Wednesday 24 August 2022

To Do Tuesday 23/8/22

My goals for last week were:

📌Put up the first panel as a listing in my Etsy shop...photos are done, just need to do some editing and write up the listing.✔
📌Continue on the Elizabeth Hartman wall hanging, i.e. at least get all the characters quilted.
📌Sew a binding to a quilt I have earmarked for the annual quilt show...of course, I left this to the last minute. Still have to do the blocking, binding, sleeve and label and deal with the negative self talk that is going on in my head (happens every time!)
📌Edit the handout for a freemotion-quilting class I am teaching in early September 

Not too bad...only the show quilt I am dragging my feet on...little bit of self sabotage going on there. I am unsure about that quilt and am still debating whether to put it in or not. If I think too long about this though, I will not put it in, so I have done some blocking and have cut the binding ready to sew. I have enough time to put on the sleeve and label and then I will see whether to put it in or not. Always go through that period of indecision...very annoying!

Continued on my Elizabeth Hartman wall hanging...done all the quilting on the animals and am now doing the background.



I am a bit bored (yep, avoiding that show quilt) so I decided to vary the background around the animals but do the border in one design. My choice of fabric and thread means that you cannot really see the quilting very well anyway so I think that will work. It turned out nice and flat (I am using a 60/40 Cotton/Polyester batting) and would also be great as a table runner.
Had some issues the last two days with tension. Inexplicably, the setting I used so far decided to not work that well anymore. Had little pokies of yellow thread coming up on the top or alternatively the brown thread showing on the bottom and no adjustment on my part seemed to make a difference. The Q20 is very reliable in general, so that was a bit surprising. One thing I like about the machine is that it stops if it does not like something. I wanted to run my thread at a tension of 1.5 ( the stitch looked very nice at that setting) however the machine was stopping every couple of minutes bringing up a tutorial about threading. I think that tension was too loose and would slip in the disks, however if I set it one notch higher it would be too tight. So it made sense for me to concentrate on the bobbin tension...I mucked around with that setting it higher and then tried lower, then tried a thread net, a new needle, oiled the machine, looked for fluff and repeated that process ten times over. Very frustrating and did not make a lot of sense. One thing I have learned over time though is to stay calm and just think it through. So yesterday I tried again, setting the bobbin tension considerably higher and the tension worked perfectly well at a higher setting. Funny enough that was on the other side of the runner, so I am wondering whether I will have issues again when I go on the left side thinking maybe the batting is slightly different on that particular patch. We shall see...

I will be glad when this is done. I think if I do another Elizabeth Hartman piece again I would revert back to an allover design. Stitching in the ditch around the open seams was just annoying and difficult to do when you have contrasting fabric like that. While I think that you can get away with pressing the seams to one side on the bigger characters, for some of those animals that would not have been possible because of the amount of small pieces. I think I did try this before on the fox, however it comes out better (and flatter) if you have your seams open. I am planning to do another Fox quilt and will definitely do an allover wood grain design again.

For next week I will keep my goals smallish as I got a fair bit going on around me, so I will concentrate on:

📌Finishing the quilting on the Elizabeth Hartman wall hanging
📌Sewing the binding onto the show quilt and preparing the sleeve; also need to think of a title so I can do the online entry.

Linking up to To Do Tuesday which is hosted by Texas Quilt Gal.

Karin

3 comments:

  1. Oh, wow! You're quilting looks just great!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Even though the Elizabeth Hartman piece is fiddly, it's gorgeous, and your quilting looks fantastic! That's neat that your machine stops when it does not like something.
    Thank you for joining with us at To Do Tuesday!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your Elizabeth Hartman quilt is fantastic; I love the quilting! Her designs do have a lot of little pieces, but I do like them. Hope you decide on your quilt show quilt - I think you should go for it! I overthink those things too much, too!

    ReplyDelete

Hi...thanks for stopping by and commenting. Very much appreciated! I will endeavour to answer all comments via email. Please check that you are not a no-reply blogger as there is no way of responding to you (other than by reply on the blog). If you need help with this issue, please head for Tutorials for a link on how to fix this issue.

Popular Posts