Asterisks Baby Quilt

One of my office mates at work was having a baby shower. I do not work with her in the same team but I got a chance to know her over the duration of working on the social committee. We organized a one day event for the office and there were several committees. We were part of social committee. My office mate is full of enthusiasm and mentioned that she sang in her church choir and hence felt at ease in leading the choir for the event.

Well, over the course of planning the event we shared in her pregnancy journey. When an invite was sent out for a baby shower, I decided to make her a baby quilt instead of donating money towards common gifts.

I had completed this  class from Crafty on  block of the month 2012. It was a free class led by Amy Gibson and I really wanted to try this asterisk pattern. She had two different versions and I opted for the non-wonky version for this quilt.

We knew it was going to be a baby boy so I decided to use blue as one of the main colors. The printed fabric had hearts in blue and yellow and so yellow was also added to the mix and white was an obvious choice to match the printed fabric which also ensured that the quilt did not end up to be a maize and blue quilt representing the Michigan Go Blue colors!

 I love how the arms of the asterisk line up when looking from a distance.

 The binding has all the three colors used for making the asterisks and reads "mummy loves me, daddy loves me, God loves me". It takes time to stitch this on the entire border and in the future I might increase the spacing between the words. The extra detail gives a very good personal touch to the finished quilt.

 I used the stitch in the ditch method for quilting and traced out all the straight lines of the asterisks. If I had more time, I might have tried some of the free motion quilting (FMQ) but did not feel confident enough to try that as yet. That is one of my goals to try FMQ on my sewing machine.

 This picture was taken on the balcony of my apartment and shows my potted herb garden collection!

It was a joy to see the expression of my friends face when she opened the package and everyone in the room gasped. It was fun creating this baby quilt - I enjoyed every part of the process of choosing the fabric, piecing and quilting. I forgot to measure the dimensions of the final completed quilt - should do that in the future for my own reference.

Sewing Tools

I bought my Janome sewing machine only this year in January. I will write another post explaining my sewing machine and how and why I decided to buy this particular sewing machine.

When I finally bought the sewing machine, I wanted to begin sewing immediately, that is just my nature to get into the thick of things and begin working. I had been reading up some blog posts about quilting and knew that I wanted to try some quilting before venturing out into sewing garments.

So my first set of tools that I bought included this friskars cutting mat set. The set included an extra large mat, a clear acrylic ruler and a rotary cutter all for a discounted price of $27, originally priced at $55. It seems like the set is still on sale on amazon. Using the cutting mat at first seemed very alien and on reading experiences from other crafters in the community is seems that this is not unusual. I watched a couple of videos and figured out the techniques in using the cutting mat and the acrylic rules and the rotary cutter to cut fabric. All the three items in the set are needed to cut fabric for the purposes of quilting. The rotary cutter slides along the ruler and gives clean edges.I am sure the mat and the rotary cutter could be used for cutting other materials like paper and leather too.

Although I did purchase these friskars scissors too, the rotary cutter is a big step up from using scissors to cut fabric. It totally revolutionizes the process of cutting fabric precisely for purposes of making quilts. The rotary cutter, with its super sharp blade made it extremely easy to cut through nine layers of fabric, something that I had to do my first nine patch quilt. I would exercise extreme caution while using the rotary cutter, so far I have not had any accidents but have read of several mishaps. I use my rotary cutter only for fabrics just so that I do not dull the blades, just like keeping a separate pair of scissors only for fabric.

I love using my cutting mat, the grid lines make it convenient to align fabric correctly and precisely before cutting. Both the surfaces of the cutting mat have grid lines and could be used to cut fabric. I used the cutting mat to iron my pieces once, only to realize that the mat does not behave well with heat. Thankfully the slight warping was not permanent and the board regained its original structure when cooled. Henceforth no heated surfaces come in contact with my board. I also store the board flat so that it does not bend or fold.

I am very pleased with my first purchase, I feel it was money well spent and would recommend this super value for money deal to anyone thinking of doing some serious crafting.

I have a whole list of other quilting tools to buy, like these rulers that would make it so much easier to cut squares. I would love to hear about your experiences using rulers and which are your "must-haves" for quilting.

My Sewing Machine

I bought my sewing machine in the beginning of 2015 and this blog post has been in the draft, unpublished state until then! I will write more about the how, which and why I bought the sewing machine but for now it would suffice to say that it was a gift from my mother-in-law!

I remember using my mom's Singer sewing machine as a child. It was a mechanical sewing machine that my mom received from her own mother. There was a leather cord that had to be wound over the balance wheel and the large wheel on the side. Ever so often the cord would come off and the key in putting it back on was to begin with the pulley on top and then slide it over the large wheel. Sometimes the metal pin that held the edges of the cord would wear off and break apart. This catastrophe would cause a major disruption in the sewing project unless a spare cord was on hand. Sometimes my dad would step in and fix the cord with a metal hook.  I still have fond memories of using the sewing machine. I found it thrilling to wind the bobbin, by resting the rim of the bobbin on the balance wheel through a screwdriver or a pen. The machine had a single straight stitch but there was no limit on the number of garments and curtains that were sewn using it.

When I  moved out of home for graduate studies, I often wished to own a sewing machine. And who wouldn't want one? Especially after spending hours in mending and altering a pair of jeans, or fixing a rip in the sheets by hand stitching. Not to mention all the cool projects that could be completed in the spare time.
I put off buying the machine in an attempt to drive the focus on getting out of school faster and made excuses for not having the space to carry out my projects. Isn't it funny that sometimes when you keep telling yourself stuff that you actually begin to believe it?

Well when I graduated last year and family visited for the ceremonies, my mother-in-law expressed her desire to gift me a sewing machine for no apparent reason at all. My husband denies sharing my interest in sewing and so this affirms my belief that eventually, the Universe, the Spirit, God or whatever higher power one believes in, makes sure that your deepest desires are fulfilled. I was shocked and thrilled when she offered to buy me a brand new sewing machine of my choice.

I spent almost four months in doing my research, reading reviews and checking out demos before I finally settled on Janome memory craft 9900. During my review stage, one of the common questions asked by the sales staff was "what is your current/last machine?" After my first demo I stopped telling that the only other machine I used was my mother's mechanical Singer where I used my feet to set the pedal in motion. I realized very fast that I am taking a quantum leap across different worlds of sewing machines!

The fact that my new machine has no pedal to drive it and comes with over 200 stitches and besides, winding the bobbin can also thread the needle for me! It seemed like the world of sewing had evolved in leaps and bounds since I last used my mom's sewing machine.

My goal is use every feature on the sewing machine before settling down on my favourite. I love that I can personalize my projects using the embroidery feature. I can use the inbuilt stitches to type out text. I hope to document the many projects I create using this machine on this blog. I hope to challenge myself to take up advanced projects eventually getting to sewing garments for my wardrobe. I hope share my journey on this blog and over a period of time reflect on my evolution. 

I would love to hear about cool features of sewing machines that other folks own. Something that they discovered and found very handy to use - there is growth in knowledge sharing. My husband says that the machine is more expensive and powerful than is laptop; enough reasons for him to upgrade :-)  As for me, I am very happy with my machine and just so thankful and grateful to my MIL for her generosity!