A couple of videos worth watching

Kay — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:15:40 +0000

My pal Cathy sent me a link to one of Bonnie McCaffery’s vidcasts. The Tentmakers of Cairo are artists I had not heard of. Their story is fascinating and the work they do incredible. And so fast! Check it out. It’s a big wide world, and it isn’t really tents any more.

Over at The Quilt Show, Sharon Pederson has been giving a series of lessons. There’s one on easy padded machine appliqué that’s really cool. You do not have to be a TQS member to watch the video.

Until next time, enjoy the show!
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

Batting bonanza

Kay — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:31:55 +0000

I finally get to write about something I’ve been wanting to get to since January. Now that my quilts for the new book are finished and safely arrived at the Martingale offices, I can actually pick up my head and look around!

Before the Road to California show in January, I received a very nice invitation from Darlene Christopherson, esteemed appliqué artist and Marketing Developer for the Pellon Quilt Division. Pellon was having a booth at the show, and Darlene invited designers to come by and receive a sample of Pellon’s new Legacy brand battings.

Naturally, I was happy to do so. I was presented with a sample pack of 15 different battings. Wow, that’s a lot of styles! I’ve been itching to stitch up some samples to share on the blog. What came to mind are some ancient appliquéd hearts that have been marinating in unfinished-land for you wouldn’t believe how many years. Let’s just say that when you see some of the fabrics you may take a trip on the hot tub time machine back to the 80s. Apparently when I was a young green quilter I thought I would appliqué a heart out of each fabric in my stash, onto bleached muslin. Well you can imagine how long that lasted. Sigh, the naiveté of youth.

Gentle quilters, I didn’t take the time to hand quilt any of them, just whizzed them up on the Bernina with some swirlies. Some of the swirlies are more “interesting” than others and I make no claims about my machine quilting. Sorry you can’t feel these But I hope there’ll be some useful information here.

I did the poofy poly and wool ones too, though these probably aren’t the styles you’d choose for machine quilting.

And last but not least, how about this dramatic back batting?

I like a low-loft batting myself, and all of the first 12 were fine and dandy for what I do. It’s very interesting the different fibers used… you can choose from cotton, poly, linen, flax, bamboo, soy, rayon, and blends of more than one. When I first started quilting there was Mountain Mist and Mountain Mist. We have so many choices now!

Until next time,
Kay
By Kay Mackenzie

All About Applique » Batting

A couple of videos worth watching

Batting bonanza