Making Tiny Stars

I am working on a new quilt pattern...very easy, but includes these tiny 4-1/2in stars. Maybe not one of my brighter ideas but it is for a small baby quilt. Need 20 of them in two different tones. Nothing complicated, just a bit fiddly. Have made 12 so far

Have the most gorgeous fabric to go with this...will be all light greenish with soft pink and apricot tones. Looking forward to finishing these tiny stars and starting on the other blocks.

As I get bored very easily, I am also continuing on my scrap reduction challenge. As part of Lisa Calle's Quilters Groove Creative Design Society we are making a scrappy log cabin quilt. Did a few blocks a few months ago but then got side tracked into other things. While I am doing these little stars I am also making scrappy log cabins at the same time. I usually make two tiny stars and a couple of scrappy log cabins.

I think everyone in the group is making them a bit differently. I settled on a random approach in terms of strip width and colouring. A little bit of thinking this through though is required in order not to be left with a tiny, tiny strip on the outside. Spent one evening though cutting some of my strips straight at 1-1/2in, 2in and anything in between. Goes quicker that way and helps me to make sure that I am sewing them on straight. You could of course also make this really wonky and not worry about the straightness of the components but I started off straight, so I thought that I better continue that way. Have made quite a few by now

Layout is yet to be decided...must say that I find the blocks a tad confusing to lay them out as there is just too much going on in terms of colour. Will have to concentrate when it is time to put these together. While I have been doing these I also thought that it would have looked really nice if I had just done one colour. Have seen a red/white scrappy one on the net and that looked absolutely fabulous. We'll see...no doubt I will have heaps of scraps left over even after this exercise.

Back to the tiny stars...

Karin

Practising the Flutterby Motif

First of all...thanks to everyone that responded to my last post. I received each comment via email! Yah!

Now to some serious quilty talk...practice, practice practice!

I have the last charity quilt to complete

...a full on 'Garden Quilt'. For some time now I have been thinking about doing a butterfly design on it. So, I did some practice of a motif that I had seen on the internet...I think by Adria (sorry can't remember her last name but she comes up on my FB with classes that she offers). As the charity quilt is a large lap size quilt I made myself a quilt sandwich out of calico and tried this out.

Not too bad but somehow did not like the shape of my butterflys. Then I remembered the Handiquilter Flutterbys Minute Motifs and gave that a whirl on a small piece of fabric.

Not that great but I liked the shape much better. Definitely needed more practice on a bigger piece. Then I remembered my UFO quilt. I have had that quilt for several years. It is basted (just goes to show how long a good baste will last) and I have used it in my workshops for beginning freemotion quilters to have a trial on their domestic machines with a 'real' quilt. The purpose is to demonstrate how disorientating it is to have a scrappy (and very colourful) quilt under the throat of your machine and how to plan and structure your edge to edge design, i.e. know the path you are going to take and how you change direction when quilting. This has been very difficult for most people as the pure riot of colours and bulk of the quilt usually leads to a fair amount of confusion. It's been a great teaching tool but after the last class I thought that I would retire this quilt.

Spent some time taking the quilting attempts of various classes out, steamed it up and off we went. I am not sure what this quilt is going to become...maybe another quilt for the cats or a floor rug for the soon to be new addition to the family. Not sure yet. The quilt has some amazing blocks in there, all a bit wonky (that's why they became UFOs) but never mind...I even found the first fabric that I ever bought in there.

Here is the path of the design

So I started with the Flutterbys on the quilt. Was not sure exactly how big I wanted to go but thought it would become evident once I started on the quilt. I think I ended up doing the Flutterbys about 1.5in - 2in. As you need some speed as you are quilting it it did get a bit wonky here and there...it was particularly challenging to keep each side approximately the same. Could at times not see where I had been before.

Soon realised that it did not matter that much because you cannot actually see the design that well on a colourful quilt like this. I am still quilting with the light green Mettler Silky Finish 50 on the machine. Have several cones of that and it's about time that I make a bit of an in-road into my thread stash.

Overall the butterflys looked alright, every now and then a bit wonky, initially too skinny but I soon got in the swing of things. Looking at the Handiquilter Minute Motif now I can see that I have done the design a bit different to what they have, i.e. my top wings are a bit longer but that was a way for me to be sure of where I was going thinking 'top wing, then down to the bottom wing and up again'.

Finished it today but you be hard pressed to see the design unless you hold the quilt in your hands.

