Episode 107 - Freehand Feathers

hello there today we'll learn about freehand feathers and Laura Heine demonstrates her specialty thread techniques plus I tell you the best way to prepare a quilt top before a long arm quilting good to know if your professional yourself or hiring one so stay tuned Linda's long arm quilting is made possible by gamal quilting machine company bringing quality innovation and service to quilters around the world for over a quarter of a century by yli making decorative threads that help you unleash your imagination by Statler stitcher providing automation to enhance and expand your long arm quilting business and by hobbs bonded fibers we're going to see how to prepare a quilt top for long arm quilting and work on some freehand feathers together but first I want to share some beautiful and colorful quilts that I saw when I was in Houston at the International Quilt Festival take a look hi we're here today at the International Quilt Market in Houston Texas and our guest is Laura Heine she is a quilt artist in author and a fabric designer how exciting welcome Laura thank you we I know that you're a long-arm quilter but you used to quilt on your machine at your home tell me about your longer and cool team I bought my first long-arm machine about three years ago and we did quilts for our customers at that time currently I have two long arm machines and I teach classes on it I travel all over the United States teaching and I also let my students rent the machines so you're just kind of expanded from there yeah that you needed to do more of your quilts that way exactly that's fantastic so you have a shop yes that's wonderin hire people to do it as well yes that's terrific and you've also written books and now you're into fabric designing which is just fabulous we congratulate you on that success let's take a look at some of the beautiful quilts that you brought today let's look at the one that you're holding right now and tell me about this quilt what's the name of this one this is turning over a new leaf and this is an old pattern it's actually my best-selling pattern its embellished with the Jean stitch thread it's fused appliquéd embellished with Jean stitch and quilted on the long arm and then F it was also trip untold and after the quilting I added the black Jean stitch stitching line to define the trapunto so the first stitching that you did on this applique is not through the entire quilt it's just on the application yes just on the applique when it was a top that's fantastic and then you did the other yeah underneath is this fuse Donner is this it's fuse this is just wonderful Laura thank you so excited about the Santa coil that I saw can you tell me about that one it's sure I designed the Santa's as a block of the month to teach in my shop a friend of mine who is a stained glass artist actually designed all the Santa's and I did all the filler blocks so each month the student learns a different technique as they complete the quilt and at the end of the year we sew all the blocks together well it's an unusual the color combination and everything is just gorgeous and the quilting I love this vine that you have through oh thank you that's one of my favorite feather designs thank you and the Dragonfly quilt this is interesting what's the name of this one it's called low buck and I designed that quilt as a how-to in my book color fusion me there's a lot of wonderful machine quilting on it and it uses a lot of threads the metallics the machine quilting variegated threads and you can use all of those on your long arm machine exact oh that's wonderful we're gonna have to have you show us how to do that and I noticed it also has some wonderful embellishments on it yeah so the wear that was added by hand yes they were by house or by hand and let's take a look at your latest work which is this wonderful it you could be Texas or Montana quilt here can you tell us about this one sure this quilt was the inspiration came from my husband I I just recently got married and he has a cattle ranch in Montana and I acquired a pet cow which is this block here the number of my cow is 427 yellow so it was it was kind of centered around the whole ranch this is also in a booklet format but it's a block of the month and it encompasses hand and machine work was quilted on the long arm there's a lot of machine embellishing and a lot of different threads were used can you tell me how long did it take you to do this quilt on your longer machine do you have an idea I was I would guess around 8 hours round eight hours that's phenomenal and the quilting is just gorgeous the is this handwork that you have out in the border that yes it is that's such a good touch for that thanks oh well thank you so much Laura for showing us your quilts here at quilt market we we appreciate you being here and wish you continued success I enjoyed seeing Laura's quilts in Houston so much that I had to have her back to the studio with me so she could demonstrate some of her techniques with specialty thread thank you so much for coming to my studio Laura and I have always admired your colors and the way you've put things together these quilts that you've brought are just blowing me away oh thank you Linda but they're actually not quilts they're rugs they're not quilts they're rugs no these hanging here are actually rugs so this is actually a rug yes that you would walk on it's hard for some people to do but you do oh wow Oh a new thing I'm excited about this to see how you see how you do this I've been very interested in this you know the fabric is all inside of here it's all gathered up and that happens at the very end we actually stitch on a canvas and once you shrink the canvas when