Part 2 starts with the all important fabric selection. Choosing fabrics can be a scary part of the process if you are new to quilting. Not only do you need to worry about the colors, but now as I looked at the quilting fabrics in the store I saw more than just colors, I saw many prints and patterns. Where do I begin? My basic instinct was to look for a color that appealed to me, and then decide on the coordinating colors. Which is a good place to start. The quilts I saw in books and magazines all used so many combinations of prints and patterns that I had no clue as to how to match them. To clear things up for me, I went back to my book and found my answers in chapter 2.
When picking fabrics, there is much more to it than picking a color you like. Although most of the time I do select by color and then move onto the other factors. Let me see if I can break this down for you. Here is some of the things to consider when choosing your fabrics: Color, contrast, overall character of the fabric, and scale.
Color the best way to learn about the relationship of colors and what works best with what is to refer to a color wheel. (You can buy one pretty cheap now days, or just type in color wheel and I guarantee you will find one on the web) Once you understand how to use one, combining colors will be easy.
Contrast is important to make your designs stand out. Most quilt pattern tell you to use light, medium and dark fabrics. Learning how to see fabrics in these categories is crucial to quilt making. One simple trick to identifying these is to remove color all together. Using a red piece of cellophane or red plastic and place it over you pile of fabrics. You will quickly see which are light, medium and which are dark. Don't believe me? Try to arrange your fabrics in a pile starting from lightest to darkest. Then place the red plastic over them and see if there are any out of place. You might be surprised.
Overall character of the fabric is simply the relationship they have with each other. Like florals, or stripes and checks, or novelty prints etc. Consider the mood you want to create, like is this a child's quilt? Then maybe brights or children's prints would be in order. Is the mood more of a romantic one, then perhaps florals, and tone on tone, or fabrics with softer color shades.
Scale is also important is making the most of the fabric prints. While large scale prints are certainly eye catching, they don't look as well when cut into small squares as you loose the design. Small scale prints from a far can look like a solid fabric. Medium prints tend to work best in large and small blocks. But a combination of small and medium prints can add interest. I tend to use the larger prints for borders, or backings.
Understanding and learning to combine all of these elements will result in great quilts.
I must be honest here, the fabrics I choose for this quilt were done by instinct and not because of some book. I got lucky as they did work well together. Some might even say I was a natural at picking fabrics. I won't say that I always got it right, but what I will say is once you understand the rules you will make less mistakes. (If you have a quilt that just doesn't seem to work finish it anyway and donate it to a shelter. I have never seen anyone there complain about how it looks)
Cutting my fabric
Next came the cutting of my squares. Now remember this was may first quilt, and of course I was not going to read the entire book before getting started right? I just wanted to start. So I scanned the section about how to use the rotary cutter and went to cut my 2 inch squares. Lot's of 2 inch squares! After cutting up my fabric into strips I cross cut them into the squares and stacked them in piles. All that was left was to start sewing. I began making pairs of 2 and then put them with other pairs which became what was known as a four patch. Once that was done I placed them in rows alternating a four patch with a solid white square. Making block after block, and row after row, then finally joining the rows. All sounds good so far right?
Well there was one problem, I started this without a pattern. What that means is I didn't even know how many squares I would need to complete this quilt. You see, I missed one very important step, and that was to determine the size I wanted the quilt to be then I could do some simple math and see how many squares I needed. That my friends is called "A Plan" which I didn't have. All I knew was I started with 2 inch squares. But how many does it take to make a quilt? And now I was wondering how many did I cut, and will I even have enough fabric? The fabric I used was some from my stash and most of what I bought were fat quarters. Fat quarters were easy to buy, since I had no idea how to determine yardage at the time. So you see this quilt ended up much smaller than I wanted. It is good size lap quilt, but it was supposed to be for my bed.
So, this was the first mistake I made on this quilt. "Not planning" The second mistake, was "cutting each separate square". You see if I only read further in the book I would have known how to plan my quilt better. I found a whole section on that later. And I soon discovered strip piecing, a much quicker way to make this type of block.
