Preparing for the Switch...

I'm planning to switch over to the new site tomorrow, so this will be my last post on Blogger. I'd do it now, except I'm tired, and there are a few things I don't want to have loose ends about that I'll definitely forget because I am groggy.

For those of you just tuning in, I decided on Friday that it was time to bring my website and this blog together on one platform, so that it has a seamless integration and a more professional look.  I am totally amazed at what a great template can do for a site.

I've spent all day working on the new site, recreating my content and getting it set up (almost) exactly the way that I want it.  There are still a few things to tweak yet, but enough of it is there I think to go public.

Tomorrow, the plan is to:

1. Change the DNS nameservers for the LoveBugStudios.com site
2. Establish an RSS feed for the new Blog
3. Set up Blogger redirects so that if anyone is still coming here, they'll go THERE instead.
4. Migrate my Google Friend Connect info so my followers don't get lost
5. Test my PayPal integration (on my website today, I take payments for people when they order a custom quilt or long-arm service, so it's not huge, but I want it to keep working.)

I am really excited about the new site, and just thrilled that I was able to do it myself. I have to give a HUGE shout out to Heather over at Main Street Web Development; I was going to pay her to do everything, but she gave me her honest opinion, that I could do it myself if I were willing to put in a little effort. And so, that enables me to free up some cash for another venture that promises to be HUGE if I stop inventing other things to do, and also will allow me to leverage her skills for the REAL hard work - e-commerce integration over at Quilt Possible!

I disabled commenting over here for now because I don't want to reimport anything else to the new site. See you on the other side!

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

P.S. This blog will remain active for quite a while yet; I still have a LOT of images hosted on blogger, and if I shut it off, I will lose a lot of pictures.  Hopefully my redirects will work and no one will even get to see this.  :)

All the Places I Need to Make My Website and Blog Work

You know, it wasn't until today that I realized exactly how many places I am using to connect my blog, my website, make my forms work, accept payments, publish photos, manage my email... so I thought I would list them out so you can see what madness this all is:

1. Ovi.com (a photo storage site I was using in the first 2 years of my website & blog)
2. Flickr (all new photos, finally broke down & went Pro)
3. JustHumans.org (form validate to eliminate spam)
4. CAPTCHA
5. FeedBurner (for RSS)
6. Site Meter
7. Twitter
8. Facebook (4 pages + personal profile)
9. Yahoo (3 email accounts)
10. GoDaddy (5 domains, 2 hosted, 6 email accounts)
11. Gmail (2 email accounts)
12. Google Docs
13. Google Analytics
14. Issuu (brochures & stuff)
15. Box.Net (large file sharing)
16. DreamHost (1 hosting account)
17. Blogger (5 author blogs)
18. VistaPrint (newsletter publishing)
19. Etsy (4 stores)
20. ArtFire (2 stores)
21. Networked Blogs
22. Twitter Feed
23. PayPal

And that's just to keep the virtual stuff running, not to mention the off-line sites that help me manage my in-person interactions:

1. Phone People (my toll-free number)
2. Trust Fax (for my fax service)
3. Square (credit card processing)
4. ProPay (credit card processing - haven't decided Square is reliable yet)

It's bananas!!  But now that I am moving to the new site I can see a couple of things that I can probably eliminate or consolidate, and one day I'll get the courage to disconnect my fax number despite the thousands of business cards I have printed with the info.  :)

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

MAJOR Site Overhaul

The time has come to bring a more professional, polished, and comprehensive look to LoveBug Studios.  I've decided to give up my free Blogger site, and move to my own hosted WordPress installation.

Late last year I talked about consolidating some things, and giving up some others, in order to make room for new and promising things that I want to do.  Part of that consolidation is to stop managing my sites across four different platforms - Blogger, WordPress, my own HTML site, and ZenCart.

I've enlisted the help of a super-fantastic web developer, but to keep the cost down, I'll be doing a lot of the work myself.  This is quite an adventure for me because it's something I've been talking about doing for years, and only just now deciding to take the plunge.

