Snug Bug sewing tours: Outstate edition! North Country Quilts and Northern Comfort B&B

Greetings Loch Ness monsters! I know you’re all about your cold, deep waters in the Scottish highlands, but I thought you may be interested in visiting northern Minnesota this summer. There’s nice, big lakes for you to float around in and better yet, there’s an awesome quilt shop and bed breakfast just a splash away from the lake!

Over the weekend, the Bug-family made the long journey to the majestic Iron Range in Northeastern Minnesota. It actually is pretty majestic – all pine trees and rocks and deer and buttercups. The glaciers were sloppy houseguests and left that part of the state all craggy and cluttered and full of lakes. And swamps. I’ll spare you the geography details, but suffice to say grandma-bug lives in the ‘big’ town of Virginia (population 8,400). The wedding was a half an hour away in Cook, Minnesota (population 620). I grew up in a Soudan, Minnesota, which is a half an hour in the other direction (population 374) and we stayed at the Northern Comfort bed and breakfast in beautiful Embarrass, Minnesota. Population 691 (that’s the whole township, there really isn’t a ‘town’ persay.) But for the low number of year-round residents (there’s a lotta summer residents and campers, fishers, hunters, etc.) the area has one of the best fabric shops I’ve been in recently, North Country Quilts in Tower, Minnesota.

 

{the quilt shop}

I have to admit to a prior acquaintance with this quilt shop, although it was in a different location when I knew it! North Country quilts has been open for about twelve years and waaaaayyyyy back in 2000/2001 I decided to try the life of a small town girl (again.) I moved back home, stayed for six months and fled back to the city. I missed Vietnamese food. Also, I was tired of people thinking I was a witch. Nevertheless, in my short time up north I learned to quilt at North Country Quilts. Back then, it was recently opened and in an old fire station – one of the few old, brick buildings in town. Nessie and friends, it was an AWESOME setup – on one side was the quilt shop with tables for sewing. On the other was a gift/coffee shop – the coffee shop was in the old jail cell! It was charming and the hangout for quite a few locals who would drop by for a sew and a chat. I’d heard that the quilt shop had moved down the street to a newer-not-so-charming venue a few years ago and was sad. Normally my visits up north are quick and at odd times and there hasn’t been a chance to check out the new digs until this trip – actually I didn’t expect to stop by, but Mr. Bug and I were driving around looking at the house where I grew up and when we drove past the quilt shop, look what I saw!!

Now, does that beat a sandwich board or what?? A front porch covered with quilts? I’m in. Even though quilting’s not my main thing, why on earth would I pass up a fabric shop? Quilt weight cotton’s the perfect summer dress weight, after all…

I was blown away by the shop. I didn’t take many photos, but suffice it to say this is a must-do stop if you’re up that way, EVEN if you aren’t a quilter! There’s a front room packed with all the cool designers (Anna Maria Horner, Amy Butler – I think I saw Alexander Henry.) There’s side rooms full of more cottons and a back room with some great knits, tons of minki and the coolest flannels I’ve ever seen – herringbone prints that faked me out so well, I still thought they were wool WHEN I WAS TOUCHING THEM!!

Seriously, you sneaky dinosaurs, if you live in Minnesota, this shop is worth the trip. I haven’t seen anything like it down in the Twin Cities (although, granted, I’m not super-familiar with the quilt shops down here!) AND, lucky for you, there’s an excellent place to stay just 15 miles down the road (that’s just a couple blocks after you make the city to country conversion…)

{the B&B}

First, to help orient you to your surroundings, here is the Embarrass post office. It’s a bit small.

Approaching the B&B

Our room. There are a few rooms with their own powder rooms, but share the main shower. I think there are a couple of rooms that have no powder room at all, and then there is the suite where we stayed. There’s a full bathroom, a sitting room with a trundle bed and the bedroom.

{the grounds}

The bed and breakfast is located on a beautiful old farm. In prior days, it was a private residence, a boarding house and who knows what. My stepfather, who is from Embarrass and 94 years old (my mom married up!) told us that the building used to be a rooming house for kids who lived out in the hinterlands and were attending the four-year high school in town.

{the antique shop}

New, since we last visited in October was the antique shop! The owners, Pam and Kathy, converted part of the barn to a sweet little antique shop. It smells nice. Partially because Kathy makes her own soap – there were little bars of it in the rooms!

 

The back of the barn is still in its original form, but overflow from the shop lives back there and we wandered in to take some pictures.