I think I will break here and continue on to part 3 where I share some of the other things this quilt taught me. Come back to see the rest of the story.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
This Quilt is where it all started
We all need to make at least one quilt, to consider ourselves a quilter. Well for me this was that quilt! Not bad for a first quilt.This quilt was quite an ambitious project for a first quilt. It looks great (well at least I think so)in this picture, but I am going to share some of the mistakes (or as I now call them design choices) I had to make in completing this project along with the story behind the beginning of my quilting journey.
First of all understand that when I made this quilt all I knew about quilting was you were supposed to sew squares together, layer it then top stitch the layers. Even though I had been sewing for years prior to discovering quilting I did not know much about this process or how much was really involved. After all how hard could it be to sew a few simple squares together after making clothing or Halloween costumes. Which before quilting that was what I worked on along with a few craft projects now and then.
Inspiration from television
My interest in quilting started after stumbling onto a cable channel where I saw a show on making quilts. Most of you should know the show I am taking about and the genius behind it. The show I am referring to is Simply Quilts with Alex Anderson. Alex has also written many books, and now has her own website "The Quilt Show" with Ricky Tims (he has his own site too which you can check out here). These sites are both worth looking at. (Alex and Ricky I hope you enjoy the free advertising. {{smile}} and maybe someday you can do the same for me! Wouldn't that be great to get some endorsement from them on Quilting Weekly. Ahh to dream is wonderful.
I think the episode I was watching was on crazy quilting. With crazy quilting you don't even need a pattern, all you need is scraps of fabric. Well as a sewer I had scraps of fabric and this did not look hard at all. So I sat down and looked through my scraps and tried it out. (Much to my disappointment, I did not like the results) It was too random and scrappy for my taste. I don't even think I got past the first square before I decided I needed more structure. But where to begin? After all all, the books I had at that time were on garment sewing, nothing for quilt inspiration there. So off I went to the fabric store. {{grinn}} Even then the fabric store was like a candy store to me.
What I found at the fabric store
I soon discovered a new section in the store, one dedicated to quilters! What an exciting discovery it was. Now I had been in this store for years, but never noticed all the books, tools, and gadgets that were just for quilters. Needless to say, I started looking at the books for my instructions, and inspirations. Well as you can imagine I lost hours in that store. (Good thing my husband doesn't keep close track of my where abouts during the day). He would have never understood how I could loose hours looking at all the books, and quilting toys. I soon realized I needed to start at the beginning. I needed a book that could take me all the way from fabric squares to bindings.
This book is still a book I use today. It is one that I recommend any new quilter purchase. This book is the how to of how to books. It covers everything from tools to fabric, to bindings. There are sections from beginner to advanced techniques, from hand quilting to machine quilting. I like to call this the "A to Z" quilting book. It is "The Complete Guide to Quilting" by Better Homes and Gardens. It comes in a paperback and a hard cover version. If you can afford the hard cover it will be well worth the extra dollars. The hard cover version has nice spiral binding, so the pages lay flat.
After purchasing this book, and reading the first section I soon realized that I needed a few basic tools as well. Rotary cutters rulers and a mat would make cutting my squares much easier. (here is an article on these tools if you are not familiar with them) After purchasing my book and my tools I was drawn to the fabrics. {{grinn}} yes the wonderful fabrics...................
The next part of this story will take you though the fabric selections and cutting of the squares. So come back again if you want to hear the rest of the story.
Monday, November 26, 2007
My Online Quilting Classroom website
One of the main reasons I am doing this blog is to help spread the word about my website which is dedicated to teaching quilting to anyone who wants to start quilting or just improve on the quilting skills they already have.
This website is not entirely my own, I have some wonderful and helpful partners who happen to live in Australia. I however live in the United States. I met my partners through another website which they own. It is called "Creative Quilting" and can be found at http://www.creative-quilting.com
I joined this site when it was first opened back around December of 2006. The site was free then, but since then it has become a paid subscription site. They did keep a limited membership that is still totally free, but with the paid subscriptions you get access to much more information. (it is one that I recommend you check out. There is a lot o great quilting information there.Totally worth the money!
