How time flies when you are swamped?  I can’t believe it has been more than a week since I posted!  Anyway, I’m here, well, but trying to get caught up and blog about a very busy past month-plus!   One of this first things I want to tell you about is a new sewing machine, and YIPPEEEE SKIPPPY it looks like I’ll be getting one!  It is the Horizon 7700 from Janome.  If you click here you can learn more about it directly from Janome.

If you are familiar with the Janome 6600 (which is what I’ve been using since it came out in early 2005), you know that Janome makes great machines and sells them at a great price…you get many more features for your purchasing dollar than with other companies (whom I shall not name!).

I got to do a quick test drive at Maine-ly Sewing (in Nobleboro, Maine) not long ago, and I am in SERIOUS machine lust!  I totally love my  6600, but they have taken the 6600 and made it better.   They’ve added automatic tension, more harp space, more lighting (my aging eyes are joyful!), and some really fun decorative stitches.  Here is one of my quickie test-drive pieces:

There is this awesome “straight stitch” throat plate thingie… if you use the programmed stitch for free-motion, it automatically moves this piece of the throat plate to make it single-stitch (a dot or small circle) opening instead of the usual rectangle (so you can stitch a zigzag).  When you go back to regular stitches, the thingie retracts and you’re back to the rectangle, and thereby don’t slam your needle into throatplate…ingenious!
When I did my quickie test, I used the accu-feed (the built-in walking foot mechanism) to do some of the satin stitches and decorative satin stitches, then popped on the free-motion foot.  The stitching was wonderful…

When checking out a new machine, I always try to make a machine do poor stitching, deliberately make “driver errors”.  The easiest one to do (and common with beginning free-motion quilters) is to whip around curves, which usually leads to eyelashes on the back.   I did   several spirals and whip-around curves,

and I tell you the back was almost *perfect*!  I couldn’t believe my eyes.   Some of my stitches were really long…like 3/8 ” for each stitch, and still, the stitches were either just right or only the itsy bitsiest bit of needle thread showing like a little dot on the back.  I am seriously impressed.

I am also on the list to get a 7700!

I was a bit hesitant before my test drive because of the 7700’s touchscreen and dial, as I am VERY visual and prefer buttons and knobs.  Often, at least with the old touchpads, my fingers were too cold and somehow the things wouldn’t work for me (much muttering at the grocery store!).  I sat down at this machine and was able to use the touchpad only to scroll through the screens (it was intuitive and easy) without even reading the manual (smacking my own knuckles, I know). I didn’t try to figure out the dial, as I had to meet someone and was short on time.

Anyway, I was very happy with what I saw and am looking forward to getting one and playing a lot!

PS…in the interest of full disclosure, Janome America has provided me with an artist/teacher loaner for the past six or seven years or so.  In exchange I did a couple patterns for their now-defunct company magazine, and they used one of my quilts in their show brochure ads several years ago.  I also sometimes send them   suggestions I hear from the 6500/6600 yahoo group (with the permission of the authors or, in the case of multiple comments of the same variety, edited into non-attributable/generic suggestions by me).  Anyway, about 18 months ago they actually wrote back to me and asked for clarifications on a couple of things–they were clearly in the planning stages on the 7700 and they were (WOW) listening to their customers!

Bottom line:  I’d say the same things if I had a loaner or paid full price…the 6500, 6600 and 7700 are some of the best machines on the market, and at a good value for the price–and a fraction of the cost of some comparable machines from other companies.

Cheers, Sarah

PS—just discovered Janome has a really good set of introduction pages on their website to showcase the features of the Horizon 7700.  Check it out here.  Be sure to click on the various tabs (features, accessories, projects, etc).

With this blogpost, we will end the series on how I made the quilt of my son playing guitar.  I had fun with the quilting, too.  Here’s the bucket and bag of threads I used for the quilting:

And here is the completed quilt; notice that the proportions have changed a little.  The finished size for the exhibit is 36 inches wide by 48 inches long, so I needed to remove some extra, especially in the length.  If the quilt hadn’t been in this exhibit, I might have let it go a little longer, but I think in terms of design and composition it is still fine the way it is.

