My Ugly Quilt

Color Trial and Error, a photo by Omega June on Flickr.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I put this together. I really need to learn better how to select fabrics. So I'm going to spend some time studying color theory and color value. I'll try this quilt pattern again someday with different fabrics.

My First BOM Project

What better way to practice piecing than doing a block of the month quilt? I think it's a great idea, especially since I found free patterns from BOMquilts.com.

I'm starting with this easy pattern.

 

And I also found lots of great fabrics for a great price at ConnectingThreads.com. I ordered my fabrics today and can't wait for them to arrive!

I will be posting my progress here. Stay tuned!

More Free-Motion Quilting Practice

The Candy Shop Quilt, a photo by Omega June on Flickr.

This is my "Candy Shop Quilt" that I made with a jelly roll and fat quarter bundle that I found on clearance at Walmart. I made 12-inch log cabin blocks. The finished size is 40x60 inches.

I did much better free-motion quilting this time. I still had a few "eye lashes" on the back of the quilt, but far less than the first quilt I ruined. As you can see, I did a meandering loop-DE-loop stitch and am happy with the results.

I learned that when you do free-motion quilting, your quilt should move up, down, and side-to-side. The mistake I made the first time around was turning the quilt as I was sewing. If you have to turn your quilt, stop sewing and turn the quilt with the presser foot lifted and the needle down. DUH!

Once again, I had a blast with this project. I've already started my next project and can't wait to share it with you!

Binding a Quilt - By Hand or Machine?

I've made a lot of baby blankets in the past and could install blanket binding well, but quilt binding is a little different. Most of the tutorials I found were on double-French binding. The first tutorial I found was from Vanilla Joy. It looked so easy, but I had to do further research on how to miter the corners. I found another useful tutorial from Sunshower Quilts. When installing this type of binding, you have to hand-sew the back of the quilt. Doing that will result in the best look. You can machine sew it, but you'll risk screwing up the look of the quilt.

Here's a video that I found helpful for machine sewing quilt binding.

I've found two different method of binding a quilt without hand stitching.

1. Sew the binding to the front of the quilt. Fold the tape over and stitch in the ditch of the binding from the front.
2. Sew the binding to the back of the quilt, then stitch the front with a blanket stitch.

So what is the best method? The hardcore may say that hand-stitching is the only way to go. I actually started hand-sewing my latest quilt project a week ago and have only finished half of it. I guess hand-stitching is great when you just want to relax and kill some time. But when you're in a hurry to finish a quilt for whatever reason like a gift deadline, installing the binding by machine is the way to go.

After I get a few more projects done, I may revisit this topic. Feel free to add your two cents in the comments!

Learning to Free Motion Quilt

After watching several videos on YouTube on free motion quilting, I decided to give it a try. So I installed my quilting foot and started free motion quilting for the first time. I did a stipple stitch on a crib quilt using my Brother CS6000i. As I was sewing, I thought, "Wow! This is easy, and it's so fun!" When I got half way through, I took a peek at the underside of the quilt and wanted to cry. I had a bunch of loops and knots here and there.

Of course I wanted to blame something else other than myself, so I cursed at my Brother sewing machine and started researching how to get the thread tension correct for free motion quilting. I spent about half a day on Google and could not find a solution. I wished I had enough cash to buy a better machine, but I read several reviews from people who love free motion quilting with this particular sewing machine.

I made another quilt sandwich using scraps and tried it again. After a few minutes, I realized that the underside loops occurred mostly when I was making aggressive turns. So it turns out that it's just me, and me and not my sewing machine. I apologized to my machine for cursing at it.

I have a lot more to learn about free motion sewing. I know that more expensive machines have a stitch regulator, but I think with a little more practice I will be able to free motion quilt just fine without that feature.

If there are any expert free motion quilters here, feel free to leave me some tips on how to improve my technique before I ruin another quilt!

My First Quilt

I just started quilting about two weeks ago. I learned mostly from blogs and videos on YouTube, so I decided to start my own blog to share my experience as a beginning quilter. If you are a newbie as well, I'm glad to share this journey with you.

First of all, let's talk about my sewing background. I was never really good at it. I had attempted to make a few baby dresses in the past. My little girl loved them, even though the seams were crooked. I was never happy with any of the clothing projects, so the patterns, fabric, and sewing machine were put on the shelf for a long time. Then suddenly all my friends started having babies, so I started making simple baby blankets. That's when I decided to try my hand at making quilts.

I've made a few practice quilts that were just awful. For those of you just starting to quilt, I highly recommend you start with the most inexpensive materials you can find! Even though I screwed up my first few projects, I learned a lot from them.

Here is my first (decent looking) quilt:

This simple patchwork quilt is a crib size quilt, about 40"x60". I sewed 4.5-inch squares together and added a border. I quilted 45 degree lines to make X's in the squares (as you can see in the brown squares) and stitched in the ditch of the border. Then I made bias tape. This was before I learned how to make double-french binding. More on that later.

I'm very proud of this quilt. Completing this quilt has motivated me to keep my sewing machine out and go shopping for more fabric. Shopping is half the fun! I will have another project to share with you soon!