Splendid Sampler II: Potted Paisleys

I have to say I was pretty flabbergasted when Pat asked me to contribute a block design for her Splendid Sampler II book. While I'm no stranger to making my own designs, especially since I like to do my own thing, making small 6 inch finished blocks is certainly not what I typically do.

Pat popped in for a brief visit at my shop.

Truthfully, I'm all about the quilting! Piecing, applique and embroidery (mostly machine embroidery these days as I am a Janome dealer) are just the thing I do to give myself a canvas to stitch out my heart. I am more likely to design a large block, set it on point with a bunch of negative space around it and quilt away!

I took it on as a skill builder, a challenge for myself to step outside of my comfort zone and take bite sized nibbles of techniques that I don't usually do. I think we all need to do that from time to time.

I'm getting ahead of myself! These Splendid Sampler designer posts get visited by all kinds of new folks, so an introduction is in order.

My name is Amy K. Johnson and I'm a quilter, teacher, shop owner, Janome dealer, blogger, mother and more. Not necessarily listed in order of importance, of course. You can find me at Sew Simple of Lynchburg in Virginia and online at AmyQuilts.com, where I sell my favorite rulers for ruler work, tools, fabric, and more. You can even see me over at Bluprint, aka Craftsy, where I teach Quilting with Rulers. Lately, I've been having the most quilting fun on my Facebook page AmyQuilts where I've been doing live quilting videos twice a week. We're currently doing a fun free motion quilt along using a panel and added borders to play with free motion and a few basic ruler work designs.

Quilting with rulers, also called free motion ruler work, on a stationary sewing machine is something I've been doing for quite a long time. In fact, that's how I first met Pat. She had heard the buzz about using rulers to quilt on a sewing machine and contacted me to be interviewed on her radio show on the April 4, 2016 episode and again this past September. She's an amazing interviewer. Like having a chat with a friend.

Fun fact: I'm a Janome dealer and my husband is my sewing machine tech. We joke that between us we know the guts and glory of sewing. He literally knows the guts of sewing machines and I get to use them to make all kinds of gloriously fun projects.

So what's a gal like me to do when challenged to design for such a specific project as the Splendid Sampler? Well, I took my favorite quilting design and turned it into an applique block.

 That's how Potted Paisleys came to be. A sweet block with a boho vibe featuring fusible applique. I love traditional applique with a modern twist and adore ones that look like a vase of flowers. So I turned some paisleys into a potted paisley plant.

Just like any other quilter doing the Splendid Sampler projects, I started with a fabric pull. AS a shop owner, I could have been matchy-matchy, but instead I went for a kind of controlled scrappy look. I pulled across several lines by Moda and put fat quarters of several colors from each line into my project box, plus a few Grunge and white on whites. This is where I pull all the fabrics for my blocks going forward.

I think it works, don't you? I don't have a bunch of blocks to show you, but I'm trying to do a few each month.

I used my new Cutterpillar light box to trace my shapes and to flip the diagram for my placement. Tip: When using one of these fabulous light "boxes" and your pattern has printing on both sides, use a less intense light selection. Mine has 3 choices. This will let you see the lines on the top facing side far better than the back. The brightest light will make them show equally.

Building up my applique...

 Final placement on my background....

Ta Da!

Looks a bit like one of my paisley play pieces, don't you think?

Since I'm really all about the quilting, I'll be doing a live Facebook video at 1pm Eastern US time with a tutorial on free motion quilting a paisley design at my Facebook page, AmyQuilts. I'll post the recording there so you can watch when the time suits you. Don't do Facebook? Check out my YouTube channel. The video will eventually be added to it, plus there are quite a few videos on free motion and ruler work.

Don't forget to enter the activities (giveaways?) over on the Splendid Sampler page, and check out the other 3 designer's blocks for this week.

If you're looking for a great companion block to mine, I nominate Flower Child by Carolee McMullin on page 102. A match made in hippie heaven.

Owl Quilt-Along with Amy: Week 3

Wheee! This week's (September 26) quilt-along video was fun. After stabilizing the quilt in week 2 with stitch in the ditch quilting (SID) using my AcuFeed SID foot (my machine's built-in version of a walking foot), it was finally time to play with free motion quilting.

Don't you just love his googley-eyed face?

You can catch the replay of the live video on the Amy's Quilting Adventures FB page. It's right at an hour long and I talk about the choices I make for the quilting while I make them. I also talk about a few basics of setting up for free motion in general, and then some details about setting up for free motion quilting on the Janome 9400. Then I quilt the entirety of this owl on camera.

