Scrap Slab Wrap Up

We had a lot of fun on Saturday making scrap slabs at Quilted Threads.

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A big advantage of a class is being able to put a lot of blocks up on the design wall and play with them to see what kinds of things happen.

Surprising things can happen.

We all liked this when it was up on the wall, then the students made one change, and we all liked it better!

This prompted a discussion about the importance of the placement of the black on white side triangles and whether to sew them to the colored triangle shapes before working out an arrangement, and how we all develop rules about what can and can't go next to each other (too many blocks with the same print, etc.)

It was a great class and we all had a good time.

My travel kit worked out great, and I knew there was a reason the suitcase I used was my least favorite suitcase. I think I will go suitcase shopping for something that fits and works a bit better. (And yes, I will bring the current one to make sure everything fits.)


If you would like to make a scrap slab triangle quilt, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.

More Student Birds...

This small quilt "Birds in the Bush" was made by Jeannette in Minnesota. She wrote "Yea, not real original.." but I have to disagree. I think this quit is no end of fun and charming. Notice how Jeannette has added buttons for eyes on her birds. I just love this.

This quilt was made by Cathie.

This was made by Jennie from New Zealand as a wedding gift for her stepson and his wife. This is on the back.

This is Jennie's signature label on the quilt.  Love those striped legs.

Margaret is another New Zealand quilter. I love that the background fabrics are different prints. I think it looks great.  You can click and then double click these pictures to enlarge them so you can see all the terrific details. There is a lot to see and love in this quilt.

What I love most about seeing all the different quilts from my students and readers is how the birds are so different and so creative. Chris sent me this photo last August of her quilt with different sized birds on a gray background.  I love the variety of bird beaks and the different lengths of bird legs, the fabrics... well, everything!

I love all the unique birds in Janet's quilt.

I'm embarrassed to say I have lost the name of the quilter who made this quilt. (Please let me know your name so i can give you credit.) I love the rhythm of the way the birds are arranged here.

If you want to make your own birds, get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop! The tutorial is an instant download so you can get started right away!

Tutorial In Progress

 

I am writing a tutorial for the Slashed Squares quilts, like Terrazzo, above. While basic instructions for making this quilt are freely available as a link from this blog, I wanted something quilters could have available if a computer wasn't nearby. The tutorial will also offer cutting diagrams and size variations.

I've got the first draft almost finished, and it has gone out to the ladies who will proofread it and tell me where it needs fixing.

After that I will write up a tutorial for the Diamonds Quilts. My tutorials for the Free Pieced Birds, Scrap Slabs Quilts and Making Your Fabrics Work For You are for sale at my Etsy shop, here.

Student Bird Quilts

One of the best things about teaching birds and selling the bird tutorial is seeing what students and customers make.  Here are pictures of quilts that have been made using the tutorial.

ELana sent me this photo. It is a collaboration between members of the Concord Piecemakers Guild, where I spoke and taught last summer. This was made as a comfort quilt for one of their friends.

This happy quilt was made by Diane. Notice the "Super" bird in the bottom row. I met Diane at the MQX show. It's so nice to meet the wonderful folks who read my blog.

This is Rita's Mahjong Mavens. The birds represent the 11 women in her Mahjong group!

This quilt was made by Rita. She researched the colors of birds native to her area of Connecticut and then made birds based on them.

I hope you enjoyed seeing these quilts as much as I enjoyed showing them to you. If you have bought my tutorial and made a quilt, please send pictures! I'd love to see and share them!

Portfolio

I knew I'd need something like a portfolio to carry the 18" x 24" cutting mat and portable design wall around in. I could find lots of things that were BIGGER, but I didn't want bigger. I wanted something just the right size. And I wanted it to seal completely and be water resistant.

I looked everywhere, at art supply websites, storage websites, and, of course, on Amazon. I bought this one. 

