Beth Ferrier’s Blog

It occurred to me that all of the designs for the new applique book are florals. Although, with my love of flowers, I can hardly understand why, all florals might just limit its appeal. Frankly, it stumped me! Why applique anything else? Oh, geesh, this is bad. I’ve really lost it now.

Not only should it be not floral, this new design also needed to illustrate some of the concepts I want to cover in chapter three: playing with thread.

Apparently all the head shaking jarred something loose. I remembered a “pet” project that always seemed to get pushed aside. It would be perfect for this application!

Off to the computer to create the simple outline. It’s tempting to get too detailed at this point. All I really need is the most basic of shapes. Detail can come later, in fabric choices and placement.

This is the print out from the computer, trimmed so that I can glue the two parts together. The next step is to create the freezer paper shapes.

I’ve been collecting polka dots for ages, no specific project in mind, just for whatever. As I prepared the freezer paper shapes it seemed clear that this kitty cat needed dots, and lots of them.

Here you can see the body of the cat, wrong side up, already fused to the freezer paper. Don’t the face parts look silly sitting there on the cutting table?

This is why we need a stash. It would be really hard to find all of these dotty fabrics in one shopping trip. Most of these are just fat quarters, even the body of the cat fits on one fat quarter. I would rather have four different fat quarters than one yard of anything else. Yardage makes me nervous. How about you? How do you collect fabric?

We’ve been working day and night to get ready for baby Alex’s first birthday party. Summer is a busy time for us in general, just trying to stave off the inevitable decline in an old house. Add in a celebration, and the push was on to gussy up the old girl (the house, not me) for the big day.

Alex was his usual precious self, a year old already. The party was fun, lots of family, lots of food and lots of laughter. You can see more pictures on Alex’s web page.

In the days since the party I’ve been regrouping in preparation for diving headlong into finishing the next applique book. I’ve made a terrible mistake in picking up a copy of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Oh my. Steamy and well told, who can write when there’s something like this to read?

I let a random number generator (what did we ever do before computers?) select the winners.

Debby wins Quilt along with Emilie Richards Endless Chain project book!

Dot in Portland wins the Lover’s Knot project book.

Lois Fisher wins the Touching Stars project book.

Ladies, please email me at beth @ applewd.com (remove the spaces, I’m trying to confound the spammers, silly me to think I can), with your snail mail addresses.

Thank you again to Emilie Richards for the opportunity to offer these books to you. I was excited to see how many of you are also new to Emilie’s books. It doesn’t matter how successful one might be, an author can always use new fans! I truly did enjoy the book, the characters were very real and engaging. Even though I hadn’t read any of the earlier books in the series I didn’t feel as though I’d come in at the middle. I do want to find the other books in the series, though, because I just like the way Emilie tells a story.

In the meantime, the most precious grandson in the universe is about to turn one. We will be having a celebration for him here next weekend. Which means we’ve been working like crazy to get the gardens and house up to snuff. When you own an old house the work is never done. If you think of it as chores, though, it will drive you crazy. We like to consider the house as our (mostly) favorite hobby, almost a member of the family.

This spring we removed the boxwoods from the front of the house. They were too big and too close to the house. That part of the yard gets very little sunlight. It was also time to repaint the front of the house. The boys finished the job this weekend, finally it was time to replant. A trip to my favorite garden center was in order to search for shade plants.

Isn’t this lovely? A robin’s nest right there in the pots of ferns! Momma robin perched a short distance away, remarkably patient while we shopped. A chirp every now and then reminded us that she was watching.

I don’t think there is a prettier color than robin’s egg blue.

The quilting is done on Pinwheels and Posies. All that is left to do is the binding, and I’ll be sewing that on right after this post is done. Yippie!

I thought I’d use this opportunity to answer some of the questions that have arrived in the comments. So, in no particular order…

Kim asked about batting. Even though I’ve tried other types of batting from time to time, I always come back to Hobb’s 80/20 Heirloom cotton. I buy it by the bolt. I love the drape, and it has just the right amount of loft to show off the quilting design.

