New Quilt Marking Pencil Review and New Fabric

So much for the plan of only buying what's needed to finish the current project.  In my defense, you all know I work with these colors a lot.   More than likely they will be used within in the next few months on the huge stack of UFO's I shared in a previous post.  

How could I pass up $3 a yard?  This receipt is for 11.806 yards of fabric and 2 water soluble pencils.  Review for the pencils later in this post.  11.806 what an odd number.   They charge for every inch, no rounding down at this store.

I know your wondering where in the world is fabric $3 a yard and is it worth a darn?

Hobby Lobby

Did you know every other week most of the fabric is 40% off?  Like clockwork for the last 2 years.  And they always have a section of clearance fabric.  Now since the company is going to change hands this may change.  

These little cuties were in the clearance section.  I've been eyeing them for a long time but I just kept telling myself, I know where it is if I need it.  But if it's in the clearance section that tells me it's going away and not coming back.  Better grab it while I can and at these prices how could I not! 

Kim, the fabric department gal, even gave me this small piece of scrap for free...LOL!   She's such a sweetie, always happy.  Yesterday as I walked up to the cutting counter she says "Hey Aries!  I knew you'd be in this week for the 40% off!".  She calls me Aries because the topic of astrology came up in one of my many recent visits.  She must be big on signs, I can't remember her sign but she remembers mine.  Not sure that's a good thing when you're and Aries.😕😁  All that matters is I'm memorable and we enjoy our visits.  

Anyway, back to the fabric.  Is it great fabric, no.  Is it better than Joann's?  I don't know.  Is it better than Walmart fabric?  Again, I don't know.  It's fabric, it passes my test of how does it feel.  All of these non quilt shop places have some okay fabrics and some not so okay fabric.  Obviously this one is better than some of the fabrics in Hobby Lobby.  No matter what the print or what store, if the fabric feels like a tight weaved gauze, I won't purchase.  If it feels stiff or heavily painted, I won't purchase.  Even in quilt shops there's fabrics with a heavy metallic, shimmer or glaze on top of the dye.  These types of stiff fabrics have given me issues in the past.  

Now here's what I do know about non quilt shop quality fabric, especially Hobby Lobby fabrics.  Bleeding is more than likely going to happen.  These will be pinked and prewashed before going into my stash.  They also tend to shrink a bit more than name brand.  

Brother Sister Design Studio is on the selvage.  A google search for the company and the thread count of their fabrics brought up no useful results.  The only thing found is they are basically a Hobby Lobby company.

Alrighty lets get back to the reason for shopping at Hobby Lobby.   A water soluble white marking pencil.  It's not something needed very often since I rarely work with dark fabric.  Many brands of white fabric pencils and markers have been used over the years and they have failed by staining or embedding in the fibers. When I saw these at Hobby Lobby I thought, why not give them a try.  If they too fail, I'm only out $2.99.

 

Any new pen or pencil is tested before using them on projects due to the many failures.  Trusting the company or other quilters is not an option anymore.  So don't trust me either!  If you decide to try anything suggested here, TEST IT OUT ON YOUR FABRICS FIRST.  Why?  Maybe its because different fabrics have different chemicals?  You may use a different starch?  Your water may have something it that causes them not to work?  I really don't know why products work for some and not for others.  

It works!  A little spritz of water and....See!  All gone.   I've quilted 4 quilts marked with these and not one white mark was visible after washing.

Now there is one thing I didn't like about this pencil and all other pencils that need to be sharpened.  The "lead" breaks inside the pencil.  It would also break if applying too much pressure when marking the quilt.  After figuring out the problem was applying too much pressure, there was no more "lead" breaks.  Of course it could have been the $1 pencil sharpener causing some of the issues. Pretty sure they don't use the best blades in those.  

Hope you found this useful and...

Until next time....

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Pocketful of Starlight Quilt ~ UFO Quilt #1 2023

My first finish of 2023!  Yippee!  We know this quilt as The Hummingbird or Periwinkle but I'm calling mine Pocketful of Starlight.

The name comes from a song my dad used to sing when I was little.  I'm sure most of you know the song. 

🎵Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket....Never let it fade away.🎵  

If you've never heard it, I've got you covered just click on image below.  It's a catchy little tune that makes my little ole heart go pitter pat.

Okay... dance yourself over here and take a look at this quilting. The quilting is why this quilt became a UFO.  At the time, way back in 2014, quilting on a frame was fairly new to me.    My free motion skills were not great so this was all ruler work which takes FOREVER.  Fast forward today, and I finished this with the arcs being free motion and the straight lines where ruler work.  It was still pretty intense but went much faster than in 2014.  If you would like to see the original post about this quilt as it was constructed you can find them here and here and here is the finished top

Overall it turned out pretty good except for a couple things.  Take a look at this big ole drip of sewing machine oil.  BooHoo!  What are the chances of this coming out?  It's been setting in there since 2014.  

Oh but that's not all of the issues.  See those faint brownish lines?  My dear friends this is what happens when you(meaning I) don't wash a quilt after using blue water soluble markers.  Spraying with water does not remove the chemicals it just makes the blue disappear until you bring it out years later.  No worries, I have Google on my side.

So...option one without google is Dawn blue and color catchers for those bright reds.  Dawn cleans everything.  If you have never used it on your windows it's a must.  I love it.  No streaking!

Well it didn't work.  That's okay because as you know google has many answers.  Most of which have absolutely nothing to do with my problems at hand.  Who is charge of the algorithm these days? On page one of my search for "blue water soluble marker turned brown on fabric" 

And Google answers...

3 ways to erase old marks off a dry erase board

and

 how to remove permanent ink from skin

They got even stranger the farther I dug into google. 