He was pretty straightforward to quilt, mostly just outlining the different shapes but getting a bit creative with the feathers on his tummy and adding some highlights to that multicolored print at the tips of his wings. I kept the lines "sketchy" meaning they don't need to be right on top of the printed lines. This made it easier to stitch, to stay relaxed, be fun, and I think it fit the aesthetic of the panel.

I'm still using the dark violet thread so most of the stitching is pretty visible unless on the violet or black printed areas. I stitched up some freehand clamshell-like feathers for his belly and if you look closely, you can see a bit of the white pencil I used as reference lines. I started with two rows of clamshells and then went to one row per line as the feathers got bigger. I also began to curve the lines to follow the curve of his tummy.

I am sorry that we ran out of this panel so quickly. I had no way to know how many of you would want to join in and since the panel is stinkin' cute, the fabric company ran out after my second re-order. We do still have quite a bit of the below companion print if you need something for your backing.

The response to this quilt-along has been wonderful! Whether you bought fabric or are just following along to watch and learn, I am encouraged to do more of these. It's so fun to stitch and answer questions together. I am always a bit timid in telling people what to do and how to do it (there are a myriad of ways after all!) but as a teacher, there is a need to do just that to some extent. So I'm glad to get such positive feedback.

Thank you!

Anticipation!

I am absolutely dying to start sewing on my new Janome 8200! But my handy hubby is working on my table so it can be sunk level with the table's surface.

I didn't get an extension table with this machine, knowing that most of the time it will be in my table so I don't want to try any FMQ on it until I've got the smooth, stable, large flat space that I recommend for great free motion quilting.

I figure this is a good time to share the progress I've made on my silk whole cloth quilt.

Above is the back. It looks so much better without seeing all the blue markings!

Then the front. Still so much to do. There's a lot of poof to manage as I quilt this. It's fairly common for a show quilt to have a double batting for a faux trapunto look, but I may have over done it.

I really love these McTavish-y swirls right here, above.

My whimsical fan-tailed dove (above). I wanted to balance the right side's leaf and curl without duplicating it on the left side.

My husband has finished my table as I wrote this post, so now I can put my new machine (Janome 8200) through its paces. I will definitely do some practice pieces or other projects before I put this silk underneath it.

I'm going to share an update to my DIY sewing table soon as we found a great way to fit around all the nooks and crannies of a sewing machine without having to be a whiz with a jig saw.

There's no doubt that I'm excited about my machine and projects. I hope that you have sewing projects that you're working on that excite you as well.

Blog Update

I just wanted to post a quick blurb here to point out that the url for my blog is no longer using "blogspot.com." It is still hosted and created on the Blogger platform and any links that end in freemotionquiltingadventures.blogspot.com should still work.

I've done a "redirect" so that it all shows up on www.freemotionquiltingadventures.com. It's still quite a mouthful, but a little shorter. If you read the blog in a feed reader or RSS service, you might need to change it. But the blog has been set up this way for the last 3 days, so if you haven't noticed any issues, you're probably good.

In other news, I've set up an Etsy shop. I shared a picture of my "Finish" quilted wall art with a Facebook group that I am in and many of the members were interested in having their own word done up in a similar fashion. I'm totally new to the Etsy thing, but I figure it's another adventure to try!

I'm continuing to work on my wholecloth quilt. That silk is slippery! I am having great results with the YLI silk thread too. It's so fine, I have trouble seeing it as I stitch but that makes for great backtracking.

The silk/cotton blend of the Robert Kaufman Radiance is beautiful, but shiny as well as slick. I get some great light through my window and I've had to lower the shade a few times to keep from being blinded!

On the window ledge is one of those little solar powered flower things. It was a gift from a friend and it just makes me happy to see it in the window while I work at my machine. It also peeks out the window and greets me when I park in the driveway.

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend and get some time to free motion quilt.

A Friend Loves at All Times

I made this wall hanging for a friend of mine as a Christmas gift. It was fun and fast, especially since to finish it, I stretched and stapled it over a cheap painter's canvas.

I have several cardboard heart templates on hand, so I traced around one for the heart. I wasn't thinking ahead and centered the heart in the middle of the piece and found myself running out of space. I marked a base line for the word 'friends' after marking the heart and freehand wrote it with my air-erase marker.

I did the stitching with Filtec's Affinity thread in Rainbow coloration. It's the variegated version of glide thread. Smooth stitching! I used white sewing thread in the bobbin.

I took a few short videos with my new camera too. But I don't know if I'll share them as they download differently than what I've done before. The pics shown here are also from the new camera. I still haven't ventured off of the automatic settings yet. It's not a Christmas present as it was a planned purchase from my quilting income, but it feels like one.

