The Sensational Seam Guide

Have you seen this in with your gadgets when you bought/inherited/borrowed your sewing machine?

It's official name (at least per Bernina) is "seam guide".

There's a hole in the shaft of the presser foot that the round part of the seam guide slides into. Then tighten the screw (if you always wondered why there was a screw at the back of the presser feet; now you know!).

 Stitch a line and then determine how much space you want between the rows of stitching. Adjust the seam guide and voila! Beautiful straight stitches every time. And since you can adjust the amount of space between the presser foot and the guide, you can make the rows as narrow or wide as you wish. 

Here's a little piece to get your creative juices flowing:

Of course I had to throw in some of my decorative stitches, but don't you love it? It was really fun to do. Now I'm thinking about doing something larger...maybe a pillow? hhmmm.

Pull Up or Pull Down?

I, like many others, was told that when removing the thread from my sewing machine, be sure to snip the thread at the spool and then pull down through the needle. The story was that the tension discs are pretty finely tuned and you don't want to throw them out of wack.
 

Well...for this post I tried to find information validating that process. And you know what? I couldn't find any. I did find a couple places where folks said that if you pulled the thread up (i.e., by the spool) then you could potentially get some lint lodged in the tension discs.

 
But the one universal point I did find is at the very least, be sure your presser foot is up so that the tension discs are released. (Besides...who wants a tense sewing machine?!)

It Pays to Plan Ahead

When I designed the back of Abby's quilt, I sketched it out briefly on a little piece of paper paper (not a napkin, as I've also been known to do). After all, I wanted the math to be correct because I had a finite amount of fabric to use and to be quite honest, I didn't want to screw it up. 

Imagine my surprise when instead of the nice little square that I had drawn, the sides didn't looked too long. Ah ha! I didn't draw to scale. If only I had used the graph paper that I have stashed in various places around the house!

Well hopefully, I could take that as a 'lesson learned' as we say where I work. This time when I wanted to work on some paper piecing, not only did I sketch it all out to scale, but I even got out my colored pencils and colored in the blocks. (Makes me think I may want to get EQ, but I'm not sure yet.)

As you can see, there is a different design appearing when I use two rows rather than three. It really paid off that I learned that lesson, I thought. 

Next step was to draw out the block and stitch one out as a sample.

Looks great! Oh, hold on a sec...if I sew this into a project, my beautiful points will be in the seam allowance. Ugh!

Enter stage right, my friend Angela from Blue Tree Studio. She showed me how by just extending a few of the sewing lines, my seams will be a-okay.

 

I have learned that I am trainable and am able to improve the quality of my work by taking time out to think things through. Yeah!

Keep Those Threads Together

If you're like me, you like to use the same thread in your bobbin as you're using on the quilt top. Sometimes it can be difficult to be sure you have the right shade in the bobbin.

Here's a tip from Moda that was shared on Pat Sloan's October 14 podcast: slide a pipe cleaner (or chenille as they are sometimes called) through the spool of thread and the bobbin. Give it a twist and Voila! organized and easy to find on one quick motion.

Hope you like this idea. Any tip that makes it easier to complete a project is a tip worth sharing!

Abby's Quilt is DONE!

 Abby's quilt was done in time to ship for her birthday. However, since she lives in Canada, it probably was sitting in Customs that day. 

Anyway, I just wanted to share the photos I took by myself before I shipped it. (I mention that I took them by myself because I had to drape them over furniture in my living room.)  Thanks so much to my friend Catie who quilted it!

FYI: my boy Asher is the model. Toys provided by Daisy!

The photo is above is the back. It looks a bit warped because of it being draped over my furniture.

The photo above is a close up of Catie's quilting and the label I put on the back. It was a very fun project and I'm really happy it's with Abby in Vancouver  now!

Fabric Samples

Okay, so let's say you bought some fabric for a project, but knew you'd need more (theoretically, of course). What do you do?  This week's tip is a simple one, but I'm not sure everyone does it so here goes...take snippets (a technical term that means a piece larger than a smidgeon but not as big as a scrap) (hope that helped clarify) and tape them on an index card or piece of paper.

Easy enough to stash in your handbag and take out whenever you get to a fabric store.
Hope you like this idea. Any tip that makes it easier to complete a project is a tip worth sharing!

I have a new toy...a needle punch!

After much deliberation, I splurged and bought the Bernina Needle Punch accessory.

In the box came the needle attachment (there are 5 needles that punch up and down simultaneously), a serious finger guard (thank goodness), and screw to attach it all to my machine. Then I also had to purchase the special throat plate (round hole will allow all 5 needles to penetrate the fabric).

I watched the Bernina DVD that came with the package and felt prepared to give it a try. After all, I was told on the DVD that your first project is sure to be a success.

I dropped the feed dogs, removed my bobbin, bobbin case and the hook (you know what that is; the piece that holds the bobbin case in place). (You just didn't know it had a real name, did you?) Also, the bobbin case door stays open the entire time.

Natural fibers work best, so here's what I tried...

1.  mohair (left over from my "sure, I can knit" days) 2. wool yarn 3. sari fabric 4. wool roving 5. spun linen. One other thing the DVD lady told me is that it's great if you can separate the plies of the yarns. That's why in #2 it looks like there are three snippets of yarn.

Here's the result Front and Back:
 

Front

Back

 























The design goes through to the back because the barbed needles pull the threads through. As a matter of fact, Bernina recommends you needle punch on the front, turn it over and felt again and then do it again on the front. I used white felt for my background and when I tried that technique, I found that when I punched on the back, some of the white felt threads went through to the front, which wasn't what I wanted so on the sample below, I just felted on the front.

I like my new toy and my mind is whirring with possible projects...wool scarf, pillow, table runner? hmmm...we'll see what's next.

Seemly Seams

This post goes along with my quest for precision piecing. When sewing two blocks together I very carefully press the seams to the dark fabric (as I was taught in Quilting 101). Then I'd stitch and quite often find out the block looks like this:

Bummer! How could this have happened I ask myself. The answer quite often is that when I stitched the pieced block to another, the pieced block was on the bottom instead of the top. Now whenever possible, I put it on top  so that I can be more successful.
 

 

Now I can be much more successful and it's improved my precision! Woo hoo!
Hope you like this idea. Any tip that makes it easier to complete a project is a tip worth sharing!

Sewing down binding by machine; imagine that!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I typically stitch my bindings by hand. It isn't something I mind doing, hand sewing can be kind of soothing. However it is time consuming. The clock was ticking on getting Abby's quilt to her by her birthday, so I followed a process that my friend Catie told me about.

Now keep in mind, I've tried the technique before. And the flip side of the quilt looked grotesque with a wavy stitching line. But this time I used my blindstitch foot.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself (imagine that!)

The technique I follow for attaching the binding itself is Susan K Cleveland's and you can read Piping Hot Binding book for details and you can watch her on You Tube. After all, who am I to quibble with a woman who's favorite part of the quilt making process is sewing the binding!

Here's the part that was new to me...using my blindstitch foot. It's meant for sewing hems, but it did a great job on the binding and kept me stitching straight at the same time!

I pressed the binding fabric in half, wrong sides together. Then I wrapped the fabric around to the front. Now it's time to stitch using the blindstitch foot. All I had to do was keep the bar next to the fold and stitch. It gave me a great look on the front as well as the back. If you haven't tried this before, give it a shot on a small sample project and see what you think. Hope this post will help someone else and please join me in shouting "Thanks, Catie!".