Showing posts with label Free Motion Quilting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Motion Quilting. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Updates

It's over two weeks since my last post, so I think I will do a general update today. A little of everything -- embroidery, hand piecing, machine piecing, quilting, and binding!

As many of you know, I badly wrecked my back last fall. Now, it's healed very well, and I would say it is better than it's been in years. But a strange by-product has been that hand stitching is clearly bad for my back -- somehow I sit and tense in very awkward ways when I hand stitch. So I can't do it. An unfortunate casualty of this new situation has been my guild challenge quilt, that I started in September. You can see the challenge fabrics here. It was due yesterday, so I think it is now safe to show you what I was doing before my back went out:


I started by embellishing the large scale print with hand embroidery. Stem stitch around the petals, pistil stitch in shaded tones around the centre, and I have some silver lined, forest green glass beads for the centre.

Here is another one:


My plan was to make six "vignettes" like this from the one fat quarter. Four are mostly done.

Then I also started fussy cutting the smaller white print...


...to make hexagon rosettes:


The small ones on the right are the finished size. Half inch (12 mm) hexagons! I wanted 20 rosettes in total.

What's the plan? A half-scale version of the first two rounds of Brinton Hall:


Last fall I was going flat out with my full scale version of this quilt. I already knew the pattern well, so I thought it would be doable in the allotted time. It will be awesome, I thought, to have both the big and little versions together in the show! Well, as I said in December, "Woman plans, God laughs."

Nevertheless, eventually I AM going to figure out a better ergonomic approach to hand stitching, so this is all packed away until then.

And my machine sewing projects are really coming together. The centre of Allietare is down to four pieces:


This is my "quadrants" strategy for a diagonal-set quilt. No seam is longer than 5 blocks. I plan to fussy cut the borders, so there is still a way to go.

Then those muscles were getting sore, so I decided it was time to finish quilting the border on Hen Party:


You can still see the shadows of the previous straight line quilting that puckered so badly. It took me weeks to unpick it, months of dithering, and one day to quilt it again! I like this fat, free form stipple a lot better. And, I think I've finally got the hand/eye/foot coordination figured out for free motion quilting. No stitch regulator here!

In my stash I had a striped fabric that I knew would be perfect for the binding. It ties together all the main colours of the quilt:


Imagine my dismay when I pulled the piece out of the box, and it fell apart! I thought I had yardage, but in fact I had three fat quarters left over from kits. But nothing else works as well, so I'm piecing it all together. This binding will be machine sewn.

The binding on my Cardinal Stars quilt, however, is still only half done:


This was about one quarter sewn when I wrecked my back, and there is no way to switch to machine stitching it now. Long sessions with it have proven too painful. Now I'm thinking that maybe if I set myself to do no more than two threads a day, I will eventually get it done.

In any case, Allietare is going well, Hen Party is finally going well, other projects to be updated separately are all going well, so it's not like this focus on machine sewing is a big sacrifice. My tentative plan for my summer break is to put new effort into figuring out machine applique, both raw edge and turned. But for now, I have plenty to do.  :D

Friday, August 22, 2014

Highlands Houses Finished

I've been debating whether I should put a question mark after "finished," but I think my little Highlands Houses quilt is done:

Highlands Houses, 19" x 19"

I started this quilt just under a year ago, when I rescued a plaid shirt that my Dad never wore from the donation pile:


It was one wrong turn after another with this quilt, and the challenges continued with the quilting! As a beginner free motion quilter, I decided to do a loose stipple with fine thread, and let the quilting fall into the background. My practice pieces looked reasonable, but it all went out the window once the real quilt was under the needle!

I learned that:

  1. Shirting is stretchier than regular quilting cotton.
  2. Paper pieced blocks are stretchier than traditionally pieced blocks, because the grains are not usually lined up.
So, there are a few bumps in the middle, and a few tucks under the binding, but at this point I'm going to call it a day and move on to the next project! 

The whole time I was quilting I had this song from Cathy Miller, The Singing Quilter, going through my head:


Three quilts done, a gazillion to go!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

New Machine!!

I've had my eye on this sewing machine since another Ontario quilter whose work I admire recommended it to me. A couple weeks ago I finally had the chance to drive up to That Sewing Place in Newmarket and give it a good trial. Needless to say, it came home with me after that! Isn't it beautiful?


