Machine Quilting

We are busy making blocks for our Sampler Quilt as well as producing cloth book covers and pages.  These will both need some quilting or embroidery at some stage and I imagine that most people will want to use some machine embroidery.

We haven't done much practice on machine embroidery in preparation for the quilting that is necessary so it would be a good idea to have a go at it and get some practice in before our next Quilters session.

Reminder: for free motion embroidery or quilting drop the feed dogs, put the stitch length to 0, use a hoop if not working with stabiliser or wadding, put the hoop the opposite way round from hand embroidery i.e. with the fabric resting on the base of the machine.

So try making all kinds of shapes - some curved and some angular.  I am told that different people are better at one or the other so see which one you get on best with.  For me it's curved shapes - I always find them easier than angles and quite relaxing to do.

Adjust your upper tension only - not a good idea (unless you are really experienced) to mess about with the bobbin tension just yet.  Start off with it set at the regular tension, about 4 and then adjust it as you do the try-outs.  You will find as you change the upper tension (needle tension) that your thread will show more on the front or on the back according to your setting.

These images are of the back and the front and I have been moving the tension wheel about quite a lot to see what would happen to the thread.  It is fun to try out the different ways your machine will react as you go from a very low upper tension e.g. 0.5 to a very high one e.g. 7 or 8.

Use cotton quilting thread and use two different colours for practice so you can see how the tension adjustments are working i.e. one colour in the needle and a very different colour in the bobbin.

For these experiments I used green on top and red in the bobbin.

Use your foot control to change the speed of the stitching and see how that affects the length of the stitches.

Use your hand movements to see how the speed and direction affect the stitches on both back and front of the work.

You will notice that as you change direction it does alter the tension and using two different colour threads will make this more obvious.

After practicing quite a lot with the hoop change over to a quilt sandwich i.e. wadding in between two fabrics either tacked or pinned together.

I have used some silk as a top fabric here so I can see the effect better.  You can see I have used a  chalk pencil to draw some lines to give me some guidance and ideas for my quilting.

It is still free motion but the lines will help me to get some symmetry into it.  Again this is just practice and a learning curve - not aiming for a work of art!

 As you can see it certainly wasn't a work of art but it did help me to remember how to do stippling.

 But you may not want to use free motion embroidery or quilting.  You may want more order and control so do practice that too.

 You can see the blue sample here (which was part of my course work) is a square of fabric separated up into small blocks and different ways of doing quilting with the feed dogs up as in normal sewing.  I have used the machine's guide sometimes, others were drawn,  I used my walking foot throughout to give it stability.

It's much tidier and this may appeal more to some people than free motion.  However practice is essential here as well so that is the advice for today practice; practice; practice.

Art Journals

I do apologise for the long break since my last post.  My laptop has been upgraded to windows 8.1 and then it kept on adding more upgrades each time I switched it on.  I have had to get the software functioning properly again and other stuff loaded so hence the long gap.

So back to Cloth Books or Art Journals. I have made some labels for the second signature of my cloth book.  I plan to decorate the third signature with machine embroidered applique.  You may remember we were practising free machine embroider techniques before Christmas and we did some applique motifs at that time.  So I plan to add those to my final four pages.

I have been thinking about different ways of binding the books.  We have already started with sewing down the centre of the cover and then adding signatures one at a time..

I think this is a good method as it is easy to do and the signatures produce several pages for the book all at once.

But there are many other alternative methods and one I have tried is making pairs of pages back to back which are mounted into the book separately and then a cover wraps around and is fastened on to the pages in some way.  I used buttons sewn through from the front to the back and this worked quite well..

Something similar could be done using metal grommets or eyelets and then threading cord or ribbon through these holes.  Packs of metal grommets are available as are the tools to fix them.  I bought mine shown here from a website call U-Handbag.  It's worth a look and is a nice site with lots of handbag making accessories.  The grommets (or eyelets) and tools are listed under metal hardware.



There is a tutorial on the site about using the eyelets but I wasn't able to print it off unfortunately.

Simply put: you make a hole in the padded and backed fabric a little smaller than the metal eyelet.  There is a tool that you place the bottom part on to, then thread the fabric hole onto that, then put the upper part on top and push the tool you can see it the photo on the left into the hole, hold it firm and whack it with a mallet.  The other photo shows a kit you can buy with a different sort of tool but I liked the first type best and the eyelet seemed smoother.

Here you see both the eyelets I tried using cotton fabrics top and bottom with thin wadding in between.  If I decide to use this method on a book I would make the page a little thicker as on this example there is a gap between the material and the eyelet.

