My Artograph Light Tracing box came in very handy for all the tracing! I may need to get some micron Pigma pens in different colors to do some of the details on the sea creatures. The seahorse in particular is going to need lots of detail I think.

I’ll be spending some time this weekend testing out colors to see how close I can get to real tropical fish. I’m also going to experiment with coloring my own background fabric!  I’m using a mixture of decal photos I found online to give me a base for my template and an idea for what the colors should look like.   Some fish don’t lend themselves very well to this technique but others seem like they’d be perfect for it. I may try a few different ones before settling on which I’ll be using for the class.  I’m very excited to see how well they color!

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This is a wonderful activity sponsored by a great designer – Geta’s Quilting Studio. I think it’s a great idea! You can click the photo to see lots of other bloggers answers to the questions she asks. These are mine.

List a few of your favorite quilting notions.
I have a few that I continuously use on nearly every project.

That Purple Thang – this very simple idea comes in handy for so many things. I think it’s saved my fingers more than once since I can stick it near the needle and keep my fingers safe. It also has a very useful 1/4 marker on the other end that I’ve used quite a few times when putting on my binding so I know I can get exactly 1/4″ away from the edge. I’ve also used it when doing mitered borders. I have two just in case I inevitably lose one.

Cuticle Scissors – Quilting notions are expensive and sometimes I wonder if they jack the price up just because it’s sitting in a quilt shop. I save a few bucks and get cuticle scissors to use for trimming threads for machine embroidery, trimming applique fabrics, snipping corners and much more. They’re sharp and get in close when you need it to. The curved edge really helps for machine applique.

Fiskars Comfort Grip 60mm Rotary Cutter - I ditched my small rotary cutter and haven’t looked back. I love the fact that I can cut multiple layers of fabric without having to press down really hard. The large blade lasts quite a while. It automatically retracts when I’m done cutting so I don’t have to worry about dropping it on my foot or my dogs if it gets knocked off the cutting table. You can also keep it open with a little button if you want but I rarely use it.

Any advice for a successful color scheme of a quilt?

I shared this tip on my Bargello Quilt Along. Value is what you want to look for with most patterns. It can be hard to assess value just by looking at your fabric as it is.

I have an app on my phone that lets me turn any photo I take into grayscale so I can instantly see the values when I lay out my fabrics. Find a photo app and use it or use the black and white setting on your point and shoot camera. Do it in the fabric store! They don’t care if you’re laying bolts out to decide what to buy.

If a pattern looks good in grayscale you won’t have a hard time choosing fabrics to go into it.

Some thoughts about thread and needles, batting, fabrics ?

Threads for quilting and piecing: I’m an Aurifil addict! I get my Aurifil thread from The Quilt Bear (buy 3 get 1 free plus get 10% off with coupon code PODCAST). I piece all my quilt blocks using 50 wt Aurifil thread color 2021. For quilting I’ve used all sorts of different colors and sizes, from 28 wt all the way up to 50 wt. I love their variegated threads.

Thread for machine applique: If I want it to be invisible I use Aurifil monofiliment thread. That stuff is amazing, completely heat resistant (you can put an iron on top and it won’t melt), my machine runs it like it’s regular thread and it lasts a very long time.

Needles: 

• Piecing: 75/11 Schmetz Quilting Needle
• Quilting: 75/11 or a 90/14 Schmetz quilting needle depending on my thread
• Machine Applique: 60/8 Microtex needle when using a monofiliment. It makes a very small hole so it can barely be seen. For regular threads I use a 75/11 Quilting Needle.

Tips for easy piecing

Nest your seams! If you have two intersecting seams you can get them to nest and properly come together by pressing the seams in opposing directions.

Other tips related to quilting

Foot pedal moving around on you? Is it never where you think it should be when you go to sew? Tape a piece of shelf liner to the bottom.

Do you have free tutorials on your blog? Share the link.

I have several free tutorials available! http://katiesquiltingcorner.com/tutorials

The sewing machine – share a few things you love at your sewing machine; what makes it special? What features do you think are the most important to a sewing machine used for quilting?

I have four different sewing machines and you can read all about them here. My main machine is a Pfaff Creative 2.0. I purchased it used last December to replace my terrible Viking Topaz 20 and it has been a complete joy to use.

Features I couldn’t live without:

• Needle up/down with hover capability which is useful for machine applique
• Large throat area (mine is 10″ to the right of the needle)
• Automatic Thread cutter
• Tie off/on
• IDT Foot (this is Pfaff’s built in walking foot and it really makes a difference)

What about modern quilting tools? Quilt software, die cutting systems, other tools? Why do you like them ?

I have an Accuquilt Go! system that I love. I mainly use it to cut strips and squares for scrap quilting. It is a time saver. There is some waste involved but I’m okay with that. The company has fantastic customer service if a die isn’t cutting correctly they’ll replace it for you.

