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Father of Lights quilt

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Beautiful work take courage to quilt.

Courage to quilt

I'm finally starting to quilt this beauty. 

It is on the Longarm machine and I'm ready to finish this beauty, but I'm nervousness.  It has taken a lot of work and time to get here.  I don't want to ruin it.  

I'm stitching in the ditch.  Also I'm am using warm and natural batting.  I also am using wool batting medium loft to give it so thickness and body.  Never done this before but I was reading a quilt book and they say double the batting showed off the quilting better.  

I'm using superior thread.  (So fine thread)  in white and using regular Cotton  thread on bobbin.  

I'm doing random feathers and pebbles and swirls around the lettering.  

It's a start. Will keep posting the progression of the quilt.  Have a great Christmas.  Jesus is the reason for the season.  

It's never too late

To work on  old projects 

I'm going to college and time is more devoted to writing papers and research journals and studying for exams.  I'm on vacation now and time is mine.  

  

I started this quilt years ago.. But the beauty of quilting is you can finish the top even if its 6 years later.  

 

This is before I got my Longarm and I didn't finish it because I lost the outer boarder fabric and just last week I found it on a stash of fabric.  I went every where through the last couple years looking for fabric to finish this quilt top.

This quilt is one I was challenged by a friend maybe 1 or 2 years ago.  She had nine patch blocks made.  The challenge is do something with this.  I did a disappearing 9 patch.  I did the the center for a while and just last week I placed the boarder around.  

Now the fun part QUILTING it. 

Appliqué vinyl Sorority Lettering

Sorority Lettering

Appliqué vinyl lettering. 
I have never done this and it's a little intimidating, but a friend is challenging me to try it. 

Cutters are awesome. 

YOU can use your cutter to do crystal shirts templates, outline a design on paper, cut vinyl, make templates for quilting designs, and fabric applique pieces.  Oh yeah you can use the cutter to do paper designs, teachers use them for class decorations, and the sky is the limit. 

They do have a cricket I bought one and gave it away.  It does do  things I listed, but it is limited because the cutter is not strong enough to cut some products.  An example it doesn't cut fabric as well as I would like, but to start its a great little machine. It does cut paper and they do have some wonderful card that have some great designs.   

 I got a zing cutter. 

I haven 't used it much other than to make crystal templates  and practices some vinyl cutting.  So I'm not a pro at this.    So this is a  project to put it into practice.  

 She gave me these already cut out letters to use as a template.  

I did scan them to my embroidery program and also scanned them into my cutting program. 

   Sometimes it is trial and error.  I did take quite a bit of time to figure out how to get the cutter to cut  the lettering. 

I also took  quite a bit of time to learn how to do applique on my embroidery digitizing program.   Time is well used when you learn something that will in the end open doors for you to do a different type of work. Which will bring opportunities to new clients and new income.

I am still having to clean up the embroidery work but for my first try this is not bad.

Winner of the A&M quilt

Winner..  Winner .... Winner...

Monica Lorena Olivia's Meza 

She did the survey and won the quilt.  

Curve piecing

Curve piecing

I purchased  this pattern about 6 years ago.  Was so excited to do it.  Then gave up in  frustration because it wasn't as easy as I thought.  

It's a pre-cut  design pattern.  

I don't know if you see the rounded curves on the angles of this quilt that needs to be pieced together.  

The problem was I couldn't keep a perfect 1/4 seam  with the pieces pinned.  It shifted as I was sewing.  Sometimes it even moved that I would have unstitching then restitch the pieces.  

 

This is my first try.. I ironed and ironed to get the rounded pieced piece to sit flat that the color bled through the fabric.  In the center it was popping up and I couldn't get it to lay flat.  So I gave up.  

I took a paper piecing class for one of Judy Niemeyer patterns and it has rounded curves.  Her suggestion was to use a glue stick to hold the seams together.  So I pulled out this old quilt and decided to try it.   Again.

Pin versus glue 

I pinned the first time.  It was hard to control keeping the seams together as the fabric moved and made it hard to keep 1/4 seam.  

 

With pinning you see the puckering and shifting of fabric.  Also it's hard to keep edges perfectly together.

Gluing

Place the two cuts together.  Press from the center to edge of one  side then do the other side.  Center  to end of edge.   Just finger press glued side to the second piece.  

This technique gives you perfect control to kiss the fabrics together.  Edges then so you have a perfect 1/4 seam.  

Glue works like a gem.  The edges are perfectly together and it stays stuck.. Also wash away glue stick.   Does no harm to your fabric.  You don't need the iron to press it together either.  

Lefts side is pinned.  Right side is glued.  

Just sew like you would a straight seam.  

It also irons beautifully  no puckering or wrinkles.  Because the fabric is sew perfectly.  

