THE QUILT TOP IS DONE!

Lars's Drunken Dragons Quilt Top, Fully Assembled, 70" x 105"

Lulu the Puppy Princess Poses with the Quilt Top

All 150 Drunkard's Path blocks have finally been assembled for Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt top.  Ta da!  I am really not as excited about this as you might expect, though, because I am much more confident in my patchwork skills than I am in my quilting skills, so the rest is all going to be uphill, with lots of experimentation and frog stitches (rip-it, rip-it!) along the way.  I even bought a new seam ripper, nice and sharp and ready to go.  How's that for a positive attitude?

Lulu kept prancing into my view finder when I was trying to get a picture of the quilt top.  She doesn't understand why anyone would want to see a picture that doesn't have a puppy princess in it.  Indeed!

Meanwhile, I still don't know for sure how I'm going to quilt this quilt, so it's time to take a break for some Research & Development.  I'm leaning toward quilting a decorative motif in the center of each circle with the "quilt in the hoop" embroidery method, but I can't get a large enough design (width-wise) in any of my machine's hoops and I don't feel like messing around with the Hoop-It-All Quilter's Square contraption for this project.  So I'm thinking I'll enlarge the selected motif as big as I can fit in my hoop, and after I've stitched one out on each circle, I'll go back and do some echo quilting around them with free-motion quilting (FMQ) to fill the rest of the circles.  That's my compromise between wanting to learn and practice FMQ and not wanting to mess up this quilt that I'm going to have to look at every day on Lars's bed.  Then I think I'll do grid quilting in the background with a walking foot, because one of the things I like best about this quilt is the contrast between the curved lines and the squares, so curvy quilting lines inside the circles, straight lines between them, should play that up nicely.  I'm still kicking around the idea of machine trapunto for added dimension on the circles, but I'm wondering if that's too large of an area to do trapunto and if that will make the quilt too bulky to work with under my little sewbaby.  I'll try to take pictures and post the results of my quilting experiments as I figure it all out.

Can you spot my "oops?"

This little "oops" was annoying to discover in the very last row of the quilt.  I thought we were really careful when we did the block layout to be sure that we didn't place blocks with the exact same fabric next to one another, but this one slipped by somehow.  Whatever -- I'm leaving it.  Nobody's perfect, right? It's not that big of a deal, and this is the bottom of the quilt, where I'm going to tuck it underneath the edge of the mattress so that all of the bedding doesn't end up on the floor every morning. 

I don't know when I'll get back to this project.  I've got receipts strewn all over the place that I've been organizing on-and-off for the accountant so he can prepare our taxes, and I really need to finish that up this week and cross it off my list.  (I wish I could just shove it all into a grocery bag and dump it out on his desk).  We're also taking Otto back to the vet tomorrow morning because it looks to me like he managed to pop a couple stitches and his incision is opening up instead of healing.  It has been nine days since he had his neutering operation, and I really had hoped he'd be back to his normal, rambunctious routine by now. 

At least he's getting used to the Cone of Shame and no longer cries constantly while wearing it.  Now he's actually using it like a snowplow, crashing into things or people deliberately with the cone.  That's what all the dents and dings are from.  Hopefully the vet will be able to seal his incision back up with a couple drops of surgical glue rather than having to restitch.  Cross your fingers for my puppy rabbit!

The Cone of Shame

My poor, sweet puppy has been crying piteously for days now, whimpering and snivelling about the injustice of The Cone of Shame. He finally went in for neutering last Friday (we waited until he was 13 months old for a number of health reasons). We tried just keeping a close eye on him for the first couple of days, but every time we turned our backs he went into turbo-crotch-licking-overdrive, so the e-collar we initially just put on at bed time is now tied around his big meatball of a head all day long. Today is the 6th day post-op and his discharge instructions say that he has to be prevented from licking for a minimum of 7 days after the surgery. So he staggers around the house, knocking down picture frames and crashing into door jambs, and makes sad puppy dog faces full of mournful reproach.

