Lessons Learned Linky #5

It's that time again--your chance to share what you have learned over the past month. If you didn't catch the linky last month, here are some highlights:
Katy at Katy Quilts shared how she uses a skateboard product to help with ruler work. While I suspect there may be a large overlap of cat people and quilters, I'm not so sure there are very many skateboarding quilters. How many of you are cat people? What about skateboarders? Therefore, I suspect she may have discovered a little-known solution to a common quilting problem.

KatyQuilts

Chris at Made by ChrissieD shared pointers for how to conquer y-seams and broken quilting stitches.

Made by ChrissieD

Made by ChrissieD

Sandra at The Bias Edge has a great system for organizing specialty acrylic rulers. I have employed her technique, so please remind me to check my binder when I forget where I put them.

 Before you take Lizzy House's Meadow class, Renee's tutorial for fixing the Meadow Quilt template is a must-read post.

Renee at Quilts of a Feather

Andree at Learning and Design: What a Combo shared her thoughts about placing art quilts together.

Andree at Learning and Design

This month brought about several new lessons for me too. First of all, keep your foot of the pedal when you are fishing around for threads. I knew better; I really did. But I put the needle through the tip of my finger anyway. Besides the grisly hassle of pulling a broken metal spike out of my finger, a  I'll refrain from posting a picture, as I don't appreciate gruesome photos personally. teeny hole in my fingernail, and the damage to my pride, I came away unscathed.

I also learned that some forms of contrast are more prominent than color, scale and value for example. I wish I had used something other than the Peal Bracelets and the less-than-subtle blue Hoffman print in the background of the seahorse I tested for Juliet of Tartan Kiwi.

My pressing board looks like I've screen-printed it with an odd pink shark head due to the combination of ironing badges on a red vest, and my abysmal level of focus. Any tips of getting badges to quit peeling off would be welcome.

In another less-than-brilliant move, I pinned an entire quilt before realizing that my backing came up short on one end.  I really should have peeked behind the batting much, much sooner.

Also, I think hoarding collecting may be hereditary. This photo captures the contents of my son's coat pocket. 

Here's the details for the link-up:

• By sharing here, you give me permission to feature your post on Quilting Mod (including a photo) with proper attribution and a link to the original.
• Spread the comment love.
• Link back to this post. I have a button you can grab below.
• Multiple posts are fine so long as they are from this month.

At the end of the month, one lucky linker will win a super EPP hexy prize pack. Update: Carol McDowell of Quilted Fabric Art won the prize pack.

Grab the Button:

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An InLinkz Link-up

Lessons Learned Linky #4

Welcome to the April installment of Lessons Learned Linky, where I encourage you to share your tutorials, discoveries, and revelation-inducing mishaps so that we can all learn from each other.
I learned some really useful things from my fellow quilters this past month.
Anne at Hudson Valley Quilts explained why updating your quilting rulers may be a good idea in her first installment of a four part series on measuring skills quilters can't live without. Like her, I have a huge square ruler (affiliate link), and love it.
Julie at Pink Doxies made an excellent point about how the weight of your embroidery floss can impact the ease of hand quilting.
Jennifer at The Inquiring Quilter gives some tips about making rag quilts.
Juliet at The Tartan Kiwi discussed how the scale of a fabric print can impact your quilt. I'll be pattern testing her seahorse pattern. So awesome!
Kitty at Night Quilter shared some of her favorite finishing tools and techniques. I use self-threading needles, and have the Hera marker on my shopping list now.
Beth at Cooking Up Quilts gave me the idea to use gripper pads for gripping a quilt during free-motion.  I tried this, and can attest that it worked really well.
Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl explained how to use tailor's tape as a straight line reference when long-arming and how to add a subtle detail to binding.
Jayne at Twiggy and Opal proved to me that sometimes we are our own worst critics, and often our mistakes could easily go unnoticed by others.
Julie at The Crafty Quilter has a wonderful video and tutorial on using machine embroidery stitches when appliquéing. I, for one, underutilize my decorative stitches, and can benefit from her expertise.

Lesson Learned

This month I realized a few things about free-motion quilting. First, it's a good idea to do some mental calculating about how long it takes you to do a particular free-motion motif (say, pebbles, for instance) before you commit to an entire background of that design. Secondly, while using a matching thread color may create lovely thread texture while deemphasizing bobbles, it simultaneously hides the thread as you quilt with it. This makes it awfully hard to tell where you've been, and where you are going.

