quilting – The Sick Chick's Constantly Crafty

Free Resources Friday

I’m very under the weather this week so I need to be brief. Hopefully this might give you some things to keep you occupied a bit until I get better 🙂

QuiltingTutorials.com is a website run by the folks at Missouri Star Quilt Co. There are many, many videos showing everything from quilting basics to intermediate level patterns.

Popular quilt fabric company Riley Blake Designs has 57 free quilting projects available on their site. I did find that in some cases the fabric requirements could be reduced if you can get a fat quarter instead of needing 1/3 yard to get a 10 inch square, also you may save fabric if you use pre-cuts. It all depends on the pattern. Just read closely before shopping. I plan to try several of the patterns in the future 🙂

If you want to try Craftsy.com for free but you are not a quilter, there is a free knitting workshop available for a limited time. (That is it is free for a limited time — and since you can always sign up now and watch the videos/interact with the instructor at any time in the future, it’s worth signing up even if you don’t have time right now.) The free workshop is the One-Skein Shrug taught by Stephanie Japel.

Finally, if you are interested in the history of fiber arts in Britain you may like to listen to a two-part series from BBC radio’s Coast and Country that is available for a few weeks on their website. You can download the shows or listen directly from the web page. In the 29 December 2011 episode (Gansey) you can learn about the history of knitting Ganseys. In the episode from 05 January 2012 (Knockando) they explore the history of a small Scottish mill, including weaving and rearing sheep. If you wish to download an episode, click on the Download link beneath the show title on the left hand side of the page. If you wish to listen from your web browser, click on the show name in the small box on the right hand side of the page and you can use their built-in Flash player.

In other news I did get my new sewing machine but I haven’t felt up to blogging about it yet. I hope to be over this virus in a few days so hopefully I’ll have plenty of things to show you soon!

The Quilt and Fiber Marketplace

I had the opportunity to attend the Quilting and Fiber Marketplace which was held in Sanford, NC on the 6th and 7th of January. This was a really delightful gathering of approximately 40 vendors, about 75% quilting and the others assorted yarns and fibers. Four or five guilds were also represented. A number of the vendors do not have bricks and mortar shops so this was a rare chance to see their wares in person. We were also pleasantly surprised at how much wool was available for appliqué and rug hooking.

This is one of the three main aisles, there was also space on the stage at the far end of the room (sadly that was not wheelchair accessible but fortunately for me I was not using my chair that day, still it’s a pain to carry the rollator up 5 steps :/) and there were some smaller booths and raffle quilts set up in the lobby.

The booth of the Quilter’s Loft was my favourite. I would love to take home all of the batik — see the half yard pieces lined up in the bottom left of the photo. There were also many modern quilts that really inspired me. I’m fired up and itching to quilt now 🙂

This was my total haul from the day. Actually the wool on the left is to be shared with my mother, I need to cut out some grey circles for needle felting on a rug, the rest will be for her rug hooking. I have a lot of batik and some solid black fabric for the Craftsy Block of the Month quilt that I have decided to work on. (Although like all BOMs I do reserve the right to not make blocks if I particularly dislike them! We have not seen all of the upcoming blocks yet.) I also have some Bali Pops that you can’t see very well under there, I’m working on a strip quilt from the Craftsy Quilting Quickly II course using those and some of the black solid. So I should have two color coordinated lap quilts when I am done. The embroidery floss was a great bargain. I didn’t really need it for the Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge but that is a good excuse 😉 There’s also a small scrap of undyed woven wool that I plan to try dyeing with Colorhue dyes. Those dyes work well on silk (I’ll post about them soon) and say they work well on wool so I wanted to test them out. The Lumiere paint I just got because it is pretty. I’m not sure what I will do with it yet but I still haven’t started with the fabric-based visual journalling I had hoped to do last year, plus with all of the silk I am dyeing I am sure those lovely paints will come in handy. Finally in the center is a needle threader (that after seeing in Quickly Quilting my mother and I decided we needed!) and the new Pilot pens that disappear when heated with an iron. Since I do sometimes work on fabrics that really shouldn’t be wet much I’d tried a few air-vanishing pens but they don’t stay on very long. I’ll give the heat pens a go and see if that is better.

