Favorite Tools – Lint Roller

September 3, 2013August 28, 201311 Comments

I have found a lint roller comes in very handy when trying to get my quilts ready for presentation. Whether it’s to display locally, or to ship to an out of state show or publisher, I want my quilts to look good! (The picture below shows my String of Pearls quilt.)

Favorite Tools – Jumbo Lint Roller

I found this awesome jumbo lint roller at my local discount store and it works wonders for covering a lot of area. It’s basically large sheets of masking tape perforated together and rolled around a tube. Such a clever idea!

First, I lint roll about half of the quilt top. I can catch enough lint and stray threads that I only get halfway through before I have to rip off a piece of tape. Then I can do the other half.

Clean Threads with a Lint Roller

Same thing for the back – I roll it half at a time. Voila! A pretty quilt that is (mostly) free of thread and lint. 🙂

If you like these types of blog posts, you can read about all of my favorite tools here.

Martha Stewart’s American Made – Voting is Open Through Sept 13

September 2, 2013August 28, 201315 Comments

I thought it was such a hoot when I saw a little picture of my Charming Chevrons quilt in an issue of Martha Stewart Living to help promote their American Made Contest (down there in the sidebar above Denyse Schmidt’s quilt). You can read more about that blog post here.

The American Made movement celebrates local makers and I just love the title of being a “maker.” It reminds me of Jacquie Gering’s fabulous and emotional address at QuiltCon earlier this year. You can view her talk as part of the QuiltCon lecture series on Craftsy for free, just in case you missed it.

So I decided, what the heck, I’d put myself into the hat as a contestant. I have nothing to lose and it gave me a chance to check out other American makers, too. If you are so inclined, you can vote for me here (through September 13th) and check out profiles of all the other contestants, too!

Craftsy Quilting Classes on Sale for Labor Day

August 31, 2013December 4, 20131 Comment

Just a quick note to let you all know about the email I received from Craftsy about their Labor Day Weekend Sale. (You probably got it too if you are on their email list). Many of the quilting classes are on sale so now is a great time to sign up!

Here are a couple of classes I recommend that are on sale now (be sure to click the links below to get the sale prices):

Camille Roskelley’s Pre-cut Piecing Made Simple is 25% off. I just enrolled in this one myself and will be doing a review as soon as I finish watching it.

Camille has a new class that launches in October which I’m excited about, too. I recently interviewed her for a magazine article I’m writing and she’s just as sweet as can be. (I’ll have more on that in a few months. 🙂 )

Cindy Needham’s Design It Quilt It is 25% off. I love this class and blogged about it a few weeks ago. You can read my Design It Quilt It review here. She’s coming to my guild in January and I can hardly wait!

If I remember correctly, they are on sale through Sept 2nd, though they usually add an extra day or two at the end. 🙂

Have a great weekend of sewing!

Sewing Summit 2013 – My Schedule of Classes

August 30, 2013August 30, 20133 Comments

I’m very excited for the 3rd Annual Sewing Summit which is coming up in just a few short weeks. 🙂 Already, I’ve heard from a few other bloggers I know that are planning on attending. It’s going to be such fun!

I thought I would post the classes I’ve signed up for below, in the hopes that any of you out there may be in my same classes. Plus, if I post my schedule here, I won’t lose it, LOL!

Friday, September 20th, 2013

9:00 – 10:15 Publishing a Book with Kate McKean
10:30 – 11:45 Getting Published in a Magazine with Ellen March
1:15 – 3:15 Curves Mini Quilt with Angela Pingel
3:30 – 5:30 HST Quilt Top with Amy Smart

Saturday, September 21st, 2013

9:00 – 10:15 Brands and Bloggers with Bernina
10:30 – 11:45 Social Media with Tauni Everett
1:15 – 3:15 Building your Creative Business with Alicia DiRago
3:30 – 5:30 Photography with Melissa Esplin

Let me know if you are attending and let’s get excited together!

Christa’s Year of Giveaways #21 – Exclusively for Quilt Along Followers

August 29, 2013August 29, 20137 Comments

For some time I have promised my quilt along followers a giveaway just for them and now here it is. It’s open to anyone who’s worked on any of my quilt alongs, finished or not. 🙂

Christa’s String of Pearls Quilt Along

To thank everyone who has worked on any of my quilt alongs thus far, I am awarding 4 winners each a set of these lovely charm packs from Andover (the same folks that brought you Pearl Bracelets). Each winner will receive a set of these 4 charm packs:

Textured Solids (25 squares)
Full Moon Lagoon by Mo Bedell (20 squares)
Annalee by Jane Dixon (22 squares)
Kitshenette by Claudine Hellmuth (19 squares)

Andover Charms 4 Pack

Now for the nitty gritty. This contest is open to anyone who has worked on any of my quilt alongs, past or present. Since my philosophy is for you to work at your own pace, you can share a picture of any stage of your quilt, finished or not. However, if you did manage to finish, you can link up twice for double your chances to win. 🙂

Here’s How to Enter:

Simply add your quilt along picture to the linkup below. You can linkup from a blog, flickr, or any other site that can host pictures and has a url that you can copy and paste.

