Change of Plans

I am changing up the original intent of this blog. My original idea was to develop my own applique patterns and quilts and to try and market them. I no longer am interested in doing that at this time. But I am still interested in slowing down with my quilting and enjoying the process rather than churning out mass amounts of quilt tops from precut fabrics and quick quilting methods.

I am very interested in doing a quilt titled Santa's Loading Dock, by Mary Buvia. The pattern is in book format from APQS Publishing. I have tried to read the book and decipher the instructions. I am already running into difficulty.  So I am chinging the intent of this blog to try and help anyone else trying to do this quilt and let my hurdles help you to make this quilt a little easier.

First, there is no master list as to the colors of fabrics needed for this quilt. Each applique has its own fabric list but it is listed as "Red  25" x 60" piece, 3" x 3" ", so you can see where the difficulty is begining. They don't sell fabric like that. So I had to go through the entire book and pull out every color she lists in the book. I then took that list and made a page for each color listed. I ended up with something like this: Purple: Lt, Med-Lt, Med, Med-Dk, Dark, and Blue-Purple. I did this for every color. There are 29 different colors in this quilt, with lt, med and dk variations for each color!!! Then I went back in and listed each and every piece that she listed for each and every color variation. In the red alone, there are 52 individual pieces listed!! And they are listed as 1 yd, 24" x 60", 16" x 18" 3" x 3" 5" x 6"....You get the idea. Ok now to add them all up. Is there an app for this??? Hell no! All the apps I found will add up all the same size pieces or will tell you how many pieces of fabric you will get from a yard. But none will add up a bunch of different size pieces. So I had to do this all by hand with a little quilters calculator. All this was a couple of days worth of work.

A list of all the colors in the quilt listed from each applique. 23 pages!

Each color on its own page with color variants listed and all the size pieces needed. Each size piece was multiplied to get the square inch of each piece. Then the square inches were added up and transfered to square yards. Then to linear yards!

The Master List

When all was said and done I now had a master list of all the colors and amounts of fabrics needed for the quilt. Or so I thought. (More on this later). My total was 70 yards of fabric!!!  70 YARDS!!!  Now I am thinking that once you get to cutting all this up to actually use, you really won't need that much. Some fabric should be left over to be used for a different appliques but there is no way to tell until you start to cut it up and use it. But no wonder she didn't list it! Who in there right mind would try and do a quilt needing 70 yards of fabric??  Obviously....Me! LOL

The next problem I ran into is the way she lists the color in each applique. There are many elves in this quilt and each has some form of green on it. In one elf the green will be listed as "Medium Green" in another the same green will be listed as "Dark green", there is no consistency to how she lists the colors.

Then when I started to really look at the globe directions, which is the first piece you work on, and the main background, the directions are not really clear. Nor is there ANY fabric listed for this. With the help of a kind lady at my local fabric store, we decided that 1 1/2 yards of 6 different blues should do the job! So add another 9 yards of fabric to the 70!!  LOL

So I have started buying this fabric one color at time and I am putting swatches onto cardstock so I can remember what colors I bought for what.

Fabric swatches bought so far.

All this is in a 3 ring binder to keep track of. This is not going to be an easy quilt to do, so organization is a must!

Well this is as far as I have gotten so far. I hope to keep this blog updated on my progress and the hurdles I encounter.


Thanks so much

Lisa

Latest Happenings

Much has been happening here lately. I bought a Handi Quilter 2 frame for my Janome 7700 machine and it seems to be working pretty well. I had the machine on it for a while and was playing around doing some free motion quilting. There is definately a learning curve to this, but it shouldn't take too long. I have used the Millenium Longarm at the quilt shop so this is not to foreign to me. I am going to put a charity quilt on it now and see what I can do. Because the only way to get good at something is to do it!

Also, I think I may have finally found an applique method I can use!! After much trial and error, I am really liking the Piece O' Cake Designs way of doing things. You can see their videos here: 

http://www.pieceocake.com/Lessons/LessonsFromPOC-AppliqueTechniques.html    
                 
I have tried the method where you glue the fabric edges around the freezer paper templates, and I had glue every where. Then I tried the method of ironing the edges with painted on starch. That just made a mess of my iron and my ironing board.  I also tried a method called Upside Down Applique. Too much to do. Then I tried a method of back basted needle turn. This is a little closer, but there are still alot of steps involved and it still was not easy for me.

I watched a ton of videos on this on Youtube and found Becky Goldsmith's way. I really like this. My appliques are coming out better. I still have a lot to learn. I would like my curves a little smoother and my points a little pointier. But I am getting there. And I am enjoying it too. Which I never really thought I would.

So with my method of applique picked out, I need to start drawing and coming up with my own designs and quilts. I am also taking some classes on the EQ7 program. Which will help me draw some of these designs.

I am still excited about this and have not lost hope yet that I can do this. I am getting all my ducks collected before I put them in a row. Still scared to talk about it too much as people tend to try and talk me out of things. So I will keep it here for now.

