Free-Motion Quilting with Joanie Z. Poole

2 days of live classes and demos, vendors, and Quilts, Quilts, Quilts at the Fox Valley Tech's Sewing Expo.

The Friday Class :
Diane Gaudynski (the Free-Motion Goddess) was not able to attend due to a family emergency. (Our thoughts are with you, Diane!) Joanie Zeier Poole filled in. JZP was very knowledgeable and did a nice job with only 48 hours notice. She has 2 books (1 on patterns; 1 on design) out, and a 3rd (on navigation) due out next fall.

She brought some fantastic heirloom quilts!

Joannie Z. Poole has a degree is graphic design. She has discovered that she loves designing and teaching. She gave some really good advice on a number of topics.

On Batting :
The Hobbs people gave her some sample squares of Hobbs Heirloom Wool Batting to share with us. She uses this wool batting and gets a wonderful Trapunto-like puff with the wool batts without adding an additional layer of poly batting.

I realized I could have brought my batting samples to continue work on the many sample squares yet to go ...

She also said we could buy directly from Hobbs for wholesale prices. They require a minimum order of $100--That seems more than reasonable! I used to be able to get Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batts from JoAnne's, but they don't seem to carry them anymore. I've really been wanting to FEEL the new silk batt from Hobbs before I go ahead and order one. Perhaps in Chicago, I'll be able to touch one ... I'll have to look into the buy direct option.

Joanie spent most of the morning lecturing and showing us beautiful samples of her work. She really is an artist! We really didn't get to much hands-on free-motion quilting until the afternoon. She had a lot to say about grids and how to mark them, and navigate the stitching of the basic grid.


Then the task was to mark every other square and stipple to make a checkered grid. I have discovered that I really don't care to stipple (much less micro-stipple). It takes too long to cover too little space. I get tired physically and bored mentally doing the background stippling. It makes me much more interested in DiJanne Cevaal's 72 Ways Not to Meander or Stipple. Then I started to play with other patterns ...

Here, I used a light green thread on a deep purple. The backing fabric is a light purple. The light green seems to look better on the back (pictured).



When I got to practicing the feather plume, I switched to an olive green Aurafil thread. This looks much better on the deep purple, and not so good on the lilac backing fabric. I guess that was part of the lesson--thread colors and the difference it makes, without matching thread colors too closely to the fabric, or contrasting so much that all my mistakes appear.

Autumn Update

It's been a while since my last post. I've been busy ...

I helped Oliver make a Star Wars Quillow [Pattern from Fons & Porter]. I did all the cutting and planning; Oliver picked the fabric theme and did most of the sewing himself. He loves his new quillow. It didn't take very long, and it's really simple sewing. It's a good project for a kid to start out on. I'm amazed at how good he is at operating the sewing machine ... I remember when I was learning to sew in first grade, there were a lot of starts and stops, sewing too fast or slow, and lots of ripping. Oliver seems to have the hang of operating the foot petal and pulling out pins before sewing over them. He sews at a nice even and steady pace. I was impressed. I suppose all the time he spends on the computer contributes to his well-developed sense of hand-eye coordination.

My regular sewing machine (Viking Rose) is in the shop, so I've been using the old stand-by Rikkar. It's a basic sewing machine--and I'm amazed at what I can accomplish with just this plain old regular sewing machine. This is the one I learned to do free-motion on.

Slow-but-sure I've been making progress finishing the machine quilted borders on the Kaliedescope quilt. A few more Sundays and it should be complete--only 11 months from start to finish. I tried the quilting in sections method ... It worked in terms of less struggling with the bulk of a whole quilt while trying to manipulate it under a regular domestic sewing machine. But I'm still thinking the answer is a long-arm quilting machine and having the quilt on a frame. Ahhh--some day! In the meantime, stay tuned for the finished quilt!


What else have I been doing? Re-habbing a 100-year-old treadle sewing machine. It is now fully cleaned, oiled, and lubed. It has a new treadle belt, and new long bobbins. Things seems to be in good working order, I even got it to wind a bobbin this afternoon. Still, something's not quite right. When I tried to sew a scrap piece of fabric, the top thread won't catch the bobbin thread--so no stitches. But I'm working on it. I'm sure someone at TreadleOn will know what's going on ...