Artograph Light Tracing Box - this thing is awesome! I use it all the time for my machine applique adventures – especially the ones involving melted crayon applique. It just makes tracing the shapes onto your fusible web easy to do since it’s backlit. You don’t have to strain your eyes to see the lines to trace.

Tips for organizing the sewing tools, the fabrics, the sewing studio?

I have several posts devoted to organization. Here are some of my favorite organizing tools:

My Clip it Up Organizing System - so great to organize fat quarters or smaller cuts of fabric that won’t fit on a comic book board.

Thread and Ruler Organization – I got frustrated last year and decided to convert to a pegboard system. You can read about my adventure and what materials I used.  Painting the pegboards wasn’t difficult and it’s now one of my favorite things in my sewing space.  I think for the pegboard, hooks, and paint I spent less than $100 for everything.

Could you recommend a book to someone who just started quilting ? A quilting bible ?

I like this one a lot. It’s hard to pick just one book. I’ve also used Quilting for Dummies when I was first starting out. I recommend going to your local library and checking out several beginner quilting books since each one words things a bit differently.

Books can be addictive and you’ll find that with some books you only want to use one or two patterns. It’s cheaper to just check the book out, learn the technique or do the pattern and turn it back in.

List one or two of your favorite quilting techniques and a tutorial/pattern/book where you learned about them ?

My absolute favorite book of the moment is Creative Quilts from Your Crayon Box. I love this technique so much I started teaching classes on it at my local quilt shop so I could get other people addicted to it too. The book has beautiful patterns inside it and step-by-step instructions on how to color your applique shapes. It can be applied to so many other things. I think it’s a useful technique to have in your machine applique arsenal.

I’ve done the small practice sample and then I jumped all over my favorite pattern in the book and completed the large Iris quilt. Right now it’s living at the quilt shop where I teach.

Do you have a favorite quilt designer ?

Kimberly Einmo! I love all of her designs and I’m so happy to have had the pleasure to take several of her classes in person.

Do you have a favorite quilt blogger?

That’s like asking me to choose my favorite corgi… it can’t be done!

Would you like to share one of your favorite quilts, made by you ?

Rainbow Insomnia Wallhanging

Do you have a favorite online quilt shops ? What makes it special ?

Fat Quarter Shop – For stash building I purchase their 12 Pound Fabric Grab Bag here. They typically also carry the latest fabric collections and you can get notifications when future collections are released.

ThousandsofBolts.com – I love to purchase my background fabrics here. It’s easy to find neutrals that you can add to your stash because they have a neat color selector tool. Most of the background fabrics I’ve found are under $5 per yard for quilt shop quality fabrics.  They feel wonderful! She has a nice selection of wide-back fabrics and batiks that are reasonably priced.

Missouri Star Quilt Company – they have great prices on daily deals and in general for precuts. Sign up for their daily deal newsletter and you’ll find out what deal they have each day on a precut! The jelly roll and layer cake deals are worth it since shipping is usually $5+ on top of your order.  Still, you can figure on saving $10 for a jelly roll or layer cake from MSQC.

The Quilt Bear– This is a great online shop where I purchase my Aurifil fabric.  They have FREE SHIPPING on all U S orders. I mainly go here for white and black Aurifil thread. Mary Jo can get any color or weight you want in usually the next business day since she’s very close to an Aurifil distributor, just e-mail her to ask for it.  Every Friday they have happy hour from 4-6PM EST and you can get 15% off your order!

Use coupon code PODCAST to save 10% on your entire order at The Quilt Bear!

What would be the perfect gift for your best quilting friend?

A gift card to a local or online quilt shop (whatever their favorite place is!)

Don’t Do Like Me!

I think my biggest mistake so far is not fully researching a dealer before buying my first big sewing machine. I had a pretty horrible experience with a Husqvarna Viking dealer and corporate office. I’ll never buy another one. You can read all about my Husqvarna Viking saga here.  I got rid of my Viking machine in January and will never purchase or walk into a Viking dealer ever again.

Part 1: Why I Will Never Again Purchase or Recommend Husqvarna Viking Sewing Machines

Part 2: Final Thoughts on Husqvarna Viking

Part 3: Viking Dealer BBB Complaint Response

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And I talked about my purchases from Inspire! on the podcast but now you can see them here. Some fabric and a pattern for an iron caddy (it looks really fun I hope to work on it this week).

My lighting for my room is getting better thanks to a few Ottlights I found on clearance. They went together pretty quickly and I put one on either side of my sewing cabinet. I love that they have a foot control for on/off (I wish it was glow in the dark though). They are bright! I don’t think I’ll have to worry about my room being a dark dungeon for a while. I like that they’re pretty too and not the utilitarian style.

I think the one next to my club chair will be handy when I’m binding and such.

