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 →

Machine Quilting: Know Your Tools

Posted by Nadine

When I pulled out the Misery Quilt to work on the machine quilting that I hadn’t touched in…well…years…I had to remember how to do all of this machine quilting stuff! 😕 It all came back pretty quickly, but it made me realize all over again that there are so many little details that go along with machine quilting that are good to remember, and I thought them all over as I retrained my eyes and hands and foot to all work together again to get the quality I wanted. This series of blog posts is dedicated to machine quilting–because the more you know, the easier it is!

Let’s start with tools! What tools are great to have and use, and maybe even count as “essential” for machine quilting? Aside from the obvious big things like the actual quilty-type project that’s basted with batting and backing and thread and needles that are appropriate for it and of course that well oiled sewing machine, here are the smaller essentials that I always keep within easy reach (clockwise from top left–more or less!): Continue reading →

Quilt Marking with a Circle Template

Posted by Nadine

I’ve been working on a wild little “black and white and red all over” type quilt, and before I could get to one of my favorite parts–that would be the machine quilting!–I had to mark it. Well, I didn’t have to mark it I suppose, but I didn’t think trying to freehand quilt a bunch of oversized clam shells was going to end well. My perfectionist side would have come out of the corner screaming the minute things started to go wonky, as they undoubtedly would without some premarking!

The search for the circle template began; Continue reading →

Patchwork Tree and Half-Rectangle Triangles

Posted by Nadine

Here’s a little peek at a new quilt I’m designing:

Mmmmm, green. If I had to choose a favorite color, it would have to be green. I love, love, LOVE greens! And I had such fun just pulling these few fabrics together, some from my stash, some from the quilt shop, and some I ordered online.

I wanted to have a tree as the center piece of the quilt, and the tree block that I liked the best had half-rectangle triangles, which caused me some issues. I was thinking that you could just make them the same way that half-square triangles are made, by cutting the rectangles, drawing a diagonal line across the middle and sewing ¼” to each side of the drawn line then cutting apart. Continue reading →

Quilt Ruler Manufacturing Report–Good News at Last!

Posted by Nadine

I’ve been keeping a bit quiet about the progress on the InchieSee & InchieDo Viewer Tool & Ruler Set because I wanted to wait and see how everything worked out with the new manufacturer. I was also waiting to post until I had something fairly positive in the way of an expected availability date to share as well. I’m thrilled to tell you that the new manufacturer that I’ve been working with is none other than Rulersmith, the same company that manufactures the Omnigrid rulers!

I received the prototypes of my tools from Rulersmith two weeks ago, and let me tell you, they are awesome! They are every bit as wonderful as I hoped they would be in the beginning, and the quality is, of course, perfect. The ruler is absolutely perfect just as it is, and the tool only requires a very minor modification to be perfect as well. If only I’d been able to find this company before I’d gone so far with the first one! (I looked, I really did, but somehow didn’t find Rulersmith until the second go round, and I don’t even remember how I found it then!) My experience with Rulersmith has been completely opposite in every way to the one I had with the other company.

I sent Dave at Rulersmith pdf files of my designs (instead of the original Corel Draw files, Photoshop files, graphics and fonts, etc.), and from just those pdf files, his team drafted the designs and made the prototypes that were perfect and nearly perfect. Continue reading →

Coming Soon! Inchie Quilts

Posted by Nadine

This was a great way to wake up:

Even without the picture of the cover, it’s still a pretty awesome feeling to see your own book listed at Amazon.com! This caused quite a stir in our house on Saturday morning! The book is also listed at the AQS site, in the Upcoming Releases section and on it’s own page, and you can actually see a picture there as well as a short description.

Now that the book is listed at the AQS site and the mother of all book shopping sites, my editor has given the go ahead and I can share the actual cover art and subject material with you! So, without further ado, I give you Inchie Quilts: