Product Review - Best Press Spray

I love Best Press Spray and use it often, especially on small blocks with many pieces. I like how it makes blocks lay flat and look crisp, and yet it doesn't leave any white starchy residue on the fabric. 
I bought the new product with a lavender and thyme scent, which has a "wrinkle releaser" (whatever that is!) I was surprised to find that I do not like it! The scent is so strong that one spritz on the fabric being ironed makes the whole sewing room smell. I much prefer the regular lavender scented spray, which is soft and understated. I think I will add just a few drops of the new spray into a bottle of unscented Best Press so I can use it up over time/thyme!  

Rotary Cutter Blades

A couple of months ago I bought an aqua "Splash" Olfa rotary cutter which has a new system for replacing the blades in order to reduce the probability of cutting yourself during the process. Okay, so this product was actually "new" in 2013, but it's new to me in 2017!

I needed to cut bazillions of triangles for Clarissa and the Bear so I got out the new rotary cutter. And somehow I got a nick in the very first blade of my new rotary cutter. I have no memory of cutting anything other than fabric. I am very careful to always keep the safety shield in place when I set the cutter down (since I have seen terrible injuries of quilters accidentally cutting themselves) so I really have no idea how the nick happened.
The blade was really sharp when I started using it, but after a few cuts it was missing threads consistently. I was able to easily replace the blade and think the new blade replacement system is great.
However, I do hope that this new $7 blade lasts longer than a few cuts!
Here are my questions:
1) What do you do with your old/nicked/dull rotary blades?
2) Do you get them sharpened?
3) Have you had any experience with using the blade sharpeners yourself? Is it a good investment?

Design Wall Monday Mystery

The final step of Scrap Dance Tango has been revealed! This is a mystery quilt from Carole who blogs at From My Carolina Home. I couldn't resist putting my blocks on the design wall and playing with different layout ideas.

Layout A

Layout B

Layout C

Do you have a preference of any of these layouts? I like them all and really don't like one more than the others. But I still have many more blocks to make, so I have lots of time to decide.
The project started in January, and I have made a bazillion scrappy HST's for this quilt since then. Seriously, it has been a never-ending task!
The BlocLoc ruler has made the trimming of the blocks much easier. Although it was a more expensive ruler to purchase, I have used it so much this year that I believe it is definitely worth the money. 

Check your sister's house!

The only problem is that the ruler is so popular, my sister sometimes steals borrows it to trim her HST blocks, which leaves me using the regular old fashion way of trimming. I think I will end up buying her one of her own!

To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Frixion Pens

Progress is continuing on quilting my UFO and I hope to have it finished before the end of the month. YAH!

grid machine quilting

I ditched the painters tape since I was stitching too fast and sewed the tape to the quilt a couple of times! I then decided to mark all the lines with the Frixion pens.
I received quite a few comments and emails about the concerns regarding the use of these pens. There seem to be horror stories that have become part of quilting folklore about quilts that were ruined by these pens. It's an interesting dilemma for quilters since almost every quilt store has a display of these pens by their cash registers.

What are the concerns about Frixion pens?

1) they leave a white (ghost) mark on the fabric:

No marks 

If I'm machine quilting on a line, and covering the line with thread, it doesn't matter if there is a white line under that thread. I am also hand quilting a large quilt right now and am using frixion pens to mark the quilting design. I accidentally picked up a real ink pen to mark one block. That matters because it is definitely not going to come out! I'm not worried because it's a quilt for my family's use, not a masterpiece or an heirloom quilt. 

2) marks will reappear in the cold:

hot iron to remove pen lines

It is definitely cold here in the winter, so the marks may reappear if I take the quilt to keep warm at the Santa Clause parade. I'm okay with the cold reappearance since the marks will again disappear with heat applied (either a hot iron or a tumble in the drier).

Many quilters have written reviews about Frixion pens over the years : Lee at Freshly Pieced, Lori's blog Humble Quilts posted results of her pen testing part one here and part two here, and the Connecting Threads blog has an interesting article here. 

In summary... 

Frixion pen

I've been using Frixion for a few years and haven't yet had a problem with the pens or the marks.  However, if I ever get it in my head to make an heirloom quilt that might be submitted to a fancy quilt show, I might not use the frixion pens. But for the majority of my quilts that are going to be used on beds in warm houses and washed until they fall apart, I think it'll be fine to use Frixion.

Design Wall Monday

Allietare parts are on the design wall today. Step #2 was posted on friday and my parts were completed by Sunday. 
Here's a photo of the bin that stores my mystery parts sewn so far, minus the ones on the design wall, and the ones sitting on the ironing board!
It doesn't look like much yet, but just you wait. It will magically morph into something else week by week.

Step #2 was an easy step to work on and everything measured what it should.

Here are a few sets of some of the blocks on the design wall. 

