Sewing For Summer:The Wonderful Room Outdoors

After all that snow, all that cold, all that collection of sweaters, coats and boots, it's the outdoor time. We love the sports, the gardening, the sun time at the beach.



But sometimes we forget that the outside is another room.
And while we may tidy it up from time to time, it's not like it needs sweeping. All cobwebs and interesting little bugs are mostly welcome.

It's a wonderful space not only for gardening, but for creating other spaces for entertaining, reading, playing for kids and dogs. And we can decorate it with the most wonderful fabric projects.

We also forget that quilt fabric is just really great fabric. It's a better quality, it wears better than much of what is commercial, but it also is perfect in any light weight sewing project. And the prints are the best!

Here are some projects that can make your outdoor space sew special.

Sue's Mother Daughter Apron Class

Aprons:
They're not just for the kitchen. Everyone needs an apron for gardening, for messy projects, for painting fences, for outdoor cooking and for the grunge you hope isn't on everyone's clothes when they're done.

Play Places
Of course you want them to play outside. But a small teepee or play house is privacy for them and their safety for you.

Your elegant dining room
 And no one cares who spills what. Make a small stack of table cloths and napkins. They'll brighten the table and make it feel like a trendy restaurant.

Go away I'm reading
This triangle shade makes a lovely spot for you and a book. Or a nap. Or both.

Wanda's Pillow Case Dress Class

Sun dresses
Of course everyone wants cute, cool outfits just for summer. 

Cool Travel Bags
Whether you're going to the beach or out shopping, you'll want a big enough bag. Peg made this one out of batiks. Yes, we'll show you how.

It's time to get sewing so that when summer comes you have your out door room all ready. We're going to be offering dress, apron and bag classes to help. Or come in and we'll talk you through.

Ann Wasserman’s New Book: Preserving Our Quilt Legacy

Ann Wasserman’s New Book: Preserving Our Quilt Legacy

Ann Wasserman has repaired and rehabilitated countless quilts over the last 30 years. She has vast experience and a curator’s attitude towards the work. And a great deal of common sense. Most quilters think that they know about repairing quilts. We also think we know about storing quilts. 


It’s not necessarily so. We know about stitching and color, but the skills to repair a  really damaged quilt are really different. Machine quilting isn’t any help here. Repair and conservation require a knowledge of fabric history, a skilled set of stitches and a sense of restraint.  Ann’s new book, Preserving Our Quilt Legacy provides all that.

There is a mountain of information about fabrics from different periods of time, bats, and nicely drawn stitch diagrams. But more than that, there’s a wealth of information about the difference between  restoration and conservation. She offers a very sensible set of guidelines for when to repair and when to simply preserve a quilt that respects the quilt as an historic document. And a huge base of information about storage, care, and sensible display. 

If you have a lovely old quilt in your life, this book is solid information for it’s care. For a collector of old quilts it would be an invaluable resource. For anyone doing restoration or conservation, a bible.
She also answers the age old question," When should I wash an old quilt."

Ann is also an established contemporary quilter. You’ll find her own work and her book for sale on her web site at www.annquilts.com.

The American Made Brand Collection, Some Solid Solids

You may have heard people talk about fabric collections or designer fabric collections. What does that mean?

When you go into a quilt store, you may find several prints in the same color scheme, and the same style. That's not an accident. They were designed to work with each other. They're put out by the fabric company as a collection.

  Did you want a background that matches the white in the print? Did you want the same colors but in a small print for the bias? Collections make that super simple.

But sometimes a collection reaches past that and becomes a constant staple.

That's why we're so excited about the American Made Brand Collection from Clothworks. It's more than 20 colors of solids in the same weight, perfect for piecing and for quilting. And it's made and grown in America, which is jobs and support for our own fabric industry.
We couldn't wait till it arrived. And we couldn't leave it alone.

Most times we buy solids it's catch as catch can. You'll find a piece in one weight, another piece where the color is perfect but it has poly in it. And there will be no more than two of every color. How limited is that!

That's why this collection is so great! The colors blend well. There's a full color range. They're the same weight and content. And did we say that they're pretty? They're really pretty. 

Solids also give us a great design experience. They give us the best backgrounds for quilting and shine clean and clear in your quilt design.

Clothworks shared this great Thickety Mountain quilt pattern with us. If we had to hunt this range of colors that could be a long search. This great collection has them all ready for us. How good is that?






You can look forward to that as a class at the shop.

Things to know about collections in general:

• Usually (unless it's an amazingly popular print) you will probably only see it for one season. Collections come and go. Quickly. If you like it, we recommend you buy it now. You many never see it again. And it's not likely the store will be able to reorder it, particularly if it's from a past year.Totally sad. Totally true.
• Colors change every season. It's not always drastic but it does happen. One reason to collect bits of fabric constantly is that this year's green may not be in next year. Really.
• Having a mix of colors is always better if you do run out.  5 prints the same shade may look like a design decision. When you have one block with one different shade, we all know what happened.

Fabric collections make quilt design super easy and fool proof. It's like you have a fabric designer in your pocket and she picked out the best stuff for you. And the new American Made collection has us wowed! Come in and play with it today!

Special Visitors Come to Threadbenders: We're Moms Too

Last week we had a special visitor come to Threadbenders. Cindee Schroll's grandson, Jacob, had sent her his friend, Flat Stanley, in the hopes that she'd show him around Michigan City.  Of course she brought him to Threadbenders.

 It turns out Flat Stanley loved the store.

He checked out Wanda's cool challenge quilt blocks.

 He went head over heels over hexies. 

