Wayside Sewing Blog

Holiday Napkin

Well the answer is fairly simple, it takes time to create a gift and if you don’t plan ahead and get started during the summer, you’ll run out of time. This is one reason; the second is that many people take vacation in the summer and what better time to start your holiday projects then during vacation.

We have been getting in lots of Christmas, Holiday and Halloween fabrics over the past two weeks. We are still expecting more but this years crop of new fabrics seem to have one thing in common…they want to appeal to people beyond the holiday season. Nice colors and festive designs, but most of them don’t push it with too many cutesy themes or images so that the projects made with the fabrics can be used for months instead of weeks each year.

When selecting your holiday fabrics, always keep in mind who they are for, how they are to be used/displayed, and what will be made with them. Just because halloween is traditionally black and orange, that doesn’t mean it will go in your daughters new house. If it won’t go and you can’t picture her using it, then consider some of the newer fabrics that use a wider variety of colors and designs to keep the holiday theme without being quite so traditional.  Traditionally colored and designed fabrics still have their place but keep yourself open to the possibilities that are available today.

And, YES we will be having a Christmas in July celebration with our annual $5 fabric sale. Keep watching your email and our website as more exciting offerings to help you prepare for the end of year holidays get announced.

Check out this great link to a free project from Amazing Designs, it’s a nice holiday napkin.

Okay, so it has been way too long since the last blog entry. I will try to do better. Spring is here and believe it or not the latest holiday fabrics have started coming in, from Halloween to Christmas…and there are some great ones in the bunch.

After looking at the new fabics it dawned on me that many of the patterns that go with these don’t really utilize the border prints as well as they could. Some of them don’t even try to use them in the patterns.

Border prints can be beautiful and to relegate them to the borders all of the time is to ignore the potential that they offer. So, I challanged myself to take one of the new lines of fabrics that came in and find a way to incorporate the border print into a quilt without resorting to using it as the border. I grabbed a cut off of each of the bolts and went to work. I loved the panel print, it is a Jim Shore christmas line. The panel is actually a bunch of santas each in its’ own circle. So I figured I’d use some of these on the front of the quilt and the rest on the back. But now to incorporate the border print….the print was a row of santa villages and then a row of red surrounded by holly in  a yellow narrow borders on either side of it. I choose to cut the border apart so that I had the red/yellow/holly and the santa villages are two different pieces. This gave me lots more options…. Once I made the decision to break the border print apart I could now use some of it as a border and others (the vilages) as an integral part of the quilt top. Take a look at the quilt I made from these. To make the quilt more unique I didn’t square off the top two corners, instead I created an extra angle along the edge to give it a hint of a house shape to go along with the santa’s village feel. Of course looking at it finished I now see that I should have centered the Santa’s villages on the bottom, but live and learn.

 Next time you have a border print don’t forget it is as beautiful a piece of fabric as the panel or any other print in the line. Consider using it as a major component in the quilt top. Think about:

• Cutting it up into sections that can be pieced in as smaller borders
• Try using it as an applique in the top by cutting out a section of it that would add pizzazz to the top
• What about simply using it as another piece of fabric in the quilt, each cut would have it’s own unique look and make it seem like you used a lot more fabrics in the quilt then you did

Just a few more things to think about. Have fun sewing.

Jill

With Thanksgiving so late this year it just make Christmas come way to quick.  I don’t know about the rest of you but I LOVE to make a big holiday dinner for both Thanksgiving and Christmas AND I love to make lots of my gifts. That was tough this year with so little time between the holidays. On the cooking front I took the approach that since I work next door to one of the best bakeries in the state….I’d leave the baking to them this year…..according to my family that was a very good choice (thank you Madrid European Bakery).

For the sewing part of things I decided to fall back on some tried and true speed piecing techniques. I tend to usually shy away from these because like many sewing enthusiasts I hate to waste even a small triangle of my favorite fabric, and they all seem to be my favorites. But these these techniques give great results and they really do speed things up.

So for my half squares I fell back to the TA DA half square sheets (these are like the Thangles but instead of doing one row at a time you do an entire sheet of half sqares at a time). Basically you fuse a piece of the Ta Da half square interfacing on the back of a large piece of fabric, place it right sides together with the second fabric in your half squares and then sew on the dotted lines and cut them apart on the solid lines. In a matter of minutes (literally) you can have dozens of perfect half squares.

