Urban Spools | Handcrafted Living

Big News…..Huge!

By Michelle On Friday, April 5, 2013 · Add Comment

I have some very exciting news (well, exciting for me!) Urban Spools Sewing Lounge is moving to a new location!!!

I’m so excited, I can hardly stand it. The new location is just about a quarter of a mile from our current spot and is located in Casa Linda Plaza. My husband did a mock up of how it will look with my sign on the building.

It is going to be wonderful to be on the ground floor and to have windows! There will be room for two classrooms and a room dedicated to Handi Quilter machines. There is also a great kitchen that will be perfect for when we host parties and showers. We have to do a bit of painting and getting things ready, but here is a shot of the front portion of the suite.

I’ll be posting updates as the work progresses, but I just had to share my news!

Faults and All

On Sunday, March 24, 2013 By Michelle

I did something new recently. I entered a quilt in a quilt show. I have been quilting for about thirteen years now and I make quilts for the pure enjoyment I get from making them. Most of the quilts I have made in those thirteen years have been made as gifts and given away. I think I have four or five quilts that I have made at my house. Over the last three years, my tastes in quilt style have changed dramatically. I used to be drawn to muted, darker tones, civil war reproductions, thirties feed sack reproductions, and even batiks. I still like a lot of those prints, but I have really been enjoying working with some of the brighter, clearer bold prints and solids. Truth be told, I just love fabric!

So, back in 2005, I was at the Houston Quilt Festival and saw a quilt hanging in the Glorious Color quilt booth. Kaffe Fasset had new book called Museum Quilts and there was a quilt from the book hanging in the booth. I instantly fell in love with the quilt and they had a kit available. So, I bought the book and the kit and then they sat on my shelf until sometime in 2010. It is a large quilt (96 x 96) and LOTS of detail. I slowly began working on the quilt and the whole time I was thinking “How am I ever going to quilt this thing!”

I finished the quilt in 2011 when I went on a retreat and posted about it here. I went back and read that post this morning and I was laughing at how my ideas on quilting it changed! I took the quilt to a Saturday Sew of the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild so I could use the giant room’s floor to pin baste the quilt. Then, it sat in my sewing studio for a year while I worked on other things and thought about how to quilt it on my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen machine. Then, I bought a long arm (my HQ 24 Fusion!) and I ended up taking all of those pins out! Oh well…..

I loaded it up on my HQ and then I sat and stared at it for a few days trying to decide how to quilt it.

Finally, I just decided to dive in and get to work. This is a view from the back of the outer border. After all of that agonizing on what design to quilt this with, you really can’t see the quilting from the front!

I worked on this quilt every day for over a week and the whole time, I was not very pleased with the quilting. I had already committed to enter it into the Dallas Quilt Show, but I was secretly thinking ” they are going to have a good laugh over this one”. As I looked at this quilt day after day up close while I was quilting, I saw every little mistake and flaw in the quilting. I entered it anyway thinking it would be good experience. I was totally shocked when I walked up and saw my quilt and saw a ribbon hanging on it! Second Place! I’m still a bit in shock!

Whenever I am teaching, I try to stress with the students that you are the only one that sees those mistakes and flaws, but sometimes it hard to practice what you preach! As I looked at the quilt hanging in the show, I couldn’t see the mistakes I had been so worried about. It reminded me to just enjoy the process of quilting and not worry about the end result. One of my favorite sayings is life is all about the journey, NOT the destination.

Now, I just have to figure out what I’m going to do with this monster quilt.

What have you been working on lately? Are you enjoying the process?

QuiltCon 2013

On Tuesday, February 26, 2013 By Michelle

If you are involved in the quilting community at all, you probably have heard of QuiltCon. I was fortunate enough to attend this past week and it was an absolute blast! There were several women from the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild there and a few of us were staying together. I don’t think I will ever get too old to enjoy the fun and bonding that happens when a group of women travel together! We had so much fun laughing, sharing and just hanging out together. These are the gals I was traveling with, hanging out in the Moda Bakeshop booth! (minus Angie who was in an all-day workshop with Jay McCarroll - LUCKY girl!).

It was so refreshing to be at a quilt show that was totally focused on the modern aesthetic that I am so drawn to. I do still enjoy attending any quilt show, but this was exceptionally fun! We stopped by the Spoonflower booth for another photo opportunity;

The show was very well done, especially considering it was the first one held by The Modern Quilt Guild. Everything seemed to run very smooth and it was well attended. Most of the workshops sold out in the first few hours. I was late to the party and all of the classes I was interested in were sold out by the time I sat down to register several months ago. It was around 11:00 on the first day of registration and most everything was sold out!