However, after having done this I feel a bit reassured that I can execute this design on the charity quilt. Had no problem travelling along, maybe need to make my loops slightly smaller but even when you get yoursef stuck on top of a butterfly you can always reverse out and start looping again from the bottom of the motif. My only other issue was to swing out far enough to actually make the motif. Every now and then I had to give them a smallish bottom wing as I was getting too close to a neighbouring loop. But apart from that this design works very well as an overall design.

Will bind this with my leftover scraps of binding...bit excited about that because I almost used them all up by now.

Karin

Email Comment Notifications

It's been a while now that I have not received any email notifications for comments left on my blog. Every now and then I would look at the settings, try different things but had no success in fixing it. It's a hassle because that meant that I had to remember to look at my blog to see whether anybody commented and of course, sometimes I did forget to do that so comments would sit there waiting for moderation.

The other day then both my husband and myself spent hours looking at this problem. I think we fixed this now. After some research I did come across a blog post at Life and Linda 'Hopefully a fix on blogger's No-Reply'.

We tried this out several times and it seems to work when my husband commented from his Ipad on my blog.

Could I please ask for a few people to give me a comment just so that I can test this out on a wider audience. This would also then show me whether or not the No-Reply blogger has been fixed. Apparently that is an issue again.

Thanks in advance!

Here is a little close up of the quilty goodness from the other day

Love Lisa Calle's Pro Echo rulers. They work so well for me each and every time.

Karin

Progress Report

Well, the AMQF has come and gone. Four days of all things quilting. I went every single day...not exactly how I had it all planned out but with having to drop off my quilt and picking it up, retail hall and one class it just turned out that way.

My quilt looked nice on the black background. It won third place and got a beautiful yellow ribbon. Loved it!

Got to do one class with Bethanne Nemesh 'From A to Zen' which was very good (as usual) and a group of us got talking to her after the class. Was able to have a very close look at some of the quilts she had brought over, including some class samples of the classes that I had done previously online. This was a bit special, I must say.

I did allocate a whole morning to exploring longarm frames and machines...have been thinking about this for a while by now and before I went to the show I did a fair amount of research into the topic in order to be a bit prepared. As so often happens when consulting the internet, I got quite confused with all the different choices (and we don't have that much choice in Australia!). Anyway, I was wondering how difficult it would be to get used to quilting on a frame versus on the sitdown machine...in previous quilt shows I have had a few moments here and there on various machines, but nothing ever quite seriously. So this time I really had a very good look and try on some machines to see how difficult it would be for me to maybe make that switch.

Must say that I got a bit side tracked in my research, lured by the cost of various set ups. As I really would want to do edge-to-edge quilting I started looking at computerized set ups which is insanely expensive. I would absolutely love to have a set up like this but am reluctant to give up my sit down machine. So I started looking at cheaper set ups and was able to test these at the show. Not to mention the brands but what I thought was a great deal (longarm, frame plus computer) felt absolutely horrendous to stitch on. Tried a higher model of the same brand which was better but that would mean that I would again hit over $20000 if I wanted a computerized set up. In the end I went to the Bernina stand. One try on the Bernina Q20 on the frame and I was sold...it was like day and night. I know my machine and I obviously think it is a good machine but the difference in operation on the frame compared to others was astounding. The machine was extremely light and easy to manoeuvre and I was able to stitch basic meandering patterns in about 5 minutes. Obviously I would need more practice to do the fine detailed quilting that I am used to but at least I was able to ascertain that I would be able to make that transition after a bit of practice. I had a really great time with the sales person...she even let me try some rulers which was also quite easy going. Talked through all the options, different frames, accessories needed etc., marvelled at the quality of the frames and this helped me greatly to get my thinking straight. I have got the machine and now that I know that I could make that transition with a bit of practice, this really opened it up for some decision-making in the future. All I would need is a frame and the space for it...the computer that comes with the Bernina is out...just too costly. Unfortunately I cannot justify that expense ($24000 for the computer system alone) as I am not intending to set up a business. However went away really quite happy after having done all the research and reassured myself that indeed this would be an option for me, now it is just a matter of time and space. Will have to wait a while...we are planning some renovations over the latter part of the year and various other things are happening. But there is no hurry, I love my sitdown Bernina and when the time is right I just plonk my machine on a frame rather than looking at getting an additional machine of a different brand. 

After this little adventure I have started back on the charity quilts. Managed to pin and baste two quilts in one hit

Really felt like some ruler quilting and started today after having spent a day stitching -in-the-ditch.

As this is a charity quilt I only ditched the major seams otherwise I would have had to spent another day just ditching. The intersections of this quilt were horrendous...at times like little hard pebbles. Also think that the fabrics used in this quilt are quite old or maybe the quilt top is quite old. Everything felt a bit more movable. In order to secure all this I decided to quilt a simple line design, semi-continuous depending on whether I remembered where to go next. Would have liked to do an individual motif in the white squares, however that would have taken forever. This way I literally zoomed along finishing half of the quilt in one go today. I stitched the curves with the Pro Echo curve no 6 which made a nice deep curve in the coloured squares and was also the right size for the white squares. Looks quite nice and will hold this all together. Also tried a different thread today...Mettler Silk Finish 50wt...no problem at all, stitched very nicely, but then again my machine stitches nicely with any thread, just a matter of getting the tension adjustment right.

So, that's where I am at...next on the agenda is some piecing of a sweet little baby quilt.

Karin

Back in Action!

Its seems like a very long time that I wrote a post.

My FMQ workshop came and went. It went very well, I think. The content was well received and the ladies had a little bit of fun as well. I always forget to take photos but the owner of the shop, being so much younger than me, always does some reels/stories which she puts on FB and IG. Unfortunately I am always not so sure how I can share this to my FB page or IG and then miss the opportunity to do anything about this.

What have I been doing? Well, I finished my background filler project...it was incredibly hard and at the last moment I decided to put it into the Australian Machine Quilting Festival which will be held here at the end of March. That meant that I had to speed up my quilting and resolve to get this done. Frozen shoulder or not I persevered much to my physio's dismay. In the last week I literally had to quilt for several hours each day to get my entry in by the deadline...and then of course they changed the deadline and gave another week. But it was done and the entry got in on time. Since then I have been working on getting binding and labelling done. Unfortunately I cannot show the quilt to you as yet as you are not supposed to have images of quilt entries on social media. But not long now and I will post some photos of it hanging at the show. They always look good hanging on a dark background. Not sure how it will be received as it looks like one of Bethany Nemesh' quilts which of course makes sense as I was using that quilt as a practice piece for the many designs that we learned in the Breaking Boundaries class. We shall see.

I did also finish my challenge block, an Ohio star, for Lisa Calle's group, however have not quilted it yet and am not sure whether I will manage til the end of the month.

I will probably be late with that finish but it does not matter. I used my favourite William Morris fabric for this so at some stage I will quilt that up nicely.

The other 'thing' that has caused some major excitement in the household is that my eldest daughter is pregnant. We are going to be first time grandparents by the end of August. So, I have been fabric shopping twice already and am looking at what patterns to use for a sweet little girl baby quilt. Found this amazingly cute fabric from Art Gallery Fabrics. Here it is in one of their free patterns on their web site

Very soft colours...gorgeous fabric! Not sure whether I will do a pattern like this, seems a bit too involved for me, so I am looking around for something a bit easier and quicker. Also dragged out another Growth Chart Panel that I happened to have in girlish tones, so will quilt that first so the parents-to-be have a little bit of decoration for their nursery room.

So, as you can see all my plans for this year came to a complete stop in terms of what I had planned but what a lovely surprise that was. With the quilt show approaching, I will be out of action again for a few days as I am also attending a workshop with Bethanne Nemesh and of course there is the Retail Hall. Once that is over hopefully I can get back to some quilting routine.

 

Karin

Freemotion-Quilting For Beginners

I have been preparing for another workshop which is scheduled for three days in mid-February. This will be a workshop for beginner freemotion quilters so I had to alter my original workshop outline as it was just too intensive.

 

I have been freemotion-quilting now for a good 13 years and while I do have a general idea on how to start and what to teach I wanted to demystify the journey a bit. Started to do some research on the internet and was very surprised. There are hardly any sites that cater for the beginner...while they all talk about what you need in terms of freemotion-quilting (i.e. set up of machine, gloves, slider, needles etc) I have not found any real assistance in where to start and what to practice, i.e so I can stitch a bit...what now? If I was a beginner I would not know how or what to practice. This was really perplexing and somewhat disappointing. I guess some of the online workshops might address this issue though.

In thinking about this further I really struggled to identify what a beginner needs to learn until I thought further on what particular skill is needed to progress in your freemotion quilting journey. Here is what I did come up, five skills you will need to practice (and ultimately master) if you want to be able to progress and be able to finish those quilts that are waiting in the UFO pile.

1. Ability to stitch a line, either straight or wavy with a somewhat consistent stitch length and the correct tension on the machine, including stopping and starting with minimal wobbles.

Easier said than done. In my workshop we are going to stitch some straightish lines in different directions in a four-patch block, just up and down, then sideways, and for the adventurous also diagonally and discussing how else you could practice that (eg. stitching-in-the-ditch freehand or using the help of a grid). Following on from this we are going to learn how to meander or stipple. Always flagged as a beginner design I don't think that it is actually that easy to do, so we are going to spent a whole session on just that.