An alternative way of doing this would be to make buttonholes on the sewing machine (or by hand) and thread cord or ribbon through these.  In this case the cover would not be a wrap-around type but would need reinforced cover pages back and front with buttonholes and the cord or ribbon laced across the spine.

I am lucky that my lovely sewing machine has the facility for making sewn eyelets through which a hole can be punched after stitching.

On my machine this is in the same section as the buttonhole stitches so it may be the same on your machine.  However if your machine does not do eyelets a small buttonhole would do just as well  and a lot of machines have the facility for making buttonholes.

Once the holes are made using whatever method you choose then ribbon or cord can be threaded through the holes with a bodkin or large eyed darning needle to join them all together.


 I also made a small trial cloth book right at the beginning to see how it went together.  Having decided not to throw this empty trial book away I have started to stitch or fuse little embroideries and other  bits I have found on to the cover and will use this to try out hand embroidery stitches.

This is a really interesting subject and I think we will get lots of unexpected benefits from exploring the techniques.  The challenge to come will be making a memory Art Journal with family photos, images we like and perhaps some clip art - all enhanced with the treasures we have stored up just waiting to be used.

Interlude

My laptop needs to go in for a service and an upgrade and will be away for a few days so not able to do any blogging I'm afraid.

In the meantime here are some images of a few samples from my course work.

This one is Biscuit Patchwork - which is circles of fabric stuffed with wadding and attached to a background.

 

This is a sample of Cathedral Window Patchwork

 

 Obviously this is Crazy Quilting

The one above is Folded Star Patchwork made with lots of Prairie Points

 

English Paper Piecing using hexagons is the last one.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Hope to be back soon.

Quilting the First Block

The framing pieces are joined to the block and then the sashing strips and little corner squares are added.  A worksheet explaining how to do all this has been circulated.

Next the backing is placed face down, with wadding on top and the front placed on top of the other layers face up.

This is now ready for quilting.  Do not quilt the sashing as this will be turned back before joining when the quilt is finally being assembled.

Quilting can be done in a variety of ways and it can be machine quilted or hand quilted.

A hand quilting stitch is a small even running stitch through the three layers. 

Work with one hand on top and the other underneath to guide the needle back and to ensure that the stitch has gone through all three layers.  You will need a thimble on both the top stitching finger and the bottom guiding finger.

Types of quilting: 

Contour quilting is where lines of stitching are done about 1/4" from the seams following the outline of the patchwork shapes.

Echo quilting follows the lines of appliqued shapes and multiple rows radiate outwards to emphasise and echo the shapes.

In-the-ditch quilting: the stitches are worked directly on to the seam lines and this is useful if you don't want the quilting stitches to show.

There are many other types of quilting which are described in detail in the specialist books.

Machine quilting can be free motion or controlled in a measured way.  A walking foot can be used to ensure all the layers stay together if you have one.  Also most machines are provided with a guide which can help to keep the lines of quilting evenly distanced.

Quilting cotton is available for hand and machine in a huge range of colours both plain and variegated.  Using a quilting needle for either hand or machine may make the job easier.

Here you see that I have used the guide supplied with my machine and I am machine quilting lines of one of the fancy built in stitches.  The tape shown in the photo is removable tape and I was using it to extend the line from the edges of the quilt blocks so that I could keep to the same angle..

First of all I stitched in the ditch along the vertical lines of the little blocks both the inner lines and then down the straight edges. Then I did some other quilting across the background.  See the back of the work below to explain what I mean.


 Use threads that match on back and front.

The last picture isn't very clear but shows part of the finished quilted block.

 Note the sashing not shown here as the picture has been cropped and edited.

A worksheet on quilting will be circulated.

Next post on the blog will be further development of our cloth books.

Tower Block

This first block of our sampler quilt has 6 tumbling blocks made with the paper piecing method to join together in the shape of a tower.

Sewing the diamonds together on the edges requires small neat stitches in a matching thread (not always easy if the diamonds are different colours). A pin helps to keep corners together while you are sewing.

Each of the
tumbling blocks is a hexagon shape made up of three diamonds joined together to give that 3D image - an optical illusion of a shape which looks like a baby's play block.  Once six are made they have to be joined with small neat stitches as close to the edges as possible so that the stitches barely show on the right side and so that the cartridge paper linings pull out easily once the tacking stitches are taken out.

Lots of pressing on the right and the wrong sides is necessary to keep the work flat and also to press in a sharp neat outside edges which will be appliqued to the background fabric.

When the fabric is first folded over the paper shapes there is a 'tail' which overlaps the long pointed corners as you can see in the first photo.  These have to be left just as they are all the way through the construction of the tower.  On the joined inner edges these curve around each other into a little rosette. 