Just a couple more days, Otto, until we ditch that cone and get your Indestructible Dog Ball out in the yard for you again! Hang in there, buddy!

Ice Berg, Dead Ahead! Approaching the Perils of the Quilting Phase, and the Band Plays On

The Titannic, image found here

Well, Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt top is nearly complete.  (If you missed the earlier posts about this project, click here to catch up).  I just have to assemble the last of the 15 rows of blocks, then attach that row to the others.  I decided to assemble the quilt top in thirds (five rows per section) to minimize fraying along the raw edges, so I'll have to join the three sections together, and then the piecing stage of the 70" x 105" twin bed quilt will be complete.  After that, I'll join my two widths of the backing fabric together and make and attach the quilt label to the backing so it will be quilted in securely. 


Scrabble fabric from Quilting Treasures, photo from Fabric.com

I am excited about the quilt label; I'm going to spell out "MOMMY LOVES LARS" in Scrabble fabric, cutting out each letter with a seam allowance so I can stitch them together like a Scrabble board. 

The scary part comes next. Depending on the quilting design, I may have to do some marking on the quilt top -- always a terrifying prospect, because what if the marks don't wash out afterwards like they're supposed to?  "They" tell you to test the washaway marking pen on every fabric in your quilt to be sure it will wash out afterwards, but I used so many fabrics...  Also, I would have needed to make up my little marking pen tests on fabric scraps a couple of weeks ago to do this, because it's going to take me at least that long to do the quilting.  Just because the ink comes out after it's been on the fabric for a day doesn't mean that it would come out after three weeks.  Anyway, I'm not marking anything until I know for sure how I want to do the quilting.

So far, this quilt has been pretty smooth sailing, like the Titannic, speeding across the Atlantic Ocean with its sparkling chandeliers and happy passengers, but we're about to enter dangerous waters...  Nothing like a positive attitude, don't you agree?  Here's what's going through my mind as I stare out into the frigid, frosty darkness of the quilting voyage that lies ahead:

Machine Trapunto by Anita Shakelford

My first thought is to stitch a grid of diagonal lines as background quilting everywhere except inside the circles.  The circles would have concentric, fairly wide spaced circle quilting for emphasis.  To make the circles stand out even more, I could add trapunto to the circles (an extra layer of batting just under the circles for added dimension) using the method that Diane Gaudynski describes in her books.  I'd use my walking foot for the background grid, but the circles?  Well...  I can't very well turn my quilt around 360 degrees under my sewing machine needle to quilt each circle with the walking foot, not on this oversized twin bed quilt.  The line of quilting that goes right in the circular seamline would be challenging to execute even with a walking foot -- do I really think I can do that accurately with the feed dogs down and the training wheels off?  Am I really going to be able to quilt perfect circles with FMQ?  I've jokingly dubbed this the Drunken Dragons quilt because the block pattern is called Drunkard's Path, but I don't want people to look at the finished quilt, covered with wobbly, crookedy lumpy-non-circular blobs and think I was drunk when I was quilting it!

I've been telling everyone how I'm going to do free-motion quilting (FMQ) on this project in hopes that I won't chicken out, but I feel a cold sweat coming on. For those who don't know, normally the feed dogs on the sewing machine pull your fabric through at a steady pace beneath the stationary needle going up and down to create stitches of exactly the same length.  When you do free-motion quilting, you disengage those feed dogs so you can control the fabric movement with your hands, enabling you to go back and forth, diagonally, sideways, all without turning your fabric.  It's like trying to draw a picture or sign your name by moving a piece of paper around underneath a stationary marker, except that you also have to be careful to move the quilt at a steady speed so you don't end up with a mess of some really long stitches, some really short stitches, and a bunch of knots.  With a lot of practice, people like Diane Gaudynski and Wendy Sheppard are able to quilt the most exquisite designs using this method, but my experience with FMQ so far looks like I tried to doodle with my left hand, blindfolded. 

