Hacked!

Mar 5, 2021

Wow, it’s March already! I was told when I was younger that time seems to go faster as you age. When I was little, I wanted time to speed up. You know you can get your ears pierced when you are 13, you can get a driver’s license at 16 and on and on. You keep waiting for those magical ages and it seems that they take forever to reach.

Then one day you are older, and time really does seem to fly by, just when you may want it to actually slow down.

Hacked Me?

Even with Covid this year, I found Christmas to be a busy time for me and then the week before Christmas I had the news that my website, this very one, was hacked! HACKED really, who would be interested in hacking a quilting website! Well apparently, someone did.

I got an email from the company that hosts my site saying they had taken me offline because of malicious files that had been embedded in some of my blog posts. At first, I thought it was a scam and ignored it until I went to do a blog post and realized that my website was gone.

Now came the fun part, trying to get everything fixed over Christmas! Luckily, I was able to hire a company that specializes in cleaning up this type of thing. To top it off I had also been blacklisted by Google so had to get that sorted out as well but thankfully this company was set up to help with that as well.

It’s sad when a company’s sole existence is to fix web sites that have been maliciously hacked into. but I am super thankful that they do exist because I would have been lost without their help.

It finally got all sorted out though and my website is back up and waiting for more blog posts.

I now have way more security on my little quilting website, than I ever thought I would need. It has been an interesting journey that’s for sure. I installed a plugin on my website called wordfence two weeks ago and to my utter surprise, it has stopped 6 people trying to hack into my site. It sends me notifications and it is fascinating information! It tells me what they are trying to use to get into the site, how many attempts before Wordfence locks them out and where in the world they are trying to access my site from.

Do these people have nothing better to do with their time! Imagine if they actually put that creativity into creating something good in this world instead of hacking into small websites and planting malicious files.

Well, maybe now I can get back to all things quilting!

Quilt Finishes

I did manage to finish one project over the Christmas holidays, and that was my Japanese Ladies panel I was working on. I got it all quilted, binding on however I waited until after the Christmas rush before sending the parcel and I’m glad I did. The quilt arrived in Virginia in just under a week.  This is great news as I still haven’t received two Christmas cards that were sent me from the US way back in December. Maybe they will show up for next Christmas!

Happy Quilting!

What is your Quilt’s Destiny?

Dec 2, 2020

What’s Going On

The last few days have been pouring with rain and I am so happy to be working inside and not having to leave the house. Cocoa doesn’t get a walk of course; however, he really doesn’t mind as he HATES the rain and will do anything to avoid getting wet. Chihuahuas are not water dogs, that’s for sure.

Today has dawned sunny though so hopefully we will get that walk in today if the weather holds.

Design Wall Update

I have been busy with client quilts these days so my own projects have been languishing. The Remembrance Day Poppy Quilt is still on the design wall, you think I would have been finished this by now!

The centre is finished and has been for several weeks now (I showed a picture of it on the last blog. I started off so excited with this project however I will admit now to feeling a little bored with it and really want to move onto other things.

I won’t until this project is at least to a flimsy stage and ready to quilt. I really need to get some of these projects just finished! Do you ever feel like that?

The other project on the design wall is a small commission quilt that I am working on. It’s a McKenna Ryan art quilt piece that will be a Christmas Gift. I love this quilt so much I may have to make one for myself. You can see a picture of it at the top of this page.

What is your Quilt’s Destiny?

 

In the last blog post, I talked about what options there were when you finally finished piecing that quilt top. Today I am going to go over some design options to use for quilting your tops whether you are quilting them yourself on your domestic home sewing machine or whether you are taking them to a longarm quilter.

Your Quilt’s Destiny

I read a book awhile ago, not sure if you can even get it now, called Machine Quilting Solutions by Christine Maraccini. In this book, she went into detail about how to analyze your quilt top before quilting it. I found this to be a really useful concept and have used a lot of her principles in my decisions about how a quilt top should be quilted and what designs may look best on the top.

She calls it “decoding” the quilt.

The first question that is asked is “What is your Quilt’s Destiny”?

It is important to consider how the quilt is going to be used as well as who the recipient of the quilt is going to be. For example, if the quilt is to be gifted to a child you aren’t going to want to spend a whole lot of time and/or money on the quilting of it.

