Men and Quilting

It really does bother me that when I Googled "Men in the Quilting Tradition," the first thing that popped up was "Quiling for the Men in your Life."

What I was really looking for was a blog I saw months ago, about a man who started quilting and started documenting his experience as a male quilter. I really enjoyed it, and I wish I had bookmarked it.

We need to start a movement to get these fellas quilting. I say that only half jokingly. Yes, quilting is a largely gender defined art...one of the handful swung in favor of women...but it doesn't have to be. Guys, you too can quilt, and the ones that do are damn good at it.

My absolute favorite quilter (aside from my momma, of course, because her designs are phenomenal...seriously) is a man - local quilter Anton Haas Jr.. His quilts are gorgeous and just so, so precise. He really is a gifted artist.

So when you have a minute, look up "Male Quilters" on Google. There are a few out there and they are blogging like madman.

One of the best feelings ever...

...is getting a quilt back from the quilter! My Australian Quilter's Companion Quilt from several posts back (you know, the one with the umbrella, fish and wild colors) came back from Frances and she did a phenomenal job! I'll post pictures soon...once I get it bound that is!

Top 5 Notions that Sounded like Great Ideas...

I love Top __ lists. That being said, the following is just my opinion based on my experiences with these notions. There are plenty of folks out there who like these tools, obviously, because they sell. But for me, these are the Top 5 Notions that Sounded like Great Ideas...but aren't.

5. FriXion Pens
Now, on the surface these sound like a BRILLIANT idea (really, it does!). These pens, admittedly, are super cool for paper. You write, and then you erase using friction. Unlike the eraseable pens from 15 years ago, these guys actually ERASE. Literally, zero residue left. The thing with quilting, is that they were being advertized and are being sold and the newest and greatest new marking pen - make your marks and use friction to remove them. It works...until your piece drops below 60(F). Below 60(F), the markings reappear. Not that anyone is sticking quilts in the freezer (I don't think...) but who would want to take the applique quilt you worked so hard on out of storage or out of a chilly room and BAM! There are your markings staring at you in the face. I know I would be one ticked off little quilter.
So, I fully endorse them for writing on paper. Seriously, they're cool. But for your projects? Nope.

4. "Standard" Pre-Wound Bobbins
Here's another one that sounds like a really great idea that makes things so much more convenient. These bobbins are pre-wound on either cardboard or cheap metal bobbins and are filled with (usually) neutral threads that people most likely go through like a house afire. I, for one, can't seem to keep enough gray thread anywhere, ever, much less in my bobbin. So Mom and I got a pack to try out. Granted, we both have Berninas and they are notoriously finicky, but I also tried it out on my Simplicity (a machine that usually has no problem with generic, standardized components). This I put a big ol' FAIL stamp on. Both machines HATED these things. The bobbins weren't quite the right size for either machine, and the thread was just dismal. The Simplicity tolerated it best, but the thread snapped so much just on a straight stitch that it was getting to the point of being ludicrous.
So, give it a go if you want, it MAY work for your machine...but beware the thread quality. Unless it is a prewound bobbin by a repuatble machine or thread company, you can probably bet that the thread is kind of cruddy and the bobbin won't fit right.

3. Rotary Blade Sharpeners
Oh man. I tried these dang things with ZERO success. I even tried a ruler that had a blade sharpener on the cutting edge! Either way, if anything, I found my blade scratched to oblivion and duller than it was to start. I found the issue being 1 of 2 things (or both): a) the sharpener was not at the correct angle for the blade to properly sharpened at. Look at your rotary blade. See that little bevel right before the edge? That's the angle I'm talking about. Either the sharpener considered the bevel and accounted for it, or in trying to accomodate all brands of blades, disregarded it entirely and in so doing, just dulled the blade. The other issue, b) the sharpener didn't fit the blade at all. Meaning, that the sharpening component missed the edge entirely and tried to sharpen the body of the blde about a quarter inch up fron the edge. A fat lot of good that does! It's a pity too, because if this worked it would be one of the very best notions out there - blades are not cheap! Maybe they just haven't got the happy medium yet, or I haven't tried the right one.

