CURRENT

INTERNET SPECIAL

POSTAGE TO CANADA

I HAVE A NOTION

READER QUESTIONS

CUSTOMER COMMENTS

Aloha!  

Spring should be spent outside weeding, planting, cleaning up the yard, or working on finishing winter's quilt projects. Instead, Janice has been spending way too many hours troubleshooting a series of computer issues. What a drag! Though nothing drastic was wrong, it was just plain time-consuming. So, if you were worried that you missed our April newsletter - you did not - here it is (finally) combined with the May newsletter.

Meanwhile, Nancy has been travelling and teaching - a lot. Meeting enthusiastic quilters across the country while cruising the western Caribbean, dropping in on an Easter parade in New Orleans, avoiding the early Spring snows in Pennsylvania, retreating on the shores of Puget Sound with The Applique Society, visiting the home of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in Illinois, and vending at our first quilt show of the season near Salem, Oregon.  Whew! It has been a busy two months.

Quilt Show Season is heating up. Be sure to check the full list of our up-coming events, further down this newsletter. Even more details are on the Calendar page of our website.

E komo mai,

Welcome,

Nancy & Janice

Single-minded determination

While there are more unanswered questions, than known facts about sea turtle behavior, it is believed that they lead mostly solitary lives. The term "Herd of Turtles", is often ascribed to an unruly group of people (i.e. your kids) moving slowly and obstructing the way of others. But we think it must surely come from the one time when large numbers of turtles are seen together - when they hatch from their nests in the sand.

Dozens and dozens of eggs are deposited by the mother into a hole in the sand and then covered. It then becomes a group endeavor, when the eggs hatch, to work their way out of this sand-covered hole and find their way to the ocean. It is during that arduous trek that this "herd of turtles", with single-minded determination, clamber their way over or around every obstacle to reach their goal.

Your herd, your kids, probably do not share a single-minded purpose about much of anything other than not paying attention to you, as you try to guide them in the direction they should be going. Luckily, the herd of turtles on your quilt is well-behaved, orderly and quiet. So while you are stitching this quilt you can at least indulge in a fantasy of well-behaved, obedient children, headed with single-minded determination in the direction you want them to go!

Pattern: Herd of Turtles, 24" x 36", normally $12.00, for a short time this pattern is our Internet Special for $10.00.  

For more pictures of this quilt, and others, visit our Gallery of 2 Fabric Applique Quilts, then go here to pick your Fabric Pack. 

 TULIP VASES - Hawaiian Quilt

 When you see tulips popping up you know warmer weather is just around the corner. Janice is making this Tulip Vases quilt using two of her hand-dyed fabrics. It still needs to be quilted, along with dozens of other finished quilt tops lined up in her studio waiting for their chance to be quilted, but its day will come.

If the reverse points (aka valleys) in this quilt are a bit off-putting, we offer help in the next article. And if you want help with the inside curves on the tulip flowers, refer back to the article in our November 2009 issue.

As a reminder, all applique is made up of just five simple shapes:

1. Straight line
2. Outside curve
3. Inside curve
4. Point
5. Reverse point (valley)

Once you know how to do these five shapes you can applique anything! If you feel the need for help, Nancy shares her easy, stress-free techniques for these five shapes in both of our DVDs:

• Hawaiian Quilting with Nancy Lee Chong
• 2 Fabric Applique with Nancy Lee Chong

To see more pictures of the Tulip Vases quilt visit our Gallery of Hawaiian Quilts.

To find, or order, hand-dyed fabric for your Hawaiian Quilt, visit Janice's Hand-dyed Fabrics page on our website.

We also have Fabric Packs, yardage, notions and Aurifil thread for your applique projects, too. We don't want you to have any excuses not to be appliqueing!

Pattern: Tulip Vases, 42" x 42", $12.00. Purchase pattern here.

We featured the Tulip Vases quilt and our Hawaiian Quilting DVD in the April 2010 issue of our e-Newsletter. Take just a minute to go back and review those articles, here.

With X-ray Vision

One common shape that sometimes presents a challenge to appliquers is the reverse point (aka: valley, or inside corner). We thought it would help if you could see these areas with x-ray vision, of sorts. Nancy stitched these samples using silk organza (quite a different challenge!) so you could see what the turn-under allowance looks like. 

Where to clip?

1. A wide V (right angle or wider)
2. A narrow V (a sharper, more acute angle)
3. A slit

In order to achieve the shape of the applique you want, it is necessary to clip the applique fabric in 1 and 2, but not 3.

A slit (3) requires no additional clipping, as nothing is to be gained by making the slit longer. We design our patterns assuming no additional clipping at the end of a slit. 

How deep should the clip be? Because we do not mark the turn-under line on our applique fabric, we use pins to show us exactly how deep to snip. Place pins, temporarily, on the turn-under line (3/16 inch from the cut edge), with the tips of the pins crossing, to see exactly how deep to clip. Make your clip, then remove the pins.

Notice that the clip on the right, the narrower V, requires a longer clip than the one on the left, a right angle. A single clip in each corner, that's all. 

 How much fabric is turned under? No matter the angle, a single clip into the corner allows for good shaping. You can see from the sheer fabric samples, that there is no fabric turned under right at the valley floor.

Samples 2 and 3: After making the clip, you turn under your normal allowance until you near the valley floor. The closer you get to the valley floor, the less fabric you have to turn under forming the V.

How is the valley stitched? As the amount of fabric turned under gradually decreases, your stitches need to be closer and closer together, at the same time they reach a little further onto the applique fabric. It is this stitching that  securely holds all the cut fiber ends in place. Because there is virtually no fabric turned under right at the valley floor, it is important to cluster several stitches right there to make sure none of the fibers poke out. These stitches take a little deeper bite onto the applique fabric to catch a few threads of the applique fabric, securing the valley, and making sure it will stand the test of time. We refer to this as a satin fan stitch. As you head out of the valley floor, continue with several closely-spaced stitches until you are stitching with a normal turn-under again.