Teresa wondered if the ditch stitching interfered with the quilting pattern. I know that some quilters begin by stitching in the ditch between the blocks. When I get to the quilting part I try to look at the quilt as a whole cloth, not a bunch of individual blocks. I stitch in the ditch between the piecing and the background, not between the blocks.

To begin, I stitched in the ditch around the applique using Superior’s Rainbow, color number 837, which I apparently love well enough to buy three times. To answer Louisa’s question, yes, I use free motion stitching and not a walking foot to do the stitch in the ditch. It’s so much easier to do intricate stitching when I don’t have that big foot in the way, and even better, don’t have to keep adjusting the quilt. It’s a great warm-up exercise for me as well, free motion ditching gets me back in the quilting groove.

Since I still hadn’t decided how I was going to quilt the blocks I decided to quilt the background. The fill pattern is a combination of windshield wipers (or bouncing bananas, if you’re a Diane Gaudynski fan like me) and swirls. I used Superior Thread’s Bottom Line in color number 633, it matches the background fabric perfectly. Unlike many of my recent quilts I wanted the quilting to be seen as texture, and not the stitched line, more of a supporting character, not the star of the show.

Along that train of thought, I only stitched in the ditch around the appliques. For that I used Presencia’s Rayon (Article 711, thirty-five weight) in colors 1214 (yellow), 3351 (blue) and 1638 (pink). I also used Sulky’s 40 wt rayon in colors 1276 (green) and 1297 (purple). It’s my favorite thing to quilt veins into leaves but this quilt demanded that I keep the appliques simple.

 I also used the rayon threads to quilt the pieced blocks. I did my current favorite ferns in the chevrons and simple loopy things (technical term for sure) in the squares.

 And more little loopy things in the centers of the corner blocks. I left the rest of the pieced blocks unquilted so that they would have a little more dimension.

To answer Sharon’s question about removing the MicroTach’s tacks, I often remove them while I’m quilting. If I have a thumbnail then I’ll just pinch them off, just like dead-heading a flowering plant. I use a little thread snip to remove the remainders while I’m stitching down the binding. I try to be very careful that the tack parts don’t end up in my sewing machine’s bobbin case. I find them by running my hand over the quilt. The ones I miss are left there for students to find, so I can show them how small they really are.

So, I’m off to bind the quilt. I wonder where I put that binding. Any more questions?

P.S. Don’t forget to read Tuesday’s post on Sister’s Choice and get your comment in by Friday night for a chance to win a project book signed by Emilie Richards!

Reading has always been one of my favorite ways to unwind. Because I tend to dive in and forget the world around me. I used to feel guilty about reading when my boys were young. For however long it took for me to finish the book they would see only my eyebrows above the pages. Long simmering sauces were the meal of choice: easy to stir and read at the same time.

Kent was also not so crazy about being ignored while I devoured my books. Once, at a teacher’s conference he remarked (rather snidely, I might add) about how much I loved books. The teacher reached across the table, patted my hand and said, “good for you! What a wonderful example you’re setting for those boys!” So there!

When Emilie Richards contacted me about reviewing her newest book, Sister’s Choice, I jumped at the chance. If Kent wanted to give me guff about having my nose stuck in a book I could just say, hey, this is for work!

Now I know that Emilie Richards has written dozens of books. How could I have waited so long to read one? How did these terrific stories get past me all this time?

The latest in a series, Sister’s Choice is a tale of two sisters learning how to be grown ups together. Being the oldest of six sisters I enjoyed that the story was told mostly from the younger sister’s point of view. Like Kendra (the elder sis) in the book, I, too, was often the designated grown up in my family.

It’s a wonderful love story, stories actually. Sister love, romantic love and love of place. Oh, and did I mention there were quilts? I can’t wait to find the rest of the books in the series!

Sister’s Choice is in the book stores now. My local Barnes & Noble had them in stock. It’s also available from Amazon.

