Touch and Talk (Visit Your Local Quilt Store Day Blog Tour)

Quilting is a tactile art. No matter how pretty something looks from afar, when you are cuddled with a quilt on the couch it needs to feel good wrapped around you.

Likewise, fabric needs to respond to your touch when you are cutting, sewing, pressing. Some fabrics are softer, drape more, or are even silky between your fingers. And those are just the quilting cottons! Quilt batting varies in drape and feel too. From brand to brand and between fiber content. Then you add the quilting and a new dimension of texture emerges. Not just texture you see, but something that rubs and nubs under your fingers and over your legs when the quilt covers you.

This tactile experience begins right when you buy the fabric. Standing the store, too many bolts piled under your arm. Picked for their colours, but when you start editing and dreaming you start to feel the fabric. Some will get discarded because they are too stiff and you aren't sure how much that will wash out. Some will seem too flimsy, seemingly ready to fall apart with a pull on a seam.

This tangible beginning to a quilt is only possible in a quilt store. (With no offense to the wonderful on-line fabric retailers out there.)

Just as quilting is tactile, it is also social. Blogs and more are wonderful for connecting quilters across the world. And for many in rural or remote locations, those surrounded by kids more than quilters, or sewists living in a world of athletes the internet is a fabulous thing indeed. I love my connections that started here. But I do quite enjoy getting into a store and chit chatting as I pull fabric. From the store gossip to the latest fabrics not quite put on the floor, building a relationship with the owners and employees builds more than a retailer relationship. Quilters are drawn together and are tied by a bond only cut by rotary cutter.

As confident as I feel in my choices, a second opinion is always good. It is a challenge to my own sensibilities at times, but always welcome. When shopping in the store it is wonderful to hear and see what someone else might do with that particular fabric. And I'll be the first to admit that there are a lot of good ideas out there, and they might indeed be better than mine.

I must admit that when I was a beginner I heavily relied on the local stores to guide me through challenges I was having. Bring in a WIP and nearly anyone in the store (employee or another customer) is almost always willing to offer insight, opinion, and a little lesson. And usually lots of laughs! Now, if you run into me in a store and you are looking for an opinion you can count on me to offer it, even if you didn't ask me!

Geez, now I really want to go visit my LQS, or the 5 that I am lucky enough to have within 15 minutes of me...

Traditional Pastimes
My Sewing Room
Out of Hand
Along Came Quilting
A Sewing Sensation

And on January 24th I encourage you to get and shop your LQS, wherever you may be. Load up the kids and make it a day trip if need be. Support Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day!

See more blog posts on the Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day Tour. A whole host of wonderful quilters are there extolling the virtues of their local shops. Between now and January 24th you can add your post too! I'd love to see where you all shop! There is even a photo contest with some great prizes.

See you at the store, fabric in hand. I promise a chat and a extra bolt of fabric in your pile.

Thread

You've heard me speak of my particular thread love before. Today I am sharing, with the inspiration from Sew Mama Sew, a bit more about thread.

How do you select colours for your personal thread collection?

Unlike fabric, I don't have a thread stash. Rather, I have thread that I've purchased for specific projects and maybe there are some leftovers.

Do you always match the thread perfectly to your project?

Well, that depends on the project. For piecing I use a cream or grey 99% of the time. For quilting it depends on the project at hand and my goals with the quilting.

Do you ever use contrasting thread?

Indeed, I have. I've outlined by hand with black. I've used colour on white, more than once. Or, when you've got a project with strong contrast in fabric choices, you can go one way or the other and you get contrast.

Do you use the same colour in the bobbin as on the top?

Usually, I do. You have to be very good with your tension if you use different threads, and even now I still struggle with this. For example, I constantly fought with tension on my Roots quilt, and it really mattered because I used grey on the back and constantly changed the top thread.

What if a fabric has big areas of very different colours?

Over time I've discovered that I stress way too much about the quilting pattern and thread choice. Especially when it comes to very colourful pieces. The truth is, in many, many quilts the thread and quilting pattern will get lost in a busy design. So, on a multicoloured or busy piece pick one colour and go with it.

Do you have any tips or suggestions on picking thread?

Experiment! Until you know what your machine likes and you've quilted a few times with it, it is hard to narrow down a specific choice of thread based on someone else's recommendation. So, try a few brands, a few needle sizes, and just play. The right thread will make itself known.

Do you ever buy thread because you fall in love with a colour? As an investment?

Nope.

What types of thread do you have?

I stick entirely to cotton.  My latest obsession is Precensia Mercerized Egyptian Cotton. I love the colours, it works well in my machine, and it doesn't produce a lot of lint. And it doesn't break! I do have some embroidery floss that the girls and I use to play around with embroidery. Thanks to Jen for that!

What about you? What are your thread favourites?

When I Turn My Back

There are two school of thought on welcoming your kids into your quilting habit.  On one hand you can have a sewing room with a closed door and they are not allowed to touch your fabric. On the other hand, you can let them play with the fabric and make a giant mess.  I will fully admit that some days I wish I had a design wall and a door to close (and lock). But most days the girls are knee deep in scraps and helping me pick fabric.

This is what happens when I turn my back on a pile of fabric.

Where do you stand on kids getting involved with your quilting habit - the process, the fabric, the inspiration? I'm working on an article on creating and quilting as a family, so I'm curious as to your habits.

SCRAPS!

Okay, like I need another project.  I have a project yet to reveal, a baby quilt started that will probably be late, my water quilt, and a million ideas racing around in my head.  And those are only the active ones, not the pile of UFOs hiding under the bed (literally). But I really, really like the Values quilts that Katie does over at Willy-Nilly.  And now she is hosting a quilt-along.

Shocking, I'm already behind.

  
The other day Hubby had The Monster our running errands so Smilosaurus and I played in my stash.  I decided that this Values quilt would only be scraps.  But in truth, my definition of scrap has changed over time.  Originally, anything smaller than 6 inches was a scrap.  And everything else got thrown back in the colour-coded bin as stash.  For this project, however, I was going to need bigger pieces.  So I refined my definition to anything I'd used before and might be less than a fat quarter.  A pretty generous definition if you ask me.

I must confess that this pile was not even close to everything that fit my refined definition.  I want to really like this quilt so I picked out only those fabrics that I still really like.  Or, at least the fabrics that I really liked that day.  I'm going to cut one of each and see where that gets me.

Let's see where this one goes...