You can see that my sewing table had a previous incarnation as a paint studio. But never mind, the machine is the Brother 1500S, which is a single stitch, high speed sewing machine. It has everything I want, including a needle down function and lots of workspace, and nothing I don't want, like a bunch of fancy stitches I'll never use. My old Janome still works well for those times I'll need the zig zag stitch. Although I am starting to think that will not be too often!

I was very lucky that the owner of the store, Jaret, who is an expert on this machine, was there to give me a complete lesson. Once I got home I was able to get it all threaded and set up without even cracking open the manual. It also comes with an extension table and a knee lift, which are not shown in the photo.

LOL!

So far I've used it to piece the flannel parts of my snowmen blocks, I've done a little free motion quilting on the Homegrown placemats, and I've done some straight line quilting with the walking foot on Edward's quilt. It is really nice. When you get the free motion up to speed, the fabric positively glides under the needle. And the humongous walking foot is making easy work of Edward's wretched quilt. Plus, the machine will hold a full sized thread cone, which I really love.

So, no more excuses! I have a back log of projects that need quilting. Some are so old and long forgotten that I thought I'd post some photos with my to do list:

Homegrown kitchen set -- a little more FMQ in the centres and these will be ready for binding.
Edward's quilt -- long, long, long overdue, the straight line quilting on this quilt has been an ongoing nightmare. I used a new flannel sheet for the backing and the fluff goes everywhere, and it just keeps getting hung up for no apparent reason on my old machine. But the new machine copes beautifully!
It's Warm Inside -- I have some FMQ and an experimental quilting in sections technique to try on this one.
Hen Party -- I almost sent this out for quilting, but I had my own ideas that I wanted to try too. Now I can!
Highlands Houses -- my latest idea is to quilt this all over in a small clamshell pattern. I hope I can pull it off. :)
Spring Planting (aka the yoyo quilt) -- I think I finally have a way to quilt this monster. The yoyos make it very fat!

Since my WIP list has grown again, it seems appropriate to link up to WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network. Here's to a decent list of finishes in 2014!

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Free Motion Quilting Inspiration

I know I have been quiet for a few days now, but that is because I have been massively productive!  I always get an energy spurt in the spring, so I am trying to make the most of it.  I'll share some of my work in the next few days, but in the mean time, here is an inspirational quilt by another TQS member, Terry Knott from Boring, Oregon:

Bursting With Joy

All the colour on this quilt is thread!  And it is all free motion quilting, no machine specialty stitches.  Terry was kind enough to also send me her Smilebox slideshow, with close-ups of all the stitching.  You can find it here.  If you go to the last slide there is a photo of the label.  428 hours of stitching and 29 bobbins full of thread!  Here's some additional background on the quilt from Terry herself:

In October, I took a "ZenSuedeled" class from Sue Patten and drew the outline of the shapes. It took me a couple months to find a backing fabric that I loved and then I purchased six cones of Superior's Highlights 40 wt polyester thread and one cone of Superior's Rainbow 40 wt polyester thread. I started stitching the first of December. Before this quilt, I was comfortable stitching pebbles, small stippling, meandering and was making progress on feathers. I wanted to be more comfortable stitching background stitches without marking.
The thing I like the most about Terry's quilt is that even though it is machine quilted, it still has a "hand drawn" feel to it.  I am finding that I have a strong dislike of computerized quilting.  It always looks too rigid to me, and lacks "flow."  Terry's stitches are lovely and even, but they don't have that impersonal feel that computerized stitches would have.

I was very inspired by Terry's quilt, because I really want to bring my free motion quilting up to this level.  Terry suggested that just 15 minutes a day would improve my skills quickly.  I find that idea to be very appealing!  I immediately started to think about a 30 day challenge to quilt every day.  I think September will be an easier month on Sedona Star, so I may think about doing it then.

I am not a great finisher of 30 day challenges - my 30 day drawing challenge fizzled before it really got started.  Last spring I did a 30 day walking challenge, which lasted about 15 days before my outdoor allergies completely paralyzed me.  But in both cases I still learned something valuable, so it may be worth starting even if I don't finish.  Maybe I can re-vamp that drawing blog!
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