Christmas Quilt

So it's Christmas. Well at least it's December, so hence Christmas quilt time. I'm so excited for Christmas this year as I have time to decorate my place and make presents, including a Christmas Quilt for some special people.

So I have cut my fabric out of my stash in the traditional red, green and gold palette with a couple of extra colours. I wanted it to have similar colours but not look too Christmassy so it can work for any season. The patchwork is a little more traditional and made to look like Christmas wreaths.

To make the wreath shape I attached two white squares of fabric to opposite corners of the colours squares, very similar to "White Diamonds" Quilt I made earlier in the year (See earlier posts). However I did this for every coloured square. I made the adjustment with the white squares from the previous time, so they were bigger and easier to match seams.

Thor was spectacular as usual, however I think I might need to service him soon. Last Saturday I made the wreaths. At the moment the layout looks a little like fruit loops. Yes, quite hilarious to me. The panel was also pretty small, so in order to expand it, I plan to place white strips in-between the wreaths. I'm hoping that will lessen the fruit loop effect.

The layout was fairly easy to work with as the colours are either bold or fair (for lack of a better word). I've included some gold accent fabrics to balance out the dullness of the other fabrics. I will also use the same binding I use for my quilt "Tabitha" which has the gold accent as well.

FTIsland, Hanson, and Mandy Moore were my soundtracks, in particular Hanson's Christmas album from when they were little. It really brought Christmas into the house which was really nice.

Anyway here is the current layout. Of course it will
look a little different in the end. I'll be updating the finished quilt when it's finished.

Happy Sewing.
Miss Mae.

Heirloom English Paper Piecing Quilt (Part One)

I have recently, and by recently perhaps a couple of months ago, started an heirloom quilt. I was inspired to begin English Paper Piecing (EPP) from an Australian Quilter, Linda White. She's an entrepreneur creating Gum Valley Patchwork, a store in Cooriemungle, Victoria Australia.

It was about three years ago that I saw her "Dear Prudence" Heirloom hexagon EPP quilt. I was so inspired at the work that I decided to learn how to do this method of quilting. I bought her book on the the quilt and taught myself the method using larger hexagons. From then I researched further and learned how to make different shapes through this method. 

For this heirloom quilt (my second EPP quilt) I decided to use diamonds and I have also wanted to create a white and cream quilt using different fabric patterns. I have been collecting this fabrics for about a year now including some from Linda's store.

I am using a larger (1 3/4" wide) diamond shape so that the fabric patterns are very clear to the eye. I am using feature fabrics for the six pointed stars and using another fabric that will act as the border around the stars. I've been using paper clips to secured the fabric around the paper and have simply tact through the paper and fabric to prepare them for slip stitching. 

It is so simple but extremely time consuming. I've recently been watching "Will and Grace" series while making this one. It's really funny, I was a little too young to understand the jokes when it came out. 

I am enjoying how big the pieces are as I can easily visualise the end result. It does help that I am using a similar pattern to another quilt I have seen just with different fabric. however its seems to be coming together much faster than expected, despite how many more patches I need to make.

Short post today, but I plan to write follow ups for this quilt. 

Let me know your thoughts.

Happy Sewing.

Miss Mae.

Bible Journaling - New Hobby?

This is a different post that is not related to my quilting, but rather my faith and how I hope to grow through craft and study of the Bible. If you would like to know more then keep reading, however if you are not interested your welcome to wait on my next post. Thank you. Miss Mae.

The latest craze in the the craft world and especially for Christians is the art of Bible Journaling. This is something I found out about from my mum about a year or so ago. The first thing I thought was "Why would you want to draw in your Bible?"

Yes I was one of the people who didn't understand the fascination, and upset that the words would be covered with paint and writing. However that's what I get for assuming.

I am a Religion Teacher and I have studied the Bible and other religious scriptures intensely for almost eight years now. It is something I enjoy even though it can be challenging at times. I am also a Christian. My faith has been challenged constantly and it has been tough. Working within my faith sometimes makes it hard to separate myself from the people I want to teach and teaching myself. I have lately needed and wanted to study the scriptures for myself and to rely entirely on God.