The price was right, it was the right size (and I couldn't resist the pink.) It has extra pockets, one for a portable easel and other pockets for all kinds of other stuff. I can carry it using the handle on the side, or...

on my back like a backpack. Since I won't be carrying anything heavy in this, it will work just great. The extra pockets mean I can use it to carry my wallet, keys, glasses and other things I might normally carry around in my purse, so I there is one less bag to cart around.  Pretty sweet.


I'll get to put a lot of this to the test this weekend when I teach the Scrap Slabs class at Quilted Threads on Saturday April 28.

I Goofed!

After I finished sewing the top of the Glorious quilt, I was folding it up when I noticed this:

See that red four patch diamond on the right? It was supposed to be lined up with the green one on the left.

You can see that I lined it up wrong in this photo.

Here I removed the red four path and the lettered fabric next to it and correctly placed the cream and green print next to it.

The red four patch diamond gets sewn to that diamond at the top.

Here I've pinned the two together.

Now I can sew that last seam.

Here it's all fixed.

Happy Birthday My Sweet Boy!

It's my son's birthday today. Here he is at the beach with my granddaughter.

Happy Birthday honey!

Featherweight Heaven

I had a small problem with my new sewing machine. Every time I would use the thread cutter, the tension in the thread made it unthread the needle.  I figure I had done something wrong, so I brought the machine back to the shop. It took Dave about five seconds to spot the problem and then while he tested the machine to make sure the problem was solved, I took a quick look around the shop.

Shelves went all around the perimeter of the room, and on the shelves were sewing machines.

"He collects Featherweights" I was told when I asked.

I should say so!

You can watch a video about Dave and his shop here.

I hit the big box hardware store and bought a couple of big plastic bins to carry my quilts around on my cart. I got smart and brought some quilts with me so I could determine the correct size. I bought two of these bins. They held two of my scrap slabs quilt and one smaller wall quilt without smashing the quilts together. I picked up a few other things, (nothing to do with the kit: I bought basil, parsley, cilantro, dill and rosemary plants for my garden) and I finally ordered a portfolio to carry around my spare mats and portable design wall. Now I just have to wait until everything arrives.

Mary asked how I would make sure everything stayed on the cart.

Bungee cords, I replied, and yes, I already have them.

The Kit and Cart

OMG!!! The cart arrived yesterday and it is totally To-Die-For! It is a Magna Cart Flat Platform Truck and I got it at Amazon (where else?)

 Here it is all opened up. It can carry 300 pounds. (The handle can go up higher.)

Here is the "top" when it is all folded up.

Here is the underside.  The darn thing is so easy to use it's positively embarrassing. And it weighs less than the portable ironing table I bought last week.

Thank you Barbara and Jackie. I ordered the 6" x 24" Karen Kay Buckley travel ruler and found the nifty 2-1/2" x 6" Creative Grids ruler from the Fat Quarter Shop. Both are on their way to my house.

Chatting with Julie later, I wondered what I would use to safely carry my collection of rulers back and forth, without breaking them. I was thinking of putting the rulers inside clear pages and storing them in a loose leaf binder, but Julie suggested a metal clipboard like contractors use.  BRILLIANT!

My friend Mary suggested keeping a Master List of everything that goes in the kit so when I pack it up I'll know instantly if anything is missing. Sounds like a good thing to laminate and keep in the kit somewhere for easy reference.

I love tins. Sometimes I'll buys something in a tin just because I want the tin, not because I want what's in it.  Although this tin of Milk Chocolate Drops was irresistible.

I converted it into a mending kit by adding a magnetic business card holder on the cover, adding some steel pins and a needle, then filling the tin with scissors, thread, a seam ripper and a thimble. A needle threader is also nice. It may not be practical for carting around every day, but something like this would be good to keep in a desk drawer at work (with maybe some extra buttons and safety pins.)

I've got to get a small spray bottle to use when I iron (a very easy thing to get)

A few more items (portfolio and cutting mat) and my kit will be complete.

The Kit Develops

Everybody wants to know what kind of iron I like. I got it on Amazon.

It's this one, a Shark Lightweight Professional Steam Iron, 1500 watts. It was less than $25 USD.

