Monthly Archives: October 2022

Use Your Phone… for Quilting?

Silly boy, phones are for quilts!

Phones are used for everything these days. From making dinner reservations to finding an auto shop or counting calories, there is nothing that phones can’t help you with… including quilting? Yes, even quilting, and not just for taking perfect pin-worthy glamor shots. Phones can help you plan your quilt in a number of useful ways:

  • Auditioning Fabrics – Looking for the perfect color combo? Assemble a dozen different color combinations and take a picture of each. The combos will be easier to flip through on your phone and you won’t have to re-arrange fabric piles one hundred times.
  • Layout – Can’t decide between “this way” and “that way”? Take a picture of each layout to compare side by side. You can try printing the options out on paper so they are bigger and easier to see. You can even tack them all up on a wall for thoughtful rumination.
  • Arranging Fabrics by Value – Arranging fabric by value (such as the light-to-dark needed for the perennial favorite Log Cabin quilt) can be difficult, especially when lots of colors are involved. You can achieve this task easily by taking a picture of your fabrics lined up, side by side, then using your phone’s photo edit features to “Save As” a black and white photo. In black and white mode, the colors can now be easily arranged from darkest to lightest.
  • Quilting Calculators – From Binding to Backing, there’s a Quilting Calculator out there to compute every quilting metric. Never get caught speechless at the cutting table again!

Start Early and Still Be Late

I can’t believe I got started this late

Have you ever walked into a big box store in the fall to find Halloween decorations displayed right along with the Christmas fare? While many people would roll their eyes in disgust, I would not. For me, skeletons next to the stockings is a bellwether that holiday quilt making is nigh! You can’t start too early, in my opinion. I say that from experience as I have a treasure trove of unfinished holiday projects. Every year I say I’m going to start early but every year I end up with a craft fair’s worth of unfinished projects.

I’m still working on a Christmas table topper that I started four years ago. It’s just a table topper… thank goodness it isn’t a memory quilt! Worse than that, I have a bag of kitschy satin thread-covered Styrofoam ball Christmas ornaments that you decorate with ribbon and about a million beads held on with pins. I bought that kit way back in the 80’s because I thought it would be a fun project to do with the kids. The kids grew up and moved out years ago. The ornaments remain not started and ever hopeful that their time will come. Maybe this year.

I bought some Alexander Henry holiday prints that I planned to make placemats out of three houses ago, back when I used to have an epic dining room table. I’ve packed that fabric up and moved it three times since then. I can’t bring myself to get rid of it because I know it’s going to make beautiful placements someday, whatever table it eventually ends up on.

The top for a log cabin quilt made with beautiful, muted holiday colors is finished but it’s still waiting for batting, backing, quilting, and binding. This was the second or third quilt I ever made, back when all I knew how to make was Log Cabin blocks. My quilting expertise has improved considerably since then, and I could make any quilt block now. Maybe its rudimentary design is keeping me from finishing this one, but I do have an amazing sleigh-ride print for the backing fabric which keeps this quilt full of promise.

Whatever holiday projects you haven’t finished, do not despair. There is always next year!