I decided to create a Bible Study Planner. I researched on Pinterest and Youtube on how others planned their Bible study as well as incorporating what I know works for me. I decorated my dividers with verses and planned my sections. However I couldn't work out how to start my study. I am one of those people that if I haven't got something to show for it I won't do it. Now with that in mind, this should be easy for me to write notes and prayers etc. This is how I planned to show my progress. Currently it isn't working. I can't seem to bring myself to choose a book or a verse or a devotional to begin my study. I became extremely busy with work, creating resources, marking and admin. Another reason why I haven't posted in a while either.

In my research as I looked for ways to really come back to the Word of God, I came across Bible Journaling. Now the first Youtube clip I watched was a young woman named Meredith Grace. She spoke about how she wanted to share her faith more on her social media and how she found out about Bible Journaling through a blogger which led her to Illustrated Faith. Illustrated Faith is a company that informs and sells products for the art of Bible Journaling, and their founder Shanna Noel has inspired so many people to write, draw and paint in their Bibles. So once I watched Meredith Grace's video and got an understanding why she was doing it, I wanted to know more. I researched other people about how and why they were decorating their Bibles through Youtube, blogs and Pinterest. There are many schools of thought of what supplies to use, what they will write in the margins, whether it is okay to cover scripture or not and if you even need a Journaling Bible. Some people will cover the words, others will use only the margins, and some will use a completely different notebook and not write in their Bibles at all. Some students of this art form have more than one Journaling Bible because they can't fit anymore in their first one. The artwork of these people is astounding and there are tutorials, and templates you can use in your own Bibles. There are even Bibles that have the art included on 500 pages, like an adult colouring book for those who don't feel they are artistic.

The world I had just stepped into was incredible. I cannot believe the community that has come out by just writing and drawing in Bibles. This sort of thing I believed to be at first somewhat unnecessary, and now I feel that this is my ticket to getting into the Word. I have ordered a Journaling Bible based on the reviews of Rebecca R Jones on Youtube. I purchased the ESV Journaling Bible Leather, Antique Flora as I kept being drawn to the floral cover. Plus the spine looks like an old leather bound book. It arrived yesterday and though it's not completely new (I bought a slightly cheaper one), it is gorgeous and I am super excited to work in it. 

I have yet to start my entries and test my supplies. I would call myself a lucky person as I draw and paint occasionally and already have supplies such as watercolours, coloured pencils, soft pastels, stickers, stamps, tabs and many other supplies to use. All I needed to purchase was a good archival pen and some setting spray for the pastels I have. I am hoping that these things work. I hope to test them out and maybe write a post on them in future. 

I hope to write more on this in future, I may use this as my platform or create a different blog should there be enough interest. I am a beginner in this so if you have any tips to share, comment below. If you want to see my entries or my supplies or anything please comment below. 

Thank you for reading.

Miss Mae

"Crème Berry" (no.15)

 I am not doing any favours for my 13th quilt. I have since completed another quilt in its place. Yes this is my 15th quilt. I had recently gone to a fabric store about 40 minutes from my house on the way to Melbourne and I bought this layer cake along with another. "Ville Fleurie" by French General for Moda. I was inspired by the colours when I returned home and began designing for it. I have always liked the idea of having the colour and pattern in one corner of the design and keep the rest in a white or cream fabric. So I made this chevron pattern using the moda collection and a cream and white fabric in-between to create that theme.

I created the squares and that was a fairly relaxing process. Seeing as the design was to split the squares in half diagonally it was simple to sew two seams and them cut between the
sewing lines.
One tool I have found amazing is the "Frixtion" pens by Pilot. I found this out somewhere, for the life of me I cannot remember (Either Youtube or Pinterest) but I used this to mark the middle of my fabric for when I would cut it later. The awesomeness of this is that when you iron the seams flat the heat will erase the pen mark! The picture above shows the mark with and without heat. When I did this I was astounded! I have never liked using chalk on my fabrics because I just couldn't get the mark completely off. This is a saviour for me, to the point I have to buy specific ones just for fabric as I regularly use them for writing.
I then laid out the pattern on the ground and with the colours I decided to make it a gradient design with the grey colours at the top, then red in the middle and purple at the bottom. I really liked the look of it and with the white fabric as a base the colours stood out.
Thor did an excellent job once again to match seams with the added insurance of pins. This quilt was a very relaxing process. It is a smaller quilt than no.14 "White Diamonds" (Check out previous posts) so it's mainly a lap quilt for cold winter nights.

