Where've Ya Been?

It’s been quite a while since my last post,  but I have a good excuse....

This happened! That makes it sound like I had an accident, but that's not the case... apparently, my rotator cuff has been wearing away over time like a piece of cheap fabric until finally it ripped in half like a hole in the knee! (It figures I would have a health problem brimming with sewing metaphors.) For over a year, I had been having excruciating shoulder pain which at first was controllable by cortisone shots, but by the end of this summer, was totally unbearable and left no choice but surgery.

Initially, I feared all the hooping and free motion quilting finally caught up with me... But NO! My doctor assured me, it is just because of my AGE! Which I guess is good news, because I do intend to hoop and free-mo some more for quite a few years yet. A benefit of enjoying a pastime associated with grannies is that you’re never forced into retirement.

Not having any MLB pitcher friends to tell me about their experience, I went into it totally not knowing what to expect. When I went a couple of days before surgery to get fitted for a sling, I was not offered the cute pink silk version with Swarovski crystals I had in my mind--but this horrendous black appendage with huge foam brick attached to it and no less than four straps! At that moment, my heart sank.

It has been slow going, but the good news is I am eight weeks out already. I burned the black appendage couple of weeks ago and apparently, my new seams are holding strong. Many thanks to my OTHER right hand, Meg, not to mention the rest of the gang who kept the business running flawlessly. My biggest concern was keeping the Baltimore Album series going…did you notice the huge lapse of time between the September and October blocks? Well, the November block will be out in just a day or so, and we're even hoping to have December’s block (last one!) by the first week of that month... can't believe the whole year has gone by!

The bad news… having any sort of Christmas Club this year was just not possible. But as I am so fond of saying, there's always next year. We are hoping to pull off some shorter notice fun like a 12 days of Christmas series... With a little free charm version and an upgrade every couple of days after Thanksgiving. Even saying that makes me fearful I can’t keep up, but I’ve always wanted to do it, so I reserve the right to finish it in January if needed!! It wouldn't be San Francisco Stitch Co. if we weren't behind a bit.

As soon a s I could sew two pieces of fabric together I did, and that combined with not being able to drive and stuck home, I finished the first of my road trip quilts of valor. Not sure my doctor would have approved, but the joy of it kept me off of pain meds! :-)

We also have an exciting new plan for 2017... some of you know I was a quilter before I was a machine embroiderer… I have partnered with an award-winning quilt designer to offer our first ever quilt BOM patterns in 2017... these do not have machine embroidery, but are strictly for quilters. Each month there will be a new block with a project idea, or you can save your blocks and make a full-size quilt. We hope you'll join the fun and tell your quilting friends! Apparently, “Tropical” was quite the new trend at Quilt Market this year, and we are ahead of the game. This will keep your sanity in the winter months to come. Sneak peek… below.

So that’s what has been going on in our world! Let us know what’s happening in yours below… we LOVE to hear from you. XOX

What's in YOUR Threadbox?

Here's a little peek at the secret life of our thread... and a little discussion of our own color mantra.

We'd love you to join in with your observations down below!

Just a little look at our green drawer will tell you a lot... no, we're not partial to one brand of thread. Sulky, Madeira, Magnifico, YLI, and even AdMelody live in perfect harmony here. You've seen our bumper stickers... you know, "Coexist." Once, upon a time, an intern had them all organized by hue, shade, and tint, but that was days ago and this is where we are now.

The truth is, you can argue about the color fastness, durability, and strength of all of these brands, but to us, having the absolute perfect color needed at any given moment trumps all. We'll let the machine embroidery archivists deal with the faded, shredded mess of our stitch outs in 100 years--immortality was never a goal of ours, and in 1,000,000 years anyway our Sun will breathe its last anyway, thus turning the lights off on our little corner of the universe. So we're living for the moment.

Having a business where all this thread is a write off and sometimes even a gift is a big advantage, but even if you don't, we do find ourselves reaching for some of the same colors again and again. Here's the lowdown on our essentials.