And now for some real summer time fun. Not only did Emilie send a copy of the book for me to read, she also sent three of the project books from the earlier titles to give away! And she signed them! How cool is that! They are very pretty books, lots of color and lots of quilts.

So, you have until midnight on July 4th, to leave a comment (one entry per person, please!). Tell us your favorite book, quilty or otherwise. I’ll draw the three lucky winners on Saturday morning.

Many moons ago the local quilt shop asked me to develop a class for beginning quilters. I started by making a list of the techniques and concepts that baffled me when I started quiltmaking. The Hidden Star Sampler pattern is the result.

It’s been one of my best selling patterns from the very beginning. How could I not make it up using my new fabric line?

I started as I always do when working from yardage, I stacked up my bolts to decide which fabric would join the party. Yes, the picture is a bit fuzzy. It’s more important to see value and colors than actual print, and has nothing to do with my lousy camera skills. That’s my story and I sticking with it.

 The focus or main fabric is draped over the rest of the selections. This way I can see how it relates to the other choices. Since this quilt is to be made from a collection, Audrey’s Garden from P&B to be exact, I would expect the fabric to get along. It’s a challenge to convince fabric manufacturers to be less matchy-matchy. I tried to work around that by making sure that the collection had a range of values.

Another lousy picture, sorry. (But at least the Garage-ma-hal is finally good for something quilty.) The Hidden Star Sampler as designed is already a pretty good sized quilt, but I wanted mine even bigger. (We have one of those ginormous pillow top mattresses.) And I wanted to use the stripe fabric.

So I decided to add an extra border. I chose to break the stripe into segments for two reasons. The first and most important reason was to break the line. If I hadn’t the middle of the quilt would have looked like it was in jail. The second reason was to be able to easily complete the cornerstone stars.

Quilting this is my next job after finishing up Pinwheels and Posies, which is coming along swimmingly.

Finally, finally, time to sew!

So that I can clear the decks for new projects I decided that I needed to finish a few. Yes, yes, that makes me one of those, a dreaded finisher, but I’m a very selective finisher. I admit to many projects that will never be finished. They get filed under “what was I thinking” and ultimately get given or thrown away.

Before the fun can begin we must first baste. This is a hump I still have to talk myself over. After thirty years of pin basting, and the agony that entails, my head still considers it as much fun as a sharp stick in the eye.

First the backing must be pressed and taped down. The pressing wouldn’t be necessary if I had basted the quilt when the backing was pieced. It was that little issue of disappearing seams that lead to a hiccup in the process.

And then my newest best friend, the Microtack basting gun makes very quick work of the basting. I love this thing! Anybody want a thousand number one nickel plated safety pins?

Almost always my first step is to stitch in the ditch, especially around the appliques. I’ve decided that I’m a touchy-feelly quilter. The close contact of guiding the needle around the shapes helps me decide what quilting design to use.

Just for grins I started by outlining the center block. My plan was to stitch that first. But how? Sometimes it helps to flip over the quilt and look at just the outline shapes to determine the design. It was interesting to me so I thought maybe I would trace the outlines onto practice fabric and test drive some patterns.

When I covered the block with this fabric I saw only the values of the fabric, and three concentric shapes. I traced it with water soluble ink just in case it bled through to the quilt top, and then stitched it out.

Just the act of stitching the lines started the ideas flowing about how to exploit the shapes. Interesting, huh? So, as so typical of me lately I started quilting the snot out of it. (That would be the technical term.)

I do like the channel quilting in the middle ring. But still, not quite right. The squares are small, the shapes confined. The fabric is happy and whimsical but this center design is, I don’t know, overwrought maybe?

So back to stitching in the ditch. Listen to the quilt. I know that sounds all artsy-fartsy, but it’s what I do. As I stitch slowly around each shape I study it, imagining stitching on it and in it.

I’m using Rainbow trilobal polyester thread by Superior. It’s one of my favorite threads for quilting because the veriegated colors are so spectacular. It is perfect for stitch in the ditch, giving just a little splash of color and spark, but perhaps it’s too fine for this quilt. Perhaps this project calls for something more substantial.

