My beloved Janome 7700 in the "sewing zone" of my studio!

Hi all!  Janome-America is hosting a challenge:  to reach 20,000 “Likes” on Facebook!  To reach that goal, they are giving away some machines and featuring some folks (including me!) on their blog!   I’m thrilled…to be included and to be able to use the phenomenal Horizon 7700 for my machine work.

You can reach the blogpost about me here — it is dated Friday, December 30, 2011, if you end up on the website homepage and need to scroll.  That post in turn has links to the three articles I did for Janome on free-motion quilting…hope you enjoy! As always, thanks to Janome for their support and encouragement.  If you are surfing in from outside of the US, click here (at the global site: http://www.janome.co.jp/e1.htm)  and then select USA from the site locator to access Janome-America’s blog.

Hi all!  For nearly 8 years now (whoosh…the sound of time whizzing by!) I have been privileged to work with Janome-America and use one of their fantabulous machines for my work, starting with the 6500, moving to the 6600, and now the delectable 7700.  Starting yesterday, they are featuring three blog lessons from me on machine quilting on the Janome-America website!

Go here to the Janome-America home page and follow the links (scroll down if you need to reach the October 14th post) to your free FMQ lesson number one.  Here’s a link directly to the lesson.  And here’s a link to the Horizon 7700, the machine I currently use and love!

I’m so happy to be able to share this information with you and through Janome.  They have been wonderful supporters, including me in the program before my first article or quilt was published.  I have done so much in the past 8 years that they have sponsored me, that it is hard to fathom–from complete unknown to exhibiting for the first time at Houston to being published in a magazine, then a series of articles for Machine Quilting Unlimited, to articles in Quilting Arts, to teaching in national venues like IQA Houston, AQS Paducah and Knoxville, NQA in Ohio, and guilds across the nation, writing my first (but I hope not last) book, and even winning an award in Houston.  It is sometimes hard to believe this has all happened to me.  And I am so thankful to Janome for their support and their machines, which have helped me do all of this.

So please, surf on over to the Janome site and feel free to download a copy of my lessons for your personal use! Wooohooo!

Hi all…. a review for you of a DVD and/or app for you i-Device (iPhone, iPad or iPod touch):  the Footbook by Jim and Diane Stutsman available at their website Online Sewing.  Jim is the buy behind the online group/learning mecca Club J, for Janome owners.

This DVD/App is for Janome feet, but many of the tips on the app will apply to ANY brand of pintuck foot, zipper foot, whatever.   For those of us who don’t have iPhones or iPads or an iPodTouch, they also have the info on a CD to use on a computer.  I noticed that they didn’t have the price on the description (for the CD at least), and wrote the Contact Us person to mention it would be a helpful addition.  Turned out it was none other that Jim Stutsman of Club J with his wife Diane writing the text and narrating the videos.  Jim wrote back, said good point and thanks, and offered to send a free CD to me for alerting them and the suggestion.  Nice!

I will note that this is a DVD / app that covers the uses of all the presser feet.  If all you do is straight seams and free-motion quilting, it may have a lot more information about esoteric feet, like pintuck, beading, buttonhole, rolled edge, ultraglide, overcast and whatnot, that won’t apply to your sewing.  If, however, you want to use those feet, do sewing other than straight seams and make garments and home dec items, there is a lot of great knowledge in this small package.  The photos are really sharp and clear, like this one:

I figured I’d look up a foot I knew how to use and one I didn’t.  I learned from the videos for BOTH feet!  The one I (thought) I knew how to use is the pintuck foot.  I do, but they had an added suggestion of taping a machine needle to help form the channel and guide the fabric.  Great suggestion!  I haven’t looked at all the feet/videos, but I’ve probably done about half, and have learned something with most all of the videos.  That’s pretty amazing!  (please note that, according to Jim, this video is smaller and lower quality from those on the DVD. The iPhone app uses 3 different quality videos depending on the type of data connection, with WiFi being the best.)  Here’s the YouTube-quality sample of one of the videos:

The only negatives:  when I pop the DVD into my  laptop, a MacBook Pro, there isn’t something that opens automatically or that suggests which browsers to use.  You don’t need a live internet connection, just the browser (don’t ask why…don’t know, something with how the DVD player reads the disc).    According to the website, the DVD is compatible with Windows Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari.  On my laptop I usually use Firefox.  I remembered the first time I opened the DVD it had nice videos.  When I tried to play it today, no videos.  Weird, I thought, where did they go?  So I opened the DVD in Safari, and there they were.

The second time I put the DVD in the slot, I noticed the disk itself on the label tells you to click on the folder that says “Start.” (DUH Sarah…I shoulda read that to begin with!)   Operator error (as in my goof).  Anyway, I clicked on Start; since I had Firefox open, but not Safari, it told me I didn’t have Safari or Google Chrome which would play advanced features of the DVD.  I opened Safari and pasted the browser address into the Safari window and it played like a dream.  There is, apparently, a Plug-In that I could install on Firefox on my laptop to enable the necessary Whatever to play the videos.  Since I had the work-around of using Safari, I declined to download the plugin and will just remember (I hope) to play it in Safari.  (Note:  for those of you not on Macs, Safari is an internet browser designed by Apple, similar to the way Microsoft created Explorer.)

In sum, I thought the information was well very written, the little video clips (which run 2 minutes or less) very helpful….Thanks to Jim and Diane for the DVD to review and try out.  With 40 years of sewing in my checkered past I’ve learned a lot, but I learned a number of new things from this DVD.  To me, that means it does quite a fine job!  Cost is US$6.99 for the app or $24.95 for the DVD.  You can order it from them here:

http://onlinesewing.squarespace.com/

Cheers, Sarah

OK...draped over the double-sized antique canopy bed...read on!

So, you might ask, does Sarah EVER make quilts any more?  Art quilts?  Bed quilts?  Lap Quilts?  ANYthing?  Some days it feels like the answer is no, there is so much life happening that I can barely manage to get myself dressed and stumble through a day!  But I have managed a few new class samples and a few other things.  A while back, I wrote about Jenny Bowker’s totally awesome idea (seen in her blogpost,  here) and my riff on the subject here and here.

Well, I had been collecting tropical colored big prints (Kaffe Fassett, Martha Negley, Phillip Jacobs and the other designers from the Westminster Fabrics crowd) for a possible project for a possible (in a couple years) new book.  Well, I had (still have) this totally cool idea, but decided it was probably too complicated for a simple book project and, honestly, was more piecing work that I wanted to do.  Then I made my sample a la Jenny, and had a brainstorm!  A QUILT made with bright squares and simple sashing.  PRESTO–fabrics re-directed to new project.  So I got out my graph paper and charted out sizes for a BIG new bed quilt for us!

I decided to use squares of the tropical prints cut 8 1/2 inches, which meant I could get four pieces plus some leftover from a fat quarter (usually about 18 x 22 inches or thereabouts) of fabric.  A sashing that finished at 3 inches would look good.

Blocks cut, order set out on wall, vertical sashing on first six rows...

I was VERY careful cutting, and used my AccuFeed foot on my new Janome Horizon 7700.  I even went to the extent of cutting the strips on the non-stretchy lengthwise grain of the fabric because I wanted this to be perfect.  Drat!  It wasn’t!  The white pieces, on the bottom, were coming out 1/8″ too short, and I KNOW (and triple checked) they were cut to the same length.  Luckily, I am on this great Yahoo group for 7700 owners and another one for 6500/6600/7700 owners (a lot of us on the first list are also on the second one, which was the mother list).  Someone (and boy do I wish I could remember who so I can say THANK YOU) mentioned the button on the right of the machine and some instructions in the manual (yes, I had read it, but just didn’t remember this part!).  If your fabric isn’t coming out even, you can turn the knob to fine-tune the dual feed!  PRESTO! Problem piecing solved.  I told the little red guy with forked tail and spear on my shoulder making rude noises at me to go away, that it wasn’t MY piecing at all…I just needed to learn how to be smarter than and adjust my machine!