In her book, she broke out the quilt destiny into three different categories

  1. The Dragger
  2. The Keepsake
  3. The Showstopper

The Dragger: A quilt that is going to be “dragged” around, loved, used and washed often.

The Keepsake: This type of quilt is special and may be a gift to someone for a special occasion, special birthday, anniversary or someone special. This quilt may be displayed on a wall or even on a bed. It may get some washing but not a lot.

The Showstopper: This would be the quilt you would be entering into a quilt show or maybe a prized heirloom that you want really fancy custom quilting on. This type of quilt will be hung on a wall, it certainly won’t be (or shouldn’t be) something the cat would use to nap on.

Destiny Quilting Decisions

Once you have determined what your quilt tops destiny is, now you can start to plan out what designs you want to do for your quilt top.

 

The Dragger

 

The best quilting for this type of quilt is an all-over edge to edge pattern. This can be achieved by either quilting an all-over design on either a domestic home sewing machine or a long arm machine. If you are using a long arm machine you can also take advantage of using what are called pantographs.

The eye-spy quilt here is a really good example of a “dragger” quilt. Its purpose is for a child to use it and love it. The many busy prints in the quilt would make any quilting design hard to see so spending extra time doing custom quilting on this type of quilt wouldn’t really make sense.

 

The Keepsake

 

This type of quilt is special, however, you may not want to spend hours and hours quilting it. For this type of quilt, you may want to quilt something special in the quilt blocks themselves with a different design, such as feathers or arcs in the borders. This type of quilting is also referred to as moderate custom quilting.

Other Factors to Consider in Your Quilt Design Choice

 

Some other factors that might come into play with what type of quilting you want to do on the quilt is time or if you are taking the quilt to be professional long arm quilter it may even be money.

Most all-over quilting designs (but not all it depends on how dense the design is) are a lot faster to quilt than doing even moderate custom quilting especially if there is stitch in the ditch work to be done on the quilt.

It may be that the quilt falls under the Keepsake category however you need the quilt done quickly or as mentioned above price may be a consideration, in that case choosing an all-over or pantograph design may be the way to go as all-over quilting is generally (although not always) more cost effective. Of course, If you are quilting the quilt yourself cost may not be an issue and it would just be down to the time factor.

 An example of the above is a quilt that I just finished for my church raffle. The quilt pattern is Summer Stars and it is a free pattern on the Robert Kaufman web site. Just a side note here if you do want to make this matter please read the pattern carefully as there are at least 3 errors in the pattern.

The quilt could fall into either the “dragger” or the “keepsake” category. The quilt top design is one that would have let itself to having some moderate custom quilting on it, however, due to time constraints and the fact that I didn’t know the ultimate destination for this quilt I decided to quilt this with a really nice all-over pantograph.

The quilting compliments the top beautifully and it won’t matter if the quilt ends up being a “dragger”.

 

Another example of choosing an all-over design rather than moderate custom quilting is the Hawaiian Bark Cloth quilt that I made for myself (far left). This quilt brings back great memories, but the design of the quilt didn’t really lend itself for a lot of custom quilting so instead, I chose a nice all-over pantograph called Tropical which complemented the quilt beautifully.

The middle Kaffe Fasset Diamond quilt would have been too busy for any custom quilting to show. I could have used a pantograph here but instead, choose just a simple all-over meander.

For the last quilt, the Bali Wedding Ring Quilt, this is a much more intricate quilt and lends itself beautifully to be custom quilted. Here I chose some moderate custom quilting of feathers in the open spaces as they show up beautifully there.

Final Thoughts

In the end, the final decision of whether you want an all-over quilt design, some moderate custom quilting or the quilt “quilted to death” may simply come down to your preference and what you think looks nice. It’s your quilt after all.

Hopefully the above gives you some insight into the different types of quilting designs and ways to determine how you want the quilt to be quilted.

Keep on Quilting!

Quilt Top Finished Now What!

Nov 4, 2020

How is everyone feeling? For a long time, I was doing well, however, I have noticed my anxiety levels are up these days and I am so thankful I have audiobooks and sewing/quilting to keep me company.

As I stated quilting is one of my stress releasers so I have been trying to get as much quilting in as possible these days.

I have finished quilting this year’s church raffle quilt! It is a beauty if I do say so myself. This year we will be offering tickets all over the world so this should be interesting. It is twin sized and named Summer Stars. Here is a sneak peek with more info to come soon.

