For those of you not familiar with Harry Potter, this is a bookshelf with a crystal ball on it. The patterned showed a white crystal ball, but I wanted to use a Stongehenge fabric to make it look foggy and give it some movement.
I quickly realized that the paper piecing wasn't going to be the issue in this quilt, but getting titles on the book spines was. My sewing machine is about 16 years old. It is a Bernina 1260, which I love. It still does about 90% of what I need it to do. It even has decorative stitches, which I rarely use. And it can do rudimentary letters.
The main problem I've run into is that the programing of a title into the machine is like trying to text a long message on a number pad. If you've ever done this, you know what I mean (to get an 'R', you have to press the 7 key 3 times). Then you have to hit the store button after every letter. There is no screen to check and make sure you have hit the right letter, and many Harry Potter titles are quite long. So it isn't uncommon to type the whole thing in and stitch it out to find out a space between words is missing or the wrong letter put in. Then there is no good way to edit. You can't just backspace like you can on a computer or even a phone number key pad because there is no screen. You have to start all over. Maddening!!!
Then there are the technical sewing issues that aren't mentioned in the owner's manual. You DO need to use a hoop. I have many, many hoops, but all of them are for hand stitching. They are too tall to slide under the presser foot, so every time I want to stitch a title, the foot has to come off and be replaced. Machine embroidery thread is a must if you want to be able to read the titles after you stitch them. It is a little thicker than regular thread and makes a big difference in legibility. My machine does only 2 fonts, one of them is a script that is almost illegible, so I stick with the block letters. My machine can only do 2 sizes of letters, one has normal proportions, one is short and fat, and again, legibility is a big issue.
I did a lot of practicing before I got something I was happy with.
I still wasn't entirely please with the way these 3 books turned out, so I went to Hobby Lobby looking for waste canvas to try stitching them by hand. They only had 8.5 count, which would have been too big. Then I went to AC Moore. They had 8.5 count waste canvas, but they also had 14 count soluble canvas. It was a little pricey, but I bought some to try.
I was pretty happy with the results.
By piecing the canvas, I was able to get 9 books out of an 8 x8.5 inch piece. I haven't tried rinsing out the canvas yet, but if it goes well, this is the technique I'll probably used for most of the rest of the books. It takes me between 30 minutes and 2 hours to stitch a title, depending on the length of the title and which font I choose. I might try some 16 or 18 count waste canvas if I can find some.