When I move to the new platform though, it will almost be like starting from scratch.  Because my blog address is changing (it will be on lovebugstudios.com), you'll have to follow me again in order to keep my blog content coming to you.  I think you'll still be able to add it to a feed reader (or get it through email) but each of you will have some work to do.

I'll keep you posted as I make the changes, and I'll probably keep some bare-bones blog stuff up to point people to the new site for a couple of months at least.

Why I decided that TODAY is the day, I don't know, but now that I've decided to start, I have to keep going.

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

Custom Quilt - Double Wedding Ring Whole Cloth - Finishing

Now that the quilt is complete and I know it has been received & loved by the person who commissioned it, I can show you the rest of the quilt!

I also want to point out something that I discovered when I finished this quilt.  I knew when I started that the quilt would shrink a little bit in the quilting, but I didn't know by how much.  Well when I first cut the wholecloth, I had to label the front & back fabrics so I knew which was which. Here's the label from the quilt top:


Well when I went to square up the quilt, I found that it had already lost 2" in the quilting, and was actually 85" x 85".  The quilt was supposed to finish at 84",  but I decided not to bother with trimming it down since it was already square.  Now this is something for you to note in your own quilts if you send them out for quilting; when they come back, they won't measure the same as when you sent them out, so don't accuse your long arm quilter of cutting off too much of your border if they had to square it up and your quilt has miraculously shrunk 2" or more.  I always send trimmings back with the quilts if I have to square them, no matter how tiny.

After the trimming was complete, it needed to be bound.  Now, when I first got all the fabric for this quilt, the first thing I did was washed everything.  I don't normally do this, but because of the deep brown in the rings and the ivory fabric for the top, I didn't want to take a chance of bleeding or inconsistent shrinkage. Imagine how vexed I was to find that for the binding, I was short two strips and had to cut off more fabric and wash that too!  Well while the binding fabric was washing, I took the opportunity to work on a quilt storage bag for the quilt.

I took the larger pieces that had been trimmed off the quilt, and laid them out to figure out how I could arrange them to get a bag that would be big enough.  I also wanted to incorporate the embroidery block that I had messed up the cutting on.  I trimmed it down to 6-1/2" and got it pieced into the bag fabric.  I wanted to see what it would look like so I folded the quilt into it and took a picture:


Yah, somehow I still managed to get the thing off-center still!  Well, it serves its purpose and insured that none of the fabric I ordered from this quilt would go to waste.

Next up was to work on the label.  A couple of weeks ago I took a piecing class, and in it learned about a product called "do-sew." Apparently it was used for pattern making or some such purpose when stretch knits were all the rage.  Well now, I thought I would experiment with it and use it to turn the edges of my quilt label so that I could hand stitch it onto the quilt.

So I laid a piece of do-sew onto the front of the label, and stitched 1/4" around it. Then I trimmed the seam allowance down to 1/8", cut a hole in the do-sew, and turned it inside out:


It was at this point that I discovered that my bamboo point turner has gone MIA, which is quite vexing.  (I blame the rounded corners on that fact.) I then trimmed the do-sew close to the seam allowance, which still gives a sealed edge but removes the rest of the do-sew so that it doesn't do any monkey business later.

Here is the front of the label:


And I know someone is going to ask, so I'll just explain why here.  When you make quilts for sale, you are required by law to label those quilts with fiber content, origin of materials, and proper care instructions.  Quilts are considered bedding and are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Protection Agency (which is part of the FTC.)  If you make baby quilts or other items, there are even stricter requirements that you have to follow because of the Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) which was a really hot topic last year and the year before when it went into effect. It was the reason why I stopped making baby quilts completely for a while, because it required doing destructive, expensive lead and phtlalate testing on every single piece of material that went into a quilt.  You couldn't test the bolt, you had to test the piece you cut off the bolt that was going into that particular quilt.  Under what circumstances would lead and plastic find its way into the manufacture of cotton fabric?  But I digress.  Anyway, the rules are a little better now, but if you're out there selling baby quilts especially, you should get educated on the law.