Another Quilt Kit Bites the Dust

I have finished another quilt kit! This was one I had purchased about 6 years ago on a trip to Maui with my Mom, Aunt and Uncle. It is a simple quilt using a variety of different bark cloth prints. The white cotton fabric used for the sashing has hibiscus flowers on it so is unique to the area.

While I was in the shop, I also purchased some barkcloth yardage thinking I would use it as a border. While making the quilt I decided that the quilt was big enough without the border, and the design could withstand not having a border so decided to use that fabric for the binding and the remainder on the back.

I had purchased a length of bark cloth some years back while visiting Tahiti that had swordfish on it and had always wondered what I was going to do with it, so remembering I had that piece pulled it out and was delighted to find out I could use the whole piece on the back with the remainder of the Hawaii purchased bark cloth making up the rest of the back. I had just enough!

Don’t you love it when things work out like that?

What’s on the Design Wall?

The next project is on the design wall! It’s another quilt kit I purchased many years ago now. It’s Pam Bono’s Remembrance Day Poppy Quilt. I pulled the kit out a year ago to work on it however, there it sat again until just now. I was a little worried that it would be really complicated, and the instructions wouldn’t be good but so far it’s been great. I had to read the pattern through a few times but once I wrapped my head around the cutting and piecing instructions, I realized that it really is like a fabric puzzle and done in a very logical manner.

Quilt Top Finished Now What!

One of the questions I get asked a lot from new quilters is what are there options on finishing their quilt? Sometimes the instructions quilt as desired doesn’t always cover it especially if you are uncertain as to what that actually means.

So your quilt top is now finished, all your hours of piecing the top have ended and now what?

Well, you have several different choices you can

  • Hand tie the quilt
  • Hand quilt the quilt
  • Machine quilt the quilt in the ditch using a domestic sewing machine
  • Free motion quilt the quilt using a domestic sewing machine
  • Free motion quilt the quilt using a longarm machine either hand-guided or computerized
  • Send your quilt out to be quilted by a professional Longarm Quilter

All of the above are great choices and you would end up with a wonderful, finished quilt.

Some of the above methods are better suited for certain quilts than others though, so let’s go through them.

Hand Tying:

This is a great choice if the quilt is scrappy and meant as a straight utility quilt however if the quilt is a Lonestar pattern or anything remotely complicated hand-tying would not be the best option.

As you can see from the picture, the best quilt designs for hand tying are ones that are very scrappy and basic patchwork designs like four-patches or plain squares or some other type of one patch quilt. This type of quilt would be classified as a utility quilt, one to be used a loved a lot.

Hand quilting:

Hand quilting is a great option for someone who happens to love handwork. For me, I have only ever hand quilted one quilt in my life and that was my very first quilt. I did it once and will never do it again (hence why I have a longarm). That said I have friends who love hand quilting because it’s portable and they find it a very relaxing pastime.

Machine Quilting in the Ditch:

If the quilt happens to be a smaller utility quilt, table runner or quilt that may not be washed too often then stitching in the ditch (basically top stitching bedside the seam) works well and is a fast and easy finish.

One thing to watch out for though, if the pieces are large and are only quilted in the ditch the batting may shift during washing and handling making a very lumpy quilt latter on.

Free Motion Quilt on your Domestic Machine

These days there are so many how-to videos and books all on learning how to free motion quilt on your domestic machine. Quilting on your domestic machine can be fun and frustrating all at the same time. The wonderful thing is that you have control over the design and how you want the quilt to look as well as thread choices. It doesn’t cost any extra money however it does take time to do. You can even quilt with rulers on your domestic machine which opens up a whole new set of quilting designs!

That said quilting a very large quilt on a domestic machine although doable can be really hard on the back, neck and shoulders. I know, I ended up with tennis elbow quilting a very large quilt and said never again. I used to then send larger quilts out to get quilted by a professional long arm quilter until I purchased my own machine.

Longarm Machine Quilting

If you have the space and money and love to quilt, you may want to invest in owning your own longarm machine, these days there are some nice entry-level machines that are a little smaller at a smaller price point than some of the larger machines. Depending on the type of quilting you do these may just fit the bill for you.