2. Circle Cutter
This thing is a good idea in a horrible little package. This works wonderfully on paper, because paper is more or less rigid, unlike fabric. It functions like a compass, but instead of a pencil, there's a little X-Acto style blade. All this does, even WITH stabilizer on your fabric, is hack at it and crumble it under the blade. Your circle doesn't get cut all the way through, the fabric moves with the blade and if it gets cut at all, it's not a perfect circle. I tried this on non-stabilized fabric, stabilized fabric  and paper. Paper it's perfect for, and that's where it needs to stay marketed to. IF the blade were a mini rotary cutter and rolled intead of slid, then it might work better because a rigid blade wouldn't have to be pushed over the more fluid fabric. I gotta say, unlessyou are using Timtex as your stabilizer, save your money and just use a template instead.

1. Fons & Porter's Rotary Cutting Safety Glove
Oh F&P, we meet again. I wan't to like you, I really do. Your patterns are good, they are! But then I listen to your snobbery on TV and see you but out products like this. I truly believe this product does next to nothing for the customer other than capitalize on the basest of human fears - fear of injury and pain. It's not a heavy duty glove, so if your cutter flies off your ruler after yuou've been bearing down on too many layers of fabric, you're still going to get cut. Period. So for $23.95 you can have peace of mind...but if you're careful anyway this is doing nothing for you other than losing you money that you could be spending on a couple yards of fabric ;-) 

"Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon."

Yes, I will always find an excuse to squeeze in a Ghostbusters quote. But let's be honest here...who wouldn't?

Anyway, I'm still trapped in my own personal binding quilts hell (::whine::) so I haven't been up to much other than that. Even the chicken quilt is on hold! Well, for the moment. So while I'm busy not being at all productive, I thought I'd do a blog about tips...safety and otherwise...that I use on the daily (when I'm quilting) or that I haven't tried yet but people at the shop keep telling me (I promise I'll try them out eventually!). If I know/remember who I heard it from, I'll attribute it to them (no last names for privacy's sake!)...if not...well, thanks for the tip whoever you are!

• I know we're all really careful not to hysterically wave our rotary cutters around and to not use them to hack at fabric as though they were a broadsword, but accidents can and do happen.  A good way to lower your odds of filleting yourself is to keep your fingers away from the edge of the ruler when you're cutting, and to ensure that happens, place your pinky on the outside edge of the ruler. This helps prevent the ruler from sliding and guarantees your fingers are away from the cutting edge. Suggested by Koleen. Nothing is ever 100% foolproof (not even those stupid gloves), so you may still get cut if something bizarre happens. Always be careful!
• Here's another tip for quilting injuries...we get stabbed by pins and needles, occasionally sliced ourselves with a rotary cutter or scissors or run our fingers over in the sewing machine (bad news) - sometimes we get blood on our work...eek! This sounds gross but I swear it works (unless you have gotten a significant amount of blood on your work, this is more for pinpricks and papercuts): Dab a little bit of your saliva on your (non injured) finger and put it on the bloodspot on your fabric. It may take a couple tries, but it will remove most if not all of the blood. This is great in a pinch if you aren't at a place where you can stop and wash your fabric or your quilt. Also, did you know there is a reason why little kids (and some of us big kids) stick our cut fingers in our mouths? It looks and sounds icky, but our saliva is a natural coagulant - if you have a minor cut or pinprick, saliva will stop the bleeding. Suggested by Helen. Just promise me you won't go spitting on other people's cuts...it only works on your own blood, and really, that's just nasty.
• If you don't have a no-slide cutting ruler or if your grips are worn down and you're not ready to buy another, in the mean time try placing Press n' Seal wrap on the back of your ruler. It is translucent, so you can see through it reasonably well and it has enough tack to it to keep your ruler from sliding on your fabric. I tried it - it leaves no residue on either your fabric or ruler. Suggested by some lady in the Tips portion of The Love of Quilting with Fons and Porter.
• Patterns can be a real pain in the butt to wrangle with by your machine sometimes, and storage can be an issue with all of those many pattern and their little plastic baggies they usually come in. To cut down on the storage issue, I numbered and wrote the pattern name on the bottom of the page on each page of the pattern. Then I shoved those pages in the clear binder sleeves and stuck them in a binder. Any applique pieces and patterns I slip between the pages in the sleeve, or keep the little baggie and slide it in with the pages. As for those little baggies the pattern came in, if they're salvageable, I use them with other projects to keep my cut pieces in so nothing gets lost. Otherwise, when you need the pattern just take the page you need out of the binder and there you have it, all nice and contained by your machine. This is my own method, and so far it's worked pretty well!
• Ripping out stitches just plain sucks. If you promise to be super careful, you can quickly and effectively rip out those stitches with your rotary cutter. Open the seam enough to get the blade in there,a nd using small strokes, let the blade snip the thread. You need very little pressure for this! Once your thread is all chopped to bits, use an emery board and run it gently from the inside of the old seam to the edge of the fabric. This will remove those little threads! Mom taught me this one :) We won't be held accountable for any injuries stemming from this tip! The key is to go slow and be very, VERY careful.
• If you're not comfortable using a rotary cutter to take out a seam, using your seam ripper you can do the same thing, run the sharp part of the ripper down the seam. Or, as Loretta suggested, cut every 4th stitch - it'll come right apart without having to snip every single stitch.
• Here's something I learned after doing it the hard way - If you're using a circle cutting ruler (you know, the ones that have all the sizes of half circles cut into it?), use a small rotary cutter to cut your fabric through the ruler with, something like a 28mm or an 18mm. A standard 45mm is too wide and can damage your ruler or knick your blade.