Here’s what it looked like as I was chain piecing lots of blocks and strips:

(Notice the lovely “Lemon Grass” Fiesta Ware mug amidst all those lovely prints!)

Here’s the quilt top a bit farther along,

Then I measured.  SHRIEK!  adjust border plans to smaller!  Eliminate the white what *was* going to go all around the center blocks and go straight to the pieced (from leftover bits) border of all colorful prints!  Here it is as I am ironing…. under the top is an ironing board with a 60″ wide Big Board PLUS a 39″ (one metre) wide table….and it drapes over the ends!

Aren’t those colors awesome??????

Trying to get a picture of the enormity of this thing was beyond a do-it-yourself photo shoot, so you’ll have to put up with me!  The finished top is 107″ square!

It's too big to fit...this shot, before all the borders are on, shows only 6 1/2 of the 9 color squares going across and up...so it's about 2/3 of the quilt!

That would lead to some questions:

Q1:  Is Sarah sane?   Answer:  obviously not

Q2:  How do you plan to baste this?  Answer:  I don’t; bless Doris and Debbie at Quilt Divas (great quilt shop in Rockland, Maine), they will baste it for me with water soluble thread on their longarm.  I don’t care what it costs.  I am NOT basting it.  Answer, part 2:  re Q1, perhaps she’s not as far gone as we thought

Q3:  What about the quilting?  Answer:  Yes, I plan to do it, but NOT for a while.  And at least the worst part, the basting, will be done by checking account!  Also, my big treat once we get moved in late January and next year’s teaching is done, is to buy myself an HQ sitdown model for working on very large projects.  I think a quilt 3 yards by 3 yards square qualifies.  Answer to Q3, part 2: ummm…OK, Sarah is clearly certifiable; either that or she has no life

Q4:  What quilting design will you use?  Answer:  I’ll do something similar to the sample I did  up in the links posted above.  When I shared an in  progress picture with a friend, she was concerned that the white is TOO bright.  I agree, it is!  But once it is quilted the starkness will be toned down and I think it will be a lovely summer quilt.

Q5:  Is Sarah insane?  Answer:  Ayuh!

Oh what fun!  I just love it when someone takes one of my classes or reads my book or an article, makes something, then shares it with me!  In this case, Janet from my Janome yahoo group shared with me a fantastic variation on the needlekeeper pattern in ThreadWork Unraveled.  In the pattern in the book, I use a couple pieces of fabric (flannel in one instance) and maybe some batting to make a “needle keeper”–one of those things to help you keep track of what needles have been used but not used up, and what needle is IN the machine:

My version of the needlekeeper, with sections labelled by type of needle

Well, Janet’s fantabuloso twist is to use her practice free-motion quilting samples to make a lovely roll-up needle-keeper! Janet cut her sample into suitable sizes, zigzagged the outside edge, then added muslin and batting to the center for the storage part of the needlekeeper.  This is the business side of Janet’s version:

Janet's needlekeeper using her practice Free-Motion-Quilting bits for the outside

And the lovely quilting on the back:

The back side showing the lovely quilting and how Janet attached a ribbon

And how it looks rolled up (perfect for travel!)–this would be a great variation to use for handwork needles, especially if you work in different parts of the house or on the road:

Janet's needlekeeper rolled up with a red ribbon (sewn to outside)

What a great gift!  Janet even typed up information for the recipient:

Information for the recipient

Now…do I have time to MAKE any before Christmas…what a great gift idea!  Thanks so much Janet for sharing with me and, in turn, letting me share with those of you who read my blog!  OK…everyone to their sewing machines!