you're completely done with the rug it will ensure bunches up so that so this side the very bottom is a canvas yes it is so that's what you've loaded on here yes okay and you're going to show us all about this yes okay so like I said we have a layer of canvas on the bottom and then we have five different fabrics now I noticed you didn't pin this on too like we normally do so I can just hang over and that's okay right okay I want to make sure you're salvages are all even up here and you want to base the top all right so should I get started oh yes the first thing I'm going to do no pattern no pattern oh wow this is all free motion quilting the first thing I'm going to do is stitch a basic flower and what I recommend my students to do is to just doodle doodle a lot and they can trace my flower and pretty soon you can do it on your own so you want to bring up the bobbin thread now this thread looks heavier than the normal thread so yes it is this is actually Jean stitch thread okay and I have a heavy polyester in the bobbin okay so I'm going to stitch the center of my flower oh that's cute it's not a regular round centre I know it's all it's it's Fussell doodling okay this is called the funky flower so you can see how I'm making the petal so there's spaces in between the petals I like that yeah I think I can do this Laura this is great okay so here's my basic flower and I'm going to come out of that flower and I'm going to do a leaf shape and that's just like just like safely okay okay and you put a little vein inside of it yeah okay now I'm going to move that away bring up my bobbin thread go ahead and cut that off thank you now the fun part of this whole technique is cutting a way to get down to the layers that your flower is actually going to do that now or do you do that you have to finish the whole thing first you don't have to finish the whole thing you can do it in steps like this you should do your complete working area okay you can cut it any time that you want but you don't want to roll the quilt and tell you have your whole working area I wouldn't hit it because I would be so excited to cut it so to cut it what you do is you just snip this first layer okay you have you can't have in your mind what layer is what okay so you do want to know what the bottom layer was for sure right I didn't okay right so I'm going to stitch around or cut around this petal and it happens to be the orange layer is on top it's beautiful so this flower is going to be orange now I'm cutting about Oh a quarter of an inch away from my stitching line and that just becomes the raw edge right you can write it easily yes okay now on the center of the flower I'm going to cut down to the yellow layer so you might want to plan a little bit of what colors you want in your flowers yeah your fabric yeah this uses a lot of fabric doesn't it dad yes this particular rug has five layers of fabric in it two yards each but it needs to be durable so in ya be that way yes so now I've cut down all these colors are gorgeous actually this I believe this is the green layer so let's cut down to the yellow there we go to the yellow good sharp scissors room yeah I think yes okay so there is my yellow Center now the leaf I will cut down to the green layer okay so when you go to choose your fabrics you want to make sure that you have fabrics for leaves fabrics for flowers and also fabrics for a flower Center now if you look at the rugs that I did behind me not all of the petals in each flower may be red or you know whatever the flower color is so whatever your mood is right and then if you accidentally clip through to the layer below that you know then you're kind of stuck with that color but you can use plaids it looks like and all kinds of trends may be good use fabric that you you know have had for a long time that you don't wouldn't want to use in a quilt now a good way to get rid of fabric that you don't know what else to do with yes oh that's beautiful that's thank you now I want to show you one more thing before your you actually wash the rug you're going to have different flowers on there somewhat like this and you need to fill in the background area with some kind of quilting because you don't want too much of the background area so I want to show you a fun feather that you can do to fill in okay to do that feather you do this damn first okay so what I'm doing is I'm just filling in with this what I call spiky fern feather and notice how I'm bringing the leaves of that feather up to the edge of the flower because you don't want a whole lot of empty space left on your rug because when you take it to the washing machine if you have a lot of empty space it doesn't pucker right so get as much of it quilted as you possibly can boy I don't know if the viewers can see that variegated thread but is absolutely gorgeous yes so you just keep going you do your fat your flowers first and then you just fill in with these ferns all around yes and open them up it's just so exciting I also noticed that you had the binding was quite different it's uh tell me how you do that a non-traditional non traditional ditch down binding exactly okay it's bound just like you would a regular quilt with a mitered corner but when I went to hand stitch it down I wanted to use a real heavy thread and make sure that I got it secured really well so that's why you see my running stitch is gonna be so yeah durable firm yeah well thank you so much I'm gonna run out and get some fabric and make a rug for my bedroom and I appreciate you coming so thank you when a quilt top is handed off to a quilter it should already be prepared if you're handing off your own work follow these steps for the best results and to avoid unnecessary charges