Yup! Here's the perfect pair... although black and white in the purest form do not really occur anywhere in nature, they're are bound to be in just about every embroidery design... if only the highlight in an eye, or the darkest single stitched line in a shadow. So be sure to never run out! We buy the big spools.

Add a beautiful cream and a smooth, warm gray and you have a quartet. If these were the only four colors you could have, think about it... any design, from floral, to seasonal, to decor, could be reduced down to these four values and would stitch out, without fail, to be the classiest, simplest, most sophisticated thing you'd ever seen. Need proof? Here's our brand new Summer's End flower basket reduced to a fabulous four:

LOVE!

But in the end, ROY G. BIV was right. A little pop of color is a good thing. So for our next thread essentials, be sure to have the following always in your arsenal: a fire engine red, carrot orange, bright yellow, grass green, royal blue, and purple.

Now we're going to expand our rainbow... to your red, a little burgundy makes a great dark accent. And in general, a light, medium, and dark tone is all you need for some beautiful shading. Although not the greatest fans of pink, we have hot pink, medium pink, and light pink just for flowers.

 To shade through orange to yellow, pick a golden orange, then a gold, a bright yellow, and a pale one.

 Leaves can usually be stitched effectively with just two shades.... but who can resist a hunter green...

 To your blue, add a pale and a navy... purple is already a dark color, so just add a lavender.

 We are not big into browns, not being neutral types at all, but you do need a couple... we love rust, a light brown, and where would we be without chocolate?

So those are our essentials... just 25 in all. But quilters are allowed their fabric stashes, so embroiderers may have their spools... be sure to always have your favorite colors, in thread. A design stitched in YOUR colors will never go badly. Left to right, we love gold.  And yellow orange was my personal favorite crayon color from kindergarten on, back in the day before the 64 pack came out with the fancy names like Macaroni and Cheese and Mauvelous. Next, peach--- so much easier on our eyes and dearer to our hearts than pink, and our favorite fruit to boot... and why not try a variegated or metallic, too?

So what's in your thread box? Do you have lifelong favorites or do your colors come and go with the wind? Are you a brand snob? We'd love to hear about it!

The End of the Road... Road Trip 2016

Our 2016 Road Trip is over, and the summer with it! So here's one last look at the ride.We'll show you how we added our borders, and also how our Quilts of Valor are coming along. And if you make to the end, there's even a cute kitty picture!

In case you have been feeling tired lately, here's why! If we had actually driven this, it was 6,883 miles, or 109 hours and 6 minutes in the car. (I love MapQuest.) That side trip to Vegas was worth it, though, don't you think? 

But what we really did, was sew 212,750 stitches. If every stitch was a mile, we drove around the earth 8-1/2 times. ( I love math.) So that is definitely taking armchair travel to new lengths!

Now back to reality. Here's a quick photo tutorial if you'd like to add borders like ours. Just load the design provided on the Road Trip web page with 2 layers of heavy stabilizer in a 5" x 7" hoop. Pick two colors; one for the words and one for the stars. We used white, then blue. We made four of these in all for all four sides.

Unhoop and trim your pieces apart right on the stitched line between them. Cut them into 2-1/2" high strips. Then cut 1/2" away from the letters on each side. At this point, remove as much stabilizer as you can, and trim up any of the larger jump stitches between the letters.

Sew the saying together with 1/4" seam. 

Pick a corner accent fabric, (we used a navy blue with stars), cut two pieces 2-1/2" square, and sew one to each end of the piece; there's extra, so just trim it even with the sides of your main piece.

Do the same for the top border. Then the side borders are done the same way as well, except out of the corner fabric, you'll need a longer scrap, roughly 5" x 2-1/2," for the ends of the side pieces.
Voila! (I love saying, "Voila.")

