UFO Sunday # 7

Another week gone...

Still working away on my Japanese Table runner, however had many distractions this week. As I am not working on any bigger project at the minute I have been free to just explore different things that tackle my fancy. We had the Australian Machine Quilting Show in town last weekend and I spent most of the afternoon there, coming home with a bag of goodies. Bought  another book... 'Dream Feathers by Peggy Holt' and have been drawing feathers all week and practising FMQ in general.

Karin's Swirly Freeform Feather

How cool is this. This is the final version of a drawing I started earlier in the week. All freehand...I am very impressed with this book, it seems to have made that final link for me in terms of putting feathers together. At first I was a bit sceptical as Peggy Holt talked a lot about coming up with your own versions of designs but before I knew it I had half a book full of different ideas...some good and some not so good. Main thing was they were all achievable and were tailor-made to what I like and find easiest. This is what I like about this book, you do not need to hunt around for that perfect motif, rather you can just make it up yourself making it fit into the specific space that you need to fill on a quilt.  I did stitch the drawing above and did the feathers freehand in a 4 inch space. Worked fine in the feathers without marking but realised I would need to draw in the base shape beforehand,  as this is just too long to stitch freehand without a wobble in it. Will keep going on this...

In terms of UFOs, here is the next one that needs completing



This a panel I stitched together into a wall hanging. I used it to try different decorative stitches of the machine and outlined the main parts just with the walking foot (yes, this has been sitting in the cupboard for a few years by now). The problem was that it left me with hundreds of threads to sew in and this took the fun out of it and it got left behind. Not sure what to do with it and even thought about chucking it...I used a wool batting for this and it is very puffy.

Maybe I should use it to practice FMQ in it. I could microstipple the background behind the house, outline some cats and birdhouses...the border has little stars in it, so I thought I could do a loopy line design with some stars in between.

Question:
- If I microstipple one area will I then have to heavily quilt all around it to make it even or could I just outline some of the cats for example in the next few sections. Not sure whether this would look odd with a heavily quilted section in between.

And what is this...yes, could not help myself...trialling a new block I found. It is from the EQ program Blockbase and is called Gumleaf

 

Here are 2 blocks sewn together out of scraps, forming one half of the very skinny star in the middle. Love this, just have to find a way to deal with the bulk of the seams where the three skinny points meet. This is foundation pieced, so comes out very accurate (I use very thin interfacing for the foundation rather than paper- this way it can be left in).

As you can see I am off in all sorts of directions at the moment. Should be interesting to see what I actually end up doing.

Linking up to Leah Day's UFO Sunday  later on.

Until next time

Karin