On the bright side the fabrics didn't bleed much, that's a win to me.  I recently read that color catchers can be reused, did you know this?  Let's give it a try.

Back to Google and my goodness I found 1 article about blue water soluble markers leaving brown marks.  You can find it here.  It's short and sweet and to the point, unlike the current blog post your reading.  LOL!  To save you the time I'll let you in on her secret...white vinegar, an entire gallon on an already wet quilt.  She didn't say how long to let it set on the quilt or whether or not to add detergent.  So I poured it on the quilt in the washer, smooshed it a bit then let it set while I fixed a pot of decaf coffee.  About 5 minutes later I went back and started a small load wash, warm water, no detergents but I did add the color catchers. 

And would you take a look at this!  Happy Dancing to Pocketful of Starlight!  The brown lines are gone!  No trace of them at all.  Thank you Shannon!

As for that spot of dirty sewing machine oil.  It faded but it's still there.  I'll take it, no big deal.  I'm chalking this one up as a win.  One little spot is better than brown lines all over the pretty white background.

Into the dryer she goes and TADA, we have a finish with little vintage looking crinkle to the fabrics.

The oil spot is hard to find.  The old girl turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself.  

The fabrics in this quilt are a mash of quilt shop quality, Joann's, Walmart, bedding and cloths I cut up.

I'm not tickled with the backing fabric.  But it was all I had at the time.  It's a older print from an estate sale.  Maybe dates to the 80's or 90's.  

If you like this quilt and would like to make one of your own I got you covered.  Mine was made with a free pattern(paper piecing template) that no longer exists.  Well it does but it now cost $4 for the PDF template.  If you want to pay for it you can get it here in the Red Pepper Quilts shop on Etsy.  

If you want a freebie I found one that is the exact same size as mine but free.  The free pattern is for what you see below.  This is (4) 5" Periwinkle blocks.  Putting 4 of them together it's called Mill and Stars.

The only difference is the background fabrics which you will see when you go to this link, click here.   

Mine was constructed using the paperless paper piecing method.  So I used templates that looked like the image below.  The link I provided above has this option or traditional templates that are also free.

If you are not familiar with paperless paper piecing the video below is for this method.  I prefer this method because I do not like ripping papers off the back of my blocks.  I'm lazy! 

Until next time....

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

Here's a quick little video I made for Facebook back in November when the quilting was complete.

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Making a UFO Plan Again....HA!HA!

 Come on in and pull up a chair while once again I TRY to make a plan to reduce the ever growing stash of UFO's.  First I want to proudly say there was some UFO progress this year.  It was late in the year, about September is when the quilting marathon began.  Starting with the quickest to finish quilts.  It came to a total of seven UFO's quilted and then four new quilts for Christmas gifts.  Not bad, huh?  Yep I'm pretty proud of those numbers.  But there's so many more.  More than I thought.  Let's take a look at them from the easiest to finish to the hardest to finish.

On the left is four of the recently quilted quilts needing the binding sewn to back.  On the right is three quilts I started quilting and tired of quilting them so heavily.  Would they be easy to finish?  Maybe, my quilting skills have gotten better over the years.  Each one of these is at least 7 years old. 

From left to right... far left, five quilt tops with backing and binding ready to quilt. All are twin size and throw size.  In the middle stack is five tops with backing but need a binding.  And on the far right is 14 quilt tops ranging from large wall hangings to queen sized.  All 14 need backing and binding.

Next up is a tote full of projects in various stages of construction.  Let's get real, the chances of me getting to this box isn't good.  So I didn't even open, let alone count them.  Should I actually make it to this box this year, we'll open it then.  These are some of my oldest UFO's.  One is a hand applique 13 block quilt.  All it needs is the border to stitched into place.

UFO's are tucked away and hidden all over the Studio.  Here's another applique quilt.  All 13 blocks are complete but I've been looking for the perfect sashing fabric.  No hurry but should I find that perfect fabric, this one will get bumped up on the list.  If you want to know what's hiding in the basket, click here.

Hiding under the quilt frame is another cart with my tiny scraps Vortex quilt.  It's covered with a plastic bag to keep the dust off the fabrics.  As you all know quilting can be quite dusty.  You can see more of this quilt by clicking here.

Just imagine how much space can be gained by finishing all these projects!  Room for more fabric?!  Yes Please!  Thank goodness for pretty containers.  These baskets hold 2 dresden quilts. The love affair with dresden quilts is out of control.  It's my go-to quilt pattern when needing a quicky to make me happy.  To be honest I went down a dresden quilt internet rabbit hole this morning.  No credit card charges were made so all is good.  The aqua boxes contain my nearly 4,000 HST's of various sizes.  I've been saving them for years from the clippy flippy corners.  Last New Years I was determined to square up and use all of these by today....HAHA!  This year I realize they are not at the top of my list.

Moving on....The green bin holds strips of fabric 1" x WOF or a little less than WOF, rope and the start of a rope rug.  I've stopped adding fabrics to this bin with the hopes of someday making a huge rug for my studio.  Below the green bin is my stash blue jeans and flannel shirts.  Some have been deboned and cut to usable squares and some(a LOT) are not.  A blue jean and flannel rag quilt for Mr. Podunk.  It was started about 2 years ago.

This is not all of them.  As I write this post I realize I forgot three more UFO's in my other fabric cabinet.  A patriotic basket quilt, about halfway to top completion.  And two argyle quilts about 3/4 of the way to a complete top.

The next finish could be done as soon as tomorrow.  There's only 2 ft. or so of binding left to stitch.  This one is a cutie...(118) 5 inch paper pieced blocks!  Any guesses on the block?

Until next time....

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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Happy New Years! 2023

 

This time of year offers us a brand new start and I want to take this opportunity to start fresh with you and wish you love and peace in the new year.

Happy New Year!

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