Doodlemania

It's been a while since I just doodled away on my machine.

Really felt like just quilting today...got out some rulers and just kept going and as you can see it got very messy.

Started off very structured. The centre is done with the HQ Petal Pusher ruler which gives you that lovely floral motif. I then played with Bethanne Nemesh' Lily Line#3 ruler. Lots of nice curves and lots of possibilities to place them. I do need more practice with those rulers to be able to use them more comfortably and make the best use out of them.

Started off with an upside down heart shape which looked great, so I repeated that on each cross hair which meant that I 'lost' the shape somehow. Also became obvious that I was too sloppy, as the resulting shapes were not equal. All good practice. I knew exactly where I had gone wrong...did not mark how far I wanted my shape to extend, just winged it which obviously did not work that well. Filled all that in and then started on a border.

The feather border is part of Cindy Needham's Border Stencil pack. Am thinking of using this for an upcoming wholecloth and thought I might just stitch that out to see what that feels like. This was the middle size, I believe, and stitched out very nicely. Will just have to decide how long I want my feathers to extend to achieve a more even look. Also noticed that the corners were particularly tight...I think Cindy Needham places her feathers under each other...not sure whether I like that. The corner certainly needs more work.

After that I just doodled along as I could hear the bobbin was nearing its end, so I kept going until I ran out. Was interested to see whether my bobbin tension would hold...last week we had about 38 degrees over here and our air conditioner had broken down. It was just really hot in the house. Doing a bit of quilting I noticed that my tension was incredibly finicky and it looked like it was not holding for the entire bobbin. Thinking that it had to do with the winding of the bobbin I trialed different speeds of winding the bobbin but it remained rather fiddly. Today, no issue at all...the bobbin tension remained decent to the very last stitch. So maybe it was the heat after all, who knows...certainly did not do anything different  today. Still using the same top and bobbin thread.

Linking up to Freemotion Mavericks 'Quilting & Learning-What a Combo'

Karin