Bits & Pieces -- Ingrid Whitcher

Emilie's new blog

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:45:51 -0500

My daughter, Emilie, has been taking pictures of everything lately and I am quite impressed with the photographs. Of coarse she is my daughter, so I may be a tiny bit biased. There are days where I have to tell her to put the camera down and leave us all alone. (That was before I saw how well her eye is for finding interesting things.) Most quilters are like this. My kids, mainly the boys, are always telling me that all I think about is quilts. I see patterns everywhere- bricks, fences, carpet….. If you like photography, I hope you will visit her site and encourage her along.

Abigail's quilt - finished

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:46:22 -0500

I had so much fun with this quilt. I wanted to make a monogram quilt for my new niece that will be born next month. I was thinking about adding some paint after the quilting, but not any more. I love the softness of the quilting with the little bit of color. I used a lime green thread for the accent color and a light grey for the background. I think that I may not use grey next time. You can see a little thread build-up in some of the areas that I had to backtrack.

Here are some detail shots.

Abigail's quilt - beginning

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:18:27 -0500

I am expecting…a new niece in the next month or so! I have had a blast working on a new design and just playing with the quilting.

I planned doing a monogram quilt. I initially wanted to paint the letter “A” but decided to fill it with bubbles instead. I am using a pretty green thread for the detail work and a silver/grey for the background fill. I may still end up doing a little shadow work with pencil later, but so far I love it.

Mark helped me find the font I wanted and placed it in a curly border. Then I hooked my projector up to the computer to enlarge the image and drew it onto my muslin with a blue washout marker.

I have started the fill work and feathers. What a fun project! Having the basic design decided, I can now just add the next “layer” of designs as they come to me.

With the feather work.

Baby quilt

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:55:17 -0500

I love making baby quilts and have had several opportunities this past year. This is the most recent quilt.

I had the birds left over from another project and loved the idea of a simple but stunning design. I am also not trying to compete with a nursery theme.

I learned several years ago that domestic machine quilters should not use a white on white fabric for the backing – the white printing is a plastic that will stick to the quilting surface. What I did not know is that this type of fabric can also pose problems for the top. I have had this piece of fabric in my stash for many years and thought it would look lovely with the birds as a whole-cloth, but what I did not know is that the plastic gets very brittle and is then a pain to work with. I had to change to aurifil cotton thread instead of my normal rayon because every time my needle hit one of the “plastic” stars the thread would break. It is broke a lot with the cotton thread but not every time and not if I went really slow. It also left weird black marks when the needle hit and “broke” the plastic. Bummer – because I still have another few yards in my stash.

Oh well….lesson learned. The quilt is still one of my favorites and I am sure the new owner will not be critiquing it as she spits up on it!