Pounce Pads [Quilting]
I had one of those moments yesterday where I just stared at all of the things on my desk and felt overwhelmed by my list of personal projects. In spite of the feeling, I'm actually making progress on things - progress is just slow at times. It just doesn't always feel like progress.
The biggest current project on the agenda is the twin-size quilt sandwich that I need to quilt. Prior to that, I am practicing by quilting a cat bed. I thought it would be straightforward to just draw out a quilting template, trace it onto the fabric with quilting pencils, and then get stitching.
It turns out that quilting pencils are terrible, so I had to cast about and come up with a different plan. Fortunately, in this day and age, hordes of people blog about their quilting adventures, so I soon learned that such pencils are disparaged and fabric markers are generally thought to be better.
And so, hup ho, time to expedition over to the quilt store in town. In contrast to Texas, the quilt store here is open even on Sundays. After I wrapped up the midday cricket injections and cricket processing, I set sail for the Calico House, and managed to get there a good hour before closing.
Not only did they have fabric markers, they also had sheets of plastic template-making material, the exact sort of stuff I wanted but had been scratching my head over because I'd had no idea how to verbally articulate what I was looking for. Sometimes showing up in person makes all the difference.
They did not, however, have any nylon thread, or leather punches, which didn't really surprise me, as neither item is a quilting supply. The nylon thread isn't an urgent item (it's eventually for sock-making), and they recommended checking Ben Franklin for the leather/metal punch (I want to try using one to punch holes in the lids of eppendorf tubes).
I also learned that a common way of transferring quilting patterns onto fabric is to use a chalk-filled "pounce pad," which is brushed across the surface of the stencil, causing chalk to filter down through the holes of the stencil and onto the fabric.
This whole notion has caused further head-scratching. Just how old is this quilting technology? I have no intentions of becoming a long-term quilter, so I don't want to continue buying up a whole bunch of expensive specialty supplies that I'll only use once. With a bit more digging, I turned up some information on how to create a homemade pounce pad, which looks more suitable for my purposes.
When walking out of the quilt store, I had to avert my gaze away from a pile of pink fabric with bicycles on it. I am grateful that independent quilting stores still exist, but struggle with how quilting has been turned into an expensive craft-hobby for many people.
Upon returning home, I successfully used the marker to trace out the first bits of my pattern for the practice quilt. Someone commented somewhere that tracing out the quilting pattern is an often-overlooked huge timesink, which also made me feel better about my slow progress. I'm getting close, however, to finally starting to quilt, and as my PhD advisor used to say, moving forward slowly is NOT moving backwards.
The biggest current project on the agenda is the twin-size quilt sandwich that I need to quilt. Prior to that, I am practicing by quilting a cat bed. I thought it would be straightforward to just draw out a quilting template, trace it onto the fabric with quilting pencils, and then get stitching.
It turns out that quilting pencils are terrible, so I had to cast about and come up with a different plan. Fortunately, in this day and age, hordes of people blog about their quilting adventures, so I soon learned that such pencils are disparaged and fabric markers are generally thought to be better.
And so, hup ho, time to expedition over to the quilt store in town. In contrast to Texas, the quilt store here is open even on Sundays. After I wrapped up the midday cricket injections and cricket processing, I set sail for the Calico House, and managed to get there a good hour before closing.
Not only did they have fabric markers, they also had sheets of plastic template-making material, the exact sort of stuff I wanted but had been scratching my head over because I'd had no idea how to verbally articulate what I was looking for. Sometimes showing up in person makes all the difference.
They did not, however, have any nylon thread, or leather punches, which didn't really surprise me, as neither item is a quilting supply. The nylon thread isn't an urgent item (it's eventually for sock-making), and they recommended checking Ben Franklin for the leather/metal punch (I want to try using one to punch holes in the lids of eppendorf tubes).
I also learned that a common way of transferring quilting patterns onto fabric is to use a chalk-filled "pounce pad," which is brushed across the surface of the stencil, causing chalk to filter down through the holes of the stencil and onto the fabric.
This whole notion has caused further head-scratching. Just how old is this quilting technology? I have no intentions of becoming a long-term quilter, so I don't want to continue buying up a whole bunch of expensive specialty supplies that I'll only use once. With a bit more digging, I turned up some information on how to create a homemade pounce pad, which looks more suitable for my purposes.
When walking out of the quilt store, I had to avert my gaze away from a pile of pink fabric with bicycles on it. I am grateful that independent quilting stores still exist, but struggle with how quilting has been turned into an expensive craft-hobby for many people.
Upon returning home, I successfully used the marker to trace out the first bits of my pattern for the practice quilt. Someone commented somewhere that tracing out the quilting pattern is an often-overlooked huge timesink, which also made me feel better about my slow progress. I'm getting close, however, to finally starting to quilt, and as my PhD advisor used to say, moving forward slowly is NOT moving backwards.