I stitched on white Kona cotton over a layer of batting, no backing. It worked ok, but it was a little harder to move the piece under my needle. It felt a little floppy and I had to be very careful to keep my hands centered around the needle so the fabric didn't bunch up. To finish the piece I just stapled it around a cheap painter's canvas from the hobby store, AC Moore. Since the piece was stretched around the stretched canvas and wood frame, it didn't matter that there was no back. But I worry that the single layer of fabric might not hold up well to the staples.

We had a lovely Christmas and I hope you did too!

Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman with a Sewing Machine

I hope you enjoyed my speed quilting video on Saturday. I finished up that project already, which is fast for me even if time lapse photography doesn't speed up reality.

I shot another video as I worked on it some more, filling in the centers of some of the letters. Then I filled in all around the quote with little swirls, shells, leaves, flowers and more.

I started to quilt the surrounding area with some white Aurifil, but while the stitching looked great, it took away from the focus of the piece. So I had to do some frogging: rip it, rip it.

Then I whipped out my staple gun and stapled it to an economy quality, 12x18 inch stretched canvas from AC Moore. I'll probably glue some ribbon over the stapled edge and down over the edge of the stretcher bars.

I think it turned out great. I'll show you another picture of this piece on the wall when I show how I rearranged my studio next week.

I love this quote! We've got our tools and we're not afraid to use them! Obscure factoid: I can also do a decent bit of welding. But this is so much prettier!

I'll work up a little tutorial on how I get these letters to use for this and other projects in a few days or so. I'm really loving putting my work on canvas this way. No binding and fast!

Keep Calm and Sew On

I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest. I can get so many ideas to inspire my free motion quilting (and more!) but it can be a huge time sucking vortex!

But I love the different encouraging memes that are out there. (A meme is usually a picture with a message layered over it-- some funny, some encouraging, and some more opinionated.)

I made my own adaptation of a Keep Calm and Carry On poster. Did you know the originals were printed by the British government in 1936 in reference to the build up to World War II?

Fusible raw-edge applique stitched down with a free motion quilting outline, done in the same thread as the background, no stops and starts except for the interiors of some letters. The letters were made using MS Word on my computer, printed out and traced onto Wonder Under.

A friend asked if I had the Accuquilt letter die set when she saw this. I don't, but it wasn't hard to do these letters. But if I do more of these, I just might get it.  I use their dies whenever I can for some fast applique projects. There are a whole bunch of new dies at Accuquilt too and they are having a sale. See the link on the right.

Can you see where I started quilting the 'A'?

Various cotton scraps for the letters. I took way too long trying to make them go together without being too matchy-matchy.

I also tried something new. Since this was to hang on the wall, I thought I'd try stretching it over wooden stretcher bars (for artist canvas), and stapling it on the back. No binding needed! So it can't be washed, but do you wash your posters? (It can be dusted or lightly vacuumed, of course.)

Turns out that actual artist's canvases are cheaper than buying individual stretcher bars! So I picked up a 16x20 canvas for $8.44 at AC Moore's (on sale, but very frequently on sale according to clerk). Also turns out I should have made note of common sizes before making my project. I nearly didn't have enough fabric to go to the back! I think that shows how much a piece can shrink up once quilted, since I thought I had left plenty of room.

I ran out of staples and also decided I need my very own staple gun. The hubby's was a bit more than I could handle and it was a bit too grubby for my liking. When I get one, I'll show more pics of the back and how it's stapled down.

No binding, no hanging sleeve......I'll be using this method again for similar projects!

This will hang in the shop where I work part-time, to encourage those who are bringing in their machines for service or repair.

If you like quilty goodness on Pinterest, you might want to see some of my Pin boards. Do you use a timer like I do when indulging in Pinterest? (My son just read part of this post over my shoulder and wanted to know why 'quilty' was underlined by the spell checker. I explained that spell check doesn't consider it a word and he said,"That's silly, of course it's a word!")

Quilted Wallet

I've been wanting to stitch up my own wallet for some time now. I was using a Dave Ramsey envelope system thing for my dollars, plus a zippy pouch for my change and plastic. (And if you're familiar with Dave Ramsey, don't tell him I still have plastic! None of it is actually credit cards these days anyway.) Things were a bit unorganized to say the least.

I knew I wanted two zippered compartments and pockets for the plastic and other cards). I had just a little fabric left over from making my current purse so I was able to coordinate my wallet. Happy day! I didn't use a pattern and sort of winged it. Love me or hate me, that's just how I am. The down side to being able to wing it and create my own patterns is a very bad case of impreciseness. That's why I don't do a lot of intricate piecing! My sewing life is also littered with things that didn't quite work out as I imagined them, at least not the first time....