I used Craft Smart spray adhesive to assemble the quilt and I'll need to purchase another as this one seems to be running out. I don't know that it is the best type of adhesive spray as it seems to leave drops of glue while being sprayed. Might be the way I tilt the can. It still did the job and the droplet marks have disappeared so it's not all that bad. 

Quilting was a little more time consuming. Though it is a small quilt I wanted to keep the same chevron pattern on the back as is shown on the front. I didn't attach any borders to this quilt as I didn't want to destroy the illusion of the design. So even though there was no border to quilt the pattern required a lot of stop and start. 
I quilted along the horizontal lines firstly, beginning in the middle and working my way out. I then rolled the quilt diagonally and quilted the diagonal chevron pattern, again starting in the middle and working out. I did quilt in the ditch where the patchwork was and then continued the quilting over the plain white squares in the top left corner. I had no problem with puckering - and as you are probably sick of me talking about my machine I'll restrain myself, but I still cannot get over how much better my quilts are using Thor. 
For binding I used some fabric from much stash, cut, joined and ironed to make it into a binding strip. The fabric is a cream colour similar to the cream in the backing and parts of the feature fabrics with a red almost paisley shape design over top. The red looks a little like coloured pencil strokes creating the same shape as paisley but without the inside decor between the lines. I've had this fabric for years and have used it for a lot of small things like broaches and hair clips. I hope to use the remainder of it in a quilt or something else but I really liked how this joined the backing fabric I picked with the front of the quilt. 
Hand sewing was pretty quick - only a few hours as opposed to several. I was watching "The Community" Season 3 while sewing the binding on. Music while making the quilt - Richard Marx Greatest Hits, FTIsland's "Treasure Box", The Corrs, Michael Jackson's Collection, Mika - there were a few others but I can't remember. I do tend to listen to the same stuff because my collection is not very big, but I'm glad I don't get sick of the same music all the time.

The last couple of photos are the final product, one has my feet in it. In that one you can really see the quilt design. I love the chevron pattern simply because the shapes just fit together so well. It's the same with hexagons and triangles, complicated shapes that look like they wouldn't fit but just do. 

This quilt I felt was just relaxing. It felt a little like I had come back to a place of joy in my work. Nothing went wrong in this project. Nothing really annoyed me. I didn't need to redo any part of it which was so wonderful. This was just a small, inspired and joyful project for me and I think it'll be hard to let this one go, but I do hope it will be sold. It is called "Crème Berry" - naming rights go to my mum, she's very good with names. I think it suits it very well.

Let me know you're thoughts. Come visit me on Instagram for ongoing updates on my quilting. (Link Below) I post about a lot of other things too, so everyone is welcome. 
Sew Happy.

Miss Mae.

