Hug-a-Bit Quilts.

Friday, 3 July 2015

Off to Europe we go! (and some progress updates)

My friends, the time has come; me and my son are off to Turkey this evening!!! I am super excited and a little nervous too. You know that feeling; you think you forget something and keep searching for it in your mind even though you made checklists and ticked everything off the list! Yes, I have that feeling and cannot stop searching for that missing item. And probably won't stop until I arrive at my destination!

Before I leave, I want to show you some progress photos of the quilt I made for my son and a few bits and pieces I made to take with me as gifts.

Let's start with the quilt. Here is where I am at at the moment.

My initial plan was to buy some nice flannel fabric from Turkey and start quilting it once I returned...uhmm..nope, I couldn't wait. I couldn't resist the itch. I bought some very cute flannel from Lincraft-normally I never buy fabric from Lincraft or Spotlight but this fabric was good quality-and just got on with it. I think I made a very good progress; given that I quilted that area only in two days. Then I had stop to prepare for our departure.

I chose to quilt it with this linear pattern as I thought it would compliment the stripes on the quilt (I have other plans for the stripy bits). It is so fun; goes very quickly and you can fill a large area in no time. I must admit that I am not very happy with my thread colour choice. It doesn't show clearly in the photo but it is variegated with some soft yellows, blues, greens and pinks. I thought they would pop on the grey background but instead , they blend in so well that they become almost invisible. The thread quality, however, is superb! It is Superior King Tut; nice and shiny, the weight is beautiful- I think it is NE 40 in Aurifil, and the most importantly it doesn't create lint balls in the bobbin case area, which is the only thing I don't like with Aurifil.

So, to add some colour for the sake of visibility-if it is so!-, I also quilted with a lovely green Aurifil I found in my stash. I will at least quilt a few rows in this colour and then go back to the variegated one.

Well, even though the thread colour didn't go as planned, I am so proud of myself. I never thought I would be able to manage such a large quilt on my domestic machine but proved that it was possible. I made a very good progress; I will be very happy to find it almost half quilted when I return. Also, I love the texture that the quilting creates!

I did some gift shopping for my family and friends as well. Over the six years, I had three trips to Turkey and took lots of gifts that reflected Australia. This being the case, I struggled to find different and unique things for a few family members; so I decided to make pouches for them at the very last moment!!

I used a thick interfacing for the green bottomed one and regretted it so much. It was almost impossible to turn the pouch inside out. Because of the struggle, the fabric wrinkled and ironing it didn't help much. So, for the red bottomed one, I just used cotton batting without interfacing and it was just perfect too. (I now notice that I forgot to topstitch around the zipper. I might still have time for it LOL.) The tutorial for these pouches and two other sizes can be found at Noodle-head.

And the last thing to show you is one of my bee blocks which I totally forgot about until the other night!

It was around 11pm when I started cutting the fabrics for this. Luckily, I had every colour I needed. I finished making the second one early this morning as soon as I woke up and they have been sent to its recipient. Phew!

Oh, one more thing. I was given a lovely charm pack by a quilty friend a while ago. I didn't have any plans for it until I decided to entertain myself in the plane with EPP hexagons!! I quickly ordered the templates, which arrived yesterday. I brought everything I needed to cut the fabrics into four to the office this morning. In under ten minutes...voila! A nice pile of 2.5"x2.5" squares to be basted in the plane! (I must be kidding myself by the way. Someone remind me that I am travelling with a three year old!)

Well, I feel like I have achieved a lot in such a short time. This shows one more time that I work more efficiently under some stress and approaching deadlines!

I am super excited about seeing my family and friends again after two years. They last saw my son-except the regular Skype calls-when he was just one year old. I am so looking forward to their reaction!

I am also looking forward to the delicious Turkish food which I don't cook very often, street bazaars, fabrics shops, streets at nights full of people, and basically everything! We will be catching up with my hubby in Germany and spending a couple of weeks there as well. I have never been to Germany; so, this will be interesting too. As the last stop, we will hop to England to spend a few days with my husband's niece who is about to give birth. In early August, we will be heading home.

