Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins’ Piecing the Piece O’ Cake Way is a great reference book that all quilters should have in their library.
The book is especially valuable for inexperienced quilters, but I have been quilting for 20 years, and I found a lot of information that can improve my quiltmaking skills. The book is divided into chapters that teach all the basics from sewing strips and squares to dealing with curves and diamonds. The best part for me is that each section contains information and tips under the heading of “Did You Know?” For example, you get such diverse information as what to do when the blocks do not match, cutting strips wider than your ruler, working with setting triangles, clipping curves, and determining whether your batting has a right side, and so on. Even an experience quilter will find these tips helpful.
In addition the book contains projects using all the various techniques, and of course, there are photos of quilts. Becky and Linda are known for their wonderful fabric choices and beautiful use of color, so the photos are lessons in themselves.
Give this book a try. I think you will like it.
Editor’s Note: While you are at it, check out Becky and Linda’s fantastic blog!
I come from a long line of seamstresses, needle workers and quilters. For as many generations as anyone can remember, the women in my family have been known for their fine needle working skills. Recently, I inherited this wonderful masterpiece from my mother. I know little about it, but given the embroidered date on the piece, I am fairly sure it was sewn by my great-grandmother, Olia Erickson. It has beautiful stitching and lovely fabrics that are for the most part in pretty good condition.
24" x 24" crazy quilt block made in 1899
I love it but it is not a finished piece and I don’t know how to display it in a way that preserves its beauty and keeps its integrity. It has been lying in drawers for years, which may explain its good condition, but I want to celebrate the women in my family by showing it. Should I frame it? Should I back it? I don’t know what is best. Any ideas out there?
Old family quilts don’t have to be valuable or even beautiful to be treasured. I recently inherited a 19″ x 24″ doll quilt made by my grandmother when she was young girl about 8 or 9 years old. She was born in the early 1880’s so the quilt is at least 115 years old.
Notice the original symmetrical design
The quilt is neither beautiful nor finely sewn (she developed those skills later) but it is wonderful to me. She was born in a sod hut on the prairies of eastern South Dakota, so I am sure she was given a few wool, cotton, and silk scraps leftover from clothing construction and allowed to make something of her own. You can also see that she began practicing her embroidery skills on the quilt.
The surprising thing to me is that the pieces had been sewn together by machine before the embroidery was added. Given the place and time they lived, it seems unbelievable, but I am sure my great-grandmother made sure that one of their first BIG purchases when they came to America was one of those newfangled sewing machines! And she was going to teach her daughter how to use it so she wouldn’t have to sew everything for the family by herself.
How this quilt survived over the years, even in its battered condition is an amazing mystery. Most quilts made by children are long gone. I feel so lucky to have it.
No doubt about it—quilters are creative people. In addition to making wonderful quilts, they are very creative in finding common household items that can help keep them organized in their quilting studio. Here are some of my favorites:
I keep a plastic desk drawer divider next to my sewing machine. It contains scissors, sewing feet, threads, seam rippers, needles and anything else I might need while sewing. It keeps things handy and organized, and can easily be moved next to my comfy chair when I am doing handwork.
I also use a similar silverware drawer divider in a drawer near my cutting table. It keeps scissors, rotary cutters, and other small items organized in the drawer.
My coworker, Gailen, keeps several wastebaskets in her studio—one by the sewing machine, one by the cutting table and a small one on the surface where she is working. That’s a great way to deal with all the trash we produce in the studio. I also find that hanging a bag on the door knob of my sewing cabinet is really handy for those clipped threads, empty spools, and so on. It’s not very pretty but can just be thrown away when full—an especially good thing if you put bent pins and broken needles in it.
Another coworker, Lynn, uses a file folder holder/organizer to keep her rulers handy. They are visible and take up far less space than if stored flat.
I am sure all of you have good ideas of how to stay neat and organized. Please share them with us.
We are expecting a new baby in the family and I thought it would be fun for the older sister and older cousin to make something special for him, so we made a baby quilt. Here is the result of our efforts:
The girls are 4 1/2 and 6, so I had to think of ways they could be involved without expecting too much for their ages. To avoid any worries about rotary cutters, I cut an assortment of bright 5″squares before they arrived at my house.
Their task was to arrange the squares on my design wall, organizing the colors and patterns in a way that pleased them. They also got a little lesson on scattering colors and patterns, but I had to let go of my usual perfectionist tendencies, so it was a lesson for me as well. When that was done, we sewed the squares together. The girls took turns sitting on my lap and guiding the squares through the machine. I put the machine on the slowest speed, and controlled the foot pedal. They are old enough to understand the danger of the needle so they were quite careful.
I was very aware of their short attention spans, so when they grew bored, I let them play and I finished up by sewing the rows together. Later I layered, machine quilted, and bound the quilt.
They are quite proud of their finished project and excited to give it to the baby. I hope they have found sewing fun, and hopefully we will do many projects together in the future.
If you are having a summer barbecue or just want some informal coasters, here is a quick no-sew project for you.
All you need are some scraps of fabric, paperback fusible web, and fast2fuse.
For each coaster:
cut two 4 1/2″ fabric squares of fabric
cut one 3 1/2″ circle of fast2fuse
cut one 4″ square of paperback fusible web
- Fuse the paperback fusible web to the wrong side of one fabric square.
- Using a piece of paper backing from the fusible web or a Teflon sheet to protect your ironing board, fuse the fast2fuse circle to the wrong side of the remaining fabric square.
