Awesome Class

I had a wonderful quilting experience this week as I had the privilege of taking a class from Lisa Snipes.  Lisa is a truly wonderful longarm quilter with many awards to her tallent.  Her most recent award was a Best in Show quilt at QuiltCon which was pieced by Victoria Wolfe and quilted by Lisa.  Lisa is a spokesperson for Gammill Quilting Machines in Missouri.  Her tallent is amazing and if you are going through any quilting magazines and see an ad for Gammill Machines you may well be looking at some of Lisa's quilting expertise.

It is amazing to me to be able to look at some of the work she does and realize that she has quilted on a piece of white fabric or black fabric and has used different colors of thread to create amazing designs.  If you check out the QuiltCon Best In Show Quilt at Victoria's Blog (Bumblebeansinc.com) or on Lisa's Blog (That Crazy Quilty Girl) you can see the totally awesome triple line crosshatch that adds so much deminsion and movement to the quilt.  Victoria has used a Double Wedding Ring type pattern, but the quilting truly makes this quilt and even more awesome thing to behold.

Being a longarm quilter and quilting for other people makes each quilt a really unique piece of art.  Without either person the result would never be the same!  The piecer and the quilter each bring a unique talent to the table.  When you get two people, both with amazing tallent in their own right and put those together you get truly amazing awesomeness!

At any rate I hope to be able to put some of the new techniques to work in my own quilting room.  I've already been practicing the triple straight line stitching and some of the different fills that she brought to our table in the class.  In my opinion, every quilter needs an infusion of new thought at intervals or they are prone to get into a rut and none of us want to be in a rut.  The same holds true with people who piece quilts.  Take a look at your fabric stash and you will see what particular colors that you tend to purchase.  The majority of people will gravitate toward one hue, light, medium or dark in addition to purchasing a lot more of one particular color family, green, yellow or red or anywhere in between.  I found that I typically purchase medium hues and when I would hunt for lights or darks I would wind up back at the fabric shop.  Now, I try to keep it changed up and one day when I am going to visit the quilt shop for nothing in particular I make it a point to pick up a light color, and then again I may decide I'm going to pick up a dark and those pieces are just for my stash.  Because I discovered this some time ago, I can now go upstairs to my stash and pick out all of the fabrics necessary for a quilt and I will have a good mixture of lights, mediums and darks. 

I have also found that I frequently tend to not purchase any geometric patterned fabric and therefore sometimes I just make it a point to pick up a geometric, when I have an extra dollar or two and this is just for my stash.  There is nothing like diversity to keep your mind fresh and your stash varied and that variation will make for some really interesting quilts if you allow that to happen.  You would have really had a laugh if you had been with me when I was trying to find fabric for a wall hanging nativity scene that I have been working on and I had very specific requirements for those fabrics. 
I needed flesh colored fabric, but I wanted one of those to be European, and one Asian, and one Moor.  In addition I needed fabric for hair for the European and Asian and the Moor in addition to fabric for the hair of Mary, Jesus, Joseph, the Shepherd and the Angel.  I did not want to use the same hair on two figures in the scene and I needed hair for a beard for at least two of the men.  Then there was fabric with the pattern of fur for the cattle, sheep and camels.  You would never believe how many shops I visited and how many hours I spent on the computer looking for exactly the right fabric.  Now those type of quilts will bring a new dimension to your stash that is truly wonderful. 

All of the above also applies to longarm quilting.  Not only do we have the patterns but we have the different colors of threads and the different textures in addition to the embellishments that are readily available to dress up the quilt.  Rickrack, ribbons, buttons and gems are truly only the beginning of what can be used to embellish a quilt. 

All of this being said, I strive to be a little different, but not overly out there because that just isn't in my nature.  Lisa, however is out there and I am so happy that she is.  Without those people who step outside the box, we would miss so very much!

A wonderful picture of some of Lisa's quilting!  I told you she was awesome. 

 

 

 

Picture of Lisa and I at the class.  It was a wonderful class.

 

While I aspire to be a quilter that produces work like Lisa, I'm afraid that I'll never quite make it that far, but I can still practice, practice, practice, as long as people continue to bring me practice pieces for me to quilt.

 

 

For a wonderfully entertaining hour check out Lisa's blog and look at her fab work.  Oh be sure and get a Kleenex before you start to keep the drool off the screen!  Hope you all have a wonderful quilty day!

 

Machine Quilting

I absolutely love my Longarm Quilting Machine.  Several years ago, right after my dear husband wanted and got a new bass boat, I told him I wanted a quilting machine and my search started.  I did my homework.  I visited numerous websites.  I talked to other quilters, at least I talked to the ones who were willing to talk with me, and I called manufacturers and requested information.  After all of this, then I wanted to get some hands on with these machines to see which one I preferred!  We, my husband and I, drove several hundred miles to Springfield, Illinois to the Machine Quilters Showcase in the spring of that year.  We went to the show and we walked around to every exhibit and I talked with so many people I couldn't remember who said what.  I was lucky I had my husband with me and his memory is better than mine most days.  He also has a long history of working in the carpet industry in maintainence.  The machines that make the carpet are in essence just large sewing machines.  A longarm quilting machine is in essence just a large sewing machine.  While I was judging the ease of use, the weight, the price and things of that nature, he was busy judging the quality of the machine and equipment.  I have to say that one company, and they make a fine machine, was tossed out of the running because the sales people just didn't seem to want to talk one on one to us and didn't seem to want to explain anything.  I figured if the sales people were acting like this, then how good would the service be if I had a problem.  If they didn't want to talk with me when I wanted to spend money, would they talk with me if I had a problem after I had given them my money?   I talked with each company about service, repair, and instructions.  I came  home after the show with all of my information, and the next week purchased my machine.  I advise everyone who is thinking about purchasing a longarm machine to follow this course.  Yes, I spent some money making the trip, but I think in the long run I saved money because I was very satisfied with my purchase after it was made.

