Highlights from the Houston Quilt Show

Last weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Houston International Quilt show. These are not your ordinary quilts.  They are all original designs, executed by some of the best quilters in the business.

This quilt by Setsuko Matsushima of Japan won the Founder's Award.  I'm not generally a fan of mostly grey quilts, but this one caught my eye.  I really like how it's a fascinating mixture of both American art, in the traditional quilt blocks, and Japanese art in the depiction of the waves.  This quilt honors and offers a ray of hope to those who suffered due to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Here's  Kimberly Lacey of Colorado standing by her First Place winning quilt.  The design of this quilt was inspired by ammonites, a very extinct sea shell found as fossils.  (Who says there's no science in the fabric arts?)  The pattern was created with shimmering fabric paints on silk, rather than the more traditional pieced or appliqued fabrics.  She's just getting started at as a professional quilter, so if you like her work, check out her website here.

What to do when you know what fabric design you want, but it doesn't exist?  Why, you create it in the computer and then have it printed!  That's exactly what happened with this striking quilt by Karlee Porter of Utah.  If you like the design, she's got it for sale.

If you like more traditional piecing and applique, check out this quilt by Beth Nufer of Oregon. It was made from fabric that shades from white to grey and then solid brightly colored fabric.  The idea is to give the quilt a 3D effect.

For the mathematically inclined, there's this quilt by Claudia Pfeil of Germany.  The black shapes are inspired by the Mandelbrot set, one of the very first fractals that was discovered.  Fractals have infinitely detailed shapes, so working with them in quilting is quite a challenge.

There's some totally fun things at the show too, like this scene of Flamingos all dressed for a party by Beth Miller of Australia.

Or this fishy quilt by Tomiko Onishi of Japan.  Look carefully -- all those fish are actually vegetables!

My cousin Suzy Webster had two quilts in the show this year.  The top one, Dotville, was inspired by a class she took at last year's show.  The bottom one, Order to Chaos, is based on a design created by her father, John Shier.  His artistic explorations have resulted in a completely new way to generate fractal geometries.  You can check out Suzy's blog about quilting here and John's webpage here.

Come back next week and see how I am dealing with the challenges posed by mid-rise pants.

Jacket with White Satin Trim Part 2

Last week, I talked about the decorative trim for a jacket that I am making.  This week, we see how the jacket went together.

I started with Vogue 1493.

The home made bias tape isn't just used for trim.  The seams are bound with the bias tape, rather than finishing them with an overcast stitch.

The sleeves have an usual shape, with the large and ornamented lower sleeves.  The seam comes to a sharp point.

This seam is made possible by clipping the upper sleeve almost to the seam line.

Here's the completed sleeve.

The upper part of the sleeve is a fairly standard shape, so it sews easily to the jacket.

The front band also proved to be fairly easy to attach.

The final step is to make 1" bias tape and attach it at the front band/front seam.  It turns out that 1" bias tape is more difficult to deal with than the 1/2" variety.  Also, if you try to feed a strip that's too wide into the bias tape maker, the fabric can end up melted (it is polyester) and ruined.  The stuff is squirrelly when you try to attach it also, note all of the pins.

The jacket did get finished.  Now I have something to wear to the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra concert!

Come back next week for a report from the Houston International Quilt Expo.

Jacket with White Satin Trim Part 1

Were you wondering about all the white satin trim from a previous post?
I saw this interesting jacket, Vogue 1493, and saw that it made use of some techniques I hadn't tried before. I decided to see if I could make it work.  Note that this is listed as an "advanced" difficulty pattern, a good sign that there's one or more steps here that is challenging to make work right.

   I choose a teal stretch denim for the jacket and white satin for the trim.  That gives a lot more contrast that the colors of the jacket on the front of the pattern envelope, but then, subtle isn't really my style.

Thank goodness I had extra fabric!  I think it came off the end of the bolt.  I made enough cutting errors that I had to redo some things and I ended up needing all the fabric I had.

As described in a previous post, making the white satin trim proved to be the difficult step.  The satin is made into 1/2" bias tape and then sewn to the lower sleeve sections and the front band in a pattern that looks random.

The pattern gives very detailed instructions for making the "random" design of lines of trim.  In this sleeve section, I've traced the lines from the pattern.  The pattern also specifies the order in which the lines of trim are to be sewn.  The right and left sleeves are different, as are the right and left front bands.

Sewing on the white trim proved to be fairly straight forward.  It did involve a great deal of top stitching.  Here's a lower sleeve section in process.

 

The front bands were easier than the sleeves.  There were just and many lines of trim, but most of them were shorter.  Here's the front band, lined with more white satin, ready to be sewn onto the jacket.

Come back next week and see how the jacket goes together, now that most of the trim is done.

Fly away, Flutter Bye!

Embroidery Library has these wonderful and lifelike designs for free standing butterflies.  There's even a few dragonflies.  I decided I needed to try these for a project I'm working on.  (You'll see it here, but probably not very soon.)

The butterfly begins with a water soluble stabilizer.  I use Ultra Solvy.  It's available at Joann's and comes in 2 widths. This hoop is a bit big for the project, which creates some problems, but it's the only one I have that will work.

 

Because the embroidery will be seen from both sides, the top and bottom threads have to match.  This means lots of bobbins and extra effort to keep them all straight.

The base color is used to stitch out a foundation that will stand on it's own once the stabilizer is washed away.

 

The foundation covers most of the butterfly, bit not some of the bits around the edges.

I had issues with the tails on the swallowtail.  My first attempt was a complete failure because the stabilizer tore and the tail ended up heading through the stitch plate.  Here, I'm strengthening the stabilizer.  This worked, but next time, I think I should try a clear tape.

 

The butterfly is now all stitched out.

