Of course I need a new project!

 It's the most wonderful time of the year - Bonnie Hunter's Annual Mystery.  This year's mystery, Chilhowie, will be another epic project and while I certainly don't NEED, a new project, this is a project just for me that I wanted to undertake.

Unfortunately for me, Bonnie wanted to use orange as her primary colour, with this photo being one of the sources of her inspiration.  These irises are beautiful, but there was something about orange being a dominant colour.  If you want to see her introduction to Chilhowie, you can find it here:  Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville - Chilhowie Mystery

My Bonnie Hunter mystery started last year and utilized the colour orange and my local guild mystery quilt also contained orange.  I wanted something OTHER than orange as my dominant colour!

I took the advice of a great friend to look in my local quilt shop (If I must, oh darn) for a multicoloured fabric that I found inspiring and draw my colours from that.

I found this fabric line from Northcott - Modern Love by Deborah Edwards.  It was carma!  Deborah had come to speak at our guild last season.

No ORANGE!  There was something positive and beautiful that spoke to me.  I then went to my new favourite fabric line, also by Northcott - Chroma.  You can see the full line here:  Northcott Chroma

All of my colours came from this line and were drawn from the inspiration fabric:

Each week I'll get the fun of working with these beautiful fabrics!  I can't wait.

Quilt Guild Inspiration

This week I had the pleasure of attending not one, but two, quilt guild meetings.  

The first group had Kellie of Silly Moon Quilting Co.  If you have not seen the Silly Moon quilting rulers, you are missing out on a wonderful set of tools.  I personally own two of her rules already and after her presentation, I'll be looking for more.

Anyone who has a ruler named "Turkey", is good in my books (and yes, I own a Turkey ruler of my own)

The second group had Joen Wolfrom as their guest speaker.  That name didn't ring a bell for me until I realized this is the lady who created the Ultimate 3-in-1 Color Tool.  I've had her Color Tool on my wish list for a couple of years now and it was fascinating to hear her speak.

Her talk was both beautiful and inspiring.  My whole understanding of colour shifted slightly as I grew up with the red-yellow-blue primary colour set, but she helped me understand I should be using Yellow-Cyan-Magenta.  It is a subtle shift but it changes everything.

Quilt guilds are a great source of inspiration and I encourage you to consider getting involved in one or more, like me!

Franken-backing

Have you ever finished creating the top of your quilt, only to realize you don't have enough fabric for a single backing piece?  That's the time to embrace the inner Franken-backing creator inside of you.

The civilized term for a Franken-backing is a Pieced Backing.  It is an accidental opportunity to create a secondary work of art.  I lay out my scraps and look at them like a jigsaw puzzle.  How do I combine these to make enough fabric to equal the size of backing I need?

It takes a bit of time, but once you put the jigsaw together, you end up with a thrifty work of likely modern art!  What a great way to use leftover fabric and have a one-of-a-kind backing for your quilt.

Now I'm off to load the long-arm!

Perfect is the enemy of Good

 The saying "Perfect is the enemy of Good" is something that comes into play with my quilting.  

I took a moment to look up the origin of that saying, which is attributed to Voltaire.  I've also found references like, Robert Watson-Watt talking about a "cult of the imperfect", in which he stated, "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes".  Even Shakespeare had a thought on this, with King Lear's Duke of Albany, warns of "striving to better, oft we mar what's well" and in Sonnet 103:

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,

To mar the subject that before was well?

This weekend, I was in a virtual Sew-Day with the Quilt Guild I am a member of and I realized I was sitting there agonizing over a border for a mystery quilt that did not have perfect points.  Should I rip it all apart?  Would I be any better off if I did?  How much time would that consume?  I decided to ask for a little perspective from my quilting family.  

It was they who said that unless I was seeking a competition-level quilt, leave the borders and send the quilt on its way to be quilted.  Take the lessons I learned from piecing it together and recall the memories of working through the clues and change it from an object of frustration to a piece of imperfect art that someone in my life would thoroughly appreciate.

What do you think? PS - this was also my triad colour quilt - Green, Orange and Purple.  Using a triad is supposed to allow the quilt to look extra vibrant. 

I give this one piece of advice freely - if in doubt, seek a second opinion from your quilting family!

Just keep quilting, just keep quilting

Do you ever find life so busy that you actually have dust accumulating on your quilting projects?  Sadly, that is the state I am in.  I work full-time and I volunteer for multiple organizations and I found myself lacking the time to do the thing that always makes me feel in tune with my creative self.

