Tuesday, September 25, 2007

T-shirt Quilt Update and Retreat plans

About 6 weeks ago I took my t-shirt quilt to a longarm quilter who lives about 40 miles or more from here. We selected a thread color and quilting design and she explained that the quilting design would be all over the quilt. After thinking about that for a few days, I called to ask her if she could not quilt on the photos that are on the quilt - look here to see what I am talking about. She said she would practice doing that to see if she could do it, but today she called to say that she can't do it, so now I have to go get my quilt from her and find someone else to quilt it for me. In July I thought I could try to do it by hand myself, but after having it on my Q-snap frame for several weeks I decided that I'd better pay someone to do it. Am I being unreasonable to want there to be no stitching over the pictures? I have the names of a couple of other longarm quilters in the area who might be able to do it. It is big - about 75" by 96" and pretty heavy. I suppose I could just tie it, but I really would like to have it quilted. I will make some calls tomorrow and see if I can find someone else to do it.

Our Retreat Committee met today to discuss plans. The retreat is not until the first weekend in May, but we know we need to get plans made. We are hoping to get a teacher who can teach us about sewing with curves, and also want to have some demos from guild members on various embellishment techiques. We are going to look into getting some t-shirts for us with maybe a picture of a quilt we would be making at the retreat. We thought it might be fun to play some strip poker, but we need to find out how to do that -- Jen, can you educate me about that? I am hoping that those who want to will be able to stay overnight. It is held at a community center way out in the country - not sure how many would want to stay, but having that option would be fun. If not, maybe some of us could spend the night in a hotel in town rather than going back to our homes for the night. Thanks to those who replied to my off-blog email request for advice about retreats.

Tomorrow morning I will continue working on the blocks for my demo to the Senior Center group about ways to connect the blocks of a quilt-as-you-go quilt, but when I get home tomorrow afternoon I'll be able to get back to MY quilting and see if I can make some progress on this week's list.

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Last year about this time, I was making two identical quilts for my sister, for her, and her friend. I used the process with the photos where you print the picture, iron to set the ink, put it in cold water, and iron again. I did the all over quilting right over the pictures and it turned out great. We were not unhappy about quilting over the pictures, because you really don't notice it when you look at it from afar. It does not upset the quilt at all. One of the girls in our quilt group has done about 4 of the picture quilts for her family, and she did the same thing. For one thing, if you don't quilt in certain areas, the quilt won't lay as nice as the rest of the quilt, and with t-shirts, unless you have them fused to something non-stretchy, I would think after awhile, and maybe even with a fusable, it might droop. You wouldn't have to do a tight all over, but could go for a bigger, all over, and it would look ok. I wouldn't abe afraid to quilt it just like a normal lquilt. Your Tshirts have pretty large designs, so if you don't quilt on the Tshirts, you won't have much quilting. Are you sure you want it done that wasy? Just some thoughts from a knucklehead!

Jen said...

I will admit; I didn't believe you could quilt over a picture until I saw it in person. It's surprisingly not obtrusive. Maybe Michelle or her friend have some up close pictures you could look at. Otherwise; you are pretty much going to be limited to quilting just in the sashing.

Have fun planning your retreat. I didn't have any ideas for you because I've never actually been to one.