Curvalicious Quilting with Island Batik

This month's challenge to the Island Batik Ambassadors is Curvalicious Quilts!  I love the challenge of piecing curves.  I was all set to make a great little quilt using the Quick Curve Mini ruler.  That is, until I realized that I didn't actually own it!

Turns out that I only own the regular size Quick Curve ruler...oops!

There I was with a whole day free to work on a project, a box of lovely fabrics, a ruler, but no pattern.  Darn.

Luckily the Quick Curve ruler comes with a pattern for a table runner.  (There are also several free patterns on their website.)  Unluckily, I didn't have quite enough fabric for the background.  Now what should I do?  

  

I decided to start cutting some fabric and make some units, then figure out how to put them together after I got a few done.  I found that you can get 4 arcs out a 5 inch strip (pulled from the Stash Builder rolls I received in my box!)  When I started sewing I found that the gentle curve is really easy to sew.  You just put the concave part on the bottom (it caves in) and the convex part on the top, line up the edges, and start sewing!  As long as you don't pull too much, or sew too fast you end up at the other end with a matching seam.  I think working with batiks makes curves come out really well because they are very stable in their weave.

Aha - I realized that if you sew a background section to the top of one arc and the bottom of the next one they make a complete arc as well - makes me think of waves.

Looking good!  I decided that this would make a nice wall hanging.  I ran out of 5 inch strips in the colors I liked, so started digging through my container with the leftover fabric from previous Ambassador boxes.  I found some nice additions in the colors I wanted.  I think I've got a little something from each of the collections I've received in this quilt!  That's another great thing about batik fabric, they blend so well from collection to collection!

  At first I didn't think I was gong to use that light yellow piece at the bottom right, but I decided if I add a row to the bottom that I can use the periwinkle color at the top and bottom of my quilt, then add side borders of the same.

And here all all my curves sewn and now I am ready to start sewing the sections together!  

I'm looking forward to seeing how this quilt comes out, it's been a lot of fun so far.  Thanks to Island Batik for the fun fabrics and the challenge to sew some curves. I finally broke that Quick curve ruler in, and can't wait to make more fun projects with it...I'm wondering how I could use it to make a cool border now!

Linking up with Connie for Linky Tuesday

Freemotion by the River

Raspberry Cheesecake - Square in a Square alternate block Quilter's Recipe Box

Today's alternate block for the Square in a Square unit comes the EQ7 library - it is called Raspberry Cheesecake.  I'm not sure where the dessert themed names for these blocks came from, but they are a lot of fun!

This block is different because it uses the Square in a Square units on the sides of the block.  When you do this, the triangles in the corners make a small variable star in the center of your block, and you can achieve a variety of effects using contrast, as you can see from the banner at the top of the post.

To sew this block you will need four 3 1/2 inch squares of your focus fabric, eight 2 inch squares for the small star points plus eight 2 inch squares and one 3 1/2 inch square of a secondary fabric.  For the corner triangles you will need two 3 7/8 squares of a contrast fabric and two 3 7/8 triangles of your background fabric.

Since you are using two different colors for the corners of your square in a square, make sure that you sew the colors opposite each other on the 3 1/2 inch square:

After you sew the remaining corners you can lay them out and see the star in the center:

Sew the half square triangle units for the corner and lay out your block:

Then sew it together!

That was pretty easy, right?  By rearranging your fabrics you can achieve a variety of looks with this block.  I had so much fun playing with it that I decided to make up a coloring sheet for you to use, too!  

You can download it by clicking here:  Raspberry Cheesecake Coloring Sheet or on the picture above.  Have fun with it!

Feeling Brave!

Sewing machine tension issues can be so frustrating!  My Juki has been having some really random tension issues over the past few months.  When I had it serviced back in November it seemed better for a while, but it seems like I've been having problems more and more lately.  For example, when I was sewing a bunch of strips the tension was absolutely fine for 5 of them, then on the 6th I would start seeing loose stitches on the bottom.  I was also having trouble quilting, especially with heavier weight threads, even using Aurifil 40 wt thread was giving me quite a lot of issues.

This really came to a head last week while I was trying to finish my quilt for Island Batik's fall line that I needed to get mailed out - luckily I was able to finish my quilt.  I decided it was time to solve this problem and started doing some research to see if I could figure out what was causing this issue.  I had a gut feeling that it had to do with my tension discs.  I was nervous about taking this part of my machine apart, but after watching a Sharon Schamber video on You-Tube I decided that I could do it, and went for it!

I really wish I would have thought to take some pictures as I worked on it, but the task was actually very straight forward.  Instead of removing the entire tension assembly, I just unscrewed the tension dial all the way, then removed each piece one at a time and cleaned them as I went.  When I got to the outer disc I found a small spot of something that was rough and tacky in one area.  I used a cleaning cloth and rubbed it off, and when I took off the other disc I found a similar spot on it.  I also found some debris wrapped around the spindle.

After replacing the discs, spring and tension dial, I reset my tension and did some trial sewing with some of the most temperamental thread I've been using and it worked great!  I was excited to try some more quilting today, so started working on a custom quilt that is due to be sent out soon.  So far, so good!  I'm using my favorite Aurifil 50 wt thread on the top and the bobbin, and my quilting was truly care free.  Despite quilting over many seams and in every direction I had no skipped stitches and only one break.  I used 2 bobbins worth of thread, and had zero tension issues.  I sure hope this continues!

I know that not everyone feels confident in taking such drastic measures with their sewing machines, but I was in a pinch and unable to take my machine to be serviced so I felt it was worth a try.  There are a lot of resources on the internet to guide you through many basic repairs, so I would advise that with caution it can be worthwhile to do your research and try this if you think you may have debris that is interfering with your tension.  I'm just relieved to be quilting without any issues now - will let you know if it continues!