Professional Longarm Quilter

There are those people who simply love to do the piecing but have no interest at all in learning to machine quilt. They are happy to quilt table runners in the ditch or do an all-over meander on a baby quilt however anything else just doesn’t interest them.

That’s where I come in (or any other professional longarm quilter). I can’t speak for all longarmers out there however for me, I love to quilt, and I really love helping quilters finish their quilts and as my tagline says turn them into quilty hugs.

Final Thoughts

I hope this brief tutorial has helped answer some questions about what to do with that quilt top once it has been pieced.

In my next blog post, I am going to explain the differences in all-over designs and custom quilting and why you might want to choose one over the other.

What types of things do you do to relieve stress?

More Wow Factor (How Value Works)

Aug 19, 2020

Well, we’re into the dog days of summer. Hope everyone is doing well. A couple of weeks back Kevin and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and it’s a good thing we did that day as it rained and was cloudy, windy and cool for the next few days.

One of the benefits of living on an Island is there are lots of little neighbourhood beaches and parks around to visit if you know where to look. So after work one day we decided to go exploring and visited a quiet cove where we spent time sitting and just contemplating how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful area.

Adding Value to your Quilts

Last blog post I wrote about adding that WOW factor to your quilts by adding that bit of deep dark. You can read more about that here.

I thought I would continue that theme on this post as well.

Value

Value is defined as the relative lightness or darkness of a color.

I was searching through the Robert Kaufman website and found a pattern I really liked called Sea Stars that was designed by Elise Lea and will be available as a free download in September 2020 from https://www.robertkaufman.com/quilting/quilts_patterns/sea_stars_4004/

Even though the quilt was designed using Kona solids the stars still seemed to twinkle and it was because of the designer’s great use of value in the pattern.

 

I thought that this would be a great illustration of what I was trying to convey so I recreated the pattern in EQ8 (a software program used to design quilts) so that I could show the original quilt and then some different variations. The quilt was designed using several different blue fabrics with even a very soft blue as the background fabric. Yet even though it was made with all solid fabrics and all in blue because of the rich use of different values in the design the stars seem to sparkle.

 

 

 

 Here is an example of the same pattern with a variety of different blues however the deep dark is missing. It is still a really pretty quilt however the stars don’t sparkle in quite the same way as the quilt above.

Here are two examples of two-colour monochromatic quilts the one on the left is made with a deep dark with a light blue background, the one on the right is a medium blue with the same light blue background. They both work however, the one on the left that uses the stronger contrast stands out much better than the one on the right.

More Value!

I have two more examples of how adding a deep dark colour to a quilt does bring the quilt to life. This is my own design which I did in EQ8 so there isn’t a pattern for this. At least not yet.

Both of the above quilts work nicely. They both have enough contrast in the value to make the design stand out and not all mush together.

The quilt on the left has the deep dark to make it really stand out and could work nicely for a quilt made for a man.

The quilt on the right doesn’t have that deep dark, however, it does have the contrast of light, med light, med and med dark fabrics in it to still make it work. Without the deep dark the quilt is much softer and would work nice in a girls room.

I hope this gives you a little more confidence to playing around with value in your own quilts and remembering to add just a little deep dark to really make your quilts stand out.

Happy Quilting

Adding that WOW Factor to Your Quilting!

Aug 1, 2020

Have you ever been to a quilt show and looked at a quilt and thought there was something missing?

Or maybe you have wondered why a quilt you’ve made looks lifeless, boring even. You made it with your favourite fabrics and they are all beautiful but still….

Or maybe you saw a whole group quilts all made by different people BUT the same pattern. Some of these were beautiful and you loved them and some were….. well, less than inspiring however you couldn’t figure out why. I mean after all they were the same pattern!

Now you may have put this down to colour, however, the real WOW factor comes through VALUE!

Value being the relative lightness or darkness of a colour.

All colours come in a range of values.

The colour blue can range from light baby blue to a medium blue all the way to a dark midnight blue.

The Power of Value

When I first started quilting, I took a beginner’s class and we were told to pick a print and then choose about 6 fabrics that would co-ordinate with the print. Not knowing anything about colour value I choose my 6 fabrics and a neutral background fabric.

When I started making my first blocks, they looked so insipid, I mean really bland, I was really disappointed with them and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I knew something was missing but had no art experience so didn’t understand why I really wasn’t happy. My Mom, who is an artist, looked at my work and said right away, you don’t have a deep dark.

My reaction was, huh, a what?!

A deep dark she repeated! Ok please, explain.

Value, she said, you have the light background and your print, and all of these medium fabrics but no dark contrast, you need the deep dark to add life. You don’t need much but it is missing.

Here is the aforementioned first block I ever made. It looks fine as it is however as I mentioned, it just looked like something was missing for me and I couldn’t figure out what that was. If all of your fabrics are on the light side or of medium value there will be no contrast and therefore your quilt could look really well, washed out, insipid even. This is what I was finding with this block. There was contrast as the background fabric was light, you have a med light with the yellow and a darker fabric with the red but no WOW factor going on here.

Now maybe you like that look, but generally, it really doesn’t make for good quilt design overall.

You don’t need a lot of that deep dark, a little can go a long way, however, you do need that contrast and your eye (like mine did) will notice it’s missing even if you don’t understand what you are seeing.

 

 

Ok so this is my first ever quilt. I am not sure how WOW it is as it is a sampler quilt however, I think you can see what a good example this is. Imagine if all the blocks in this quilt were made without that deep forest green or that deep red. If they were all simply made using the medium fabrics like in the first block above. The quilt would have been really bland. It would have been fine, I mean it’s a quilt, made with love but adding a small bit of deep dark into each of the blocks makes the blocks pop off the quilt instead of mushing together into the background.

Some other examples of using that deep dark to create sparkle are the blue bargello and Vintage Valentine quilts below.

The blue bargello quilt is monochromatic meaning it is using all one colour family, in this case, the colour blue ranging from very light blue to the deep dark blue however without the value contrast the quilt wouldn’t have the same impact.

The second quilt is my Vintage Valentine quilt which is hand appliqued and took me many years to complete. With this quilt, I kept most of the fabrics neutral but used a deep dark red and even a chocolate brown to make the different blocks pop. I tried auditioning a darker border around the quilt however what I found was that it actually overpowered the blocks so that your eye went to the border and missed the blocks completely. In this case, the deep dark was necessary to add contrast, however too much would have overpowered the design of the quilt.

 

Examples of Low Contrast Quilts (Not Mine)

There are those who really love the look of low contrast quilts, made with all medium or very light fabrics, however, I am not one of them (as you’ve probably guessed by now). If you are intentionally making a two-colour quilt, with only two fabrics you can sometimes get away with this, however, most of the time they simply don’t work that well.

Here are a couple of examples that in my opinion (and this is just my opinion) don’t have that Wow factor. Perfectly acceptable quilts and I’m sure someone will love them but….

Quilts made from one fabric line

A lot of quilters like to make quilts from kits or use all the fabric from one fabric line. This is a safe way to make a quilt if you are a beginner as all the fabrics are co-ordinated and you don’t have to think too much about it.

The quilts made this way can be really nice and very pleasing to the eye but quite often they are also missing that WOW factor.

The reason for this is that the fabrics do co-ordinate but they actually become very matchy, matchy and 9 out of 10 times the fabric line is missing that deep dark that is needed for the WOW factor. The fabrics may have a large print, a smaller co-ordinating print, a background and some medium blenders but as mentioned the deep dark won’t be there.

The quilt will be pleasing and look really nice but to get that WOW factor you need to have the fabrics not match quite so closely and you really need the contrast of that deep dark somewhere in the quilt.

The table runner on the left was made using all one fabric line, it looks fine, nothing wrong with it, however, it is a good example of a fabric line not having that deep dark to just elevate this up a notch in the WOW factor.

Updating Your Stash

If you are like most quilters, you may have a stash! I have one that may take me several lifetimes to use up.

Next time you are pulling fabrics from your stash to make a quilt take a really good look at the fabrics you have collected.

Do you have mostly medium value fabrics? This would include prints and blenders. Do you have deep dark fabrics of most colours?

If your stash is shy of the deep darks next time you are in the fabric store, pick up a some even if it’s just some fat quarters. You can never have enough fabrics and the more contrast the better!

That way you will be ready to make your next quilt a WOW quilt even if it’s just a quilt made to be loved by a good friend!

So next time you are creating a new quilt, think value over colour and make sure you add that deep dark to add that WOW factor! 

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