- Fuse the web-backed square to the other side of the fast2fuse. Press the fabric very tight around the edge of the fast2fuse to make sure the fabric edges will fuse together.
- Use scissors, pinking shears, or scallop scissors to cut a circle, cutting about 1/4″ beyond the fast2fuse circle.
Trimming with decorative scissors adds a nice touch.
That’s all there is to it. These are quick and use very little fabric. You could make them for any special occasion or to match any décor or style. I made mine with a different fabric on each side of the coaster for a mix and match look. You could also cut the fast2fuse into squares or hexagons to create different shapes. The possibilities are endless.
We quilters have too much stuff!! We love it all and can’t resist when we see wonderful fabric or great embellishments or a handy gadget, but it SO adds up, and the problem becomes where to put it?
I am lucky because when my children grew up and left home, I inherited the family room as my sewing studio. However, the room does not have a lot of storage, so I had to create some by using inexpensive bookshelves I already had. Making the open shelves look neat was a challenge. These 12″ x 13″ baskets from IKEA turned out to fit perfectly on the shelves. The smaller ones stack together 2 high and the larger ones fit just right.
I tied on tags to easily identify what is in each basket.
The baskets hold everything from yarn, to fabric, to stabilizer, to small embellishments and ribbon, to templates, etc. All that stuff is now neatly stored in baskets, making the shelves look neat and serene, rather than jumbled and junky. It works well and didn’t cost a fortune!
Ask anyone at C&T, and they will tell you I love my grandkids. I am sure my coworkers are getting tired of my talking about them, but the kids are just so cute and so much fun to be with.
As someone who sews and quilts and knits, I make things for them—I just can’t stop myself. They have quilts, teddy bear clothes, sock monkeys, and sweaters all made by Grandma. The best part is they aren’t old enough yet to think what I make for them is dorky. I know that time will come, but in the meantime, I am knitting and sewing away.
This last winter I decided I wanted to knit them hats. Each hat needed to be different and show the child’s particular interest. So for the little girl who loves yellow, I made a yellow hat with a pink flower on top. For the little girl who loves light blue and stars, I made a blue hat with yellow star buttons all over it. The toddler loves “choochoos” but he got an elephant hat because I don’t know how to knit a train engine. It was fun for me and for the kids. I put the tremendous love I have for them into the stitches and somehow they sense that.
I had a bunch of flannel scraps left over from 2 quilts I had made for my son and my husband. The quilts were fun—very scrappy with many “manly” plaids in primary colors, but now what to do with all the leftovers? I was tired of all those plaids, so a third quilt had to be fast, easy, and most of all, it had be made with just the leftovers I had—no buying of fabric for this quilt. Without much idea of where I was going with this, I sewed together a bunch of blocks. When I arranged them, I didn’t like the blocks right next to each other so I added navy blue sashing and border to separate all the busyness of the plaids. (Okay, I admit it, I did have to buy a little fabric for the sashing and border.) When I finished the quilt, it needed something more. I added some buttons, but it still needed something so I decided to use red perle cotton to do big stitches down the center of the sashing and around the border.
I am not great at keeping my lines straight or my 1/4″ long stitches even, but that is where our Inchie Ruler Tape came to my rescue. I just stuck the tape down the center of the sashing and stitched away, using the evenly spaced marks along the edge of the tape as my guide so I could sew evenly and straight.
It worked great and made the job much quicker. I am happy with the results, and I even like this “leftovers” quilt better than the first two I made.
Just a word of caution about stitching with perle cotton through flannel—it is nearly impossible to sew through 2 layers of flannel and batting with such heavy thread. I had already machine quilted around the blocks so I used the big stitches as embellishment. I sewed the perle cotton only through the top layer of flannel and caught the batting. It looks good and was not nearly as hard as trying to actually quilt all the way through the layers.
One of the hardest lessons for crafters to learn is to let go of the feelings we have when a gift we made is not received in the way we would like.
You know the experience: a lace scarf you painstakingly knit out of cashmere, having spent your life savings for the yarn and hours knitting and ripping out and knitting some more, is received with a polite thank you, never to be seen again. Or the quilt you spent so many hours quilting and embellishing that you needed several trips to the physical therapist. Then it is given to a loved one and quickly becomes a soft bed for Fido. We have to tell ourselves that our joy in making the gift is what counts, and that we love the recipient no matter what. And the next Christmas we knit ourselves the cashmere lace scarf and give the loved one a Target gift card!
But sometimes the result of our gift giving is wonderfully unexpected. A couple of years ago, I made my granddaughters pillowcases for their beds with matching doll pillowcases. It was fun and I used novelty fabric that reflected their interests. I followed the easy instructions in Oh Sew Easy Pillows by Jean and Valori Wells to make standard size pillowcases. Then I divided all the dimensions in half for the doll pillowcase. The doll pillow itself is half the dimensions of a standard-size bed pillow and made out of muslin stuffed with polyester fiberfill. The girls loved the pillows so the gift was a success.
Then something weird and wonderful happened—no one knows how or why, but my grandson, the baby in the family, latched onto one of the doll pillows as his special security pillow. Now he carries it around, takes it to bed, and can pretty much fall asleep anywhere if he has his pillow.
He looks so sweet with his much-loved pillow, and I am a happy and successful gift-giving grandmother. Now we all hope that he will not be too humiliated when as a teenager he sees photos of himself with his beloved pillow made of fabric covered with hippo ballerinas in pink tutus.
