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Zachsmom
Member
07-13-2000
| Friday, January 05, 2007 - 1:38 pm
So, I dug out the sewing machine and bought some fabric. It's been years since I have done this. Anyone else here a machine quilter? And if you are a hand quilter, can you give me some tips?
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Wargod
Moderator
07-16-2001
| Friday, January 05, 2007 - 1:44 pm
Z, this is what I do when faced with quilting or sewing challenges. I lay my stuff out and smooth it out, if sewing, I'll iron the fabric. Then I get on the phone and call my mom and act all pathetic and tell her how I'm going to use fabric glue or maybe hot glue and then she runs over and does it for me, lol! I'm a disaster with anything that requires needle and thread or yarn and I'm a little envious of those who can do it with no problems. I'd love to see what you do.
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Mocha
Member
08-12-2001
| Friday, January 05, 2007 - 2:25 pm
lol
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Zachsmom
Member
07-13-2000
| Friday, January 05, 2007 - 3:12 pm
ROTFL!! WAr you sound like my maternal grandma!! When she had to hem her pants she used stitch witchery (sp?) I love to sew and I love to crochet. My son gave me a loom for knitting, but since I am left handed it is hard for me to understand the directions. I love "Quilt in a Day". I have one of her books that I am using my scraps with Many people here at TVCH were wonderful to my family, so I thought this would be a way that I could give back.
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Ecoop
Member
07-07-2005
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 11:35 am
Other than all the quilting my mom made me do when I was a youngster, I've only done 4-5 quilts as an adult, and they were all machine quilts. My latest was a quilt I made for my grandson's 10th birthday in October 2006. My daughter and I downloaded photos taken in outer space by the Hubble Telescope. We printed the photos on special fabric for an inkjet printer--worlds better than iron-on transfers. These photos became the main blocks for the quilt. For earlier quilts, I used just a regular sewing machine, a tedious process. However, I took this quilt to a pro, who did a fabulous job on the stitiching. If I can figure out how to download photos here, I'll post a picture, if you're interested.
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Ecoop
Member
07-07-2005
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 11:40 am
My grandson's quilt

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Landi
Member
07-29-2002
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 12:02 pm
that is awesome ecoop! where do you get this "special" fabric? i'd love to do the same for a family member.
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 1:37 pm
Landi, I am not a quilter, but I stumbled into a quilt shop looking for salmon (oh, don't ask), and they suggested printing my own salmon on this fabric. So, the short answer is go to a quilting shop.
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Ecoop
Member
07-07-2005
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 4:26 pm
There are several manufacturers and you can get it at some of the fabric shops or on line. My daughter got the first packet on line, but I can't remember which one. I picked up some more at JoAnne Fabrics. They were made by June Tailor. Try www.junetailor.com if you can't find it locally. It is called "Colorfast Sew-in Inkjet Fabric Sheets." My next project is a quilt for my 8-year old gradson (the one on the right in the picture). That one will be a beach theme, with family pictures of beach vacations, with a fish patterned print for the background. The fabric is all cotton on a paper backing and you feed it into the inkject printer just like paper. When the ink dries, you remove the backing and rinse gently in cold water, lay flat to dry, dab excess water with a paper towel, then finish drying the fabric by pressing on the back side with a dry iron on high heat (lay on a dry cotton cloth while ironing). Then, trim to size, including your seam allowance and it's ready to sew just like any other quilt piece. For the quilt above, I only had to trim one side because the fabric was 8.5 X 11 and the photos were 8 X 10. The 8.5" side already had 1/4" margin and I trimmed the 11" side to 1/4" margins. For the beach quilt I plan on using various sized photos and will "frame" with various shaped fabric pieces (squares, rectangles, ovals, circles). Then I'll lay them out like scattered postcards. At least, that's the plan. Anyway, this fabric is great, and the colors are vibrant, much more consistent than printing iron-on transfers in your printer and much less work.
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Egbok
Member
07-13-2000
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 8:04 pm
Juju...I want the long answer. Ecoop, I love the quilt you made for your grandson! Very creative!!
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 10:01 pm
Egbok, don't ask. Just look assiduously for salmon plaques, sculptures, wood carvings, metal sculptings, etc. About 5" high by 14" long. If you find some at a garage sale, buy them for me.
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Babyruth
Member
07-19-2001
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 10:07 pm
http://www.silyasgallery.com/pages/salmonplaque.html
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Egbok
Member
07-13-2000
| Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 11:44 pm
BR, although that's one purdy Salmon Plaque, it's definitely not garage sale worthy... Juju, I'll keep my eyes open for you.
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Landi
Member
07-29-2002
| Friday, January 12, 2007 - 7:43 am
jujudawg, this is the napa valley, now that was a silly answer. if you want anything here, you drive an hour to get out of the damn valley or buy it online! i was hoping for the "online" answer. thank you ecoop!
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Friday, January 12, 2007 - 10:02 am
Uhhhhh ... thanks, BR, that is one very nice salmon plaque. I was hoping to stay under the $400 range, however. LOL. Way under. Egbok, do not buy me a $400 salmon. Well, duh, Landi, I forgot.
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Ecoop
Member
07-07-2005
| Friday, January 12, 2007 - 11:38 am
A closeup of the Hubble Telescope photo blocks.

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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Friday, January 12, 2007 - 8:12 pm
Very cool, Ecoop.
