Quilter, pharmacist, Gammill repair technician...

Yesterday I decided to load my friend Dyane's ultra modern quilt onto the Gammill and start quilting. Although I had no idea what design(s) I wanted to use, after looking at a couple modern quilting books, I soon knew exactly what I wanted to do!!

Once I got started, I was LOVING quilting this quilt!!

 BUT it was super hot in my quilting studio and when I was about half way through the quilt I decided to take a break and go for a swim to cool off. BIG MISTAKE!!

One thing led to another and I never got back to the quilt until this morning. The first stitch I took made a HUGE crunching noise and then I saw the needle broken off and curled into the shape of a "C". Not a good sign (and a big reason why I'm not that sad that I have to wear glasses LOL).

So, I put in a new needle, but the thread kept breaking and the machine was skipping stitches so I adjusted the tension and figured that I needed to "time" the needle and hook. After doing that the needle wouldn't bring up the bobbin thread. I changed the needle, but that was no help sooooo....I got out the manual and decided that maybe the impact of the needle break was so great that it had affect the height of the needle bar. I've had to fix this before, so no big deal, but I had to take off the faceplate in order to access the screw. Would any of my allen keys work for this??? Of course not, and so began the 10 minute search for my son's allen keys....

OK - faceplate off, needle bar height adjusted AND..... still the bobbin thread will only come up when there is no quilt under the needle. Soooo... I change the needle again and take off the throat plate to look at the timing again. It looks OK, but when I look straight on through where the bobbin usually sits, the needle is WAY too low now!! What is going on??? So I take the needle out and lay in down beside the other needle and it is almost 1/4" longer!! So, this is something I never realized before but Gammill needles are not a standard length. - good to know!

So,,, faceplate off again, needle bar height adjusted AGAIN. Timing adjusted AGAIN. And now the machine will quilt (thank god!!) but it is skipping stitches like crazy! And when I roll the quilt into the uptake bar at the back, there are little knots of thread on the back. And the thread STILL keeps breaking so I keep adjusting the tension and after two hours of this I decide that it is once again time for a swim!!

After cooling down (literally and figuratively) I went back to the Gammill and it was stitching a bit better. Well enough to finish the rest of the quilt although the thread probably broke 50 more times and I had to go back and re-stitch over places that it had skipped stitches.

The quilting looks really good on the front of the quilt dispite all of these issues, but tonight I will be spending the evening with my punchneedle thread and tweezers pulling the little knots on the back under the fabric. At the least the Olympics are on!! Go Canada Go!!

 

 

Using the Mod Squad fabric panel to make a modern baby quilt

52 Week UFO Challenge - Project #30

Nellie and I used Northcott's Mod Squad panel from the ColorWorks Concepts line to make our Modern Vibe quilt pattern. It is a super fun, fast and easy quilt to make for someone youg (or young at heart)!

Since they usually give us extra fabric to work with, I had a second panel left over and just HAD to do something with it.

Instead of just quilting and binding it, I wanted to make it a bit bigger, so I cut rectangles and squares from the chevron fabric and sewed them together in a row with some of the white triangle print.

I then added a white strip to the right hand side and sewed this to the panel. Another white outside border finished it off and set off the colours in the panel SO nicely!!

I used my overlapping box quilting design to quilt the entire top and put a funky orange fabric on the back of the quilt.

Yellow binding looked good from the front AND the back!!

This was a fun and super quick project to make using a panel! Project #30 in my 52 Week UFO Challenge is done and this quilt is now for sale in my Etsy store.

Modern Vibe now available on Craftsy!!

Nellie and I have been super busy for the last few months designing and writing patterns for Northcott. We have finally finished writing the pattern for our Modern Vibe quilt which went to Fall Quilt Market in October.  We've also redesigned our pattern cover - here is the new look for Upper Canada Quiltworks!!

I blogged about machine quilting this sample back in October and I still love this quilt. The fabrics are available in quilt shops now and the pattern should be arriving shortly.

You can also check out Craftsy to see our downloadable e-pattern.

Modern Vibe

Modern Squares baby quilt

52 Week UFO Challenge Project #21 - Leftover squares made into a baby quilt

A couple years ago I went on a baby quilt making spree and ended up with five different baby quilts for expecting co-workers and friends. I also ended up with some leftovers - of course LOL.