Overall I really enjoyed the market! If you’re in North Carolina they are having another one in Statesville at the Civic Center the 27-28th of January. The vendor list is not identical but there is a significant overlap. With batik fabrics as low as $6 a yard and other fabrics I saw as low as $4 a yard it is a great place to stock up for quilts. The fiber offerings were not very interesting to me, but I already have a huge fiber stash and attend fiber fairs throughout the year so get a better offering there. But if you don’t have a local yarn shop or don’t have access to dyed rovings, etc., this is not a bad place. There are probably 10 vendors with yarn and two or three of those had roving or other spinning/felting fibers. I don’t know if it would be worth the $5 entry if that is all you are going for. I got a coupon from my local quilt store for $1 off so that helped. Please do let me know if you do go, I can’t make it that weekend but I’d like to know if it was as good as the Sanford one 🙂

Oh Brother, where art thou?

As I mentioned, I am doing some courses at Craftsy including several on quilting that I am taking along with my mom. I’m still a very novice sewer, I’ve done a crib quilt, a few bags and aprons and endless repairs but I have a lot to learn. My mother has been quilting (or more accurately, collecting quilt supplies 😉 ) for over 20 years and in that time we have watched a lot of videos, gone to many quilt shows and bought a metric ton of fabric. I’m pretty up on quilting techniques, just haven’t put it into practice very much. So with these classes on making quick quilts we have decided to do some projects together.

My sewing machine though is a Janome Sew Mini. It’s fine for really basic things but only has two stitches and that’s about it. My mother had saved for me the Singer that she had when I was in middle school, before she started quilting. It’s not an old, heavy metal one like she had when I was tiny (when she was a home ec teacher), it’s a very basic but plastic machine with 6 stitches. Unfortunately, after 15+ years in the attic, it has…. aged. The plastic is somewhat warped, and it’s not all that easy to use. (It does still run so if anyone wants it and can pick it up at my mom’s house in North Carolina, let me know!) It has also developed a bit of a smell and I am really sensitive to chemical off gassing 🙁 So my mom has decided to buy me a new sewing machine.

Now she actually has two machines, but one is new and fancy and super expensive (a Babylock Ellisimo, she bought an ex-demo machine on end-of-model sale when the Ellissimo Gold came out) and so she has been both intimidated by it and not had the time to really learn how to use it (except the machine embroidery functions). I do *not* want to be in that position, so I want something that is easy and inexpensive but still has the whistles and bells that will make my life easier. (Particularly with my disabilities, some things just make life a lot easier.) I should also note that while I am looking to do a lot more quilting, my previous experience has been mostly with home dec and I also have experience with costuming and plan to do more of both this year, especially with a move and a costume con coming up!

So we’re looking. I think I know what I want but I am very open to suggestion. Here are my criteria:

Must not be very expensive. I don’t want to be afraid of using it because I might break it.
I want to have foot control and a start/stop button. I prefer to use the foot pedal to control speed but some days my feet don’t want to cooperate so having a button is good for other days. However I am not very confident at *only* having a button, I miss the fine control of a pedal.
Must be able to drop the feed dogs. I really really want to start making art quilts and to do free motion quilting, thread sketching and more.
I want more than just a basic 6-8 stitches. I use decorative stitches more for scrapbooking than sewing but I still like having them. But I don’t need hundreds.

Optional but very desirable:

One-step buttonhole. Because I am completely rubbish at buttonholes, but I really want to learn dressmaking.
Self-threading needle, because that can be hard when I am shaky, even with a needle threader.

Based on these criteria, the Brother brand looks to have several good options. There’s the CS600i that has been very popular for many years, has a ton of good reviews and a good price. But I’ve heard it’s being discontinued soon. There’s also the CP-7500 which is newer so not as many reviews but not being discontinued, and has a few more quilting features built in. With the difference in price less than $20, I am leaning toward the latter. My only concern is that it just doesn’t have as many reviews in general.

Am I being paranoid that something only has 40 reviews per site (both are on Walmart.com too) rather than 900? Does that really matter, since in both cases reviews are 95% good? Or should I keep looking?

