Showing posts with label table topper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label table topper. Show all posts

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Newfoundland's colourful houses as a table topper

Hi and welcome! The table topper is finished - some free motion quilting (FMQ) and mostly walking foot quilting. Here is a quick post to celebrate!

Painted fence becomes a table topper


As I mentioned in my last post, I made a table topper based on my friend's Newfoundland (NFLD) colourful houses painted fence. 

Our friend in front of the fence!

We attended his retirement party yesterday. It was a lot of fun and it was obvious that he enjoyed every minute! I asked his daughter to take his picture in front of the fence, so here it is. 

Quilting the table topper


I used the pillowcase technique to finish it. The batting was on the bottom with the front and backing facing each other. I cut the backing very carefully to ensure that it would be stitched at ¼" along with the front. Before flipping it right-side out, I could tell that the backing wasn't taut and this could lead to puckering😲.  Re-stitching one side made everything right!

Above is the pillowcase finish with just the opening to close up. I stitched the ⅛" around the piece with different coloured threads so that it would match the quilting. 

I started quilting the yellow house with the walking foot. Each line is 4 stitches from the other. That meant that I could follow the previous line in one of the openings of my walking foot. At the windows, I would secure the thread before and after the window and pass over them. There were a lot of threads to cut once it was over. 😀

Quilting the house with a walking foot

I quilted the yellow and purple houses before attempting the roof. I marked the lines of the grid (see What I learned!) I didn't take any pictures after that 😞- but next came the orange house and then I FMQ the sky in simple wavy lines.

Using the walking foot to quilt the houses and roof.

I mentioned in my last post that I had issues with my zig-zag stitch. When I finished quilting the houses, I went over the zig-zag stitches around the windows and doors twice with straight lines. It helped to emphasize the outline. 

Our friend in front of his lovely painted fence.

Our friend and NFLD's 
colourful houses

What I learned
  • There were a few learning moments in the making of this piece.
  • Designing a quilt late in the evening can lead to artistic interpretations (see previous post).
  • When using the pillowcase method on larger pieces, it's important to pin the back to ensure that the backing fabric is taut.
  • Covering parts of the zig-zag stitches with straight stitches may have helped, when the lines actually covered the zig-zag stitches. 😁
  • When marking lines on a quilt, keep the Crayola gel pens away from the FriXion pens!!!!! The pink lines within the gray roof area just added a little hint of colour but weren't so great on the edge of the sky area!😞
  • No matter how much I try, my quilts will never be perfect. I should accept this by now...but it is a lovely quilt 😊and my friend loves it!
  • The moment I saw the painted fence in our friend's backyard, I knew that I would make him a quilt.
Related links
Linking parties

Project details
Finish table topper

NFLD's colourful houses table topper
based on our friend's painted fence
18" x 18"
Materials: hand-dyed and commercial fabrics
Techniques: piecing, appliqué, pillowcase technique, quilting with walking foot and free motion quilting (FMQ)





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Thursday, November 07, 2024

Table Topper and Playing with Weaving

Hi and welcome 😊 I'm late but finally here. I can't imagine anyone is waiting impatiently for me to click on Publish, but if you are, then please accept my apologies. I had a great day out with my girlfriend. We had an amazing Thai lunch to celebrate our October birthdays and then attended a preview at the National Gallery of Canada. What a lovely, carefree afternoon.

Making a Table Topper


The friends whose pool I took care of this summer are having a party on the weekend. He is retiring and I'm making him a special table topper/placemat. He is from Newfoundland and had painted his back fence in the style of the homes there. 

Here is the quilt, ready to be FMQ (free motion quilted).

Newfoundland Houses Table Topper ready to be quilted

Here is the backyard fence, painted in the style of houses found in Newfoundland. The picture is slightly fuzzy because I took it from inside the gazebo. 

Fence in the backyard

I didn't take process pictures. I drew the three houses on graph paper, cut and pieced the fabric for the houses. I then used Steam-a-Seam light to appliqué the windows and doors. On the fence, the white doors are outlined in black and the black doors are outlined in white so I used black and white zig-zag stitches around the windows and doors. I made two passes at them since some of the stitches were missed. It might have been a tension issue because there was no issue stitching on the thicker purple fabric.

I'll be finishing this piece before Saturday, so I'll try to write a post on the weekend.

Playing with Weaving


This afternoon was the preview of Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. What a great exhibition. The premise of the exhibition is that modern tapestry has influenced abstraction in modern art. A lot of the work was done in the sixties and was very ahead of its time. The majority was also made by women 😍

I'm just going to share a couple of pieces with you and hope that if you can, come see the exhibition (see Related links below). 

