Who Else Wants to Create Beautiful and Easy-to-Sew Machine Quilting Designs by Simply Taking a Stroll Through a Garden?Discover how to use leaves, flowers, trees and other shapes from nature to make your quilt stand out from the crowd.From: Penny Halgren Dear Friend, I’ll admit that I have several quilt tops lying around for various reasons. Some because they still need borders, and I can’t find the right fabric. One is a Christmas quilt that I made for Bubba when he was about 10. He will be 24 this year…. I wanted to appliqué a string of Christmas tree lights in a very wide border. But never got around to it. Then I thought maybe I would paint the lights on. The paints and plastic template material are in a drawer, and the quilt is still folded up in my closet. Now the whole idea has lost its appeal – somehow a 24 year old has different tastes than a 10 year old. In any case…Unfinished Quilts always seem to be a problem.
But this quilt is really almost finished. It just needs to be quilted. But for some reason, I have never run across the right quilting design for it. When I first made it – back in 1994, I knew I wanted to machine quilt it. I had made a series of quilts using the same technique – sewing strips together and then cutting them into triangles and arranging the triangles into blocks for a quilt. And these were the triangles that were left over from some of the other quilts. When the quilt top was finished, I was reasonably happy, but it just seemed like a good candidate for machine quilting, and not an investment of my time for hand quilting. That decided, I layered it and basted it – with poly batting. Fortunately when I basted it, I didn’t know anything about basting with safety pins, so the thread basting has been holding the three layers safely for the past 13 years, and I didn't need to worry about rusty pins. Every once in a while, I pull it out, hang it up, and hope for some inspiration for a quilting design. So far, nothing has occurred to me. Until today. Not that the design has occurred to me, but at least maybe a hope for a design. Our expert machine quilter, Pam Bauer, mentioned that Kathy Sandbach is one of her mentors. Pam has taken several classes from Kathy, has almost worn out her copies of Kathy’s books, and says that whenever she is looking for a good design, she goes straight to Kathy’s books.
As it happens, I was looking through my new materials from C&T Publishers, and lo and behold, Kathy is a featured quilter this month. She has come out with a new book, Show me how to Plan My Quilting. Although her suggestion is to make the quilt with the quilting design in mind, I’m guessing that even though this quilt top is complete, there will be an idea or two in there for this top. According to the write-up, “Kathy shows you how to choose fabrics and threads to highlight your quilting, leave areas open for fancy quilting, echo design motifs from your fabrics, and use trapunto and other special effects. You'll even learn how stitching in the ditch can enhance the look you want.” This wonderful-sounding resource includes easy quilting motifs including leaves, flowers, cars, animals and many more. In some of Kathy’s other books, she shows how to translate shapes from simple pictures found in catalogs into quilting designs. She also suggests looking at home décor pieces and fabric in our stash for inspiration. Like our expert machine quilter, Pam Bauer, said in her interview, the machine quilting design is "The hardest thing for anybody to come up with." It presents challenges for beginners and experienced quilters alike. Yet, with a great quilting design, your quilt will stand out from other quilts in the crowd. Many quilters just "stitch in the ditch," because it's easy, they don't know any other way, or can't think of a different machine quilting design. Kathy's ideas will add another dimension to your machine quilting toolbox. Just like architects study the details of buildings that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary, when you study Kathy's style and ideas your finished quilts can take on the look of beauty that makes people say "Wow!" Kathy isn’t new to machine quilting, either. She began to do machine quilting full-time in 1998, and has become one of the quilting world’s experts on machine quilting. She is based in Oregon, and lectures and teaches all over the country. With all of that machine quilting and three books under her belt, I’m sure that there are some great ideas for your quilt as well as my quilt. As a matter of fact, I’m sure that there are so many ideas jam-packed in this resource that it will be really hard for me to decide which design to use. And because I am so new at machine quilting using something other than stitch-in-the-ditch, I thought it might be fun for us to explore this together. And so, I decided to have a contest. With this resource in hand, we will be able to take a look at this quilt and see what kinds of quilting designs might make this quilt sparkle. And with all of us able to see and hear each others' input on this quilt, I'm certain that we will get some great ideas for other, more personal, quilt projects. Heck, if you share a picture of a quilt you are wondering about, maybe we can help you choose the right quilting design for that quilt. Then, all you'll need to do is quilt it. Everyone who invests in this great quilting resource will have the information right at their fingertips to help decide how to machine quilt my quilt, and theirs. I will post all of the details about my quilt on a webpage, and let you know where it is. If you want help with yours, just send a picture along, and I'll post it, too, where quilters can make their suggestions. Then, when Show me how to Plan My Quilting arrives and is mailed directly to your snail mailbox, our real work will begin. Thumb through the pages, use the information about my quilt, and then send me a design. I’ll post the proposals, and everyone in the group will vote. The design with the most votes wins. It’s just that simple. For you, anyway. Then, I'll get to quilt it, and show you the results. “What’s the prize?” you ask. I can guarantee you that it will be a really great prize! And something directly related to machine quilting. It could be a machine quilting book or two. Or a gift certificate for shopping on the site. Or it could be your very own copy of The Machine Quilting Adventure – my newest DVD product coming out in a week or so. Or, maybe the prize will be the quilt. In any case, all of the details will be emailed to everyone who participates. The only requirement for participation is that you have a copy of Show me how to Plan My Quilting, because the idea will come from the book. You can reserve your copy of the book right here today, and have it arrive in your snail mailbox possibly weeks ahead of when your local shop has it. It hasn’t been published yet, so anyone who is taking orders is taking pre-orders, like we are. The deadline to pre-order with us is Monday, August 6 by midnight Pacific Time. My order gets faxed to C&T bright and early Tuesday morning. If enough of us order, ours gets shipped first. They should arrive in our shipping area the week of August 20, and we will ship to you within 2 business days of receiving our copies. Can your quilt shop say that? amazon.com shows availability beginning in October 2007! By then, this contest will be over, and the quilt will have its binding on it and be hanging on a wall. In the meantime, I’ll be scanning fabric, posting pages, and getting things lined up for the contest. And, oh, based on what I heard from Pam Bauer, expert machine quilter, and H.D. Wilbanks, batting expert, I guess I’ll be un-basting this quilt, and replacing the polyester batting with some kind of cotton. Since this is a wall hanging, and I don't want it to beard, I won't be using polyester or wool. Ready to sign up? Click here to get your copy heading toward you, so you will be equipped choose just the right machine quilting design for your next quilt - or maybe one of your Unfinished Projects.
Happy Quilting!
www.How-to-Quilt.com www.TheQuiltingCoach.com www.Fabric-Postcards.com P.S. Remember the deadline to reserve your copy of this fantastic resource and get in on the Machine Quilting Design Contest is Monday, August 6, midnight Pacific Time.
for TheQuiltingCoach.com
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