Continue stitching out feathers

Ok here I go again I am going to Continue to show videos on how I stitch out some of the feathers that I showed you in the drawing videos. Have a look and enjoy.

 

 

here is another way to stitch out feather and to dress them up. Your back tracking skills are not as important with these feathers.

 

 

 

Here I have stitched out for you a feather that every other one is a leafy looking one. You do have to worry about your back tracking with this feather. Remember that if you match your thread to the fabric that you are stitch on you will not notice any boo- boos as much.

 

 

 

This is what the two of them look like. You would not normaly put the two of them on the same spin. but for demo reasons I did.

Stitching out feathers

Back to the feathers again.

Today I am going to post a few of the stitching out videos that I did over the holidays.

 

 

 

This first video is stitching out the over the top feathers. I am using a dark thread so that you can see the stitch out. If you match your thread color to the fabric that you are stitching out on. Your burp will not be as noticable.

 

This is what the stitch out looks like

 

 

 

Here I am stitching out the inside curve. I will apologize my husband was filming with the ipad, and he was not used to the ipad he hit the stop button ( close button) before I had finished stitching the last of the curve. I beleive that you get the ideal with what there is.

 

 

 

Here I am stitching out the outer curve.

 

 

 

here is the stitch out of the curve. Take a look at how you come into the tight curver your back tracking become smaller and your feathers wrap around each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Studio

Well my weekend was full. I just could not wait any longer to post about this even thow I have not finished working on organizing the studio. I just had to share what I have finished up to now.

I was getting tired of getting out the large bins of fabric every time I started a new project. So my husband and I went to Ikea and found a few ideas and that week my husband started implementing the ideas. The first idea was I would like to have a larger ironing surface.

 

So here are the steps that we took to getting a larger ironing surface.

 

 

 

This is a wall unit that we bought and we bought casters three sets of them in each set there is one wheel that locks on it. In the cubbyholes I put my projects that I am working on and some of the design fabric books that I have for curtains and other home sewing. The surface of this is only 15 inch and I want 24 inches. So off  to Rona ( hardware store here in quebec) to buy a piece of plywood that we had cut down to 24 X68 inches. This I brought home and started to cover it.

 

 

 

 

here are the supplies that you will need to cover the plywood with . You will need some batting I used two layers of cotton batting. Put them first onto the board. Then you will need the silver heat resistant fabric (not sure what the name is ) and over that I just used some kona white cotton. You will need a good staple gun with staples  I just happen to have every thing I needed in the house.

 

What I did was I layed them down on the floor starting with the outer layer which was the kona cotton then the silver heat resistant fabric with the silver side down onto the kona cotton after that the two layer of cotton batting. I placed the plywood down centering it onto all the layer.

 

 

I started to staple the side of the cotton batting first then I did the silver heat resistant fabric and then the kona cotton finished off the corners. I made a diagonal cut and stapled them down. After all the stapling was finished I cut off the extra all around.  You may have to hammer the staples down because sometimes they do not go all the way in. (I hammered as I went.)

 

 

Here is the back side of the ironing surface.

 

 

 

 

 

And here it is all finished. This can be easily moved around the room if need be.

 

Now we liked this ideal so much that we did another one but we put on a finished top that we had cut down and we ironed on strips to finish the raw sides just to clean it up. This one also will be able to be moved around the room as need be. This other one will have my die cutter on it and I will be able to move it too the middle of the room close to the ironing surface so I can iron the fabric place onto the dies and easily move to the cutter with the tray.

 

 

I was able to clear out three medium size bins, and I had a lot of quilt tops with there backings just piled up on top of the bins and that was all put into these cubbyholes.

 

My husband also bought four plastic bins that fit into the cubbyholes and a lot of fabric was able to go into them. All my small scraps went into the two that I have shown here.

 

 

And this corner of the studio is looking a little bit better but I still have a lot of work to do.

I will post more pictures in the future as my husand and I finish up organizing my studio. I will say this that Ikea has some great stuff that can be adapted to your needs.

 

 

 

 

The last of the feathers.

Well we are coming to the end of the feather drawing lessons.

I hope that everyone has been practicing on paper.