Lisa

Its been a while since I last posted. I have been very busy clearing my schedule of monthly commitments so I can focus solely on CastleMyst Creations. I have gotten my things down to the Wedding Star quilt, the Saturday morning Bee, and of course, the Charity Quilts. I am starting to work on CastleMyst Creations (CMC) a little bit, but the lack of drawing skills is holding me back. I can not draw a realistic human figure. I think what I might do is take pictures of my daughter and trace them and use that image to draw my figures. I want to take an online class on how to do picture quilts. I think it will help.

I am very excited to be beginning this endeavor of starting my own business. A lot of things seem to be falling into place with this. I just need to get the drawing thing down. I have conquered bigger things than this. I will figure out how to get this done!

In the mean time, I have already gotten a lot of stuff done! I finished the Kentucky Derby Hat Quilt on Superbowl Sunday while that farce of a game was playing. And I also finished the Glacier Star Quilt class. Both came out awesome!

I did some free motion quilting on the hat quilt:

I really hope this quilt does well at the raffle!

I went to Quilt Camp with a local quilt store 2 weeks ago and had such a blast! It is so nice to just sit and quilt all day everyday, for 4 days! With no interruptions! Well, except for Dave calling to tell me he dropped all of Tara's Tramadol down the drain! LOL.  I was able to get a lot done there. Came home and I am dragging now with this drawing thing. The guild wants me to do a free motion demo next month. Maybe I will work on that for a while. Until this online class gets going and Sandy comes home so I can take pictures of her.

Until next time...


Lisa

What is the Hurry??

Everything these days seems to be to get things done quickly! Even quilting. Which I really don't understand. Don't we quilt because we enjoy it? Then why are we rushing through it? There are precut fabrics of every color, shape and size, there are books on how to quilt in a day, have a quilt by Monday and large block quilts. I believe the Modern Quilt movement is based on this. Get the top done quickly. But at least they take their time and do beautiful quilting on top of it.

Now don't get me wrong, I love all the new gadgets to make things easier for me. What would I do without my rotary cutter? And templates? I have plenty. But I am in no rush to collect quilt tops that sit around undone because the quilting part is what takes all the time. I had this revelation a couple of days ago. I am involved in Round Robins, Mystery quilts, and Bee Quilts. And I am just collecting quilts that I really didn't want in colors and styles I really don't like. I have 16 quilts in various states of "doneness" and a few of them I don't want to even look at, much less quilt them. So I have decided that I am not going to do the Round Robins or Mystery Quilts anymore. And I quit doing those block of the months last year. I am going to still do the Bee quilt, probably because I bought the fabric for it already. Its an applique quilt and its growing on me.

I sat down this weekend and worked on this applique block, and actually enjoyed the slow pace of the hand work. I have been thinking about getting into applique some, and even signed up for a class at the VA Quiltfest coming up in 2 weeks. Its a machine applique class that is suppose to look like handquilting. I can't wait for this class. My husband bought me a used Janome Horizon for Mothers day last year and I love sewing on it. So I will definately do some applique work on it. But the hand applique has a place too. And as I was doing this work, I thought about all the quilts I had done and that none of them are really anything special. I have one that is screaming for feather quilting on it. I am practicing my free motion quilting skills, but they are not ready for this quilt yet.

I want to start doing some quilts that are different, and take some time to complete. And will be fun to do and to have around. I want special quilts that I will be proud to pass down to my kids and have them fight over after I am gone, LOL. Right now I feel like its quantity not quality going on. I am going to change that about my quilting. I want to try some new techniques and things that maybe have not been done with quilts yet. I also want to try and make my own applique patterns.

We will see where this goes. But for now, its slow down and take it one day at a time. Enjoy the quilting process no matter what stage its in.

Happy Quilting

Lisa

Hello BlogLand!

Hello,

I am new to this Blogging thing, but it intrigues me. I am a quilter, have been for about 30 years now. Wow! Can't believe its been that long!! Made my first quilt when I was about 20 years old in the spare room of my husband-to-be's home he lived in with his parents, on a little JCPenney sewing machine I bought for myself. I knew nothing about quilting, but I had sewn garments for myself since I was about 10 or 11 years old on my aunts sewing machine. 

I don't pick anything easy for myself, never have. My first quilt was a Storm at Sea quilt. With all the bias edges and tricky points. And not knowing too much about quilting, I bought fabric that was not 100% cotton. It slipped and slid all over the place and none of my corners matched up. But I finished it AND quilted it! My family loved that quilt! It was cuddly and soft, and it had a cool feel to it, even in summer time. But eventually, it fell apart and had to be thrown away. There was just no saving it.

I have come a very long way since then. Made many, many quilts since then. I am working on a few now and I hope to start documenting some of them here. I don't know if anyone will be interested in anything I have to write about, but we will see.

Hope everyone is keeping warm under this arctic freeze the country seems to be under at the moment.

Till next time, Happy Quilting

Lisa