Valley Lake Sunset Pillow

Pattern/Technique: Kalaloch Pillow from Simple Geometric Quilting by Laura Preston

Added zipper using Covered zipper pillow tutorial by Lisa Bongean

Materials:

• Fat quarters: Peppered Cottons Garnet 26, Saffron 25, Paprika 32, Flame 16, Magenta 42, Parrish Blue 67

• 1/2 yd Peppered Cottons Ink 45

• 3/4 yd Peppered Cottons Marine Blue 11

• Aurifil 50 wt color no. 4182

• Quilters Dream select cotton batting

• 1/2 yd Kona cotton natural (for backing of quilted panel)

Fabric purchased from Cottoneer, Shot & Pepper

New skills: strip quilting

Lessons: I'd read in one of my quilting books that it isn't necessary to block / straighten fat quarters before cutting into them, so I didn't do that. But I definitely noticed I had a lot of loose threads fraying from the strips. This wasn't necessarily a problem, but I did have to manage them.

The pattern called for short blue strips that were slightly shorter (10.5") than the colored strips (11"). I would cut 11" strips of these to have a little extra in case of inaccuracies while piecing.

I'd cut slightly longer long blue strips (maybe an inch longer) because there were some inaccuracies in my pieced strips, so I offset them to make sure that the center panel (yellow/dark red) was aligned. I ended up having to trim down the length of the pillow by ~0.5" so that the edge of the fabric would be within the seam allowances.

Ironing on a wool felt pad produces incredible results when piecing.

It's critical to check the following settings on the sewing machine before every use: presser foot pressure, stitch length, tension, and needle size/type. I started out piecing using a chrome denim needle (bleargh) which I switched out partway through the project. I then forgot to cancel the needle offset after switching out my zipper foot and ended up driving the needle (breaking it) down into my 1/4" plastic quilting foot (cracking the foot, ugh).

I had quite a bit of trouble with skipped stitches while piecing. (Confession: I didn't resew the seams because I would be quilting them in the ditch and assumed that the quilting process would reinforce any janky seam.) I did a lot of research both online (this thread was a huge help), in my machine manual, and the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing. Here's what I learned:

• The most common cause of skipped stitches is using the wrong size / type of needle for the weight of thread being used

• Aurifil 50 wt thread is 2-ply so it's thinner than a 50 wt 3-ply thread

• I tried a variety of sizes and types of needles (80/12 universal - skipped, 70/11 universal - skipped, 80/12 microtex - far less skipping, 70/11 microtex - no skipping) and eventually had great results with a 70/11 microtex needle

I'm not sure what I should do when I go back to garment sewing - whether I should pick up some 40 wt thread, or use the same size/type needle I've been using for quilting.

While quilting, I had to drop the presser foot pressure a lot more than my initial setting (intially 4.5, and dropped down to 2) because the quilt top was getting distorted / pulled while I was making the horizonal lines. I'm wondering if this might have also been exacerbated because I was quilting across the grain of the fabric, and I've read that the cross-grain tends to have a little more give.

While sewing in the zipper, the fabric stretched a ton. Again, I'm wondering if this is because I was sewing across the grain and maybe the fabric was stretching out while I was attaching the zipper. I managed to get things to work, but the zipper was definitely doing some wonky stuff while I was trying to topstitch it and I had to do some Grade A fudging to get it to work. Definitely need to do more research here.

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I used a chaco liner and a hera marker to mark quilting lines - both worked effectively, though the hera marker might have been slightly better because it didn't get chalk on the thread, causing it to look a little dull. Most of the chalk has rubbed away as the pillow has been used, and it's now unnoticeable.

The pillow insert I had on hand (recycled from an old throw pillow) was 13x24 inches and I considered reducing the pillow width by an inch. I'm happy I didn't end up doing this because 14x24 and 16x26 are far more standard pillow insert sizes when I eventually replace the existing insert.

What I'd do differently: Piece and quilt a test swatch to make sure I have the right needle for the fabric I'm using.

While my strips had some alignment inaccuracies, I think that improving is mainly a matter of continuing to practice piecing.

Care: Hand wash, lay flat to dry

Test Drive Quilt

In preparation for quilting my first large-ish quilt top, I wanted to get practice quilting a smaller piece. I followed the "test drive" steps that Jacquie Gering outlines in Walk to start getting my sea legs and test out the techniques I've read about in various quilting books (more on those below).

Pattern/Techniques: I followed the steps for straight line and angled quilting in the "test drive" section of Walk (p. 11). I then began improvising lines of different widths and creating simple crosshatch patterns. Lastly I practiced starting lines midway through the fabric (i.e. white thread) using the short stitches technique from Heirloom Machine Quilting by Harriet Hargrave.

I followed the instructions for binding a quilt from Quilters Academy Vol. 1 to create a 1/4" binding.

Made with 2 pieces of Kaufman 200 ct white muslin and Quilters Dream Select cotton batting. Binding made from the same fabric as the quilt top/backing.

New skills: Quilting with a walking foot, layering a quilt, pin basting, binding a quilt

Lessons: Pressure foot pressure can be lowered to reduce/prevent the fabric from puckering when quilting intersecting lines. The default pressure foot pressure on my machine is 6.5, and I had to lower the pressure to 4.5-5 to stop puckering.

Add small sharpie marks to your presser foot at key dimensions (e.g. the width from the edge of the presser foot to the needle) to act as guides for pivoting, which will result in even line spacing after the pivot.

Quilting angled seams can result in the fabric warping—it's possible this was exacerbated by being too stingy with the number of pins I used to baste.

I don't love Bohin curved size 2 pins for basting. A lot of them were hard to insert, and they left large visible holes in the quilt. I've ordered smaller size 1 curved pins to try them instead. (A pro tip from Gloria is to avoid pins with plastic grips because they take up more space and are harder to quilt around.)

Be thoughtful about pin placement—don't put pins right where the first seams will be quilted.

Don't close pins after they're removed—you're going to have to open them to baste the next quilt. Store them open to save the extra effort.

Bring the bobbin thread up at the start of a seam (press needle down then needle up) to prevent a thread nest forming. An angled tweezer can be used the pull the bobbin thread if it's quite short, saving your fingers from being accidentally stabbed by the needle.

If there's a low bobbin thread warning while sewing, change the bobbin before starting the next seam. I didn't do this and ran out of bobbin thread mid-seam.

When hand sewing the back of the binding, double check to make sure you haven't sewn through to the front of the quilt. I did this a few times by accident. Check in particular if the needle requires more force to insert than usual. Quilting betweens needles are super handy for sewing a binding.

Harriet Hargrave's instructions for getting mitered corners on a quilt binding are excellent (Ref: Quilters Academy Vol. 1).

What I'd do differently: My goal was purely to practice and I had no expectations for the final product—the fact that it turned into something I genuinely liked was pure serendipity.