Bernina Stitch Regulator, from Bernina USA

I have a gizmo for my fancy computerized sewing machine that is supposed to help -- the BSR function (Bernina Stitch Regulator) has a little Doctor Evil laser thingy that scans and counts threads next to the needle as I'm moving the fabric, speeding up or slowing down the needle movement as needed to keep stitches around the same length.  But BSR doesn't improve my ability to "draw" by moving fabric, it only helps to keep stitch length more or less consistent.  If I'm really going to drop those feed dogs and quilt without training wheels, then I'd better set the quilt top aside and do at least a week of practice quilting before I even mark the quilt top. I'd hate to mark an overly ambitious design on my quilt top and then realize I'm not skilled enough to execute it well. I'm looking at this quilt top, and not really coming up with a lot of FMQ ideas that would look good on this quilt and that I'm likely to be able to do well.  I mean honestly, circles?  I really WANT circles, though.  I may have to plan a smaller project, like a table runner, for FMQ practice.

Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors, Decorative Quilting Motif Stitched with Embroidery Module, 2006

So there's this cunning little voice in the back of my head, and I can't tell for sure if she's an angel or the Devil. She says there's no shame in using all the high-tech gadgetry at my disposal in order to finish the quilt and get it on Lars's bed, looking the way I want it to look, and finished within this lifetime. I have several design collections of Keryn Emmerson's outline quilting designs that I could use with the embroidery module of my sewing machine to insure good looking results using fancier designs than I could manage free hand.  When I've used this method in the past, most notably for Anders' Froggy Quilt of Many Colors above (I know, I should have done more quilting on the Flying Geese patches and I still might add more later), I got annoying little thread knots on the back of the quilt (which, thanks to Diane's book, I now know could have been minimized by using a lighter weight quilting thread).  I just found a Bernina Through the Needle: Quilting in the Hoop article that suggests using these outline embroidery designs on just the quilt top and batting for the decorative stitching, then adding the backing fabric before doing the background quilting through all three layers, so that any tension snafus or knots gets hidden between the layers of the quilt.  I guess I'd need to use an adhesive basting spray to adhere the quilt top to the batting if I'm going to do some of the quilting before I layer and pin-baste all three layers together, though -- ugh, this is getting complicated again!  I wonder if this is like that moment when Captain Edward Smith ordered his crew to increase the Titanic's speed just as they were approaching the ice they'd been warned about?  I mean, is this going to make my project go more smoothly, or will this plan of action come back to haunt me in my dreams? 

Here are a couple of the quilting designs I'm considering for the circles on this quilt:

Keryn Emmerson's Continuous Quilting Designs collection for Bernina

 I like that Celtic knot circle design shown on the cover of the design collection packaging, but it's too small so I'd want to enlarge it and then add some additional wide-spaced circle outlines.  This particular collection is on one of those design cards that plugs directly into my sewing machine rather than on a CD, and although I can resize the design directly on my sewing machine, I'm pretty sure I need to use my PC software to add additional outline circles.  I may be able to do this if I open the design on my sewing machine, save it to the sewing machine's memory, and then copy it from there to a thumb drive that I take downstairs to my PC. 

Another Keryn Emmerson design from her Quilting Inspirations 788 Collection for OESD

The design shown above is another possibility, and even though it's also too small to fill the big circles on my quilt, perhaps I could stitch them out as-is and then add some FMQ echo quilting.  Since this design is so angular and irregular, the echo quilting wouldn't need to be perfect in order to look good.  But I really, really want circles...

I did some browsing over at Embroidery.com (even though I hate to buy more embroidery designs when I have SO MANY that I already own and have never used), and found another possibility:

Rangoli design from Embroidery.com, get it here

I like the circles in the Rangoli design at left from Embroidery.com, and even though at 3.5" it's again, a little on the small side, I could easily resize it larger to fit, and the stitching looks like it would be open enough to allow the quilt to puff up between the stitches.