Most of the stabilizer was easy to remove.  Just a little bit remains around the antennae and between the wings.   Wash thoroughly under hot running water and it goes away completely. 

This butterfly also has some friends.

Stay tuned and see what I've got cooked up for them.

Come back next week and see what I used all that bias tape for!

Fishy Dress for a Toddler

Sewing for little girls is so much fun.  I made a new dress for my favorite little girl.

This isn't the first thing I've made for her.  There was the Too Cute Pink Dress and the Madeline costume, part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Her father picked out the fabric at The Calico Cat in the Kaimuki district of Honolulu.  It's this print full of sea creatures just perfect for an island girl?

For a pattern I chose this Ellie Mae Designs pattern, sold by Kwik Sew.  It has really nice detailed directions for new sewers.  

I like the sleeve ruffles from view B, but not the trim, the fabric being busy enough, so my dress is a bit of a blend of view A and view B.

All the tricky sewing in this dress is in the bodice.  Here's the wrong side of the bodice, just as it's being sewn together.  Note the extensive clipping of the neck seam.

Right side out, it looks like this:

The next step is to attach the shoulder ruffles.  They get assembled as a set before being sewing to the bodice.

The armholes are finished with bias tape.   I used purchased bias tape, but this would have been an excellent opportunity to try making my own, as I described for a different project.

The finished shoulder ruffles are very attractive.

Come back next week for a new project and more fun with a sewing machine.

Sewing Room Tour

Ready for a peek at where all my projects come from?  Today's the day!  Welcome to my sewing room...

Perhaps I'm lucky enough to have a whole room to devote to sewing.  It could also be said that my sewing tools, supplies, and fabric stash just took over a whole room.  In fact, the sewing activities spill out of this room, since my dining table doubles as a cutting table and all the computing power is also in a different room.

You'll notice that the walls are a lovely coral color.   Once upon a time, they were beige, but that just doesn't stimulate creativity or effort, at least for me.  It goes well with the rest of the house, none of which is beige any more.   The floor is carpeted, definitely not my first choice for a sewing room, where it is really nice to  be able to sweep up all the loose threads and small pieces, but that's a project for later.

Here's my ironing station.  There's nothing fancy here.  The iron is at least 10 years old and I think I bought it from Walmart.  The art is a different matter.  It's a genuine hand painted batik from the island of Bali in Indonesia.   It's a rather different depiction of the classic mermaid -- this one's a lion fish, so watch out!

Some of my tools and supplies, mostly the smaller stuff, is stored on open shelves.   The baskets generally came filled with peaches or tomatoes, so this is an example of reuse.  The paint color on the shelves is left over from a different residence, but it seems to work, at least in my color sense.

It's not possible to have too much art or inspiration in a sewing room, so I hung a quilt by my most talented Aunt Kathy.  The colors go well with other things in the room.

This room comes with a really nice big closet. Two sets of wire shelves from Home Depot just fit and keep fabric and other supplies mostly organized.  With a solid door, this closet stays dark, so there's no light damage to sensitive items.

Here's the grand finale: the sewing table.  It's about 4 ft long, just big enough for my largest machine with the embroidery unit attached.  It's not a special sewing table, it's just a sturdy table from the office section of IKEA.  Currently, it's occupied by my Husqvarna Designer SE LE, a remarkably capable and rugged machine.  The machine is placed right in front of a window.  That provides natural light, which I find preferable for sewing and essential for selection of embroidery thread colors.  The window has a blackout shade for when the room is not in use, to protect the contents of the room.  To either side of the sewing table are racks of sewing and embroidery thread with home made covers that I discussed back in August.

 Come back next week and see what the machine is so busy stitching out!

New Tools: Bias Tape maker

Sometimes, you just have to try a new tool or technique.  I recently tried out a bias tape maker for the first time.  It's a great tool for a very specific task.  This tool is a staple of the quilter's toolbox, but not so much so for garment and home dec sewers.

 First, why would you want to make bias tape in the first place?  You can buy it already made in a variety of colors.  Simple. Right?  Sometimes, you'd like to have bias tape that matches a fabric.  Bias tape can be used for things like armhole binding, like on an upcoming project.  It can also be used as a decorative element, like on another upcoming project, where I wanted bias tape made of satin, rather than plain cotton fabric.   Quilters use it for binding quilts, where matching the fabric in a quilt adds a lot to the final effect.  So, making your own bias tape gives you options. 

Bias tape makers come in a variety of widths, too, so you aren't just stuck with the standard 1/2" width.

The first step of the process is to make a long strip of fabric cut on the bias, diagonal to the grain of the fabric.  A long strip of bias cut material is sewn together to make a loop. However, the ends of the loop are offset.

  Now the fabric is cut in a helical pattern.  The trick is to make the strip a very uniform width.  It should be 1/2" wider than the bias tape.

Unfortunately, on attempt #1, the width of the fabric strip was to variable and too narrow in spots.  There wasn't enough to fold over in some places.  I actually had go give up on this and buy new fabric!

I discovered that using scissors to cut the strip is a disaster.  It's better to use a ruler and rotary cutter.  Also, the 1/2" bias tape maker will actually accept a 1 1/4" strip.  That leaves a little room for error in the cutting, especially since I cut the strip 1 1/2" wide, then trimmed where necessary.  That was a lot of work, but it did work!

The  final step is to feed the fabric through the tool.  It goes in flat, it comes out folded.  Then you use an iron to crease the material.  You use the loop to pull the bias tape maker along the fabric strip.

I did try making bias tape by folding over the edges of a fabric strip.  Don't do it!  Getting a uniform width, especially if the fabric strip isn't a uniform width is very difficult.

Come back next time for some applications of the bias tape maker.