Michael Miller Fabrics is having a year-long batik quilt-along, and you’re invited! Each of the 2020 Brand Ambassadors (including yours truly) was sent the fabrics and invited to play. “My” block will be in October, but I made Miss January too, LOL! If you’d like information, go here to find more information, including free pdfs with yardage requirements.

If your local fabric shop doesn’t carry Michael Miller (ask them to!), you can order these exact fabrics from Fabrics.com. And let me tell you, MM Jet Black Cotton Couture fabric is famous for good reason…it isn’t an over-dyed something that didn’t work the way some other companies do. It is SPECIFICALLY dyed black, really, Really, REALLY black, and it is consistent batch to batch. I have some Cotton Coutures from a 2014 project, and the colors are SPOT ON perfect match to the 2019 color swatch card and the fat quarters from the box I won last year. Amazing!

I used the AccuQuiltGO! to cut my pieces following the directions in Michael Miller Fabrics’ free PDF pattern. The only change I made was to cut the flying geese black triangles by hand–the pattern by the way comes in two formats: traditional cutting and using the AccuQuiltGO dies. I used the dies with this one exception since I didn’t want to make two half-square triangles and sew them together for that outer unit of multi-batik and black. Instead, I cut a rectangle and placed the half-square triangles cut with the die on it, sewed, then trimmed away the extra black.

Each Brand Ambassador gets a “month” and will post their block. You can follow along via the MM blog, here’s that link again. Have FUN!

Over the past week to two weeks, I have been working on ….sit down and prepare yourselves for this… a **pieced** quilt. Yes, me. A very simple pieced quilt, but nonetheless.

I’ve also been experimenting with the AccuQuiltGO! that was given to this year’s crop of Michael Miller Fabrics Brand Ambassadors. To my distress my block was not perfect–too small! I KNEW it had to be something on my end (it was), so I triple checked my seams (perfect to scant). I checked the size of the fabric cut on the dies: perfect. I checked that I used the correct dies: I did. Then I noticed something. After ironing, the block seemed off. Look at what I discovered:

First I placed my half square triangles on the dies, and look how much smaller the pieces are after sewing and ironing! So then I checked the start of the square-in-a-square center of the block. Same thing: after steam ironing/pressing, a unit that finishes at 2″ and one that finishes at 3 1/4″ are each 1/16-1/8″ smaller!

I decided to get a bit more scientific about it: Cut, measure, dry iron, measure, steam iron, measure. Here is what happened with the Cotton Couture, a delightful solid with a glorious feel in the hand:

Batiks are made using hand-dyeing processes that include a resist being applied (usually wax of some sort), then the wax is washed out, more dye applied, and so on. This means some of the shrinkage should already have happened.

So my lesson is, when I am not fusing things up, I really need to either pre-steam-iron everything, or prewash and mostly-dry it and then iron dry and smooth. I can now use the perfection of the AccuquiltGO and actually achieve as close to perfect as I will ever get! Now, off to order backing fabric for my BIG quilt.

And yes, there was even more fun stuff at Market…see why I never got to the quilts? (Previous two posts have more good stuff.)

One trend I noticed across various fabric booths is that they are getting super smart about cross-marketing. The artwork isn’t just in quilting cotton, but heavier and/or lighter weights (in this case a canvas weight for a jacket, chair upholstery or tote), wall paper, gift paper, note cards, little stationery items. Smart.

A perfect end to a fun Quilt Market. More on the house renovations, Festival, family and more in the coming weeks.

YES, I’ll teach you how to get perfect miters that match your seam measurement, no matter what it is, without having to measure! Today I’ll talk about my Fine Finishes workshop, #525 from 9-5 on Friday, November 9th, at International Quilt Festival Houston.  Link to register is here and at the bottom of this post.

This class is all about what to do with the edges of your quilt…and not just straight edges:  curves, inside points, sharp angles, facings not just bindings.  Using techniques adapted from high end garment construction, you’ll achieve precise results, perfect corners, perfect miters, without measuring your seam allowance!