If you are too tired at the end of this whole trip, just buy some nice red, white, and blue fabric, cut it to 2-1/2" strips and use that for a border. Or you could just make one saying for the bottom border and do the rest out of fabric. It's all about you. <3

We were SO tired after last year's trip, nothing ever happened with it! So this year, we plan to finish it. These big breaks in projects are something you may have noticed with your own work-- it's okay, it's just a bit of resting time before it becomes clear what the embroidery wants to be. Sort of like dough resting. There are no UFOs in our studio-- just resting dough.

Et Voila!

And look how impressive they look together! Makes us want to go ahead and digitize every city in the whole world, huh!

And finally, in between cities this Road Trip, we did get a few more star blocks finished for our Quilts of Valor-- that is what we will have when this project is fully baked. A little photoshoppin' here, folks, but honestly, we're pretty close to finishing one now that the centers are done.

And that makes it a wrap! We were going to post a picture of a sunset last to symbolize the end of the road for Summer 2016... but all we could really pull up was one of the office cat taking a sip of water from his teacup while the rest of us groveled on the floor with the above quilt blocks. 

If you enjoyed the road trip, please comment below with your first name, town, state, country... it's like carving our names in a tree when we all reached Seattle. Happy Fall! <3

Local Quilt Show Faves!

Last time I showed off some ribbons I won from a local quilt show—the Bayberry Quilters of Cape Cod put on this show earlier this month with the theme “Cabins on the Beach.” Now I have attended many, many national shows, and while beautiful, they can get a bit repetitive with the same winners all the time. But let me tell you the talent just on Cape Cod is amazing—you may have noticed, artists always pick nice places to congregate, and Cape Cod is full of artists! Judging by the show, quilting is alive and well in this corner of Massachusetts. Here is just a handful of my favorite pieces this year.

Let’s start with critters, because in this part of the country, you will find plenty of them!

This was one my absolute favorites… an original piece by Cathy Papazian entitled “Salt Marsh Shorebirds.” The birds have wonderful bead eyes and the fabrics are just perfect.

This is one of those animal quilts designed by Elizabeth Hartman—you’ve probably seen the foxes, the bears, bunnies, porcupines—sometimes one has glasses on—this is the first time I’ve seen whales, but I never get tired of them. Her Aviatrix pattern is on my bucket list. This one is stitched by Rada Elegant and called “A Whale of a Good Time” which I am sure is describing the fun she had making it! I looked for a whale with glasses, but didn’t see one. I guess whales aren't as nearsighted as some other creatures seem to be.

Lots of critters in this one! This is “Beach Walk” by my friend Tere D’Amato. Lately she’s been winning prize money with original work in AQS shows, but in her “formative” years she made this amazing kit! I was the one who encouraged her to enter it—she felt because it wasn’t original, it wasn’t up to snuff. She took a second place—wasn’t I right, AS USUAL.

For my last critter quilt fave, I just loved this because after “Easter Sunrise,” it was nice to see someone else had bunnies on the brain! And it was hung right next to mine-- so cute together! It is “The Carrot Farmer” by Jean Howes. Jean—I believe we are soul mates!

Next up is favorite pieced quilts—I love piecing and I really admire it done well.

This is one of the most complicated and beautiful log cabins I’ve ever seen—plus it was huge! This is Carol Salerno’s “Chocolate is Sweet But my Honey is Sweeter.” But I'll be that blue ribbon was pretty sweet, too!

A beautiful, modern quilt: Laurie LaConte, “Color Cubes.” Beautiful colors and the quilting was just simple and sensational. I love the transparency and it reminds me of a clear plastic construction toy we had years ago in my family "Play Plax..." Does anyone else remember it? Happy memories.

An on to embroidery… I am always lecturing to this group about machine embroidery, and I guess I will have to keep on, because so far there's not a lot out there! Gorgeous hand applique is where it's at for this group and who can blame them.