After joining this site, I found myself logging into the site several times a day. It became addicting to see what others were writing in the forums. I also found myself answering many basic quilting questions. The type of questions varied from simple to more complex. So I did some research if needed to answer the questions, but I was determined to help where I could. That is when the light bulb went off in my head! "This is how I can take my passion to teach people and to help people learn to quilt." Which for years I had struggled to find a way to take my quilting passions into a full time business. I have always wanted my own business, I just did not know how to start one. Let me share a bit more about some of those ideas.
Some of the business ideas I had over the years
For years I had dabbled in many possible business ideas. I tried to make it in the craft fair business, selling my handmade creations. (This is a tough market to break into, unless you have something really unique and lots of them to sell and lots of time to sit and wait for your customers) I found this to be difficult at best, as I needed to block off many of my weekends to sit at these fairs only to make a few dollars. After that I moved into teaching. This was something I did not realize I enjoyed so much until I started. I taught at quilt shops and other fabric stores. Then moved to community centers, park district centers, and even worked with "Girl Scouts" and many other groups. I even did private lessons in my home and traveled to others. It gave me great satisfaction to help others, and to see how excited they were when they finished something for the first time. While teaching I worked at JoAnn Fabrics and for a brief period I found myself in charge of the education department. That was a time when I really saw how much I wanted to help others learn how to create their own projects. I found myself teaching quilting, sewing, knitting and crochet to people of all ages. (children were especially fun to work with) All though I enjoyed the time there and my discount, I found myself dreaming of working for myself instead.
When the idea of owning my own shop came into my head, my husband thought I lost my mind! He said "Are you crazy?" "We can't afford that kind of risk now at this stage of our life." So as soon as I found the dream he squashed it. I know it would have been extremely tough to open a store, and I really did not want to have a store to sell inventory, I just wanted a place to teach quilting. Which to have to pay rent somewhere just for a classroom, and not know if I would have enough students to pay my rent was just that an idea. Not one worth finding funding or worth pursuing.
Back to my website idea
After joining the community on creative quilting I found that there is world out there who wants to learn quilting. I could not bring the world to my store (if I had a brick and mortar store) so why not build a virtual store. That is when I approached Michelle and Simon (the owners of creative quilting) about opening an online classroom. And just like that "Quilting Weekly" was born, and our friendship moved to business partners. I still have not met these wonderful people face to face. All our business is done through the internet. What a wonderful technology based world we live in. This relationship was built on faith and trust without ever meeting in person. Goes to show you there are still good people in the world today.
Quilting weekly is a virtual classroom. We provide you with the classes and all the support you need to complete your quilting projects. Now this is a new site, and still has a lot of work to make it the greatest site on the web. (But give us a little time and we will get there!) One of the things that makes this site so great is the ideas behind it are all driven by the customers who use it. We take our ideas from you the customer and create a site that you enjoy using. Our forums offer the quilter a place to ask and get answers to those pressing quilting questions, or just meet other quilters from around the world who share their same passions for quilting and fabric collecting. There are many other helpful links and pages to explore there to feed your need to learn quilting. If you want to have a a chat with your quilting friends you can use our chat room to do so, just enter the classroom and you will find the chat room link. From time to time we update the new sections to keep you aware of what we are doing on the site. Finally we are building a quilters FAQ's section. Where you can find lot's of helpful tips and tricks. (If you have a tip you want the world to know about e-mail me chris@quiltingweekly.com and I will be sure to add it)
This is about it for today, I must do some other non-quilting related tasks around the house so I can keep the family happy. I do hope to see you some time soon. Go ahead drop me a line by e-mail and tell me what you think. I would love to hear your ideas for my blog and my website. By the way the site is free. So go ahead and register, if you want to take a class then you only pay for that class. I promise there are no other fees or monthly subscriptions involved with quilting weekly.