Here we go today I am going to show you how to draw a tear drop feather. In my mind I think that these are the easiest feathers out there because all you have to do is learn to draw a tear drop. Make sure that you do a little curve at the pointy side of the tear drop. This will be clear when you watch the video.

 

So there you have it all the different types of feathers.

 

 

 

 

Here I stitched it out in a triangle shape. Please take the time to draw them on paper. As you get better you will need to practice drawing all these different feathers in different direction. If you are a long armer you can not turn your quilt so you need to be able to quilt them up and down, side to side, and on the diagonal coming towards you and a way from you.

 

 

This was a class I took on Craftsy called "Beyond basic machine quilting". The teacher is using a demestic machine, so anyone can do this you do not need a longarm machine. This class was easy for me, so I changed what I did for my feathers and flowers and tried different threads that I do not get to play with often. Tested different methods of marking. This was my end result.

 

Over the top feathers.

 

this is a tear drop feather but making the tear drop look like a leaf.

 

 

 

and in this photo you see that I did a whimsical feather with a starburst.

 

 

Next week I will show videos of me stitching out the different feathers, Have a great weekend.

 

 

Back to the feathers

I thought that I would go back to the feather lessons today but before I do I will just let you know that today has been a better day there was no traffic this morning ( got to love that). It is still very cold and I still can not get back into the house through the front door the latch is still not working.

So onto the lesson.

  Today I will be showing you a few more fun feathers this will end our hooked on feathers lesson

 

 

 

Well that ends the lessons on hooked on feathers tomorrow I will show you another feather and this will end our feather drawing lessons. I hope that you have been practicing on paper like I have been showing you.

 

you see that I did one of the whimsical feather here on this one. I used a metalic gold thread  just to give the star burst a little sparkle.

 

 

 

 

 

I have shown this picture before but I thought that I would put it here again. You will see me stitch this and other ones out in later blogs.

 

 

 

Happy quilting

 

What the last two day have been like

I will tell you a little about the last two days.

I have been busy with working at the machine and also working on a baby quilt that I am doing for a client.

picture of the fabric that I am using for the first baby quilt.

The weather here has been really cold - 23c before wind chill. So because of the very cold weather I have been driving my kids to and from school not that I do not do that on the warmer days. I always drive the kids to school but I do not always drive them home.

I have ordered fabric for curtains that a client asked me to do ( for a little girls room very cute) when I start working on them I will take lots of pictures and do a blog on how to make french pleated curtain. This fabric will be coming in tomorrow evening.

Today was a lot of on and off the phone. I have two phone lines coming into the house and of course there is the cell phone. Let me tell you that it is no fun to be on one line have the other line ringing and then you are receiving a text on the cell phone, and do not get me started on the emails.

Made an order of threads for clients. ( not for me), and at the end of the day just before I ran out the door to get the kids ( oh wait the end of the day for the kids not for me) I get a call from a client that is wanting a baby quilt made. Colors are yellow golds and gray. Theme is giraffe so back on the phone with my supplier ordering another bolt of very light gray. Will be off to the local fabric store to look for other grays tomorrow. I will post pictures of these two baby quilts that I am doing for these clients. They are really cute.

The only sewing that I got done today was on the first baby quilt finished the pinwheels in between getting the kids from school and asking them to clean the kitchen. My son did the dishes and my daughter cleaned the guinea pigs cages.( there are eight pigs and two cages.)

Our babies all eight of them.

 

 

I just have to go back to how cold it is here so cold that when I got the kids home we could not open the front door. We could not push the latch down to open the door. What to do, what to do, we could not get into the house. Well asked my son to climb the fence and go into the side door that takes you into the garage. Ya we are in.

I am finishing today on the computer writing this blog. It is eleven o'clock at night my husband is out of town( left yesterday morning before 5 am) I have not even had a chance to talk with him today but did do some facetime with him last night ( very cool).  So I am going to say good night and hope that tomorrow will be a better day, and I hope that I can get back to blogging about feathers. I have a few more videos on drawing and then I will post the videos stitching out some of the different feather.

 

 

Happy Quilting.

Continue with hooked on feathers

 

Last week I showed you the basic hooked on feathers. I also showed you the book Hooked on Feathers by Sally Terry. We are going to continue working with this basic hooked on feather, but I am going to show you another book and some feathers from this book.