I feel like this will be a fantastic trip which we will always remember. And some other adventures are waiting for me upon my return!

Well friends; thanks for your patience and reading this long post. I will try to keep blogging while overseas. You can always follow my fabric and food (and everything else) adventures on Instagram.

Stay safe, stay well, keep stitching!

Love,

Nurdan

Monday, 29 June 2015

Monday Makers!#45 and my humble review of some quilting machines

Hiya!
Last week, I wrote briefly about my visit to the Sydney Quilt and Craft Fair. Today I want to share a little more about the quilting machines I tried. This will be a lengthy post; so, if you want to link up your projects, just scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Whenever I go to a quilt and craft fair, sewing and quilting machine booths are the ones I run to first. Before I get too confused among all the other booths selling all sorts of colourful fabrics, threads, craft supplies and etc, I go to every single sewing/quilting machine booth and try them if I can. I also try to go in early to make sure I have enough time for everything. This time, however, I only got to spend two hours;so, rather than checking out every machine brand, I went to the ones I had a particular interest in.

The first booth was Handi Quilter's and the machine was the beautiful Sweet Sixteen. My quilty friend Mon owns one and she introduced me to hers a few weeks ago. She taught me all the how-tos and let me play with it as long as I wanted. Because I wasn't new to it, I knew what to expect and it certainly didn't fail to deliver.
This machine is so easy and nice to quilt with. It does 1500 stitches per minute and the speed is fully adjustable. It has a beautiful, large space which makes small projects a breeze to quilt and larger projects very easy and manageable. It runs so smoothly with very little noise and you feel like your quilt underneath is just floating in the air!

Do you see the intricate design that I quilted???? Naaah, joking, I didn't do that. LOL

If you later want to move to a long arm machine, Sweet Sixteen can be converted into a long arm very easily. Since my first encounter with my friend's machine, I just can't get it out of my mind. If I had some disposable money, I wouldn't even think twice and would just buy it.

Then I moved to the Juki booth.

Juki had its TL-2200QVP (Quilt Virtuoso Pro) on display (as well as TL 98). I had a little session with this machine too. I am not going into the technical features of it since you can find them on the internet. Here is my experience with it.

I found the stitching quite noisy and also it didn't feel as smooth as the S16 either. It felt like the machine was somehow resisting me. There is a clear, hard plastic plate/shield just in front of the needle which I found quite distracting. It rather blurred my vision and hurt my eyes a little, which might be due to me being slightly longsighted. Having said that, this shield can be removed by unscrewing the screws. The booth also didn't provide me with a clean, unused piece of quilt sandwich even though they had many pieces (not because they were being nasty, they were very friendly indeed). It was stitched to death all over and I struggled to see what I was doing, where I was going... The machine was certainly strongly built and a very high quality but I didn't enjoy quilting with it.

I had to concentrate hard while quilting.

Then I tried the TL 98P. I won't say much much about it; it was a dream to sew with. I read probably every customer review available on the internet. I haven't come up with one single negative comment. After trying and seeing it myself, I can say with no doubt that this machine is a work horse. Being able to sew 8-9 layers of denim was quite impressive and the machine didn't even blink once.

I also wanted to try a couple of long arm quilting machines too. The first one I played was HQ Avante 18".

I didn't ask much about its technical features; what you can't get is the experience and this was what I went for.

I only tried quilting circles/pebbles because I was wondering how making circular movements were going to feel; smooth and easy or not quite circle but squarish and not very smooth. When I started quilting, it was difficult to have a perfectly round shape; the machine was kind of resisting. When the representative lady asked how I was doing, I told her exactly the same thing. She said that the machine was on stitch regulator and it might have been the issue. Surprisingly, it was the issue; as soon as she switched it off, that resistance disappeared and making circles was so fun and much easier! I loved it! The only thing that interfered with my performance was my belly LOL. I shared a short video on my instagram if you want to see me in action.