Here's the low-down:

• By sharing here, you give me permission to feature your post on Quilting Mod (including a photo) with proper attribution and a link to the original.
• Spread the comment love.
• Link back to this post. I have a button you can grab below.
• Multiple posts are fine so long as they are from this month.

At the end of the month, one lucky linker will win two fat quarters of Flock Together by Kathy Doughty for FreeSpirit Fabric.
Update: KatyQuilts is the winner!

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An InLinkz Link-up

Lessons Learned Linky #3

Thanks for dropping by the March segment of the Lessons Learned Linky, a special place to share all the things you discover in your quilting journey in an effort to spare others the distress of learning the hard way.
If there's anything I'm skilled at, it's making mistakes. So here are my astute observations from last month. Firstly, you may remember the new Add-A-Quarter Plus Ruler I introduced to you with a free snowflake pattern. The following picture illustrates its proper use. The skinny side is also good for scraping difficult to grasp fabric debris off your cutting mat and into the trash. What you don't see here is the piece of packaging tape wrapped around the edge of the ruler because somebody nicked it with their rotary cutter.

Lesson Learned

Do not use the tapered edge of the Add-A-Quarter Plus Ruler to cut a straight edge on irregular chunks of fabric when the thick edge is completely sufficient. Otherwise, the rotary cutter will slide up that thing like a skateboard ramp and veer dangerously close to your fingers. Then you will have to repair it with packaging tape so you don't look as dumb as you feel when taking tutorial photos. One side is for folding; the other is for trimming.

There's no way I'd just do one foolish thing in the course of a month that even has an extra day. Therefore I bring you a tale of marking pens. I used the Sewline Air Erasable Pen to mark a quilt with a short deadline. Unfortunately, the purple marks did not rapidly fade, and days later they remained. Using the eraser from the Sewline Duo only served to make the marks appear even more vividly. I was able to drench and scrub them out, but that's not ideal. As for the Sewline Duo, the marker makes thicker brown marks that can successfully be erased with the accompanying eraser pen. Unfortunately, if you don't like your original markings, and attempt to make new ones in a place where you have erased, your markings will vanish. It is also a bit tedious to go over every mark you made with and eraser. I've used the Clover Air Erasable Marker on precious projects, and found that it erased much quicker than the Sewline version. This makes it a better choice if you intend to get around to your quilting immediately. It also makes a very thin purple line. I like the ease of erasing a Frixion pen with heat. Unfortunately, like a germ, the ink is still there whether you see it or not after pressing. The ink does leave a white shadow, which is more apparent on certain fabrics than others, and can resurface in in it's original color in the cold. Another important factor to note is that you should not use a Friction pen when you have no desire for your ink to vanish. For example, noting which fabrics to use in each section of a paper-piecing pattern, or drawing an elaborate design on paper and proceeding to leave it in a very hot car (Buh-bye design!).

Lesson Learned

Test your marking pens out to know which is the best fit for your project.

I've bought myself a new iron because my last one was very bad and did this to the backing for a mini. It could have been much worse. I'm relieved it didn't do this to a completed top.

Lesson Learned

Replace your iron when it starts acting naughty instead of after it creates unforgivable damage.

A few rules, if you don't mind.

• By sharing here, you give me permission to feature your post on Quilting Mod (including a photo) with proper attribution and a link to the original.
• Spread the comment love.
• Link back to this post. I have a button you can grab below.
• Multiple posts are fine so long as are from this month.

Grab the Button:

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I'm not above bribery, so here's this month's prize for one lucky linker, a fat charm pack of Wyndham's Upstairs at Manor House by Jeanne Horton. Update: This month's winner is Julie of Pink Doxies.

An InLinkz Link-up

TGIFF

If you are visiting from TGIFF, welcome!

This week, I completed my art quilt featuring two crabs in battle over an oyster. I used a painted, non-woven material called reemay for the appliqué. You can see more about the process in my tutorial.

Applying a faced binding was a first for me, but I found the tutorial at The Silly BooDilly to be very thorough. Here's the backside.

Now, let's see what you've been working on. Please check out the other links, and leave a few words of encouragement for the other participants. Include a link and/or TGIFF button so others can join the fun.