Ok! So after that little adventure, the binding was washed, dried, cut, and assembled.  I attached it to the quilt in the normal way, on the front, to be stitched onto the back, but instead of doing it by hand, I did it by machine.  Also, I normally use a straight stitch to attach the binding, but I wanted to try a different stitch to see if I liked it better and if it worked more reliably:


I think it turned out beautifully! This is the view from the front, and you can see how well the thread blends in to the edge.  Here's a photo of the back:


Sorry for the terrible shot, but you get the idea.  Can you see how the stitch isn't exactly in the same place everywhere?  It still looks OK though, and no matter what I've caught the edge.  If this were a straight stitch I'd probably have ripped out a few places, but when using the zig zag, I didn't do any ripping at all.  I think I'll experiment on a couple of other stitches but I think I may have banished the straight stitch from my binding repertoire for good.

So now that you've seen the little bits & pieces, it's time to reveal the entire quilt! I laid this out in my guest room which has been dubbed the "Paris Room" and has enough room for me to stand back and get a couple of great shots:


I like how this looks in my blue room!  I especially like the brown binding, I think it sets off the quilt quite beautifully.  Here's a shot of the back:


This was taken of course before the label was put on, but the label was attached to the corner that's at the bottom of the picture.

I really enjoyed working on this quilt and the challenge it presented. I really hope that when it is presented as a gift that the couple enjoys it and has a happy marriage to boot!

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

Custom Quilt - Double Wedding Ring Whole Cloth - Quilting

Today's post is all about the quilting that I did for this quilt.  I think it provides a lot of lessons about handling large quilts with wide open spaces!

I got this quilt loaded on the frame, and then quickly realized that I would need to take it off the frame.  Why?

Well, first of all, I hadn't quite decided exactly what I was going to do before loading the quilt, and once I realized what had to be done, I had no choice but to take it off the frame soon after it was loaded.

If you're doing a wholecloth quilt (or something very close to one like this is), you really need to mark the quilt unless you're just going to do an allover pattern from edge to edge and top to bottom.  I can't do this because of the rings in the center.

Second, since I appliqued the DWRs to the quilt, and I couldn't quilt right over them (because of the color change from dark, to light, to medium, and the embroidery) I needed to define them better in the quilt.  The best way to do this is with stitch in the ditch.  On the long arm this can be accomplished with rulers, which I initially tried, but this was extremely painstaking work when you don't have a ruler with a curve that matches what you are doing.

So what I decided to do was take the quilt off the frame and do the stitch in the ditch at my tabletop machine.

To have any hope of getting the quilt back on the frame after it's been partially quilted, I needed to baste the quilt completely.  I did this with a big serpentine stitch:


I prefer basting with a serpentine stitch rather than a straight line because you get more coverage with fewer stops and starts.  I also realized that these machines really do only like quilting from left to right - lots of thread breakage when I tried to go the other direction really fast & really long.  The thread I'm using by the way, is So Fine #402 in the top and bottom. The quilt is an ivory color, and this seemed to blend in the best.

Once the quilt was basted, I took it to my Viking to do the SID work.  I took an extra bobbin that I had wound for Darcy, took a bit of it to wind a bobbin for the Viking, and then used Darcy's bobbin as the top thread:


This just insured I had a perfect thread match.  This exercise made me realize two things: that I hate working with large quilts on a table top machine, and that it's a good thing I have Darcy or this quilt would never have gotten finished.

I decided to do a pantograph design for this quilt instead of custom free motion.  I mentioned this earlier about keeping the customer's budget in mind when you work on these quilts.  I quoted this project to be a certain amount, and I have to make it work within that budget.  Needless to say, pantographs are not necessarily a bad thing - they have their applications and uses and I am glad to have a nice selection to pull from.  This design is actually one that I was saving for my French Liberty quilt, but it works out well on this quilt too:


Now because of the rings in the center, I actually quilted this in a different order than I would normally.  I marked about 2" away from the rings along the top and bottom, and then I quilted the top half (from the rings to the top) and the bottom half (from the rings to the bottom.)  To do the first row, I needed to identify where the rings fell on the pantograph, and mark that on the pattern:


Where the rings fell in the pattern, I then modified the path of the design so that it was still continuous and blended into the design.  To mark the rings, I used the hopping foot of the machine and my needle up/down to mark points along the curve, and drew dots on the grid where the laser light fell.  Then I connected the dots to mark the curve.  I gave myself plenty of room when drawing the new path so there was no chance of running over the rings.  Here's what it looked like stitched out:


As I went, I removed the basting stitches, which is a pain in the neck (literally) but a necessary evil.  You don't want to stitch over the basting because that just makes it doubly hard to get out later.  Also, I didn't want the basting to stay in longer than it needed to, because I didn't want the holes left by the basting stitches to be more difficult to close.

