Airplane Projects

I always try to have an airplane quilt in the works. No, not this one…

 

My “airplane” quilt is my travel quilt. It is the quilt I take with me to work on when flying on an airplane, going on vacation, or going on a road trip when I don’t need to catch up on binding. It is not an actual airplane, but is some form of hand piecing. My first “airplane” quilt was started many years ago at a Residency fair with my sister. She had a knack for taking me fun places including Kansas City to join her while they worked a fair for incoming residents. In the evenings she taught me to cut my pieces using a template, and during the day she worked with me on sewing by hand- an entirely new thing, much different than sewing with a machine. I remember constantly grabbing the ruler and checking my quarter inch seam (or lack thereof). We cut and sewed and cut some more. It passed the time and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. 
 

Years later the project still sat in my unfinished project pile. I pulled it out again many times, but never quite made progress. 

The next time I vividly remember working on it was while my grandmother was in the hospital and we were celebrating her birthday. My grandmother was/is a key player in teaching me to sew. The amount of pillows we made in one summer while I was learning at a young age was surely enough to fill a gigantic foam pit at a gymnastics center. We sewed and sewed and stuffed until we were exhausted. We shared so many giggles that summer. Sitting next to her at the hospital talking about our shared, favorite hobby-sewing-was wonderful. I was finally making progress on my quilt. 

After I got home it went right back to my unfinished pile. I typically struggle with hand-piecing unless I’m traveling. I think the long to-do list at home is too much of a distraction for me to pull out some sewing and sit on the couch. I also like instant gratification and that is just hard to come by with hand sewing. At least it is hard when you sew about as fast as a sloth. Think the tag office scene from Zootopia—that is my speed. 

My sisters moved, life become even more hectic, and my unfinished projects pile became a mountain. Finally, I had a flight scheduled and I found my “airplane” quilt. I was flying alone to Kentucky  to visit my sisters and I knew this was the perfect project to bring along. I sewed and sewed until my fingers hurt, but this quilt was finished on the last flight home. A perfect, full-circle ending for the quilt that taught me so much about hand sewing. 

My next “airplane” quilt was an English Paper Piecing quilt designed by Mickey Depre. I’ve mentioned it here before, but be sure to check out her patterns. She is extremely talented! This row-by-row quilt was my first EPP adventure, and unfortunately it still remains in my unfinished pile.  

I did jump into another “airplane” quilt for my cousin’s baby on a flight to Disney World one year and it was finished and shipped in a fairly timely manner (a huge accomplishment!). 

I have found myself pulling out my Row-by-Row blocks by Mickey during my most recent travels. Maybe this year will be the year it is finished, but I am making no promises. I don’t like to race with hand sewing. I find that when I do, I just hate the process and sometimes dislike the quilt’s end result. That is not worth it to me. Unfinished projects keep me busy, so I will continue to add to my pile. One day I will catch up or give a few away, who knows.

Do you have an “airplane” quilt or a travel project? 

See you at the machine, 

•Care

14 Days!! 

Millie Hums

We went on vacation this last week and I completely checked out on technology. It was wonderful, but I am happy to be back!

I missed WIP Week for this month, but I did spend some time working on an unfinished project. I hope you did too! See my last post for more about my WIP Project. It was an English Paper Pieced quilt designed by Mickey Depre (Her patterns are fabulous!).

We flew back home late Friday night and yesterday (Saturday) I spent on a date with Millie. If you remember, we had a few boxes delivered the week before I left town. Those boxes turned into an amazing, APQS longarm machine. I AM IN LOVE! Sorry My Love, you might have a little competition.

Back to Millie- Her full name has turned into Millennium Falcon thanks to one of my awesome Brother-in-Law’s suggestions. For short, we will still call her Millie. The week before we left I was able to get her all assembled, we plugged her in, saw lights turn on, then I had to leave and drive back to my house. This was so tough! It was just before midnight when we saw her lights turn on, so we were not able to actually hear her hum.

The week was crazy and I wasn’t able to get back to her before leaving town. Thankfully, I had a great distraction-Disney World. Though I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about sewing with her every day.