Since purchasing my machine, which is a Gammill Classic Plus, I have learned so much.  I have never gotten tired of quilting.  I've never had to purchase another machine, and have had very few problems with the machine.  Now that I have written that I expect my machine to break down tomorrow.  My sales person has been helpful, but I have also had to call the main office and talk with the mechanic there on more than one occassion to get help with some minor problem that he was able to tell me, over the telephone, how to fix.  The people there have been very helpful.

I have been to Machine Quilters Showcases since then and taken many classes.  Yes this cost money, but each time I have received new and valuable information that has helped me to build my quilting business.  It has helped me to make my quilts much more meaningful, and helped me to be able to make my customers very happy with quilting that was meaningful to them making their quilt into a true "heirloom" piece that will be passed down in their family from generation to generation.  That is a feeling of satisfaction that not everyone experiences.

I recently took a quilt top to quilt for a lady who told me the finished quilt was for her niece who was in college.  She is working toward her degree in early childhood education.  The lady told me, I am so very proud of her, she's just the "apple of my eye" and I just can't even explain to you how much I love her and how proud I am of her.  We talked about the quilt pattern and using a meandering pattern to quilt down the background so the pattern would stand out and she said, "I'm going to leave it up to you, how to quilt.  You are the professional and I want it to look good, and I don't want to spend over _____ this amount of money."  I knew there was a reason I had immediately liked this lady.  I used the things she said to what we talked about to design my quilting.

I hope the apple that I have outlined in the center of each block
is visible in this picture.  It really turned out great.

Every block has a apple in the center, after all, this niece is the "apple of her eye."  When I decide to outline something, be it apple, feather, leaf, wagon, car or star, I frequently take a piece of chalk and draw the outline directly on the quilt.  After I sew the moffit, I take a brush and brush back and forth over the chalk and it will dust out.  I don't have to use any water or damp rags etc.  I do not use white chalk on black or very dark fabric, I'll use a darker blue or green chalk on those, and I don't use very dark color chalk on white.  Usually I will use white on white and can still see the pattern easily.

I used a simple quilt in the ditch method on the rest of the star and then meandering or stippling on the white background.  When I add special touches to a quilt, I've found I don't have to go overboard with special effects in every area of the quilt.  I just pick out particular areas and do the specials in those and then fill in the rest with standard quilting.  This is very helpful to the customer because it helps keep the price down.  When I do quilting like this I add a specific price to each of the special items.  It can be anywhere of an extra $2 on up to and extra $10 for each special item.  If I use metalic thread in a special item that increases the price.  If I change colors of thread for the special item that increases the cost of those items.  If it's the same color of thread that I am using on the rest of the quilt then the price can be very inexpensive for the customer depending on the difficulty factor.  The apple was a fairly simple item in the same color as the rest of the quilting so the price was very inexpensive.  The quilt had 9 blocks so the price multipled by 9 was added to the base price of the quilting.



The sashing around the blocks gave me a perfect place to
demonstrate the "apple of her eye" was surrounded by
love from the quilt maker.  What better shows that love
than a heart.

 I felt the sashing around the block would demonstrate the love with a simple pattern of what I call meandering hearts.  This sashing happens to be narrow so the hearts are just linked together and they are facing in different directions.  This really makes for easy and quick quilting and something of this nature really adds very little to the price of the quilt, but really adds a lot to the meaning.  One of my friends who I quilt for occassionally can always be pleased by adding meandering hearts somewhere in the quilt.  She just loves the love.  Another lady I know in advance will be extremely happy if I use pink thread.  Everyone has their favorite things and if you can pick up on those or get them to share what they really love it is easy to please your customers, and as you get to know them with repeat business you will become much more adept at pleasing your customers.

My last special on this quilt was the fairly narrow outside border.

The last narrow border is the ocean waves.

I'm a fan of old songs and old sayings that have great meaning.  "My love is deeper than the deepest ocean" is the real inspiration for this last border that surrounds the entire quilt.  I know that will have to be explained to the maker of this quilt, but I felt it just added a little extra and is so simple.  All of the quilting was done freehand with the machine.  I don't have a computer on my machine that sews the patterns.  No the hearts are not all exactly alike, and neither are the apples or the ocean waves, and those things are all part of the uniqueness of each quilt.  There are no two exactly alike.  Each is special in it's own way, just as each of my customers and quilting friends are special in their own way.  No two alike, but all uniquely special individuals.

If you ever want to discuss what quilting patterns you may want to use, or other ways to decide what quilting pattern to use, drop me a note.  I'll be happy to give you my thoughts, for what they are worth.  Hope you all have a great day, and remember, you are loved!