The Finished Project!
Today we celebrated 25 years of Messiah Lutheran’s ministry in Amherst NH! It was a great day of celebration with wonderful music, the Bishop preached and we had a wonderful luncheon! Old and new friends were there and it felt like everyone had a great time! A lot of hard work went into today – there was cleaning done, painting done and LOTS of planning done! We also had the liturgical banner Connie, Trudi and I have been working on for the past eleven months dedicated. It felt so good to see it hanging and people ohhhing and ahhhing over… Read more »
A Journey’s End…
It started about 8 years ago. I was at Camp Calumet and saw a poster on one of the bulletin boards that was a picture of a mural that artist David Hetland created at the 2003 ELCA Youth Gathering in Atlanta, GA. It was love at first site. I kept thinking, I want to reproduce that in fabric! I even dreamt about it! Finally I got up the courage to ask for the poster…and it was MINE! Fast forward to 2006…my husband (a Lutheran Pastor) accepts a call to Messiah Lutheran Church in Amherst NH. After a while of settling… Read more »
Smart Phones and Quilting
Okay, I admit it. I. am. a. geek. I love technology! It probably takes me away from sewing/quilting WAY too much, but I still love it! This weekend it made my life just a little bit easier! I have a droid smart phone. It’s an older one but still quite a step up from my Krazer! I couple of weeks ago I downloaded and app from the App Store that is put out by Robert Kaufman Fabrics and Quilters Paradise. It’s called QuiltingCalc. QuiltingCalc has an assortment of quilting calculators to help you figure out all sorts of problems encountered… Read more »
A Word (or two) About Quilt Backings…Part III
Squaring up – what exactly does that mean? Well when you load a backing onto a longarm frame, if the fabric isn’t’ a nice square shape, there will be areas that droop and as I quilt your quilt, these can and will cause puckers in your quilt backing. If I catch it in time, I can sometimes pull and yank and get it to work, but if I don’t catch it there will be a pucker in your backing. The easiest way for me to square you backing (which you can do yourself) is to tear it. There are some… Read more »
A Word (or two) About Quilt Backings…Part II
To wash or not to wash, that is the question….every quilter has an opinion on whether or not to wash their fabrics before sewing. I do. I’m not saying you have to but I do recommend that if you washed all the fabrics in the top, you should probably wash the fabric for the back! But….if you’re not going to wash the fabric for your backing, at least iron out that crease that is formed from the fabric sitting on the bolt. If I load a backing fabric and it has a crease in it, I will spray it with… Read more »
A Word (or two) About Quilt Backings….part I
Recently I’ve had a couple of quilts show up at my doorstep with backings (linings some call them) that have issues so I thought this might be a good place to discuss it. Now keep in mind, if you use another machine quilter you may want to check with them for what they require – this is based on my requirements. Your backing fabric needs to be at least 5″ larger than your quilt on all four sides. That means if your quilt is 80″ by 90″ your backing fabric (at the very least) needs to be 90″ by 100″…. Read more »
Uh-Oh!
Quilting was not my first love….I know, shocking, isn’t it?!? When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my mother sent me to the Singer Sewing School at the Singer Sewing Center in the Nanuet Mall. Every Saturday for what felt like forever, I got up early and was dropped off at the mall before it opened and attended sewing classes. We got to pick out a pattern, fabrics and notions and was walked through the construction process and at the end of the “term” there was going to be a Fashion Show! We were going to get to model… Read more »
A Fresh Start!
I recently moved my personal sewing stuff to our basement. Wasn’t much to look at, your typical semi-finished basement…white walls, cement floor, washer and dryer set up. Then my friend René said, why don’t we paint it…René loves to paint! I mean LOVES to paint! So I went to the paint store and picked out one of my favorite colors…almost, but not quite, lime green! It is a color that gives me great joy! I don’t care if it’s going out of style, I still love it! So we checked our schedules and found a day to spend painting together… Read more »
What to get??
Do you have your Christmas shopping all done? I certainly do not! So far one present has been purchased. Good thing I don’t have too many people to buy for! I’m thinking of getting my husband a Kindle from Amazon.com but I’m still not convinced he/I would like it better than an actual book….what are your thoughts? Then there’s the Advent Conspiracy where they urge you to “buy less, give more” which I love! But then you have to convince your whole family into participating so you don’t look like a cheapskate! So how does your family handle Christmas/Holiday giving??