Sewing | BulgingButtons

June 11, 2022
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Such a Bright Quilt!

I’m so pleased this braid quilt is done. I was going to say finally done, but that’s not really the case. I have a quilt tops that have been around for 20+ years, but not this one.

This one was started this past spring while school was still in session. I was teaching full-time, working on finishing my National Board materials (not a small task, let me tell you), and trying to finish out the spring months with my sanity intact. Although I already started this quilt, I put it aside knowing that I just did not have enough time to do everything. In fact, it sort of motivated me because each time I looked at it thinking I wanted to work on it, I told myself to go work on my National Board submission.

Fast forward just a tiny bit, and school was out for the summer, and my National Board materials were submitted. I stopped and took a couple of deep breaths. Now I could quilt.

Since I recently bought myself a massive long arm quilting machine, I figured I better put it to good use. What better way to practice, then on a quilt that will end up in the hands of someone whose eyesight is not so great. That would be my mom. Unfortunately, she has developed quite a few problems with her vision, but she can still see bright colors. That’s what she asked for. A quilt with bright colors.

I got to work in my scrap bins, and cut up all these little pieces. Fortunately many of them were already in 2 1/2 inch wide strips. I put the pieces into a paper bag, and pulled them out at random to make the braids. Once in a while I re-pulled if the color was too similar to the one before it.

Putting the braids together was a lot of fun, and really a great stress reliever. It was getting the whole thing stitched together that was a little bit more of a challenge. I’m glad I saved that part of the project for after school let out. First, I had to decide what I wanted to put around the braids, if anything. I tried out a few different colors, and decided the turquoise was the way to go. I also was debating between either white or black in between. As you can see, I chose the black. My mom wants to use this on a bed in what used to be in my bedroom. Grandkids stay over regularly, so I figured the darker color would be a little easier to maintain. I love the way the black sets off all the bright colors.

The thing about this type of a quilt, is that when you do the braids you end up with a lot of bias edges. If you don’t sew, you may not realize that the bias edge is extremely stretchy. That makes it a little bit tricky to sew with, because those edges like to change size. Getting those turquoise frames around each strip ended up being kind of a hassle. Still, I got it done and loaded onto my quilt machine.

That’s where the fun really began. You see, I am a novice at this. I only have loaded the quilt machine three times. Well, actually four. The thing is when I put it on the quilting machine I forgot to check my tension before I started quilting. No big deal, right? Wrong. I got pretty far across the quilt before I realized that stitches were being skipped. That’s not good. However, I decided to ignore it and finish quilting the row. Big mistake.

When I got to the end of the row I looked under the quilt, and to my horror, there were tangles of thread all the way across the quilt. It was time to tear out stitches. Thousands of stitches. What took me five minutes to create took three days to undo. I even had time to order a new seam ripper and have it delivered before I had the job done. Once all of the stitches were out, I took everything off the frame and reloaded it.

This time I made sure to check my stitches on the side of the quilt before I got going. They looked pretty good to me, so off I went. Unfortunately, after a short while my thread broke. Maybe I threaded it incorrectly? I unthreaded the machine, re-threaded it, and tested the tension again. Then, it broke again. What was I doing wrong? I had to take a break, and watch a few videos to see if I could figure out the problem. I changed my needle, rethreaded the machine, changed the bobbin, and still it broke. Then I started to mess with the top tension, and all of a sudden the stitches looked a lot better. Yes, I thought they were fine before, but I was wrong. New tension setting in place, off I went to finish the quilting. Lesson learned.

The good news is that my quilting was better the second time around, so there’s that silver lining. I also ended up with an almost perfectly squared off quilt, which seems sort of miraculous considering how much fiddling I had to do with the turquoise and black strips. I had plenty of the black fabric left for binding, and much to my surprise the binding went on smoothly, and looked really good, if I do say so myself. Usually I hand stitch it down on the back of the quilt, but I decided to be brave and try a machine binding again. This was the first one I did that I’m actually happy with.

Mom’s quilt is done, and I learned a lot along the way. I also had the opportunity to use up some scraps, and to practice my longarm quilting skills. I love the bright colors, and I know she will too.

August 8, 2021
by BulgingButtons 2 Comments

A New Mission for My Old Wedding Dress

This morning when I checked my email I found a beautiful note from a lady named Mary Lou. Rather than try to explain, I’ll just post the body of her note:

Thank you for donating the beautiful wedding dress to Gowns of Love and giving us the opportunity to turn your memories into blessings for a family that suffers the loss of a baby.

As you can see, the set we made from your dress contains a blanket, a keepsake satchel, two hearts, and two identical gowns (one for photos & burial and a second for the family to take home as a keepsake). The keepsake satchel will be used for hand prints, pictures, etc. that the hospital provides.

