Tag: featured

Fabulous Flat Quilt Hanging Hardware

Using inexpensive metal straps and plates from the hardware store with neodymium magnets makes a quilt safe hanging method.

Deciding to change the art quilt on my wall pretty often, I realized that a traditional nail wasn’t going to cut it. My quilts have variable sizes and weights. I got the idea for this setup from my magnetic name badge. Surfing my favorite magnet website, I found that there are magnets strong enough to even hang a regular quilt.

Hardware for flat hanging art quilts
Hardware for flat hanging art quilts. Tie plates, tie straps, command strips, neodymium magnets.

Neodymium magnets are very strong, and have a polished clean finish. Magnets strong enough to hang a bed quilt should be used with caution. Their strength could damage your fingers if your fingers or skin got slammed in between them.

For my test, I am hanging a 24×24 art quilt. I wanted temporary but strong and reliable setup so chose 3M command strips of the strongest I could find. My local home depot had 16 lb velcro sets for hanging framed pictures.

Tie plate adhered to wall
Tie plate adhered to wall with command strips

I used 1 13/16 in x 5 in tie plates (found in the lumber department in the structural straps section), and I also bought a variety of 20 guage strap ties in various lengths. 18 Guage would work too. But keep mind that there is a tradeoff in how strong a magnet sticks (thicker metal or more iron in the metal) versus weight of the metal. These bars will not sag because they will be oriented flat to the wall.

Use tape to overlap the straps and secure them to each other. Use enough straps to fit behind the quilt back.
Use tape to overlap the straps and secure them to each other. Use enough straps to fit behind the quilt back.

I overlapped two flat metal bars so they were long enough to fill the entire quilt sleeve but not stick out beyond the quilt. I put the command strips on the small tie plates. This size, five inches long, give enough surface room for the long command strips. The tie plates are then fixed to the wall and I allowed them to adhere for an hour to allow the command strip adhesive to develop full strength. I checked the width of the quilt back and made sure the tie plates were hidden behind the quilt. Put a magnet on the top of the tie plate.

Testing the setup
Testing the setup. Velcro command strips can support quite a lot of weight. I chose strips that will support 16 lbs. The horizontal bar will go inside the quilt sleeve.
Metal tie straps used to hang quilt
Metal tie straps used to hang quilt

I slid my assembled strap into the quilt sleeve and set it against the magnets. it was super easy to adjust the level. And it will be super easy to add length and tie plates with magnets.

The result is a super flat against the wall hanging arrangement that fully supports the quilt without pinching, compressing, or putting holes (pins or tacks) in your quilt.

I believe this is my hanging method of choice from now on!

Ovarian Cancer Awareness Quilt by Suzan Engler
“Turning Over a New Leaf” art quilt by Suzan Engler. Suzan made this quilt for the Ovarian Cancer Awareness Quilt Project. Auctioned in 2014, the quilt raised money for Ovarian Cancer Research at MD Anderson.

MQG is Loving the Improv Charity Quilt We Made

The Balancing Change quilt my guild made for Quiltcon 2016 was truly improvisational from beginning to end.
At each step, we improvised and modified. Even the quilting wasn’t decided until the quilt was on the frame. But at each step we kept basic design theory in mind.

Balancing Changes - San Antonio Modern Quilt Guild 2016 Challenge Charity Quilt , view of quilt front.
Balancing Changes – San Antonio Modern Quilt Guild 2016 Challenge Charity Quilt , view of quilt front.

The Balancing Change quilt my guild made for Quiltcon 2016 was truly improvisational from beginning to end.

We knew we wanted to make a quilt for the Quiltcon Charity Challenge that embodies how random things become organized, how chaos ends up organizing and balancing out in the end. In the greater San Antonio Texas area 2015 saw an overwhelming amount of destruction, Wimberly flooding probably being the worst. I think we did succeeded.

In our first sew-in, we all talked about ideas and we decided a triangle, the symbol of change, would be important imagery. We also discussed traditional blocks that we could use as inspiration, specially the churn dash, as a symbol of change. I saw this an an opportunity for me to get a beta ‘test’ of a improvisational ruleset I am working on to publish (more on that in a future post.) We added a few more rules such as scissors only, no rulers. For at least half of our group, this was a very uncomfortable situation. We all knew this quilt would expand our horizons.

Our first go around resulted in an interesting mess that didn’t inspire us to move further. We looked at it and moved parts around and it just didn’t work. So we let it rest for about a month in order to let our creative juices get to work.

2015-BalancingChange-3
Balancing Changes, view of quilt back.

Sarah Jimenez found a sketch of a black and white triangle with a couple of bars all done in pencil. It began a conversation about the concept of balancing. We considered two bars, but felt that it could be taken as a political statement and we wanted to avoid that even though there is much chaos in politics. We wanted this to be about the abstract concept of changes affecting us and not about a specific idea. Instead of directing the thoughts of the viewer, we wanted our quilt stimulate and open those thoughts.

I had also been reading a lot of design theory and wanted to apply some ideas of depth and movement through relative sizes and layering of objects.
Sarah and I worked together to combine the ideas into the final layout.

Taking the design concept of depth one step further during the quilting process I applied comic book drawing theory. In comic books line value and thickness are often used to indicate depth of field. Thinner lines with color value closer to the background indicates farther away from the viewer while bolder thicker more color value difference indicates closer to the viewer. So I used a variety of very thin 60 wt threads, and thicker 50wt and 40wt threads when quilting. I had planned on using 30wt thread too, but it required mechanically adjusting my machine to accommodate the very thick needle. There was not enough time to get out the tools before the quilt had to be in Pasadena for Quiltcon 2016. I plan on trying the thread weight ideas on a future quilt though. The idea intrigues me.

This quilt really pushed our group to get out of our comfort zone and to really think about improv as a concept that still requires design theory application to get a great results. We are all happy with the outcome. We all learned a lot. I hope this group will do this again!

 

MQG talks about it on Instagram

#quiltconcharityquilt, #quiltcon, #improvquilting, #quiltcon2016, #quiltconcharitychallenge

Yet Another Instruction Guide on Tube Cut Bias Binding

I was in a class last week and we were supposed to do tube cut bias binding. I find this the best way to make bias in the entire world. But I had a major brain fart! It was, to say the least, a bit embarrassing. At that moment, I couldn’t have even told you what make my car is. Luckily we planned for overflow time the following Tuesday evening.

I made some notes and turned the unfinished keynote address into a Quicktime video. I will probably come back and add a voice over at some point. But the keynote slide show is what I’ll be actually using as a classroom aid. It will play better live in person.

Here it is for those of you who want an early peek.

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