X & +

There's no question that Brigitte Heitland from Zen Chic is my favorite fabric designer. I have loved most of her collections, to the point of collecting them obsessively, but I was a little disappointed when Day in Paris first came out. But when I actually saw it in person, it began to grow on me, and when I saw X & + made with Day in Paris, I fell madly in love with it.

I really enjoyed working on this quilt because of the gorgeous fabrics, and I knew the quilting just had two jobs: play up the huge borders and show off the fabrics on the blocks.

This quilt was rather easy to design quilting for as I didn't have a story in mind (unlike Rainbow Road), so I just wanted to play up the design of the quilt. I created some channels in the borders that extend the block design, and filled them with a combination of swirls and more linear designs.

I quilted each block with a few different designs, including serpentine lines, ribbon candies, straight line echoes, and dot-to-dot designs.

This quilt is pretty big at 83" x 83", and I had such a great time working on it. The colors are perfect and I'm really happy with how the quilting turned out. I hadn't quilted a swirl or ribbon candy in several months, and I missed it!

Quilting Tutorial: Steampunk Gears

When I quilted Rainbow Road, I had the idea of a Matrix-style steampunk city, so I tried to do a steampunk design of gears and teeth. I wasn't sure how it'd turn out, but I really liked the result. I've received requests for a tutorial on how to quilt this, so I'm trying my hand at a how-to guide.

I suggest practicing drawing this before trying it on a quilting machine. This design is actually just a variation on swirls, so it'd be helpful if you already knew how to quilt swirls. That being said, let's get started.

First, this design does need to be boxed into a space. Then, from a corner, we start with a traditional swirl. Swirl to the center and come back out. It's very important to close the swirl with another echo outside of it.
Now, we add some teeth.
After we make some teeth, we close it with another echo, this time the echo should touch the edge of the teeth.
After this comes the most important echo. After this you can quilt as many echoes on top of it as you wish, but there must be at least one extra besides the one that touches the teeth or the effect will be lost.
From that point on, quilt more gears. Once in awhile, I like to throw in one with a different shape, a square shaped gear teeth. It's harder to quilt than the triangle teeth for me, so I throw it in only once in awhile for a change of pace.
And so on and so forth.
I really like how this design looks on certain types of quilts, and I hope this tutorial was helpful!

Season of Gifts

At first, I just wanted to take a little break from blogging. Just a few weeks. But then, once I got off the schedule, it became easier and easier to just let it keep slipping. And before I knew it ... a few months slipped by. I've been spending less time quilting in the past few months and more time on other endeavors, but I managed to finish a few gift quilts finally.

The first one is a quilt and pillow set for my daughter. She is going through a massive unicorn phase, so I knew she'd love this panel set by Sarah Watts from her Crescent collection. It was a rather large quilt so it took awhile, but I did a simple allover paisley design.

Next up is another large panel I quilted for my mother. When she requested a quilt, she wanted two things: black / white and no piecing. I found a gorgeous Aztec inspired panel on Honest Fabric which was then printed on demand, and I quilted this with straight lines. I won't lie ... this was a really hard quilt because without piecing and seam lines to follow, it is really hard to keep the lines straight across the quilt. Overall I still think it looks nice and I sure hope my mom likes it!

After that is another challenging quilt, but challenging for a completely different reason. My mother-in-law had given me a very old quilt that her mother had pieced years ago, and it was by far one of the most challenging tops I'd ever wrestled with. The whole thing was wavy, puckery, and the fabrics were stretched badly in areas. I almost gave up on it and wanted to send it to someone else to finish it, but in the end powered through. I used a loopy design that was at least very quick to do, though I could not avoid quilting a lot of tucks into it. I probably should have sent it to someone else who had a better idea of how to handle tops like these, but I knew it'd mean more if I finished it myself. At the end of the day, I can only hope she's happy with it.

Finally, piggybacked onto the vintage quilt, I finished a table runner for my sister-in-law as a housewarming present. Never mind that she moved into that house several years ago! She picked the fabric and the pattern, and I really enjoyed making this modern and beautiful table runner. The pattern is called Calamity Crosses by Jenifer Dick. I quilted this with straight lines only in an improv kind of way, and I really like how it turned out.

With these gift quilts off my plate and off my mind, I will now have to decide which of my own quilt tops to quilt next. It's not an easy decision because I have ... 93 of them. (There, I said it!)

Rainbow Road

Rainbow Road, pattern (originally called Prism) and fabric by Alison Glass, is actually a very old quilt top lying in my stash. I've wanted to quilt it for a long time, but I kept putting it off because it is the scariest type of quilt to deal with: the negative space quilt. Negative space quilts offer infinite potential, and also infinite chances to not reach that potential.

As far back as a few years ago, I already had a story and a plan for this quilt. I imagined a futuristic steampunk city with a lot of paths criss-crossing in the air, and at the top of it all was a rainbow road, a (somewhat unreachable) holy grail for the citizens of the city.

To give the quilt a feeling of depth, I quilted a lot of roads that criss-cross in the air, representing a top-down view of the city.

Since the theme is inspired by steampunk, on the background areas between the paths I quilted a lot of gear type motifs. Whether or not it actually invoked a feeling of steampunk, I cannot say, but I love the look!

The rainbow road itself is quilted with a dot-to-dot design that I sort of made up as I went along. I really like how it allows the beautiful rainbow fabrics to pop up.

Rainbow Road isn't my first paths-in-the-air quilt, as I previously quilted Skyways with a similar idea. But Skyways represents a happy futuristic city set in the clouds with flowers and greenery beneath, while Rainbow Road is definitely grittier.