The book that I have taken the next few feather examples from is:

Whimsical and Funky Feathers
by Irena Bluhm
This is a great book to inspire you and help you with taking your feathers to a new place.

 

 

Here you can see that I have shown and stitched out a few different feathers.

It is aways good to practice stitching out different feathers you never now when you will need to do them.

 

 

 

 I am going to show you two videos today. The first is talking about the two books that I mentioned. The second video is showing you how to draw out some of the feathers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have done a few of these feathers on a project.

 

 

 

 

We are almost finished with the drawing portion of these videos, and then I will show you how I stitched them out with the machine.

 

 

 

Learning to do hooked on feathers.

In the next few posts I am going to show how to do” hooked on feathers” and how to dress them up.

I thought I would start with the basic hooked on feathers today, and then dress them up in the next posts starting on Monday.

Hooked on feathers is a book out by Sally Terry. I attendant a lecture that Sally gave a few years ago and she talked and showed her Hooked on Feathers. I bought her book and have been practicing her feathers on paper. I have done a little on the machine but not on a quilt as of yet.

I like these feathers because you do not have to do any back tracking with them.

 

 

 

Get out your paper and start practicing you may like these feathers better because you do not have to do any back tracking.

 

 

 

In this photo of my stitch out you will see on the right what Hooked on feathers look like when stitched out. On the left I will cover them starting on Monday. So please come back and have a look.

 

Other ways to do your feather part 3

Today is going to be a short post for a number of reasons, But the main reasons is I have to get back in the studio and work on a clients quilt. Also I am starting to organize my studio. My husband came home with something from Ikea that I am going to use for my new ironing board. We spent sunday morning at Ikea looking at different things that may work for my studio.

This all came about because  I have been talking with a very good friend about what she can do for her sewing space her lovely husband is wanting to redo her space. She said that Ikea may have some good solutions. So when I started to talk with my husband and he said the same thing. That is why I found myself at Ikea Sunday morning. We found some things that we thought may work. When we got home we started planning. On Tuesday my husband came home with the first item. It was assembles last night. Yaaaaa it is going to work. I still have to make the ironing surface but will work on that this weekend.

There will be more to come about the organization of my studio and I will let all of you know how it is going. 


Ok to the actual post that I have planned for today.

Well this is the last of these feathers that I am going to show you…….After today I have other feathers that I will be showing. In this video I am showing you a feather that you start off just like I have in the past videos, but the second feather will look like a pointy feather leaf. I have never stitched this one out, because I have never had a quilt that I thought that it would look nice on. Even though I have never used it to date on a quilt it does not mean that I should not practice drawing it out, because you never know when you may want to use it.

 

 

If I every stitch it out I will post pictures so that you can see how it looks.

My Crazy quilt

Some time ago I had this ideal that I would like to make a quilt using half square triangles. Not any size half square triangles. The size that I had to choose are finished at one inch. I need my brain examined!

 

 

So the best way that I could make these half square triangles are with thangles. What are thangles They are  paper that have markings on then for your sewing lines and others for your cutting lines. You can get them in any size up to 6 inches. Have a look.

 

 

 

 

To use these you will cut your fabric to the width that you are working on. My width of my strips are 1.5 inch wide. I cut all my strips with my accuquilt ( cuts my time down)strip cutter that is 1.5 inch wide. Take two strips and put them right sizes together and then a paper on top. Pin everything together making sure that you do not put your pins over the sewing or cutting lines.

Just a tip always put your paper on the same  fabric ex: if you are using an off white fabric and then a darker fabric ( like I have) I put my paper on the darker fabric this way when you go and iron you will be  pleating the paper and ironing your seam to the dark side all at the same time and this will make it easier to take the paper off later.

 

 

I like to sew them together in segments of five strips lining up the sewing lines as you see in the video.

 

 

 

 

That is how I do my half square triangles. It is a good thing that this method does not take all that long because I have just under five thousand half square triangles to do.  After you have sewn them together like I showed you.  You will have to start to cut them apart, and iron them open. I like to iron them with the paper on and then after tear the paper off (I do this in front of the tv.).

 

 

After this I will sort them into a plastic jewelry box as you see in the photo. (I have five of these boxes for this project. ) This makes it much easier to put the blocks together.

 

 

 Well what am I going to do with all these half square triangles? Remember they are finished at one inch. I am going to make six inch finished blocks with them.

