Tension Trials and Tribulations - Part 2

Before I continued on my wholecloth I stitched out Patsy Thompson's little task from her online January Ruler Workshop.

Patsy shared a stack of information both on Monday and Friday last week talking about the two different channels that give some life to otherwise pretty simple shapes. Don't be fooled...while this may look basic I did pick up a few hints (like you need to have a plan!) and definitely found out that I need to do some more work on parallel channels, particularly the 1/4in ones. While I stitched them with no problem they all are slightly different widths and this problem occurred seemingly always on the right side. Maybe the way I align the ruler on that side? Need to explore this a bit more.

I hope we don't need that sample for anything else as I then used it to trial a different colour for my wholecloth. Still Magnifico 40wt but this time in red. Strangely enough this had a slightly different tension and I had some difficulty working this out.

As you can see there is some red poking through on the back. I spent some time again going through the process of adjusting the tension. This was not easy and I think in the end I actually had the tension a tad too tight but I then went onto the wholecloth anyway to put in a featherette. Did not want to obsess about this as this thread is obviously a little bit difficult for me and for now this is good enough. 

Looks ok from afar, but I must say I do not like the stitches. What is it with the colour 'red'. I know I cannot blame the machine for this as I also have difficulties stitching with darker colours on my DSM. Just does not look that great. Anyway, I continued with hyperquilting with some blue Magnifico thread in the outer feathers.

Bit out of practice with the hyperquilting. Looking at the photo now realise that the heart shape in the feathers leaves a lot to be desired...I reckon that they should have been a little bit bigger, filling out the space a bit better, but so be it...not too fussed as this is just for a bit of fun/trial with rulers and some different thread. Was happy to get back to the yellow colour for the outlining which does not seem to give me the trouble that I had with red and to some extent with the blue as well. Incidentally I did try the Magnifico thread also with a different bobbin thread using So Fine 50/3 and liked the feel with which it was moving along much better. Seems that a thread closer to its weight might be better. Unfortunately I do not have So Fine 50/3 in a cream colour, so I continued with the Bottomline thread. 

I am going to stitch some feathers around this and I might try to pair the Magnifico with a cream Rasant thread (Tex 24) which is similar in weight and have a look whether this is less fiddly. Anyway happy with my efforts so far...not sure I will use this Magnifico thread on another wholecloth. While the thread is beautiful, I don't like its slippery nature. Just not used to it and had some trouble with the locking of stitches. But then again that might just be me at this point in time.

A little bit more filling as this looks way too naked and then I will stitch the feather border. 

Karin