New Projects, New Machine

It’s Wednesday and time to share what I’m really working on this week! I’ve been working ahead to our quilt along next year, and on a DVD project that will be finished by the end of the summer. So no matter where you look, you’ll find paper sketches, scribbled calculations, and lots and lots of fabric!

This is my dining room table covered in a wide variety of luscious Island Batiks. Yes, I learned my lesson from the Building Blocks Quilt – I need to work with prettier colors, and these definitely fit the bill for next year’s quilt along!

As for next years design…I don’t want to reveal too much yet. I will let slip the following clues:

– It will be another quilt-as-you-go quilt, but I’m, playing with new connection techniques that will not require binding strips.
– The focus will be on applique and free motion quilting, with maybe a bit of embellishment thrown in for fun!
– The quilt along time will run from January until June, so you should have a bright, beautiful quilt to enjoy for the summer.
– And yes, since we will be finishing in only a few months, we start a second quilt along with a totally different quilt for the second half of the year.

Whew! It’s exciting to be working on this project and planning all the details. It’s a lot to consider, plan, and organize, but I’m finding it easy to work on now that I have an extra set of helping hands.

I hired a “piecer” to help me construct quilt tops and stitch step outs for videos and patterns. The employee already knows how to measure and cut accurately so that should make training a little easier.

Hopefully, by having someone do my piecing and step outs, I can spend time designing and writing, while the piecer constructs the quilts I will use for filming.

This week I’ve taught the piecer to prepare, square, and cut fabric, and piece a huge amount of half square triangles. Interesting tip – this individual found piecing the diagonal seams easier when marking only one diagonal line through the center of the square. They then lined up the edges of the 1/4 inch foot with the edge of the line.

It’s interesting to find what is easier for different people. Since we’re piecing half square triangles for our Pinwheel Quilt Blocks this week, that tip might help you as well!

So what are all these dozens of HSTs going to be used for?

This is the Salsa Verde Quilt, a massive 109″ king sized quilt designed for a new DVD we’ll be shooting this summer. The DVD will focus on how to manage a quilt this big on a machine this small:

This is the Janome DC1050, which is a small, under $500 sewing machine with a 6 inch throat plate. When I asked quilters on Facebook what machine they would like to see a king quilted on, overwhelmingly everyone wanted to see it quilted on a TYPICAL home sewing machine. So I’ve risen to the challenge!

I’m excited to be working on both projects through the summer, and to have help constructing the quilts for all our future projects. With more time to design and plan, I can become an even better online teacher, and create more beautiful quilts for us to create and learn together.

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day