Liz Collins Heartbeat 2019
silk and linen textile, Jacquard woven and cut

Liz Collins' Heartbeat 2019

Here is Olga de Amaral's art piece, Cintas entrelazadas c. 1969 made of wool and cotton. The colours and the construction are so interesting.

Olga de Amaral, Cintas entrelazadas c. 1969
wool and cotton

Close-up of Olga de Amaral's, Cintas entrelazadas

After viewing the art, my friend and I stopped in at the creation area of the exhibit. There were materials and information on how to weave. Here are our creations!

Woven on cardboard with strips of printed paper and raffia. 

My woven piece after visiting the exhibit

Lise says she's not creative
but her piece begs to differ!

If you can't make it to Ottawa to view the exhibit, there are many articles in the Related links below. The exhibition, Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction will be at MOMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York, April 20–September 13, 2025.

End Notes

Here are a couple of photos taken today.

Poppy and some street art in Ottawa's
Byward Market

Louise Bourgeois' outdoor sculpture, Maman,
outside of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa


What I learned
  • The table topper is coming along. My proportions are off compared to the fence. We'll call it artistic interpretation (aka accuracy challenged).
  • The zig-zag stitch was a challenge. I changed my needle but I'm not sure that my machine likes to stitch over Steam-a-Seam. In the end, if I stitched very, very slowly, the zig-zag stitch was better. It also worked fine when I stitched over a section in reverse! Next time I need to appliqué, I'll try to do it when I'm fresher and more patient. That will surely help to trouble shoot.
  • You probably noticed that the table topper is the mirror image of the fence. I must have sewn the fabric upside down, but didn't notice until it was too late. Oh well, another artistic interpretation 😁
  • I have already cut out the backing and will sew it up using the pillow case method. This means that I won't have to deal with binding. Yay!
  • It turns out that the Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction exhibit has been around for a while. This was great in finding the links below. I took quite a few pictures of the text since I'd like to research a few of the artists.
  • I really wanted to include other art pieces here but sometimes textile art just doesn't photograph well, at least without great equipment. I'm going to change my phone soon and I can't wait to get a much better camera.
Related links
Linking parties
I'll be linking to many fun linking parties. Why not check them out after linking up below? Monday Musings, Sew & Tell, Midweek Makers, Put your foot down, Needle & Thread Thursday Off The Wall Friday, Finished (Or Not) Friday, Patchwork & Quilts,

Free Motion Mavericks


Welcome to week 506 of Free Motion Mavericks! It was another productive week! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting. 

Gail of Quilting Gail made this cute Dresden Plate mini that is at the Hobb's Batting booth at the Houston Quilt Market! Very cool and colourful.

Gail's Dresden Plate mini

Deb the Scrappy Quilted quilted and bound three legacy quilts. Here is one of them.

Deb's quilted charity quilt

Did you see my finished scrappy placemat? This one is for my son. Now we all have one 😊

My scrappy brown placemat

It's now your turn!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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Monday, July 29, 2024

Table Scraps and Quilting with Rulers

Hi and welcome! I've finished my July Table Scraps Challenge and took out my quilting rulers to see what I could do. It was interesting and productive 😊 Let me share this weekend's learning with you.

July's Table Scraps Challenge


You may have seen a few preview pictures of my quilting in the last post. It turns out that July's colour was aqua, not teal, although teal is just the darker form of aqua. Anyway there is a little bit of aqua in this piece as well as lots of teal. The theme was butterfly and this was the highlight of the "Butterflies Table Topper".

Butterflies Table Topper

Notice in the image below, the milk can that my girlfriend's painted for me. The fall side matches this month's Butterflies Table Topper.

Butterflies Table Topper matches the fall side of the milk can

For the binding, I used a print of small colourful butterflies on a white background. I wouldn't normally use a light fabric but I'm glad that I did. Yes, a darker aqua fabric would blend in but this is cute and fanciful, just like the runner. Yay for doing something outside of my comfort zone!😁

Butterflies Table Topper and phlox

Here are a couple of detail views of the quilting. This was done with rulers and free motion quilting (FMQ)

Some of the ruler and FMQ

The three butterflies

Quilting with Rulers


As I mentioned in the last post, I knew that I had done some quilting with rulers and taken a course with Silly Moon. I had never posted it. When I found my practice pieces, I remembered why. Although the course was very good, I had problems with the universal darning foot that I had used with the rulers. If you don't get it just right, the tension can be off, which is what had happened. I had also used spray adhesive on my quilting samples and it had left stains. After these trials, I just put everything away!

