Smithsonian Inspiration

Three years ago when my daughter was an exhibits designer at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum https://airandspace.si.edu/ she designed the new Time and Navigation exhibit. When she needed a design for a mariner's compass image, who did she turn to for inspiration? Her mother the quilter. I sent her several quilt blocks to consider and she made her own compass using them for ideas. Here are Heidi's designs....

This one is on the wall just as you enter the exhibit.

This one is on the floor and you walk over it as you enter the exhibit space. 

I bought some really cool fabric at Capitol Quilts www.capitalquilts.com, a white background with navigational symbols in pale gray printed on it. Now all I have to do is make her a quilt in to celebrate her first big exhibit design at the museum. Which one will I make?

Time moves on and Heidi is now at the National Museum of the Native American www.nmai.si.edu/. Her first big exhibit will open in 2017. 

Grid Girls Club....and a good time was had by all!

Here is a great idea for your local quilt shop. A Grid Girls Club! The club meets once a month and each month a new Creative Grids© ruler is demonstrated and then members get right down to sewing as they make blocks using that ruler. If you are looking for a block of the month club alternative for the coming year this is a fun and fabulous way to get together while learning to do new blocks.

Deb's Cats N Quilts in Franklin, North Carolina (www.debscatsnquilts.com)started with my traditional Log Cabin Trim Tool. This is an easy ruler to use and you can see by the happy smiles on everyone's face that everyone was successful in making perfect log cabin blocks.

Kanuga Retreat 2016

Every January, for the MLK holiday weekend, my sister, Janet Houts and I teach a 3 day workshop at the Kanuga Conference Center kanuga.org in Hendersonville, NC. This year there were 31 quilters in our workshop. They were working on their own projects or working on one of 5 different projects we provided ranging from easy for beginners to challenging for experienced quilters. Every year we have returning quilts as we welcome quilters of all levels of skills to our event. You are all invited!

Kanuga 2015 Workshop

Charlotta's Round Robin

Mary's Round Robin

Jeanine's Jelly Roll Quilt

Danielle's Pineapple Quilt

 

Pineapple Quilt Back

Mary's Quilt in Blue

Mary's Wonky Log Cabin In Yellow

Kanuga 2016 Workshop

Color Boxes In Progress

Michele adding embellishments

Compass Rose In Progress

Denise's Compass Rose pieced and ready to quilt

Mary's Purple Wonky Log Cabin

Binding Bonanza

Last week I picked up 3 quilts from Sue Bentley,  my longarm quilter http://www.suzquilts.com/longarm-services.html.  Then I machine quilted a smaller quilt on my Janome professional machine. All 4 quilted at once, all 4 needing binding, right now.

I do all of my binding by machine, both front and back. I use a folded binding. I cut my binding strips 2-1/4" on the straight grain of fabric. Most of my quilts never see a bed and they are not entered into quilt competitions. (If I were making quilts to be judged I would apply the binding to the front of the quilt, then hand stitch the folded edge to the back.) Here are the steps I take to bind my quilts:

1. I sew 2-1/4" strips together end-to-end, fold lengthwise and press the fold. Then I line up the raw edges of the binding to the raw edge of the quilt top and sew in place with a 1/4" seam allowance. Note that I am using the even feed foot with rudder to control the 1/4" seam allowance as I sew. The even feed foot is a built in feature of my Janome sewing machine.

2. I turn the folded edge of the binding to the back of the quilt and use those clever little binding clips to hold the binding in place. Then I stitch the binding in place from the right side of the quilt, again using my even feed foot. The stitching is on the top of the binding strip and using the even feed foot with rudder to maintain the 1/4" stitch line. 

3. When turning the corner to start a new side of the quilt, I stitch right up to the edge of the quilt.

Then I fold the binding at a 45° angle. Then I start stitching again, beginning at the top edge of the binding and resume sewing right down the edge.

4. I use the clips to sew maintain the mitered corner in place as I approach the corner, turn the corner, then continue stitching until I have sewn around all four sides of the quilt.