Quilting in Catalonia (Part IV)

...and it's complete! 

This project ended up being more challenging than expected. I started off with polyester batting (the first time I tried this because it was the only available option in town) but quickly the machine was not able to handle it. It couldn't keep the tension right. So after quilting a few rows, I had to back track, undo all the quilting, order cotton batting online and wait until it arrived before I could continue.

I continued to have problems with the tension from time to time, especially every time the bobbin needed replacing; it would take about an hour of starting and stopping before the tension would be right, then I could start quilting again. But alas, it is "finished" (I'm still contemplating redoing some of the quilting and it needs a label).

I quilted this in-the-ditch, not that interesting but I quilted all the lines so the back looks pretty fun.

Here you can see the pattern a bit.

Close up of the alphabet fabric with red thread used for quilting.

Quilting in Catalonia (Part III)

I found this cute *free* pattern from Robert Kaufman fabrics.

Just Stroll With It Quilt (Photo courtesy of Robert Kaufman fabrics)

It's stroller size 36" by 36" but I have modified mine to be 36" by 49.5".

This quilt has been very simple and easy to do in a short period of time. I recommend it to anyone who is just beginning and wants to tip toe into the sea of quilting. Even with enlarging this quilt, cutting the fabric only took about two hours.

The most difficulty I have had with this quilt was when working with some of the ribbons I bought (which unravel easily) and with learning to use a new sewing machine.

The quilt itself comes together really quickly and I had all of it pieced in about six to seven hours, not including the two hours I spent on layout. Here are two different versions of the quilt, one is 4.5 by 5 blocks and the second is 4 by 5.5 blocks, which is the one I ultimately chose.

4.5 by 5 blocks

4 by 5.5 blocks

I couldn't find cotton batting or basting spray in town so I bought polyester batting and hand stitched the top and bottom to the batting which took about two hours. With basting spray, this can be done in ten minutes and without puncturing the fabric.

I have found that the tension on this machine is very finicky so I spent some time testing it before I started the actual quilting. It seemed like it was going to work really well until I actually started quilting. I think because of the weight of the machine and the looseness of the polyester, the machine got really confused. I tried quilting a simple straight line down the center and only got halfway through before it was totally destroying the quilt. I spent a few hours troubleshooting - sewing, unsewing, testing, sewing, unsewing before giving up and deciding that I needed cotton batting or to learn how to hand quilt. I found some batting on Amazon and I am waiting for it to arrive before I continue. (...to be continued.)

Quilting in Catalonia (Part II)

The next step was finding a sewing machine. There was the question of buying a basic used machine, borrowing a machine, finding a store where I could rent a machine, etc. I had started looking from the moment we arrived but now that I had fabric, it became necessary.

There is this great second hand website that sells just about everything used (like Craigslist) called segundamano; we have found it very useful for finding baby supplies. I also searched on eBay and Amazon. What I found, though, was that in Spain (and I'm guessing, Europe in general) the available sewing machines differ greatly from what is offered in the United States. The brands are different and quilting hasn't really taken off here as it has in the States, which means getting information about if a machine can quilt or its capacity to quilt, etc. is very limited. There are some machines, of course, that are well-known in the US and in Europe (Brother, Singer, Pfaff, Bernina) but these are either ones that are available at a very low ($100-$200) or very high price-point ($1000+) and here are available beginning at a much higher price point (400€+), which means it is less affordable to begin sewing.

The machine!

Thankfully, Kilian's grandmother offered to let me use her older Singer which saved the project because we had not budgeted for a moderate to high-priced sewing machine (at least at this moment). The machine seems solid and it may even be from the 1970's. The instruction manual comes in English and I am ready to start sewing (I have already cut the fabric)!

My workstation in the basement.

Quilting in Catalonia (Part I)

As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I knew I was going to make a my baby a quilt. I love quilting and I will use any opportunity to create one. What I did not know was how difficult it would be to get going.

When we were living in Israel, there was one quilt shop that was about an hour from us by public transport that was opened on weekday mornings and some Friday afternoons - basically during our working hours. I think it opened on some Saturdays too but since that is Shabbat there, it is even harder to get around. It eventually closed last summer but I had already given up all hope for quilting in Israel. The prices for everything were high and there just wasn't time in our lives to squeeze in quilting. So I was really excited when we were leaving so I could get back in to my favorite creative hobby.

I started searching online for different fabrics to get ideas of what type of baby quilt to make before we left Israel. I even bought some cute nautical fabric from Dear Stella with the idea of taking on that trendy theme.

Selection from "All Hands on Deck" by Dear Stella

Shopping for fabric online, however, is just not the same as being able to go spend hours in a fabric store, mixing and matching different fabrics until you have the right combination for your project. Also, shipping fabric from the US to Europe or Israel is not exactly the most economical solution so I decided to wait until we arrived.

Fet A Ma Patchwork (photo courtesy of their website)

There are two small quilting shops in the town where we are living, which is AMAZING and both offer classes in applique and hand-quilting. These shops don't sell much fabric, however, so I needed to do some research about where I could find fabric stores in the area. Eventually, after trying to figure out the correct word for quilt in Catalan and Spanish, I stumbled upon a site that included a directory of quilt shops in Spain and from there it was just a matter of getting to Barcelona during their opening hours.

One rainy day, Kilian and I made our way to Barcelona and found ourselves holed up in a small fabric store for over two hours as I mixed and matched until I got the right number of fabrics and the right combination to make a simple fat quarter baby quilt.

The final selection - a clear departure from the Dear Stella nautical theme.

Poor Kilian was dying of hunger since he hadn't had lunch and I kept having him get down and put back bolts of fabric. He took leave to get a sandwich just as the rain was coming down the hardest. Of course we forgot our umbrella so he got pretty wet on his hunt for lunch. I am so thankful for his patience that day; it is small acts such as these that remind a woman of how lucky she is to have found someone so special.