The hospitals requested some boy sets so one of our talented seamstresses added a vest to your set. I pray that this picture brings you joy and makes your heart sing as you think of the gift of love that you made possible.

I cried. I’m still crying. I can only imagine how devastating that loss is. I never had to suffer that pain, but I feel for anyone who has.

I didn’t set out to donate my dress to this group; I didn’t even know about it. I was cleaning out my storage locker and there was the giant eyesore containing my carefully preserved gown. It had been sealed up for over 2 decades, and it was in a box/coffin roughly the size of a Buick. The marriage was long over, I don’t have any daughters, and even if I did I wouldn’t saddle them with something that was my taste when I was in my 20s, a million years ago. It was time to cut it loose. The problem was, nobody would take it. Not the thrift store, not the second-hand shop, not even Goodwill.

It was a beautiful dress and I couldn’t just throw it away, so It sat in my trunk while I tried to come up with a solution.

During that time period I had a meeting at an office I’d never visited before. As I waited for my appointment I noticed a framed article on the wall with a photo of a wedding dress. I read the article and found my solution. It turned out that the woman who ran Gowns of Love was also a client at this office. I left my contact information and the kind people at the office who shared it with her. Within a day or two someone picked up the gown from my home (pre-Covid). They thanked me very much, and that was that.

I was so relieved to finally have that thing out of my life. The dress was beautiful. The wedding was beautiful. The memories are beautiful. But the giant, dusty box? Nope. I soon forgot all about it. Until this morning.

I’m so sorry to the family whose child will be buried in this gown. I’m so terribly terribly sorry. I hope this beautiful set that the talented volunteer seamstresses have created will provide at least a tiny crumb of comfort. I’m so glad my old gown will cradle an infant with its love.

May 18, 2019
by BulgingButtons 4 Comments

Time for Some New Feet

Feet? What feet? Well the ones at the ends of my legs, of course. Particularly the one at the end of my left leg. That sucker has been causing quite a bit of annoyance lately. A little thing called plantar fasciitis has decided to take up residency there and let me tell you, it’s no fun. Long story short, it causes pain in the foot, but it’s not constant (thank goodness), at least not for me. It does mean that my fashion options, when it comes to shoes, have become quite limited. Either that, or suffer the consequences. Black Nikes it is, then! all black nike shoes womens-450bhl.jpg

These aren’t the only feet that have been on my mind lately. I’ve also been messing around with my sewing machine feet. I’ve dusted off the old gal (what a weird phrase, even if my machine is approaching its 25th birthday in a few days) and pulled out a few sample quilt sandwiches (if you don’t quilt, it’s just a few layers of quilty stuff put together) to do some practicing.

I have to thank Angela Walters for my renewed enthusiasm. I found her YouTube series The Midnight Quilt Show and became sort of hooked. Then, when bopping around on YouTube I found a tutorial from a quilt shop that showed a machine binding using an edge joining foot. It was beautiful. It was simple. It was fast. I wanted one. I needed one. Stat!

So, off to the quilt shop and sewing machine dealer I went. And lo and behold, there’s an edge joining foot for my machine, but it looks nothing like the one in the tutorial, and I’m pretty sure it won’t work. This left me feeling a little sad, but not totally discouraged. Maybe the other shop will have something that works.

Off I went to the other shop, the one that actually sells my brand of sewing machines, and I explain what I’m looking for. Cristy is on the case. She is bound and determined to find the correct foot for me. She brings one out and we pop it on a machine and give it a whirl. Nope, not quite. I need to get the needle over to the left position and this one only allows a straight stitch down the middle.

She’s not giving up, though. Out comes another foot. This one looks promising. Pop it on the machine, and… yes! This is going to work! Maybe not as cleanly as the one in the tutorial, but it will work. SOLD!

Of course I have to allow Mr. Google to have a crack at this quest, too. He comes up with three other options, the cost of all three, plus shipping, is less than the one I just bought. Well, what the hell, why not? SOLD!

One of them is gold. Not literally, but it works great. Just not for the purpose I intended, but no worries, I will use it plenty. It’s a quarter inch foot with an edge guide on it so no matter how sloppy I get I won’t stray from that sacred quarter inch.

The other foot has been sitting in my UPS box for the past couple of days. I’m looking forward to picking it up later and seeing what it can do.

This renewed interest in quilting is fun! I managed to get the center section of a spider web quilt put together (finally, I’m calling this one “Decades”), and I finished up the binding on a little quilt that’s been hanging around for a long time. It feels good to sew, and it feels good to see myself improving my machine quilting skills.

If only human feet were as easy to replace as sewing machine feet, I would pop this one off and put on one that works a little more easily. A girl can dream, but in the meantime I think I’ll sew instead.