On the longarm today….An Antique Quilt top.

July 20, 2016 Lovelli Quilts2 Comments

Each quiltmaker trusts me to enhance their quilt with quilting. I feel both blessed to have that trust and a bit nervous as well. I feel the nerves especially when receiving a vintage or antique top to complete. I collaborate with my client to make several decisions about an antique/vintage top:

Is the fabric sturdy enough to stand up to the machine needle and thread? Are the seams put together well? Are there areas on the quilt top which need to be mended?
Would the quilt top’s value as a historical artifact decrease if quilted? If so, can I do something to stabilize it so that it’s structure will last?
Which quilting design would both respect the time period in which the top was completed and give a nod to today? Many times economic factors prevent people having vintage/antique quilts from being custom quilted, is there a less expensive alternative which would still respect the original time period?

The quilt maker, who gave me this beautiful redwork quilt to finish, found these beautiful blocks among her grandmother’s things, including the block labeled 1932. It is such a wonderful block to include in this quilt because it documents when the blocks were made along with the family history regarding the blocks and the maker.

Redwork embroidery became popular just as the fad for crazy quilts was waning during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Women entrepreneurs contributed to the spread of its popularity, both as pattern designers and pattern markers. Mothers frequently purchased ‘penny’ squares, squares of cotton with a stamped design, to practice embroidery skills or to give to their children for practice. As the 20th century progressed, designs were distributed in collections, such as States, Presidents, State Birds and Flowers, Fairy Tales, Colonial, and, of course, Sunbonnet Sue. People collected the blocks and then placed them in quilts. You can see more red work examples here. There are also blue work quilts, embroidered with blue thread, over many of the same designs.

I chose to do a ‘Baptist’ (or ‘Lutheran’ or ‘Methodist’) fan pattern and quilted right on top of the embroidery. Fortunately, I could quilt through the embroidery because it laid flat and tight to the background. The fan pattern was frequently used was a very popular design during the 1930’s and throughout history. It is one of the easiest patterns for a hand quilter to do because it requires little, to no, marking. One simply uses the elbow as a pivot point on a compass to form the fan shape:To hand quilt a fan start in the position indicated by the light pink forearm in the image above, continue moving the forearm, with the elbow fixed in place, until the forearm is in the position of the dark pink forearm. Tie off the thread, move your elbow (stretching helps) and then place the elbow and arm to do the next line of stitching. Machine quilting a fan is a little bit trickier because it involves either multiple tie-offs or tracing previously stitched lines. On a domestic machine you can mark one of the fan lines and then use a walking foot to quilt it. For subsequent lines in the fan use the walking foot guide to keep lines spaced correctly. On my longarm the fan design requires a little extra set up and a quilt top which is square so that it begins and ends at the same points from side to side of the quilt.

Here is a last look at the darling bunny on the quilt. I wonder if he will share those carrots?

Have a quilty day!!

On my longarm today…Scaling quilting designs

July 11, 2016 Lovelli QuiltsLeave a comment

I love quilting baby quilts and this sweet pattern with small Churn Dash blocks is no exception. I wanted the quilting to reflect the vintage pattern and the retro feel of the fabric. The blocks were 6 inches square, which is about half the size of a standard block (12″). It would look funny if a quilting pattern designed for a 12″ block was used on a 6′ block. In my software, Creative Studios 6, I was able to preview the quilting design.

In the first example, the Butterfly and Flower design by Kim Diamond, is shown on the quilt top as if it were stitched out with the default size of 12″, notice how large the flowers of the quilting design are compared to the size of the block, and the individual pieces which make up the block. In addition, the size of the flowers in the quilting design are approximately 10 times larger compared to the size of the flowers in the fabric.

In the second example, the quilting is denser, but it is also more in scale with the block size and the scale of the prints. I much prefer being able to preview how my quilting is going to look on my computer monitor and then hitting ‘undo’ than to quilt something out which I don’t like and taking my seam ripper out to undo it!

The finished quilt had a soft, ‘quilty’ look and feel–just perfect to wrap a baby!!

Have a quilty day!!

On my Longarm today….Ditching

July 1, 2016 Lovelli QuiltsLeave a comment

Ditching, or stitching in the ditch (SID), refers to quilting with stitches that are placed precisely in the seam. SID comes from garment sewing where it is used in shoulder and collar seams to strengthen the seam and tame seam allowances. It is a skill which I’ve practiced ever since I began quilting. I started ‘ditching’ as a hand quilter, tried it a few times (not very successfully) on my domestic sewing machine, and I find it a necessary part of my repertoire as a longarm quilter. The wonderful applique quilt on my longarm today has given me lots of practice with stitching in the ditch. The technique is an excellent way to stabilize the quilt, especially between borders or around applique. It also shows off precise piecing and applique.