https://www.instagram.com/miss.mae90/

Binding - my tips - plus finishing "White Diamonds" no.14

Binding! This is actually one of my favourite parts of making a quilt. I used to hate it. Reasons being that it was the longest process to make binding and I had to make it because I could never find pre-made binding that worked with my colour choices. Once there was a massive sale at Lincraft and they sold pre-made binding. I bought so much of it simply because they were the closest I was going to get to match my fabrics. I still have some left but since purchasing a binding maker I am more inclined to make my own. This way I can match my fabrics perfectly and keep that 100% created by me reputation I like to uphold. Anyway I would like to share my tricks to making my binding clean and perfect. And by perfect I mean I've never had to redo any part of my binding.
The first tip is new because I can now use a double needle. In the top image you can see I have a double needle sewing the binding. Now it is hard to tell but when making binding using the small gadget (see in previous posts) you make two flaps which result in a crease in the fabric. On previous binding using a normal needle I would sometimes sew off the crease and when I folded the binding around I found these little creases showing on the side. They are awfully hard to iron out and mostly it doesn't help. Now if you use a different method to making binding - such as just folding the strips in half, sewing the raw edges on the edges of the quilt and then fold around - you won't have this problem. However if you have one of the gadgets to make binding like the type I make, this double needle tip is great for minimising those creases. All you need to do is keep the folded crease in-between the two needles and you will never have those crease issues again. That was a very long explanation but believe me - this idea has changed my life!
So what I really want to show you is how I join the end of the binding together in a clean and inconspicuous way. This part annoyed me the most. I tried a few different ways and was never really satisfied with the result. I believe I worked this out on my own when making a portfolio for a client a few years ago and I believe it is the best way to make the finish nice and durable.
So I start sewing my binding usually on the side of the quilt in the middle and I leave a bit of binding unstitched, like a tail. Once I go all the way around the quilt and come back to the side I started on, I sew down to a point where I am close to the other tail but still leaving a large gap.

Next I lay the quilt flat on a table and measure the binding against the quilt to see how much I need. I do this by pinching the two tails of fabric and checking that the quilt and the binding are both flat.

I then fold the binding upwards and downwards to make a small crease and then pin the binding together where they should meet. 

Next I fold the quilt away from the binding and sew the binding tails together at the crease and pin marking. Now on most occasions the binding widths don't always match but the beauty of binding is that there are no raw edges, so you can hide it. The only thing I would suggest is try and match the fold creases together rather than the edges of the fabric. 

 Check to see that the binding is flat against the quilt's edge and then trim the excess fabric. You can then pin it into place and then sew it down using your machine making sure the seam is sewn flat. 

Now you have a durable machine sewn closing of the binding. Now this example is not great close up mainly because this is a large pattern size fabric and it has words on it. However from a distance it is not noticeable and if you are using smaller size pattern fabrics it works a treat. When it comes to closing off edges like this I do prefer machine sewing as it feels more durable, plus it's so much quicker. 

 One more thing I want to share is how I hand sew my binding to my quilts. Slip stitching I find a bit hard. I do need to practice more but with my first quilt I slip stitched and well you can see all of it. I dislike it so much sometimes I feel like redoing it, but there are so many stitches it would be so much work (and I guess it shows how much my skills have grown). So because I hated seeing the stitches so much I changed the way I did it and I only have just now worked out what kind of stitch it is called. I ladder stitch my binding. Yes it took me about eight years to realise what I was actually doing. I like using this stitch though because I can do it securely, quickly and well enough that you would never know that it was stitched. I believe it gives a clean finished look to the quilt and I don't have to worry about thread being seen. While I was hand stitching no.14, I watched "The September Issue" as well as part of Season One of "The Community."
"The September Issue" is one of my favourite documentaries - you can see me watching it in the photo above - I really wanted to work in fashion when I was in high school and though I realised I didn't have the personality to be that competitive I really enjoy the process of designing, creating, producing and marketing products. I guess it is why I still do it, but in making quilts and other miscellaneous goods I don't feel so pressured because the community is so eager to learn. Yet even so I would like to promote and sell my products one day and this blog is part of it. So to all who are reading this, thank you. I really am astounded at all the different people who are reading my blog and it is really inspiring to share one of my passions with you.

In closing - I finished "White Diamonds" last night. The final product and the first finished quilt using my new Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.2, more commonly known now as Thor. I'm sure he would be willing to bow if he could bend that way. So I am extremely proud of this one and though the white diamonds are not perfect I am so happy as it's a quilt pattern that I've wanted to do for some time and it has double needle stitched boarders, and I used fabric in my stash. I'm really happy if you couldn't tell. 

This is a long post! Sorry about that. I'll try and be less talkative. Eventually I won't have to explain my ways so much. But I am a teacher, it's part of my job. I hope it all made sense and that you try these methods out. If you have any tips to share, you are welcome to comment below - I'd love to hear the methods you use as I love learning new things. 

Thank you so much for reading. Sew happy.