I bought some foam core at Staples, then I went to the hardware store to buy some spray adhesive and some blue painter's tape.  After dinner last night I cut the foam core down to 18 x 24" (same size as a cutting mat I will use) and then stuck a layer of quilt batting to one side. I trimmed it down, then put some flannel on top, folded the edges to the back and used the adhesive to stick them down.

 Now I have a portable design wall to show students the correct way to do something. (And note to self, make these samples BIG enough so folks across the room can clearly see what I mean.)

The tools for my kit arrived the other day. Last night I labelled all of them. The tools themselves fit nicely into my little boxed bag on the right. And notice I keep small band-aids in my toolkit.  I cut myself at the MQX class last week. I indicated the bag on the far table and calmly asked a student to get a band-aid for me. I put it on myself, because blood-borne pathogens are no laughing matter.

My favorite ruler is the 2-1/2" x 12-1/2" one on the lower left, except I'd like it better if it were 2-1/2" x 6". I broke one of these by accident, and find that, at least for the bird class, the broken pieces are the perfect size to work with. I'm worried I might have to break this one on purpose.





**The new switches are on order and should arrive at my VAR (value added reseller, for the curious amongst you) on Tuesday. They will do the initial configuration there (because switches are "smart" and really nothing more than a specialized computer) and then they'll be installed at the office next Wednesday. Lest anybody think this is trivial matter, the switches, their support fees, configuration and installation costs hover around $15k.

Reality Bites

The big device with all the cables plugged into it is a 48 port switch.  All computers on a network "talk" to the server through a switch like this. This switch connects 48 computers or other network devices (like printers or scanners) to the server. Actually it's more complicated than that, but that's enough for now.

At 5:50 on Tuesday morning my cell phone rang. It was "the guys" who remotely support and manage the network at the company where I work. I was lying in bed, awake, but my alarm had not yet rung.

"Hi Lynne, how are you today?"

I laughed, "If you guys are calling me at not-quite-six in the morning, my day has just gone to hell, and I'm not even out of bed yet!"

Turns out several users out in the factory had no network connection. Problem was, SOME of them did, and SOME of them didn't. There's nothing harder to troubleshoot than something that is intermittent.

The folks at the far end of the factory connect to the network through two smaller switches hung up in the rafters of the building. It was clear that one of them wasn't working.  Except when I rode up the lift truck to look at them (about twenty feet above the factory floor) they were lit up and seemed to be working.

I went back out to the front office and since it was barely 8:30 AM, I went to the front to turn on the lights and was stopped by the VP of Manufacturing. "I can't get on the network" he told me.

WELL! That meant my problem was not one of the small switches out in the factory, but hey, the users who complained were all out there when I arrived at 7 AM, so I had to start there.

As soon as I opened the door to the server room, I could see one switch that didn't have any lights blinking. Obviously that was the source of the trouble. I called "the guys" and while I was talking I unplugged the switch and plugged it back in, hoping to jump start it. Nope. So I unplugged it again and tried another UPS (uninterruptible power supply) because sometimes outlets die, and we had had a ton of rain the day before that leaked into the first aid room next door. The switch came to life, lighting up like a Christmas tree, and then running through a series of tests where the lights blinked on every port.

AND THEN I HEARD A BIG BANG AND SMELLED ELECTRICAL BURNING.  OH CRAP!

I yanked out the cord and made sure nothing was on fire.

By the time I reached the phone to tell "the guy" at the other end of the line that the switch was well and truly dead and we needed a replacement ASAP two of my colleagues were standing at the door asking if I was OK. Apparently I either squeaked or screamed. I was certainly shaking.

So that was how my day started. A little while later one of "the guys" showed up in person and we painstakingly identified connections that weren't working and moved those cables to other switches, thus bringing everything important back on line. We knew we'd miss some (like the 3-D printer, but we fixed that the next day) but by and large everybody was working, the UPS computer was up so we could ship product, the computer that connected the two CNC machines was working so that computer could transmit jobs to the CNC machines (thus keeping production going. Being "dead in the water" is a real risk, an EXTREMELY big deal, and should be avoided at all costs), and the guys in the stockroom could pull raw materials to fill shop orders, and receive orders into the system, bar code labels could be printed and the big laser printer out there could print.

