Agony Aunt - Karen

Today we're back with another installment of our Agony Aunt series. Don't know what Agony Aunt is? Don't worry, neither did I. From Wikipedia:

"An advice column is a column in a magazine or newspaper written by an advice columnist (colloquially known in British English as an agony aunt, or agony uncle if the columnist is a male). The image presented was originally of an older woman providing comforting advice and maternal wisdom, hence the name "aunt". An advice columnist can also be someone who gives advice to people who send in problems to the newspaper."

Today's question comes to us from Karen Linton (@savinggrc on Twitter). Karen scored the quilt top pictured above for only $15. What a steal! But now the burden for quilting it has fallen upon her shoulders. She would like your advice, dear readers, on how she should quilt this beauty.

Oh, but there's a catch -- the middle piece on each bow tie is three dimensional, meaning it's raised in a way that you can put your fingers underneath but not all the way through. You can see this a little bit better in the image below.


So who's up for the challenge? How would you advice Karen to best quilt this quilt? Have you quilted something similar to this? If so, be sure to share pictures -- we'd love to see them!

Agony Aunt - Dana

Dear Fat Quarterly readers

Hi I'm Dana from http://drinkingfabric.blogspot.com.

I’ve recently embarked on my very first quilting project, an appliqué quilted pillow.
I'm having a few problems!. I'm using a walking foot but I’m still experiencing puckering. Do you know why this would be? I have spray basted my quilt and used a thick wadding. The project advised that I use this wadding to give a puffy appearance but I think it's too thick for my standard machine in retrospect.


I'm also getting inconsistent stitch lengths. Could this be because the wadding I have used is too thick?


..and whilst I’m on the subject of wadding, I cut the wadding a little larger then I needed it, as I read that it can shrink whilst sewing, but it keeps getting caught in my machine foot. Is there anything I can use instead to avoid this happening in future projects and that still gives a puffy appearance?


Finally, my lovely appliqué which I attached using iron on interfacing is fraying, what with all the tugging I need to do to get it through the machine. I have tried partially rolling it up but it’s a pain trying to get a thick rolled up quilt through the machine as im trying to quilt it. Would I have been better off applying the applique on piece by piece and quilting as I go rather then attaching the whole appliqué on first and then quilting it?

Many Thanks

Agony Aunt - Heather

Dear FQ Readers,

I'm looking to start a t-shirt quilt, yet have never quilted before. I have a whole bunch of t-shirts.

A lot of them are from high school, so there are a lot of basketball shirts, our school colors were green and white. So those would probably be some main colors.



I've thought about trying to somehow do high school shirts on one side and college on the other, my college colors are red and white.



I haven't really narrowed them down yet. I kind of wanted to get a pattern or idea first. I also don't really want to do a log cabin pattern but something more unique.

Do you have any patterns or places I could get patterns from? Any advice?

Agony Aunt - Lynne

Dear FQ readers,

this is Lynne from http://lilysquilts.blogspot.com/ and I need your help with a quilt that has gone wrong.

I had decided to make one quilt for each of my kids and the other quilts had gone according to plan. I had made this quilt for one of the twins:



This quilt for the other twin:



And this quilt for one of the boys:



But when I came to make quilt no. 4, it all went downhill.

We decided he wanted something a bit like this fabulous Natalia Bonner /Whitnee North quilt (http://piecenquilt.blogspot.com/):



But didn't want the cream fabrics or the green fabrics or anything with flowers or dots and also wanted some plain black. And now we've ended up with this:



Which we both think is just kind of blah or even worse than blah. I don't mind ripping it up and starting again, adding some more colour, adding in different strips, cutting it up somehow and re-piecing. I just need ideas of where to go next.

He's 12 and into football (Manchester United so red could feature) and guitars and he did like the big initial on the original so that's a possibility. He's keen not to have anything on it that might vaguely be interpreted as being girly (hence no flowers and no dots...!). HELP!!!

New agony aunt feature

Today we are starting a new 'Agony aunt' type series of features and we would like YOU to be involved.

For each feature we will show you a query a fellow reader has come to us with and we would like you to help that reader out with your advice and opinion.



Our first query comes from Moira, who says

"This is my fifth ever quilt (2 finished and 3 WIPs). I finished the quilt top (picture #1) and want to quilt it using straight lines along the length of it using white cotton thread. I just can't work out what to do with the back. I'm trying not to run out and buy more fabric (currently my other half gets palpitations when the postie comes!) Colour and colour combinations is where I am least confident so I'm looking for some advice. Would it look with a plain cloth back (teal as in picture #2) with some odd patchwork squares or should I go with a patterned back? If plain cloth, will it look strange with the white quilting lines or should I use a teal bobbin thread?"

So what do you think? are you able to help Moira our with her plea?

Please let us know your thoughts!

And if you have a question or want an opinion on your WIP then send us an email to customerservice@fatquarterly.com