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Egbok
Member
07-13-2000
| Friday, January 12, 2007 - 10:40 pm
Juju, what about the width of any garage (...under $400..WAY under $400..) sale salmon I happen upon? What's your deadline to buy any I might come across? There are going to be tons of garage sales in the Spring.
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Egbok
Member
07-13-2000
| Friday, January 12, 2007 - 10:41 pm
Ecoop, I love that quilt!!
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Ecoop
Member
07-07-2005
| Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 9:22 am
Thanks Egbok, Juju, and Landi. In keeping with the outer space theme, the yellow material is tone-on-tone yellow stars; the blue material is two-tone mottled that has silver threads throughout, sorta like a midnight sky with millions of stars; and the backing is a patterned material with light and dark blue stars with the same silver thread. And the orange & yellow tie-dye? My daughter insists it represents outer space, but I think she chose it simply because it is tie-dye, which she loves in any color.
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Ecoop
Member
07-07-2005
| Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 9:39 am
Zachsmom, back to your original topic. I love "Quilt in a Day" quilts, though I've never finished one in a day. Strip quilting is the way to go, fer sure, and the Quilt in a Day books are easy to follow. I've made the Trip Around the World and the Double Irish Chain Quilts. These types of quilts are also easier to finish off via machine topstitching than pieced patterns. I used a zig-zag stitch (on my regular machine) that stitches three straight stitches to the right and then three stitches to the left, with the seam centered under the presser foot. I'm certainly not a quilting expert, but I'm proud of the few I've finished simply because I finished them, instead of giving up when it wasn't quite as easy as I expected it to be. So, good luck to you in your efforts.
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Juju2bigdog
Member
10-27-2000
| Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 6:37 pm
Eggie, preferably two dimensional salmon, not much width to them.
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Sewmommy
Member
07-06-2004
| Sunday, January 14, 2007 - 6:48 am
Ecoop That is a beautiful quilt! I primarily do alterations but I have done a couple of lap quilts, and 2 twin size for my girls that I hand tied. I am entirely self taught, no books, just a couple references from online. So I probably didn't do them the traditional proper way, but they turned out lovely. Zachsmom, have you tackled it yet? And are you having fun?
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Cdbga
Member
10-04-2004
| Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 4:08 am
I dabble in quilting! I'm self-taught, too and have made mostly baby-sized quilts. I started up a few years ago. Things were really stressful at work at that time and quilting was so relaxing for me, because when I was quilting, I couldn't even think of anything else. My only problem was what to do with all the quilts I was making. I did a little online research at that time and found a charity called Newborns In Need that I could donate them to. I don't quilt nearly as much any more. My current project, though, is a quilt for my grandmother that I'm making out of old shirts of my grandfather's (he died a few years ago). I have the top pieced together, just need to do the quilting, the backing, and the binding. This has been harder than any of the others because I keep changing my mind about it. I had it quilted and had the backing on, then decided I didn't like binding/backing decisions I'd made and took it all apart again. Now I've got the backing picked out, but can't decide what to do about the border. I bought a book a while back about quilting and just got around to reading a section about using a special foot to do the actual quilting...which I haven't been doing (but I haven't done any "fancy" quilting, just quilting along the quilt squares)...which is why I have had some bunching issues. So, I decided I'd wait until I could get one of those for my sewing machine. I was having a hard time finding one and after weeks of putting off proceeding with quilting, it actually turned out that my sewing maching CAME WITH ONE! HEE! I can be so dense sometimes. One of these days I am actually going to finish that quilt! Zachsmom, when I first started my quilting, I found tons of free patterns and tips online. I used these instructions for an Easy Small Quilt to make the blocks I used in my very first quilt.
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Karen
Member
09-07-2004
| Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 7:09 pm
Zmom, I've done two quilts with my old 1977 Kenmore. The machine I have was actually a gift to my mother from my father on their first wedding anniversary - Mom was livid, she'd failed sewing in school and wanted none of it ever again... she grew into an amazing seamstress. Both the quilts I did were simple square pieces in simple grid fashion. The second was much larger, though, and much more elaborate. The first one, I made for myself. It's 4' by 3', quilted on one side and a solid sheet of super soft fleece on the other. Here it is during production:
Of course, once it was done, and I was loving it on the couch with a scary movie, Donners decided he needed one too. Being the big man he is, he decided he wanted his to be BIG. It ended up being 8' by 6', give or take a few inches. The front is a grid of different fabrics, 4"x4" squares. The whole thing is trimmed with 8"x8" courdouroy, and then again with 16" squares of material. The four corners are squares of fun fur, and there are four fun fur patches in the centre, also.
But, oh, it gets better. "Can we put in a secret pocket?" he asks me. "Maybe a secret pocket made of fur?" So, silly me, I complied. You can't see it so well in the photo, but that's the pocket I've got my hands in. It's lined with the super-soft silver fun fur you can see patches of in the photo above.
And once all was said and done, we needed to throw a back on it. "Oooh, ooh! Different from the front. Tiger print fleece, and black fleece. Checkerboard!" Off I go. Here he is revelling in his (almost) finished quilt:
Guess the point of the story is that it's pretty easy to make a quilt with a machine. I'm working on one for my mom now, which will have about twenty plain white patches of material where she can print out photos on iron-on transfer paper and turn it into a 'memory quilt'. Good luck on your quilt, and keep us posted with updates!
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