Later as a colleague and I reviewed the quotes for a new switch, and as we debated getting one or two (since we'd had planned to replace the one that died and one other eventually, but not quite yet) he mentioned that the other big switch was almost 10 years old and the estimated life cycle of a switch is 10 years. "Then we should replace both of them" I said, "because if the other one goes, then everything in the front office goes down with it - sales, engineering, purchasing, accounting, HR and payroll."

He stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widening.

"OK, so we replace both of them."

So that's the next trick.

In case you all wondered what I did in my day job.  Trust me, figuring out how to put a quilt together is a hell of a lot less stressful.

What Did I Learn?

I always tell people that I learn so much from the students I teach, and they don't always get it. Sometimes it's as simple as this:

These bed risers underneath a work table to make it easier to work on.

My friend Mary, a former schoolteacher, sent me this email last night:

Hi Lynne,

How did it go?  I'm assuming you've been evaluating the experience...what went well, what you'd change, if anything, etc.  

Did anyone approach you with a new idea...perhaps something you'd never considered doing...a new adventure?

I'm going to be interested in how you like your new Elna.

 After typing my reply for about half an hour it occurred to me that you all might like to know just what I did learn. So here it is:

Hi Mary,

Well, the biggest thing I learned was that I had to find a better way of carting my stuff back and forth. When I was in St Louis with Julie and she had this nifty little folding cart. So I have to get (and in fact have already ordered) one of them.

With all this packing and unpacking of my tools every time I teach a class, I finally got smart and decided to get extras of all my nifty tools and keep them packed and ready, so I ordered those from Amazon. (Rotary cutter, spare blades, various rulers, blue painter's tape, seam ripper, pins... stuff like that.)

The room was a typical conference room. It was smallish with a sewing machine and about twelve inches of desk space for each user. Not much. I like to have a central place where the students can work on the bird legs and I can give demos.  The  Center of NH set up a worktable for me just outside the room. I had brought a cutting mat and big ruler, so we used that.

I am so accustomed to classes providing ironing boards it never occurred to me to ask for one. There were two outside the room, but the irons weren't hot and there were always lines. So one of the things I bought at the show was a portable ironing board for the students to press the bird legs. I probably should have bought one that sits on a table, but I got one that has legs and can stand by itself.  Anyway, problem solved.

I love steam irons. So I try to have an extra one on hand. The one I have been using just died, so I pulled out it's trusty twin and didn't miss a beat. So I just ordered two more. One to keep as a spare (kinda line a spare sewing machine) and the other to go in my [new] travel kit, which is my least favorite suitcase on wheels.

When I was at the Bedford Quilt Guild, they put a table up on bed risers and OMG!!! Was it awesome to work on. So I ordered a set of those for my trusty travel kit.

And oh yes... luggage tags to identify what bag, cart, quilt stand is MINE!

I will make a portable design wall. I am so used to being at Quilted Threads where I have a place to pin stuff up, but I need something to show everybody... So I will get a piece of foam core and make a small design wall (18 x 24", same size as a cutting mat I bring to my classes now.) Of course I will order another one of those some time. I will wait until JoAnn's has a sale because I hate paying full price for anything if I can get it on sale. I'd get a portable easel, but places like the Center of NH often have those for the asking. I'll see how that goes. I don't really need to lug more stuff around.

An inexpensive portfolio for carrying artwork will carry my mat and portable design wall very easily.  It will also be a good place to store that extra 6-1/2" x 24" ruler I need to bring to classes. 

I usually keep a ruler in one back pants pocket and a rotary cutter in the other. My cell phone lives in my front pocket. I use it for taking pictures. I'm always putting something down and then walking away. It happened so many times that the students told me I should get an apron with pockets. Damn! Why didn't I think of it? I can make one of those... and OH, can I have some fun with THAT!!!

