tip tuesday: presto change-o!

Posted on November 17, 2009 by laura west kong

Ever piece a block together only to find out that the fabrics you chose didn’t work out as well as planned? Hold off on that seam ripper. Try a fabric marker instead!

flannel-block This flannel double four-patch originally had white and yellow tiny squares, but the white and yellow blended into each other way too much for my tastes. Fabric markers to the rescue. Rather than ripping the entire block apart and starting all over again with different fabrics (which would have involved a late night trip to the fabric store … if any were even open) I just colored in the background of the white squares with a green fabric marker. Voila … Instant fabric change!

y-c-pens Y&C Fabricmates are some of my favorite fabric markers. They contain permanent pigment fabric dye and have a great brush tip which gives both a fine tip and thicker tip in the same pen. And no heat-setting required!

You don’t have to color in the entire background to make a change for the better. Try adding polka dots, stripes, funky doodles or coloring in small details of the offending fabric. It works for fabric that hasn’t been pieced together too, in case your local quilt shop has closed for the evening, and you’ve just got to get that quilt top finished.

It’s important to test the markers out on a small scrap of fabric, especially when coloring fabric that’s already been pieced together. These pens are permanent and you will want to see how the markers react with your specific fabric. Flannel takes marker dye differently than regular quilting cottons. Even among quilting cottons, thread count and sheen varies, and those factors influence how the fabric reacts to the markers. Sometimes the color will bleed outward and in that case, you will want to color a bit away from the seam and let the dye flow towards the edge rather than coloring directly on the edge of the seam.

Give it a try sometime. You’ll feel thrifty and clever for making do with the fabric you already have in your stash, and you might even get bitten by a creative bug and discover a whole new obsession in fabric re-design!

tip tuesday: cut smart! (part two)

Posted on November 10, 2009 by laura west kong

Today’s cutting tip has nothing at all to do with cutting fabric, but it will help the edges of your fusible applique stay nice and neat:

Make a small cut into the paper-backed fusible paper before you iron it to your fabric. This will give you a place to grab the the paper and remove it gently without destroying the edges of the applique.

happy quilting! =(^_^)=

tip tuesday: cut smart! (part one)

Posted on November 3, 2009 by laura west kong

Fusible applique is quick and fun. Here are a few cutting tips to make it easier:

Even if you like a bit of fraying, smooth-cut edges are still important. You don’t want it to look as if your new puppy chewed up your appliques, so make sure you have a good, comfortable, sharp pair of scissors, not too large and not too small. It doesn’t have to be expensive, just sharp.
Cut slowly and carefully, it’s not a race.

Cut smart. Notice the differences between the two appliques above. The red swirl is actually only cut once. The green swirl isn’t cut at all! I traced the outer circle and the inner swirl together onto one piece of fusible, ironed the red fabric down, and cut it apart into the two designs. Cut only one swirl, but get two swirl appliques. Then place a simple circle background beneath each one. Clear as mud? Check the pattern below to see what I traced and the photo at left to see what I cut.
Finally, practice, practice, practice! The more you cut, thebetter you’ll get. Try it out for yourself with my Salt Water Taffy pattern below. It has both shallow and sharp curves to hone your cutting skills.

For a pair of candies as pictured at top right, trace the following onto the paper side of fusible web: one swirly circle, two plain circle outlines (just trace the outer circle for these, ignore the inner swirl), and four of the tulip-shaped wrapper ends.

Fuse the red fabric onto the swirly circle, the green fabric onto the two plain circles, and the white fabric onto the four wrapper ends. Cut out the pieces as shown above, being extra careful when cutting the red swirly circle into the two swirls.

Assemble and fuse the candy pieces together as shown at top right onto a teflon pressing sheet or directly onto your quilt block background squares.

Have fun! =(^_^)=

tip tuesday: give blood … get thimbles

Posted on October 27, 2009 by laura west kong

With the holidays as well as the flu season fast approaching, the Red Cross needs a steady supply of blood donations to meet the increased need. You probably know that blood donors get free juice and cookies, and that just one donation can save up to three lives, but you most likely did not know that you also get a free supply of great quilting thimbles.