if you're a professional quilter advise your customers to do this prep work or list how much you charge for providing these services first of all keep the top the lining and the batting separate don't pre base them together press and trim the seams on your quilt top I find this particularly true on antique tops that may have been washed there will be extra threads that you will need to trim same the back if necessary make sure that the lining is longer and wider than the quilt top I suggest 8 inches to give your quilter lots of extra be sure that there are no weak spots in the pee scene again particularly if it is hand pieced discuss what feeling the quilting should lend to the quilt if you don't have any ideas about that ask for quilting ideas and be open to the suggestions from your quilter she's seen a lot of quilts ideally these items should be listed as instructions or optional charges on a work order that the piece er and the quilter fill out together at the start of the process we talk more about work orders and the best way to approach them in another episode I'm so excited to show you an advanced technique using feathers once you get your basic feather down then you can do some of these specialty feathers I have constructed a little while hanging and I already have the vase in there and I'm going to come down and finish the other side of this framing this little wall hanging with feathers and I'm doing this to show you that feathers don't all have to be the same size I can make some long and some shorter ones so I'm going to vary the size of these feathers as they come out even the last one can just be laying in there like that let that needle come up move it over go down and bring up my thread now I'm going to bring some feathers out of this base and the first one that I'm going to do is a teardrop feather so it's going to come out like this and round and I'm going to do the teardrops in it as I do it so it's going to appear to just be dripping out of the vase and as always once I do one side I'm going to come down with a double stem and come back with the on the other side doing the same thing now one time at this point I'm going to come up and do a curly feather a nice teardrop shape and then a curl that curls up toward the top and it takes a little bit of a place on the stem it doesn't just come up between the feathers it has a little place on the stem I love this feather adds a little bit to the regular feather you can see that it's a little different and putting those curls in it makes it a very little happy feather then I'm going to come right out from there and do what I call a a very feather fern so I'm putting some ferns in and some feathers and I'll even come out with some little berries circle Stan circle Stan a little curl circle stem circle stem on the way back and then I'll cradle that with a fern and back to the feather like that and then of course back up to the top to do the other side that double stem on the feather makes it look real it looks like there's some life in that feather otherwise there's nowhere to get nourishment now I'm going to come out to the side here and drip another feather off this one I call finger feather and as you come out to the end you make a circle and then come back I love using this one on pieces that have fish in them it almost looks like a coral and it's really fun to do you try to see how round you can get those and of course I could come out with a little tender coal like that a little curl all right and that pretty well completes the vase now I'd like to put a little bird in there because in reality the quilting that we do is a lot on applique and there are a lot of applicators and so it's fun to do a little bird and they're not hard it's just a matter of thinking what we know about birds first of all we know they have weeks and they have feathers on their wings and they have tails there's the other wing and then I'm going to come straight out and back and make a little pad like that now I could go over that a couple of times if I wanted to make it look like an embroidery work in fact it'd probably be a good idea to come down here and just make a little eye maybe go over it a couple of times just to make sure he's there he might be there hovering over a flower or if you made a longer beak it could be like a hummingbird so there we have a little wall hanging with its feathered flowers and a little bird and so quickly and easily done but just some different variations of feathers so don't get stuck in the same old rut with your feathers next time on Linda's long arm quilting we see that all quilts are not created equal some are trickier to quilt than others with wavy or uneven borders we'll look at tricks and tips for handling problem quilts an award-winning quilter Carol syllabic stops by to share some of her secrets then I'll tell you about the best way for professional quilters and potential customers to find each other advertising remember if I can do it you can do it see you next time for more information visit us on the web at when I was in Houston at this year's in tonight at the year's in all right Linda's long arm quilting is made possible by Gamal quilting machine company bringing quality innovation and service to quilters around the world for over a quarter of a century by yli making decorative threads that help you unleash your imagination by Statler stitcher providing automation to enhance and expand your long arm quilting business and by hobbs bonded fibers you

Channel: Linda V. Taylor

Views: 22,853

Rating: 4.8378377 out of 5

Keywords: linda, taylor, longarm, quilting, gammill

Id: 9jD1TMYvHIs

Length: 25min 28sec (1528 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 11 2014