More Ruler Work and Two More Finishes

Its been a productive couple of weeks...managed to finish all of the charity quilts ready to be delivered next week.

Had a lovely 'I Spy' quilt to finish. Given its colourful fabric I just meandered over it. Still find that the most effective and fast ways to finish some of the more scrappy type quilts.

Nearly got side tracked again in going through my stash to find similar fabric that could be used for an 'I Spy' quilt. Such a good isea and a fun project! Restrained myself though and kept going with the next charity project.

Now this one took a bit longer as I had to ditch the seams first but then I got going with some simple curves in the blocks. What started out as just wanting to do a motif in the larger yellow squares turned to an allover design. Really enjoy using Lisa Calle's Pro Echo rulers!

Put a piano key border around it as well using a blend in purple colour. Came out great and finished it off nicely.

Next will be another baby quilt panel that I will quilt up for one of my daughter's friends who is expecting and then my machine will go in for a spa day. I had some issues with my stitch regulator...minor, and maybe related to the particular project I was working on. Experienced some racing of the needle at odd times. This has since stopped and could very well be attributable to the sliding mat I have around my needle plate...not sure. I thought that maybe the edges of that might have been catching the fabric, so I have now taped this down a bit better and have not experienced this again. But in speaking to the dealer we decided that we may as well have a bit of a look and while at the shop the machine might as well get cleaned and oiled on the inside. Not strictly speaking necessary, but can't hurt...I have had this machine now for over four years and while Bernina talks about it only having to go for service at 30 million stitches I have since heard different viewpoints. In the end I contacted Bernina some time back asking around service and they had said that it was recommended to have your machine looked at every couple of years to make sure everything runs fine. As I am thinking about putting my machine on the frame at some stage later this year I thought it might be a good idea to get the machine running as best as it can. (assuming that I will have a horrendous adjustment period).

That's all from me today...have a nice quilty weekend!

Karin

Some Ruler Work

Here is the finished Ballerina quilt from a few weeks ago. Again forgot to post the finish here as I had posted it on my facebook page and IG and then moved straight on.

The outer border is done with the HQ 4" Swag set...finally used it! The 4" swags fitted nicely around the long edge of the border, however I had to problem solve a bit for the top and bottom because I needed to elongate my swags by 1/4in to make it fit. Found that I had an oval corner shape that just fitted that width (and height) and which was only ever so slightly different (tiny bit slimmer on the top). I used this as sliding the HQ 4" swag along to make it a bit wider produced some wonky shapes. Worked really well.

Really enjoying the ruler work at the moment so I moved straight on to the next charity quilt. A striking little number

Used my favoutite curve set for this...the Lisa Calle Pro Echo rulers and chose the 7" curve. By the way, Lisa Calle is doing little workshops on ruler quilting on FB every Monday and I think you can get a bit of a discount on her rulers this month. Watched the first one last week on using straight rulers. Very enjoyable.

The ditching was a bit of a hassle and to save time I just ditched in a grid around the blocks and left the diagonal untouched.

Really liked how this turned out as the unditched areas tended to puff out a bit more and really made the curves stand out. Mind you, my stitch regulator was a bit unhappy at times...the backing was very thin and in the white areas I had some racing at times. Not quite sure why...maybe the thinner fabric both from the backing but also in the top or the puffiness. Definitely something noticable as I approached the seams at times. Experimented on some scraps that I had and had no problem at all, so hopefully it had to do with the fabrics in this quilt.

Well, I am already on to the next quilt which I will just meander over as I have got another one to go after that. You probably wonder at my sudden surge of activity...we are expecting our first grandchild in August and I do want these charity quilts to be delivered before this. While I will take a few additional ones after this there no doubt will be a few months of very limited quilting activity. Somehow it seemed quite far away and all of a sudden it is so very close. My daughter is huge by now and I would not be surprised if this baby makes her entrance a little bit earlier. We shall see. Still need to handstitch the binding of that special baby down. Also need to prepare for a workshop which has now moved to November, write up a pattern etc...all before the end of August! As always in life lots of other things going on...

But, hey, we work best under pressure!

Karin

Baptist Fan Charity Quilt

Quick update on the finished Baptist fan charity quilt.