So, starting today, I'm planning on a few things to help me prioritize my quilting time.  One of those is my 20 minutes per blog post.  This blog is something that has suffered from lack of attention too.  No quilting = no content to write about.  

I have found that my Blogger app is great to use on my phone.  It is easy to snap a picture of what I'm going to be working on and add it right in.  

That's one of the ways to build habits that add value to your life.  Take something you struggle to do and allow a few minutes to focus in on it, in this case, today's blog post.  Reward yourself with something you love to do, in my situation that would be time with my quilting projects.  Finally, add a time limit to the whole thing so it doesn't overwhelm you.  I'm shooting for 30 minutes.  If after 30 minutes I'm having fun and nothing else is pressing, then keep on quilting.  At least this way, if all you do is 30 minutes, that starts to build forward momentum.  I don't want to look back at the end of a week and say I just let dust accumulate on my quilting projects.  With multiple 30 minutes blocks, there is no doubt great progress will be made.

So what will I spend the rest of my 30 minutes today on?  A dancing date with my longarm, trying to practice my feathers.  

How about you?  How do you find time and motivation for your quilting?

Feather Frenzy

I, like a sizeable portion of quilters, have admired Angela Walter's work and thought "one day", in regards to participating in one of her Free Motion Challenges.  If you are someone who has not heard about this, Angela periodically organizes a multi-week event (approximately 8 week period) where she challenges quilters to learn and practice their quilting skills.  She produces a series of YouTube videos with a weekly "how-to" demo video and a weekly live chat check-in.  There is no cost to participate and I am grateful to her for sharing her knowledge and experience so openly.

She does produce an optional fabric and coordinating thread collection, if you want to practice on a whole cloth piece that she has designed for the purpose of the challenge.  This time, I saved up, and I got the panel, matching borders and thread collection.  This time was the "Fabulous Feathers" challenge and feathers terrified me up until now.  Think of this as a new school sampler.  It is something, when finished, that will serve both as a beautiful wall hanging and reference for quilting skills in the future.

Add in the new-to-me long arm and we had quite the challenge ahead.

It has taken me longer than I hoped, buy I'm on week 6 and doing corner feathers.  My feathers sometimes look a toddler with mittens trying to work an etch-a-sketch, but it is slowly improving.  Here's the latest portion of tonight's efforts:

So now, I sit and say, can I do better?  Do I want a Mulligan, a do-over?  Stay tuned to find out if I carry on, or embrace that many times used tool, the almighty seam ripper!  Here's a hint (thanks to the Quilting Marine): it's only fabric and it's only thread!

What about you?  Do you offer want a do-over?

Getting my quilting jam on!

 I'm very lucky to have a supportive group that helps keep me inspired to quilt.  It's not that I need a lot of inspiration, but I tend to let life and grown-up responsibilities get in the way of getting things done.   Once a month, a group of us get together via Zoom and spend a day virtually together.  We are even planning on continuing to meet even now that the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic are easing.  I love to quilt, but life can be overwhelming and when you focus on others - family, work, community - you can find less time for your own hobbies.  These group sessions are one way I know I will have hours to work on my projects.

Yesterday was one of those days and we got to have one of our fun virtual days.  We chatted about Leaders and Enders, using Bonnie Hunter's pattern as an example (and the upcoming 2022 Leaders and Enders pattern coming in July).  We got some help on free-motion quilting, including sources of inspiration such as Angela Walters's Free Motion Quilting Challenges.

I made progress on a Mystery Quilt with a clue that has driven me crazy.  3 completed, 29 more to finish off.

At one point, I searched for an old guild project to share with the group.  I rummaged through my extensive collection of UFOs and never did find it.  I did, however, realize what a collection of UFOs I have.  2022, is definitely the year of finishing 3 before I can start anything new.

How about you?  What ways do you use to have time for quilting?

Timing my Longarm

 If I had to give a recipe for how to time a longarm, I'd likely list the following:

• 1 part tools (having the right tools is key to any job)
• 2 parts determination (since you likely won't get it right on the first try)
• a dash of flexibility (you may need to be a contortionist if you try to time it while it is on the frame)
• a sprinkle of hope (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can)
• a good chunk of luck (that will determine how many times it takes you to get it right)

When I got a massive thread jam in my longarm (not sure exactly how that happened), I started with clipping out as much as I could with the access I had.  The challenge was having the needle in the down position.  I could not rotate it out of the way to open up the access hatch on top.

