete a custom. Remind me to double my time estimate next time I decide to do one of these for someone else.

I have found that people who are not quilters can't tell much of a difference between edge to edge and custom. So why did I decide on custom for this quilt? Well, it was a round robin quilt and the makers had different design aesthetics. There was a lot of plain gray fabric that I felt needed to be dressed up. I started by sketching ideas in mark up mode in the photos app on my iPad. When I was satisfied with my design, I started working on the quilt. I thought I could get in done in a weekend. HA HA HA. It took me four days. I used nine thread colors on it.

My goal with this was to avoid having to switch between my ruler base and my iQ. I'm not sure why, but adding the ruler base always changes my tension significantly. So I ended up using a lot of line pattern to replicate ruler work. Basically I had to mark along each area with a clicker, place and adjust patterns, and then stitch. So it was slow. I drew a lot of my own patterns, including the vine I used in the green borders, the pumpkin seed in the yellow border, all the aforementioned line patterns, and a brick pattern I used on the silo. I also drew all my cross hatch blocks, but some of those didn't quite go as planned. I need more work on ones that go around designs. I did the black borders freehand.

I then decided to go with a pantograph (Ansley Park 2) in a really tiny, 4" row height, scale to fill in all the gray areas. I forgot to measure before I started, so I guessed at my pantograph area.

Here's what my pattern ended up looking like on my iQ.

Prior to taking leave of my senses, I completed two quilts for others. 

This one is Charlene's, quilted with Winterfest.

Sally's, quilted with Ansley Park 2. Yes, this was my trial run for the custom quilt. 

I did make a very, very, very small amount of progress on my OMG, but didn't take a picture.

Oh, and I almost forgot! I can share the quilt I tested with you. This pattern is called Silly Goose and you can purchase it from Yellow Umbrella Quilts. The pattern has two variations and I found it quick and enjoyable to sew.

I used the trimmed HST to make the back.

We've had a couple frosts, so the outdoors plants are not looking ideal. My indoor lettuce is almost ready to harvest and I set up my second Aerogarden over the weekend. I planted four of the herb pods that came with it and two of chives that I sowed. I wanted to do another chive plant, but I only had stickers for two of the pods. I found a shop on Etsy that 3D prints reusable pod covers and ordered some, but they haven't shipped yet. I'll be ready for my next crop though.

We gave the chickens a new food--coolapeno peppers. These are jalapeños with much less heat. As long as they were chopped in tiny parts, the chickens were happy to eat them. We also discovered that fresh clover is the best thing ever!!!


We also discovered that there is a persimmon tree growing just beyond our property line. Someone bought the lot it sits on and clear-cut almost the entire, densely wooded lot. 😭😭 The creatures are not happy, nor are most of the neighbors whose property is adjacent. Anyway, they left a few trees right along the property line. We were trying to decide how many Norway Spruce to purchase to try to regain some of the privacy and noticed the persimmons. We had no idea it was there. My neighbors discovered they have paw paws along their lot line. Lots of discoveries by those of us trying to preserve the trees. 

We were out on a walk the other day when we noticed what could only be squash blossoms growing on a vacant lot (next to the clear cut lot). This lot had been mostly cleared recently, though they left the large trees on that one.  Anyway, we found a bunch of baby gourd plants and some other weird plants that turned out to be moonflowers. How on earth did all those get there? Moonflowers are highly toxic.  Aren't the seed pods weird looking?

One last bit of news. After 5.5 years, my son is getting his braces removed tomorrow!

Linking with My Quilt Infatuation and Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Alycia Quilts.

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