Turned out great, looking fairly accurate on the top edge

Love the consistency and the 1in spacing between the fans

...and another close up

That's it...already onto the next charity quilt, currently ditching which will take a little moment. Planning a little bit of ruler work but we shall see as to whether I have got any energy left after I finished the ditching.

Happy quilting!

Karin

More Charity Quilts

I am running behind in the the quilting of the charity quilts. Have four more to go before I pick up new quilt tops, so I am really knuckling down trying to get this done (hopefully by mid - August). Very much in the mood for ruler quilting and the next quilt top presented the perfect opportunity to do some Baptist fans again.

I am using templates from Michael's Quilts. Purchased those a couple of years ago now and still think they are fantastic and the best on the market. Remembered that I looked at other ones at the time, i.e. Amanda Murphy had just brought out her Baptist fan rulers but they were too narrow for me. I was looking at a 1in space between the curves in order to use it as an allover design. That's how I eventually came across the templates from Michael Quilts. 

First issue was that my charity quilt was not exactly straight around the edges. As I can't mark the charity quilts my trusted masking tape came in really handy (using a lot of that lately). In order to start my fans I needed a straight edge, so I used a large right angle and marked the 5-1/2in height of the fans with masking tape straight across. Had not thought that through though as I needed to get my beginning fans straight! The first little circle is 1-1/2in high so I had another straight tape line at 2in and from there I chalked in the 1-1/2in line.

Bit clumsy, but worked fine. As I was stitching along I removed the tape

Took me a moment to get comfortable again with the templates. The largest template is based on an 11in circle, hence it is quite big to use on a sitdown longarm. Takes up my whole hand.

As you can see I have lots of little grippy disks on the back and also use the sticky drawliner pieces to hold the ruler in place. Similarly, the smallest fan is based on a 3in circle and is somewhat awkward to hold, so a slow pace was the go. Initially I was dreadful at backtracking over previously stitched lines, but improved as I went along. The trick is to use the top of the templates to help you stitch along 1in to get to the next fan.

Now, I am not going to say this is super easy...it's not. Being on the sitdown means everything moves and you are surrounded by your fabric sandwich which may not always cooperate in terms of push and pull. Nevertheless I was impressed how consistent this looked after a few rows. I forgot how heavy this is on the shoulders, so given my shoulder issues I had to really take it easy. So I took my time doing about 2- 3 rows per sitting.

Looking good

I finished the last few rows today but could not take a photo...just too grey and rainy over here. Turned out lovely and fits this quilt really well. I think it was originally a memory quilt top as there are lots of old shirt fabrics in there. Really interesting to stitch over. Will take a photo tomorrow of the finished quilt. The Bapist fans came out great...funny though there is always one row in doing this where you think 'oh, I lost the plot' as nothing seems to align properly and you feel as if you are really trailling off. Then the next row...everything seems back to normal and I had several fans that aligned a 100%. Too weird. So, not for the faint-hearted, but I am used to it and just keep blindly going and hope for the best. The surprise is always on the top where you can see exactly how much or how little you have been out with your alignment. Given that the edges of this quilt were not totally straight, my top row came out great. Not a 100%, but good enough. Once the binding is on, this will hardly be visible. 

So jsut have the binding to go and then it is on to the next one!

Karin

Gridwork on a Charity Quilt

Have not completely finished my baby quilt, however the binding is on and it just needs to be handstitched to the back.

Was itching to stitch so I made a start on the pile of charity quilts I have sitting here. First one I picked up is a cute ballerina panel quilt in pastel pink tones. Decided to try a new thread on this that I purchased at the last quilt show. It is 50wt Konfetti from Wonderfil threads. 

Now when trialling new thread I go by what experience has taught me over the years. This thread is different to Aurifil 50/2 thread in that it is thicker and feels more cottony, so I assumed it was 50/3 thread. In fact it felt very much like the Mettler thread cone I used for the last few charity quilts. So I decided to use the Mettler setting (i.e. tension and speed) that I kept on my machine for this thread and no surprise, it was just about right. Also used this thread on the bobbin which turned out to be a bit of a hassle in terms of the tie offs. On my machine which is a Bernina Q20, I have a programmable tie off function.

It is set to something like 4 or 5 stitches before you start off. With Aurifil 50/2 that gives me a very neat tie off. With this thread it was more like a horrendous knot...very unsightly and hard to digest. Absolutely a nightmare to bury in your quilt. Tried different ways to counter-act this, i.e. starting off carefully in Manual, making a few stitches on the spot and then taking off in Regulated mode but still, the thread kept making these unsightly knots. This slowed me down there for a while...in the end I used the Manual mode to start off with some very small stitches and then moving over to the Regulated mode. I think if this was my own quilt I was quilting I would put something like Decobob in the bobbin which is an 80 wt thread...I think the knotting issue would be far less. Anyway, I have a whole cone of this so I continued with it, as the stitching looked fine otherwise and one big plus...this thread has absolutely no lint!

For the ballerina quilt I initially decided to do the center panel in a meander and then do some ruler work in the borders, however I did not really like that idea. The problem with the charity quilts is that I cannot really mark them a lot other than using a bit of chalk. The fabric is likely not pre-washed and getting rid of the blue marker with water could lead to disasters (think colour run). Maybe not so relevant in this pink quilt but it is also winter over here, so I would have problems getting that dried in a hurry.

Looking at it I thought a grid would look nice over the ballerinas. Have not done this on the sitdown machine before over an entire quilt, so that was going to be a good challenge. Now, if this was my own quilt, I would definitely pre-mark this before basting and then just follow my lines but that was not an option here. So I needed to come up with something different. In the end I used masking tape.

Found the center of the panel first. I did not trust the straightness of the panel, so that is why I did not start in the corners. Maybe it would have been fine, but I don't know...could not think that through. Started in the center and did my 45 degree angle from there. Put two lines in for good maesure to see how accurate I would end up after the first line because I did this after the quilt sandwich was all put together and this has a puffy wool batting, so I was not quite confident that this would work out. Did the first two lines and it did look alright, so I continued without the tape basing every subsequent line on the previous one, going very slowly with carefully aligning my ruler. I used the Handiquilter straight line ruler for this which is about 9 in long, so it was bit by bit, moving the ruler along, following the previous line. I made the lines 2 in apart to match the pieced second border. Was not that confident that it would turn out accurately when I started the crosshatch as I had to move a fair amount of quilt around on the diagonal with a fair amount of puff from the wool batting. Aligned my straight ruler on the previous lines but also used some additional 45 degree lines to keep the angle as consistent as I could. But wow...to my surprise, it turned out brilliantly

Even measured the squares...yep, more or less 2in, looking nice and square. Not that it matters that much if it was out a bit but I was expecting much more inaccuracy. Now to that checkerboard border. Will put some curves in there and finish off the outer border with a bit of a scallop. Still undecided whether I will quilt the smaller 1-1/2in borders down or leave them unquilted.

This, of course, is all taking a bit longer than anticipated, but I felt a bit like experimenting. For a kid's quilt this is quite long and larger than usual. Given that this worked out well, a simple grid is a really good option for a smallish baby quilt. Definitely will do this again.

Karin

Update on Baby Quilt

Before I get into the baby quilt, here are some photos from the Garden Charity Quilt I talked about in previous posts. Noticed the other day that I actually had not put up any photos of the finished thing...and that after I did all that practice to be sure that I actually could execute thatt design. For readers who have not read about it as yet, I decided to do the Hndiquilter Flutterby Design over this charity quilt. Had to practice a bit to be able to do this though over a larger area.

This is what that looked like

Bit hard to see as I used a lightgreen blend in thread, here is the back

I was so sure that I had talked about his, but maybe I just posted it on IG or Instagram.

Anyway, for this baby quilt I decided to do my favourite edge-to-edge design called Daisy Dotz #2 available through Urban Elementz. I have done this design numerous times but still enjoy doing it, so I made a start today. I am using Golden Threads paper to get the rows onto the quilt 

Labour intensive...yes, but the result is always stunning and given that this is a bit of a special quilt, I do not mind the extra time. In the picture above you see the first two rows stitched out already. I secure the paper with removable glue dots but also use pins as you can see in the picture above. I am quilting with Aurifil 50/2 cotton thread in regulated mode at 10 SPI. I am going not too slow but also not too fast in terms of speed just moving along those lines. I do use a blue erasable marker for drawing out my lines, basically becuse I am used to that blue colour and it also ensures that I do not inadvertently transfer any pencil marks or similar onto the quilt. After I finish the first two rows, I take the top and the first row out, i.e. remove the paper. Firstly to see how my stitching went, but also to free up the quilt (as you go along some compaction happens and I feel it is easier to free everything up for the laignment of subsequent rows. Aside from that I also enjoy just sitting there quietly taking out the paper after each of the rows. i don't think I would want to do that in one hit for an entire quilt...that would take ages!! With the second row still there and a partial row drawn in I align the next two rows and continue...so relaxing to stitch out.

