Quilt Along #12

Wow...this was very challenging indeed. The first time I looked at the wholecloth quilt on Leah's post I was not sure whether I could do this. Must admit I was very pleased with my little quilt last week, thinking that this was all going really well.

So with my new found confidence I tackled the microstippling. While it looks alright, I found it incredibly difficult. My first problem was to stay in loose rows when filling out shapes, i.e. the hearts. You would think I would get it after so many hearts to fill in, but for some reason I started filling out one area, making it across, back again and then usually ran into trouble of not having enough space left. I tried all sorts of ways, changing direction, starting at a different spots but somehow did not quite get there. Not that it really matters as it is not very noticeable...however in some hearts, I ended up stopping on the side of the curve rather than neatly at the point.

The next issue was consistency. As Leah suggested I did complete sections in one go as I knew that would be an issue for me. I did the middle section first then the surrounds, hearts and finally the outer section. I did  complete the outer microstippling in one hit...it was huge. I noticed that I was getting bigger as I was approaching the end, so those two areas don't really match up all that well. Also, because I had to really concentrate on the scale I often have whole fern frond shapes due to not changing the direction of the shape much...this happened a number of times when I was losing concentration or focusing in on the scale...some more practice is required with this.

I paid no attention to the actual stitches. I could only do this with the speed set at the highest level and really going for it. My stitches have all sorts of issues in there, i.e. some build-up of stitches when I hesitated, some squared up loops, jerky stitches and a stitch length that is probably no more than 0.5 - 1. Hence, undoing any of this was not an option...given the stitch length, unpicking any of this would have been a nightmare. I also think my needle wore out. In the end I had some skipped stitches and the needle eventually broke after I had finished the piece and was just playing around on a practice piece. Every now and then I was in the zone and it went very smoothly but as soon as I thought that, I would loose it again and loose my rhythm when getting into tight spaces. Overall, good practice though...very pleased that I actually finished this. I do like the look of it ...very effective...but very labour intensive.

The final product

Don't really have any questions...Leah's post was really informative and the issues I did come across seem to be a matter of practice, practice, practice...

Until next time

Karin