Couching tutorial
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| Decorative stitches with a 3-way cording foot |
I had absolutely no idea what couching was when I first heard of it. I saw a demonstration of couching on a longarm quilting machine, and then very quickly wrote it off (since I didn’t have a longarm at the time), thinking I would never have the means or opportunity to try couching. You can use couching to emphasize a print on fabric, outline applique, doodle with it, and you can even quilt with it.
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| Couching can add a little flair to regular fabric |
Well, there are some ways that you can couch without buying a super expensive longarm quilting machine, and then also buying a super expensive couching attachment for said longarm. You can actually couch by hand–but it takes a while. And you can certainly try couching by using a domestic sewing machine. You don’t even have to buy a special foot for it if you don’t want to. As long as you have a free motion quilting foot that has some sort of round part that the needle goes through, you’re good! I will say, that if the hole for the free motion foot is really big, you can easily modify it yourself by taking a small piece of scotch tape and covering a portion of the hole (not a portion the needle will travel through). The smaller the hole on the free motion (or couching) foot, the easier it will be for the yarn to travel where you want it to go.
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| Make an art piece using couching techniques if that floats your boat! |
I wrote a super easy to follow couching tutorial for Janome’s website that can be accessed HERE
So click it and check out how easy couching is! There are seriously so many things you can do with couching to spice up existing projects.
Science Class DayDreams
I have a friend that I had the honor of quilting a special quilt for. The pattern was JayBird Quilts “Science Fair” pattern in some gorgeous Kate Spain fabrics. I’m not sure that I’ve had more fun quilting something with such a fun concept. My client had discussed her thoughts about having the colored/patterned hexagons be quilting with straight lines and lots of structure (kind of like science class). And the remaining white would be quilted like a daydream, rising up from the structure of the science class. Such an ingenious idea for a quilting layout!
So the bottom of the quilt, close to the clustered patterned fabrics, was quilted in a lighter thread than the top, with slightly less dense quilting. The more white fabric there was, the denser the quilting got–and thread colors changed to get gradually darker towards the top as well.
And the back of the quilt had beakers pieced into it. Come on. It doesn’t get any better than that!
T-shirt quilts
Have you ever picked up someone’s journal or diary and caught a glimpse of who that person is and what drives them? Even if it belonged to a total stranger? That’s how I often feel when I get a t-shirt quilt commission. Sometimes It’s t-shirts, sometimes ties, sometimes clothing from a deceased loved one, but what my clients may not realize is that by the time I am done with the finished item/quilt, I feel like I personally know the person the items belonged to.
I recently completed a t-shirt quilt for a graduating senior who was an avid football player. And let me tell you…Momma did an awesome job of saving shirts from elementary school on up! This was probably the largest t-shirt quilt I’ve done, being nearly king-sized when completed.
Seriously…this sucker was a monster.
This is going to sound totally lame, but I feel like I know this kid and went through each achievement with him! While cutting out the shirt blocks, sometimes your mind just wanders. A lot of things about this quilt reminded me of when I was in high school. Thinking about football games and pep rallies and all the fun and carefree days.
It is such a joyful process to make something that parents are putting so much thought into to gift their child. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? I am so happy that I’ve found my thing–and that it can bring other people a little joy and happiness.
Insert Harry Potter theme song here…
So…It pretty much seems like everyone I know is either pregnant or just had a baby here lately. I am in that season of my life where the wedding invitations have stopped and the baby shower invitations are lining my mailbox! That being said, I get a LOT of joy making things for people’s new babes. While I work on it, I wonder if they’ll be curled up on the couch with it, playing outside and dragging it through the mud, becoming a couch fort in the living room…I love it!
This was the appliqued fabric before I started quilting it.
I had a close friend from college ask me to make a Harry Potter themed baby quilt for her brother’s first child. She pretty much gave me free reign to come up with whatever (which is AWESOME!!!), so I thought I would applique the deathly hallows symbol, followed by “lways†so that it kind of looked like “alwaysâ€-just google it, I’m sure there are examples! I made a fun template out of poster board and traced it onto the fabric I wanted, used some Wonder Under and fused that bad boy to my background fabric to get ready to applique!
I was really excited about the quilting process and wanted my free motion quilting to LOOK like MAGIC would look.
Just pulled from the longarm frame!
I’m not really sure what that means, but I tried my best to quilt what I thought magic looked like in thread form. And I loved the outcome.
I used the Harry Potter-y chevron fabric that I think was really meant to be college colors for the backing and really love how it turned out. I’m not usually a huge applique person, but I definitely will be trying it with more projects in the future! And I really hope and pray that this kiddo is a Harry Potter fan!
Roughly crib sized finished baby quilt!
Dresden Placemats tutorial
There’s also a really cool-no bind technique that is explained in the tutorial that you’ll just have to try out! I love this fabric by Sarah Jane Studios for Michael Miller fabrics, and think it’s perfect for spring and most of summer!
I hope you’ll find some time to sew this week and play around with some cute dresdens!
Applique your way to a handmade Mother’s Day!
So I was trying to think about what kinds of gifts would be meaningful to me if I were a mother. What kind of gift would I cherish and appreciate forever?
Well, right off the bat, I think about things that represent my “imaginary kids”. Handwriting samples, drawings, things that could be made more permanent. But then, I thought not all kids are old enough to draw or write…so how could that stage be permanently captured in a cute way? My answer was hand prints! But the painted hand prints are kind of cheesy, and lots of those probably come home from school in the form of turkeys, reindeer antlers, spiders, butterflies, etc.
So how about making a functional patchwork pillow with traced hands of the kiddos appliqued on top of the patchwork?