Quilting with a long arm is very different when compared to moving the fabric underneath the machine. It gives you a different kind of freedom. You certainly have a wider vision of the area you are quilting without the interruption of your project bunched up underneath the machine's throat or at the back or on your lap. But I can't say that I prefer a long arm to a sit-down or domestic machine or vice versa ; as I said, they are all different and the experience you gain is different too.

The last machine I tried was a Nolting. Unfortunately, I can't say much about this machine as I didn't spend enough time quilting with it. I also can't remember the model and don't have a photo of it. The only thing I can say is that neither was the poor machine nor the poor representative was a having a good day. The machine got stuck several times- that turned out that there was so much tangled bobbin thread underneath the fabric. The salesman tried to clean them crazily by pulling/tearing them. Then the bobbin thread ran out, and a few other things happened. I didn't want to push the poor guy too much as he already looked super tired; I thanked him and left. I hope he got a good rest on that night.

There you go! Here is my experience with the above mentioned machines.

I also want to say that I am by no means a quilting or quilting/sewing machine expert. These are my personal views and your experience might be totally different. And it is totally fine.

Now to Monday Makers!

What do you have to share with us this week? Come and link up!

1.Your project can be anything you start on that Monday as long as it makes you move and be active and creative: a new quilt, a knitting project, scrap booking, cross-stitching, baking-we don't mind yummy recipes!, a gardening project, painting your house!, tidying up the pantry!...This is your Monday and you are the maker of the day!

2. Grab the button from the side bar or put a link back to me in your Monday post.

3. Click on "add your link" and just fill in the required areas.
4. Please link to your specific post, not to your homepage: We would like to find your post easily.

5. To link an Instagram photo, click the Instagram icon at the bottom of the link-up screen and use the URL of your IG feed as the link (for example, my URL is http://instagram.com/hugabitquilts) Please hashtag #MondayMakers!
6. Please take time to visit other links and leave a sweet comment: We love comments!

7. Share the photos of your finished Monday projects in your next link up- I am hoping you will come back again!: Who doesn't love a sweet, finished project or a "before-after" photo?

An InLinkz Link-up

Monday, 22 June 2015

Monday Makers!#44

Hi everyone!
How was your week/end? I had a pretty busy week and a weekend.
I want to tell you a little bit about my weekend, but first, I want to thank you for all your nice comments for last week's 2015 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop post. I will catch up on responding to your comments and visiting your blogs this week. I also want to take the opportunity to welcome my new followers! Your support means a lot to me. I hope to see you visiting my blog again and again!
Ok, now to the weekend.
Last Saturday, I attended a festival at the Blue Mountains, Sydney with my jewellery stall. It was a pretty full on day with a very early set up in minus temperatures and a late finish due to the number of stalls that attended. My lovely sister-in-law Rhia came to help me for the day. Luckily we were all rugged up and from time to time, we had a chance to warm up under the gentle winter sun.

The biggest excitement for me was the Sunday. Me and Rhia went to the Sydney Quilt and Craft Fair. It was so lively, full of all kinds of fabric and craft booths, oh and sewing and quilting machines! Because it was the last day of the fair, it wasn't so crowded; therefore, we were able to spend as much time as we wanted at the booths. Also, I had a chance to meet the lovely Molly Sparkles and try my dream sewing machine Juki TL 98p. Ok, I have to admit that the model I want to buy is TL 2010Q which is not sold in Australia. But, seriously, the only difference between the two is that the 2010 model has speed control. After trying the 98P in person and talking to Molly, I am totally sold!
I also tried several sit down and long arm quilting machines. I will write more about my experience in my next post. If you want to have a sneak peak, I shared on Instagram a few pictures and a short video of me quilting on a long arm. My IG name is hugabitquilts.

A quick photo with the sparkling Molly :-)

I also bought a couple of things like thread and some fat quarters from Allison Glass, which I could not resist! I will show them in another post as well.