Now with the top half and bottom half stitched, I needed to address the sides of the rings:


For this, I again identified the edge of the rings and centered a row of the pantograph on the quilt.  Then, because there was a gap at the top and bottom, I just did a couple of curly loops to blend in the sections.  So tell me, if I hadn't pointed it out, do you think you would have noticed that filler stitch?


After that, it was time to address the rings themselves.  The two outer rings didn't have any design at all, so I wanted to put something in the center.  I have a matching block that goes with this pantograph, so initially I tried to use the design as a pantograph.  This didn't work out so well:


It ended up being extremely off-center, so I needed to work this from the front of the machine.  I ripped out the original stitches, traced the block pattern onto Golden Threads paper, and pinned it to the quilt. This way I could watch the stitches as I went and make any corrections that were needed:


I traced it using white chalk, because I know this doesn't stain the quilt if the powder gets on it:


After stitching it, I just pulled off the paper.  It's so much better to have it properly centered!


Now you're probably thinking I would leave the embroidered center alone, but I did not.  The quilt needs to be just as beautiful & well thought-out on the back as it is on the front, so the embroidered block needed to have a design too.  To get the right effect, I swapped out the top thread with MonoPoly, which is Superior's monofilament thread.  I had to make a tension adjustment, but the MonoPoly just blends into the front, while giving a consistent design on the back.  Here's a close up of the rings from the front:


And a view from the back:


And here's the quilt coming off the long arm:


In another post, I'll talk about the finishing process for this quilt and some other goodies!

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

Finalist in AccuQuilt's Barn Quilt Contest

Cool!

I'm a finalist in the AccuQuilt Barn Quilt Contest.  Would you mind voting for my block to get closer to the winner's circle?  Click the photo to go to the voting!

To endless possibilities,

Ebony

More Feathers...

There was a show new to Chicago called the "Sewing and Quilting Expo" that was here last weekend, and I had the opportunity to take more classes and continue my feather exploration.  I took a total of 3 classes - one was an applique class where I learned a new method to applique circles, and the other two classes were on the long arm.  I was fortunate to have signed up for a class called "Feathers for the Feather Phobic" and I'm really glad that I did because I learned a third way to make feathers!

I don't know for sure which method I like better, but I can see where they would all have their different applications.  The neat thing about making these feathers is that they don't incorporate any backtracking and they don't have to be connected together.

Here are a few photos from my sampler. The basic feather looks like this:


The things you have to watch out for is to make sure you "hook" around deep enough to form the shape, and that you leave yourself enough room to bounce back out of the hook.

Once you get that method down, you can start to vary them.  Here's one variation with spirals:


Here's another variation with multiples stacked on top of one another, and a different flourish at the tips:


I had a lot of fun trying the different techniques.  I personally find this one easier to do than the other methods I've learned, but it could be that because I had the fortune to take the other class first at Handi Quilter (and so closely to this one) I was able to adapt more quickly to the movement.

The instructor gave me a very nice compliment too - she asked if I'd considered teaching, because I'd be good at it.  I was going around helping other people with the machines and their feathers.  We were working on the Gammill Vision (a fussy machine if I EVER saw one, and so glad I didn't get it & got Darcy instead!)

Once I got the hang of it, I started combining techniques - stacking rooster combs, combining with spirals... the possibilities are virtually limitless.


We ran out of time to do shapes, but I did manage to try to fill a large triangle.  Let's just say that one is gonna take a lot more practice.  :)

To endless possibilities,

Ebony