Saturday, February 25, 2012

We're in love...

  
With this fabric!


Here's the fabric for our next quilt. We got it for Christmas and we love it! We wanted to find the perfect pattern before we cut it up.  We finally found the perfect quilt for it, so we started cutting it out today. Hopefully, we will find time to work on it next week...

Monday, February 20, 2012

Handy Dandy Quilting Tools


 1. Darning Foot for stippling and loopy machine quilting. This foot is a cheap way to transform your sewing machine into a quilting machine.


 
2. Quilting Gloves for gripping your quilt while machine quilting. Actually, these are garden gloves that we bought at the dollar store! They are ultra grippy, which is perfect for machine quilting.



 
3. Gypsy Gripper- a handle for a rotary ruler. It makes cutting a lot easier (and safer)!



 4. Safety Pins to baste your quilt. We use these instead of basting pins, and they work great. We used to use basting spray, but it stretches out your quilt and makes your house smell.


 
4. Gingher Scissors for cutting and cutting and cutting.



 
5. Walking Foot for straight line machine quilting and binding.


6. Seam Ripper...just in case :)

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Brother vs. Babylock




Do these sewing machines look like a good deal? Of course they do, that's why we bought them. We're here to tell you they're a RIP OFF. We bought these machines (Brother XL3750) last May.  They broke the day the warranty expired ( How did they rig that?)! Two Wal-marts later, they were returned. (The first Wal-mart wouldn't let us return them)



We went to a local sewing machine shop and asked for a recommendation in our price range. We found these machines: Babylock Anna. We bought them because we loved the name they are one of the top sewing machines. They work great for machine quilting and normal sewing. We love them! The extra money we spent was worth it.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Rail Fence Quilts


 

We love the way these quilts turned out! We bought the fabric last summer, and the jelly rolls have been laying around waiting to be used since then. All the fabric comes from JoAnn's except the backing on the blue/ green quilt comes from Walmart. The quilts came together fast, which is always nice.  We made two different quilts, a blue/green and an orange/blue. I swear all our quilts have blue in them...it's our favorite. Here's the other version:

 

These quilts are both in the shop.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Sewing Cabinet Redo

Last summer, we took a trip to the thrift store and bought old sewing cabinets. We needed some new sewing tables that would work well for machine quilting. We redid them and they turned out really nice. We don't know how we would live without them!! Here's a tutorial on how to redo them:

Materials:
  • Sewing machine cabinet
  • Wood for the shelf & top insert
  • Metal Brackets
  • Spraypaint
  • Electric Sander
  • Jigsaw
  • Screws
  • Wood brackets (1 X 2s for the shelf to sit on)
BEFORE:





1. Buy and clean an old sewing cabinet. Unscrew the old sewing machine and remove all unnecessary parts (extra wood,etc). 
2. Using an electric sander, sand the cabinet. Patch up any holes and fix anything that is broken.
3. Use jigsaw to square up opening. Screw flat metal brackets to the underside of the top of your cabinet. These will hold your table top insert.You need to do this step before your shelf is put in or else you'll do a lot of unscrewing. (Notice, we made a notch on the right side to allow room for the sewing machine cord). 


4. Make a shelf to place the sewing machine on that will make the sewing machine level with the tabletop (measure your machine from the sewing surface to the bottom...this will be the dimension from your tabletop to the shelf)
5. Screw wood brackets into side of cabinet to hold the shelf (see picture below...this picture was taken from the bottom-up so the brackets really go below the shelf).  The shelf will need to be in place before screwing in the brackets.
                                     
6. Spray paint/paint your cabinet any color that you want. 

7.  Trace the outside of your sewing machine top onto a piece of cardboard. Cut out the cardboard, and use it as a pattern to cut the insert that goes on the table top.We happened to have this piece of melamine shelving on hand, you can use any kind of smooth wood.  Make sure the wood is the same thickness as your cabinet table top.


8.  Place the insert on the brackets.


    

 AFTER:









Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day!

Don't you just love Valentine's Fabirc?

















Too bad this isn't ours.  Hope you have a good one!

Monday, February 13, 2012

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Look what we made...

 In only 2 hours!


This pattern was SO easy to work with! The pattern is McCall's 2255. It's our kind of skirt pattern: no zippers, no waistbands, no gathering, no stress (or at least not as much). All you have to do is sew the sides, sew the casing, and sew the hem.

 Inspired by this skirt from DownEast:







Friday, February 10, 2012

Quackadoodle Quilt

Welcome to our quilt blog! We are twin sisters who LOVE to quilt. We love reading other people's quilt blogs, so we decided we should start one of our own. Who knew choosing a name for a blog would be so hard? After years days of brainstorming, we finally decided on Quackadoodle Quilt.

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