That's it for now...Keep an eye to the Newsletter for more great tips!

You're harshing my mellow, Broski.

So after Blogspot decided to "do maitenance" on its server (I think the proper term is "screwing ish up") it dropped my most recent entry. Isabelle, you're a witness! So let's try this again.

I made another quilt, blah blah blah, I didn't care for the original colors, blah blah blah, so I did it my way in lots of reds and oranges and gold with a spash of green.

It's AMAZING how easily I just summed up a 5 paragraph post. "Blah blh blah" has got to be my #1 favorite filler when I'm annoyed about something, which, I am VERY annoyed that the post got lost in who-knows-where of cyberspace.

So anyway, enough grumbling and grousing and whining. I got the pattern out of the book Fast, Flirty and Fun  by Sarah Bisel from That Patchwork Place, which we have available in the shop.

See? It's an adorable pattern, but those colors...I can appreciate them but they're just not my thing. So...of course I changed them.

This is MY color way. I gotta say, I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Most of you know I'm not too shy about color, and I know what I like. Even though purple, believe it or not, is my absolute favorite color...I heavily lean toward the reds, oranges, browns and golds. Actually, the quilt I'm about to finish (which I've had since January...) is also reds, golds, browns and oranges...I need to step outside my box and do a blue quilt.

Did you hear that? That crashing sound was the sound of my motivation coming to a grinding halt. I like blue all right, but I think I'll leave that to someone else.

As always, the hardest part was trying to be "random" with my color placement. I just don't think I have it in me! I'm too persnickety, too Sheldon-esque, too whatever. Ask my roomate...I had this quilt spread out all over the living room floor and I was asking her every 5 minutes if the color placement looked okay. It's like the people walking around who look like they just rolled out of bed...most of them spent an hour in front of the mirror with a blow dryer and a fistful of pomade to get that look. Don't ask me to do random. I can't. lol.

One of these days I'll invest in a nice camera, one that's not attached to my cell phone. Of course...my birthday IS coming up in September...*cough* :b Anyway, the green there isn't quite that bright. It's the dark green piece from Patrick Lose's Mixmasters line. I LOVE that fabric. I really do. Let's just be honest here...I just like Patrick Lose (not as much as Debi does though). But I think the African ladies are gorgeous, and I've been meaning to do a quilt with them in it for a while...cultural stereotypes be damned!

Someone stop me before I put myself in stitches!

Hehe, well, if you can't laugh at yourself, well then, what are we doing here?

