Melanie Testa

Quilt Top

Handprinted Quilt Tops meet Angela Walters

I have been hard at work, printing, and piecing quilt tops made of my hand printed cloth. I have about 12 tops ready for machine quilting. And you know what? I can’t just make quilt tops!! I need to finish things!! And, my handprints deserve to be seen, shown and sold! Its time for me to remedy this bottleneck situation.

I haven’t done much machine quilting geared to more traditional quilting in a long while. In this time, free motion quilting has had a renaissance, it seems. In trying to navigate this new world, I have come across Angela Walters, Quilting is my Therapy and her set of rulers, put out by Creative Grids. Angela Walters has an extensive learning library in support of ruler and free motion machine quilting. I feel honored to be learning from all this free content! I have also joined her Free Motion Challenge Quilt Along group!!

So, I am going to upload my own series of videos to show off my newly acquired skills! Here is my first!

Getting from Here to There

Since taking this Free Range Textile Printers show on the road, I have printed about 80 Lace Swirl and Herring Bone fat sixteenths in total. In keeping with a recent love affair with Half Square Triangles, I went to work trimming them all to 8.25″, I like to cut them one at a time to maximize them as much as possible. After which, I paired them, right sides together, in groups of two, with an eye toward a light/dark pairing. I then marked them with pencil before piecing, cutting and ironing. 

This quilt has me thinking about the use of starch when ironing, so I went to Facebook to ask others for their experience. This interesting thread emerged. Check it out!

My love of the Half Square Triangles will not abate! The initial cut size is such that quilt tops quickly emerge, which is especially to my liking. I like making quilts, quick and easy. Large blocks help me do that. 

I really appreciate the back side of handprints too. The above print (the red) must have been a really juicy print to smoosh through the cotton print cloth like that! And it is so pretty to see how the printed layers of color interact with each other.The above quilt will be complete soon. I am excited about it so far. Can’t wait to show both sides, in good lighting. Normally I track these print jobs pretty closely. This time, I went about the entire thing in a much different manner. Tracking got cast to the wayside. I could track this lot retrospectively, by counting and comparing. I will see how far I can get. I could lead to a ‘printers must’ or pattern. 

To explain what I mean by a “printers must”, I need to harken back to my days as a sample cutter for a small women’s wear company. At the beginning of the day, I would be given a, “cutters must”, which looked something like this. From this, I could discern the path and needs of each cut sample on my docket for that day. Basically, I was given a pattern and the ‘cutters must’ were the directions. 

This in the hope of offering a Playful Fabric Quilt pattern. I have a bee in my bonnet. Goal #1 Make a downloadable pattern for Melanie Testa.com.