 

 

 

I will post more about this project in the future after I get further along with it.

 

Other ways to do your feathers Part 2

Well I hope all of you had a great weekend. I have been busy working on my next few posts.

 

Well last week I started to show you how to do your feathers in different ways. So today I will continue with this theme. The last video we did curly feathers. So today I will show you how to change it up again with doing hearts on every other feather. You are going to have to go back to back tracking with this one, but I have said in the past if you match your thread to the fabric that you are sewing on. Not hit right on with back tracking  will not show as much. So here we go.

 

 

 

 

I told you that I would come back to the feathers on the left.

 

 

 

You will see in this picture that the hearts that I have stitched out are a little looser then the ones that I drew on the video. Try doing both and see what you like. I will be posting in the future videos of me stitching out some of the feathers that I have been drawing for you.

 

 

Just a little something

Couple years ago I had a client come to me with a quilt top that was going to be put into the garbage. ( I know what is that) She told me that her and her boss were cleaning out some shelves and they came across this quilt top. The client told me that it had been there before her and before her boss started working there. She told her boss that she would love to take it home and have it finished for her granddaughter. When she got it home she found some holes in the top that she was not sure how she could fix them.

Well this is where I come in. The holes were made by mice. Well we came up with the ideal that I would embroider something over the holes so that they would be covered up.

So off to the computer to browse all my embroidery designs. We found a butterfly that was big enough to over the larges of all the holes. I went to work, I hooped up some tearway stabilizer, loaded my butterfly design. I took out all my embroidery threads and made my selection of colors, mapped out the direction of the butterflies so that they will cover the holes.

Once all the butterflies were done and stitched out I loaded the quilt into the longarm machine and I quilted an all over design. Binded the quilt made a label for it, sew  by hand to the back of the quilt.

Well here is the finished quilt with butterflies.

 

 

Here is the quilt finished. You can see the butterflies if you look carefully.

 

 

 

These butterflies had to be put close together because those pesky mice made holes in to places.

 

 

A close up of a butterfly.

 

I would like to let everyone know that I will not be posting anything on feathers for a few days. I have to put in some hours at the machine. I also am going to get the filming that I have done ready for posting .......This all takes time so I thought that I would spend sometime putting together a few days of post a head of time.

 

Stay tuned and comeback next week to see what I have put together for you.

 

Other ways to do your feathers Part 1

I must say this is getting fun. I had a rough start but am settling down just fine now.

Todays video is showing you how to switch up your feathers. You will see that every other one I do is a curl on the first feather and when you stitch (draw) back it really does not matter if  your back tracking is dead on. I think that it looks nice if the back tracking is off. These feathers are not looking so formal, but will take the pressure off for perfect back tracking.  Have a look!

When you sit down to practice, work in different shapes and size spaces. Your quilt is not always going to have a straight line, or you may like to put some feathers into a traingle or a square. Just switch it up so that when you get to the machine, and you are staring down your quilt that you just loaded into your machine and you know that you want feathers, but the space is a little awkward. No problem you will have done it on paper first.


When I do feathers on a quilt and need to have them looking all the same from one space to the next. I will draw the spin into each identical space. This way I will have each feather coming out looking the same. To draw on your quilt top please use a tool that can easily come off with water or an iron or just with your hand. I like to use blackboard chalk on the dark fabrics.


This one I drew in my spin with blackboard chalk and then did my feathers. I had traingles all around the quilt, and I wanted to make sure that they are all looking the same.

 

In this example I used the ditch as my spin so I really did not have to do any drawing first.

 

 

 

 

This is a picture of two kinds of feathers. The one on the left I will cover another day. The feathers on the right you see how I did a curl at the top and then I came back and did another heart shape feather going back to the spine so that I can do another set.

There is so much that you can do with your feathers and by working on paper first you can practice different ideal and get them working and feeling right before you go to your machine. Just have fun.!

 

 

 

 

 

 

On this example I did feathers on the outer border but I changed it up a little more. This is what I did, I did two normal feathers ( this means that I had to hit my back tracking )then a curly Q that came all the way back to the spin so that I am set up to do the next two normal feather.

 

 

This is the same quilt as above but am showing you the back and one of the corners to show that you can mix the feathers up but still able to do your corners the same.