I got to team up with Janome for this super easy tutorial, and really loved the experience. If you’re in the need for a super cute, but still functional Mother’s Day gift (or grandmother’s gift!), this is the project for you! Follow this Link to access the full tutorial and supply list.
The pillow features Karen Lewis’ awesome fabric range, Blueberry Park. The back of the pillow is an easy envelope closure that takes minutes to make.
Hemming the envelope closures of the pillow
Sweet little blanket stitch on one of the hands prior to quilting
Selecting thread to go with each hand
For more details, check out Janome’s project page and access the complete, free tutorial!
Until next time, I hope you are able to get some good sewing in!
Texas Road Trip QAL-Customer quilt
I had the awesome opportunity to quilt a very talented quilter’s Texas Road Trip QAL quilt. The design for the quilting was fairly straight forward and not that complicated, but the impact was really breath taking. Straight lines and curved lines work separately to really make the quilt pop.
These are some of the great swirls that this quilter chose for her design. So gorgeous and free flowing. I really loved quilting this because there were lots of people in our guild completing this quilt along at the same time, and I enjoyed seeing how differently they were quilted. In the picture above, you can see a little snippet of a post it that I pinned to the next section as a reminder to stop quilting swirly loops and switch to straight lines 🙂
Another great detail that this quilter chose was to put a heart over the center of San Antonio–in hot pink thread. It really was so much fun to quilt, and the swirly loops are really relaxing to kind of get lost in.
And here’s a picture of the finished quilt:
I absolutely LOVE the scrappy reds in the Texas shape and the scrappy low volume background. Normally, I’m not a red person…but this quilt…WOW! I just had to share one of my favorite quilts that I’ve longarmed for someone else. I hope you get to enjoy some time sewing, or doing whatever makes you happy this week! Until next time….
Longarm quilting a double wedding ring quilt
How many times have you looked at a quilt top and been totally stumped on how you would quilt it? I feel like this is a skill that really is developed over time and trial and error. I’ll be the first to admit that my very first quilts–after quilting–didn’t really showcase the quilt pattern with the quilting as they could have. My quilting designs made little sense and didn’t work with the existing pattern to make the quilt pop. Basically, I was just quilting to get it done and keep all the layers together.
It’s a little difficult to see the quilting, but it’s orange thread in squiggly lines…obviously my photography skills were lacking as well 😉 This was the first quilt I ever made, in October of 2011.
I think that typically, for beginning quilters, the quilting is all about function. It’s difficult enough to remember 1/4″ seam allowance, minding your bobbin so you aren’t sewing without thread, etc. I know that I was just relieved to be finished, and I was very proud of the quilting at the time.
Fast forward 5 years, and quilting is now my favorite part. I’m enamored with the process of evaluating a quilt top, selecting batting, figuring out what quilting design will best display the awesomeness of the quilt pattern. I know that I still have a long way to go, and I pour over Instagram, Pinterest, blogs, books, etc. to find every piece of information and inspiration I can get before I start planning to quilt a quilt.
I recently had the opportunity to quilt my first Double Wedding Ring quilt. My client’s quilt was pieced entirely by her grandmother (prior to her passing) from vintage fabrics and feed sacks. It was the greatest honor to be trusted with a family heirloom. I used plastic overlays to audition different quilting designs, and finally came up with a combination of a few simple designs that I felt would work well together and really make the quilt pop.
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| This was actually the first row that I quilted with a feather. I hated them and ripped them all out and started over. |
I stewed over the newly blank quilt after ripping the first row out and finally re-started.
I was very pleased with the outcome and can’t wait until I can return it to the customer.
Here is the full quilt:
I love the finished look of ruler work with free motion quilting. I think the structure really works well with the free-flowing quilting and I can’t wait to play around with this some more. I can’t wait to see where my work is in another 5 years…
My Finished Glam Clam Quilt
I’m a member of the San Antonio Modern Quilt Guild, and we were fortunate enough to have Latifah Saafir do a trunk show AND teach 2 awesome workshops! I was super excited…the clam shell style quilt has been on my quilting bucket list since I first started sewing, so this was a great excuse to get it done. I immediately signed up for the workshop and picked my fabrics out after I got the pattern and templates. I painstakingly cut out all of the pieces, labeled them, and organized them all into little ziplocs, until I would attend the workshop. I had the finished quilt in mind for a very special friend and was excited to gift her a really cool quilt.
About a week from the workshop date, my grandmother’s health was failing. She passed away, and the funeral was scheduled for the same time as the workshop. I missed the workshop and didn’t touch the pieces I’d cut for a few weeks after. Once I started the quilt, I thought about my grandmother often. I’m not crazy about piecing curves, but I must say that it was kind of a healing feeling to sit and sew without really thinking about anything. It gave me a chance to think about relationships and friendships and how much people can impact your life.
Quilting the finished top was even more fun that putting it together. After doing a little bit of research, I found that many of the clam shell quilts are quilted with just an all over design, without much attention paid to the individual blocks. I definitely didn’t want to just do edge-to-edge quilting.
Latifah’s pattern is seriously so simple to follow, and her templates are to die for. They are very mindful of how curved seams should be constructed, and here’s something even more awesome–NO PINS NEEDED!!! I won’t lie…I didn’t believe that at first, but after sewing a couple together, I tried it without pins, and–life changing.
Here is a little more of the quilting–not really anything too difficult, but I felt it gave a better effect than an all over quilting design.
Above is the top with no quilting or binding–I absolutely love how this quilt came together.
And then this was the finished quilt after binding. I shipped this beauty off to my friend in California and hope she uses it until the thing falls apart! I must say, Latifah did an amazing job on the pattern and tutorial and I can’t wait to make my next Glam Clam quilt.