Almost at the Half Way Point

I am almost at the half way point on this quilt - OH MY GOODNESS!!  I cannot wait to be finished.  I have half a dozen more ideas floating in my head and I have quilts coming in soon!!!  Tomorrow is our second Christmas with my Husbands family...a day of play...then after that I have to buckle down because that only gives me one more week to finish the quilting on this.

I have been getting a lot of questions about what batting or what thread I'm using.  This is Glide thread on the top and in the bobbin - the cream fabric is mainley natural muslin - meaning there are natural imperfections in the fabric.  I like the look personally - and I like even more the idea of an elegant design over what is normally thought of as an inexpensive utilitarian fabric.  I love love love Glide thread because it tends to quilt up somewhere between a very fine thread and a thicker polyester thread...it's perfect for sort of, all purpose quilting.  You can do a lot of dense quilting without a terrible amount of thread build up or you can do really simple designs and they look very elegant and fancy with Glide's bit of shine.  I wind my own bobbins and have yet to use the magna bobbins but I hear great things about them!  I also like that Glide comes off the cone really smoothly.  I have only had one cone out of the forty or more that I've purchased from them that I had to use a thread net over.  (The price is right too - and they have one all across the board price...so I pay the same for the thread as you!  I am not affiliated - just a fan!)

I am using two layers of batting - and I prefer two layers of a lower loft batting to one layer of high loft batting.  It just gives a better more fuller look in my opinion.  Dare I say I even like the look of a "faux" trapunto look with two layers of batting and dense quilting versus real machine trapunto over top another layer or two layers of batt.  Or maybe I'm just lazy and would rather quilt the crumbs out of my quilt instead of cut away batting...  LOL!  :)

The top batting is Hobbs Tuscany Wool - I have never used this brand of wool before this quilt and I have never made a quilt this size with wool, but I do like Hobbs 80/20 quite a lot and they are very consistent so I thought it would be a good wool to start with.  I do love the fullness and the loft...but I don't like the memory retention and the sort of looseness of the batting.  When on the frame I like to poke the sides of my quilt where there is no top with pins while I am adjusting things and wool doesn't make a very good pincusion!  :)

The bottom layer is an off brand equivalent to Warm and Natural.  I have no real strong feelings about Warm and Natural either way other than to say that Warm and White tends to beard and beard bright white through my fabric so I rarely if ever use it anymore.  I honestly don't care for cotton either because I'm a machine quilter - I feel like poly and poly blends show off the quilting better and I like even more that poly batts tend to retain fold lines less.  I do however really like the look of these two batts together (wool and cotton) - though in the future to get more bang on the back I will probably layer wool with Hobbs 80/20.  Hobbs and Quilter's Dream have been my two favorite battings so far...and both are pretty economically priced.

Alright, happy sewing!  Hopefully I'll be DONE next time you hear from me!!!  :)

I'm Pretty Sure I have ADD

The title pretty much says it all.  I'm pretty sure I have ADD.  Un-diagnosed ADD.  Self diagnosed ADD.  In any case I can't keep my mind on one thing to save my life.  Today I started this project...

I'm playing with the whole idea of making art quilts in the style of my paintings.  I want to do some actual painting on fabric but I'm broke!  I spent all of my fun money on supplies for my show quilt and now I need to get quilting to fund the rest of the quilt and Christmas.  (This is probably not the best business model, I know.  I'm in it for passion not profit people.  Though a profit would be nice!)

I don't know why the photos of my sketches came  out so - digitized!?!  They look really cool though don't they?

In any case this whole thing is actually for a blog hop I'm going to be in using batiks.  I was going to just make a dragonfly but then I had to get carried away and do more.  Because that's what I do.  LOL

The dragonfly wasn't enough so I added a sun and now I need to add a girl.  Me fifteen years ago?  Maybe.  A thinner, younger me.  Possibly a Hindu me because she does have a bindi.  :)

I sketched out the sun and the dragonfly in the same manner and assigned each section a number - I just forgot to take pictures of those.  I did make some changes as I went to make pieces that would be easier to turn the fabric under.  After assigning each piece a number I traced it onto freezer paper, then using the freezer paper as templates cut the pieces out of fabric.

I still need to turn under the tiny hair pieces today.  Everything but the girl is from batik fabric.  I'm thinking I'm going to play with shading her and her hair in a bit with my Shiva Paintstiks.  If I don't get side tracked that is.  :)

Dahlia Center Block

Almost finished with the center dahlia of my newest quilt.  The paper I used for piecing is still in place on the back, but when removed the  lines will be less jagged and flow smoothly.  I pulled a couple of pieces off just to be sure!  I still have decided if the center will stay black - I think it will.  There is black fabric behind the block right now, but the center is still open.  In my first draft the block had color in the center, but I think I may leave it open for quilting.

I'm pretty happy with how this has turned out!  I love the gradation of blues.  This is just a small piece of a much larger quilt.  Once I finish the center - it's onto loads and LOADS of paper piecing.  :)

I made a short video explaining how I pieced this for anyone interested in that sort of thing.  :)

Linking up with Nina for Off the Wall Friday!

Gutermann Silk Thread and ONE MORE DAY!!!

I just couldn't NOT sew for a week.  I love my three little girls like crazy but for this stay at home Mom there is no break.  Ever.  I'm hiding a bit in my bedroom after my blood pressure went through the roof just a few moments ago...my little boogers had toys and sheets and blankets and pillows, and bowls and cups of who knows what scattered EVERYWHERE after all the scrubbing and cleaning and straightening I did.  They tried to escape cleanup by running into their rooms...grrrr.  Lol*

The house is for the most part tidy again but I'm stealing away to the computer for a few minutes of peace.  Gutermann thread is on sale for 40% off at JoAnns until February so I ran and grabbed a couple of the small silk spools for applique.

Ack.  So much for peace, of course the baby just went down for her nap and the Husband called and urgently needs me to run to the post office!!  Pooh!!

Ok I'll make it quick then.

I'm making a couple of runners for Etsy...at least I think for Etsy.  I love them so much and they aren't even done!  I might just keep them...they are just some fabric I've had in my stash for a while now.  I told ya I crave those brights this time of year!

I couldn't find a darker purple but there is a bit of this lighter purple in that batik fabric so I'm hoping it won't be noticeable.  I've heard such great things about silk for applique.

Several people have suggested Invisafil for applique AND quilting and I've got an order going into them in the next few days.  Really looking forward to try it - it's 100 weight poly so it's finer even than bottom line.  Really looking forward to trying it out.

Tomorrow the long arm comes!!  Yay!!!