However, after quilting with the rulers on the Butterflies Table Topper, I did figure out how to adjust the darning foot so that it worked fine. I watched a video on YouTube that suggested that I use a credit card underneath the foot to make sure that it was adjusted properly. The credit card has to slide easily under the foot. It worked!

Adjusting the tension of the darning
foot with an old credit card


Here are some of the samples that I quilted with the Silly Moon Eggie rulers.

Overlapping one Eggie ruler

Using the straight Eggie 6 ruler

Using various Eggie rulers

You can see in the image below some of the ruler work. 
  • At the top, I used a large Eggie (oval) ruler to make two lines and then stitch pebbles between them.
  • Underneath the first butterfly, you can see the overlapping semi-circles and the straight lines over them. I used different sizes of the Eggie rulers and then the straight ruler at the top.
  • For the bottom butterfly, I used the straight ruler to make some of the straight "V" lines. 
  • Finally, to the right of the bottom butterfly, the larger Eggie ruler was used to make overlapping curves. 
FMQ and ruler work in the Butterflies Table Topper 

While looking for my sandwich pieces, I found these four samplers that I made in 2017 as part of the Learning Quilt-A-Long I hosted. For the month of October that year, I made four scrappy samplers and used different batting for each of them. I then quilted, bound them and washed them. It turns out that on these small samplers, there wasn't much difference between them except for the silk/polyester batting, which was so much thinner but fine to quilt on. If you want to read more about this experiment, the links are below.

Four samplers now being used as placemats


What I learned
  • Looking at my sampler placemats, I noticed that my FMQ was possibly better than it is now, several years later. I would attribute that to taking my time back then, as opposed to just doing it now! I do tend to just go for it instead of preparing properly and FMQ carefully. I think that I need to learn to slow my FMQ down.
  • I never thought of using my square samplers as placemats because in my mind, placemats are rectangular. Since joining in the Table Scraps Challenge, I noticed that a few people make their placemats square - so now I have four lovely new placemats. 😊
  • I'm glad that I played with quilting with the rulers. It really is great for straight lines (so I'll keep them handy) but I'm really not sure what else to do with them except for those ovals and curved lines. I suspect that I won't be investing in many more rulers, unless I figure out what else to do with them. If you have any ideas, please let me know!
Related links
Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, including Free Motion Mavericks and July's Table Scraps Challenge. Why not check some of them out? Monday Musings, Design Wall Monday, Sew & Tell, Oh Scrap!, Patchwork & Quilts, Midweek Makers, Needle & Thread Thursday, TGIFF,

Project details

"Butterflies Table Topper"
made for the 2024 Table Scraps Challenge
Materials: commercial fabric scraps
Techniques: scrappy improv piecing, appliqué, FMQ and quilting with rulers
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Sunday, January 29, 2023

Blue and Crazy for January's Table Scraps Challenge

It's a good thing that I was catching up on my blog reading or I would not have remembered the January Table Scraps Challenge! 😮 There's nothing more fun than whipping up a wee little scrappy project...and even learning something at the same time!

Blue Scraps for a Crazy Quilt Topper


This month the colour was dark and/or bright blue and the prompt comes from the letters C, R. or J. My prompt is therefore C for Crazy quilt. I started by sewing blue scraps together. Blue is always easy to do because I have a whole basket just with blue scraps! I tried to use triangular shapes because scrappy quilts are not just squares and rectangles.

Blue and Crazy table topper

Once the top was finished, I decided to quilt it using some of the stitches on my machine. It's a good quick alternative and I finally got to try out stitches other than straight and zigzag! One day I would love to make a real crazy quilt but not today! 😊

Here are some of the stitches

Fancy Stitches on my machine

There are card symbols: diamonds, hearts,
clubs and spades

More interesting stitches

Harder to see but still impressive stitches

Newly added: Blue and Crazy is now in the kitchen
keeping the counter somewhat clean 😊

What I learned
  • I just love sewing pieces of fabric together. Improv piecing with scraps makes my happy 😊
  • I didn't worry about bright or dark - anything blue was added, with one scrappy fabric that included a few subtle colours for contrast.
  • I was reading the stitch diagram wrong on my machine. After a few tries I figured it out!
  • There are some really fun stitches that I will have to use again. It's not FMQ but it's still cool!😎 
  • I sewed on the binding using the lessons that I had learned in December (see link below). They worked out really well. 
  • I tried to use a fancy stitch to sew down the binding but it was too thick, even with the walking foot. Next time I'll try a simpler stitch.

Related links

Linking parties

Project details




Blue and Crazy Table Topper
Made for the Table Scraps Challenge 2023
10¼" x 10¾"
Material: blue cotton scraps
Technique: improv piecing and quilted using fancy machine stitches






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