Quilter help please?

[zombiequeen]

Hi!
I was wondering if I could get some advice or help for a quilting project (my first ever!) that I want to make for my mum. She recently had a huge scare with a weak valve in her heart, so she's letting me help out with Thanksgiving this year. I wanted to make a nice quilted something for her. I don't know if I want to do a huge full quilt, she has lots of nice afghans already and she also has a bunch of fall-themed pillows.
I was thinking of making a nice long table runner that would roll up and turn into a turkey or something. I don't know, I had a dream last night that I made a table runner that rolled up and it had this holder that made it look like a turkey. Maybe a table runner by itself would be nice. She has a pretty Christmas one she uses every year, and she loves her placemat sets to death.
I've been practicing piecing together blocks, and so far I can sew squares together pretty well. I do know how to sew, I make mostly plushies and that sort of thing, is quilting just that scaled up with straight lines? I'm so intimidated by how complicated finished quilts look (I have a lovely one on my bed right now.)
Is this a good starting project? I used to help my grandma make these pillowcases that were a bunch of squares sewn together and then it had a slit in the back for the pillow form. She said that's just lazy-man's quilting though.
Ugh...I had a bunch of caffeine so I'm not sure if that makes sense. I hope it does, and I'll try to get a picture of what I'm thinking of too.

[Kanalah]

Yay quilting!

One thing you can make that's way easy is an applique table runner with a turkey on it. If you use the fusible applique (basically iron on glue) it so easy, even I can do it.

Another idea is to go to your local fabric store and ask for thanksgiving or harfest themed fabric. I know Moda makes these pre-cuts called a "charm pack" basically 42 5" squares of a collection. So you know they'd all work together.

http://www.charmpacksplus.com/charm-packs.html is a good place to start looking at charm packs. Another good thing is that they're less then $10. So a charm pack, a small piece of batting, some backing fabric and some binding and you're done.

Quilting is way easy and fun. You cna always PM me if you have other questions. I love helping people out.

[zombiequeen]

Yay quilting indeed!
I'll ask my grandma about that iron-on stuff when I go up there this weekend, she might have more fabric for me to use too. So far I have this:

There's a full yard of that red+yellow flowers on the bottom, and little bits and pieces of the others. The striped one and the gold swirly one are metallic. But there's only little pieces of them.
Would a yard sized piece of fabric be a good end size for a table runner? If not, I have this white fabric with really subtle white leaves on it that I could use for the backing and use those colors for the top.

[Kanalah]

Normally when I make a table runner, I cut a strip about 15 or 20 inches wide and use that. You might want to lay out your yard of fabric and eyeball it, see how it looks on the table.

Otherwise I think you have a great start for a thanksgiving runner.

[zombiequeen]

I'll do that then. I'm thinking about cutting out leaves and either using the iron on things or sewing them on using a zigzag stitch. At least on the brown parts.

[dalesys]

Use your thimbles!

Yes, Virginia, there are sparkly vampires. They live in pincushions.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Let me say for the record I know pretty much nothing about quilting. And I am a lousy seamstress.

Having said that, when I was decorating my daughter's nursery, I could not find what I wanted as far as bed clothes and curtains go. So I made them myself.

I talked to a few people, looked at a few online articles about quilting, and promptly made myself a small quilt in a weekend.

I got some quilting fabric in the colors I wanted, laid them out in a simple, random, color blocked pattern with all straight lines. Sewed them together on a machine. Bought a roll of iron-in batting and followed the instructions on the bag. Then I ran it through my sewing machine, again using straight lines (I sort of followed a "square spiral" pattern. )

It came out great, my kid still loves it, and it made me mighty proud to look at it.

It was hardly real quilting...there probably isn't ten hand stitches in the whole thing. And if you want to do it for real, then listening to me is not the way to go about it. Still, it was an easy, fun, very satisfying project.

[Kogarashi]

It was hardly real quilting...there probably isn't ten hand stitches in the whole thing. And if you want to do it for real, then listening to me is not the way to go about it. Still, it was an easy, fun, very satisfying project.

Bah, if you ask me (and my mom, who actually does this a lot better than me, since I've only done three baby-sized blankets in my life, the third finished just today), machine-quilting is just as "real" as hand-quilting.

Iron-in batting? As in it stays put without pinning when you sew the three layers together? I must find me some of this to save myself the hassle of safety-pinning my next project.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Yeah, what you do is use a hot iron to "tack" it into place on one side of the "quilt sandwich". It stays in place very well without pins. When you finish sewing and wash the piece, I think the tack lets go and relaxes. It worked out great for my clumsy fingers.

Like I said, I had no idea what I was doing and the whole project literally took me a weekend. And that includes making a pair of valances for the windows.

[Kanalah]

I use my machine to quilt >.>

You know they even have quilting machines that you hook up to your computer, tell it the design you want and the size of the quilt and it quilts for you. It's the price of a car though.

zombie, if you use the fusible method to applique your leaves it's as easy as ironing. Then you just zig zig stitch around the edges of the leaves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1OahzmtM50 this is a great tutorial for fusible applique.

Also feel free to ask the nice fabric ladies at the store, they love to help. They also like to see finished stuff.

Quilting is way easy. And fun

[TawnyMyst]

Call me a sucker for punishment but I just recently started making my first quilt by myself and my first quilt since my grandma passed when I was twelve. I used to help her when she quilted. It's a baby quilt for my soon to be born godson. I figure he'll get it for Christmas. The killer part, I don't have a sewing machine or quilt frame, so am doing it completely by hand and stupid me picked a fern batik pattern. This may take a while.

[zombiequeen]

Oh my gosh thanks for all the help! I'll need to get a picture up of the pattern I have planned. Just squares on the one side with a leaf hopefully, and on the back (I want it to be kind of reversible) I'm going to applique a brown turkey on the red leaf fabric. I hope it turns out as awesome as it is in my head.
Here's a picture of the beautiful quilt Kanalah made for me.

(to distract you while I go lay out my fabrics so you can see the pattern I'm going to do)

[Kogarashi]

Good luck with the runner, zombiequeen!

I have a question for the more experienced quilters here: how do you manage machine-quilting a large quilt (i.e. not baby-blanket sized) on a regular sewing machine? Or do you? And do you bother using a walking foot for it?

Patiokitty and Kanalah (courtesy of zombiequeen), those quilts are lovely!

Well, since people are showing off some finished projects, I've attached a photo of the finished baby quilt I just did. I machine-quilted it, but you shouldn't see the stitching (hopefully) since I followed the seam lines in the quilt top.

[Kanalah]

On my Singer machine, I used a walking foot but I generally didn't quilt on that machine a lot since it liked to eat quilts. Nothingl ike spending $8-$10 a yard on nice fabric just to watch the machine rip it apart.

My new machine is a Bernina Activa 220, and I love it so much. I don't need to use a walking foot to quilt on it, and it sews like a dream. There's even a button on the side to drop the feed dogs so I can free motion quilt. I really really like it a lot more then my Singer. >.>

[Kogarashi]

I was just curious since it was a bit of trouble getting the blanket to fit on my machine depending on how I had to turn it for the stitching. My machine is a Viking that I want to say is about 30-40 years old at this point (but still chugging away ). The question about the walking foot is mostly because it looks like it's going to be pricy to get one for my particular machine if I decide to.