What about mistakes? Yes, they do happen...sometimes you deviate from your lines a bit but I reckon as long as you keep them nice and round and in line with the design, that does not really matter. I do put more effort in on the second row to stay exactly on my lines as this is where I will have to align the next two rows, but I must say, I do not stress over it as you really cannot notice it if you are a bit out. What if you thread breaks or some other small disaster happens and you need to take something out and redo a section? Absolutely possible...the paper is wafer thin and delicate, so any unpicking will have to be done from the back. I unpick my section stitch by stitch in order to keep the paper on top intact. As you can see the holes where the needle went really well, you just start again in one of those holes, secure your thread and continue on. Must say that I have never messed up an entire row but if you do, you will just have to re-do it, i.e. draw out more rows and start again.

Had a new mishap today though...my mind must have temporarily wandered off

Did not stitch out one of those leaves...noticed it, but continued and then when I finished the rows went back and stitched that one leave in there (with the paper still intact).

This is how far I got today...

Managed four rows (the thread running through is my basting)...not that much,but it is a start and I am taking my time with this as I do enjoy this process. Tomorrow I will draw out another few rows and continue slowly but steadily. Love this design! 

Will keep you posted...

Karin

Gorgeous Baby Quilt Coming Up

I am working on several projects at once...as always! Finished my gorgeous baby quilt top though. This one is for us, however I will write up the pattern for my Etsy shop in due course. For once I did take good notes while I was making it, so hopefully that won't take too long.

It's absolutely gorgeous fabric! Acquired from a local quilt shop that put together a selection of 'Cottage Grove' fabrics from Art Gallery Fabrics for a Fat Quarter bundle. The quality is outstanding and even after washing the fabric, it felt just superb. I complemented this with some Kona Solid greens to make the stars. Really like the combination of the soft pinks and greens. As usual I changed my mind about borders and ended up buying more fabric only to realize that my border fabric was directional and needed to be placed lengthwise on the sides of the quilt top. What a hassle! Had to do some tricky math to work out how I was going to make this go all around the quilt. In the end I did not exactly pattern match as I would have lost inches of fabric doing this and this fabric was not exactly cheap. I got some fabric left from my Fat Quarter bundle and am thinking of putting another little baby quilt together from that, possibly just doing a Charm Square quilt or similar. I think I might still have enough for a smallish quilt. We'll see.

The last few days I have been torturing myself with trying to work out a Zig-Zag border for another Freemotion-quilting workshop. Should have been quite simple and it was until I decided to look at various different dimensions and shifting my Zig-Zag around. I was looking at Cindy Needham's stencil out of her Border package, but then could not work out the dimensions that were used to produce this stencil. I was there for days until I realised how that stencil was structured! I ended up doing mine a bit different and had to take a deep dive into how to make borders fit a particular length of quilt as I will need to talk about that if I want people to be able to follow the instructions for the borders. Got myself utterly confused a number of times (as usually happens with borders for me) and had to really knuckle down and work this out properly. In the end I used my Affinity Designer Pro program to draw my borders out and check the measurements to make sure I can actually explain how I got to the dimensions chosen and apply this to other borders. Always sounds so simple, i.e. just look at the repeat and either reduce or enlarge as you need it...I was there doing fractions galore, but it definitely helped to have  a visual via the drawing program so I could see what I was doing and where my thinking went a bit wonky at times.

Have a little sample project that I will be stitching out shortly to see how much time is involved in that little skillbuilder workshop. This is for the second half of the year so lots of time still but I want to get this done so that I can discuss it further with the shop owner in terms of what she wants size wise. My sample is based on a 2in zig-zag so it will turn out rather small. I am thinking to make it a 3in zig-zag for the workshop as that allows more space for filler designs. We'll see...

Apart from that lots of UFOs and charity quilts waiting to be quilted. My gorgeous baby quilt is next with a special edge-to-edge design and then I need to write up the pattern.

Will try to post a bit more regularly again once I get back to the actual quilting!

Until then...enjoy what you are working on!

Karin