Anyway, cheesy joke and puns aside, for the whopping ZERO anythings I did in April, I'm making up for it in May...right? I'd like to think so! I finished another project and I have to admit, I'm really happy with how it turned out. It needs a little lot of squaring up, but I think when it's all said and done it's going to be a neat, ample sized wall hanging.

The original pattern is this:

I mean, it's cute, right? The display picture knew the way to my heart - it had a big ol' chocolate cake on it. I knew I had to make it! It was a match made in my stomach. But I looked at the colors it was asking for, and I looked at the picture and it's so sweet, so darling, so pretty...and so not me at all. to me, the colors are very nice but pretty blah. So I put the ol' Lauren spin on it. Because that's what I'm calling it.

Reds, oranges, golds...are you seeing a trend here? lol. Who'da thunk that my favorite color is purple, because I sure don't use it a whole lot. But this time I thought to put a zing-a-roonie of green in there. It's in the African ladies fabric, and quite honestly, I reaallllllllly love that border fabric and I'll pretty much take any excuse I can to use it in whatever I can.

As usual, the random color choosing was difficult (ask my roomate, I had all 54 pieces spread all over the living room floor, and I kept interrupting The Daily Show to ask her opinion on color placement) but it happened. I'm not too thrilled with that coin-gold in there once I got it in, but there's nooooo way in hell I'm going to take it all apart and replace it. So. I'm just ignoring it and letting the green take over.

This picture is not so great, but the lighting wasn't either. One of these days I have to invest in a for real, no joke camera. My birthday is in September...hmmm ;) Anyway, the green is quite a bit darker than shown here, but the point is the African ladies. Aren't they beautiful? I love this fabric. Considering my Anthropological background (God, it sounds pretentious doesn't it? I hate saying stuff like that but for this it's just what it is)  and the fact that my advisor was legitimately African, cultural stereotypes like this in art set me a little on edge but not enough to stop enjoying them or using them in my quilts. So, hoity-toity academia...I just got 2 words for ya :)

So I have a new quilt in the works and one more that all it needs are its dang borders (I know, I'm slacking in a mjor way on that quilt...I've had it since what, January?)...the latter, guess what, is in oranges and reds and browns and golds...Someone stop me! I need to do a blue quilt or something. Just the thought of that though completely un-motivates me. The new one is black and red and orange and yellow and purple and blue...but I'm really stepping out of my box and the focal fabric has bright, big ol' chickens on it. Seriously. I don't like chickens in decor. No offense to those of you who appreciate the occasional non-edible chicken in the kitchen but it's seriously not at all my thing. So, at least I'm branching out there!

It's Second Saturday this weekend, so the store will be a madhouse. But it's a new Block of the Month, so it should be fun! Hope to see some of y'all there :D



Late Night Sewing Adventures

If you know me, then you know that I am a night owl to the umpteenth degree. I stay up late and wake up waaaay too early, though not 100% by choice. So what do I do? No, I'm not out drinkin' with the college kiddies. I'm not watching Powerball (okay, so I'm probably watching WWE)  or heck, I'm not even reading. I'm out in the middle of the living room sewing, and sometimes I get a wild hair and try something new.

This is the case with the other night (I can't remember which other night, one of 'em recently...is it bad that at 23 I'm losing track? I need a vacation, lol). I have never really delved into the wild and wooly world of templates. Based solely upon the reception of template usage in Block of the Month - oh yes, there was groaning - I kind of just assumed they were a pain in the keester and I more or less avoided them. But *someone* delivered a subtle hint to me that they wanted me to try them, by putting a freakin cute pattern in my cubby box at work...Mom...

So I gave it a go, and you know? It wasn't hard at all. I don't know what all the griping was about! It took a few extra minutes to draw trace out the templates onto some template plastic, but I had those and all the fabrics cut in less than 45 minutes. The only issue I encountered with the pattern was that it was a wedge type design that converges in the center rather than going across in rows; that in and of itself wasn't the issue, the issue was just the bias on those edges stretching because someone got irritated at sewing it together wrong and tore out the stitches too vigorously, thus stretching the bias and making the center bubbly. Ahem.

