Dan the Quilter Man - Scissors and Cats

Never let it be said that Dan the Quilter Man is a quitter (or a quilter, for that matter!). He is not going to let the unfortunate outcome of his initial steps into the world of quilting stop him. Not while he is still breathing anyway. It is pretty clear that Dan is not ready for the more complex (i.e. sharp) tools in a quilter’s toolbox, so it is time to explore something a little more common. How can you go wrong with a pair of scissors?

Well, apparently Dan can find a way.. Most people take pleasure in using well-designed tools for the purpose for which they were designed. Cutting fabric with a good pair of scissors is a sublime effortless experience when they are used correctly. On the other hand, never let it be said that Dan is afraid to explore alternate uses for perfectly good tools. In some ways you have to admire Dan’s sheer inventiveness in the ways he can create injury-inducing moments out of perfectly common situations.

Watch the video below or on my Youtube channel to see how you shouldn't use scissors.

If you do use scissors for your quilting projects, please don't follow Dan's example and keep them away from cats.

Creatively,

Telecast Thursday - The Pick-a-Pocket Purse

It's another Telecast Thursday and this week I'm sharing some of my tips for constructing the Pick-a-Pocket purse. This free pattern can be found at www.allpeoplequilt.com, the American Patchwork & Quilting website. I've made several of these purses and decided to change it a bit this time. 

To help ensure that you pass quality control, check out the video for my helpful tips.

You can watch the video below or on my Youtube channel.  

Subscribe to my Youtube channel to receive automatic notifications when new videos are posted. You can also click on the Chatterbox Quilts logo in the lower right corner on the video itself to subscribe. If you like what you see, please share my videos with your fellow creatives.

Share your photos of your favourite purse pattern or photos of this specific one, if you've made it. Let me know your best tips for purse construction in the comments below.

Creatively,

Dan the Quilter Man

One of the best things about being part of a crafting community is the interesting people you meet. There are many talented people out there who have spent years honing their skills and creating stunning projects.  Unfortunately, Dan is not one of them.

This is Dan the Quilter Man. 

Dan is the type of guy who lives by the philosophy of “why bother to do it right when you can do it twice (assuming you survive the first attempt)”. It is not that Dan is stupid (although the jury is still out on that one), it’s that he refuses to invest the time to learn how to do things properly. This attitude combined with an unhealthy amount of curiosity and a complete lack of any ability to foresee the consequences of his actions results in one disaster after another. 

For most people having a hobby is an important part of living a healthy life. However, in Dan’s case, hobbies are apparently designed to shorten his life span. Dan’s most recent hobby, wood working, resulted in a disaster that landed him on local news where the community got to see his woodshop burn to the ground. The only thing Dan managed to save was his buddy Charlie.

Now with lots of time on his hands (always a dangerous situation for someone like Dan) and the woodshop gone he has decided to take up a new hobby. Dan’s wife (who will remain nameless to protect the innocent) has been a quilter for years so Dan has decided to join her in that time-honoured hobby. Frankly, it is possible that the quilting community will never be the same.

NOTE: No cats were harmed in the making of this video - only Dan!

You can watch the video below or on my Youtube channel.

You can see that Dan's first attempt at using a rotary cutter wasn't very successful. Don't be a Dan! Follow these tips for safe rotary cutting:

• Always close your cutter after making your cut. Always! Get into the habit of cut, close, cut, close and you'll never have an unfortunate accident, like Dan.
• Use a ruler when you are rotary cutter to prevent the cutter veering off in an unexpected direction. Ouch!
• Keep one finger on the cutting mat and the other ones on the ruler. This helps to stabilize the ruler when rotary cutting.
• Pay attention when you are cutting. Don't let purry assistants, like Charlie, distract you from your task.

While I don't recommend cutting up your shirt to use for quilting, I sometimes buy shirts from the thrift shop for just this purpose. I found Bonnie Hunter's video helpful in deconstructing an old shirt for quilting fabric.

I hope you have better success in attempting your first quilting project and remember: don't be a Dan!

Creatively,

Telecast Thursday - Quilting Motif Choices

It's Thursday again and time for another Telecast Thursday!

I'm sure you've had to decide on what quilting motif to use on a project. This can be a tough choice and sometimes you may decide to just put the project away until you can make the right choice (oh, maybe that's just me!). Don't worry about making the right choice, just quilt that puppy! 

In this video, I'll show you two different ways of quilting the same wall hanging. While there is a definite difference between these two projects, they both look great! The reason is simple: I quilted what I was comfortable quilting. Take a look to see what I mean.

You can watch the video below or on my Youtube channel.

Subscribe to my Youtube channel to receive automatic notifications when new videos are posted. You can also click on the Chatterbox Quilts logo in the lower right corner on the video itself to subscribe. If you like what you see, please share my videos with your fellow creatives.

Creatively, 

Youtube: Channel, Videos and Playlists, oh my!

Do you watch the videos on my Youtube channel or do you watch them through my blog posts? If you're a subscriber to my Youtube channel, you automatically receive new content each week – you don't even have to go looking for them, any time a new video is released, you'll receive an email to let you know there is a new one to watch. If you don't watch my videos on Youtube, you may not be aware of how the content is organized.

You may think that I post videos on my Youtube channel willy-nilly and there isn't any easy way to find a video on a specific topic, other than scrolling down through a large list of videos. This just isn't the case!  I have developed playlists to categorize my videos and make it easy for my subscribers to quickly find videos on specific subjects. I often post a series of videos and it's so much easier to find all of them in one playlist.

Let me explain how this works. I'll walk you through how to find and use playlists and I'm assuming that you're going to Youtube on a laptop or computer, rather than a mobile device, as it looks a bit different if you're looking for the playlists on those devices. When you go to my Youtube channel – you're going there now, right? -  you'll see several choices along the top menu, such as Home (where you currently are, but perhaps not where you're reading this blog post!), Videos, Playlists, Channels, etc.

This is a portion of what you'll see on the home screen of my Youtube channel

The one you're interested in is "Playlists", so just click on it now. This will take you to the Playlists page, where you can see the different playlists, or categories, of videos. If you click on the "All Playlists" on the left side of the screen under the main menu, you will see a list of the playlists that are available and can access any of the playlists from here.

Now you're on the Playlists area of my Youtube channel

If you don't click on the "All playlists" dropdown menu, you will notice that there are thumbnails and playlists under "Playlists by Chatterboxquilts". Click on the "Hand Embroidery and Stitchery" playlist to be taken to 15 videos about this subject (each playlist has a different number of videos depending on how many there are for that particular category).

You'll see a list of all the videos in this playlist on the right side of your screen. You can either let the videos play automatically or select the video you'd like to view. 

The videos in the playlist will play automatically or you can select a specific video from the right sidebar.

New videos are added to the appropriate playlist and I will create new playlists if I'm starting a new series of videos on one specific subject.

I hope that this helps to explain the categorization of the videos on my Youtube channel and makes it easier for you to find the one, or two, or three in which you are interested. 

Creatively,