May
16
I survived Market!
Filed Under Books, Quilt shops, Show & Tell | 1 Comment
The trip to Salt Lake City for Spring Quilt Market went “like butter.” I had a blast and a half. The good times started just as soon as the plane out of San Jose finished loading. My seat neighbor turned out to be going where I was going, so naturally we chattered like magpies the whole flight.
Julie operates an on-line boutique fabric shop, The Intrepid Thread, stocked with fresh modern fabrics. (And a whole lot of new ones coming after she saw the fabulous lines debuting at Market.)
And get this… Julie said her friend Sally, who was picking her up at the airport, would give me a ride to my hotel too! How’s that for nice? No Supershuttling! They even picked me up and took me back to the airport for the flight home!
These are the sweet gals who adopted me. Julie, left, and Sally, right.
Sally Keller’s shop is Sally’s Angelworks, offering darling mini art quilts, unique fabric camera-strap covers, and other handmade items.
Julie and Sally were there to shop, of course, and also to help out Amanda Herring at the Quilted Fish booth. All of them are part of the Riley Blake design team. Whew, these young quilter gals! Enough energy to power Salt Lake City for a week! Both of them have nice Market photos and stories on their blogs.
Thursday was Schoolhouse, which is a series of short break-out sessions geared toward the shop owner, to introduce what’s new and exciting. This is how it works. Two hours before the whole deal starts, you can get the schedule. There was a huge room full of chairs where you could sit and study the offerings, plotting and scheming on which ones you wanted to go to. There were about 20 sessions in each time slot, so if there were two at once you liked, you had to pick the one you wanted most!
When each session ended, it was that silly thing that happens when elevator doors open… people wanting to get out and people wanting to get in at the same time. There were thousands of bodies, everybody had wheelie bags, and it was one great big milling churn dash. I’ll share the first couple sessions that I went to, and I’ll put up more information later, in bites.
First on the docket I chose to go hear Dan Purcell. Dan is the boy genius son of Bob and Heather Purcell of Superior Threads. Dan, a smartywhistle techie extraordinaire, grew up in the quilting industry and is the nicest, friendliest young guy you would ever want to meet. Dan operates Websites for Quilters, a company offering a whole bunch of services for quilters who want to be on the web and need a little or a lot of help.
One of the great things that Dan told us about is his FindMyFabric.com, a fabric, quilting, and sewing supply search engine. You can search for products offered by hundreds of online stores to find exactly what you are looking for. You can also search by uploading a photo of the fabric you need more of! How cool is that?? And totally free, this one.
Dan also operates QuilterBlogs.com, a directory of quilting blogs that you can check out to see what’s out there in the blogosphere.
I bought Dan’s book so I can learn more valuable nuggets about having a quilting website.
Next I went to the presentation by Stacey Michell of Shades Textiles. Stacey’s main product is SoftFuse, a paper-backed fusible web that has become my favorite. It’s the lightest weight, and it actually works the way this type of product is supposed to work! What a concept! It fuses quickly, the paper comes off right away, and like I said it is extremely lightweight and flexible.
Stacey’s mom is Marti Michell. They were both there at the session to show us how you can use the product to do a prepared-edge type of appliqué for either hand or machine stitching. It’s fused, and the edges are turned! Very interesting! I’ll be giving this a try myself and will report the results here on the blog. I ordered some SoftFuse so I’ll be able to offer it on my website soon.
This was my favorite entry in the quilt display.
I’m Watching You by Barbara McKie of Old Lyme, Connecticut.
Much more to come,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Apr
9
Size doesn’t matter… but strength does
Filed Under Threads | 4 Comments
I’ve been wanting to get back to the topic of thread content and quilter’s jail.
When I wrote about the Superior windfall back in January, Marcella asked, “Not sure what to think about mixing poly thread with cotton, won’t that put you in quilters jail?”
And Lois asked, “Where is the quilter’s jail?”
I wrote to Bob Purcell of Superior Threads and received the following reply:
“Thank you for mentioning us. Lots of great follow up comments! Regarding the “poly will tear the fabric” myth, here is an article we wrote and posting in the Education section of our website: Will Polyester Really Tear the Fabric — Truth, Tradition, or Myth?
Go read the article and be informed in your thinking. Bob points out that it’s not the thread content that matters, it’s the strength of the thread in relation to what it’s sewing. I love Bob’s analogy of the family tradition and the roast beef.
Willie ponders deeply upon thread strength and roast beef.
Now for Lois’ question, where is quilter’s jail?
I know where quilter’s jail is.
It’s in your mind, and only you can put yourself there.
For every “truth” that is told in the quilting world (or any other world) you can find a direct dispute to it. I remember when the self-adhesive sticky stamps came out, I thought, hey great, best thing since sliced bread! And then immediately there were urban legends of how they came off in the mail. I don’t think so. One time at a quilt show there was a vendor who claimed that grocery store freezer paper was full of acid and that every time I pinned through it I was pushing little dots of acid into my fabric. I chose not to swallow that on the spot, and I’ve never seen hide nor hair of the outfit since.
I think it’s better to file away bits of information in your brain, gather as much info as you can, think about it, and decide for yourself. Bob’s article is good information and food for thought. There are lots of other great topics posted in the Superior Threads Education section as well.
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
P.S. I’m going to be at the Seven Sisters Quilt Show in San Luis Obispo, California, April 24-25. If you’re in the central California area, I hope to see you there!
Feb
10
Superior report
Filed Under Blanket stitch, Hand appliqué, Machine appliqué, Product demo, Threads | 10 Comments
Yesterday I had the chance to try out the Superior windfall.