I love the front of this quilt, but I might love the back even more. This is truly a double-sided quilt, and you can really see the details on the back.

I'm so very happy with this quilt because of the story and how it came out pretty much as I envisioned it. It was almost 3 years in the planning, but the end result is so very special to me!

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Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Powered by Quilting, and Meadow Mist Designs.

Atmosphere Quilt Along

I really wasn't looking for a new quilt along. I already had several block-of-the-months to keep me busy, not to mention a slew of other projects I had queued up. But when the Atmosphere quilt along was announced, well, how could I resist?

I really wasn't looking to buy a kit. I had bins full of scraps, and shelves full of fat quarters. But when the lovely bundle of 34 Kona fabrics came wafting under my nose, well, how could I resist?

So I fell headlong into the Atmosphere quilt along. Cutting and organizing the fabric was arguably the toughest part!

The blocks are simple and straightforward, just some flying geese and half-square triangles combined with squares and rectangles. But the beautiful array of colors made it so exciting to work with.

This quilt was a joy to put together. All that rainbow goodness was making me super happy. I guess color really acts as a pick-me-up.

I haven't done a rainbow quilt top for quite awhile, and I love this! The quilt pattern also comes with a minimalistic version that I might have to do sometime as well.

For Want of a Magnet (My Favorite Longarm Tools)

I prepared this blog post several years ago but then totally forgot about it. Due to our season of quarantine and having two little kids stuck at home, I've been very slow on projects and have nothing to show. I thought it'd be a good time to post this instead! Despite this post being old and the links probably not all working, in a way this post is more valid than ever because I've been using these tools for the last few years to know they're holding up well.

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I've been quilting on a longarm for less than a year, which doesn't make me an expert, but I feel it's a respectable amount of time for me to finally share my favorite longarm tools. A lot of these are total game-changers for me!

Disclaimer: I provided some links to the sites that sell some of this stuff, but I have no affiliation with any of these parties and these links are not affiliate links.

Stapler

But then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll, I'll, I'll set the building on fire ...

Milton - Office Space

Before I got a longarm, I've researched lots of methods about loading quilts quickly and with as much control as possible. While there are methods I haven't tried, when I found one I liked I stuck with it. And that's staples.

I first saw this method demonstrated by Mandy Lyons, and I admit, I was initially skeptical. But I was so tired of pinning that I decided to invest in a stapler and give it a shot. Immediately, I loved it! It's much quicker than pinning, I have as much control as pins, and I never prick myself or risk bleeding over the quilt.

Spray Bottle

I picked up this tip from Beth of Cooking Up Quilts. While stapling made actually loading a quilt easier, I still had to iron the backing and I haaaated that. But after reading Beth's tip about using a spray bottle to de-wrinkle as I load, I was so tempted that I bought a spray bottle immediately. And it has worked great!

I've loaded a few quilts now with Beth's tip about using the spray bottle, and it was wonderful. I can skip that pesky ironing of the backing stage entirely now. It has made loading so much more pleasant!

Handi Grip

What's just slightly less annoying than a ruler that slides in rotary cutting? A ruler that slides in longarm quilting. I always have to pick those stitches out, and it's not fun. I use quite a bit of rulers in my quilting, so this handy (no pun intended) little Handi Grip tape has really come in handy. It is like a sticky tape on the back of the ruler that pretty much prevents slippage. I have some on the back of each of my rulers.

Needle Alignment Magnet

And I save the best for the last. I hated changing needles on the longarm because I'm never completely sure the needle is pointed toward the right position. In fact, several times when I was sure it was correct, I realized that when I tighten the screw, it likes to shift just a tad. And that tad seems to make quite a difference in how happy my quilting experience is!

Finally I figured somebody has to have solved this problem. I looked for quite awhile before I found these. I couldn't believe they're not more widely available! With this little magnet, now I can see whether my needle is pointed in the exact right position I need it to, and I can easily calibrate to compensate for the shift that usually happens when I tighten the screw. I love it, and changing a needle is no longer guesswork!

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So these are some of my favorite, not-as-widely-known tools. What's yours?

Unintended ~ A Mini Haphazard

If there's one part of the quilting process that I hate more than anything ... it's loading a quilt onto the longarm. After quilting Modern X, I realized since Modern X isn't a very big quilt, I have a little bit of room to put another quilt on there! That's what I call a freebie, since I didn't have to load it.

The only quilt top I have that actually fits is my mini Haphazard quilt that I made late last year. I named this quilt Unintended because it truly was unintended. The fabric came out of my Rock Star quilt, because I made a mistake reading the instructions and ended up cutting twice as much of the black and white fabric as I needed. The fabric was too special for me to put aside, so I made them into half-square triangles and then loaded up my Haphazard generator to get a nice 36" x 36" arrangement.

For the first time ever, I decided to try matchstick quilting on my longarm. Nancy from Grace and Peace Quilting had previously given me some advice for how to do it, and I'm very grateful, because otherwise I would have totally messed it up! Just like free-motion is not as hard as it looks, matchstick quilting is not as easy as it looks.

Matchstick quilting isn't particularly exciting to do, but there's a sort of zen-like calm to it. I think it turned out really well, and I'm very happy with it. It is so striking, and the quilting adds such a lovely texture. I'm not sure yet where it will go, but I think it will look great hanging up in my quilting room!

But after making this quilt, I realize that I really want another black and white Haphazard quilt, except throw-sized. I guess I'll have to do that one soon.

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Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Powered by Quilting, and Meadow Mist Designs.