Fill'er Up Quilting Designs

It's time for a book review! Since I love free motion quilting, it's no surprise that I drool over any books by award winning quilters.

The book, Fill'er Up: Quilting Designs is by Renae Haddain, professional longarm quilter and top prize winner of many shows. Her most recent win was Best of Show with "Fiesta Mexico" at the 2013 American Quilter's Society show in Paducah, KY. That's big, y'all!

She credits this quilt as the catalyst for the book and it features prominently in it. You can see the quilt and learn more about it in this video interview and post on the AQS blog.

I was in a funk on Friday and had no energy to do anything, and I mean anything! Then, despite the 2+ inches of snow (in southern Virginia) the mail carrier dropped of this book for me! My brain could now lay off the guilt trip of doing nothing because it now had learning and research to do, while my body got to rest.

She talks about filler qualities: thread color and weight, filler scale vs. motifs, and design complexity. Then discusses the logistics of stitching which is geared towards the longarm user, but still has good info for those of us who move the quilt  instead of the machine.

I love the following quote from the book:

"I have learned that if I try to plan every stitch, I paralyze myself."

In my opinion, that's the beauty of free motion, the freedom of the fillers!

Then she goes on to talk about choosing designs before giving an extensive pictoral gallery of quilting designs. In many of the photos, computer generated lines have been super-imposed over the stitching to make it easier to see or to illustrate the direction of stitching.

She's got a good section on ruler work too, and since I love doing ruler work on my Janome sewing machine, it gives me some great ideas.

And the book is finished with a delicious offering of her quilts in a wonderful display of designs and colors.

I love this book! I also have her other book, Amazing Ways to Use Circles & Rays, though I don't have her "rays" ruler.I'll get it one of these days!



I really recommend both books as they are so inspiring and informational.

Organizing my Works in Progress

 The McTavish-along is getting off to a good start and I am so glad to have so many folks comment and link up. Isn't free motion quilting fun? And to learn from one another via the internet is just fabulous!

One thing I learned, thanks to fabulous appliquer Karen @ http://karensquiltscrowscardinals.blogspot.com/  (Not Karen McTavish) was that I had become a no-reply blogger! Oh the shame! Seriously, I understand privacy issues, but if you're a blogger like me who is trying to build a circle of like minded friends, or if you're asking a question of a blogger, you really shouldn't be a no-reply commenter. This means folks can't respond directly to a comment you leave! Apparently this setting has a mind of it's own in blogger sometimes and it's a good idea to check to make sure you aren't set to no-reply. (Leave yourself a comment on your own blog and see if the email you get shows no-reply instead of your email addy.)

I've got a ton of half finished projects that have been sitting in my recliner in my studio. Messy, messy. My "studio" is a small room just inside the front door. Can't let it get too messy.

It almost felt like the chair of shame, taunting me with all the unfinished projects. Some are for me, some for classes I teach, some for the shop I work at one day a week. The big grey piece is a commissioned quilt I'm working on.

 I bought another big drawer unit this week. I plan to use it for works in progress and get that chair emptied out!

Got the drawer in place. Looks like I might as well move some pictures off the wall....

Have I mentioned lately that I homeschool my kids? Yep. Never ending battle for time at my house. Today during history, I let the kids doodle while I read aloud.

This sweet girl is a creative one! Look at her doodle! I think my quilting is rubbing off on her a bit. This past week she made a dress! All by herself, no pattern or anything. Now, it's not going to be worn by anything other than a stuffed animal or doll, but still!

I gave the dress a spot of honor on my design wall. She's already using my Janome 3160 to piece a doll quilt. That stop-start button and the speed slider are awesome when teaching a child to sew!

 

Here's one of my WIP's, a sample for the shop and inspiration for a class I'll be teaching at the end of March. Gotta get a binding done!

 And my main project, a commissioned quilt for a friend. Look at all those tails to finish off. It's going well, but I need to get it done!

I have a border in mind that will involve ruler work and an area of McTavishing where there's a bit of water in the scene.

 Here's a FMQ sample for the shop that still needs binding. I need to get it done and back in the shop. I quilted it at the shop (Sew Simple of Lynchburg VA) on the Janome 8900.

It stitched up beautifully and the automatic tension worked wonderfully. No adjustments needed.

Then there were these blocks I did on the shop's Janome 15000. These are designs that come in the machine, created by Jill Buckley, aka The Quilt Rat.I need to piece these into a runner or wall hanging.

And another piece for a demo I did a few months ago still isn't done.

 

And this purse, from the post Quilting to add Color, from back in November.....is still just a set of quilted pieces.

 But, look! The new drawer is filled.

And the chair is revealed....sort of.....I threw a quilt over it. Doesn't it look better? Wish I had time to sit in it!

 The blog has seen a huge jump in readers lately, so if you are new, don't forget to follow the blog with whatever method you choose (there are links in the sidebars) or bookmark the page.

McTavishing Monday: A Free Motion Link Party

It's time for a free motion quilting adventure! It's McTavishing Monday and my very first link party! (Linky is no longer valid) I am so excited to share this quilt-along with you all and totally tickled to tell you that I've got some goodies for you in the next few weeks.