This is an old block originally called Wandering Foot. That name was thought to bring on the wandering foot to youths who slept under it, so a new name was given to it… Turkey Tracks. Much more attractive, don’t you think? :) It’s also called Iris Leaf when it’s green on white.
Fused and unstitched.
After some investigation on the Superior website, I discovered that the Holy SuperBobs are Bottom Line, a line of thread developed by Libby Lehman. It’s 60-weight polyester. I perused the rainbow and picked out the color that matched the best.
Wow, you can hardly make it out! It really is whisper-fine.
I fired up my Bernina and adjusted the blanket stitch down a few ticks, reasoning that a very fine thread should be given a pretty small stitch. A few minutes later, and voila! The block was stitched, and looked great! My machine liked the thread, which I used in both the top and the bottom, and Mother Superior says it’s not linty like cotton.
How’s that for blending in? From a short distance you can’t see the stitching at all. This thread might be a nice choice when you really want to mimic hand appliqué while still using your machine, or when using the turned-edge blind-hem stitch method of machine appliqué (which BTW I am not adept at).
One thing I did note is that the edges of the appliqués feel a little “crispy” compared to when I use cotton thread.
On to MasterPiece. MasterPiece thread is 2-ply 50-weight cotton, favored by the Piece o’ Cake gals and by Alex Anderson.
A simple forget-me-not.
Fused and unstitched.
My choices from the rainbow.
I adjusted the blanket stitch to my usual setting, just a couple ticks down in width and length. Away I went!
I like it, my machine likes it. I wound a bobbin for the green, but for the dabs of yellow and blue I used bobbins I already had wound with DMC. Worked great! They really are equivalent in weight so that’s a plus for me that I can mix and match at this stage of evolution in my thread stash.
Now on to hand appliqué. I just happened to have a block in the queue that I needed to stitch up twice, to use as an example in the new book I’m working on for Martingale.
Here are the threads I chose.
Poly on the left and cotton on the right.
I started with the polyester first. I was really excited about trying out this thread for hand appliqué. In the past, when I’ve tried other brands of poly thread, it went around in circles, kinked up, and raveled at the end. I’m delighted to report that Bottom Line stays straight. It sinks right into the turned edge of the appliqué and hides itself really well, and I was not plagued with knots or kinks. Yay! The one thing I did notice is that since it’s more slippery than cotton thread, my thread tail kept shortening up on me and I lost the thread out of the needle a couple times. I guess this just takes getting used to coming from the fabric of our lives.
I was on a roll watching the chocolate challenges on Food Network, so I plunged on ahead to the second version, using MasterPiece cotton. Excellent on all counts.
Can you tell the difference in the completed piece? Neither can I, so I’ve been keeping sticky notes on them :).
These pink dogwood blocks may seem kinda pale, and that’s on purpose. I’m going to embroider around the edges of one of them to illustrate how you can better define the edges of your appliqués when you want to use low-contrast fabrics.
Well, thanks guys! I got a lot done yesterday!
Chime in! I’d like to hear from others who use Bottom Line or MasterPiece. How do you use it, why do you like it?
Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
Jan
27
Superior windfall
Filed Under Designers, Threads | 8 Comments
At the Road to California show earlier this month, I was directly across the aisle from the Superior Threads booth. What a fantastic location!
I was on the lookout for The Thread Guy and Mother Superior, aka Bob and Heather Purcell. I was sure I would recognize them from their appearances on The Quilt Show.
When the opportunity presented itself, I approached Bob and said, “Mr. Bob Purcell?”
He looked at me with a little bit of that “deer in the headlights” look (like is this someone I’ve met and I can’t remember her?) but I quickly explained how his fame as The Thread Guy had preceded him. I told him about what an appliqué enthusiast I am (gesturing toward my booth as evidence) and that I had been using DMC 50-weight 2-ply cotton for years. I asked him whether Superior’s MasterPiece would be like an equivalent.
The answer was yes, and it’s long-staple Egyptian-grown cotton, which makes it, well, superior! I told him of my appliqué blog and how I liked to supply information to other appliqué enthusiasts, and he generously presented me with a fantastic goody! A rainbow of MasterPiece threads in a collection of prewound bobbins! Yippee! A little bit of 36 colors!
Later in the show, Heather came over and said, “I know you like Bob better.”
“Well,” I replied, “he gave me thread.”
“But I want you to try this,” she said, and handed me a rainbow of polyester threads in a collection of prewound bobbins. Wow!
“Now I know that you’ve only used cotton,” she went on. “But just try this poly thread and you will never go back. And then, you will like me better.”
Cotton on the left and poly on the right. The “Frosted” part of the cotton name came about because Superior did a collection of threads for the Piece o’ Cake gals, and donut, kinda self-explanatory. I can only conjecture about how they came up with Holy SuperBobs.
What a thread windfall for an appliquér. All those luscious colors at my fingertips… I can’t wait to try out each kind, for hand and machine appliqué, and file a report!
The cotton MasterPiece thread feels and looks very comparable to the DMC. The poly thread is even finer than the two cottons.
The Purcells are super-nice, down-to-earth people. I like ’em both. They care passionately about their product and they are very tuned-in to the needs and wants of the quilter. Just check the Education tab of the Superior website for gobs of information about the world of thread.
I also met quilter, designer, author, and sweetheart Cindy Needham, who was hanging out in the Superior booth helping shoppers with their questions about thread. I think I persuaded her to go a guest post for us about appliqué and her fabulous work with wholecloth linen quilts. Stay tuned!
More later,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie
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