Don't you think they look like rows of Santa hats? 






I was happy that this project gave me an opportunity to try out the Omnigrid Glow Line Tape I bought a while ago. The tape is used to mark shapes or lines on rulers, and it's one of those purchases you make and then wonder if you will actually ever use it. 

Can you see the yellow strip on the ruler below the red strip of fabric? It is a visual guide to help line up the strip with the correct measurement on the ruler. The benefit is that your brain doesn't have remember the size you need, and your eyes don't have to look for the numbers every time you reset the ruler. The tape guides your vision right to the line you need to see. The cutting went so much faster once I put the tape on. The colour of the tape is faint, not too distracting, but easy to locate.  I placed it slightly below the cutting line so that I could still see exactly where to line up the fabric strip. The tape is not very sticky, so it comes off easily which is great because you don't want sticky residue on your rulers. 
Hop over to Quiltville to see more Allietare progress postings, and then go visit Patchwork Times to see more design walls.

Cozy Afternoon Beading - Silk Thread

I am preparing some blocks for the reveal of the free Cozy Afternoon Block of the Month.  The first patterns will be available on June 15th. Have you signed up yet? Click here to join in.

Playing with wooden beads

I had fun playing in the bead box and picking just the right beads for these flowers.
When attaching the beads, I tried out the new silk thread I bought last week. 

Kimono Silk Thread

It is a finer thread than Nymo, which is my usual beading thread. And it didn't seem to split as much on the ends so threading the needle was easier. I must say after my first experience that I really like this thread and look forward to using it more.

Bitty Baskets

Have you seen the Bitty Blocks on Quilty Pleasures? 
On the first monday of each month a new free block pattern is posted. I wasn't enticed by the January bowtie block, but I was quite smitten with the 4" February basket block. I got out my collection of baby HST blocks, and opened up one of the baggies to try just one block. The 1.5" HSTs are the bonus triangles from my Angel Solstice quilt. I only needed to press and size them. I love the Bloc Loc ruler for trimming HSTs. It has an indentation underneath the ruler that snugs up against the seam and makes it easier to trim the blocks accurately. It's an expensive little ruler, but I think it was worth my money for how often I have used it.

And here is my test block.
Uh oh... I can tell right now that these are addictive. It went together smoothly (since I had the tiny HSTs already made), it is tiny and adorable, and I am using up scraps. 
What could be better?

Book Giveaway

I was recently given a copy of a new book by Viva Editions called "Imagine the life you'd love to live, then live it" by Peg Conley. The editor gave me this book in exchange for writing a blog post reviewing the book.

So here's my review...

What's inside this book?

There are 52 short chapters in this book, each one explains an idea or practice that will increase your creativity. Who doesn't want to be more creative, especially if you are a quilter? I have read many books over the years about creativity and was happy to read a new one. 

After reading this book, I was surprised to find that I am regularly practicing many of the suggested ideas. It was good to be reminded of why these choices are important, and to be mindful of the reasons why I continue to engage in some of the things I value, like LAUGH, PLAY, enjoy a massage, etc.  

There were a few new tasks I want to try, including "clean out your closets". That's a tough one for me because I like my stuff... especially my quilting stuff. And we all know about the never-ending UFO closets! But I recognize the value in what the author says:

" We have a tendency to hold onto things, but honestly, holding onto the past can clog up the plumbing".

That resonated with me since my house has had horrendous plumbing issues this past year. It's time to unclog the plumbing, clean out the closets, and get the creative flow going!  I'll let you know how that works out for me.

What do I like about the book?

I like that this is the kind of book that you have on your bedside table, and pick it up for a quick read of specific chapters you want to work on. There are many inspiring thoughts that remind you of small but important

things you could do to move forward in your life, and be more creative.

One of my favorite things about the book is that each chapter ends with a quote by a famous/inspiring person.

Here's one of the quotes I liked by Paulo Coelho: "Stop being who you were and become who you are."

What would I change about the book?

I would add colour. The author is a watercolour artist,  but the only colour in this book is on the cover. The book pages do not visually attract the attention of creative people. It would be like me writing a book about creativity and not putting any pictures of quilts inside!

And speaking of quilts, Peg gives a shout out to quilters on page 146 and describes us as "artists whose medium is fabric". And she has produced a fabric line available through Clothworks.

If you are interested in the topic of creativity, leave a comment below and I will draw randomly draw the name of the creative quilter who will read it next (after my Granddog Max is finished!).

Heat Press Batting Together

I am getting ready to finish up some smaller quilts and want to use up odds and ends of batting scraps. I am using some fusible tape to join some small batting scraps together. 


Here is an example of what I'm doing. Here I am filling in this little corner which is about 6" x 20".  Fixing the corner will make this chunk of batting more usable. Then I will fuse this chunk to another chunk, and so on, until I get a piece large enough to use for a baby quilt.