For the flying geese I reverted to the rulers. There are a few brands out there of flying geese rulers but they all work pretty much the same. Use them for cutting your pieces and they will even have you notching the fabrics for quick alignment and perfect geese.

There are lots of other speed piecing techniques I use but the important thing to remember is that if your pattern doesn’t call for one of these techniques it doesn’t mean you can’t use them. For example I love to use the half and quarter square rulers from Kaye Englands Cut for a Cure line of rulers. The reaons I like them is because you don’t end up with any “dog ears” when you are done AND you pre-notch your pieces while cutting for perfect alignment. It doesn’t hurt that you also use less fabric to do it (I told you every fabric is my favorite). When I am switching to a specialty ruler or speed piecing technique I usually use a piece of paper to either draw or cut out the shape called for in the pattern. then I lay my specialty ruler on it and determine just what strip size I need to use to get the same piece. If I’m using something like the TA DA I follow the instructions on the back of the pack.

But That’s enough for now. I am almost done (thanks to the help of everyone at the shop) with the first sample quilt from our 2010 Block of the month and if I do say so myself I think it is going to be a real knock out!

Happy Holidays everyone, don’t forget to find time for yourself.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Trudie Patterson. We had a great turn out and a great day on Saturday with Trudie Patterson. Her knowledge of embroidery and her grasp of the problems, and more important the solutions on how to fix them, made her a wonderful speaker.

There was plenty of food (after we ordered more) and drink for everyone, and even some candy for an afternoon pick-me-up. But after all that I think everyone was on brain overload. Lucky for us we didn’t lose power at the store until 3:30 just as the last student left the store. Trudie had to pick up in the dark, but we helped.

I hope everyone had as much fun as the staff did. Embroidery is a great creative outlet and even more fun when it comes out the way you want it to!

We have Scrap Therapy starting up later this month along with a new pocketbook class with Sidney later this month too. We hope you’ll join us in some of our up coming classes. Don’t forget to check out the web coupon (link on the main page) for this months special!

See you soon, Jill

I can’t believe it is only just over a week away until Trudie Patterson arrives.  My conversations with her have been great; I really think you’ll all enjoy her. She’s been embroidering for years and has lots of great tips and tricks to share. We’ll have a large selection of stabilizers and embroidery specials while she’s here. Some stuff will be up to 50% off, amazing savings.

Trudie will be here for one day on saturday September 12th. If you haven’t registered yet, you could be missing a great event.

Today Trudie and I were talking about the new 20″ wide stabilizers. I made the mistake of saying that it was only good for the mega or jumbo hoops of todays big machines. OOOPS what a mistake. That got Trudie explaining about how must more cost efficient the large roles were when divided up for use in the smaller hoops…then she explained about using it for lots of things like endless designs and ….well I’ll leave that for you to learn from Trudie.

Trudie works with Floriani stabilizers. If you haven’t had a chance to read about these amazing products you should check out some of the information on it at the RNK Distributing website.

See you next Saturday! Call 508-481-2088 if you haven’t let us know you’re coming.

The one problem with the Sunday Open sew, is they know me too well…and that means they always ask me about the projects they’ve seen me bring in. Now as most of you can’t be any better than I, my guess is lots of those started projects are on your UFO list.

So, how to keep the UFO pile short. You can of course….

1.  give away those you finally realize you won’t finish
2. Finish them using an “alternate” approach, such as dumping the pattern and taking the blocks you did complete and making them into pillows or a wall hanging….tada - they’re done
3. Trade services, find a friend to finish the blocks and you’ll quilt their UFO top for them - someone out there must like to do the step that you’re on that you just can’t seem to get up the motivation to finish
4. Get some great project boxes, arrange the UFO’s so that the pile, though tall, looks great….then you can attack them one at a time without having to tear apart your sewing room each time looking for that fabric that went with it that somehow found its way in to a different quilt leaving the UFO destined for the next fabric exchange at your guild

Do any of these methods work? I don’t know. I use the last and my stack of boxes are beautifully arranged. And I will say that when I opened one yesterday in an attempt to make a dent in it (and I did) it was great not to have to find alternate fabrics to flesh out the kit. Everything was there and I was able to jump right back in to the quilt without any real effort. It made restarting the quilt enjoyable.