McTavishing is the namesake design of professional longarm quilter, Karen McTavish (below). She brings a certain unconventional flair to the quilting world and she does the most incredible traditional quilting, plus brings her own creative style to her work and influences the work of many other quilters. I think she's pretty awesome! I'll write more about Karen as we continue the quilt-along, but I thought we'd better dive on into this design.

Her book, Mastering the Art of McTavishing, has gone out of print, so snag yourself a copy if you can find it! But the design is also featured in her other books, most noticably The Secrets of Elemental Quilting.

She's got a new book coming out early this summer and I hope to have more on it later in the quilt-along. Of course, her book Custom Curves was the first book I snagged after finding the Janome ruler toe and finding that I could use longarm rulers when quilting on my sewing machine.

 

Some fairly recent McTavishing of Karen's. I love seeing the spiral curves in the picture below as I tend to throw in the spirals when I quilt this design.

Beautiful trapunto scroll work with McTavishing below. Karen loves to take the traditional and put just a little something new and wonderful into it.

Below is a drawing of a great design featuring McTavishing that Karen sent me for the quilt-along. You can really see the swirls of movement in this design. It's a repeated series of curved and curvy lines echoed 3-4 times. There's some back tracking required to move from line to line of stitching and also to move to a new area. Oddball spots are filled in with what Karen calls "C's".

Here's a series of videos with Karen teaching McTavishing:






She mentions "Wonder Woman hair" and the Yin and Yang symbol to describe the wild curves she is going for in this design.  Keeping the words in my mind help me to loosen up and swish around.



There are several other videos of Karen on YouTube and more on McTavishing by other folks too. Take a look if you'd like. I've even done my own video on it:

And you can see the difference between THE McTavishing and MY McTavishing! That's one reason for this quilt-along; I want to improve the 'swishy-ness' of my McTavishing! I recognize that some of the difference might just be the difference in the range of motion between the longarm and quilting on a domestic sewing machine. And then the machine does swoosh so smoothly over the quilt with a longarm....but I love the control I have with my sewing machine. Anybody else see the irony in me wanting to get away from my control freak self and get loose and swishy? I want to improve my McTavishing and I thought some of you might want to join me.

Some still shots from the piece from my video, above and below.

Here are two pictures from a quilt project I did over three years ago below. This must have been shortly after reading Karen's Mastering the Art of McTavishing.

And this last picture is my latest McTavishing practice piece. I tried really hard to get more swish to my curves. I found I had to increase my speed a lot more than I'm used to in order to keep my stitch length from getting too long as I swooshed and swished around. That made it harder to hit my backtracks. But it's somewhat better.

You can also visit the second Free Motion Quilting Quilt-along post featuring McTavishing.
Third week of McTavishing
Fourth Week of McTavishing
Fifth Week of McTavishing 
Free Motion Quilting video: McTavishing
BTW- I'm linking up this linky with Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.

Blue Bobbins and Short Feet

 I am passionate about free motion quilting and as such, I am also very focused on a well-running machine, quality thread, good needles, and all that makes for a great quilting project. This extends to my bobbins.

Generic on left, Janome in center and right.

 I am particular about my bobbins. In my post, May Your Bobbins be Smooth, I showed you these pics which show a difference in bobbins. I have found that Janome bobbins don't have any noticible improvement when used with a bobbin washer (Little Magic Bobbin Genies ), but the generics definitely improve with it.

I prefer Janome Bobbins . Look for the J.

Bobbins are like the bras of the sewing machine. (I know, just run with me on this....) Without a good bra, nothing else looks as good as it could. Buy a quality thread and stick it on a generic bobbin with a snag and you'll have all kinds of problems. Wind it all snarly and things will bunch up. Put a metal bobbin in a machine designed for plastic bobbins and it may run ok, but it will dig in and hurt your bobbin case. Not to mention if it is the wrong size!

You'd be surprised how many machines come into the shop with the wrong bobbin in them and how putting the right bobbin improves things dramatically!

I also have a thing for threads and keeping my threads orderly, so when Janome came out with their Cherry Blossom Bobbins a few years ago, I jumped up and bought 3 sets. You can imagine my joy when Janome Blue Bobbins became available! I got a box this week and they make me happy.

Basic sewing thread stays on my regular bobbins but I use the pink ones for my quilting threads. I have several types of quilting threads, so I can now divide them up further.

I also got this Applique Foot F for stitching applique. It is a much shorter foot than most, to make it easier to turn around applique. Only the front portion rests on the project. I love machine applique, so I'm glad to have another helpful tool in my toolbox!

 

 It snaps on the regular snap on foot "ankle", but that back pin goes over the back of the ankle and the foot sits more solid that other snap on feet.

I had all my quilting derailed by horrible back spasms this week and I'm finally getting back (ha!) to normal. I can't wait to get back to quilting and getting ready for our first McTavishing Linky party, dubbed the McTavish-along!

The links above are Amazon affiliate links, great if you order online, but I urge you to buy from your local sewing machine dealer when possible.