Kathy had a very nice selection of buttons in the shop and I think we all, mythical creatures and snug bugs alike, know how I feel about buttons. Here’s my haul. Check out those most excellent ones in the upper left! I (ok, Mr. Bug) paid $12 for three of them, but they were irresistible…

{the food}

OK, we can’t leave off a post regarding a B&B without addressing the second B, now can we? I must admit that I consider the plethora of food-photos on Facebook an unfortunate side-effect of too much leisure time coupled with too many iPhones, but nevertheless, here’s our melon-with-crème-fraiche and German apple pancake.

{details!}

I assure you, the nice ladies at North Country Quilts and Northern Comfort will do their very best to make you feel welcome. Just let them know you require absolute secrecy, a large body of fresh water around 800 feet deep and a steady diet of scuba divers and northern pike.

North Country Quilts

303 Main Street | Tower, MN 55790

218-753-4600

http://www.northcountryquiltshop.com/

 

Northern Comfort B&B

4776 Waisanen Road | Embarrass, MN 55732

218-984-2014

http://www.northerncomfortmn.com/

northerncomfortmn@yahoo.com

[a lazy resident of Embarrass, Minnesota]

Finished! My spring-green, stripey, silky, stitched up, wool & leather quilt.

Morning Easter Egger Hens! I’m back from our great trip up north, the quilt has been left on a gift table at the First Baptist Church, Lucy got to run around without a leash and fell in a ditch (no injuries, much laughing) and I got to meet CHICKENS!!! But more about that later this week, today we’ll finally take a look at the wedding quilt, which, to Mr. Bug’s intensely amped-up stress level was finished IN THE CAR and photographed on the way up north. Luckily, we have the most beautiful rest stops in the nation here in the great state of Minnesota…

I thought the back was so pretty it was a shame to wrap it up, plus wrapping a quilt is weird. I mean, who has a box big enough and if you skip the box it’s just a floppy paper-wrapped amoeba. I raided my jewelry box and co-opted my leather bracelets to use as special quilt straps, rolled it into a tootsie-roll and just pinned our tag to it. I used a bit of the same leather in the quilt as I had to make the bracelets, so it was very matchy-matchy.

And of course, I had to include a little tag. Everything’s better with a basset hound on it, right my chicken friends? I bet you LOVE this quilt, what with your penchant for laying green eggs…

{the front}

OK, first lets’ talk about the front! I used a whole bunch of different fabrics including some organic cotton flannel, silk/cotton blends, dupioni silk, cotton voile, wool flannel, silk charmeuse and plain ‘ole quilt-weight cotton. Unfortunately for the new bride (or groom, how they sort out their household chores is a whole different bag of scraps), this quilt will not take kindly to baths. I love giving practical gifts, don’t you agree?

In addition to all my fun fabrics, I did some not-so-fancy stitchin’. There’s a shop close to my house (Needlework Unlimited for curious Minneapolis-based hens) that carries a giant array of handwork supplies, including silk embroidery yarn (like perl cotton, but, you know, not cotton. I’m not familiar enough with the terms to tell you the correct weight!) The best part of the selection (apart from the fact that it’s SILK) is that the colors are much more vivid (and varied) than the DMC offerings at Joann’s. I got a couple colors of green, then ran some basic running stitches along a strip of Kona cotton in Snow. I embroidered the bride and groom’s names (Olin! Great name, isn’t it?) and their wedding date on one of the strips. Everything was totally freehand – I didn’t even trace out a pattern - and it cracks me up that the letters look EXACTLY like my handwriting!!

 

I embroidered one other strip by hand as well – just a scroll of running stitches with little sunburst flowers. Both white strips were 4” wide, if that helps give you a sense of scale.

I quilted with straight lines of stitching to either side of the seams. I’m not sure if there’s a name for this style of quilting. It took FOREVER, but I am incredibly bad at stitching in the ditch, plus I thought the double lines of quilting would look nice on the back of the quilt. I put on the binding entirely by machine – a first for me, as I’ve always sewed to the front by machine, then slipstitched to the back. It was fun to use one of my decorative stitches and I like the effect! In the end, it wasn’t that much easier than slipstitching by hand, as I had to be SUPER careful to have the edge of the front in line with the stitching line from when I had attached the binding, otherwise it looked messy in the back. And you hens all know how much I dislike a hot mess on the back of my projects!