Good stitching in the ditch should disappear into the quilt. In the photo above, at very high magnification, my stitches with a white thread disappear into the quilt. The only thing that one can see is that the seam has definition and depth.

To SID choose a thread which is thin (I like 50 or 60 weight), with a color that blends well with the colors of the fabrics which are seamed together or a mono-filament thread. Although many quilters love mono-filament for ditching, I prefer a matte thread in a blending color because I don’t like the shine of a polyester thread. Although I have seen a shiny thread ditched in a star block which made the star appear to sparkle–gorgeous.

Notice that the needle goes directly into the little ‘ditch’ next to the seam. Perfect SID starts with piecing the quilt top. It is necessary to make sure that you have a plan for pressing each seam and are consistent. Do not have the seam allowance flip between seam intersections. A top which is paper foundation pieced can be ditched because they are sewn and pressed consistently.

To SID, I draw the seams on my computer with the quilting machine head, then I start the sewing machine. This leaves my hands free to gently pull the seam slightly apart as the machine quilts, making the ‘ditch’ larger and an easier target to hit. If the seams don’t match perfectly at intersections, then my ditching will follow those unmatched ditches. I find that concentrating solely on the needle gives me a version of ‘highway hypnosis’ so I usually focus my eyes on the ditch slightly before it goes under the needle. I need to remind myself to take frequent breaks. Eyes, neck, shoulders, back, and elbows get tired from this type of intense work.

SID quilting is necessarily slow work but it also has a meditative quality which I enjoy and it makes lovely quilts!!!

Please have a lovely and safe 4th of July, celebrate our country, enjoy your family and remember those who have fallen in service so that we may live free.

On the Longarm today–a cup of Kaffe Fassett coffee

June 22, 2016June 24, 2016 Lovelli Quilts1 Comment

It is so much fun to quilt a quilt with beautiful color and fabric. This lovely design is by Virginia Robertson Designs and it uses Kaffe Fassett fabrics with a purple Grunge background. The challenge for me as a quilter was to make the applique stand out and to let the fabric be the star.

I used double 80/20 Cotton/Polyester batting because I wanted the applique to pop out of the surface of the quilt. I stitched in the ditch around the cups, handles and saucers. I wish I had a magic wand which makes ‘ditching’ easier. However, the real trick to getting the needle and stitches to go in the tight indentation between applique and background is concentration and patience. The next thing is to choose the right thread color. Before starting to quilt I auditioned several thread colors:There are 4 different threads here–the first two are Superior So Fine, the next is Isacord and the last one is Aurifil. I didn’t like the first and last because the purple was too red and they were really dark, I thought that they would fight with the maker’s fabric choices. The second one was too light and obvious on all the fabrics, although, if the quilt was going to be about the quilting it would have been a good choice. The Isacord won–I had some trepidation about using it because I had never used on my longarm, but it worked beautifully and I had zero tension issues.

My next challenge was to find a quilting design which would make the background recede and would give it texture in a relevant way. I found a coffee bean design by Mike Fountain at Intelligent Quilting. I think it works really well as a background ‘meander’.

I would love to have one of those cups filled with coffee every morning!!

A quilt party: Spiked Punch on the Longarm!!

November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 Lovelli Quilts6 Comments

It is such a joy for me to quilt for clients and to help them finish quilts. Last week I spent my time on a client’s quilt, made from a pattern called Spiked Punch by Tula Pink. The fabrics in it were from Amy Butler’s latest line “Glow” and some Tula Pink fabric. Here is a screen shot of the quilt mockup:

I used a Whispy Feather design by Donna Kleinke of One Song Needlearts, a fill pattern by Anita Shackelford and a curved grid fill of my own design. It was fun to place the feathers ‘behind’ the stacked bricks (something I’ve seen hand-guided quilters do) with computer-aided design and quilt it with the computer. Note, I still sat and ‘helped’ the needle to stitch in the ditch along the bricks. It is fun to fill the negative space with quilty lusciousness!!

Have a quilty day!!

