Orphan Block Quilts, The Golden Bobbins and More Moxie Tips

What a productive start to the year I’ve had! In this post I’m going to be showing off this first batch of charity orphan quilts, telling you about The Golden Bobbins and reporting on my current Moxie quilting practices and some recent troubleshooting.

Let’s start with The Golden Bobbins. This is the name of my Sunday Sewing Group who meet in the Goldenacre Bowling Club in Edinburgh (hence the name!). We are 10 Modern quilters who have committed to sewing together one Sunday every month. We each take a turn to lead a discussion or tutorial on something quilt related, we work together on charity quilts, and we are planning a group collaboration for a competition quilt this year.

We also now have our own Instagram page! You can follow along with us here.

We started meeting last summer when covid restrictions finally allowed and one of our first sessions was an orphan block quilt drive. We each brought in a pile of left over blocks along with extra fabric and after dividing up the blocks using colour, set to work on two separate tops.

The first one finished was this very subtle low-volume quilt, with pops of red.  As well as abandoned Snail Trail bee blocks it includes ‘London Town’ house blocks made by Lynne Goldsworthy as sample blocks for our Thread House Club 2020/21 BOM quilt Folk Dance. Lynne doesn’t have much use for her orphan blocks so sent a big pile to me.

The other quilt we worked on that day is a much snazzier affair and didn’t quite get finished during the meeting. I took both quilts home to finish and quilt (the quilter with the long-arm takes home all the charity quilts obvs!).

I quilted the first one last year (and had some issues which I will detail in the Moxie Report section of this post below). It’s already been donated to my own quilt drive for the Social Bite Village (read more here). I took an interim small batch of quilts just before Christmas which I will write more about it a future post.

I added one more row of blocks to the second top between Christmas and New Year and got it loaded to the Moxie.

This quilt includes a lot more of my own blocks (along with many from the rest of the group) including class samples and test or spare blocks from some of my magazine quilts. There are some lovely memories here! Plus the starring role is the Circle of Flying Geese which Lynne designed for one of last year’s Thread House Virtual Retreats. I had been given a lot of Kaffe Fassett FQs (to use in chairty quilts) by a regular Social Bite Village quilt maker, Muriel Campbell, and they worked so well with these bright blocks.

In my last post I mentioned how I’d been dragging my feet finishing the Watermelon Eyelashes Quilt and struggling with my quilting mo-jo. So once I got this one loaded to the Moxie long-arm I decided to use the simplest FMQ pattern I know, loops and double loops, just to get it finished and off my to-do list.  I knew this design was fast (and this is only a single quilt) but even so I was surprised to finish the quilting in just one 1.5 hour session!!

I felt so energised by the speed and ease of this! 

The next day I finished it with a machine binding (which takes me about half an hour) and straight away started on the next orphan block quilt.  I was thinking that I could get one finished every 2 days at this rate!! 

Luckily I have a LOT of orphan blocks!  I even ended up with extra after taking home those quilt tops from our Golden Bobbins day. In some ways it makes putting these quilts together much easier as you can divide them up into colour groups for a more harmonious finished quilt.

This next quilt includes all my bright blocks, including more class samples from myBearpaw, recent virtual workshops and Thread House Virtual Retreats, a couple of spares from the Farmer’s Wife QAL and some blocks made for blog tutorials like the butterflies.

I really loved how this one turned out! I think the larger blocks make the difference, giving the design more spcace. Plus of course I love the bright cheery colours! I decided not to be in quite such a hurry to quilt this one and went with one of my favourite all over patterns, interlocking rainbows.

This one took about 3 hours to quilt and once bound I got straight on to the next Orphan Block quilt, with red, white and blue (with pops of yellow).

This one included quite a few more of Lynne’s donated blocks and I’ve just realised that both of these quilts have the same improv house block in the top row!

Not wanting to repeat myself I used a spiral overall FMQ design. I really like how this one has turned out. The spirals give such a great texture, I will use this again soon for sure.

Again once I finished this quilt I got straight on with the next! I’ve actually just finished that one too but haven’t been able to photograph it yet (so hard in the winter!) and as I still have MORE blocks to use I will save the next few quilts for a future post.