As I said above, I stitched some leather strips to the quilt as well. I really wanted the overall look to not veer towards super-girly, so I offset the embroidery, silk and polka dots with a more ‘masculine’ color-palette, leather and wool flannel.

I stitched the label on after the whole quilt was assembled rather than stitching to the only one side before quilting or tucking into the binding. I like the casual look of stitching labels through all the layers – I do that when putting labels into a lot of my clothes as well. It’s even better if you use a decorative stitch – of course, one that looks nice from both sides!

{the back}

I really loved the back of the quilt. Almost more than the front! The silver shiny fabric is a wonderful silk/cotton blend (I think it’s 55% silk, 45% cotton, but I might have that backwards) that I got at my local quilt shop. I was a little concerned about working with silk in general in the quilt, and ESPECIALLY on the back, but this fabric is incredibly stable – no running, fraying, getting chewed up by the sewing machine, rippling or showing off giant holes from the needle (unlike some charmeuse’s and dupionis I could name…) I really loved the feel of the silk on the back of the quilt and it really looked awesome quilted!

In order to not have to do too much piecing for the back, I used the silk the long way – that’ just about two yards, so it’s 72” x 44” (more or less) on the right. I bordered the silk with some leftover strips from the front and then pieced together another wider strip of the green and white ‘brocade’ print cotton. I love the strong, simple lines and the fact that they are running vertically, while the quilting (and the piecing in the front) runs horizontally.

I actually needed a bit over two yards length for the back and asked for the wrong length of silk at the quilt shop, so I was about 5” short. I didn’t want to shorten my quilt top that much, so I ‘lengthened’ the large silk piece by adding a little pieced strip to the bottom of the silk before attaching to the narrow strip/cotton part of the backing.

Here’s how I did it: I trimmed a 5” strip of silk from the long side of the silk piece, then I pieced a few of my scraps to one short end and sewed it back onto the bottom of the large silk piece. For the most part it just looks like the silk is longer, but there’s this fun little patchwork piece in the lower right corner – it’s hard to see in the photo above because of the light, but here’s a closeup! You can also (sort of) see how the machine stitched binding looks on the back. A little wonky, but that gives it character, right??

All in all, this was a fun quilt to make. I’m not sure I’ll jump wholeheartedly back into quilting, but I would like a matching throw or two for my living room update. I may make a couple blankie/quilts that look more like the back of this quilt!

{what I learned, tips and resources}

• Quilting. It’s not just for cotton anymore.
• Spray adhesive makes basting a quilt a LOT easer (tutorial)
• Strip quilts are fun to make and not quite as tedious as block varieties (tutorial)
• Cutting binding strips is not difficult (tutorial)
• Machine applied binding: sew to back of quilt, wrap around edge, line up fold with stitchline and secure with decorative stitch. Normally you sew to the front of the quilt, then slipstitch to the back as the neatest side will be the machine stitched (front) side, but when doing by machine you will need to see what you’re doing and the neatest side will be the side you are looking at when you sew down the fold.
• Working with voile, silk and wool in quilts. As you hens know, silk dupioni frays like the dickens as does some wool (like the stuff I was using) and while voile is fairly stable as its tight weave is what makes it so soft, I always consider it ‘delicate’. I considered serging the whole thing and probably would have if I’d had a serger at home (I made the top pre-serger.) Instead I made sure to shorten the stitches a tad to make them extra-strong (I normally sew with a  2.5mm stitch, I went down to 1.8), I trimmed with pinking shears, and pressed to one side. It was not a pretty sight!
• To deal with the quilt during the quilting process. You should start quilting in the middle of the quilt in order to keep everything balanced. When you start in the middle, you’ve got a LOT of quilt to either side to deal with. If you’re doing straight-line quilting like I did, roll both ends in – like a scroll. It rolls into a surprisingly easy to handle shape!
• When doing straight like quilting like I did you have to ‘flip’ the quilt after every line, otherwise you end up with a crooked quilt. So. Start quilting (start in the middle, it’ll be easier). Sew your first straight line, then you will turn the quilt and start quilting on the same side that you just ended on. Like so.

Special thanks to my boss, Nikol, for all her advice during my frantic month of quilting… And to Ashley at Film in the Fridge for the endless inspiration (um, is copying someone’s work directly still considered ‘inspiration’?) and great tutorials!

In closing, a snapshot of some nice hens I met this weekend.

What I’ve been up to. And my new toy: the walking foot.