 I used fabric from Jinny Beyer's Outback line (the two black pieces) and the rest is from M&S Textiles' Australian Aboriginal fabrics. I think I have Audrey Martin Napanangka and Bea "Nambooka" Edwards featured here.

I love it and it looks great, but uh, I screwed up the middle. That's suppused to look like a peppermint candy, you know, every other one? I got irrtated and pulled out my stitching and put it back together and in the process stretched the bias and made it bubble in the center. Luckily the fabulous Carol can fix that little issue in quilting! But anyway, not bad for a first go!

Why yes, I DO know better. But that, my friends, doesn't mean diddly.

So yeah. My machine hates me. Which, by "my machine hates me," I actually mean I totally screwed it up myself. User error.

I know better than to sew over pins, which is why I always take them out before my needle goes over them. who am I kidding? I don't. I leave them there...like most imperfect quilters (is there such a thing as a perfect quilter? Ooh, quilting existentialism). But in the back of my brain I know that there is a risk of breaking a needle or the pin if the the needle actually hitis the pin. apparently it's way back there in the back.

To the untrained eye, it looks like I'm being a diligent machine owner and cleaning my machine after using it. Yeah, that beast gets duuuuusty. I wish I could say that this is why I have got everything dismantled. Alas, I ran over a pin and the unexpected happened....

See that? Yeah, the pin didn't break like one would expect it to, and nor did the needle....The damn thing sucked itself into the feed dogs and got itself crimped and stuck therein. You should have heard the noise. It was ugly. I think my roomate dang near jumped out of her skin, because there she was minding her own business, watching Futurama, and KA-CHING-CRUNCH - pin, meet feed dogs, they want to devour you.

So what is the moral of this story? You probably shouldn't run over your pins. Will I run over my pins again/still? You betcha. But I will change my needle and watch things a little more closely.

Somewhere out in the wild and weird world of the interwebs, there's a Quilt Police Officer taking down my number so they can smack me upside the head with a ruler. 

Just some photos from yesterday's post...

Okay, I got the photos!

This is where I found the pattern. I LOVE this magazine!!

This is their version. Very cool. I like the pattern they have going on in all the pieces. Espcailly in the orange, who would know right away that all these are, are Nine Patches?

My version. Less pattern, more in-your-face-color. 

There's nothing like a new needle and a fresh rotary cutter blade.

So the last couple days I have FINALLY been able to sew. I've been working on a project for the shop since ohidontknowmaybedecember and I finally had a chance to work on it again. I got the top mostly pieced and I'm startng to get the little appliques on. It's the pattern "Freshwater" from the Australian Quilter's Companion, which has rapidly become my favorite quilting magazine...unlike Fons and Porter... :D

I don't have any pictures if the final product taken yet, which is in poart due to the fact that there is no final product yet... But I'm taking an ol' stabaroonie at blanket stitching the appliques. For those that know me, and those that don't, let me reiterate/put out there how much I HATE doing the blanket stitch. It's adorable! It's fun to look at! I love it's looks. But it takes for-freakin'-ever for my machine to do it, if it chooses to do it at all. See, I have one of those cranky "Bish please I'll do it when I feel like it" machines and it really, REALLY doesn't like to cooperate when I try to do a blanket stitch.Even though I've fixed the tension, had the timing readjusted, it just hates the blanket stitch...it'll hop over when it shouldn't, it'll skip stitches entirely...you know how it goes. But I did manage to get a fish stitched down and it looks super cute!

I can't find a picture online of the quilt itself to save my life, but I assure you it's adorable. This is the color layout. It makes more sense when the appliques are on there...in the dark blue/turquoise areas, there are 3 fish. In the orange and yellow there is an umbrella and a beach bucket and in the light blue there is a big ol' sun. It;s bright and wild and just my style! I love it. Smaller than I expected though. I'll try andupdate this post again with more (and better) pictures.

Oh and don't mind my awesome Randy Orton cup. Quilting and pro wrestling in my life go together like unicorns and glitter! :D