Alternatively, I should also be able to digitize my original concentric circle idea myself fairly easily with my Bernina Embroidery Software, but I upgraded from Version 4 to Version 6 last year and have not been able to take classes from my dealer yet to learn how to use the new version.  It's completely different than the older version, because Version 6 has a baby version of CorelDRAW for digitizing from scratch and when I fooled around with it last night I wasn't able to figure out how to use the circle tool.  However, I was able to find the handouts for the Version 6 Software Mastery classes online, which I printed out, and I also managed to send the colossal on-screen software owner's manual PDF to my iPad so I can read it in my Kindle app -- but it doesn't navigate as easily as a Kindle book would, and I'm not able to use the hilighting or annotating functions.  This is so irritating -- I want a real, physical owner's manual that I can highlight, write notes in, and cover with Post-It flags to help me find the right information quickly when I need it again!  I know some users have paid to have a local printer print the whole thing out in multiple spiral bound volumes...  Ugh.  Bernina, are you listening?  I want an owner's manual next time!!!  So anyway, there is going to be a little software learning curve, and I have a few hundred pages of boring technical reading ahead of me, but it's doable -- and I need to learn how to use that software anyway or else it will be a huge waste of money.

Monofilament Nylon Thread from SewArt International

Finally, just when you thought I was finished with this smorgasbord of anxiety-inducing possibilities, we come to the question of thread.  I wasn't thrilled with the look of the heavier-weight "machine quilting thread" I used on Anders' quilt.  I've considered using the lighter-weight cotton or silk threads recommended by Wendy Sheppard and Diane Gaudynski.  But I'm leaning toward a .004 nylon monofilament quilting thread from Sew Art International for this project.  I have a lot of busy fabrics in this quilt, and I don't think I want the quilting thread to stand out and scream at anyone.  Plus, invisible nylon should hide my oopses and glitches better than any other thread, and it will enable me to quilt in that Scrabble label without scribbling all over it with the quilting thread. I have this thread in both clear and a smoke color, and I haven't decided which color to use yet.  I've never used the monofilament nylon thread before (it's a maiden voyage -- just like the Titanic!), and I'm nervous about the thread snarling, snapping, or otherwise misbehaving, but I'm going to do my research as far as tension settings and practice before I tackle the Real Deal.

Ready to Go: Final Blocks Awaiting Assembly

I can worry about all of this some more while I stitch those remaining blocks together today, since they aren't going to sew themselves.  After all, it's not a real quilt until somebody gets an ulcer.  Isn't that what they always say?  Well, that's what they should say.  Meanwhile, the band plays on...

Extreme Makeover, Web Site Edition: A New Look for Custom Interiors by Rebecca

Screen Shot of my New and Improved Web Site at www.CustomInteriorsByRebecca.com


My darling husband, who will be the first to tell you that he is not, NOT, a web designer, lovingly slaved away with something called Frontpage or FTP something-or-other about 12 years ago to help me create my first web site, back when just having a web site at all was enough to set me apart from other designers.  The site didn't do everything I wanted it to do, it wasn't as polished as what I would have liked, but it has served me well as a presence on the web, a place where prospective clients can find out more about what I can do for them and see photographs of my work.  Set decorator Casey Hallenbeck, who hired me to collaborate on window treatments for the sets of the NASCAR film Talladega Nights, found me via the web site, after all -- actually, that's a funny story, because when he called me and said he was working on a movie that was filming in Charlotte I didn't believe him, but I digress...

So, what was wrong with my old web site?  Well, for starters, Bernie had set the iPower account up for me using his own email and passwords, and I had no access to go in and make any updates on my own.  Changes could only be made from his computer, because he had the Frontpage software and I did not.  Every time I wanted to change photos or copy on my business web site, I had to wait until my husband was home and had time to help, then do some serious nagging for a few days (because he'd rather do just about anything else -- it was amazing how he'd hop up and declare that it was time to change air filters, aerate the lawn or patch holes in the wall when I mentioned working on my web site).  Then, once he finally sat down to work on the web site with me, neither of us could remember what the username or password were so we had to contact iPower and reset the password...  Big, giant pain in the butt!  Then I'd describe to Bernie how I wanted the site to look and feel, and he'd get frustrated because he didn't know how to do that using the tools at his disposal, and he'd grit his teeth and mutter "this is NOT what I do for a living!" Can you understand why my web site sat on the Internet, neglected and unchanged, for over a year and a half at a clip?