This technique has been a blessing.   I never thought I could finish this quilt but now I have almost half done.  

I hope you try this out.  I'm enjoy finishing something that I gave up on and now doing a beautiful job.  Power of          wash-away glue.  Who would of thought.

A&M quilt is done

Here a glimpse

 

Close up

Center quilting

 

Sashing

Trapunto

Quilting A&M

A&M in the process of being quilted.

Here are some pictures

TRAPUNTO on A&M quilt

Trapunto 

Came from the Italians meaning, "to embroider" also considered a "stuffed technique."  It has two layers in the interior of the fabric. This creates a raised surface. 

Step 1: You need vanish away thread. 
When it gets wet it disappears. 

 You also need extra batting. Poly or cotton batting works.   

 Place it on the underside of fabric where you want the raised areas.

I like cotton  it easier to control when doing this but you need to use more layers to get a nice height.  Poly batting has a higher loft but hard to work with.  

Then start stitching with the thread on the bobbin and on the top. Sew on your top.










As you are stitching try to follow the outside line. Also remember it doesn't have to be perfect stitching.  This stitch is going to dissolve and no one will ever know how you did this.  






One of the tricks I learned from being an embroider is always make sure you can see the fabric, that you don't want your scissors to touch.  Have fabric pulled down and the batting that you are cutting have it on top.  You can hold the top fabric or batting. It will pull away from the bottom fabric and give you some control as you are cutting.  


TAKE YOUR TIME !!!!
TO DO THIS PART.   ESPECIALLY WITH A FINISHED QUILT TOP.   GOING SLOW AND BEING PATIENT IS BETTER THAT HAVING TO START OVER. BECAUSE YOUR SCISSORS CUT A HOLE ON YOUR FABRIC. 


It would be horrible to nick the fabric at this point or have a cut from the scissors grabbing a piece of the fabric and then all the work you have done is now compromised.  

A&M University quilt top

Yes!  I just finished the quilt top it is an 84X73

For never doing a quilt like this before,  I think it is exciting the open doors of creativity this has opened for me.  Now keep an eye out on the quilting part..  I really am loving what I do.

Bias tape

   

A pretty good gadget

This is a bias tape tool. This gadget us a 1/2 size bias maker.  You cut your strips and slid it in.  

There a slit on the gadget get a pin to pull it through. 

Pull some fabric through

Flip the gadget and have you iron hot and ready.  Pull the fabric through.  I like ironing on this end better than it on the yellow side. I had better control of the fabric folding over then where you see the two folds.

Pull and iron.  Have your iron real hot.  

I really like this gadget.  There are different sizes and the price for each gadget is $8 at Joann's they have 50% coupons which makes it worth the buy.  The bias is consistent and this tool makes it easy to make even when it crosses over the seam line. 

A&M Quilt (Applique Process)

Applique A&M Quilt

Making bias tape

In this picture you can see that I already have biase tape rolled.  The way I make it I cut a 1/2 of fabric and did several strips and folded it by hand making sure the fabric is fully wet then ironed it and made my strips.  

Now this isn't the best way to make bias tape.  I have only done small strips and doing bias to make this quilt showed me I need to find a better way.  The bias I did wasn't consistent and I want this quilt to be a great representation to the logo. 

 I found out that they make a tool for making consistent bias tape. It cost at Joann's 8$ but its worth the money.  The tool makes it easier to make the bias too.

The reason for the paper copy.  I made the letters out of freezer paper.  I used three layers of freezer paper.  I traced it on the freezer paper and ironed all three papers together.  Then I cut the letters out and now I have a cheap template of the letters that I can use.  

 

I placed my letter template on the fabric that I am going to use to applique and traced it with chalk pencil.  

Tips and tricks.

To make sure the lines stayed consistent I placed them on the fabric together.
My Favorite product is ELMER'S GLUE STICK WASH-AWAY.  I place the glue on the bias and then placed it on the fabric and then ironed it down. 

When appliqueing the bias the glue kept it on the fabric and gave me control as I was hand stitching it down.  It does take time.  To Iron the bias down.  Remember I wanted to keep the integrity of the logo. 

 I also did the same with the star.  I had the lines on the fabric design and made a paper template and used my glue and the nice part is it didn't shift and gave me control.

With the lettering I didn't glue it.  The reason is it was a smaller piece and I had more control.  I did a turn over applique and I think it look nice.  I still need to add the ANTONIO.  I didn't embroider these letter yet because the tip of the A touched the tip of the star and one of the letters was embroidered on the star. 

 

Once I finish the center part of the quilt the rest is the basics.  I just need to add the sashing and then to the quilting.  On the next blog I post I am considering trapuntoing the A&M part of the quilt and then to the fun part Longarm Quilt.