If you are unable to do it yourself, you can email me your pictures to christa@christaquilts.com and I’ll post them for you (as a last resort). I want everyone to show off their hard work and inspire others!

I will select 4 winners at random from all the entries. This giveaway will stay open a little longer than my regular giveaways, just in case anyone wants to start one of my quilt alongs last-minute. (I try to be as accommodating and as inclusive as I can.)

If you have finished your quilt, you can link up twice – with two different pictures, one in-progress and one finished.

The linkup will close on Wednesday, September 11 at 6 PM PST. Please note that the linkup below will take you to a separate page to linkup. Due to the limitations of WordPress, it won’t show the pictures here in this post. 😦 But they are just a click away!

Linkup Below

Click here to enter your picture link and view everyone else’s amazing work! While you are there, be sure to give some comment love to those who have linked up. 🙂

Thanks for quilting along and be sure to check in next week for the announcement of my next quilt along (hint – think Modern Christmas)!

Last week’s winner: Congratulations to Vicky R. who won Angela Walters’ Craftsy Class, Dot to Dot Quilting!

Favorite Tools – Aurifil Thread

August 27, 2013December 4, 201323 Comments

In my quest to find the perfect threads for piecing and quilting, I’ve been trying to make as many quilts as I can, trying out different quilting designs and brands of thread. I can now say I’ve enthusiastically jumped on the Aurifil bandwagon. (That is, once I learned how to spell it!)

I’ve been hearing rave reviews about how wonderful Aurifil 100% cotton thread is for piecing, so that was a no brainer. But after finishing my latest quilt, I can now recommend it for machine quilting, too. Here’s a closeup of one of my String of Pearls blocks, quilted with matching Aurifil 50wt cotton.

Aurifil Thread in Purple and Black

I like the 50 weight because it works well for both piecing and quilting. I prefer to buy the larger 1300 meter spools because that’s usually enough thread for an average sized quilt. Since it can be kind of spendy to stock up on large spools of all the colors I need, being able to use the same thread for sewing and quilting makes it more economical to keep a wide variety of colors on hand. I love all the neutral basics, too!

Aurifil Basics

Thanks to Nancy at Owen’s Olivia for her indepth thread review, I was able to see exactly why Aurifil is such a good quality thread. Her husband took these pictures under a microscope showing what thread looks like when magnified close up. I’m re-posting them here with her permission.

Aurifil is very smooth and closely twisted, leaving less lint and making for a nice tight stitch. No wonder the cheaper cotton threads are so linty – just look at all of those thread slubs sticking out everywhere on the last picture!

My top two machine quilting tips are to use a thread that blends with your fabric, and use the same thread in the top and bobbin. Both of these suggestions will help hide your mistakes (not that anyone makes those, right?).

In all fairness, I do like other brands, too (Superior So Fine 50 wt Polyester, Glide and Isacord Polyester, and Superior Silk.) But Aurifil will be my new “baseline” or go-to thread for both piecing and quilting from now on.

An Old Finish and a New Start

August 26, 2013August 26, 201326 Comments

I recently finished hand piecing, yes hand piecing this Winding Ways quilt top I started about 16-17 years ago, soon after I began quilting.

Hand Pieced Winding Ways – Fabrics Circa Mid 1990’s

I remember cutting out plastic templates and joyously hunting through my local quilt shop’s fat quarter bin to find just the perfect fabrics. I had no stash at the time so I had to create my own “scraps.”

I forgot about it in a closet for a good 10 years at least. Then, when all these awesome modern quilters starting embracing hand-work, I decided it was high time to get it out and do a little hand stitching myself. You can definitely tell the difference in my stitch quality between then and now, but it has been relaxing to work on while watching TV with the family or going away on a family vacation.

You can see the hand-marked seam lines. Yes, that was a lot of work!

Now I’ve got to decide how to quilt it (by hand of course) and get it basted. Suggestions anyone?

While I wait for my Winding Ways quilt top to tell me how it wants to be quilted, I’ve decided to start on something a bit more modern. This is my version of an improv quilt.

I started with a sketch my hubby made on his ipad and started interpreting it in fabric. The improv part is that I’m not exactly sure how long to make the strips or how far apart to space them, but it will be a fun exploration. I’m really stretching myself with this quilt, but so far, I like what I see. 🙂

Sew and Tell – Traditional Guild Meeting Gets a Bit Modern

August 23, 2013August 20, 20139 Comments

I currently am involved with two quilt guilds in my city – The Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild and Desert Quilters of Nevada. Both satisfy different parts of my quilting personality and I love to be involved with both.

Finishing Stitchers Circle, DQN Guild Mtg.

I recently attended a sewing circle of DQN – a smaller subset of the larger group that meets monthly. This “circle” is called Finishing Stitchers and they focus on, what else – finishing your quilts! It’s a fun group and is divided up about 50/50 between domestic quilters like myself and those who quilt using a long arm machine. (At first I tried to call them longarmers but that just didn’t come across well in print, LOL!)