Blogger’s Quilt Festival and Wacky Witchy Way

October 24, 2014October 24, 2014 Lovelli Quilts3 Comments

I’m entering Wacky Witchy Way into the Blogger’s Quilt Festival which starts today. Voting will start November 1.

I was inspired by the great fabric line from Maywood Studios, Black Cat Crossing. Although it is a Halloween seasonal fabric line, most of the prints are very versatile and can be used in many quilt applications. My houses could be witches are wearing hats put on with flair. Or, my witches could be houses with crackled eyes. I made free-motion free-standing lace spider webs, there is a tutorial here. The spider web quilting is a design by Jessica Schick.

I will be adding my link to the Original Design Category in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival. Don’t forget to vote!

Black Cat Crossing and Wicked Witch-y Way

October 22, 2014October 22, 2014 Lovelli Quilts91 Comments

Thank you Wicked Wendy for leading us on a blog hop featuring fabric from the Black Cat Crossing by Maywood Studio. Thank you Madame Samm for organizing such wonderful hops with interesting themes. I promised a Halloween quilt and a tutorial. Today’s quilt is a Quilt Design a Day finish–yippee!! My first finish from the designs which I have posted on Quilt Design a Day is from September 11, 2014. Here is the design as I originally posted it:

And here is the finished quilt:

A closer look at the scary/whimsical witch-y houses:

I fussy cut the eyes/windows in the witch-y houses so that the spiderweb prints would look like eyes. Each house has a door/nose using a purple background print, the houses/faces are a green print and the roofs/hats are a black background print. I used fabrics from the Black Cat Crossing line and some solids which were in my stash. The web quilting design was by Jessica Schick. The spiderweb embellishments were free-motion free-standing lace. They were definitely a spooky addition and easy to make.

To make the webs I started with Aquamesh Plus, a water soluble stabilizer, Bridal organza and embroidery thread.

I set up my machine for free motion stitching, lowered the feed dogs, installed the free motion foot, changed my needle for an embroidery needle and installed the straight stitch throat plate. Please consult your sewing machine’s manual for how to do this.

In order to stitch the colored webs, I threaded both white and colored threads through the machine as if they were one thread following the same path. Both threads should be threaded through the one needle. Please consult your owner’s manual if this does not work on your machine or if you have excessive thread breakage. I stuck the adhesive side of the stabilizer to the bridal organza ribbon (after removing the wire from the ribbon) then I hooped them together in an embroidery hoop. I used a 7 inch diameter hoop.

If you are insecure with your free motion stitching drawing ability I suggest that you draw your web on the stabilizer/organza with a water soluble marker. I drew my first web with a non-soluble pen and it transferred to the thread when I dissolved the stabilizer. The resulting web looked very dirty. After drawing a few webs I felt comfortable enough to go ‘off-road’ at the sewing machine. The first stitches are an ‘asterisk’ shape which form the skeleton of the web.

I found that setting the needle speed at approximately midway between the slowest and fastest kept thread breakage at a minimum. The needle will be going fast, but your movements should be slow and deliberate. First lay down the base stitches–I stitched the lines upon which I would build the design. I usually went over the lines twice. Next I went over the spiderweb ‘straight’ lines with a tight looping stitch.

In the above picture you can see both the straight lines and the beginning of one line of the looping stitch. Watch that you do not have excessive thread build-up in one place, you don’t want to pull your needle out of the needle bar or break your needle. The width of each line when finished should be 1/8 inch. When stitching the outer lines of the web be careful not to bump into the hoop with the presser foot. Also I noticed that my hoop was not travelling smoothly because my sewing surface was not completely flat–I used my Silicone Slider to fix that issue.

After stitching the skeleton of the web and the outer shape I stitched the inner lines.

Once you have completed stitching the web, remove it from the hoop and following the manufacturer’s instructions dissolve the water soluble stabilizer.

Remove the webs from the water, dry them in a towel and press them. I then carefully cut the organza out of sections of the web to add to the ‘webby’ illusion. Arrange them on the quilt and tack them down with a few stitches.

Thank you so much for your time. Please visit the other blogs on today’s schedule:

Have a quilty day!!

Welcome New Quilt Blog Hoppers!

