Bitten by the Silk Worm

My husband took all 3 kids and went somewhere nearly an hour away this afternoon. Translation: they will all be gone at least 4 hours. I no longer care that I have a headache. The house is quiet, and I have had the fun time of playing with fillers on my silk wholecloth quilt. It's small enough and stabilized so I can take it off and on the machine whenever I want/need. I received a box of Superior Bottomline thread this afternoon. It's mostly prewound bobbins in a variety of colors that I will use on a couple of upcoming quilts. One just happened to be the color I needed to get back on this quilt. Initially, I thought I might do the backgrounds in colors so that they show up more, but I had so much trouble with the Bottomline thread pulling now and then as I stitched the feathers, I decided I'd take a different approach. I'm awaiting several cones of Invisifil that I was going to use, but there was still polyester doubt. I have one 1000m cone of taupe silk-100 thread that I had yet to try, and I figured when better to do so than on the silk quilt?

Holy Shazam! I absolutely love this thread. It is smooth. It never pulled or nested on me. Never shreaded like the poly does sometimes. Many times. If only it weren't so freaking expensive. Like 6-1/2 times the cost of thin poly thread. Yikes! But it sews sooooo nicely (you can see where this logical argument will be going, right??). I just may have to get more of the taupe for quilting the background of the quilt I showed yesterday.

Anybody have a supplier of YLI-100 thread (1000m cones only) to recommend? Even better if they will sell to me wholesale...

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supplier update...

1. www.brewersewing.com has YLI 1000m at retail $18. Don't know about wholesale yet

2. Superior's www.superiorthreads.com has them wholesale for $9, and $12.99 retail, but I have not tried their silk.

3. The best prices I found are at Linda's Electric Quilters www.longarmsupplies.net at $9 for the 1000m YLI silk - retail price.

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Inquiring minds want to know...Why does a silk 100 never shread at the needle and the 60wt and 100wt polyesters do???

More Time translates to Less Progress

Why does that saying always seem to be true? When I only had 2 hours a day to quilt, I was the master of productive. I was focused and on-task. Now that all 3 kids are at school for 3 straight hours every afternoon, I am a mush of anti-productivity. I find more things to do that just dont need doing. I waste more time on the computer doing Lord knows what. It's enough to just drive me nuts! Things need to change next week.

My silk wholecloth is off of the frame now. I tell myself: "It's off so I can plan what to do in the backgrounds and order thread". Reality: "Customer quilts really need doing so my indecision has to wait!" I have some ideas, and am contemplating using colored threads for the fills, but may chicken out on that. We'll see when the next order of Invisifil thread arrives. Thank you MQS!~
The back is this nice olive, which shows every painful stitch (and mis-stitch). I don't know what came over me when I chose the backing that dark, knowing that the thread/bobbin would match the top.

This week, I will lose 3 of my quilts. The babes are all being sent off to different shows. The shows seem to be rather late getting their acceptance notices out, giving us barely a week to ready the quilts before they must be sent. Sea Glass is very close, but still needs a little attention to some stray threads, and a 4" section of the binding. As I mentioned earler - procrastination! Fortunately, I did get the crystals put on this week. There's an insane number on this quilt. I only wish I could see it hanging in a show. Someday... As usual, I am busy designing another applique project. Like I really need another one?! But one of them is wrapping up, and what's another hand sewing project for the evening???

Have a good Sunday~

The Fruits of my Labor

Today marks the end of the 4-day weekend. Kiddos go back to school tomorrow and hopefully they will slip into a normal routine without too many days off. I have had a little time this weekend to play on the wholecloth quilt I have loaded. This is my first attempt, so it is completely marked with blue pen (which is still there). Perhaps someone can tell me if I can remove the pen from the silk (silk Radiance 50% cotton) before I do the background fillers, or will it leave water spots?
It's not large - only about 38". I have not decided what fillers I am using. In fact, when the last of the feathering and echoing is done, it will probably come off the frame so I can qiult some customer's quilts. I have some Invisifil coming for the background fillers in colors other than the champagne.

I had to lay on the floor to take this picture from the back side. It is really a deep olive green (and not the brown that my monitor is showing). It is clear that I have some areas that don't have exact/ideal symmetry, and these will possibly be "fixed" at some point. I am still having trouble with looping of the Bottomline thread (but on the topside of the quilt!), but sinceI changed bobbins, I have had less issues. Nevertheless, I have at least 2 places on each of the feathers stitched so far that have to be taken out and fixed (sigh!). Not sure that this will ever be "show worthy", but it is a learning process I wanted to take. It's more like going to the mall in your satin underwear...every last mis-stitch, wobble and roll of fat shows!

Goings On for the week

The week is over. I have had some good work time this week, with school starting. Despite it being a short week (Tues-Thurs), I still had calm, productive quilting time. I have done one customer quilt, and taken in a couple more to get done in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I am frantically trying to get all the last details of the Seaglass quilt finished up. This week was for binding and the sleeve (which is approaching done).
I have the last of the crystals that are being put on this quilt due to arrive next week. The binding was time-consuming, but is so worth it in the end. The micro-piping coordinates with the backing and tones in the sand fabrics. It also stiffens the edge to help hold the edges from ruffling while hanging. I also went to the pain-staking trouble to align all of the changes in binding fabric with where the border fabrics change. It's a nice effect, but took lots of tweaking.

Before we left on vacation 2 weeks ago, I was working on my so called "fast pieced quilt". It was supposed to be designed with minimal piecing so it could be more of a quilting project than a piecing project. Oh, was I so wrong. I have learned I am incapable of doing easy and simple and fast piecing. My mind thrives on the complicated and intricate patterns, and even better when they intertwine. This is lacking a couple more borders still, but you get the idea.

These are some of Northcott's stonehenge fabrics from the Amazon and Maui (I think) lines. They are so gorgeous; I just love them, even more than the Stonehenge ones I used on my Postcards quilt. My heart beats to purple and green. Just a simple fact. A few of the materials have gold leafing on them too.

One more looksee...

I have been helping my 9 year old design and sew a placemat. And my 5 year old is attempting to hand quilt a doll blankie that I pieced on machine. They are having fun, but it's eating into my time!

And lastly, I loaded the silk wholecloth this afternoon. It is only 36" square so in theory, it ought not take that long (famous last words, I know). I have only done this much, and I have things to rip out and redo. The Bottomline thread is giving me frequent fits on this job, making little nests, and bunching out when it should not. From a few feet away, it may look OK. My eye is too trained to want the feathers more uniform and areas of symmetry to be actually symmetrical. I may leave it and opt to fix things when the rest is stitched. On the bright side, the silk is not hard to stitch on, just a bit nervewracking.