Lines by Design Quilts blog hop day 2 and machine quilting

Up today on Day 2 of the Lines by Design Quilts book blog hop is Casey York. Click here to pop on over to her blog and see what she has going on!

Do you know that I cannot seem to type the word design correctly? Ever? I know how to spell it, but for some reason I type it wrong. Every time. And it is in the name of my pattern line (Seams Like a Dream Quilt DESIGNS) so one of these days I am going to put out a pattern, or a marketing publication with my own business name spelled wrong. Yeesh. Flashback to high school!

In high school I had a physics teacher that loved to intimidate his students, especially the girls. I was one of maybe 5 girls in my physics class. Every year in March, the physics students had to turn in a project with a typed paper. Guess who typed her own name wrong? Guess who pointed it out to the whole class?

So,what is going on today; what are you up to?

 

Today, I have a LOT of sewing to do! Yesterday I finished up my project from Debbie’s book; you will get to see it Monday. I even quilted it myself.

 

I don’t do much of my own quilting. For a couple of reasons. Time is one. Some of my projects have deadlines. Also, I work with an amazing long arm quilter, Crystal Zagnoli of The Quilted Cricket,  so I am very lucky. Why not let her do her thing, which is so much better than my thing?

But occasionally I do my own quilting, as did for the project from Debbie’s book. I have always struggled with free motion quilting. I can do it, but I am not relaxed. And if you are not relaxed well, it ends up being painful. Neck and shoulder pain to be specific. 

A while back, I saw a quilt show with Mary Mashuta and read her book on machine quilting called Foolproof Machine Quilting. She only quilts with her walking foot. I can do that!

Then I watched Jacquie Gering’s class on Craftsy called Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot. Yes. Great class and very helpful to me. 

 

Now I am in the middle of watching Amy Johnson’s Quilting with Rulers on a Home Machine. This class is neat in that I never thought to try rulers to help me quilt. So I am excited to try this technique soon.

 

Did I mention I met Amy at the Craftsy instructor Summit in January? She is very nice and I even sent her some blocks to quilt for her next class. I had some leftover Daisy Mae blocks from my Craftsy class and she is using them to demonstrate her quilting techniques in her next class. How cool is that?

 

If you are interested in learning to machine quilt on your home machine, there are many great classes on Craftsy. Ann Peterson, who is local here is Colorado, has a bunch of different machine quilting classes. I have watched Quilting Big Projects on a Home Machine. Leah Day, Angela Walters… a lot of great teachers on Craftsy.

I will tell you a secret. If you take some of these classes, you will get many, many great tips and techniques to help you improve your machine quilting. But guess what else you need to do? My mother often told me, but I resisted. Practice, practice, practice. 

But today, I piece!

Maybe tomorrow I will practice. Sorry mom!

happy quilting,

Kate

p.s. Yes, all those links to Craftsy are my affiliate links. But remember, you save by using them. And the National Craft Month sale is going on so if you use my links to buy a class from now until March 13th, you will be entered into a drawing to win $1000 for a craft related charity of YOUR choice. A pretty cool thing.

This is my last post about classes on Craftsy related to the sale- next week, there will be my post on the book blog hop with another chance to win a copy of Debbie’s book and hopefully I will catch up with the BOM’s  I am doing and post about them… so much quilting, so little time!

Speaking of machine quilting… here are a couple of pictures of gRadiant– the first one is pieced by Carol B. using hand-dyed fabrics and quilted by Mryna Ficken of APQS West.

This second one is pieced by Bonnie Dwyer and quilted by Julie Legere of Ironworks Quilts.

Amazing!