Thursday, July 02, 2009

Philanthropy - Why we do it


I think longarm quilters all do some form of charity quilting. I quilt for Camp Reach for the Sky through Rosie's Calico Cupboard in San Diego. CR4TS is for kids with cancer. Every kid that goes to camp takes home a quilt to snuggle with. I continue to do them because the rewards, though unseen, are wonderful.

This year I did church raffle quilts back to back. The proceeds from the raffle go to the Prayers and Squares group at the church. Our P&S group provides quilts for comfort and healing after surgeries, death of a loved one and any life-altering event. My group does not quilt them, they tie the quilts. The P&S group stitches embroidery thread in many plaes on the quilt to give it stability. The pastor announces the quilts for the congregation (or their relatives or friends) and they are set out between services on Sunday morning. People find the threads not yet tied and says a prayer for the receiver and then tie the thread in a knot. The receiver knows that each knot represents a prayer said for them. It is very comforting.

I'm still waiting for the $$ numbers from the Immaculate Heart of Mary raffle quilt. The catholic church had a spring carnival and one of the events was the quilt raffle.

My church, Spririt of Joy Lutheran church just had the drawing for the winner of the Spring Star on Father's Day. Our Prayers and Squares group received $666.25 from the proceeds of the raffle. They will use that to buy batting and thread. Many people, myself included, donate left over fabric from projects that we have completed at home. That group, 25 strong now, creates beauty and comfort using the bought and donated items. It is a worthwhile organization.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Another Penguin Quilt



I am so far behind on the blogging. I just finished this Standing Room Only quilt (pattern by Carol Morrisey). I took the class and ended up with three more to quilt besides mine. This one is Sally Ts quilt. I called Sally when it was ready and drove into town to drop it off at the quilt shop.

I noticed several kids (11-12 years old) in the parking lot but kids frequently accompany mothers to the shop. I grabbed my quilt and was on my way into the shop when 2 women (the mothers of these 4 girls) saw the bag. One of the women was the wife of a local pastor and the other was a Japanese woman here on a visit. The pastor's wife spoke Kanji. I have been to Japan many times but only know "Hello" and to bow as a greeting. So that's what I did, smile and bow. They wanted to see my quilt.

We were all gathered on the ramp into the shop and I opened the bag and showed them the quilt. The Japanese woman had many questions which were relayed via the pastor's wife. We stood there so long and talked that Sally T had time to drive from her house up to the quilt shop to pick up her quilt, the one I was displaying in the parking lot. When Sally figured out that we were all gathered around her quilt, first she loved the quilting and then she was also pleased that it had an international audience. LOL.

Sally is all about the quilt. Sally made a kingsize quilt for one of her daughters a year or so ago. I was holding the, as yet unquilted, quilt top up in the quilt shop to look at it when another woman admired it. Sally said "thank you" without even noticing that it was Eleanor Burns who complimented her on her quilt. A few weeks later, Eleanor Burns came to our annual quilt show while Sally was putting the binding on that big kingsize quilt. I grabbed Sally, her daughter Chrissy and the quilt and got a nice photo of the three of them: Eleanor, Sally and Chrissy. Sally loves to make quilts.

Baby Quilt for Marie


Marie is a hand-quilter, a very good hand-quilter. But after helping Marie out of a jam by machine quilting a nephew's baby quilt, she has changed her ideas about machine quilting a little. She still hand quilts her bed quilts but baby quilts can now be machine quilted. She loves the time it takes. She has her own batting, presses everything and wraps it on a cardboard bolt to minimize wrinkles. I normally have a $50 minimum for a quilt. But Marie is a neighbor and a good one. So she got the good neighbor discount plus $10 off for a referral that she sent me so this little beauty only cost her $17.93.

Plaids Galore

This is Lori's quilt. She got the pattern from the Quilt Maker magazine and called me to ask if I would quilt it. "Bleached muslin and Cheap Walmart plaid fabric" is the way she described it. Wow, what longarm quilter wouldn't jump for joy to get this quilt. 9 17-inch block made in a checker board pattern alternating the muslin and the paid fabrics and 6 inch sashing, plus 3 borders. Yeah, it was wonky, not square. When I see lots of straight lines, I try to soften them with flowing lines, like curls, swirls and circles.

I quoted 2 prices; one for custom involving lots of circles and one for edge-to-edge using the Circle Lord SwirlZ template. Lori chose the Swirlz.

The backing was a Moda wide back and no it was not square matching selvage to selvage. I'm finding more and more of these widebacks are not square. Thank goodness she bought a bigger back because I had to square it and lost as much as 3.5 inches getting it square. It was one of those white on white with HUGE flowers, like Hibiscus painted on.