But this wallet turned out nicely! There are a few tweaks I'll do next time and I did make my own pattern on paper as I went so I can make it again with those tweaks. The magnetic snap was a...well....snap to put in too. Best thing is it's the perfect size to grab out of my heavy purse if I'm just popping into a shop and carry it as a clutch. I might put a little handle on it as a wristlet.

I used a serger for several of the seams and even sewed the zippers in with it, but since I didn't have a zipper foot for the serger, it was a bit wonky. I think the next time, I'll just use oversized zippers and then trim them down when I stitch the side seams. I'll probably add another zippered pocket, since I do use a cash system for 2-3 expense categories.

I used Peltex under the outside fabric for a nice, stiff outside and did a bit of free motion quilting following the fabric's pattern too. I think it could use some stitching around the outside edges for a more finished look, but I'm glad I made it.

Pumpkin Hexies

I finished up this fall themed table runner yesterday. I love working my free motion quilting magic for this client and her wool applique. She does great work and makes it easy for me to do my thing by having everything nicely stitched, pressed, and ready to go.

The hexagons were stitched with continuous curves using rulers and then everything else was done in a swirly thing around the applique and in the white. Nice thicker cotton batting gave the piece good dimension without being too bulky.

As it happens to us all sometimes, I ran out of thread in my bobbin with just this little bit left!

  Choosing the thread for the green border was the hardest part of this quilt. It's a sort of camo green with black dots. I kept thinking I had found the perfect shade, but no...

That 5000M cone of Isacord looked like just the thing when I bought it. How long until I use that up?! In the closeup below, you can see that the winning color was actually brown!

 Thread colors will fool you on the spool. You've got to lay them across the fabric to see how they'll look.

The backing was a nice flannel. This was a first for me, but it worked out perfectly.

I decided to use white in the bobbin for the white are around the hexies and the fuzz of the flannel really subdues the color difference.

That's my last customer project on hand. Now to choose a new project and the list is insanely long, plus there's my sweet girl dying for mama-made clothes (Will that continue once she start going to public school this fall?) and some samples and things to make for the shop (www.sewsimple.biz). I want to work on a "show quilt"....maybe. But I also want to do something smaller and fun. Hubby said I should sew on something fun and just for myself this past Sunday and I couldn't think of anything. Gotta watch that, I don't want to lose my enjoyment of quilting!

Blogger's Quilt Festival- Farm Quilt Finale

Finally! The farm quilt is done! Whew, I loved doing it, but it seemed to take forever and life conspired to give me only little bits of time to work on it.

Binding done and time for a bath. Special note: If you use Fons and Porter's white mechanical pencil on dark fabric and then the fabric gets darker when wet, the white will get very bright and act like it will never go away......But it does. Don't freak out. Ahem.

Time to assemble the foam board so the quilt can dry flat. This 6ft.x8ft. piece takes up nearly the entire room!

I have been showing shots of this in progress for a while and have been accused of being a tease with it. It's featured in a few of my free motion quilting videos too. It lays so nice and flat, square. It was a challenge to not over quilt this quilt as it was just so fun to do, but it is destined for a bed and no one wants a stiff quilt on their bed.

 I don't have a big enough area to get a good square, full view shot of the quilt without moving my entire bed out of my room. (Doesn't everybody have a huge design wall behind their headboard?) So I took the best pics I could while up on the staircase overlooking the table.

I am super pleased with how this quilt turned out. My friend wanted "something farm themed but not cutesy". I think I will do another quilt in a similar silhouette style someday, but definitely smaller!

 My little sparrow. I quilted bigger swirls around the branches of the tree to give a nod to foliage, not just bare branches.

Two shots of the back.

Finally, a closer shot of the ruler work. I love how this has turned out! I am so happy to have figured out I could use the ruler toe for use with the Janome 1600P in a frame system could be used on my Janome 6600 for regular sit down free motion quilting on my sewing machine. I am thrilled to be able to share the technique here with so many wonderful quilters! If you're new here, click to find more about using long arm rulers for free motion quilting on a domestic machine.

Some stats:

• 72x72 inches.
• Machine appliqued
• My own design, but inspired by some illustrations in some of my kids' early reader books.
• A commissioned quilt so I don't get to keep it.
• Made and quilted on my Janome 6600.
• Hobb's 80/20 batting

To top it off, it's finished just in the nick of time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival where I'm entering it in  the home machine quilted category. Maybe somebody will like it enough to nominate it for a viewer's choice award? Maybe a few votes? Hmmmm...what is the etiquette for these voting things? I dunno. But I do know that if you'd like to see some fabulous quilts, head over to the festival for links to a ton of great quilts and blogs. You might even want to enter one of your own! Plus there's some great giveaways.