In a big class (like one with 20 students) it's easy for students to miss out on part of a demo. Very often students sew the head triangle to the bird the wrong way (they sew the long side of the HST to the body. Wrong, wrong, wrong.) I often have examples pinned up on a wall for reference, but this class didn't have walls for that and I didn't have a portable design wall. So I need to make samples, but they need to be BIG, so I students can just look up and see the CORRECT way to sew these pieces together.  So that's something I have to do.

Years ago Julie told me to make a bunch of birds and hand them out to each student before they get to work on their own birds. They can't keep them, but they can turn them over and see how I put them together, how I pressed them, etc. Several students told me this was VERY helpful, especially if I was across the room.

This tip I learned a long time ago. It's almost simplistic, but when I park my car in a parking garage, I always take a picture of the nearest location sign. After a long and stressful day of teaching, I can barely figure out what to do next, let alone remember where I put the car. Something like this helps me remember and keeps me from losing my cookies while dragging stuff all over hell just to find my car.

Another tip: Decide where I am going to treat myself for dinner after class BEFORE I leave in the morning. Along with trying to remember where I parked the car, knowing I won't have to go home and make dinner (translation: macaroni and cheese out of a box, eaten with a soup spoon directly from the pan as I sack out on the couch...) but still get a good meal really works wonders. Sometimes it's fish tacos from Shorty's, sometimes it's pizza at 900 Degrees, sometimes it's a steak and cheese sub at Nadeau's or fish and chips at Daniel's. Sometimes it's pasta at Johnny Troy's and sometimes it's a steak at Longhorn, the deal is, I don't cook. It's amazing how a good meal rejuvenates me.


So that's it Mary. This class taught me about working in a tight space, and lugging my stuff long distances and how to avoid making several long trips to the parking garage and packing my things better.

It Followed Me Home...

If you looked at the picture of the class I taught at MQX last week, you probably noticed these sewing machines. MQX provided new sewing machines for all classes which were provided by vendors. There were twenty of these Elna Excellence 680's in my classroom.

Elna's rep, Russ, called me two hours before the class started, asking me how to set up the machines. Many of the classes were about machine quilting. "My class is all patchwork, we need a quarter inch foot." He asked about the color of thread the students would need. "It doesn't matter," I told him.

"Oh that'll be easy."

He was there when I got to my classroom, and he stuck around for the whole class answering any questions the students had, but I don't remember anybody asking anything.

Later (as part of an agreement between MQX and the vendors), Russ told the class about the Elnas. He felt they were the best of Elna's line, talked about some of the features and said they were for sale for [he gave a number] 48% off. I barely paid attention.

But later that night, after having had dinner and read a bit, I was talking to Julie about the class and the show. I don't really know where it came from, but I said to her. "I think I'm going to buy one of those sewing machines." Which was really weird, because I didn't touch one of them. "Why do you say that," Julie asked.

"It was the way they sounded," I replied. "I had twenty students in a smallish conference room. The students were in four rows of five, and they were practically climbing over each other to get around (a large cutting mat and the ironing boards were just outside.) I didn't hear a sewing machine all afternoon. They were so damn quiet. And not one student had a problem."

At 10:40 PM I texted Russ, told him my name and which class I taught, and that I was interested in buying one of the machines in the room. When I woke up the next morning I had a reply from Russ (that he sent at 5:50 AM) telling me which booth to visit.

Well, long story short the damn thing followed me home. (They actually had it packed and ready for me when I got there.) It has every bell and whistle I could ask for, sews like a dream and is incredibly quiet. I haven't had a new sewing machine since 1977 when I got a Kenmore for college graduation. (It ran for 33 years until it died around 2010.)

"You'll be doing your own free motion quilting with this pretty soon," Russ teased as he loaded the box into my car.

Oh no I won't.

"Oh, yes you will."

Oh HELL no I won't.

We both laughed.

I'm old enough to know to never set yourself up for something you can't or won't do, so, I guess we'll find out next year!