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 it!

So here’s what you’ve been waiting for, the pictures of the finished project! Enjoy!

View of banners from the altar

Here's a larger view of the banners. There 10 separate banners.

Fast forward to 2006…my husband (a Lutheran Pastor) accepts a call to Messiah Lutheran Church in Amherst NH. After a while of settling in, I realize that the back wall of the sanctuary is the perfect place for this piece of art! I talk to a few people who are in charge of that kind of stuff, one of the ladies wanted me to reproduce the stained glass at the Valparaiso chapel…ummmm how do I politely say, “No, I want my piece there!” So I went to the artists’ website and sent him an email. Sadly, I found out that he had died just a few months earlier (Easter Sunday, 2006) but through email conversations, was giving permission to recreate his mural. But with everything going on in Amherst, I could not find the time to start the project. I just tucked my poster and dream away…

Fast forward once again, to 2011…Messiah celebrates it’s 25th Anniversary this year. November 20th is the date decided for the big celebration and my friend Trudi says, let’s pick a day and get started on that wall hanging, maybe we can get it done for the anniversary. So Trudi, Connie and I begin our journey to create this masterpiece!

Picking out fabrics! This is the fun part!

First, I scanned the images into the computer and then projected the images on a wall where we took turns tracing the design onto newsprint. Then using sharpies, we re-traced the images on the reverse side so that we could make pattern pieces. Then we traced the pattern pieces onto fusible webbing. Then came the fun part — finding just the right fabrics! I originally only wanted to used batiks and hand dyed fabrics, but some colors were almost impossible to find so on some spots we used regular cotton quilting fabric.

We really had no plan, so for the first banner, we had our piece of black fabric for the background ready and we started ironing the pattern pieces to the different fabrics. Then we had to cut them all out — some of the design elements took a LOT of little pieces! Then it was time to put the puzzle together. We tried laying the fabric on top of the paper pattern but soon realized that it just wasn’t going to work that way. So we took to laying the paper pattern alongside the actual piece. This way we could see if it was the right length. Then the moment of truth…iron it all down and OHMYGOSH! It looks amazing!! Now we just have to repeat the process NINE more times!

The first panel done (well, sort of!)

Each time we got together to work on another panel, it got easier and easier…not that it was ever easy but it did get easier! We developed a system that worked really well for us. It took approximately eleven months to make the ten banners which isn’t too bad considering we only met once a week!

Two down, eight to go!

Number five of ten...halfway there!

working on Jesus' face...this is my favorite panel!

The Jesus panel finished (he's a hottie!)

The last panel...

Of course, once we got everything put together, we had to sew it all down! Connie sewed three panels, I sewed three and Trudi sewed four (glutton for punishment if you ask me!). We pressed, we measured, we measured again and then we cut the backing fabrics and spent and evening trying to figure out how to get them to be all the same size (this would have worked better if we had measured stuff from the beginning! But hey, this is ART!). So with a little tweaking here and there we figured it all out…and just in TIME! The anniversary celebration is THIS SUNDAY!

As soon as they’re unveiled at church, I will post a picture of the completed project! I am so excited that it’s done but also a little bittersweet…It was a long journey, but the reward is great!

Special Thanks to: The Estate of David Hetland for giving us permission to reproduce his artwork. Ed, Henry & Tom for putting up with us while we were on this journey. René for helping us hang it at church and a big thank you to Connie and Trudi for helping me see my vision to the end!

Philippians 4:4-7
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

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 when sewing.

It’s available for the droid or the iphone. Here’s a rundown of what it’s got:

1. Fabric Measurement – this calculator converts between inches, yards in decimal form, and yards in fractional form
2. Backing and Batting – it determines how much yardage from a bolt of fabric is needed to make a backing for a quilt, it can also be used to determine how much batting you need for your quilt.
3. Piece Count – determines the number of fixed-sized pieces of fabric that may be cut from a larger piece of fabric.
4. Pieces to Yardage Area – determines how much fabric is needed in order to cut a given number of fixed-size pieces.
5. Binding – here you can calculate the amount of fabric required to bind your quilt based on the quilts dimensions and the binding strip width.
6. Border Yardage – shows the amount of fabric required to create borders, based on the quilt’s dimensions (width and length) and the width of the borders.
7. Square-in-a-Square – works out all the key dimensions of a square-in-a-square block using either the finished inside square length or the finished outside square length as the starting point.
8. Set in and Corner Triangle – determines the size of the square piece you’ll need to cut in order to create both unfinished set-in triangles and unfinished corner triangles, based on the size of the finished square.

I used the Set-in and Corner Triangle calculator this weekend while on a quilt retreat – I hadn’t thought about what size I would need before I left, so I just brought a lot of fabric with me! Of course I could have just made larger than needed square and cut them in half, but then I would have had bias edges on my quilt. Instead I used the calculator and it told me I needed 9 3/4″ square cut into quarters, which would then give me the straight grain on the edge! Loved it!

One of the best things about QuiltCalc is IT’S FREE! So thank you Robert Kaufman Fabrics for making my life a little easier!!

For Wide Backings:

1. Measure the fabric and make two 1″ snips where you want to tear (top and bottom)
2. Grasp the fabric firmly on either side of the tear and pull apart.
3. Snip about 1″ in from the selvage edge and tear the selvage off, discard or give to your friend who’s collecting selvages for a project.
4. If your fabric is from a decent manufacturer you should now have a quilt back with 90 degree angles on all four corners. This is a good thing!

