Thread storage update

25 12 2012

Santa bought me a large-spool thread stand, with holders for 120 spools! 😉 Well, I bought the stand for $20 (down from $100) at my local quilt shop’s Christmas sale earlier in the week and thanked my husband for the lovely present he’d bought me for Christmas!

thread_spool

It’s a heavy stand and while it opens out, I just don’t have the floor space for it to stand up by itself. Equally, I don’t want to hang it on the wall, so I’ve leant it against a bookcase in my sewing room — I can easily move it from there if I need to get to the photo albums behind.

And I’ve added all my 1000 m and 5000 m spools to it, but there are lots of gaps, so I guess I need to buy more thread ;-). All the Isacords and Fil-Tec spools fit fine as do the Wonderfil Deco-Bobs and Invisifils, but my existing Robinson-Anton and Floriani 1000 m spools don’t as they have a inner core that narrows and therefore doesn’t fit the spool holders. I’ve put those threads in a plastic thread tray.

My smaller spools are still on their stand (below) — they definitely won’t fit on this new stand. The old stand is an old spice rack made by my ex brother-in-law many decades ago — works perfectly for the smaller spools.

thread_spice_rack

 

 


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Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff

Community Quilt 41

25 12 2012

Community quilt #41 was a very busy ‘I spy’ (or ‘eye spy’) quilt. An I Spy Quilt is made from fussy-cut fabrics, usually children’s prints and novelty fabrics with motifs that the recipient can ‘spy’ when looking at the quilt.

This one had everything from kittens to spiders, pegs to lemons, and everything in between! It was very ‘busy’ visually, and had every colour under the rainbow in it. The fussy cut pieces were hexagons, and most were on a pale blue or pale yellow background fabric. These blocks were separated by other novelty fabric blocks, and the whole top was bordered with a plain navy fabric.

How to quilt such a busy quilt? I thought of doing outline stitching around the motifs as I did for the lolly jar quilt, but I decided against this fairly quickly after examining some of the motifs more closely. I thought of the open headband motif — quick, easy; or a large all-over stipple. Then I decided to do a variation of the open headband motif — instead of points at each turn, I decided to square them off, giving a geometric look to the quilting.

As there were so many colours in this quilt, I used a pastel variegated thread to blend in with many of the fabrics. I also extended the stitching into the border as I didn’t want yet another different motif to draw the eye — there was already enough going on in this quilt!

(Click a photo to view it larger)

quilt41_02

quilt41_01

quilt41_03

Threads used:

  • Top: Fil-Tec Harmony in variegated pastel pinks, yellows and blues (cotton; 40 wt; colour ‘Spring’ 14062)
  • Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white, 70 wt)

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Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff