Quilt As You Go, Simply Done

Simply Done

Marguerita

Stella’s Quilts and Story

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Stella sent me photos of three quilts and a story about one of them. Her first email had the words that I love to hear:

Hope they are useful and will add to your web site if you can use them. All have glaring mistakes but I love each one mistakes and all.

I just love her attitude because it matches mine – “It’s just PERFECT to me, sewing & quilting mistakes and all.”

The first try. Was thrown over the back of our settee and has stayed!

Guest Bed Quilt
















Shortly after sending me her pics, Stella emailed with an update that you’ll just love:

Hello again, Marguerita

I just had to tell you the latest about my favourite blue and greeny quilt, on the guest bed.

We have our grandson visit after school – he is four and a half. He likes to watch a DVD – usually Nanny McPhee. I was downstairs getting him a snack and all of a sudden everything was quiet – unusual when he is here!

I went up to have a look to see what mischief he was getting into. He was tucked up under the said quilt, hands behind his head, totally relaxed watching the film. As he saw me come in he said, ‘This is ever so nice and cumferbull, Grandma. I’m going to stay here tonight.’
So top marks for the quilt as we have been trying to get him to stay over for a long timeto give his mother a rest, but he usually wants to go back home.

kind regards
Stella
from Bexhill – on – Sea, England

The third. I love the piece in the middle and couldn't bear to cut it up. I have free machined round the paeonies in bronze metallic thread.




Many thanks to Stella for sharing her her quilts and her story 🙂

Crazy Shortcut Quilt Stories!

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My friend Sara, in Abu Dhabi, made a childs tee shirts quilt. Sara has made so many CSQ quilts that I think she can make them in her sleep!! Here’s the story on her newest quilt:

My sister was visiting and brought with her her children old tee shirts
and asked me to put it in a quilt. This is my very 1st tee shirt quilt and
I choose to use your method. It went really fast and is so cute.

Sara's assortment of children's tee shirts















Sara's finished quilt!














From Louise

I have recently met with a few very nice women in our community who also love to sew and quilt..We started a sewing/quilting night in one of the ladies’ home…We have a blast I bought your book and made two quilts…then other ladies made quilts also..and one of them bought your book too..
With this little group I don’t feel so alone here and they are a great bunch of ladies..Sometimes we sit and chat and other times is progess ..we just love to show off our work and we love to see each others work..and it’s great to bounce ideas off each other and well it’s just great fun..
My daughter even made herself a quilt and she barely ever sewed before..Thank you it certainly has brought us together..Here are the pictures of the quilts I did..
One I gave to a friend cause it really matched the colors of her living room, the other is pink with pink ribbon for the cure a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer and I wanted it to comfort her..She is far away from me..So she can cuddle up in the quilt and think of me..

Oh, I just love stories like these!! I receive emails regularly from quilters, not just about our book, but about all kinds of quilting, and the best ones are the emails that tell me a story of connection, reaching out, teaching and sharing of ideas!! What a huge smile they give me. Sara and Louise just made my day, week and month with their stories 🙂

Quilt Photos!

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Amy Henry's Shortcake Quilt

I have a great email from Amy Palmer Henry, showing off her second Crazy Shortcut Quilt! Amy said that this one features a zigzag stitch, but she’s just gotten a new sewing machine with tons of decorative stitches and they sky’s the limit for her next quilts 🙂

Almost immediately an email came in from Margie Kitzman with the following story:

Sweat, Tears and a little bit of Sally!

My daughter and I made this quilt for my dad. It was our first bed-sized quilt (queen) and I was so thankful for the quilt-as-you-go method. (I simply cannot understand how anyone can quilt a bed-sized top on a sewing machine! They are truly amazing in my book!) Anyway, I couldn’t have been more pleased with the results and am itching to try the pattern again.

The only thing we did different was to quilt each block–in addition to the seam quilting–each piece of fabric sports a different quilting design. This quilt will have to stand up to many washings and I thought more quilting would be a better idea. That significantly increased construction time–I think about 1.5 hours per block–but will be worth it in the long run.

Gorgeous back of Dad's Quilt

My daughter is the first and only person I’ve actually known who has sewn through her finger with the machine! I will be missing the 48 fat quarters I pulled from my stash to make this quilt but they say that gives me reason to go out and buy more. (I’m feeling something akin to mourning as it seems I can remember picking out, taking home and lovingly stashing each and every one of those lovely pieces!) The name is a little strange, I know, but I think it helps to tell the story of the quilt! It took quite a little work, I’ll be missing the FQs and Sally really did bleed on it when the machine bit her!

Thanks for the wonderful pattern and the inspiration!
Margie Kitzman/Sally Kitzman

Sarah's Shortcake with grosgrain ribbon


And lastly, Sarah finished up a quilt just before going into labor with new daughter Violet! Here’s her newest Shortcake quilt, quilted with grosgrain ribbon instead of decorative stitches! So bright and pretty, just like baby Violet 🙂

Bunny Helper

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Spoiled HouseBun likes getting in the way


I haven’t shown any pics lately of our bunny. Here he is on the painted concrete floor in Arizona, when I was making myself another custom quilting table.

He likes to play in Audrey's dollhouse

He loves fresh oranges!