Piecing a Backing so it’s square:

1. I’ll explain a one seam backing – to do more than one seam just repeat the steps for each piece.
2. Measure double the length of the fabric you’ll need (if each panel needs to be three yards, use 6 yards)
3. At the top and bottom of the fabric length tear off each end to make the ends square.
4. Snip about 1″ in from selvage edges and tear off selvages.
5. Fold the fabric in half lengthwise (right sides together) so you have the selvage edge touching and the edges you just tore matching.
6. Starting at the raw edge, sew 1/2″ seam allowance towards the fold stopping about 1″ from the fold. Using your scissors, tighten the fabric edge so the scissors are in the tight fold. Snip.
7. Carefully tear from the sewn side to the edge. Once torn all the way, continue your seam to the edge (which used to be the fold).
8. Press seam open and you should have a nice seamed backing with 90 degree angles on all four corners.

I hope to get a video up showing how I do this in case the written directions are confusing. Give me a week or so!

On a side note, too much backing is almost as bad as too little – if your quilt is 80″ by 90″ and you give me 120″ by 120″ wide backing, I will most likely tear it to a more reasonable size and send the scraps back to you.

I hope this helps with your confusion about backings – feel free to email me if you have a question or leave a comment.

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″. This is important with longarm quilting due to the clamps we use on the sides of the quilts – if there isn’t’ enough fabric, the machine will bump into those clamps causing a little bobble in the quilting. Most fabrics run at least 40″ from selvage to selvage so that means you’re probably going to have to purchase extra fabric for your back. Now this is what kind of confuses me with most quilters – you have no problem what-so-ever buying tons of fabric to suit your needs, mood, desires but when it comes to backing fabric all of a sudden the frugal gene kicks in! Try as you might, those two 3 yard pieces of fabric is not going to cut it if your quilt is 80″ wide. You have to take into account that you’ve got a seam allowance – I prefer you use a 1/2″ seam allowance on your backing fabric (and that you press the seam open so there’s no lump in the middle of your quilt) so you’re losing an inch, then you need to remove those selvages – they’re made with a tighter weave than the rest of your fabric so it will cause issues when I load the backing fabric on my machine, so you lose another inch to two inches. So if you started with 42″ wide fabric you’re now down to 39″ wide fabric which will give you a 78″ wide backing. You’re going to need more fabric, aren’t you.  Buy it! You can always use the leftovers on another quilt – that’s what we quilters do! Too much fabric is not a bad thing!

But in the late eighties I discovered counted cross-stitch…I had already made my son a quilt and that was fun but this cross-stitch stuff was (at the time) better! I bought kits galore, took pattern books out from the library, I had a huge floss collection. Friends and family received cross-stitch masterpieces as gifts! But that grew old pretty quickly…

Then my family came to visit us in North Carolina and my niece re-introduced me to knitting! I had learned to knit in third grade (everyone got knitted slippers for Christmas from me that year!) but hadn’t even thought about it for twenty-five years and low and behold I could remember how to do it! So I purchased needles, yarn, giant safety-pinny things and started knitting again…I made a green and white striped sweater for my five month old niece (which she promptly outgrew), I knitted scarves like a mad woman! But again, that grew old….

I stuck with quilting. I liked (and still do!) every aspect of making a quilt…the cutting, the sewing, the quilting, the binding – you name it, I love to do it! I have given each of my nieces and nephews quilts for their high school graduations (and I’m hoping they love them and use them!), I’ve made them for friends having babies, I try to make one each year for our church’s charity auction, I have one on my bed and one on the bed in the guest room…I have quilted throws for when you’re visiting and you get chilly. I have more than enough quilts…and yet I continue to make more! And probably always will…

But yesterday, I took a class on making a beaded bracelet. The supplies weren’t very expensive (I was expecting to spend a lot more!) and I’ll have a lot left over (kind of like quilting!). I found the actual process to be quiet relaxing and something I can do while sitting on the couch in the evening with my husband. I’m already thinking of what I have that I can use for storage for my beads, jewelry findings, etc…In my head, I’m picking out color combinations for people for Christmas gifts!

What.have.I.done.

Beading my last a while for me, but there will always be quilting!

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 and boy does René know what she’s doing! She brought her own brushes, a disposable paint tray, a nifty paint can that’s easy to hold and has removable inserts – she has the tools to get the job done right!

We moved stuff into the middle of the room and René laid down the drop cloth and got started. Without using any painter’s tape, she slowly cut in along the ceiling, floors and windows and when she was enough ahead of me, she let me use the roller and paint the big spots. We started around 10 am and finished around 4 or 5pm with a short break for lunch (which my husband Tom made for us).The windows in our basement have plain wooden sills so I checked our paint inventory and we had some off-white trim paint and René got to that, too.

Once the walls were done, I was flabbergasted! The once dreary, boring basement was ALIVE!  Then we got to moving furniture around so that it was in the right spots with enough room to get around without disturbing the flow of laundry. I couldn’t believe how perfect this space was becoming!

I love this color green!

Then René suggested I put up a curtain rod with a curtain to “hide” the washer and dryer so I wasn’t thinking about that while I was sewing. I didn’t have a fabric that was right for the curtain, so I worked on the rest of the room figuring that could come later…which it did…while out shopping with Tom, I coerced him into a visit to Fabric Fix in Manchester. Fabric Fix has a cool assortment of non-quilty fabrics and Malden Mills fleece, and while I don’t shop there often, if I’m looking for something different, that’s where I go. I knew I wanted something funky and fun and probably black and white…then I spotted it…EUREKA!

EUREKA!

So this is the (mostly) finished product and I totally love it – on the opposite end of the basement we’ve put an elliptical machine which I swear I’m going to use daily (once the stupid company sends us all the right parts to put it together!). It’s still a work in progress (there’s got to be a more efficient way to store fabric!) and I need to buy curtain rods for the windows (matching fabric) and covers for the overhead lights, but I am so happy when I get to sew down there!

Ta-da!

What does your sewing space look like??

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??