I talked about my Gone with the Wind fabric obsession on the last podcast and it started coming in! I particularly like this panel:

I think I just have one piece left to get and I’ll have most of it to plan a quilt with. Last night I decided I was going to embroider some of the famous lines from the movie onto the wall hanging. It’ll be a tribute to my favorite film.

Here are two of my corgis looking out their new favorite window:

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Origins Pinwheel Top is Finished – design process for border

Flag for boston

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And here’s a few of my faves!

A fun chair at my little sewing station

A large string quilt in progress from my friend Maria

Another string quilt at show and tell

These are fun monsters that Ellen of Handmade3d makes for comic con shows and such that she vends at. She does tons of Dr. Who creations! Aren’t they cute? She has an Etsy shop too.

Olivia finished the top for a new pillow she’s working on

Elizabeth gave us a preview of a new queen size bed quilt that she’s working on

Flags for Boston!

Mine is the heart with the dots

All strung together!

It was a really fun afternoon all told. I’m starting a new quilt with my Robert Kaufman Poseidon fat quarter bundle. Right now I’m working on churning out tons of 2″ half-square triangle units using my fast and accurate foundation pieced method.

Hoping tomorrow will be productive too. Maybe I’ll even get a podcast episode out!

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First up is a lace edged heart from Big Dreams Embroidery. This will become my flag contribution for Flags for Boston that the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild is organizing. They have some suggested guidelines. I’m keeping mine simple with just the heart as the centerpiece. I wish i’d used a contrasting thread for the lace edge but oh well, what’s done is done. Isn’t the dot fabric cute?

The turquoise thread was part of my May Aurifil Thread Club shipment from The Quilt Bear! It fit perfectly with the fabric. I think this month is my favorite so far.

Next on my embroidery machine is a fun design I just found of a Totoro! I’m a huge fan of the Japanese anime director Miyazaki and I think his film My Neighbor Totoro is my favorite with Spirited Away being a close second. I have some other Totoro stuff and I’m trying to expand my collection. This will be the centerpiece of a pillow I think. Download the free totoro design here.

Lastly, a little tip for your sewing room! In my recent move I got tired of chasing my foot pedal around on the floor. I don’t have carpeting so it goes all over the place. I remembered I had some shelf liner that’s rubberized and decided to use a bit of that under the pedal. I put a bit of masking tape to secure it to the pedal. No more chasing it down! It stays put now.

Have a great quilty weekend!

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The quilt always sort of felt like it was meant for her. It has way too much white fabric to go in my house!

I think the hardest part of this pattern was squaring up the blocks. I did enjoy doing the strip piecing though. It was nice to get a few honeybuns out of my stash! I used the Summer in the Park for Honeybuns pattern (free) by Missouri Star Quilt Co. It’s a fun, quick pattern if you’re looking for something that comes out on point.

I quilted it using Aurifil 2021 50wt cotton mako thread. Inside the strip areas I just meandered. The white areas were marked using a Thirstystone coaster to try and have sort of a “curve”. My label was machine embroidered using a fun variegated thread – Aurifil 4250 50 wt.

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

Alexandrea M.! She followed @SouthernFabric on Twitter and that was picked as the winning entry. Congrats Alexandrea! I hope you get lots of great fabric with your gift card. Thanks Southern Fabric for sponsoring this giveaway! They’ll be doing another one next month so check back and see what I’ll be giving away then!

Alexandrea was actually the third winner I picked – the first two had invalid e-mail addresses when I notified them that they won and their e-mails bounced back. Remember when entering giveaways to double check your e-mail address in case you get picked as the winner!!

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I wasn’t sure what to do in the white area but I wanted something curvy. I played in one of the blocks and figured out this looked kind of cool. I was using one of my Thirsty Stone coasters as a template to trace. I free motion quilted over the lines. This quilt was a breeze to quilt on my Pfaff Creative 2.0! Now that I’ve figured out a good tension and didn’t have a wonky backing fabric it quilted just fine. The quilt took 4 bobbins of thread to finish. I mostly meandered it since the fabrics were too busy for any pattern to really show up. I’ll have to dig through my stash and find a binding that matches. Also need to make a label!

I got a small fill stitch design made of both the pembroke and cardigan corgi silhouettes. I tried one of them out on a keyfob last night and it looks fantastic! My other plan is to put them on polo shirts in place of the “alligator” or other designs you might see. I also have some e-reader case designs they’d be cute on in place of a monogram.  These will be eventually listed on Etsy.

New Photo Challenge on Instagram! 

Are you on Instagram? A lot of sewers/quilters are and this looks like a fun challenge for May! Tag your photos with #isewphotochallenge so everyone can see your contribution for the day. My Nostalgia quilting photo was my first one! I found this via A Girl in Paradise and really hope I can keep up with it.

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