The sample above incorporates the next point.

2. Ability to follow a drawn (or stencilled) line. Once freed from the feeder dogs and able to doodle or meander, it's time to get more serious and start trying to stitch out simple motifs. Again, not that easy...you need a good dose of concentration and steady hand movements and speed to follow a line. However if people want to make use of motifs they found on the internet or stencils they bought, an absolute essential skill to have. When doing my research I read somewhere on a blog that stitching out a pre-marked design was not really freemotion quilting...I was a bit stunned at that because I was wondering whether the author thought that I sit in front of my 40in fabric square and just stitch out my wholecloth designs just like that, all freehand out of my head. No marks, no guidelines, no nothing...had to smile at that. I am good but I am not that good! Definitely consider myself a freemotion quilter though.

3. Ability to backtrack. Nobody (maybe myself excluded) likes it, however the ability to go over an already stitched line is something that the beginner quilter will have to learn not only for stitching out non-continuous motifs/designs but also to travel from point A to B over an already stitched line unless they want to tie off every five minutes.

4. Echoing a shape. Echoing about 1/8in from an applique shape or around a motif, but also useful for varying or extending an already known design. In the beginning the beginner quilter is probably only able to stitch out 2-3 designs which is absolutely enough to start off with. In order to make this a bit more interesting, echoing can be used to vary a design or even extend it while practising to become more proficient at the design.

5. Internalising the quilting path. My personal favourite...in order to fill a space, any space, the quilter will need to know and be familiar with the direction of the design, including direction changes. This does not come naturally, it is something that has to be practiced. In order to do this the quilter will need to know beforehand where they are going to go and what they are going to do well before they come to the point of a direction change. Improvisation rarely works out at this early stage as the beginning quilter is still preoccupied with executing the shape they are trying to do plus their hand movement and speed. I think structure is the answer to this, similar to going somewhere in the car. You certainly would not just jump in the car hoping to get to where you need to go somehow...you usually have a very clear idea which roads you are going to take to get to your destination.

So I build the workshop around those five points, keeping the designs to a minimum (just meander, loops and swirls) hoping to enable quilters to go on their actual quilts to practice or get themselves one of those cute panels you can buy and just follow the lines.  I did include some basic grid work on the last day as some people might find that easier than filling an empty space. This should be very interesting to watch...I hope that me building everything around those five points will make sense to people and sink in and provide a rudimentary roadmap for beginners to continue their journey. But most importantly, I hope that it will encourage participants to tackle their quilts.

Karin

Exploring Affinity Designer 2

Today was 41 degrees over here and definitely a day to just stay inside and keep as cool as possible.

I sat down at the computer with the intention to do some work on various things, but then ended up playing with the Affinity Designer 2 program.

As I have got the program on both the Ipad as well as the desktop there was some confusion for me about the duplicate function as it is executed slightly differently on the desktop. Wanted to explore this a bit more and also make use of the power duplicate function (just press some buttons and it spits you out a motif) and the POint Transform tool that you can use to rotate your shapes around.

Basically played for the entire afternoon starting with some simple shapes

The power duplicate function is awesome...I basically just have to tell the program the rotation I want in degrees and how many times I want to go around. My Point is in the middle on this shape.

Next came the feathers

These are not my drawn feathers but a shape you can use in the program. Personally I would angle my feathers more (there probably is a way to do this, except I don't know it yet)...but I just wanted to see how this worked. So again I made the shape rotate around the middle, however then used the shape tool to erase the centre lines so that the middle was clean.

Next I re-visited a motif that I had previously drawn up painstakingly in the program trying to align each heart shape exactly next to each other. I managed but it was not a 100%. I was sure there was a way for the computer to work this out for me in terms of the hearts just touching...and it did!

The point in this example was still in the centre but outside the actual shape. Very neat! I then played around with the swirls which were added to the program a few updates ago

Very cool

Tried myself at e's and l's which was surprisingly challenging to get the shape right. The power duplicate is also used here except that you tell the program how many times you want to repeat the shape in the horizontal.

A bit of ribbon candy

A drawn motif rotating around the centre

I spare you the grids except for this one which I thought was really cool

So glad I did this...such a powerful program. But like with everything you do have to practice and become familiar with all these different functions and keep practising as it is very easy to forget how to use some of this. Like the pen tool...I think I will have to watch a tutorial again to get that straight in my head...find the pen really difficult to use. 

Hopefully the weather over here will cool down a bit as I got some quilting to do!

Karin