Take care and happy quilting!
Chris
This website is not entirely my own, I have some wonderful and helpful partners who happen to live in Australia. I however live in the United States. I met my partners through another website which they own. It is called "Creative Quilting" and can be found at http://www.creative-quilting.com
I joined this site when it was first opened back around December of 2006. The site was free then, but since then it has become a paid subscription site. They did keep a limited membership that is still totally free, but with the paid subscriptions you get access to much more information. (it is one that I recommend you check out. There is a lot o great quilting information there.Totally worth the money!
After joining this site, I found myself logging into the site several times a day. It became addicting to see what others were writing in the forums. I also found myself answering many basic quilting questions. The type of questions varied from simple to more complex. So I did some research if needed to answer the questions, but I was determined to help where I could. That is when the light bulb went off in my head! "This is how I can take my passion to teach people and to help people learn to quilt." Which for years I had struggled to find a way to take my quilting passions into a full time business. I have always wanted my own business, I just did not know how to start one. Let me share a bit more about some of those ideas.
Some of the business ideas I had over the years
For years I had dabbled in many possible business ideas. I tried to make it in the craft fair business, selling my handmade creations. (This is a tough market to break into, unless you have something really unique and lots of them to sell and lots of time to sit and wait for your customers) I found this to be difficult at best, as I needed to block off many of my weekends to sit at these fairs only to make a few dollars. After that I moved into teaching. This was something I did not realize I enjoyed so much until I started. I taught at quilt shops and other fabric stores. Then moved to community centers, park district centers, and even worked with "Girl Scouts" and many other groups. I even did private lessons in my home and traveled to others. It gave me great satisfaction to help others, and to see how excited they were when they finished something for the first time. While teaching I worked at JoAnn Fabrics and for a brief period I found myself in charge of the education department. That was a time when I really saw how much I wanted to help others learn how to create their own projects. I found myself teaching quilting, sewing, knitting and crochet to people of all ages. (children were especially fun to work with) All though I enjoyed the time there and my discount, I found myself dreaming of working for myself instead.
When the idea of owning my own shop came into my head, my husband thought I lost my mind! He said "Are you crazy?" "We can't afford that kind of risk now at this stage of our life." So as soon as I found the dream he squashed it. I know it would have been extremely tough to open a store, and I really did not want to have a store to sell inventory, I just wanted a place to teach quilting. Which to have to pay rent somewhere just for a classroom, and not know if I would have enough students to pay my rent was just that an idea. Not one worth finding funding or worth pursuing.
Back to my website idea
After joining the community on creative quilting I found that there is world out there who wants to learn quilting. I could not bring the world to my store (if I had a brick and mortar store) so why not build a virtual store. That is when I approached Michelle and Simon (the owners of creative quilting) about opening an online classroom. And just like that "Quilting Weekly" was born, and our friendship moved to business partners. I still have not met these wonderful people face to face. All our business is done through the internet. What a wonderful technology based world we live in. This relationship was built on faith and trust without ever meeting in person. Goes to show you there are still good people in the world today.
Quilting weekly is a virtual classroom. We provide you with the classes and all the support you need to complete your quilting projects. Now this is a new site, and still has a lot of work to make it the greatest site on the web. (But give us a little time and we will get there!) One of the things that makes this site so great is the ideas behind it are all driven by the customers who use it. We take our ideas from you the customer and create a site that you enjoy using. Our forums offer the quilter a place to ask and get answers to those pressing quilting questions, or just meet other quilters from around the world who share their same passions for quilting and fabric collecting. There are many other helpful links and pages to explore there to feed your need to learn quilting. If you want to have a a chat with your quilting friends you can use our chat room to do so, just enter the classroom and you will find the chat room link. From time to time we update the new sections to keep you aware of what we are doing on the site. Finally we are building a quilters FAQ's section. Where you can find lot's of helpful tips and tricks. (If you have a tip you want the world to know about e-mail me chris@quiltingweekly.com and I will be sure to add it)
This is about it for today, I must do some other non-quilting related tasks around the house so I can keep the family happy. I do hope to see you some time soon. Go ahead drop me a line by e-mail and tell me what you think. I would love to hear your ideas for my blog and my website. By the way the site is free. So go ahead and register, if you want to take a class then you only pay for that class. I promise there are no other fees or monthly subscriptions involved with quilting weekly.