So I wanted to be very careful when quilt this one. Make sure I don't run out of thread or break thread. Needles holes do not heal when you have to remove stitches from this painted backing. Think "Minimize your stops and starts". Then I examined the top and realized that there was no way I would be able to quilt this from the back of the machine because of the fullness in unexpected places on the quilt top. So no panto and no templates. I would have to swirl in free motion. That's cool, I love to work from the front of the machine.


So within the first 8 inches, I started to have problems. The machine would skip 5 or 6 stitches and then it would resume quilting before I could stop and check it. It did it twice. I put a pin thru the quilt and looked on the underside. I figured that it was the painted backing. RATZ! It looked like it lined up with a big painted flower. Of course, there were painted flowers everywhere. Some of hte petals were almost an inch wide. I went back and fixed the bad spots, of course, making additional holes in that painted back. RATZ! I forged ahead and it happened several more timew on the first row.

I called the quilt shop to rant about %#*@$ painted fabric. The owner, Martha, is a friend. So she listened to my sad story and suggested that I change the backing. I wanted to get it done now, not have to stop, wait for permission, replace the backing, yada, yada. So I checked everything. I changed the bobbin, the bobbin case, another cone of the same thread and got the same results. I put on a practice piece and crap, I still had skipped stitches. The light bagan to dawn. The painted backing is not the problem. RATZ! I have to time my machine. My husband just timed it last week-end. I needed to take a break because I was crying on the quilt. Not really but you get the idea that I hate to time my machine. Too many tools, flashlight and squatting to make sure this lines up with that.

OK, I took Steve Anderson's Timing is Everything class at MQS in May so I should be able to do this. My husband Terry took Rick Taylors Gammill Maintenance class at MQS. So I'll just let him time it. But that meant I would lose the whole day of quilting waiting for him to get home from work.

(resigned) Oh, alright, I'll time it myself.

Gammill makes a great Maintenance book. Well, maybe I should have said "good" instead of "great". The book would get my "great" rating if it said things like "rotate the freewheel clockwise only" and "after timing the hook, use the holes on the side of the machine head to reach the set screws in the bobbin race without rotating the hook and tighten the 2 screws in the hook race". Those were key phrases to me. Well, they were key phrases that I got from my Gammill dealer, Barbara, after 4 unsuccessul attempts to re-time. I penciled those tidbits in so the next time I will know.

So why wasn't this key information in my book, my notes from Timing class or Terry's notes from his Gammill maintenance class? I don't know. But then the light bulb went off. My machine worked fine last week. I had Terry time my machine this past weekend because I ran over a couple of pins and well, he needed to practice timing. This was the first quilt since he re-timed. When I explained this new info to him, I could almost see the light bulb go off above his head. Ah-HA. I coudn't be angry with him, he had followed the same procedure in the book that I had. Live and learn.

Back to Lori's quilt. The quilting was smooth after the machine was re-timed and I continued quilting without major problems. I kept pulling the quilt up to clean up bright threads under the white muslin. No matter how much I trimmed, there were more. I used the #14 crochet hook to grab a couple of the stray threads but there were too many. I used Quilter's Dream Puff batting and Superior So Fine thread #401 Snow on top and in the bobbin.

I trimmed it, got some photos and called her at 8:30 PM. She had just gotten home from work and wanted to come right over and pick it up. She loved it. OK, mission accomplished.

Bunny Rabbit shop sample



Isn't this a sweet little bunny quilt? Debbie pieced this shop sample, including the embroidery and blanket-stitched applique. I outlined the bunny and the heart and stitched fluffy curls into the pieces blocks. The border is a big zigzag with small daisies at each intersection. The back was white on white. I used Signature white thread top and bobbin and Warm and White batting.
The quilt will be on display at the CraZy 9 Patch Quilt Shop in Ramona for the Southern California Quilt RUN coming soon.


My life has changed in the last couple of years - some bumps, I retired from quilting, and then I moved to Texas. I'm anxious to see what new adventures await me in the next phase of my life.

About Me

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Ramona, California, United States
I started quilting when a quilt shop opened in our little town in January 2004. I have been hooked ever since.

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Books I"ve read lately

  • The Help (Kindle)
  • The Appeal by John Grisham
  • Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
  • Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
  • To Kill a Mockingbird (again) by Harper Lee
  • Bleachers by John Grisham

This is called Fruit Cocktail

This is called Fruit Cocktail
It is all batiks