Adding Serging to your Quilting

Like many of you, I have a serger. I have used it for many years for a multitude of sewing tasks but not until recently have I thought of it as a quilting tool. I have since found a variety of ways to use my serger for quilting.

Using your serger to make serged cord, you can incorporate some of the lovely decorative threads you own. We are all attracted to and purchase metallic and other decorative threads only to find they are, at times, difficult to work with on our regular sewing machines.

Running these threads in the loopers of the serger, I have no difficulty using them. I've had fun making cord by serging over two stands of acrylic yarn. The yarn was passed through a hole in the center of the foot and fed nicely while the looper threads covered it with my decorative thread. In the top sample, I am using pearl cotton in the upper looper and cotton thread in the needle and lower looper. In the second sample, I've used metallic thread in the upper looper and variegated polyester thread in the lower looper.

Now that I have these wonderful cords, where can I use them? What was your suggestions?

Come back and see where they end up.

For other serged projects, check out my book Serge and Merge Quilts.

Lovely in my new crinkled scarf

Was this what I wanted? In the creative spirit to start the New Year, I thought I would try making a crinkled scarf following the directions that I found on Quilting Arts. O.K., so I didn't follow them exactly. My rayon definitely had a right and wrong side, with the printed dots much crisper on the right side. I thought I would just make a tube and then the wrong side would never show.

I twisted and I twisted and ended up with a ball of wet fabric that I dried though several dryer cycles and over the heat for three days. Finally, came the exciting moment when I would see my beautiful new scarf. Well, it certainly kept its crinkles and I unrolled it to no avail, it just rolled back up. This looks nothing like the picture.

I tried my best to look trendy. Did I succeed or do I look like I have a wrinkled rag tied around my neck? I asked my husband and he (wisely) had no comment and said he would defer to my artsy friends.

So, artsy friends, what do you think?

What Have You Resolved?

Now that Christmas has past and the New Year is beginning, what have you resolved to do in 2011?

One of my first resolutions is taking down the Christmas tree, although it's disappearance does seem to leave a big hole in our home. Then, there are all those cleaning resolutions......... and we previously decided they have both good and bad results.

So, I guess that only leaves my resolution to open myself up to new and exciting adventures in my quilting/art world. God continuously presents me with wonderful opportunities and its up to me to be unafraid to take that first step.

I would like to encourage each of you to try something new this year. Maybe you can adopt my outlook which is "I don't have a clue how to do this but I will give it a try anyway." See how God will enrich your life.

Can Your Studio Be Too Clean?

Ah, my life is starting to get back to normal.

In preparation for Christmas, I vigorously worked to clean my quilting studio. I love to have multiple projects going but, yes, sometimes the mess takes over. So I cleaned and organized and put fabric away. I piled all my quilting magazines in one place (and I hoped the floor didn't cave in.)

My studio was pretty near spotless and looked fabulous if you like a big empty room. But...that is where the problem came in. It was blank and when I walked in to start working, my mind also went blank. A perfect room, no ideas...... Too clean, no direction, no project pulling me in.

Fortunately, my husband needed a storage box and I had the perfect one half full of fabric. I dumped it out and offered him the box. Perfect for him, perfect for me. As I walked back into my studio and saw a pile of fabric, ideas started to flow again. Happy Day.

Moral of story: Cleaning can be dangerous to your health. Your inspirational health, that is.

Is There Such a Thing as Ugly Fabric?

Every time I look at this quilt, it brings a smile to my face because I won a lot of the fabric in an "Ugly Christmas Fabric" contest. One year our guild decided this would be a fun competition and a way to purge our stash of unwanted fabric. I had a Santa fabric that revealed him as a drugged out version of his normal jolly self. (Maybe this is what he looks like at the end of his long ride?) Needless to say, it couldn't be topped and I won the pile of "ugly" fabrics.

After cutting the fabric and stitching it into this snail's trail pattern, I found I had, not a quilt of uglies, but a colorful scrap quilt. This brings up the question. Can there really be an ugly fabric? Or, in their proper place, do we love them all?