Shabby Chic Kitty « LoveBug Studios

Shabby Chic Kitty – Finished Quilt

December 19, 2010 9:31 pm by Ebony in Finished Quilts

Wow – Mr. Darcy finished this quilt so quickly that there was hardly any time to take progress photos & post them! The quilt was loaded last Sunday, but I didn’t get to start stitching it until Thursday. Well, Thursday morning, before I left for work, I did the basting and one row, and when I got home that night I finished it – including the binding! And I was not up very late at all. I mentioned last week about having serious tension issues when working with a spool of YLI, and so I switched back to Superior So Fine for this quilt. Did I have tension problems again? You betcha! This happened while I was basting the quilt to the backing fabric, and was completely user error. When I first started, I asked myself, “Should I check the tension before I baste?” My self quickly replied, “Nah, it’s just basting. You can check it after.” BOY! Was that a mistake! I should have known something was wrong when I felt NO resistance at all on the top thread when I first threaded it, and it wouldn’t pick up the bobbin thread for tying off. Did I check then? Nope. I actually basted all 3 sides, and started a sample before I actually checked the tension. Boy, was I surprised at what I found underneath the quilt! I just gave the tension wheel a good crank clockwise, and that was it – problem solved. I actually had an epiphany then… So Fine needs a tighter tension because the thread is so thin, so when I want to use monofilament or King Tut, I should loosen the tension from this point. Hopefully that will keep me from mucking the tension too much – I shouldn’t need wide cranks left or right, and if I do, that means something is horribly wrong. Brilliant observation I think. I chose a creamy white for the quilting stitches. It blends in pretty well with the quilt in most places, and where you can see the quilting, it looks pretty cool. I chose a 10″ pantograph design with a floral motif to go with the fabrics, and discovered that I actually do like 10″ pantographs. Why? Well, the harp area on my machine is 24″, which gives me about 22″ of actual quilting space front to back. So on a 10″ panto, I can actually get two full passes without having to roll, versus a 16″ design where I’d have to roll after every pass. I guess it just depends on how intricate the design is; this quilt took about 3 hours to quilt, maybe a little less because I take frequent breaks. Here’s a pretty good photo of the quilt top. I actually took the time to set up the lights, and I’m much more pleased at the color interpretation – now you can see that the quilt is actually pastel! The back was also fun to make – pretty large stripes with some extra blocks incorporated. This is a really great shot of the quilting too: The binding I did completely by machine. I stitched the binding to the front, flipped it to the back, stuck a whole bunch of pins in it, and did a stitch-in-the-ditch from the front of the quilt. I was pretty much sewing blindly, but the key to the stitching is to have a very precise stitching line, and to GO SLOW. No, it didn’t look perfect everywhere, but I can attribute the bobbles to me not using my walking foot from the beginning, and stitching too quickly. I will definitely do more quilts this way; as much as I love binding by hand, I simply can’t spare the time for most of the ones I want to do. I am very much a perfectionist, but I’ve seen some pretty famous quilters with their not-so-perfect binding, and I think maybe if I sacrifice a little perfection in favor of getting more things done, people won’t holler about it too much. After I did a final inspection of the quilt (clipping loose threads, giving it several good passes with a lint roller, making sure the binding is quite secure, and a final spell-check on the label, I packed it up into a pillowcase I made with the fabric that was left over. I even had a piece of leftover binding that, with a serged edge, made a perfect tie for the pillowcase! Making this pillowcase gave me a great idea for future customers who get longarm service through me, and as a result, I have a new toy winging its way to my Studio. I have the perfect spot for it in the room with Mr. Darcy, but it will require finding a new home for my spare sewing machine. My client has seen some progress pictures of the quilt, but I didn’t show her the quilting, the binding, or the pillowcase. Hopefully she’ll be pleasantly surprised! She already sent me a note saying I “have a customer for life.” That’s pretty cool! Happy quilting!

New Custom Quilt – Shabby Chic Kitty

December 6, 2010 1:45 pm by Ebony in AccuQuilt

Shabby Chic Kitty

Recently I was contacted by a client to work on a quilt for her best friend; Christmas is on the 25th, her friend’s birthday is on the 27th, and then she’s going into surgery on the 29th. Since it’s already December, a custom quilt is a tall order for holiday delivery, but by now you know that I have a tendency to go BIG and not say “no” even when the odds are against. With that in mind, and knowing that I also have 25 videos to post between now and Christmas, I had to do some creative thinking to fit this project in. An idea occurred to me: if I could somehow incorporate the quilt into my video process, I’d be able to squeeze it in, and coming up with a pattern that could be easily executed on my AccuQuilt cutter was also a bonus. Luckily, my client understood that in such a short time frame, she’d have to accept what I came up with, and readily agreed to the plan if I could get her quilt done. The pattern is very simple, and is based on a layer cake I cut on my Studio in 4 passes. The video will be posted later this month, probably the day I deliver the quilt so you can see the video with the quilting complete. In the mean time, here are some progress pictures as the quilt comes together. The color scheme is so far from what I usually work with, and the block placement was as random as someone like me could possibly manage. The fabric required consultation with the ladies over at Quilt Play since nothing like this exists in my stash, and I am always grateful to them for their advice and help. The theme of the quilt is shabby chic, and is to have some photographs of a kitten incorporated into it somewhere as yet to be determined. (I know what you are thinking! But sometimes a masterpiece is really about how much people will love something, and not what we would prefer or feel comfortable doing ourselves.) Here are the fabrics, though I am quite vexed that the colors are not faithful in the photos. The colors are softer & more muted than they are represented here: And here is the interior of the quilt top. This is my first quilt where I’ve pressed the seams open on the entire quilt. I’d especially like to see how Mr. Darcy appreciates this effort when it comes to him next week. Once I got this assembled and photographed, I decided that it needed another row added, and then I applied the borders. Again, the colors are not true; the narrow inner border that you see is not red, but rather a dusty pink. I took all these photos with my iPhone, so I’m pretty sure that has a lot to do with it. Once the quilt is completed I’ll set up the photo lights and take a really good picture. I really like the way this turned out, and the piecing came together very quickly. It’s a top that can be assembled in an afternoon, even for a slow quilter like me. Happy quilting!