And he flirted with us all. He talked over his next quilt project with Peg. 

We so enjoyed his visit. So, Jacob,  this is for you. Stanley had a nice time with us and he wanted you to know.

The point to all of that is not that we play with paper dolls (well at least not all of us). But we all have children in our lives and we understand that you want to include them in your sewing world, because it's such a big part of yourself. 

And we're delighted to be part of that.

We were so pleased to help Cindee do something special for Jacob. And when you have a project for a child you love, bring it in. We'll do our best to help. We have kids too.

Machine Applique: Fast As We Can

We know about quilting as zen. People always ask me about my patience. They have no idea. I've no patience at all. I want that baby done.
Machine applique is often the answer for that. There are myriad techniques that go from hand sew look alikes to raw edge wonders. We'll explore those today.


The secret about machine applique is that you want it to stay put while you stitch it down. Reasonably enough. The simple answer to that is our last blog post. If you want to stitch by machine, you fuse it as a basting.

Couldn't you just trust the glue and not stitch it? Sure. I can also trust two dogs not to touch a baked chicken that's landed on the floor. We can do almost anything. But some things just don't work the way you would like. Glue is not always permanent, not always applied well enough and not always trustworthy by itself. You could get lucky or not. If you want it to stay stuck, stitch it down.

From Julie Baird at Generations

 The applique can either be turned under or not. This is a surprisingly strong method

Karen Woodruff

Straight stitch applique. 
You can just run a stitch along the edge. It gives a modern and wild kind of look that can be a lot of fun. It needs some kind of other reason to stay on. I'd fuse it first.

From Ellen Luckett Baker at The Long Thread

Zigzag applique:
Fed zigzag applique ( with the feed dogs up) gives a solid blocky line. It's a nice finish that's very durable.

From Thread Magic Garden Ellen Anne Eddy

Free motion applique: This is applique done with a darning foot zigzag. It gives a more fluid line that can be shaded with more stitching.

What ever you choose, you'll be done in a flash. And sometimes that's just what you need.

The Left Over Block:Yes They are Yummy

Beth Shibley at Live Laugh Quilt

It's simple economy. You're working on a quilt. You cut up strip after strip of segments and sewed them together. Were we counting? Don't be silly. We were sewing!

From Dianna at Wedding Dress Blues

And somewhere in the middle of all of that there's an extra block. Yepper. 64 blocks needed. 65 blocks available. What does divide evenly with 65? 13x5? That's an odd quilt size. 
But we can't waste it, can we?

From Lily's  quilt

Before this all leads to tears, let's think it through.
No one sews evenly every time. Inexplicable things happen to your fabric that sometimes makes a block too large, too small, just unusable. Aren't you glad you made an extra?

From Jess at Life Under Quilts

A left over block is a wonderful starting space for a new quilt. It's like a special seed sitting safely in your sewing room, waiting to become a wonderful new and different quilt.




It's not new either, although it always looks modern because it's largely random. Now we call them Orphan Block Quilts. But we've always had left overs and we've always served them up later.

From McCalls Quilting

How can we stretch a small pile of left over squares into a quilt?

• Put it in the center and put borders around it.
• Add an extra kind of block to fill in.
• Add an odd and unexpected element.
• Put lots of left over kinds of blocks together.
• Give up on the quilt idea and make something else: a tote bag, a pillow, decoration for your jacket, a pot holder. This goes on forever.

Orphan Block Quilts

Tricia Lynn Maloney has written a very helpful book called 

Orphan Block Quilts: Making a Home for Antique, Vintage, Collectible and Leftover Quilt Blocks. You'll find that a very nice guide for your journey into leftovers. They're especially tasty!

Fusible Applique: Lickity Stick

Pictures from Thread Magic Garden, by Ellen Anne Eddy

Hand applique is pretty. Calming. Historic. A bit time consuming.
So is there a way to speed this up? Of course there is!

Fusible applique is the lickity split way to applique. Instead of turning your edges you either cover them  with some kind of stitching, or you don't. But either way, you fuse the applique pieces to your top fabric first.

Kinds of fusibles
Fusibles come in several classes

• Unbacked: 

These are raw spun webs or films of nothing but glue. They have no paper backing. Some of them are formulated to be less stiff. You need to be really accurate to use these. You want to applique piece to completely match the glue so it's really stuck and so it doesn't bleed glue around the edge. You probably want to use a teflon ironing sheet to protect your iron and ironing board.

Backed: Paper backed fusibles have a paper backing. It protects your ironing board and  iron. It can be ironed onto the fabric and then you cut the applique pieces. Which means it really is accurate and you don't have glue bleed. These fusibles have one paper side and one glue side.

• Tacky: These fusibles can be finger pressed onto your fabric, cut and then ironed down. Like a peanut butter sandwich you have two pieces of paper, and glue in the middle. You peel one side, pat it on to your fabric and cut your shape. Then  iron it down.

Web textures
Most webs have a texture of some kind. It will show through. Films and webs work better than webs with a formal glue structure on the back. Of course if you stitch enough on it, who will know?

Some of the first fusibles have been around for over forty years now, and have proved permanent. But  I don't ever trust it as a finished product. You might if it's:

•  a piece you never intend to wash.
   If it's just going up on your wall, it's probably fine, but cleaning it is going to be dicey if you ever need to.

• a piece that will never be rough handled. Keep in mind that shipping or traveling quilts to show can be very rough handling. 

Most people stitch after they fuse in some regards. But fusing fabric changes its texture. It's much harder to stitch through. So stitching by machine is probably the way to go.

Next time we'll talk about machine stitching applique.