July 15, 2014July 23, 2014 Lovelli Quilts28 Comments

Thank you so much, Beth from Plum and June for organizing the hop. I have had so much fun exploring everyone’s blogs and learning their blogging and quilting tips. I love quilting and have been quilting for roughly 26 years, with time off for children and travel. I turned ‘pro’ two years ago when I purchased ‘Sven’, my beautiful teal Statler Stitcher. I love to longarm quilt and will happily quilt all day and into the night for my clients. In addition to longarm quilting, I appraise quilts professionally. I also love to design quilts, and thanks to Quilt design a day (Qdad) I have been turning out 2 quilt designs every day and I have just earned my 60 day badge.

I use EQ7 to design and my first tutorial was about designing with EQ7. Here are some of my designs from the month of June:

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My quilting tip is to learn something new everyday, it can be something small or something large. Each new technique you learn will help you in the future, often in unpredictable ways. Learning about quilt history will expose you to beautiful quilts and give you ideas to incorporate into the quilts you are sewing today. Every mistake I make, teaches me something new or teaches me to pay attention to something I learned before. Learning keeps me interested even when I am doing tedious work. I decided that this year will be the ‘year of the binding’. I am working hard at improving my bindings and you will see tutorials on bindings throughout the year. In between designing and learning I actually find time to make my own quilts. This year my big ‘finish’ was Pie in the sky, by Kim Diehl. I’m still working on my Improv Log Cabin which I started in April during a class by the delightful Jacquie Gering. I started blogging by reading as many blogs as I could. I figured out what I liked and what I liked more. I’m still a work in progress. My blogging tip is to write posts ahead of time and schedule them. I started blogging by just jumping in and writing with the lofty goal of writing two posts per week. Then life intervened (doesn’t it always?, lol.) I’m still working at having blogs prepared in advance. There are always new and upcoming blogs. This year, the New Quilt Blog Hop has four dates, June 4th, June 11th, July 9th and July 16th. On each of those dates there are two groups of bloggers, with each blogger linking to the other group. Have fun, explore, and learn something new by visiting them, here are some of the bloggers participating today:

Sharon @ Fabrics and Flowers

Serena @ Sew Giving

Carmit @ Quilting Rainbows

Jehn @ Jehnny And The Boys

Jenny @ Jack’s Room

Deborah @ Sunshine Through The Rain

Jennifer @ A Quarter Inch From The Edge

Jane @ Where Jane Creates

Carla @ Granny Maud’s Girl

Have a quilty day!

Using EQ7’s Serendipity to Design Original Blocks, part 2

July 5, 2014July 5, 2014 Lovelli QuiltsLeave a comment

Today I would like to show you some more quilts which I designed with the help of EQ7’s Block>Serendipity>Shrink and Flip. You can find part 1 of the tutorial here. In the galleries found below the first image is always the original block and the following blocks are the combinations from Shrink and Flip, used in the quilt design and numbered to reflect the set of flags in the Shrink and Flip dialog box.

I took the “Palm” block in EQ7 and rearranged it for the following quilt design.

I find that by mixing and remixing the combinations in the Shrink and Flip dialog box I discover new blocks and fun new ways to arrange blocks. Many times the combinations are unexpected and beautiful. I hope you discover something new when you play with Shrink and Flip.

For the following quilt, I recolored some of the patches in each block once it was set into the quilt and I also darkened the background.

Finally here is the Orange Slice design which I showed you in part 1 of the tutorial:

Spend some time to play around with this neat feature!

On the longarm today.

May 21, 2014 Lovelli Quilts4 Comments

I am so lucky to be able to quilt on a beautiful client quilt. My client and I decided to quilt using designs inspired by those in the fabric. I combined several medallion designs from Anita Shackelford and from Nancy Haake. The fill function in Creative Studios (the software which runs my longarm) made it easy. Here is my (very rough) design:

I learn something new from every quilt, my lessons today:

size the medallions to the width of the longarm table in order to minimize stops and starts.
rotate the design so that the start of the design is behind the ‘trim’ border, enabling the rest of the design to sew continuously.
break apart designs to minimize stops/starts (it sounds counter-intuitive, but if the longarm quilter is going to stop and start multiple times at the edge of a trim, then breaking the design apart and only sewing the portion which fits entirely on the sewing area will reduce the total number of stops/starts).

Next time I will try:

to plan the outlines of the design and layering the circle borders by themselves first, then stitch them (stabilizing the stitching area). Next digitize the center medallions and stitch them. There were quite a few areas where I attempted to remove stitches which retraced stitching lines but, these were difficult to remove in standalone mode and tedious to stitch.
to make sure that I take the time to manage the sewing order better.

I love to try new techniques and I’m so excited to learn something new with every quilt! What have you learned today?