I LOVED using the Twister Tool ruler to make a couple of the baby quilts, but for each quilt, after  I used the tool to cut the tessellated blocks I ended up with a bunch of 5" bias squares of fabric. 

The Twister Tool and my left over sqauers

I decided to use the squares to make another baby quilt.

First step was to trim the squares so that they were all exactly the same size. I added a few more squares to make up the right number for the quilt.

Next I cut sashing strips from white fabric and sewed one to all but eight of the squares.

Chain piecing the sashing strips to the squares.

I sewed these together into eight rows and then added one of the left over squares to the end of each row. I then added a sashing strip in between each of these rows. 

When sewing rows like these together, it's important to make sure that the small sashing strips are lined up correctly.

One the rows were all sewn together, I added a white border to all four sides.

Adding the border

I decided to quilt it using wavy lines that travelled the entire length of the quilt. I lived this design as it was simple to do and added to the modern feel of the quilt. I used cozy Northcott flannel for the backing!!

Wavy quilting lines

Once the quilt was finished, I decided to put it up for sale on my Fairfield Road Designs Etsy shop. To my delight it was bought by a woman in Australia!! Such fun to be part of a global economy!!

Project #21 in my UFO Challenge is finished - and my Modern Squares baby quilt is en route to Oz.

52 Week UFO Challenge Project #5 - QUILTSocial Flying geese quilt

Finishing up the Flying Geese quilt

Last month on QUILTsocial I used Northcott's ColorWorks Concenpts fabric to make a quilt top. Now that my Gammill was free, I finally had a chance to quilt it!!

The first step is to load the quilt on the frame. With lap sized quilts or anything smaller, I usually just float the top instead of pinning it to the leads. So first I pinned the backing, laid the batting on top and then added the quilt top.

The next thing I had to do was to decide which thread to use. I narrowed it down to three - purple/pink, lime green and blue variegated. I decided that the purple/pink would be one!!

I wanted to do something modern and came up with this straight line design with random triangles quilted along them. Luckily my Gammill has a horizontal lock, so I just locked it to stitch the line and then unlocked when it was time to do the triangle.

Triangle Step #1 

Triangle Step #2

Triangle Step #3

This was an easy and fairly quick design to quilt over the entire quilt top. After adding some binding the quilt was done. I delivered it to Taylor Sewing Centre so it could be displayed at their open house and I'll be teaching this quilt at Taylor's in April. Check out their class list here.

Here's the finished quilt - now on display at Taylor's Sewing Centre

Another UFO checked off of my to-do list!!

It's always a good day when I can use lime green thread!

 Today I got to do the quilting on our sample of one of our new patterns - Modern Vibe. This fun and colourful quilt was made using Northcott's Colorworks Concepts fabric line and I just LOVE how it turned out. How fun would this be to make for a kids room - you could get one of the co-ordinates to make curtains and pillows!!

I used a few of my favourite "modern" quilting designs to do the quilting using my lime green thread!!

I just LOVE this stripe that we used for the inner border!

Simple quilting designs always look great on modern quilts.

One of my favourite designs - modern boxes.

Our sample is heading to Houston to be displayed in the Northcott booth at International Quilt Market. I wish I was going too!!

Here it is the finished quilt!!

Fast and easy quilt for a "Modern" kinda guy

If you need a fast and easy quilt to make for a special guy in your life, Our Mosaic Maze pattern might just fit the bill! The large blocks feature easy piecing and go together SUPER fast. Nellie and I designed the quilt using digital images of the fabrics in EQ6, So it was fun to make the actual quilt when I went to the quilt retreat last year. 

Usually I precut everything for my projects, so when I am at the retreat I can just sit and sew,sew,sew. But, this time I ran out of time and had to cut the pieces there.

 Even doing that, I managed to put the quilt top together in one afternoon!!

 

I decided to add an additional pieced border using the fabric that was left over after cutting the pieces for the blocks. To set off this pieced border I also added a second black inner border.

When I got home from the retreat it was time to put it on the quilting frame.
I had so much fun quilting this quilt as I got to do a fun overlapping square and rectangle design using the vertical and horizontal locks on my Gammill.

 A black binding finished it off and it was all ready for Christmas! It now lives at my brother's house BUT, once in awhile it gets to hang out with the rest of my quilts!!

My booth at the Thousand Islands Quilt Guild quilt show - May 2015