Miss Mae

Name revealed - no.14

Number 14 has now been bestowed with a name. Yes, I am excited by this because I usually have trouble giving names to my quilts but with the look of it, this one was obvious. But I'm not going to tell you until the end.

So continuing with day two and three, and would you believe it? This quilt got bigger than I expected. I am so into double borders lately but I forget how many inches it adds to the quilt. This required expanding my backing by joining two pieces together and the stripes made it super easy to disguise the seam. I normally use really small patterns for backing but this one the large stripes still worked. I basically matched the two brown stripes and sewed in the middle of the stripe so it looks the same width as the other stripes in the pattern.
I then ironed both front and back and laid them on my lounge floor. Using my pool noodle and quilting spray glue I assembled the quilt. I love this method because I don't have a large table but I can still prevent any puckering.
So in purchasing the fabric for the borders, I also finally bought some quilting safety pins. I have been using large quilting pins to hold my quilt together since I started quilting and I would always get stabbed. Quilting always turned out to be a painful experience, until now. Yes not a single gasp while quilting this one. I am surprised it took me so long to get them.
(Though I had no idea they existed for a while)

For the quilting I used a normal straight stitch and followed a diagonal pattern across the squares skipping the small white squares. I used a blue gradient cotton thread on top and a brown gradient thread on the bottom. The reason behind the choice was that I simply wanted the top thread to stand out and have the bottom thread more muted. Quilting the front panel wasn't all that difficult or long. The extra room on Thor made it far more comfortable than on my old machine. Thor is an amazing machine. It sorts out any potential puckering or problems with ease and I feel that I don't have to put in as much effort to match seams, press fabric flat or anything. It really has simplified the process of making a quilt for me which makes me so happy. You can see my little finger in one of the photos here. It's healing fine but slowly. I'm hoping it'll get better soon.

Now for quilting the border, I am finally going to return to the double needle quilting. My old Pfaff machine could not handle this procedure no matter how many times I tried. They were tension issues mostly so I just gave up on it and quilted in other ways. But now I have Thor which has settings for this specific process. So I gave it a try, with a trial of course, I wasn't about the go straight in on my pretty much perfect (no mistakes yet) quilt. I tried and it worked! I have been waiting to do this for so long. It was one of my lessons when I first learnt how to make quilts. "Quilt it properly" is what I was told. Plus it gives it such a lovely texture and I really miss having that. It is also something I can do myself. One day I might explore having my quilts quilted elsewhere with something fancy but currently I like having my quilts completely made by me. I used a 2.5 millimetre wide double needle and a combination of Polyester and Cotton thread. I wish I hadn't used Polyester because now it might melt under an iron. I don't know that I'll need to iron it but I might iron the quilt with the back facing up to prevent that from happening. I know now for next time. Use cotton thread! All the time!
So anyway the double stitching was so quick I could not believe it. I stitched seven rows on each brown boarder and again there was no puckering and only one problem with the tension. I think Thor needed a rest, but he's very good at letting me know that there is something wrong.
Music I was listening to was a bunch of Hanson EPs as well as Lifehouse "No Name Face", Jewel "Spirit", Tracy Chapman "Collection" and The Corrs "In Blue". I was in a lighter mood while doing this and I really enjoy singing these songs.

This is how the quilting looks on the back of the quilt. It's really nice I think. I barely had to redo any of the stitching which shows how wonderful my machine is. I left the white border completely clean as I think it would have destroyed the effect. The same goes for the small squares on the front. I did test out quilting around the white squares and though it look great on the back, It looked horrible on the front. It drew a lot of attention to it and I really didn't like it. I decided to unpick it and leave it alone because the seams on those areas are not perfect and it just looked bad. Trust me on this.
I am going to leave the binding off this post as I would like to do a tutorial on how I match the two ends cleanly. I cannot remember if I saw it somewhere or if I worked it out myself. But however I learnt it I would like to share it. So the final picture without the boarder is below, let me know your thoughts.
Time for the name of this quilt...