 

 

Just mix things up and have lots of fun practice on paper before you go to your machine. Put some cheap fabric into the machine and do some more Practicing.

Enjoy!

Over the top feathers on a curve part 2

Well here I am again starting my next post.

I thougth that I would talk to you a little bit about how I have been filming these videos. The ones of me drawing on paper have all been done with a digital camera on a stand. It was not all that hard but I found the quality not very good. Well my lovely husband bought me an ipad and he ( and my son did some too) helped me film some of the ones that I did stitching out with the sewing machine( you will see them later.). The ones filmed with the ipad have a  much better quality, but this opened up a hole different can of worms to be able to post them onto this blog. I had to buy a copy of quick time so that I can compress the videos, so that I can post them. This was just the first worm that got out of the can. I had to learn how to do that. The second one ( as of yet have not address it) is that I need someone to do the filming for me as I work because I can not hold the ipad and stitch or draw at the sametime. ( Now I am searching for a stand that will hold the ipad so that I can film myself instead of asking someone else to do it. Will keep you posted).

I have been only working on this for one week now and I must say that I already feel like an expert, but I am sure as time goes on I will have more worms to deal with, time will only till.


Well lets get on with the next video.

This next video is part 2 of yesterdays lesson. I am drawing the outer part of the feather and you will see that it is not has hard to do as the inner curve.

 

 

 Have your paper and pen handy so that you can practice as you watch.

 

 

 

Well this is the back of a quilt I quilted for a client and it really shows how I did the corners. Can you see how I wrap the feathers around themself on the inner curve and how the feathers stretch out to the outer corner?

 

 

 

Here is another example of a tight curve.

 

I would like to take a moment to say that it is very importent that you practice drawing every day so that you can teach your brain what to do, because when you move to the machine you need to make fast decision on where you are going to direct the machine. we do not what and stops or jerks as you sew. We want smooth fluided movements this way your feathers will come out looking smooth and graceful.

The next Video on how to draw feathers

Well I must say that I am getting the hang of this ( kind of).


 Just thought that I would say that my videos are to help people to get past there fear of doing feather. When I started learning feathers I did it all on paper. In my mind I find that if you can draw them you can stitch them. Yes I am working on a Long arm machine, but there is no where that says you can not do this on a domestic machine. With that said I did spend about six month just drawing over the top feathers. So I hope that you will get out paper and pen and follow along and enjoy the process of learning to do feathers. Please do not get inpatient with this process it takes time to get your feathers looking great. Some of you will have no problems getting the hang of doing them, and will be able to jump to the machine fairly fast. For those of you that need to work on paper longer this is not a bad thing I still to this day and for ever more will do work on paper.

 

 

Please enjoy my videos and ask any questions if you need help.

 

 

This is a close up of a quilt I would like to show you that if you match your thread to the fabric as I did here you do not see any bad back tracking that we have to so with over the top feathers. This border was done after I had practice on paper for six months.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a little wall hanging that I did not long after the six months of drawing. As you can see I stitched out a vase with cross hatching and then I have feathers coming out of the vase. To do the feathers and to make sure that I had enough space I drew the spins in with blackboard chalk first this gave me a starting point for the feathers.

 

 

A close up of the same wallhanging.

 

 

 

 

Another close up.

 

Enjoy!

 

Video show how to draw over the top feather.

Well I am slowly learning how to work on this Blog. This is my first attempt at posting a video.  . I have been asked by many of my facebook followers to show little tutorial on my feather stitching. So I thought that I would also share with all of you. In the next few days I will post one Video each day showing you different styles of feathers. I am starting with what I think is the hardest feather to master. So please get out paper and pen and follow along and practice drawing over the top feathers.

my second post

I am still trying to find out how this is working I am not sure if I am going to be able to get this working. I am now going to try to post a picture to this post. Ok I got this posted so it looks like I have to share on to picasa web albums and to do that I have to post on to my profile. Well this is a lot of work. It looks like I am need to have a youtube account so that I can post videos on this blog. This is starting to look like a lot of work.

My first day Blogging

Well I am starting a blog this is the first time that I have done something like this. You will find on this blog things about quilting and sewing for the home. I will be posting Videos and pictures of things that I am working on or have finished.