Back to yesterday. Yesterday I finally got to not only turn her on and hear her hum!

At first, I loaded on a couple fat quarters to check tension and play with settings on QuiltPath, the computer program she is able to work with and we have conveniently named “Millie’s Brain”. Here is what we came up with.

After this was finished, I decided to work with a larger area and loaded a little over a yard top and a backing then played more. This time I didn’t have a plan and just wanted to try different things.

I wasn’t looking up tutorials or spending too much time fighting through settings because I am taking a two-day class next weekend. This was just a time to get my hands dirty.

The first row I was hoping to alternate a teddy bear and crosshatching. Everything went well for the teddy bear, then it moved to do the crosshatching, but instead of making a jump, it sewed the transition line. “It is just a test piece,” I reminded myself, though I was already looking for a seam ripper to mend this mistake. On the next jump from crosshatch to teddy bear I thought I could trick it and stop her right after finishing the crosshatch then move it to the start of teddy bear and search for closest stitch. In theory it sounded like a fabulous idea, but in action it just didn’t work. I moved along to a new row.

Another issue I came across was that sometimes after starting a block, setting the safe areas and where the block should sew, Millie would move through the pattern, but wasn’t stitching. I was able to jump in the middle of it and get her to start stitching again, but I couldn’t figure out how to back up and get her to fix what she missed.   I’m hoping to clear this up with a YouTube video or in class next weekend.

I’m very happy with how everything is going so far even with this learning curve. I’m glad I was able to start playing and come across these issues ahead of time.

After coming across a few issues I decided to take a stab at freehand quilting. I turned QuiltPath off and unlatched her from the belts to give me full control. Once ready, my mind went blank and I had no idea what to quilt. I started with a simple “hello!” and I forgot halfway through how to write cursive- brain fart!

Next up I played with writing “Quilter’s Hideaway.” Remember that surprise I hinted at a few posts back? Here is another part of it. I’m going to let you slowly put pieces together as I share hints and clues.

With that, I moved on to some meandering, straight lines, and a box. I also tried pebbles in a smaller box, but my goodness, this will need some work.

I hope you enjoy this journey with Millie. I cannot wait to continue learning and sharing along the way.  I already realize I will need to come up with a better option for getting pictures of the quilting.  Often it was hard to get the stitches to show up.

 

See you at the machine,

•Care

Traveling With My Needle & Thread

Hand sewing is happening.
We were up and at the airport by 4:00am this morning, but we are heading to our favorite place on earth-Disney World. 

Last year I started an English Paper Piecing (EPP) project. My Momma-In-Law gave me a pattern for the first row of a row quilt using EPP, and I dove in. It was a learning curve but not too difficult to figure out (you could definitely figure it out!). 

I was doing a decent job of staying on top of things with the first row and even the second row. However I quickly fell behind. Then, our rental lease ended, we frantically searched for our first home to purchase and we moved. I’m still trying to find everything again and really dig back in to my slower projects. 

This week happens to be WIP Week, and a travel week so I dug this quilt out and have started it again. 

The pattern is by Mickey Depre and I could not recommend her work more. If you are a fan of English Paper Piecing, she is a fabulous resource. She also has many other patterns outside of the English Paper Piecing world and all are spectacular!! Be sure to hop over to her page on Instagram (mdquilts), Facebook (MDQuilts) or her site. You won’t be disappointed! 

A fun little back story- After I started working on my first block I wanted to find the designer on Facebook (nothing is official until it is Facebook official-or something like that). When I began my search her last name was awfully familiar, and when I found her page, MDQuilts, I instantly realized I roomed with her daughter in college! Small world! Mickey is in Chicago, the college was in Arkansas, and I’m from Oklahoma. I love how things work. 

Enough of the jabber, here are some of the blocks I have finished. 

Everything always works out perfectly. As I dug for my EPP box last night, I hopped over to MDQUILTS and was greeted with a super exciting live video that Mickey has just released a Basic Hand Piecing Acrylic Template Set! You can read more about it or even purchase it here. 
That’s all for now friends. It is time to lay my phone down and pick my needle up. 

See you at the machine (or maybe the comfy chair with a needle and thread?) 

•Care