August 3, 2015 Podcast
Guest: Heidi Boyd
Topics: working with felt
She says: "Stitching, especially with the wonderful colors of felt, that really spoke to me and it was really easy to use. I love doing applique with it when you don't have to worry about the frayed edges. And it's so forgiving. If you embroider in it and make a mistake, you can rip it out and you don't have the big hole left behind."
Guest: Robin Long of Robin Ruth Design
Topics: quilting tools
She says: "In the early '90s strip-piecing and rotary cutting were becoming big and popular. And I was doing a lot of quilts that were using those methods, and so I thought, 'there's got to be a way to strip-piece a Mariner's Compass block'. So over the course of a summer I came up with a ruler made out of a spare piece of plexiglass and some graphic tape, and came up with a ruler that made skinny and fat Mariner's Compass blocks in two sizes."
Guest: Rita Verroca
Topics: applique tips
She says: "I think that students want to do too much all at once. If they have a curve ahead of them, they go ahead and figure out, 'OK, I've got to do the curve, and behind that is a point, so why don't I pin everything at the same time because then it's all set and then I can go about it.' But that doesn't work. So the smaller the increment, the smaller the curve or inverted V, the more you have to pin, meaning just pin in intervals as the direction or the design changes. So if you have a smooth long curve, you can pin a little bit more. But if you have a curve and an inverted V and then something else happening, just go about it 1/4" by 1/4" at a time."
Guest: Terry Kramzar
Topics: art quilts
She says: "The trees are overlays of Organza, so that's why you can kind of see through them. And I created the background quilt first and then I fused the trees on top, and then quilted all around the silhouette of the trees. Sometimes the fusible web seeps through the Organza a little bit, but I found if I use a release sheet, that really helps a lot."