Bogged Down

Have nothing to link up anywhere much this week...very unsatisfactory.

I really got bogged down with my second feather border for my Wholecloth quilt. I don't know what it is but somehow the whole quilt took on a momentous importance. I started off marking a bit of a wavy line onto the border, even leaving a half inch space at the bottom, but not sure what happened then. Started my feathers on one side and then stood back to have a look at it...they looked nice, yes...but how was I going to match this properly on the other side?

Seems that I did not think that through at all. Paying no attention really to how I was travelling I just stitched the feathers how I felt like it, sometimes going right to the bottom and sometimes not...herein lies the problem...there was no way to reproduce this on the other side (unless I want to really drive myself mental)...I started half way down and then stopped. Have to rethink this somehow.  Either do informal, free flowing feathers or do the more formal approach of actually following the wave that I have drawn in keeping the plumes a similar shape and size, so that both sides match somewhat. While the stitching above looks nice, once the binding is on, it will be obvious that I followed the wave more closely on the right side.

Funny actually, as I have done this border before in a slightly smaller border and had no problem whatsoever. It seems that the little extra width has totally confused me. I also had to remind myself that this quilt was just for me to practice...it is not going to be the master piece of the century, nevertheless I got completely carried away over the week.

So, I put it to the side and just started to work on my Squares quilt, just sewing squares together...so calming and relaxing.

I think I will have to do some more thinking around this second feather border and make a decision before I start to stitch about what I want this to look like. Maybe I just overestimated my abilities or was not in the right head space. Probably need to mark my reference points better. The stitching of the feathers was fun though.

Watch this space.

PS. On the plus side, I worked out my issues with my Springloaded foot on the new Pfaff 4.2.  I use this foot now with the Dynamic Spring Freemotion quilting mode. When I was at the dealer the other day we talked about that the opening of the foot was creating a bit of an issue in the new model, not grabbing the thread at just the right moment some of the time. The Dynamic Spring Freemotion mode fixed that, but I also put one of those Magic Genie Bobbin washers in the bobbin to just lift the bobbin that little fraction. Stitched beautifully with not one skipped stitch.

Karin