Pick and approach and give it a try. For those of you ready to give up on your stack, we will be offering SCRAP THERAPY starting in September as an alternate approach to finishing your quilts. I’ll give you guys more info about it later, but in short it is a quick and easy way to shrink your fabric stash into usable pieces with a great selection of patterns to make the pieces disappear.

Talk to you later - Jill

I can not believe it is finally sunny out, well as close as it has been getting this summer. And we just got in all these great Halloween and Christmas fabrics, they seemed more appropriate during the rainy cold days we’d been having.

Well on to more interesting things…  Yes I am working on the class schedule and am trying very hard to finalize it….I am also working on finding more guest instructors! Diane Loomis is coming back this Satruday for another free motion class, but we NEED more. We are working with Florianni to have them come in September…keep watching as we work out details of this and other events.

With all that aside I’ve been working on my own free motion project alot lately. I’ve been catching bits and pieces from Diane Loomis’ classes and have jumped in with both feet. I am working on the feather purse with lots of the great fills from her fills class too. Instead of Sateen I am doing it in red Silk (silk-cotton blend to be specific). So far other than listening to my husband be astounded that it isn’t done yet, it is coming out great.

So why do I think it’s coming out great…well because I am having a ball making it. What have I learned you ask?

1) speed is NOT my friend, slow down and your stitches will line up better when you back track, and you will be able to follow the line of your pattern more accurately

2) a microtex needle does make a HUGE difference. I started with the 60 needle but I was too aggressive and broke a lot of them. I moved to the 70 and got much better. Now I am back to the 60, the hole is practically invisible. The thread and pattern looks way better using the smaller needle

3) Spring motion open toe foot is the way to go for me. I’d been using a closed toe foot and it was working, moved to the open toe and it is like a breath of fresh air, I can SEE what I am going. It makes going in different directions without having to stop and turn the fabric so much easier

4) Wool is fabulous. I am using the wool batting that Diane L recommends and the results make it worth it. The feathers pop right off the fabric while the heavily quilted/filled sections flatten to help accentuate the feathers

I learned alot more but that’s a good start. As soon as I have the purse done (or maybe even just fully quilted) I’ll try to post some pictures.

Free motion is FUN! If you haven’t tried it just stop by and we’ll help you figure out what your machine needs to make it work.

Bringy our machine outside for a while and go sew in the sun!

$5 fabrics and 15% off other fabrics, tomorrow/Saturday.

We have lots to do to clean up after our summer sewing camp. The kids have done amazing things this week, but the classroom looks like the fabric exploded.

This is an online advertised sale only with little warning. Should be interesting to see who comes in. We have so much fabric we have to clean some of it out to make room for all the new stuff still coming in. Hope you can make it.

I’ll post some of the kids projects on the web as soon as their done! We had a waiting list for the camp so we might add another session in August. I’ll let you know.

San Franciso is great, the weather is beautiful. I hadn’t seen this many days of sun in what seems like months.

Well better get to the BIG news before I have to head back to classes in a few minutes (no rest for the weary).  BERNINA just introduce the new Aurora Fashionista; the perfect sewing machine AND My Label software for designing your own custom fitted garments!

All sorts of new feet, fabrics, accessories and to top it all off a new cutting tool for use with your sewing machine and embroidery unit to create and cut your own applique pieces or embellish your garment with percision cutwork.

So Diane just came back from Husqvana Viking convention and now I am off to Bernina convention. So many new things to share with you. I’ll have to see what pictures I can find to show you the new stuff we have coming in - including a number of new machines!

Oh, Diane brought back samples too - stop in and we’ll show you some of the great stuff she got at Viking convention. We’re going to pull together a “Notions Commotion” session to share with you all of the new stuff. Stay tuned to the calendar as we pull together our new class line up too.

We’ll gotta go, but thought I’d give you a quick update. Wait til you see the new flat felled seam foot, it is great and so easy to use for all of you garment people out there.

Jill