While I was mulling over how to quilt the walls, there was yet another discussion on either QuiltArt or SAQA (or both?) about the line between traditional and art quilting.  As usual there were those who want nothing to do with traditional quilting.  I, however, am proud of our traditional roots and proud of this as an art form that began with women’s work.  As someone recently said to me, Quilt is NOT a four-letter word!

This discussion led me to the idea of using traditional feathered vines for the background quilting.  As you can see from this next photo, though I chose a thread I thought would show up on the background, it was too subtle.  I decided to echo-quilt around the feathered vines, then pencilled in the resulting space/channel to define the outlines of the vines with Prismacolor Pencil (which I later covered with a combination of a textile-friendly varnish and water to seal it to prevent it from rubbing off).

Here is a wider-angled shot of the wall area showing the feathered vines…I just love them!

This shows the quilted quilt with the threads distributed over the top where they were used:

Here are two close-ups of the quilting of Joshua’s face and torso:

I love the backs of my quilts, the line drawing look, so took this (alas blurry) photo–you can see the feathered vines clearly on this semi-solid background fabric, and that the entire quilt is stitched 1/4″ apart or close… a lot of thread!

And to end where we began, but arrayed nicely, all those beautiful threads ( all but one of them Superior Threads):

PS–I am reminded by the comments to add that Joshua –hallelujah!– actually likes the quilt!  Given how picky teenagers are, especially of pictures of themselves, I am so thrilled that he of all people likes it.  Hugs to my firstborn!  Now…. what will the years bring that I can do another quilt, this time of secondborn son?

that I began my quilty life as a traditional (well, sort of) quilter.  My very first quilt…the one I began first…was a Mariner’s Compass (!!!!).  However, it was too hot in Central Africa, even sitting by the air conditioner, to sit under the quilt for more than 30 minutes so I gave up trying to quilt it by hand until we got back to the Washington, DC, area.   Pretty soon I started playing with colors, quilting designs and themes, though.  Maybe ten years later, I fell in love with Judy Robertson’s hand-dyed fabrics; I spent a small fortune buying two multi-light yards and two multi-colored dark yards and made this quilt, From Sea to Shining Sea:

The colors reminded me of the words from America, the Beautiful, so they song is machine quilted into the quilt, with an American eagle (from the US quarter dollar coin) and a sorta-traditional vine.  I tried…but just couldn’t get a truly traditional feathered vine to look  right on this quilt!  Detail:

That purchase of hand-dyeds started me on learning how to hand-dye myself.  Then I started selling my hand-dyeds.  I wanted to show folks that they could combine hand-dyeds and lookalikes with print fabrics and make fun, contemporary quilts based on traditional blocks.  This quilt is, I think, North Winds, and came from the Quilts from the Quiltmaker’s Gift book (link here) or More Quilts from the Quiltmaker’s Gift (link here…forget which one).   They are both lovely books, with great illustrations to show how the quilts will look in different colorways.

Anyway, this quilt has an official title, but to me it is the Anti-January quilt.  I lived in the Pacific Northwest of the US at the time, where it is gray and dreary from late November until at least February.  I found myself yearning for bright cheery fabrics every January, and made this one at that time of year.  I set the colors to look like the blazing sun surrounded by the green islands and tropical blue waters…..:

and a detail…quilted with tropical seas, palm trees with coconuts, waving beach grass, tropical fish, seagulls……..

Then as a quickie quilt to help sell MY hand-dyed fabric (which I no longer do really), I grabbed some purple (four fat quarters I think) and a very girlie yellow-purple print on my shelf and made this quilt using the Road to Oklahoma block:

Since it is hard to find the block, I did up this photo.  There are nine blocks of 12 inches each in the center of the quilt, which is about 42 x 42 inches (about a metre square).

Hope you enjoyed this trip into medium-ancient quilt history!