On Friday night, Jessica Sloan from Remnants fiber [culture] stayed open late for the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild and we all trouped over for a little shopping trip (cause we were all very short on fabric and needed to stock up!). It is an adorable shop and Jessica is a delight! She has such a passion for fabric and the people who love it.

That’s Jessica and her husband (I never did catch his name…sorry Jessica!) She will be the speaker at this Thursday’s DMQG meeting and is hosting a workshop on Saturday.

Well, that’s it for now. I’ll be back later this week for a photo show of all the amazing quilts I saw in the show!

Focus and Simplicity

On Thursday, February 7, 2013 By Michelle

I don’t have much of either of these items in my life right now, but I’m working on it. I read an email from a business coach I follow where she talked about using a “word of the year” instead of writing down a bunch of resolutions. I decided that I would try that this year as I am not usually very successful with lists of resolutions. I tend to go overboard and create very long lists of things I need to improve on or change and then it’s just overwhelming and feels like too much work and I don’t do any of it. So, I spent a few days thinking of what my word would be for 2013 and what I came up with was Focus. I am juggling a lot of balls in my life right now (aren’t most of us???) and I can succumb to the “Oooh, something shiny” syndrome very easily. I desperately need to find a way to “focus” in order to accomplish some goals I have for this year.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I was at a quilt show in central Florida and as I wondered through the booths in the vendor area, I came upon a table set up with this book laying on it with some fun designs, cool looking pens (I have a pen fetish) and some cute little square cards.

What caught my eye was the line under the title “Drawing your way to increased creativity, focus, and well-being”. Wow, that’s a big claim. Then, I opened the book and the first line said “This book will change your life”. Wow, again! I had heard a lot about this technique and even have a couple of friends who have told me about it directly. I wanted to try it because I thought it would help me think of new free motion quilting designs to use on the long-arm, but I was also intrigued with the idea of increasing creativity and focus. So, I bought the book and a couple of the pens and sat down that evening to try it out.

The book went on to say that this drawing technique has been used to help people with chronic illnesses or suffering from grief or depression. You don’t need any artistic training or talent, for that matter. There are specific patterns in the book for you to replicate and when I sat down to try my hand at it, I was amazed at how easy it was. But, the most amazing thing for me, was that after working on my “tile” for a few minutes and just concentrating on the pattern I was creating, how amazingly calm and focused I felt. For that fifteen minutes or so that I was working on the tile, I was thinking only of the design I was drawing. My mind wasn’t racing with the million things I needed to do! Here is my very first tile! (a tile is what the small square cards are called)

Not perfect by any means, but I’ll tell you, I am hooked! And it falls right into my word for the year…..Focus. I plan to keep doing this activity for lots of reasons, one of which will be new designs for my quilting. Look at this page, it’s feathers! With some very cool background fillers.

Have you tried Zentangling? Or another form of doodling to spur your creativity? I’d love to hear about it!

Collaboration

On Tuesday, December 18, 2012 By Michelle

I finished a large project a couple of weeks ago that is the result of a collaboration with a talented quilt artist. Last August, I was featured in an article in the Dallas Morning News along with several other quilters. The article was covering the Modern Quilting Movement and I was thrilled and honored to be a part of it. One of the quilters featured in the article was Shari Lidji of Red Llama Studio. A couple of months ago, I received a call from a friend of Shari’s who is also a quilter. We visited awhile and arranged a time for Shari and Kalynn to come by Urban Spools for a visit. I had an absolute blast meeting these two women! Shari creates custom, one of a kind quilts by collaborating with the client and developing a quilt specially designed for them. Shari brought me a quilt top a few weeks later that she had just completed. Shari’s quilt designs are copyrighted by Red Llama Studio. It was a pretty large quilt and truly an open canvas for some custom quilting. I was immediately struck with several ideas of how to quilt it and couldn’t wait to get started.

Here is the quilt right before I loaded it on the frame.

Not a great shot, I know, but I couldn’t get far enough away to get the whole quilt in the shot. I started with the white areas and decided to do some straight, horizontal lines. I didn’t want the quilt to be too linear, so I decided to add a few figure eights at random intervals and to vary the width of the straight lines. I each of the colored blocks, I did something a little different. Shari and I had decided that we should do thread color changes to match the color blocks.