Take care and happy quilting!
Chris
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Well I have to start somewhere
We all need to start somewhere, and for me this is the beginning of my story. The middle and the end is still being written. So sit down, and hang on for the ride. I will do my best to keep your interest as I share my story with you.
As far back as I can remember, I have always had an interest in working with my hands. Creating something from scratch and finding out what I can do with the raw materials is very exciting and rewarding. I have worked with many different materials along the way, like fabric, thread, yarn, clay, pencil, and paper, paints, chalks, and so many more. There have been many different results some good and some not so good. (Not going to share those right now {{grinn}}. But I will over time share some of my creations with you once I figure out how.
You see this blogging thing is relatively new to me, so for those of you who are seasoned bloggers, you may need to bare with me as I figure out things here. (if you want to share you expertise with me I am open to help)
Anyway back to me, as this is my story. Though trial and error I discovered my true passion and I am driven to follow this passion. It has plagued me for years, and I really did not know what it was or why but all I knew is I needed to continue until I found my destiny. (which I think I have) You may be asking yourself what is she talking about? My dream was to have my own place where I could teach others how to create. I have had many jobs along the way which were all part of my journey here. Over time you will get to know more about them. But right now I want to let you all know that this blog will give you an inside to my experiences and I hope to inspire you to follow your dreams too!
I know there is not much to read on this blog now, but I promise to work at daily so if your at all curious then bookmark me, and come back to see the rest of my story. This blog will also promise to provide you with lots of information on quilting, and sewing. I want to share what I know with you, and I want you to learn what you can from me. Sound good? Then come back and see what else I have in store for you.
In the meantime, I would like to invite you to check out my website: http://www.quiltingweekly.com This is also a new venture for me. It is an online quilting classroom dedicated to quilters around the world. You can register for free, and pay for a class only if you want to take it. I even have a free class which you get when you register so why not check it out!
Until next time,
Remember in quilting there are no mistakes, only design choices to be made!
As far back as I can remember, I have always had an interest in working with my hands. Creating something from scratch and finding out what I can do with the raw materials is very exciting and rewarding. I have worked with many different materials along the way, like fabric, thread, yarn, clay, pencil, and paper, paints, chalks, and so many more. There have been many different results some good and some not so good. (Not going to share those right now {{grinn}}. But I will over time share some of my creations with you once I figure out how.
You see this blogging thing is relatively new to me, so for those of you who are seasoned bloggers, you may need to bare with me as I figure out things here. (if you want to share you expertise with me I am open to help)
Anyway back to me, as this is my story. Though trial and error I discovered my true passion and I am driven to follow this passion. It has plagued me for years, and I really did not know what it was or why but all I knew is I needed to continue until I found my destiny. (which I think I have) You may be asking yourself what is she talking about? My dream was to have my own place where I could teach others how to create. I have had many jobs along the way which were all part of my journey here. Over time you will get to know more about them. But right now I want to let you all know that this blog will give you an inside to my experiences and I hope to inspire you to follow your dreams too!
I know there is not much to read on this blog now, but I promise to work at daily so if your at all curious then bookmark me, and come back to see the rest of my story. This blog will also promise to provide you with lots of information on quilting, and sewing. I want to share what I know with you, and I want you to learn what you can from me. Sound good? Then come back and see what else I have in store for you.
In the meantime, I would like to invite you to check out my website: http://www.quiltingweekly.com This is also a new venture for me. It is an online quilting classroom dedicated to quilters around the world. You can register for free, and pay for a class only if you want to take it. I even have a free class which you get when you register so why not check it out!
Until next time,
Remember in quilting there are no mistakes, only design choices to be made!
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