Moving Onto The Wholecloth

I am on a roll...finished off my Ruler Practice Quilt! My Pfaff machine was in for a Spa treatment and so I had nothing else to do.

I was really feeling like some FMQ, but did not feel like just doodling and ended up pulling out another UFO.

Had not looked at this for some time and really felt like some stitching, so I began to continue on that. This has ended up as an UFO as there are some design issues in there which seemed just too huge to continue with it. On the other hand, looking at it now I thought that this was a pity...it's a decent piece of fabric (Kona Solids) and a fair amount of stitching. It would look amazing finished, I think, even with all those 'mistakes'. Anyway, really felt in the mood for it and just continued stitching...

Did a little bit every day as you have to concentrate quite a bit on this one and made some progress. Will need to do some unstitching in some areas and also just come across another problem...my corner motif needs to be altered! What a hassle. If this ever gets finished this will be an amazing feast in improvisation!

Also started the design process of my other project, another wholecloth, that I drew up in Cindy Needham's class last year using a lot of her wonderful stencils that she had brought along.

It's nice but does need some work.

Started off with Cindy Needham's Ultimate Stencils. Normally you would use the transparencies that Cindy has provided for her stencils to draw up your design roughly. I usually start with drawing on paper, using the blue washable markers. Somehow I got used to that as I did not originally have the transparencies and I must say, this helps me to think the process through in every minute detail. As I am drawing I take note of the measurements and how my designs are going to fit into the spaces that I created as well as looking at how the quilting would show up, i.e. which area will 'puff out' and which one will recede. 

And here comes the somewhat intense part...I will do the same drawing over and over again, until I am happy with it and I am sure that everything fits.

This is number 2

...and so it goes on. Already have a number 3 going, but forgot to photograph it, but I think you get the idea. The above drawing was used to trial different sizes and different arrangements. Also have Cindy's Border Stencils and played around with that as well. While I am drawing this I get a sense of were problematic areas arise as 'if I cannot draw it with ease, I cannot stitch it either' and that gives me the hint that I need to do a bit more work on that. Undecided also about the size of the middle section...maybe make it a tad bigger? Before I had the Sweet 16 I did stitch everything freehand from my drawing. Now things are getting a bit more complicated as I have got rulers, so my design needs to be matched to particular rulers if I am going to make use of the rulers.
If you are interested in the wholecloth design process, I did write a number of posts about it last year, starting HERE.

Getting back to drawing...this could take a while!

Karin