The biggest problem with my business web site that I'd noticed since getting my iPad a year ago is that the lovely Edwardian Script font we used for my business name in the site header was only visible on computers that also had that font loaded locally.  So my web site looked pretty good on my own PC and on my husband's PC, but on my iPhone, my iPad, and on anyone's computer who did not have Edwardian Script, the header showed up in ghastly Times New Roman and looked hideously unprofessional.  I should have taken a screen shot of the old site to show you the before and after. The web site that looked pretty good when it was created in 2000 looked amateurish and cheap to me by the end of 2011.  A makeover was long overdue.

Custom Wedding Monogram by Jennifer Alison Designs

So anyway, at the end of last year I hired Jennifer Alison Designs to create a new logo for my business.  I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted the logo to look like, incorporating a script monogram, freshening up the branding I'd been using for my business, but similar enough that my previous and current clients would recognize that it was me when they got something in the mail with the new logo on it.  I chose Jennifer Alison Designs because the concept I had in mind for my business was very similar to the custom wedding monograms that Jennifer specializes in.  Her prices were extremely reasonable, she was great to work with, and the only difficulty was choosing between several gorgeous designs she submitted.  I highly recommend her.  This is the new Custom Interiors by Rebecca logo, created by Jennifer Alison Designs:

Now that I had the new logo design, it was time to tackle the web site.  I got the iPower account information from Bernie and then I shooed him out of my office -- this time, I was going to do the web site completely on my own so I'd have complete control and be able to make content changes or add pages to the site whenever I wanted to.  I discovered some deceptively easy looking Weebly drag and drop templates on the iPower site -- I say "deceptively" easy because it was not readily apparent to me how little I could modify the templates, and I wasted several hours working on a design based on a template that didn't have the features I needed in the right places, an error I discovered after struggling for awhile and finally calling for tech support.  Most of the templates have too much going on for my purposes.  I wanted my web site to be a background framing the photography, not something artsy or distracting.  I didn't want color, because a background color that looks great with one portfolio shot might look terrible with another photograph.  It was also irritating that I couldn't add a photo header to a template that didn't have one already built in, or that I couldn't change the color schemes of templates.  The tech support guy told me I could do some of that if I upgraded my account, and of course I could have invested a lot more time into learning to create a web site from scratch instead of using templates at all, but I was determined to use the tools I was already paying for and to keep the site as easy as possible for me to maintain.  It took me an entire day, from breakfast to dinner time, to get the web site looking the way I wanted it to, but it's finally finished and it was definitely worth the time investment to not only have a web site that accurately reflects my design business today, but one that I can tweak and adjust whenever I need to, from any computer with internet access.  I'm pretty sure I could even make changes to my web site from my iPad, although I haven't tried that yet.

 

My favorite things about the new web site are:

• My logo, which looks snazzy on every computer -- thank you, Jennifer!
• My slide show on the home page, instead of a separate portfolio page like I had before
• My Contact page, which I was able to customize with additional fields to include the basic information I want from every prospective client
• My new BLOG PAGE!  When I started writing Cheeky Cognoscenti, I intended it to be a personal blog where I'd write about my family and sewing projects, but design-related posts kept creeping in just as frequently.  Going forward, I'll be blogging on interior design topics over at http://www.custominteriorsbyrebecca.com/blog.html.  I still need to figure out how to add sidebar goodies like a design blogroll, links to preferred vendor sites, etc., but at least the "meat and potatoes" part is done.

Whew!  Revamping my web site was one of my New Year's Resolutions for my business.  It felt good to cross it off my list before the end of January!  If you have a moment, please take a look at my new web site here and then come back here and leave me a comment to tell me what you think.  Compliments are always nice, but I especially want to hear from you if you find a (gasp!) typo, or if something looks wonky on your computer that I might not be aware of.  Thank you!