Now I have tried many different kinds of thimbles in my quilting career: closed, open, metal, leather, … and the list goes on. But for me, none can beat a piece of the simple bandage that they wrap around your arm after you donate blood. Cut a piece several inches long, enough to wrap around your finger or thumb a few times and voila, you’ve got yourself a thimble that is thin enough to feel the needle but just thick enough that you don’t get pricked. It fits perfectly, the price is right, it’s a great way to recycle, and it comes in fun colors too!

When the needle starts to poke through, discard the bandage thimble and cut a new piece. Depending on how hard and often you hand quilt, by the time you run out of bandage thimbles, it might be time to donate blood again. You can donate once every 56 days, that’s 8 weeks. Or if you run out earlier than that, you can buy a roll at the drug store.

Every two seconds someone in the United States needs blood. (American Red Cross) A gift of blood is a gift of life, so why not consider making a blood donation this holiday season? Wear your bandage with pride, then give your brand-new quilting thimbles a try and get started on a hand-quilted gift. Two gifts from the heart in one!

Visit Give Life: American Red Cross for more information about donating blood or to find a blood drive near you.

tip tuesday: easy leaf patterns

Posted on October 20, 2009 by laura west kong

It’s fun and easy to make leaf patterns for applique. Just gather a collection of interesting leaves. They don’t even have to be in autumn colors, just find some shapes that you like. When you’re choosing fabric for your leaves, they can be any colors you want.

Lay the leaves down on a computer scanner or photocopy machine and print them out. If they’re not the right size you can enlarge or reduce them. This is a scan of some gingko leaves I collected.

If you’re in a hurry you can use the printout just as it is. Otherwise trace the outlines of the leaves onto a new piece of paper and use that as your pattern. Tape the printout to a sunny window and place a blank sheet of paper on top and it will be easy to see.

You can trace all the details of the leaves just as they are or you can simplify the outlines as I did with my gingko leaf patterns below.

Here’s a fun free project I designed using my gingko leaf patterns, Autumn Gingko Leaves Purse Jewelry. You can download the PDF at CottonSpice.net, September 2007 issue, page 40.

tip tuesday: getting started with free motion quilting

Posted on October 13, 2009 by laura west kong

Sometimes the hardest thing about free-motion quilting is simply getting started.

This week I’m quilting my Candy Hearts Baskets from February 2008. After quilting in the ditch over the seam lines with invisible thread I free-motioned the borders before tackling the appliqued blocks. Heart vines seemed appropriate for this heart-themed quilt so that’s what I went with, plus a twisting ribbon in the narrow vertical yellow border as well as to fill the extra space in the wider horizontal yellow border. I enhanced the quilted lines at right to give you a better idea of what it looks like.

Here’s what I learned:

• Matching cotton thread on the front with invisible thread on the back helps reduce stress about making mistakes. While quilting, you can see just enough of what you’re doing, but when you take it out from under the machine and stand back, the imperfections fade into the background and it looks great! Similar to hiding the stitches on the back with a busy print.

• Borders and strippy quilts are a great place to practice free-motion quilting. You don’t need to worry about a wide open expanse to quilt, quilting yourself into a corner, or coordinating your stitches with the design in the piecing or applique. Just focus on one row at a time, getting from one end of the quilt to the other.

The heart vine takes just one pass across the quilt: dip down, stitch the heart, back up again, and then down for the next heart.

The twisting ribbon takes two passes of a simple wavy line. On the second line, dip down where the first line goes up and go up where the first line dips down.

• Don’t worry if the motifs don’t come out all exactly the same. Let them be their own lively selves and dance across your rows to their own rhythm.

In case you’re curious, I decided to echo-quilt around the baskets with yellow-orange-red variegated thread. It’s coming along quite nicely. =(^_^)= This quilt will soon be ready for binding and beading.

tip tuesday: make mine mini!