It has been a while since I blogged about Coastal Quilters, our wonderful local chapter of the Pine Tree Quilt Guild.  Maine is lucky to have a great statewide guild, with something like 73 local chapters.  Our group runs from traditional to art, beginner to experienced.  This month we had a fun show and tell, including my lap quilt.

Eleanor Greenwood is relatively new to quilting, but clearly willing to try anything, and succeeds well.  She LOVES her grayhound, Louie, and is actively involved in rescue placements and supporting the organization.  She told us that he loves to sleep on his back; apparently this is quite common among the breed and is called “cockroaching” or “dead cockroach.”  I love it!  Anyway, she used a photo to hand PIECE (not applique!) this portrait of her pooch, “Jigsaw Louie”:

Great work!  If you’re interested in adopting one of these sweet dogs, visit www.greyhoundplacement.com, a 501c3 organization.

Joan Herrick is one of our traditional quilters (as well as an accomplished knitter).  Her work is meticulous…. I hope she never looks too closely at the pieced work I’ve done recently…my piecing is, well, let’s just say it’s nowhere NEAR as precise as I would like it to be, and even further away from hers!  In this photo, Joan is on the left, and another guild member (Patty C.) is on the right:

A new member, Paula Blanchard, shared some of her work with us.  In a class with Jude Spacks (an artist living in nearby Belfast, Maine) a while back, she did a fabric collage based on Edward Steichen’s photograph of Gloria Swanson, the silent film diva:

Here is her take in fabric…. I think Paula has a great future in art quilts!

And finally, my lap quilt, done.  The photo isn’t too precise, so one of these days I’ll take one that is sharper and share, but you can see now how I put it together.  Think when I’m done with writing blogposts, I’ll go cuddle under it…the back is creamy yellow minkee!  I’m on the right and Barb M., our tallest member who is always so willing to help is holding it up on the left…thanks Barb!

Yes, I’ve been AWOL (Absent WithOut Leave) again…..  I plead the holidays, kids, exhaustion, and needed to re-charge.  So what does one do?  Quilt of course!  I spotted the panels for this quilt on eQuilter a while back and loved the motifs so much I ordered up a set.   Then in late October I saw a quilt in the Maine-ly Sewing booth at a small regional show made with them and decided that’s what I needed to do…make a colorful lap quilt (like we need another for the sofa…NOT! …but when does that stop a diehard quilter?).

So I bought a bit of fabric from Maine-ly Sewing.  Then I saw more of the line at Alewives Fabric, and bought MORE.  Ahem.  I had some serious “Visa Accidents” this past 45 days….. books and fabric!  (like I need more books and fabric…NOT! …but when does that stop a diehard quilter?)  So just before Christmas, to prevent implosion and breakdown, I started!   Thinking to make a quilt similar to one I saw at Alewives, I cut MANY 2 inch squares, thinking I’d make two rows of checkerboard sashing between the blocks.  It turns out the blocks are a weird size, so I edged them in the perfect hand-dyed rusty orange I had, but decided they also needed a SECOND fiddly, skinny outline in black.

The checkerboard:

UGH.  It was even worse the more I added……

So I looked at what fabric I had, and said “green it is!”

I went out and bought minkee (a lovely creamy yellow) for the back.  THen discovered I had only one quilt batt anywhere near big enough, and that one I needed to save for something else.  So I decided to quilt without a batting…just the top and the minkee.  To compensate for the slipperyness of the minkee, I spray basted a bit heavier than usual.  Mistake.  Even though I used a combination of threads that has been flawless in the past, I had snarls and fits everywhere with the black thread quilting.  I tried every trick in the book.  I changed needles, I changed tension (top and bottom), I changed the placement of the thread.  I still got the occasional thread clots.  I gave up and just kept quilting.  This is clearly NOT going to be a show quilt!   But it will be snuggly despite the appearance of some not-so-nice moments on the back.  Of course, I haven’t taken a picture of the finished quilt, so that’ll come later…