As I’m quietly and slowly stitching around the shapes I find myself thinking that maybe this happy little quilt doesn’t need a lot of flashy quilting. Maybe just a simple, swirly fill in the background fabrics, and a few understated lines in the applique and blocks, are all it needs.

Maybe for this quilt, less is more. We’ll see.

Long time, no blog, I know. Life has been blissfully uneventful. No big trips, deadlines are met for the summer, and the fabric line launch is mostly behind me.

What have I been doing? Just about everything but sewing.

I’ve been weeding the gardens, moving perennials and planting new ones. I’m so happy with my decision to stay home for the summer. For many years my travel committments have required that I lower my expectations for the gardens. It was impossible to keep up with them and everything else that teaching trips entail. This year I have been able to dig in knowing that I’ll be home to pick the flowers.

Then there’s the baking and cooking. Sunday Dinners with the kids are the highlight of my week. It’s a chance to catch up with the guys (and their girls). The weeks when Nate and Amanda (and Alex) are in town are extra special. The laughter around the table is tonic for the soul. As a parent it’s wonderful to know that all four boys not only get along but look out for each other. And the three young ladies they’ve brought into the family also fit like they’ve always been with us.

It’s been fun to try out new recipies. The dinner crowd has been my willing guinea pigs, gamely tasting just about everything we set out. My most recent success was recreating the melting chocolate cake that Kent enjoyed on the cruise. The first batch didn’t even make it to the dining room table! Everyone grabbed a spoon and dug into the individual cups right there in the kitchen.

Best of all, I’ve enjoyed being grandma. Alex is almost a year old. It’s so hard to believe, but in just a couple of weeks he’ll be one.

He’s got to be the happiest baby I’ve ever known. His bright blue eyes just twinkle with delight. Quick to smile, his toothy grin melts my heart. He coos and laughs and flirts. He’s sweetly shy, making his giggles twice as precious.

Cruising the furniture for now, it won’t be long before he takes those first steps.

 We had a delightful day recently, at Saginaw’s Childrens’ Zoo with his mom, his other grandma and several members of Amanda’s family. A picture perfect day, not too warm and lots of sunshine. What a blessed boy, this young man, to be loved by so many people.

He hasn’t yet said his first word, he doesn’t do chores or bring in a paycheck, and yet we adore him just because he is. What a lesson for his over-achiever grandma. It is possible to be loved “just because”. What else will you teach me, darling boy?

I’ve been a Detroit Tigers fan since I was a little girl. I remember sitting with my dad, pulling weeds in the garden and listening to the game on a tinny transistor radio. Living in northern Indiana, Detroit seemed like the Big City, very far away from our quiet life.

This week was my first chance to attend a game at Comerica Park. It’s a beautiful stadium. We were there with some of Kent’s coworkers, and 38 thousand of our closest friends.

They say in Michigan if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute, it will change. So it was for game day.

The dark skies seemed to be building up and flying by.

As the thunder and lightening grew near the upper decks were cleared. We had great seats under the canopies. We were able to stay put and watch the show Mother Nature provided.

 In just over an hour the storm passed, the tarps were rolled away and the game resumed. We were all kind of hoping for a rain out, we were behind 8-2 when the skies opened up. The Tigers lost, but it was still a good game.

On the way in we passed Elwood’s Grill. What’s a quilter to do, of course I had to snap a picture!

 Wouldn’t that an interesting design for a quilt?

Okay, I’m sure they’re not what most women would think of cute shoes. They aren’t strappy, or sparkly or high healed. But I have lusted after these shoes since I first saw them on Mickey Dupre’s blog.

Of course, by the time I saw them back in February they were long gone in the store, and not even available to order on line. I haunted the shoe store from time to time, but since I’m lacking the shopping gene, I rarely go to the mall.

I was so tickled when I saw that the shoes were back in. I had to special order my pair because I have great big feet, but they arrived in just a couple of days and fit perfectly. They are surprisingly comfortable. What a fun way to show off the dozens of pairs of socks I’ve knit on my travels.