Quilt As You Go, Simply Done

Simply Done

Marguerita’s Blog

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.

My Design Wall

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***UPDATE*** I have been getting a LOT of requests for specific information on the design wall fabric that I buy. Here’s the label from the bolt of my most recent purchase:

Rainbow Classicfelt by the KUNIN Group

Just a Few Projects

I started digging through some unfinished projects recently and put some on my design wall, then I thought I’d make a video about the design wall and share it 🙂

A Whole Lotta Crazy Shortcut Quilts!

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Ok, I had some setbacks and I didn’t finish a quilt, but I have a list of quilters who did!! Hurray for them!
Judy of KS sent this one, Derek’s Quilt made with Teenage Ninja Turtle Fabric!

Judy of KS made Derek's Quilt

 




























Amanda made these two as Christmas presents:

Amanda's Quilt #1


Amanda's Quilt #2






























Sara from Abu Dhabi made a RolyPoly

Sara's Roly Poly

Sara's Roly Poly Quilt

Sara's Roly Poly











































and Marie Bartels from the Netherlands made this lovely blue and white quilt:

Marie and her Crazy Shortcut Quilt






















Cheryl in Texas made this lovely Christmas Quilt!

Cheryl in Texas made a Christmas Quilt

5 Minute 5 Dollar Organizer

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My pal Judy Wedemeyer gets credit for this one and she’s going to post about it on her blog too 🙂

5 Minute 5 Dollar Craft Organizer

We were chatting about making quilted Art Cards and she wanted to show me some of the decorative bits she’d collected that she used to both make the cards and to give her inspiration. Colored feathers, beads, buttons, strings and more filled her little organizer bag. When I asked her about her bag, she flipped through it and told me how she’d made it from a tapestry book cover and some zippered food storage bags. I was in awe!

No amount of arm twisting could get her on camera but she did give me permission to share it all with you and so I’ll post the steps here, along with a video. I must say, I’ve made three of these so far, all as gifts, and I just LOVE them!

I started by scouring second hand shops for the tapestry book covers but could not find one in months of searching. I did, however, find a multitude of zippered bags, and a gift bag, and I’ve transformed several of them. I learned that it helps to have one of the plastic baggies with me while shopping, to check sizes of the zippered bags against the size of the plastic baggies. While it’s easy to shorten the depth of the plastic baggies, trimming the “zipper top” down was not something I wanted to do.

Use a bobbin thread that matches the exterior fabric

I look for the full zipper closure on the bags and the ones with two zipper heads are quite nice; I love a few extra interior pockets but they aren’t necessary, and I search both the “purses & bags” section and the luggage section of shops looking for likely candidates for this project.

What’s absolutely necessary, for the way we make them, is some type of fabric spine (like a book spine) for sewing the baggies to.

Offset the zipper pulls when sewing them in

Judy explained how she grouped the baggies for sewing (we both use 12 baggies per organizer) and offset the zipper tabs of the baggies, to reduce the bulk.

Stapling the bottoms keeps the baggies from slipping while sewing













For most of the organizers I’ve made so far, I grouped the baggies by three, and stapled the bottoms of the bags together to keep them from slipping while I am sewing them. I backstitch at the beginning and end of each row of sewing the baggies in and I used a cotton wrapped polyester thread for strength, with a slightly longer stitch length than normal.

Supplies




Supplies I’ve been using so far:
Zippered bag from second hand shops, laundered
Zipper pull plastic food storage bags
Strong thread
Stapler
Scissors to trim the excess off the bottoms of the baggies, if needed
Sewing Machine 🙂

Here’s the video – if it “hiccups” please press the Pause button and let the video fully buffer (watch the red line get longer, which indicates that the video is loading and buffering) and then press play.

Here’s another one that I made for my granddaughter:

My Design Wall Trinkets

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I watched a video that made me start thinking about all the things that I keep up on my walls in my quilting area. As a response to the video I watched, I made this video which thanks the original artist, Margaret Fabrizio, and shows some of my cherished bits and tells their story. The more I think about it, the more I want to turn those “bits” into a quilt that I can keep forever. Here’s the vid and if you have a “design wall” story, I’d love to hear it! Also, if you go to YouTube you can see the comments (and the channels of the commenters)….I just had a super time exploring channels and blogs!

UPDATE – My friend Margie Wallace posted a video response to MY video! This is like a chain reaction! If you post a video response would you let me know?

Jean N and her Hawaiian Tee Shirt Quit

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Jean wrote to me a while back about her collection of gorgeous tee shirts – she made a gorgeous quilt from them!

Jean's Hawaiian Tee Shirt Quilt

The shirts on the quilt represent 16 years of taking my fourth grade students on an annual study tour of the Big Island of Hawaii. Although there are only 15 blocks all 16 years are represented. If you look carefully at the center block of the bottom row you’ll notice an area that’s a little pinkish.

Gorgeous School Tee!

That little piece was taken from the missing shirt and stitched onto the blue one. Except for the printing of the piece being of a different color the design and shirt color were exactly the same as the shirt that it is on.

Our shirt designs were done by various people… one by a parent who was a scientific illustrator at the university, several by local tee shirt designers, and others by our students. Some designs were of a more general nature while others focused on a highlight of the year’s trip. For my backing I used a fabric that I found on the Big Island. It features the honeycreeper birds that are endemic to Hawaii.

I’m pleased with the result and glad that my shirts did not just end up in a rag bag. btw… I actually had 48 shirts since for each year we had one shirt for the 3 days of our trip.

Again, thank you for sharing your shortcut quilting method and for allowing me to share my experience with you.

With much aloha,
jean n