A Sue Spargo block of the month, “Creem Treat” by Gloria Farmer. Gorgeous, gorgeous work—it did not get a ribbon, so that tells you something about the level of competition at this show because it was a wonderful piece! One of my personal favorites.

A blue ribbon for handwork! I think that this is an original piece—it is by Audrey Germer entitled “Many Happy Hours.” I think that pretty much describes how we feel when making these things. And this one was many, many, many, many hours, I am sure! Audrey won a blue ribbon in another category for handwork as well—obviously a very talented, not to mention patient, person.

Finally, this was the Best in Show— Anne Messier won for “Folk Art Baskets.” Every year, some amazing hand appliqued quilt wins the day—some year will it be a gorgeous machine embroidered piece? I certainly hope so!

"The Making of Easter Sunrise"

If you can have Christmas in July, you can certainly have Easter in August! This is the story of how I finished my sample of the Spring Cottages collection that was for sale last spring.

Although machine embroidery is the great love of my life, my roots are in quilting. After buying my first embroidery machine in 2002, it was actually a matter of years before the light bulb went off in my head... embroider, then add batting and backing right in the hoop, and you can quilt.

I've always wanted to see what a large, fully finished piece of this nature could look like. "Computerized" is the next frontier for quilting. First, we hand quilted, then by machine, and longarm; each method had to wait its time for acceptance. The mere word "computerized" implies that some of the artistry has been removed--I'd love to challenge that notion and fully explore the technique.

Enter the Spring Cottages. I added a checkered border and pinned it to my design wall with so many other unfinished embroidered pieces. But the creative juices were still flowing. The first thing I did was enter it in a local show a couple of months off-- what more motivation do you need to finish a piece than that!

I took a photo, printed it full scale, and did a tracing paper overlay. Starting with some landscaping between the houses, a rising sun and clouds popped up on the horizon.  I then added some of my other favorite things: dragonflies, fields and daffodils. And being Easter at the time, it wasn't long before bunnies were hiding eggs in the grass!

To prepare for more embroidery, I added three layers of batting-- 2 poly blend and one wool, and a cute Easter Egg backing fabric. Past experience  told me that's what I'd need for maximum pouf-- to hold up to thousands of embroidery stitches. Starting with the trees, one by one, I digitized each element, then hooped, and stitched, again and again.

Over a matter of weeks in my spare time at night, I digitized each new piece and stitched it on. Sky, then clouds, sun, fields and daffodils.

While reading up on quilt shows, I learned that most required a perimeter of 100" or more to move out of the miniature category. I needed a bigger piece- that was the inspiration for my bunny border! While fun to design, the border fought me in construction--- there's at least 6 yds. of extra bunnies hopping on my design wall. I learned that if you need a mirror image of something, rotating it 180 degrees does not do it, and was reminded of that quite a few times! The borders also had to fit perfectly-- I had no idea how much shrinkage was going to occur with a piece this heavily embroidered, so more restitching.

Of course, I finished just a day before it had to be at the show-- tired, but very, very excited! Every inch of this piece has been fully embroidered--how many completely digitized and hooped pieces are in these quilt shows? I haven't seen many-- maybe it's because no one else is crazy enough to do it!  

I firmly believe in happy endings and my little Easter Sunrise deserves one, so here it is:

You like me! You really like me!<3

QOV

    After last year's Road Trip we were exhausted!  We thought the finished embroidery would make a fantastic center to a red, white, and blue quilt and photoshopped this plan with some really vague instructions for our customers, not really intending to pursue it anytime soon, end of story.

     In truly the most surprising email in 14 years of business, our stitch along friend, Joanelle from Meridian, Idaho, sent us her project photo a surprisingly short time after. It is no secret and we don't try to hide it: some of our customers are POWERHOUSES, way beyond anything that comes out of this studio. We were quite bowled over!

