Hoffman 1895 Bali Batik Swatches for Electric Quilt

Posted by Nadine

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working with a new Watercolors Bali Pop from Hoffman Fabrics to design a quilt. This Bali Pop has 40 2½” x 43″ strips of Style #1895 Handpainted Bali Batik fabrics, and came with a neat color card with a list of all the colors in the Pop, including color numbers and names. Sweet, right?

I had an idea for the quilt in mind, so I fired up Electric Quilt to play around a bit. Once I had a rough design, of course I wanted to fill it in with fabrics that matched what I had in the Bali Pop. I knew that there were already some Hoffman batik fabrics in EQ by default, so I tried using those. The problem was, I couldn’t tell if I had exactly the right fabric swatches in the sketchbook on the screen compared to the fabric I had in the Bali Pop.** What’s a girl to do? Continue reading →

Pinning Patchwork for Perfect Points

Posted by Nadine

Crazy Accuracy Freak Girl has broken out of her cage and is on the loose. I do try to keep her locked up, but she’s a wily one. If 1/16″ or 1/32″ of space that shouldn’t be there between two patchwork pieces that are supposed to match doesn’t bother you, that’s okay–then this post was not meant for you! You quilt your way, and I’ll quilt mine. 😉 However, if you are like Crazy Accuracy Freak Girl and you want to know the really nitty gritty details about how to make patchwork pieces fit together better, and maybe even perfectly on the first try (or you just want to have a good laugh at a quilter gone mad with the need to control literally everything) read on. Continue reading →

Ten Ways to Mark a Quilt Top for Quilting

Posted by Nadine

I’ll admit it. I’m old school. I like marking quilting designs as opposed to just winging it and making it up as I go along, and my quilting quality is much higher when I have a line to follow. And to be honest, I mark designs for machine quilting and not hand quilting, so I guess I’m only sorta old school! 😉

Over the years, I’ve tried sooooo many different methods for marking quilts; some are easy and work well, some are only so-so but still good to have in mind just in case the easier methods don’t work for some reason. Here are ten different methods and tools to transfer quilting designs to your quilt top: Continue reading →

Tutorial: Multiple Mitered Borders Made Easy

Posted by Nadine

I’m just gonna say it: I love mitered borders on a quilt! Unless there’s a strong design reason for a straight-set border, mitered borders are my first choice for border treatments despite the small amount of extra work involved.

Depending on how many borders the quilt has it’s actually no extra work at all, since you can apply multiple borders all at once instead of one at a time like you’d do for straight-set borders. Not only can you apply multiple mitered borders all at once, it’s really the better and more accurate way to do it, and you’ll get the most lovely matching corners if you do! Here’s the complete how to: Continue reading →

Flannel Design Wall Tutorial

Posted by Nadine

I’m still “moving in” and getting settled in my new sewing area (as well as the rest of the house, if the truth is told), and of course, I want a design wall of some sort. There is not a lot of room or empty wall space, but there is one wall that will do (ignoring the electrical socket and pass through right in the middle of it that I would never use anyway):

Looking back on my design wall solutions in the past, I didn’t really want to repeat either of them. The Portable Design Wall was an utter failure for me when I bought it, and still doesn’t get used for the same reasons (and I can’t bring myself to put it up on ebay and try to fob it off on someone else since it’s just that bad).

In our Matchstick Manor house in Germany, I put up Block Butler on one wall in the studio, but honestly, I’m really glad that wasn’t my house (for many reasons, not just this one of course) because when I took it down as we were preparing to move out before the house fell down around us, Continue reading →

Head to Head: EQ Printables vs. Jacquard Cotton Sheets

Posted by Nadine

I’ve been doing some printing on fabric off and on lately, using EQ Printables Premium Cotton Satin Inkjet Fabric Sheets. I picked up a 6 sheet package at Quilt Market in Houston in 2008 so that I could try it out. The results with the EQ Printables are okay, but I haven’t been ecstatically happy with them, so when I was ordering from SoftExpressions.com recently, I decided to order a package of Jacquard Cotton Ink Jet Printing Sheets to see if it was any better.

I actually wasn’t planning on doing any sort of really scientific side-by-side comparison when I ordered the Jacquard, but after I printed an image on the EQ Printables and was pretty unhappy with the way the ink ran and spread during the rinsing phase, I decided to print the same image on the Jacquard to test it out. And okay, it’s still not a terribly thorough analysis since it’s not like I’m going to burn through three or four more sheets to test different kinds of images on each of these brands, but I think the results are worth sharing anyway.

Here’s the head to head, brutal comparison: Continue reading →