I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed both piecing and quilting these orphan block quilts.  One reason is I am finally using up all these pieces I have been hanging on to for so many years! I also love the sort of problem solving, improvised, jigsaw piecing required to create these quilt tops. It actually feels much more natural to me than planning and executing a traditional quilt design.

AND I now have all these quilts to donate to charity! I’m planning to give all of these to the Social Bite Village as they are quite low right now.  I’d be very happy to accept any donations from UK quilters out there (so expensive to send quilts internationally right now). Have a read of this post and send me an email  (or comment below) if you have something in mind.

Taking the pressure off myself with the quilting, not trying to do something too fancy or with competition quilt status in mind, means I just had fun quilting again!  And I’m still having fun!!

Now let’s look at some of my latest Moxie tips and advice along with an important thought about wellbeing that has struck me while quilting this latest batch.

Moxie Report

Thread

I was sent a lot of free thread with the Handi Quilter Moxie and until now I’ve been very cautious using only the Glide polyester thread (as I got a spool of every colour) or the cotton Aurifil 40/3 in the top of the machine and ‘So Fine’ polyester thread in the bottom.

I’ve run out of the ‘So Fine’ (which I love!) and rather than just order more I thought I should experimented with some of the other thread I’d been sent. So I used ‘The Bottom Line’ polyester thread in the bobbin. I paired this with King Tut variegeted cotton thread in blues/greens/pinks.  I couldn’t get the tension right using the Bottom Line thread so instead tried using the same King Tut thread as the top (but in that beige/brown combo).  The tension returned to normal and both the top and bottom of the quilt looks great!

I used the beige/brown thread on the top and the bottom for the red, blue and white quilt. This thread seems very similar to the Aurifil 40/3 thread and I will definitely continue using it.

Needles

Usually I change my needle for every new quilt but as these are all a single size quilt I have been changing the needle after every two quilts.

Troubleshooting

I mentioned above that I had some issues quilting the first Golden Bobbins quilt last year.  I was using one of my favourite FMQ patterns, mussels, and all was absolutely perfect until the machine started skipping big stitches when I was moving downwards (top to bottom, not side to side).  It seemed to happen in one particualr spot but then would be fine again. After a while it kept happening more and more so I abandoned the quilting (after shooting a quick video of the problem) and contacted my supplier Pinhole Quilting.  Liz and Pete have been brilliant at sorting any little issues I’ve had with the Moxie and there has always been a solution.

Pete said it probably had to be something to do with the ‘Y’ encoder – that’s the one on the right hand side of the machine when you are at the back of the frame, with the wheel that runs along the carriage.

Pete said, “have a look from the back, and move the machine forwards and backwards. Is the wheel always in good contact with the carriage? You should be able to slightly raise the wheel and it should then drop down freely onto the carriage.”

I duly fiddled around with that little wheel and the other wheel at the back, giving them a clean and making sure they were sitting properly.  Problem solved!! Now it’s something I regularly look at along with checking to see if the other wheels and rails need cleaning.

Wellbeing

I often struggle with my mood at this time of year. The days are so short here in the northern hemisphere and even when it’s light it still feels quite dark! But the main issue is it forces me to be so inactive.  In the lighter months I am outside walking right in to the evenings but with darkness falling at 4pm (and living out in the countryside with no street lights or pavements) I end up sitting down for long periods.

When I quilted on my domestic machine this also meant long periods sitting down to quilt.  But now I have the long arm I can stand up and move a little bit and still be productive!

This being the first proper winter I’ve had the machine (it arrived at the end of January last year) the difference this makes has been a bit of a revelation to me. And not only am I upstanding but my hands are not taking all the strain of domestic FMQ!

I wanted the Moxie so I could get better and quicker at quilting but it’s only know I’m really appreciating the health benefits.

So one of the other reasons I’m enjoying quilting so many quilts right now is that it’s giving me something to do in the long dark evenings that doesn’t involve sitting down!

If you think you might be interested in finding out more about the Moxie head to Pinhole Quilting’s website here.  While you are their why not sign up for their newsletter. You will see a box on the sign-up form asking for a Moxie Mentor Referral Code.  If you enter my code JA102 you will get a big pack of thread and accessories worth over £100 (as listed above) if you go ahead and order a Moxie!