Posted on October 6, 2009 by laura west kong

Here’s a tip for trying out new embellishment techniques: Make really small quilt sandwiches so you can get right to the fun stuff. This gives you a taste of the process as well as the satisfaction of finishing a project quickly. (The mini wall hanging on the right is just 4″ x 6″ without the beaded fringe.)

By the time you are finished with the mini, you will most likely be good enough at the technique to use it without fear on a quilt that you’ve already invested many hours in. You can decide if you like the technique enough to commit to a regular-size quilt. It will also help you decide which quilt to use the technique on.

If you try out different variations on many minis you will have a whole library of techniques (that you can see and touch) to choose from when it comes time to embellish your regular-size wall hangings. Of course you might just enjoy the small projects so much that you don’t want to go back to larger pieces. A group of minis artfully arranged on a wall would look fabulous!

I created this quilt as a sample for my new workshop, Bling Your Bindings! which is all about embellished binding techniques. The binding featured on this sample is Inside-Out Beaded Binding.

happy embellishing! =(^_^)=

tip tuesday: floral quilts

Posted on September 29, 2009 by laura west kong

Today’s tip comes to us from quilt artist and teacher, Marguerette Tate, who creates gorgeous dimensional floral quilts. She advises not to worry about making all the petals on flowers in your quilts exactly the same. Look at flowers in real life or photographs of flowers. Each petal is unique. If all your petals don’t come out exactly like the pattern, it’s OK, the flower will still be wonderful.

Give it a try, maybe even cut or sew the petals without a pattern and see what happens.

Here’s my first dimensional flower I made in Marguerette’s workshop last week. Tune in tomorrow for WIP Wednesday to see everything else that I made.

tip tuesday: just bead it!

Posted on September 22, 2009 by laura west kong

Perhaps the hardest part of trying something new is simply knowing where to start. Maybe you have a tube or two of beads on hand and would like to bead on fabric. Find a patterned fabric and follow the design. Try a handful of beads in the centers of some pretty flowers, or sew on beads for dimensional eyes.

On the left is my Calico Kitten block from my Dear Diary Quilt with E-beads for the eyes and nose. On the right is my Laguna Beach brooch. The printed fabric is beaded with size 15 seed beads and tiny garnet gemstone beads following the foliage and waves printed on the fabric.

For more tips about beading on fabric for jewelry see my new book, Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Cover-Button Jewelry. (Check this post for a coupon code good for a free Kurumi Mini Lanyard kit with book purchase.)

tip tuesday: wonder under basting

Posted on September 15, 2009 by laura west kong

I don’t know about you, but basting is the part of quilting that I absolutely dread the most. I’m always looking for a good way to get out of basting a quilt. One of my favorite ways to baste is with leftover scraps of Wonder Under fusible web.

This technique is great for small wall hangings like my quilt, Penny for a spool of thread I, which is 9.5″ square. It can leave your quilt a bit stiff, but on the wall that’s a good thing … helps the quilt hang nice and straight. And if you’re just learning to machine quilt, a stiff quilt is much easier to maneuver than a floppy one.

Just save your leftover pieces of Wonder Under, remove the paper and cut it up into small pieces, around 1/2″ more or less.

Lay out the batting and sprinkle the Wonder Under pieces evenly across the surface. Spreading it evenly is more important than how much you use. Uneven application can cause ripples in your finished quilt. Use a little or use a lot, just keep it fairly consistent across the quilt. More fusible = stiffer quilt. Less fusible = softer quilt.

(If the quilt is large enough that you envision having to fold it for storage or shipping, cut the Wonder Under into smaller snippets and spread them sparingly. Large pieces of fusible can crease when folded, and creases are no fun to remove.)

Carefully place the quilt top on top of the batting and press with a hot iron from the center outwards. Press the fabric and avoid the batting sticking out past the edges in case of stray Wonder Under bits.

Trim the excess batting, then turn the quilt over and sprinkle Wonder Under pieces on the other side of the batting. Iron the backing to the other side of the quilt sandwich.

Turn the quilt back over to the front side, trim the excess backing, and then quilt as desired. If you need some quilting inspiration, visit Leah Day’s blog, 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Designs.