Or is there another machine you’d recommend? I’m really not committed and probably can’t purchase until February anyway due to my car refurb being more expensive than anticipated. So I’d really welcome any advice or suggestions you may have!

I’d really appreciate any help you can give me on this matter. In the meantime I’m sewing on my mom’s Bernina, so I hope I don’t break anything 😉 I’ll be posting in the next week or so with the very basic baby quilt I have started.

Thanks!

Free Resources Friday

I’m going to attempt to post most Fridays about the free craft resources that I have found and used during the week. I’m not going to focus on blogs or You Tube videos or individual tutorials unless they have really been a major element of my week, but I will mention courses, one-off videos, live events and similar things that I think you may not have heard about or are in some way time limited.

Please remember that these items are free but that doesn’t mean the producers wouldn’t appreciate something back from you, even if it is only comments! For more ways you can support free (i.e. make it worthwhile for the producers to keep making it), please see this series on Craftypod : Free & Sustainability (in crafty business).

This week, I’ve discovered:

1. Strathmore Papers has a free series of Online Artist Workshops this year, with a focus on visual/art journaling. The first one on doodling for mixed media has only recently started, there’s plenty of time to catch up and join in.

2. Craftsy, my favourite online craft class venue, has a free course that also just started. It is a block of the month sewing project to make a lap quilt and finish it all in 2012. Since Crafty had a big sale just before Christmas I am already knee-deep in some of their classes (and will be posting about them soon) but this is still excellent and a perfect way to get introduced to the Craftsy format. New videos will be posted on the 1st of each month.

3. Scrapbook Soup is a tv show in the US that comes out weekly on PBS (public television). Not all stations carry it yet (it just changed its name and format, it used to be Scrapbook Memories) so they are offering limited free streaming on Saturdays. One episode will be available each Saturday between noon and 5 pm EST. I know this is somewhat inconvenient but it is better than nothing 🙂 I’ve seen most of the series but missed the first episode so I hope to catch it tomorrow afternoon if I get back from the Quilt & Fiber market in time.

4. Sharon B of Pintangle is running Take a Stitch Tuesday again in 2012. This is a series of weekly challenges and tutorials in hand embroidery and is in its 3rd year. Even if you have done it before she changes up the stitches and the order in which she presents them. I hadn’t heard of this before but I certainly plan on following along, at the beginner level. I only found out about it after it started so I am behind a bit but I hope to catch up before next week’s lesson/challenge.

5. Urban Threads, my favourite source for machine embroidery patterns, often has freebies available. Right now their featured design is a little monster in a box with a “Free Monster” sign. So cute 🙂 The design is available in several sizes for machine or hand embroidery or digital stock art. It is free until the 16th of January.

I hope you find some of these things useful and if so, please let me know. Also do remember to thank the people who have made them available.

Items to Craft for Chronically Ill Friends & Relatives, Part One

National Invisible Awareness Week has ended but it’s still National Pain Awareness Month and right now I’m well aware of my pain so I thought I’d blog instead 😉 In honour of my Crafting for Causes charity program (which has NO donations yet *sniff sniff* — whatcha waiting on people??) I thought I would list just a small sampling of items that could brighten an ill person’s day and/or make their lives easier. Of course some of this depends on what kind of illness they have but you’d be using your judgement, of course!

Papercrafting

Handmade cards and postcards (can involve sewing/quilting/fabric/etc too!)
Signs of good wishes to hang up near their bed/lair
Mini-books filled with inspirational quotes
Personalized stationery to make it easy to write notes to friends — with postage included
Blank journals to record their health, feelings, dreams or wishes, etc.