This is the product I am using called  Heat Press Batting Together. If you asked me about it, I would probably have described this product as "okay". But I have to admit that I must like this more than I had thought because my package is empty... I used the whole thing! 
I guess I could cut my own strips from fusible web sheets and maybe I'll try that next time since I'm out of the prepackaged tape. It's just so convenient and easy to use.
What method do you use to join batting scraps together?

Slow Sunday Stitching

Do you have special tools that you don't use just because they are "special"? While hand stitching the binding on my little Superpower wallhanging, I got out a treasured thimble and decided to use it. 
What am I saving it for? 
So my descendants can gawk at it 100 years from now and wonder what it was for!?! LOL

So I took my beautiful porcelain Meissen thimble out of it's box, admired it, and actually used it!  
What good is a thimble sitting in a fancy box? 
I used it. 
Yes I did.


I don't know how long a porcelain thimble would hold up to the harsh treatment of having pins and needles stuck in it and scraped on it, but I am trying to put my new mantra into practice as often as possible, and find out! 
The experience of using this thimble was lovely, although I would have liked it more if the indentations were a little deeper to catch the needle in a more sturdy way, but it did the job, and I felt extravagant while using it!  

It's Slow Stitching Sunday - take out your beautiful tools and fabrics, and USE them!!
Today is the day to treat yourself to something special! Then link up your blog post below and share what you are hand stitching today.

Slow Sunday Stitching - Stencils & Frixion Pens

Have you ever used a quilting stencil before? I have very limited experience with them, but my Journey quilt really wanted a cabled border. I found the right sized 3" cable border stencil and then had to decide how to mark it. I remembered the information on Lori's blog and Lee's blog about the Frixion pens, and decided to try them out.
The Frixion pen was easy to use, just like a regular pen, and the marks showed up well on the fabric. I drew some lines, and tried out the iron to see if the lines actually disappeared as they were supposed to... 
and they did!
Completely gone! 
Reviewers say that the marks reappear if you put the quilt in the freezer or take it outside when it's really cold, but then you just have to reapply the heat to get the marks to go away again. I think I would be nervous to use this tool on a white quilt, but I was willing to try it on this busy print border.
So I took the plunge and marked the whole border. I easily got the hang of adjusting the cable sections to make sure there were whole designs across all sides. I just had to lengthen two of the cables by about 1/2". 
And when I made a mistake, I just took the iron to it, and started over again. 
Loved it! 
Now which thread colour should I use to quilt the cable? I'm thinking pink or green?

What are you hand stitching today? Link up your hand stitching blog post below so we can celebrate your slow progress with you.

Slow Sunday Stitching Linky Party

This week I tried out a new (to me) product called "finger cots" which were  recommended by Teresa at Fabric Therapy (see blog post here). I finally located some at Shoppers Drug Mart. They worked great and I liked them for pulling the needle and thread through easily. It was more convenient than constantly picking up the needle grabber discs that I had been using. 

I was getting very co-ordinated with the thimble on my middle finger and the cot on the first finger, until the cot cut off the circulation in my finger! I fixed that problem by cutting into the rim at the edge and it worked perfectly, and my finger stopped turning purple. 

My big announcement is that this week I finished hand quilting the 9th block on my Journey of a Quilter....the 9th and last block! I started hand quilting these blocks in December 2012. I have just loved every step of making these blocks - the fabric selection, block construction, hand embroidery, and the hand quilting. This one block has over 30 different fabric scraps in it, and even the light background fabrics are scrappy leftovers too.

Here is how the quilt looks today...

YUM!

I spent some time running my hands over the stitches, admiring the texture that hand quilting gives. My mind revisited many memories from working on this quilt over the years. One of the benefits of having a blog is that you can easily review your posts about a quilt's journey - you can see the 35+ posts written about this quilt since July 2007 by clicking here. 

My biggest hand stitching challenge today will be that I am puppysitting my granddog Max. And he doesn't like hand stitching, or anything slow! He wants me to play with him. All the time. It's cute for a while and then it's annoying!  "Come on Grandma... play with me"!

I hope to be able to get the border design marked today. I had been debating about hand quilting an unmarked design, a "liberated" free motion kind of quilting. Since I didn't do any marking on the blocks, it seemed like I should do the same for the borders. But I really had my heart set on a cable pattern around the border, and I can't do that in a free motion, unmarked way. Still thinking about it.

What are you hoping to stitch today? I hope you have some time to enjoy your hand stitching project, and link up your blog post below. 

Product Report and a Finish!