You’ll learn about all of these and, depending on how fast you work, make at least four samples, maybe more. In Houston, it is class #525 on Friday.

Fine Finishes has proved a perennial favorite –sign up soon!  If the PERFECT bias binding hasn’t happened for you, or the PERFECT facing for an art quilt, one that doesn’t roll and bulge, you need this class.  Have you ever considered piping?  Time consuming, but OH MY what a wonder!  So worth it … try these and more as time permits.

Last but not least–and it usually fills up fast–is the Machine Quilting Forum on Thursday morning.   Think of it as not-so-speedy dating for machine quilters.  We meet in one of the large “ballrooms” at the convention center. The first hour is an introduction to the presenters (I think there are six of us, or maybe seven, this year):  each teacher gets a few minutes to share about 7 slides representing who they are as quilters.  Then the participants break up into six (or seven) groups.  Each group goes to a certain teacher, then after 20 minutes (15 presentation, 5 Q&A) a bell rings and the participants move to the next teacher.  This is a fabulous way to learn a lot in a short time, get a great idea of a teacher’s style teaching, see if you want to take a class with them or have them come teach for your guild.

Registration is OPEN for classes for International Quilt Festival Houston 2018, including my four classes.  For more info on the other workshops, my first class, Birch Pond Season,  is covered here.  Collage the Garden, one of my newest classes and proving to be one of the most popular, is covered here.

My Quilting Arts Article, August-September 2018, on using your camera–in the case of this article, the one on my PHONE…nothing fancy!

PANTONE Studio app as it displays on my phone — I use just the “Images” function. My app was free, but there are in-app purchases that I haven’t tried.

Found it in Google Play (Android). It’s called myPantone but is not published by Pantone itself. It does cost $7.99 and you have to download another app Color True (free) but I am having so much fun. Thanks.

Screen shot from my phone on 9/16/18 showing the app available.

Picking colors on the app: you get to move the dots around to generate a palette. It is fun to watch the colors change, and how the phone “averages” the pixels under the dot to create a color.  And yes, this was done months ago when I was writing the article.

Once you have selected the colors, you can generate a palette and then export it to your photos album/folder.

The bottom line:  I expect there are various “color picker” apps out there.  Try what you can find–you don’t necessarily need to have exact Pantone colors with color codes for the purpose here.

MOST IMPORTANT:  trust your eye!   You will learn and grasp color more quickly than you realize.  When in doubt, go with what your eye and instinct/gut tell you.  The artwork you produce is YOUR artwork, not that of the app designers.  And HAVE FUN!

UPDATE:  Thanks to an inquiry from Janice N., I’m adding this info:

Question:  Downloaded the app. Am I correct that there is no way to access photos from the phone and no way to save the photo with the color analysis.

Answer: Yes, you can access your own photos and then you can export it to your photo album.  Open the app.  Click on images.  Up at the very top, in the white bar, if you tap that it will give you a drop-down menu.  Mine says “Recently Added,” but I can click that and it allows me to choose from FB, Pinterest, Instagram, etc., All  Photos, Favorites, etc.  Just tap whatever one you want, and then choose a photo from that.

Once you have selected your colors/moved the dots around, there is an export icon at the top…looks like a box with an arrow pointing up.  Tap that.  A new menu appears.  You can save it as a Palette or Share.  A window then appears that says “Select Item to Share.”  Click the circle/dot (in my case in the lower right).  Then click Share on the bottom.  An iOS menu pops up that allows you to save it to iCloud Photo Sharing, Save the images, Save to Files, AirDrop to your computer or whatever.  Tap whichever one you want and presto!   I share my PicStitch collages to Instagram often (more on that app in a few days). 

HTH…if not clear, ask again.  I may add this to the blogpost…is your question and my reply ok to share with you?

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