    So here we are starting another yearly road trip. We pulled out the embroidery from last year, which has been serving time pinned to a design wall.  There wasn't enough red, white, and blue fabric in the "stash" to make a quilt top; really, there wasn't much, and a lot of the prints were pretty inappropriate. So we went online found a gorgeous kit on Keepsake Quilting's website, "Stripes and Stars." 

     It's a precut thing: jelly rolls, layer cakes, and charm packs and is amazingly well organized to put together simple star blocks and strip borders. There's enough in the kit to make about 22 blocks; add a little extra and you could get 24. We have six already, done just between embroidery thread changes, of course!

     Here's the plan so far-- so while the kit was pricey, we will end up with two quilts out of it, two finished road trip projects, with an amount of work that is very manageable.

 
And yes, you have guessed by the title! It has been on our bucket list for the past couple of years to make a Quilt of Valor. Here we are living the charmed life, but one only has to turn on the TV to realize this carefree existence has been bought and paid for at great price. Volumes could be written about that! We may swap out the "Road Trip" block and make one that says "Let Freedom Ring" or maybe "From Sea to Shining Sea" which is a bit more in keeping... we will make these available for you as well. Our local guild has a person who longarm quilts these things for free, by the dozen.
Two quilts eady for giving in time for Veteran's Day? That's the plan... we will keep you posted!

   

My Very First Quilt

I grew up in a sewing home. My mom frequently made my sister and I clothes, more for enjoyment than out of economic necessity. Kenmore sewing machine, scissors, and thread surrounded me and there were frequent trips to Joann Fabric. By the time I reached middle school, I could make a dress, too.

It wasn’t until high school when the “obsession” officially began. My mom took a day trip with some of her church friends, into the heart of Amish country—the Kutztown Fair. Ironically, I wasn’t even present, but they all came back on fire to make a quilt, and a spark flew off in my direction. (As far as I know, my mom was the only one who did actually make one.  <3)

Mom bought a book to help her get started and once again, a seed fell on some fertile ground. I have laughingly referred to it since as “the book that changed my life.” Let’s Make a Patchwork Quilt” was about making a sampler, and was divided into easy, intermediate and advanced blocks. I leafed through it a hundred times. Of course, the “advanced” section held my interest most, and one particular block caught my eye: the Virginia Star.

 

"The Book That Changed My Life"

So it began. Diamonds were lovingly cut from a cardboard template, one piece at a time.  I remember working on it especially right after college graduation, in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, in between job interviews. It was such a treat to take it out and sew--- a guilty pleasure on days when I probably should have been making phone calls and pounding the pavement. I knew that one part of life was ending and a new one starting—one that might not include many sewing days. A phone call might come any moment, with a job offer and a place to be 40 hours a week, catapulting me into adult life.

Adult life did begin and it took a couple of years, but here’s my very first quilt:

My Very First Quilt

It spent its first years on my Brooklyn bed, as a young bride. In our first home, my husband “lovingly” cut holes in the binding to insert a rod—he felt it was a piece of art, deserving to be on the wall. I, having no concept of a hanging sleeve, lovingly agreed. Still later, a little four year old boy took a marker to it, for which he received quite a tongue lashing, but those marks are now a happy memory. Thirty five years later, my quilt and I are now antiques, but serve as a reminder how God held me through the anxiety of finding that first job and many roads and travels good and bad after.

Feeling nostalgic now that my last baby left for college, I took it out the other day. I have to say, my piecing is still exquisite—unfortunately the SID on top of it, somewhat less so, not so in the ditch! The holes in the binding have not self-healed. And some stitching has come apart, thankfully, all on seams. Add to that, probably during some time in box between moves, a water stain took hold. I gave my quilt a good soak—although I can’t remember where I left my purse, I clearly recall pre-washing those fabrics so many years ago, so it washed up beautifully. A new binding, and some stitches-in-time are ahead, and who knows—wouldn’t some fabulous machine embroidered feathers look amazing in between those stars? You’re never too old for a makeover. <3