"White Diamonds"

I feel that it is quite obvious as when you look at it there are white diamonds all over it. I don't know why I have trouble with names. I guess cause it's a bit final and I want something that will suit. So that's the name. Let me know what you think.
Tune in for my next post which will be a tutorial on binding.
Thanks for reading.

Miss Mae

Beginning a new project, with others still unfinished. (no.14)

The latest quote to pop up on my Instagram feed that made me laugh out loud was this...

"You know that feeling when all your sewing projects are finished? Yeah, me neither."

I've been unable to finish some of my projects due to an unfortunate incident a few weeks back where I cut a decent piece of skin off my right pinky while making dinner. Not to get into details but due to having to wear a fairly large bandage around my finger it made sewing very difficult. It is now healing well and because I only took some skin off it should grow back to normal after a few more weeks. Now it's healed enough to just cover with band-aids, I can finally sew.

And yes I began a new quilt. This will be my fourteenth quilt even though it is quite possible I will finish it before no.13. I won't be changing the order though. Quilt 14 is significantly smaller which sort of takes me back to when I first started quilting. It was also somewhat unsettling, as my quilts tend to get larger with each new one I make - downsizing was a bit of a surprise. But I realised that I didn't need to make massive quilts every single time. I've now come to peace with it after seeing how quick it is to make.

So for this quilt I am finally using one of my layer cakes of 5" pre-cut squares. The collection is from Moda called "Piecemakers" designed by Kathy Schmitz. I love the colours in this set and it really suits a baby sized quilt. There were 42 squares and when I laid them out in a 6 by 7 rectangle I was a little underwhelmed by how it looked. The colours were pretty but it didn't stand out to me. So I went to my Pinterest Board for quilting and found this patchwork design from
'byway-hobby.blogspot.com.br"
I really like this block and it is such a simple design, but with the diagonal diamond quilting, it is so effective. I found some white and cream fabric from my stash and tested the design and loved it.
With the pre-cut squares and 60 small squares to make from the white fabric, there was little cutting to do which made this project very easy to start.

The patch simply needed to add the smaller white squares to the corners of the bigger squares and then trim the seam. Some squares only required one small square, some needed two and some didn't need any. As shown in the original design the small squares do not appear on the edges of the pillow and look like the number 5 on the side of a dice. I wanted to replicate that look only to be made into a quilt, so I kept the small squares within the middle of the front panel.
Making the front panel, I was very careful not to confuse the lay out of the fabric. The fabrics were all on the floor in order and I picked them one by one so to not accidentally mess up my placing. Thor, my Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.2, breezed through each one and it felt so nice to be able to use him again after 2-3 weeks.

Music I listened to was Lifehouse, Daniel Powter, Mika (The Origin of Love) and Hanson (Roots & Rock 'n' Roll EP). Of course I'm likely to have different music for tomorrow.

Piecing together the squares was fairly unproblematic. The only thing I wish I'd done differently was to make those smaller squares slightly bigger. The small squares were about one and three quarter inch and I completely forgot about seam allowances. Had I made them at least two and a half inches the squares would have firstly looked bigger, and secondly be a little easier to meet seams together. However with a little persuasion I was able to get them where they needed to be without any puckering.

Pressing the seams flat was simple and quick as was completing the front panel. I am astounded how fast it is to make a smaller quilt, I haven't made one for years and I think I might do it more often.

After completing the front panel I then cut my boarders and my binding. This binding I believe it the best binding I have made in a while. I was able to cut the right width for my little binding tool and ironed it with ease. I do cut my bias on the straight mostly because I find it is easier to work with when hand stitching it. But I really am excited by this fabric in particular. It has a bunch of sweet words on it such as cupcake, lemon, bakery, cake, chocolate etc and I am looking forward to sitting down and hand stitching this binding to the quilt. The word pattern compliments the design as there are fabrics on the front panel with words on them too. The colours work so well together I am so itching to see the final product. The final front panel is below, I will be bordering firstly with the same white fabric as the small squares and then a darker brown with a blue and black accent. The backing will be a blue, cream and brown stripe pattern. Let me know your thoughts and stayed tuned for the next post.
Happy quilting.

Miss Mae