This one was so fun to work on and I can’t tell you how excited I am about this collaboration.

A New Batch of Quilters

On Sunday, October 14, 2012 By Michelle

Yesterday, I wrapped up a four week series for Beginning Quilters. There were eight students in this session and they all were amazing. I don’t know what it is about people getting together to create something, but it just seems to build connections. We met every Saturday for two and half hours for four weeks in a row. Some had a little bit of sewing experience, a couple of them had never sewn anything and all of them were completely new to quilting. I have to say, it was so exciting for me to watch them all as they made progress every week, get more and more excited about the art of quilting.

As the weeks went on, they helped one another, encouraged and shared ideas. It was so rewarding to watch and be a part of. A couple of the students decided to make their quilt a throw size instead of the crib/wall size that the class was designed around. I used the Two Happy pattern by Happy Zombie

I really loved how all of the quilts turned out. I got distracted and didn’t get photos of everyone’s quilts, but here are the ones I did manage to snap.

Melinda’s Quilt

Cynthia’s Quilt

April’s Quilt

Donnice’s Quilt

As the last class wrapped up, I felt a little sad. We all got to know each other a bit after spending that much time together. Hopefully, I will see each of them in a class again soon. Or maybe at a meeting of the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild. I was reminded again why I love teaching! It is just so darn rewarding to see someone’s eyes light up when they stand back and look at what they created. I am grateful every day to be a small part of that.

There’s a new session of Beginning Quilting starting in about 10 days, so I have that to look forward to! Happy Quilting everyone!

A Study in Pink

On Monday, September 24, 2012 By Michelle

Several months ago my friend Sarah gave me a quilt top she had just finished and told me she wanted me to quilt it. The pattern is Escapade by Rachel Griffith. I just love the colors she used and she always does such a nice job on the piecing. This just might be the most straight and true quilt that I have put on the long-arm frame so far! She was undecided on what she was going to do for the backing, but wanted me to hold onto the quilt while she decided. In the months since she first gave me this quilt to hold onto, I have thought a lot about what I wanted to quilt on it. At that time, I was thinking an all-over, edge to edge pattern. Since I purchased the long-arm, I started to think about doing something a little more detailed. And I started practicing different designs. And practicing, and practicing. All the while, I had this quilt in the back of my mind and was busy imagining what I would do for a quilting pattern. I have done quite a few quilts on the new machine during those months and felt like my quilting was improving somewhat. A couple of weeks ago, she brought the backing to me and we talked a bit about what she wanted in terms of quilting designs. Her only real instructions were that she wanted something with curves since it was such a linear quilt.

I loaded it up on the frame the next day and got to work. I decided to use two colors of thread on it, a dark pink to match the border and a lighter pink to use on the blocks inside the border. I’m not sure how well the two colors show up in the photo, but it made kind of a cool secondary pattern when you look at the back of the quilt.

I love quilting pebbles, so I wanted to put them on this quilt. I decided to use them in the border, but thought they might be boring if they were in the whole border. So, I used my quilting ruler and laid down some “wonky” angled lines to mimic the piecing in the blocks, then I quilted the pebbles in between the lines.

I am pretty happy with how this one turned out. I had an absolute blast working on this quilt and it feels really good to be becoming more confident with the machine and my quilting abilities. I’ll leave you with a full shot of the quilt. How’s that for a really pink blog post?

P.S. That’s Sarah’s cute teal Tom’s shoe peaking out from under the quilt!

Spreading the Word

On Sunday, September 9, 2012 By Michelle

First off, let me say that since I opened I have struggled a bit with how to get the word out that we are open and offering sewing classes. I have had a booth in the White Rock Local Market a few times and have met some fantastic people doing that. Several people that I met at The Market have come and taken classes from us. But, still it has been a challenge to fill classes. Where we are located has no visibility to someone driving by the shopping center, so it’s not like people would just wonder in. Many of you know that I worked with a business coach last year and she was such a great help and was a huge part in getting this little venture off the ground. She kept telling me to write a press release and send it off to local newspapers, especially ones specific to my area of town. I have a dear friend who is a professional writer and I enlisted her help with the wording of a press release. Then, it sat on my computer for a couple of months. I want this business to succeed in the worst way, but I get really shy about “tooting my horn”. And I can really talk myself into a slump in a big hurry. So, the press release sat and sat. This week, I decided that my desire to keep some forward momentum was much stronger than my aversion to promoting myself. So, I pulled up the press release, and sent it off to The Lakewood Advocate. I wasn’t even sure who you send press releases to, so I googled “Who do you send a press release to” and lo an behold, other people had asked that same question. I learned that you send it to reporter. So, that is exactly what I did. You know what? She wrote something up for their blog that very day! And I started getting phone calls! And a bunch of new Facebook “likes”. And people signed up for classes.