FMQ Demo – Practice Sketching

I presented a little demo on how I practice my free motion quilting, drawing my designs first on paper then quilting lots of practice samples before I finish my quilt. It was basically a recap of my recent FMQ tutorial that I shared on my blog.

Binding Demo by Linda

We introduced new members, had a wonderful binding demonstration, and had a bit of show and tell.

A recent finish from a Laura Wasilowski Fusing Workshop.

It is fun to see how artistic and modern some of the gals are starting to become.

A new member and her modern-inspired quilt.

In fact, one of our members who helped found the guild more than 25 years ago is thinking of starting up a modern circle as part of the guild. I would join that in a heartbeat. 🙂

Ann’s gorgeous piece.

It just goes to show that if there are good ideas out there, quilters will embrace them, no matter what names you attach to them. 🙂

Craftsy Class Review: Dot to Dot Quilting by Angela Walters

August 20, 2013August 19, 201318 Comments

Dot to Dot Quilting is the 3rd in a series of online machine quilting classes by Angela Walters. Along with her other two classes, Machine Quilting Negative Space, and Free Motion Quilting with Feathers, Angela helps you to conquer your fear of machine quilting your own quilts.

Her warm, humorous manner along with her motto, “close enough is good enough” really put me at ease in this class. Even though she is a professional long arm quilter, Angela Walters teaches this class entirely on a domestic machine. Can we say “versatile”?

Dot to Dot Quilting is a way to quilt intricate designs on your quilt top with little to no marking, using points on the quilt as a guide.

Angela covers 3 of her favorite quilting motifs in this class (starbursts, lattice and diamonds), plus some cool FMQ variations for borders, sashing and blocks that create entirely different looks. In this class Angela shares how she thinks it’s easier to learn one design and tweak it 5 different ways, rather than learning 5 different designs. Clever!

After watching the first couple of lessons, I quickly quilted up these little diamond and starburst sample motifs, just to get the hang of it.

Dot to Dot Practice

Being able to watch Angela quilt “live” on video, then being able to pause and try it out immediately is an excellent way to learn. 🙂 I really like how I can go back and rewatch the segments again, to review what I just learned and make sure I really get it.

Here are a couple more quilting doodles I tried, to get a feel for the process. I just used some scraps I had lying around, quilting with whatever thread was in the machine.

Filling in the Diamonds

Because I enjoy learning and sharing free-motion quilting techniques, I appreciate it when Angela demonstrates things that I also teach, such as using a blending thread whenever possible. This allows you to see the quilting texture, rather than the stitches themselves.

Dot to Dot Quilting is broken down into 8 different segments of about 8 to 10 minutes each, plus an introduction at the beginning. This is a wonderful way to watch because for me personally, I only have about 10 minutes of uninterrupted free-time at any given point in the day!

More of Christa’s Quilt Doodles – This is Fun!

Angela first shows how to quilt the designs in roughly square shapes, then uses a variation on a theme to show how to fit the designs into other shapes, too. Her designs are very scale-able, which means you can quilt them in any block size, large or small. She shows how to quilt them in a regular, classic way, and then she changes it up by starting off-center, or in a corner. The possibilities are endless!

My favorite motif I quilted is this diamond star. I stitched it completely with my free-motion foot and no marking. 🙂

Christa’s Diamond Star, FMQ

Angela states that quilting is like handwriting – she can show you how to form the shapes, but it’s up to you on how you develop your own signature style.

At the end of the class, she shares tons of different examples of dot-to-dot quilting from quilts that she has finished. This was one of my favorite parts of the class – I love looking at all that quilting eye candy!

Angela Walters’ Dot to Dot Quilting

Angela includes a free sample pattern in the course materials along with stitching diagrams and quilting design variations. I recommend tracing them with your fingers or sketching them on a piece of paper before quilting to get your “muscle memory” flowing.

Another highlight of the class is reading the comments left by other class members as they watch. Both Angela and the other classmates are quick to answer the questions I have while watching. I highly recommend Dot to Dot Quilting!

The Modern Quilt Guild Fabric Challenge with Riley Blake Fabrics

August 19, 2013May 15, 20149 Comments

Since I am a self-proclaimed cheerleader for all things modern, I thought I would announce the start of the 3rd annual MQG fabric challenge featuring Riley Blake fabrics.

Here are the fabrics entrants will receive when they sign up, a set of Riley Blake basics that can be mixed and matched with other solids and Riley Blake printed fabrics.

Riley Blake MQG Challenge Fabric

You know I love a good challenge so I’m definitely in on this one. Now here’s the catch – you must be a member of the Modern Quilt Guild to enter, but then you get the fabric for free, so how cool is that?

Fabric sign-up ends August 31st and the challenge entries are due in December 2013 (no specific date set yet). Hmm… time to get my designer thinking cap on now!