Quilting from the Road

Hello, Quilters! My name is Katie and I am a quilter. I am a fabric lover and a quilt-aholic.

I have a small business called Modern Cottage Creations which allows me to put my skills with a sewing machine to use and also feeds my quilting addiction. With my business I have been selling my handmade bags, table runners, and baby things at arts and crafts fairs in Wisconsin, in addition to doing some neat custom work. Now, with the kick off Fat Quarter Quilting’s new and improved website, I am launching my new blog. For those of you who are long time shoppers at Fat Quarter Quilting, you may remember seeing me at the shop. I spent a lot of fun time working at Fat Quarter and once I moved across the border, my time at the shop ended. With the launch of the new site I am happy to collaborating with this extremely creative group once again (even if I can only be cyber-present now).

In addition to being a quilter and attempting to begin my own sewing business, I work many different jobs throughout the year. One of them happens to be working with a travelling carnival. Last week we packed up many of our things into our house trailer and hit the road for the summer. At home I have a great sewing room with a sewing table, ironing table, and cutting table with plenty of room to lay out my quilts.

Now that we are in our house trailer my sewing space also happens to be the kitchen table. My kitchen table/sewing table also has to work interchangeably as my cutting table and ironing board.

With this small space some might be discouraged by sitting down to work on a new quilting project, but, like Tim Gunn might say on Project Runway, I “Make it work!” When you love fabric and quilting as much as I do it is harder to think about leaving the sewing machine at home than to worry about quilting in a small space.

I love to stay busy and make productive use of my time so I plan to have lots of great quilting projects and ideas to share with you. This is the first blog that I have written and I hope that you will bear with me while I find my blogging way and please, enjoy the ride!

Comments

Long time comin'

I had hoped that I would have more energy to work while I have the house trailer to myself, but unfortunately that was not the case today. After a slow start to the day and still a much needed nap, I was able to muster some energy and get to work sewing. I am a quilter who always has a TON of UFO’s. Sifting through half-done projects, I decided to start yet another one. I decided to pull out a selection of fabric that I had purchased almost exactly a year ago and get to work on the quilt that I had designed with that line in mind. These fabrics and this quilt have been on my mind for quite some time, so this one has certainly been a long time coming. The fabrics are from the “Serenity” line by Heather Mulder Peterson. I absolutely love her designs! I have a good collection of her books and have really enjoyed every line of fabric she has put out for Henry Glass & Co. “Serenity” is by far my favorite of her fabric lines...

Creating a Blog Planner

I like to think I'm a pretty organized gal. But with a busy life and lots of work, my mental best laid plans for blogging are quickly falling through the cracks. I ran across this great blog planner through Pinterest and I'm getting ready to give it a whirl! The printables that Lamberts Lately developed here are absolutely adorable and I can't wait to put them to use! Another awesome Pinterest find was this great tutorial from Just A Beautiful Life on to-do's and best practices for creating your own blogging binder. Between the great advice from both of these sites, I've got a start on my own blogging binder. I did a little office supply shopping (honestly, I love shopping for office supplies!) and picked up a cute colorful binder, some tab dividers, sheet protectors, loose leaf lined paper, and post it notes to put together with my freshly printed blog planning sheets. I have a three hole punch and nice markers at home to use already...

Hand Sewn Binding Tutorial

The more professionally accepted way to finish your binding is to sew it by hand to the back of your quilt. For heirloom pieces I prefer this method, but for quick, functional quilt I use the machine sewn method. The directions are very similar, but I will list them out here separately so that the directions are clear. Creating your binding Measure around the entire outer edge of your quilt and then add 20 inches to this measurement. Divide this total by 40. This new number is the number of strips that you need to cut. If you came up with a decimal, round your number up to the next whole number. For example, if your result was 7.6, round up to 8. Cut that total number of strips measuring 2.5” wide x the width of fabric. To connect your strips together, make the seam on the diagonal. Lay the first strip right side up and the second strip on top with right sides together, perpendicular to the first strip. Sew on the diagonal from point to poin...

Modern Cottage Creations

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