Several weeks ago, I had an email from a reporter for the Dallas Morning News. She wanted to know if I would be interested in talking to her for a story she was doing on Modern Quilting. It happened to be four days before the open house party I was hosting for Urban Spools. So, I told her yes, and suggested that we meet at the Sewing Lounge to talk. I also invited her to the open house. So, she came and we talked for quite some time, turns out she sews a bit herself. She sent a photographer to the open house and he took tons of photos. That was back in early August. I wasn’t sure if the article would run or not, but sure enough, it was in the paper yesterday! The article actually showed up online on Friday on their website.

I have to admit, that even though I feel very awkward about being mentioned in the press, it has been good for Urban Spools. I received many phone calls yesterday of people excited that we were open and very interested in classes. And bottom line, that is why I wanted to open Urban Spools; so that I could share this fantastic art form with other people in the hopes that they would find it as fulfilling as I do. And I can’t do that if people don’t know I am here.

I’ll leave you with one of the shots from the article.

Spreading the Word

Fine Tuning

On Wednesday, August 15, 2012 By Michelle

I have been doing some re-working over at the Sewing Lounge. When I first set up the classroom, I wanted to have everything arranged so it would be easy for students to collaborate and get to know one another. So, I set the tables up all facing one another and coming out into the center of the room. In order to do this, I had to put the cutting table over in a corner and the iron station in the opposite corner. After having several classes, it became obvious that this was not the best plan. It created sort of a traffic jam at the cutting and ironing stations and it made it hard for the teacher to get around to all of the students.

Classroom Before

A couple of weeks ago when we had the open house, I moved the tables all around to set up the snacks for the party. While they are all out of the way, I decided to re-visit the arrangement. I moved the cutting and ironing stations to the center of the room and moved the tables to the walls surrounding the cutting/ironing island.

I Classroom After

I had a class today and the new arrangement worked so well! A much better flow. And, the room feels much larger.

Classroom – Another view

I’ve learned a lot in the last few months since I opened Urban Spools, but I think one of the most important things I have learned is that I don’t have to have it all figured out on Day One. I can tweak and adjust and that a business, just like life is always moving, growing, evolving. I learned this in my personal life several years ago, I need to be always moving forward, not looking back. I am happiest when I’m learning, improving, growing.

Book Review – Bags, The Modern Classics

On Friday, July 6, 2012 By Michelle

I recently obtained a copy of a book I had had my eye on for awhile. I am an absolute sucker for a bag. I have lots of bags and I use them all. Each one has a purpose and I keep some bags packed for certain occasions at all times. Like hand piecing bags for road trips and a different handwork bag for airline trips. I can’t really put my finger on why I like bags so much, I just like them. So, when I saw this book on bags with it’s intriguing title, I knew I wanted it. I have the ebook version of Bags, The Modern Classics by Sue Kim. I like having the ebook version. At first, I thought I would miss having the actual book to hold. But, I like that it isn’t taking up space on a bookshelf, that I can have a copy with me anytime my laptop is with me, and that I am being “green”.

bags modern classics1 Book Review Bags, The Modern Classics

Photo Courtesy of C & T Publishing

So, the book…. It’s great! There are 19 different projects in this book, each neatly divided into categories. There are Small Bags, Clutches and Large Bags. There are several (if not all) of the bags that I plan to make!

Photo - Courtesy of C & T Publishing

The instructions are very well written and there are photo illustrations for most of the steps. It has very easy to understand directions for each bag. The patterns are all at the back of the book. Since I had the ebook, I wondered how well that would work, but I printed out the pattern for my first project last night and it printed just fine. I think it might actually be easier than keeping up with pattern pieces that you tear out of the back of books.

The small bags section has a pencil case, a case for your sunglasses, a wallet, and an adorable wristlet.

Photo Courtesy of C & T Publishing

There are several styles and sizes of clutches (like the lovely one on the cover of the book) and many different styles of tote bags. I can’t wait to get started!

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Big News…..Huge!

Faults and All

QuiltCon 2013

Focus and Simplicity

Collaboration

A New Batch of Quilters

A Study in Pink

Spreading the Word

Fine Tuning

Book Review – Bags, The Modern Classics

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