In a fit of desperation, and attending a study period at YouTube university, I found that I should try to drop and pull out the needle itself (which I did), then I put LOTS of oil on the case, and pull hard on the dial/fly-wheel at the back of the machine to manually get the bobbin case to turn.  IT WORKED!  But it also threw off the timing.  

I sent my machine to the local shop who did me a solid of getting it to reset and fixing the timing for me in short order.  At least, I thought that's what they did.  I soon realized the timing was still off enough to cause issues.  In the shop's defence, this could have happened on the drive home as I live 45 minutes away and there were some bumpy roads.

I was able, with the help of my best friend and her tools, to figure out how to do it myself.  If nothing else, it has given me a better understanding of how the long arm machine works and what is involved in the timing.  You could have everything aligned perfectly, but when you tighten things up, you mess it up again.  I think it took me almost a dozen tries, but now that it's done, I have so much more confidence in my machine and look forward to continuing to get to know it better. 

Thank Goodness for Bonnie Hunter!

 Have I not already mentioned that I'm a quilting magpie, someone who loves to start new projects?  So even though I have 3 unfinished Bonnie Hunter mystery quilts, of course, I decided to jump in and start this year's mystery "Rhododendron Trail".

If you've never tried one, they are an exceptional and challenging gift from an amazing quilt designer.  Bonnie is known for her scrappy quilts and every year for a number of years now, she has released a mystery quilt pattern to her followers.  Starting with US Black Friday (last Friday in November), and weekly until sometime in the new year, she releases a clue a week for the legions of fans to complete using either her recommended palette of colours or your own choices and either as scrappy or with yardage (so many choices!).

Her instructions are always clear and your piecing will definitely improve through the course of completing the clues.  While many people are completing Clue #6 at present, I'm still back on Clue #2.  It's not a race for me, but an enjoyable journey.  I am trimming flying geese tonight (and distracting myself from my longarm woe's (see my previous post).

4 of a lot of flying geese

The key is the quantities.  You may see something like, make 3" half square triangles - a relatively straightforward block for many quilters.  Now repeat 982 times (ok, slight exaggeration on my part) and you'll get a new clue in 7 days!  😟  That scares off many, but I promise you that making a lot of whatever the block is, based on Bonnie's instructions, the quality of your piecing will improve every time.  Some people elect to make half the number of blocks as most of her quilts are queen size when done.

I encourage you to check it out for yourself and I'll keep you posted on how my efforts go in the coming weeks.   You can go here to check it out:  Quiltville 2021-2022 Mystery Quilt

Happy Quilting!

A frustrating start to the new year - Welcome 2022

I hope, if you are reading this, that you have enjoyed a wonderful holiday season and are looking forward to your quilting adventures in 2022.

I am off to a frustrating start with my new-to-me longarm HandiQuilter Avante.  After getting a massive thread jam in December that could only be cleared by throwing off the timing, I had it in to the local shop to get the timing adjusted 

On December 23rd, I got my machine back and the needle moved up and down beautifully.  I got the machine home and realized I had company coming for the holidays and needed to house someone in my long-arm room.  (OK, technically, it was my daughter coming home from college for the holidays and looking to sleep in her own room, but let's not get caught up on semantics here).

After Christmas, I got the machine set up once again on the track, with a new needle, and oiled and threaded, it started to move like a flowy dancer and my heart was filled with joy.  Ever hear that sound of a balloon deflating slowly, that was me when I realized that not a single stitch was actually being made.  I sent an email to the store, thinking they were closed for a holiday break, but within 24 hours they called me to try to help.  They had me reseat the needle, check the needle was at 6pm position, rethread the machine, change the needle.  I finally got it to lock a stitch - hooray.

Hang up the phone, push the machine back while in regulated mode (as it had been before).....and no stitch lock.  I have tried everything I can think of and I suspect I'm back to some kind of timing issue as I can get a locked stitch going back to front, but not front to back.  The machine will stitch nicely going from back to front, but it won't stitch from front to back and side-to-side is hit and miss (mostly miss).

I've inserted a photo for any brilliant ideas you may have but my husband is looking at this thing as a very expensive and very large boat anchor and I'd love to change his opinion.  

Avante Timing Issue?

I have tried all I can think of and have reached out to an online HandiQuilter community to get some advice and will see if they can assist.

In the meantime, I have started in on "Rhododendron Trail", the 2021-2022 Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt and I'm looking to the month of January to finish by "Triad Fiesta" (it's "on" Elm Street Quilts - see picture below).