However when the applique stage is reached outer edges are tacked down and these tails have to be turned in neatly, one fold over the other, and tacked firmly ready for stitching on to the background fabric.  The tacked edges should look like this on the back and the front.


Next, the tower of baby blocks is centred on the 13" square of background fabric and tacked in place to held it flat whilst the applique is done. 

Neat slip stitches in thread that matches the blocks is needed to attach the tower to the background fabric.  In other words hand applique done as invisibly as possible is required.

There may be a need to use different coloured threads as the thread should match the colours of the blocks, not the background.

These last photos back and front show the tower of blocks stitched on but with tacking threads still in place.

the next phase is to add the framing strips, the sashing and then to quilt the block.

To be continued ...

Tumbling Blocks

Now for some traditional quilting.  Patchwork over papers is a traditional English method most often used with hexagon shapes.

We are using diamond shapes for this block but you will see that when the three diamond shapes are sewn together they actually create a hexagon which looks like a baby's toy block.

To achieve the right result the block has to be created from fabric with dark, medium and light values.

 We have to make a diamond shaped template to start with and this can be made from card or from template plastic. 

Copy the diamond shape from your circulated email to make the template then use it to copy the shape eighteen times on to cartridge paper.

Cut out the shapes and pin them on the straight grain to the wrong side of the fabric pieces - six shapes to each of the three pieces.  Leave enough space between them to allow for a 1/4" seam all around.

Cut them out roughly at first and then use your quilter's quarter or other measuring equipment to draw a 1/4" seam all around and cut them out accurately snipping the ends off the long points to a 1/4".

When they are all cut out fold the edges of the fabric tightly over the paper and tack down.  Don't worry about the seam allowance overlap at the long pointed corners as this will be hidden later when the blocks are joined together.

 In this photo you can see some diamonds pinned and cut out and others already tacked and pins removed.

 The next part is to place one of each colour into a box shape and join the pieces right sides together with a neat small oversew stitch using a thread colour which will not show.

Make sure the corners match up and as you sew from one of the corners put a pin in the other end to keep the corners together and matching. 
 
After joining the edges together press on both sides and press the little 'ears' down neatly in the same way that they folded when you tacked them down.  later these will dovetail together when joined to another block.

Make up the six blocks in the same way.

The tacking and papers stay in the blocks for the time being.



The next stage will be to join them together and then applique them as a group to the background.

To be continued.

Cloth Book Number Two

This second Fabric Art Journal has a buttoned spine and the pages are made individually.

See the buttons on the left hand side which go right through the spine and are stitched to more matching buttons on the back.

The cover wraps around the pages and the edges are finished with zigzag stitches.

If you remember when we made roses from organza ribbon you may recognise these because that is what I have used as a decoration for the front.

Add as much or as little as you want.

The inside covers can also be decorated but I haven't done that on this book.

 Here are two of the inside pages which are decorated with the Suffolk Puffs I brought in to show the Quilting Arts group.

The smaller ones on the right hand side were meant to be included in a Journal Quilt but it went wrong so I cut it up and used just the bits I liked in this Cloth Book.

Perhaps you remember some of the printed images on fabric which I brought in. 

Here I have used Bondaweb to fuse the butterfly and the rose to some fabric which contrasts with the pages.  Then this is stitched on to the fabric page.

The pages are padded and after decoration are sewn wrong sides together and neatened around the edges by hand or by machine.

The yo-yos or Suffolk Puffs were sewn to the page using the buttons in the centre.

An even number of pages are made individually at first, then sewn back to back with wadding in-between and neatened with stitching around the edges.

Everything shown here using machine stitching could also be done by hand.

The unicorns are some machine embroidered embroideries which I did ages ago and never used for their original purpose.  I embroidered them on organza in variegated embroidery thread.  Now they have a use at last and as you can see some of the silk roses we made some time ago are used as an additional feature on this last page.

 In this photo of the cover you can see the small metal clips holding everything together and level so that as the buttons are sewn on the whole thing will end up symmetrical.

After making the pages and preparing the cover I discovered that I had put the decorations too close to the spine edge and would have lost some of my fancy bits when I sewed the buttons through it all.  So the amendment I had to make was to join some extra fabric to the inside edges where I would be sewing through the cover and pages and adding the buttons to join it all together.

Although at the time I was annoyed with myself for making this mistake I realised afterwards that it was a good idea because the thinner centre made sewing it all together much easier.

There is a full worksheet written up and to be circulated at Quilting Arts or by email.