Sacked out on a hot day

Rotary Cutters – Holding and Safety

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I have been meaning to make this video for a long time. What prompted me to finally finish it was seeing two instances, in the past week, where quilters were holding their rotary cutters in a way that actually makes it harder to cut, and watching one quilter cut toward herself – which made my heart skip a beat!

It’s not a gorgeous video, but it does address how to hold a “stick” cutter and some safety issues. One more tip: use caution where you place your other hand while cutting – never place it in front of the blade to hold a ruler. My friend Joan tells me that she uses a meat cutter’s glove on her left hand (I’ve seen them also with fishing gear, called a “Fillet Glove”) and that’s probably a good idea also.

A New Quilt Design

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Red & White Crazy Shortcut Quilt

Hi Quilters, we found some quilt inspiration on YouTube! This quilt was inspired by a video that I watched on YouTube and that I talked my daughter Sarah into making. She loved it so much that she made about five different tops! Check back here regularly because I’ll be playing with new designs on the rest of her tops all summer 🙂

Below are all the videos – mine on how I made this quilt, and Heirloom Creation’s “Jelly Roll Quilt Race” video and link to their pattern. If you can’t watch video on your computer, give me a few days and I’ll have a pattern for download on our “New CSCQ Patterns” page.

Here’s the link to the Jelly Roll Quilt Race Pattern -it’s important to follow the instructions to cut off the first 18″ and sew as instructed.

For this quilt, you’ll need 20 Fabric Strips – 42″ long & sewn using the Jelly Roll Race Method”
51″ of complementary fabric (or buy 1 & half yds) – this is the white fabric portion of our quilt
3 yards of backing
50″ of 90″ wide batting
1 yard of complementary fabric (this is the extra red fabric that I mentioned for sashing and binding)

Three Awesome Pinwheel Block Tutorials

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I recently met (online, via her blog) Sandi of Piecemeal Quilts. She and her friend Jeanne have challenged each other to post some really useful tutorials on basic blocks in quilt making. They are starting with a Pinwheel Block and I have to say, it’s one of the best tutes I’ve seen on the internet.

What I like the absolute most is, they use different methods to attain the same block! Now that’s quilting! There are so many ways to do things in quilting. None are “the right way” or the “only way” and there’s only ONE best way – YOUR way – – the way that works best for you. 🙂

Kudos for them!

If you’d rather watch it in video, Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Company does a super job of showing yet another way here:

Sew & Quilt in Comfort

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Just Released!

Introducing my newest book – a work of love! You may have read some of my posts, or seen the photos, of my “Custom Sewing Table”, which I’ve also called my “Cheap Sewing Table”, well, now it’s a book.

The short backstory is that when our book proposal (Crazy Shortcut Quilts) was accepted in 2006, I needed to make eight quilts in about two months. I struggled with comfort, stitching distortions, the weight of the quilts and more and I started innovating. Through much trial and error, I settled on a design that I still use to this day – in fact, I just set up another custom sewing table for temporary use just a few days ago.

For anyone who has seen the videos (there are three so far) or read the Squidoo Lens or even seen my old blog posts – you don’t really need the book unless there’s something about the reasoning, design or adaptations you don’t understand.

Who I wrote this book for is all the people who are not online, who don’t watch video on the computer, who are still in pain or struggling with their quilting and need that extra, printed, hold-it-in-your-hand and look at all the pictures (35 of them) in order to get motivated to create their own custom area.

I found out just how valuable this information is to other quilters by accident, sort of. That’s a whole other story.

My online friend, Margie Wallace, reached through the internet and twisted my arm to make her point about the usefulness of video. I’ll be in her debt forever.

She convinced me to make a video, any video, but make it about something I was passionate about.

Well, I’m passionate about comfort while quilting – I harp on it to anyone who will listen. I made a short video as a learning experiment. It’s a hit. It has been watched over 50,000 times and I get comments on it regularly. Comments like “brilliant!” or “I went from beginner quilter to advanced machine quilter in hours because of your design”. I even got an email that someone took my information and wrote it up in a magazine article!

The rest of the story is long, but the condensed version is that I’ve studied self publishing information for the past two years, recently quit my job, moved, bought publishing software and learned to use it, and I made this book my first self publishing effort. It’s not perfect – nothing I do is perfect – and there are changes I want to make already, but it’s out there, ready to help anyone who needs it.

If you know of anyone who is might benefit from the information in the book, I would be grateful if you would let them know about it. I’ve had too many friends need surgery because of a bad quilt-room, sewing or cutting arrangement when all they needed was some ergonomic intervention. Please help your friends and yourself quilt in comfort today – book or no book – it’s really important to be comfortable and kind to our bodies.

Thank you,

One of These Things Doesn’t Belong Here….

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Which thing doesn't belong?

I love Sesame Street! My youngest sister, Nicole, used to watch it when it first came out and my daughter Sarah watched it 27 years ago and now my granddaughter Audrey watches it. Hurray for PBS!

They used to have this song, about one of these things not belonging….I can’t get it out of my head! You see, this room, with the big, useless, unused pool table, was supposed to be my studio. How a freaking pool table stole my studio space is a very, very long story but today I had had enough of being crammed into a too small working space and I took the master bedroom. By force. The pics are of my things, piled in “my studio” while I wait for the bed and clothes to come out of the master. We are now sleeping in the guest room and I am much happier.

Here is the Sesame Street Song if you want to hear it.