Quilting

Lap quilts for wheelchair users (I like 30 inches square finished size)
Small throws for lounging on the sofa
Bed quilts, especially for the hospitalized to bring to colour to the room
Padded cases for eyeglasses
Thick quilted “pot” holders to be used for hot OR cold items (my hands can’t handle taking things out of the freezer, for instance)

Sewing

All kinds of warmers made with grains/rice inside of fabric that can be microwaved; these can be shaped for certain body parts or square for a generic heating pad
Nice pillows to put said warmers into, or just in general
Fleece hats
Extra-warm Mittens
Bed jackets and shrugs
Bags and totes for carrying things to appointments
Bags, “backpacks” and other items to add storage space to a rollator or wheelchair
“Slanket”/”Snuggie” type throws
Cute animals to cuddle up with — yes even adults like to sleep with a friend sometimes! — ideally very soft as well

Knit/Crochet

Lap blankets for wheelchair users (see above)
Throws for lounging
Shrugs and cardigans for those who get cold easily
Gloves, mittens or fingerless versions thereof
Wrist, arm, legwarmers
Hats, especially soft ones that are washable but don’t have bulky brims (for those of us who have to sleep in hats a bump at the brim can be uncomfortable)
Handmade socks
Prayer square where appropriate
Cute, soft animals (see above)

Toiletries — check with the person first for allergies/sensitivities!!

Lotions for those with skin problems
Unscented items for people allergic to perfumes
Exfoliating items for people who can’t bathe/shower every single day (dead skin can build up quickly)
Aromatherapy blends for relaxation, stress reduction, mental clarity, etc.
Bath blends without harsh chemicals; salts are usually good for this
Massage oils safe for use on the temples and forehead or warming or cooling ones for the body

Beading

Bookmarks
Stretchy jewelry for people who have trouble with hooks and clasps
Pretty, sparkly things for women who may be feeling unfeminine b/c of illness or side effects of treatment
Prayer beads where appropriate
Tiaras to make them the Queen of their Domain 🙂
Medic alert IDs — make the medic sign very visible
Awareness jewelry relating to their specific disease(s)

This is really a small sample of things that can be made, and things I plan to make for others. Watch this space for more ideas in the weeks to come, and of course feel free to ask any questions about the items listed or to make suggestions of your own!

Getting Ready!

My walk is tomorrow! Please consider donating! I lied about wearing my sequinny All-Stars, it’s a bit too hot and t managed to fix my broken Z-Coils (sandals with springs in the heel, much easier on the back) so that’s the plan.

I’ve started making thank-you cards. Not quite satisfied with the design yet but I’m still working on it.

I’m also starting to make my packing list for my trip. I’m trying to be minimal about what craft supplies I take — tools only — but when dealing with things like hand carders and jewelry pliers it’s starting to stack up :/ I need to be less than one suitcase on the way over and will bring three home but one of those will be mostly magazines and the two small quilts we plan to make, plus I’m stocking up on pillows as I can’t get the ones I like over here. I vacuum seal them but it’s still a lot of bulk.

Homestead Wool and Gift Farm got another batch of new fibers today so I finally placed an order. Several pounds of fiber, about half raw and the other half roving. That should keep me for most of the summer for spinning and felting, I don’t know when I will find time to dye, quilt and embroider! My beading stuff is mostly going over to do the annual repairs on mom’s substantial collection, including re-knotting all of the pearls this year.

But I’m worried that we may spend a few weeks in Florida in the hospital if my dad doesn’t get better. He has a mass that is squashing his intestines that they don’t know what it is yet. I think it’s a hematoma like Helen has, but there’s a chance it may be cancerous 🙁 Anyway I may also be stranded in NC when I first arrive as Mom may be down in Florida with Daddy. (Remember he’s only in Florida because of the Army, he’s due to retire any day now but they are keeping him down in Florida until this health crisis is over which may be many more months. So Mom goes to visit as much as she can.) So I need a lot to keep me busy as my looms may not be in by then!

I also have a ton of beading work to do for her before I go. I don’t want to take beads over if I can help it, so all of the stuff I have bought to make things for her needs to get done next week, ideally.

Plus I have two swaps to do (already started on both but need to finish) and two care packages to send out (Project Superstar and Purlpower).

So I am a very busy bunny the next few weeks! But unfortunately my body has other ideas and is making me rest a lot so I’m just going to have to prioritize. But just right now I have cards to make and emails that need writing, so I’d better be off!

I’ll leave you with a picture of some of the fiber I have ordered, a beautiful white baby alpaca…I bought a pound but there is still more for others!