Morning chickens! I’m up and bleary eyed, having spent the weekend working, sewing and rooting about in my garden. What with the wedding-quilt project and the procrastination-induced mad gardening frenzy, I’m still low on the blog fodder, but I’ve got a bit for you!

Most exciting for me is my new toy – a walking foot! I was hoping to not have to get one for this quilting project. Mostly because I’m cheap. But my boss, Nikol, she of much quilting expertise, encouraged me to get one and I like to listen to those wiser than I am. Also, Most of my quilt backing is silk and a lot of my quilt strips are silk, so I was anticipating some problems keeping the layers under control. Here it is!

I hope you like the shot framing, including Mr. Bug’s American flag, some fine morning sunshine and a ton of fuzz!!

The Mechanics of a walking foot

OK. Walking feet. Why they exist and why even NON-quilters should get one… Most sewing machines – at least the ones us home sewists are using – draw fabric through and under the presser foot by the action of the feed dogs – those little metal ridged things under the presser feet. I’ve made one of my super-nice drawings with a pink arrow pointing out the feed dogs. They move in a circular motion which grabs onto the fabric and lugs it on through.

Since the feed dogs move and the presser foot doesn’t, the layers of fabric will move under the presser foot at slightly different rates. The layer closest to the feed dogs moves faster, the layer closest to the presser foot moves slower. This can cause wrinkling and bunching, especially when sewing long, straight seams or annoying, slippery fabrics. Most of us compensate for this by swearing and holding the fabric taut, which will ease those wrinkles away.

A walking foot has moving parts that help move the top layer of fabric along at the same rate as the bottom fabric. I’m not 100% sure of the mechanics, but here are the basics. First, this is a foot that has to be attached by a screw – not the nice little push-button action that a lot of feet use. I have a standard Singer machine and my walking foot came from the Viking dealer inside Joann’s – just a regular generic foot.

The action of the foot rather cleverly makes use of the screw that secures the needle – see the metal arm I’ve indicated with the pink arrow below? You just sort of line up the whole contraption with the two screws and tighten (only the screw above, not this one) and you’re set.

It’s sort of hard to take photos to show how the monster works, but I’ve tried. There are two parts – the white plastic part and the metal foot part. Here, the needle is partway down and the plastic parts are pressed into the fabric.

Here the needle is all the way down and the white plastic pieces have moved into an upright position. The plastic pieces move in a circular motion which draws the fabric through in the same way as the metal feed dogs. You can see in this photo how the plastic pieces are ridged to help grab onto the fabric.

Here’s a 10 second clip showing the feed dogs at work. I’ve finally braved the user-side of You Tube, ya’ll. Get ready for endless videos of Lucy playing with socks!

Walking feet for garment sewing

I assume most of you are primarily interested in garment sewing and just putting up with my foray into quilting with slight annoyed bemusement. These walking feet are helpful to all you annoyed hens as well! Since it moves both layers of fabric at the same rate, imagine the possibilities while sewing charmeuse or super-thick fabrics such as boucle! I’m also looking forward to trying it out for my own personal sewing demon – matching plaids and lining up sideseams. No matter how well I pin and sew slowly, I can never quite get those waistband seams to line up perfectly with sides of my skirts and trousers!

As a last note, you may have seen these giant feet for sale in bags with a bunch of other metal bars. Those bars are probably seam guides – attachments you stick in to the side of the feet to nicely sew lots of parallel seams without having to mark them in any way – here’s a picture I swiped from somewhere (I closed the window and can’t find it again!) showing the general idea – see how that little side extension is following along with the already-stitched seamline?? I can’t really think of any non-quilting application unless you were doing a ton of decorative top stitching on something. But it’s nice to know what all those strange bars and pieces are, isn’t it?

Sneak Peeks!

As I said, I’ve been working away on my quilt. So far I’ve finished the pieces and basted - thanks to Ashley, author of excellent quilting blog Film in the Fridge for her inspiration and tutorial on using 505 spray adhesive for making the basting process WAY less painful than the safety pin riddled process I remember. I’ve finished almost half of the quilting – just simple straight lines a bit away from the seamlines. It takes forever!! I’m pretty pleased with the quilt so far – there’s lots of silk, flannel, a bit of wool and leather and even some hand stitchery with silk yarn!!

And I’ve been spending a lot of time with my other love, gardening. Yesterday I finally finished most of the spring rearranging and planting, clean up, patio arranging and Mr. Bug helped with my least favorite gardening task, putting down mulch. I’ve still got a few more veggies to plant today. Here’s a few shots from this morning.