Three years ago my friend Marjorie gave me a bag of leftover HST's that she was going to throw in the garbage (gasp!). I was happy to rescue them and you can see the beginning of the project here. This is a long term leader/ender project and I was really happy with the layout that evolved over the years. I finally pulled it out again to work on last week at quilt camp, and decided this would be the perfect quilt to experiment on. I usually use my Machingers or old dollar store gloves to help with moving the quilt around, but this time I tried out two new (to me) machine quilting aids that other quilters had brought to camp.

"Batt Scooters"

They were "okay" to use, and gave me good control over the quilt movement. But my hands tired easily from picking up the batts and moving them from place to place. It might be "user incompetence", and if I used them more, I might find a better way to move them around that would be less tiring.


"Steady Betty Bands" 

These bands worked really well, and were easier to use with less hand stress than the batts. However, they allowed me to get way too close to the needle, and guess what happened? 

Yep... sewed right through the side of my finger! OUCH! I didn't get any blood on the quilt, and managed to finish the quilting anyway. It was also probably "user incompetence" but if this happened to an experienced machine quilter, I wouldn't want to have beginners trying them!
Honestly I wouldn't buy either of these products and prefer to use gloves for machine quilting, although they can be hot to wear in the summer. In the winter, like today where it is minus 15 degrees Celsius, but feels like minus 26 degrees... I want the gloves! 
The quilting that I figured out is a continuous design which means I started in one place and didn't stop until the whole thing was quilted. Well, I did also stop when I was bleeding! The design is curved lines around the light star HST's and in the centers of the blocks, and a swirly vine and leaves in the sashing. 


This photo shows the finished quilt and the truer colours. It's a fun finish to enjoy, after it started 3 years ago from some garbage!
I have finished the binding but not the label because it doesn't have a name yet... any ideas?!?

Hari-Kuyo Festival of Broken Needles

I read on Quiltville Facebook that February 8th is the 400 year old Japanese ritual called Hari-Kuyo "Festival of Broken Needles". You can read more about the festival here and here. I really enjoyed reading Kelly's post over at I Have A Notion blog. These links lead me down a cyberspace rabbit hole where I may have been lost for hours jumping from link to link.... hope you don't get lost there!

This lead me to many thoughts about sewing needles and I found this quote:

...it also honors the secret sorrows that women have. As a woman sews, her essence permeates that small needle with her energy and aura. The needles are believed to share these burdens, and take some of them into themselves, so this burial is a way to thank them and put these matters to rest.

I wonder what burdens my needles would tell you they have carried for me? Here is the final resting place for my broken and bent needles.

My machine quilting needles rarely break because I am very careful what I sew on and never ever sew over pins. I hate it when a needle breaks when I am machine quilting - it really scares me, so I am careful to always use a strong needle with no burrs. When starting to quilt a large quilt, I change the needle, usually putting in a 90 Topstitch needle. When I finish the quilting on a project I change the needle again, usually putting in an 80 Microsharp for piecing.

However, I do seem to be very hard on hand stitching needles. They seem to bend easily, especially through thick seam intersections. This is the needle I bent during Slow Sunday Stitching this week!

These are my precious John James hand quilting needles. The "Big Eye" makes it easier to thread, and the small size needle helps me to take tinier stitches. I have probably tried every brand of needle on the market and have many packages laying around so I will never be without a new sharp needle to use.

I was thinking about pioneer women who treasured their needles, often having only 1 or 2 to sew with. Click here for a story about how precious needles used to be. 

Still thinking about needles? 

Here is a video on Schmetz needle production (a bit odd and slow moving with lots of advertising for Schmetz) and here is a Discovery channel video about needle and pin production (this video is half as long and more interesting to watch).
What's your favorite needle? Do you break and bend your needles? Do you have any tips for needle care?

Marking Pins

Have you seen these cool marking pins?? They are large safety pins with alphabet bead markers that you can use to keep your blocks or rows organized.  I bought these pins at the Shop Hop in May and just love them! 
You can see the size of the beads in this photo. They are just the right size to fit on the safety pins, and can easily be found if they fall on the floor. 
Here are my Sweet Treats blocks all pinned together in the rows I layed out on my design wall. 
The only thing I don't like about this product is that it doesn't come with a storage container and I am afraid of losing some of the letter beads, so I am keeping my eyes open for the perfect tin or box that they can be stored in.
To see what new things bloggers are trying, hop over to Jo's Country Junction.

Clover Binding Clips Review

I am finishing up a mini quilt while enjoying some wonderful warm sunny weather.
And I am trying a new product - the Clover Binding Clips. (Click here for a link to a YouTube video describing the clips.)

I always enjoy sewing bindings on quilts, but it is even easier with these new binding clips.
I just love them! They are slightly curved on the red side and hold the binding snuggly in place until you sew it down. No more sticking myself with pins!
Hop over to Jo's Country Junction and check out other new things that bloggers are trying out. I can't wait to try the new recipe I found there for Dandelion Jelly!