To Do Tuesday Link Up

Tuesday certainly comes around very fast, it seems.

Last week I set the following tasks

📌Finish off the hand sewing of the binding on the second panel.✅

📌Not sure this counts, but I will have to spend some time to put up the first panel as a listing in my Etsy shop...that always takes a moment as you have to be fairly specific in what you write, what photos you use  and how in general you present your item. ❌

📌Continue on my Elizabeth Hartman wall hanging by making the last fox block and putting the sashings in between. Who knows...I might even get it basted. Can't wait to freemotion quilt this one! ✅

Well, two out of three...not too bad. Life just got in the way over the last week and I felt like the Elizabeth Hartman wall hanging, so everything got a bit left behind.

My other panel baby quilt is finished.

It's hanging outside in the wind at the moment as I sprayed all the marks off with water. Bit of a grey day over here, but I don't like to leave the blue marker in for too long. Together with the other panel there is a few days of work to get them both up in the Etsy shop. A job for the next few weeks.

As mentioned, I got motivated to finish off my wall hanging. So this is basically half of a baby quilt from the Fancy forest pattern.

To be honest, I am not sure I would make it through an entire quilt. The piecing is quite challenging. Maybe if you do it over time but for me personally there would be a lot of danger in this becoming an ongoing UFO.

Now to the fun part, the quilting. I had seen that Natalia Bonner quilted a Fancy Forest quilt some years ago. Found them on You Tube and decided to give that a go. Looked all pretty easy and straightforward...famous last words...of course, it was not. Had a number of quilting decisions to make about the things that I obviously did not think about before.

- My background was much darker than what Natalia quilted on. The seams of the Fancy Forest quilt are ironed open, hence the stitching-in-the-ditch was a bit of an issue. When you watch Natalia do it in the video she just runs over the seams and if she did not exactly hit it, it did not matter as thread and background blended well. In the end I chose to quilt with Invisafil 100 wt thread...a brown colour to echo the characters and a tan thread to stitch-in-the-ditch around the seams. What an adventure!

- stitching with such a fine thread then meant that the quilting itself would hardly show, i.e. I did some feathers in the rabbit's ears and you do have to look really hard to see that.

This was the pay off...had I stitched, like Natalia, with a 50 wt thread, this would not have been such an issue, however it would have meant that any slip up in the seams would have been very noticeable and unsightly. Also did not take into account my fabric choices really as the patterned fabric made the feathers even more invisible. However, I know there are in there and they look cute. I could have changed the thread weight just for the ears but in the end that would have meant changing thread weight constantly which would have meant changing bobbin etc. In the flower block below Natalia also had some feathers which I am going to leave out as the fabric is just too patterned. It would really not add anything.

- in terms of tools of the trade, I used the following rulers

This was also a change from what I normally do, i.e. use one ruler for a job. Somehow this piece needed a different ruler for different tasks. I used the middle Handiquilter Ditch ruler for doing the echoes around the characters as it has 1/4in markings. I needed this to judge the distance that I needed to advance around the points.  Natalia Bonner's ruler was great for the 1/2in lines across the character as it is nice and big and covered the whole face usually, holding everything in place. On the right I have a ruler from Bethanne Nemesh which I used to stitch in ditch of the open seams. As I had to stitch on the lighter side with my tan thread, this ruler is small enough in my hand to be able manoeuvre it around as I go along.

Did the owl yesterday

Have three blocks left to quilt and then will do some heavy background quilting in the dark brown fabric. Not sure yet exactly what designs to choose...might use similar designs to Natalia Bonner but I am not sure yet. She used pebbles, some paisley looking shape and swirls. Might change that up a bit.

So, for next week I will hopefully

📌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 freemotionquilting class I am teaching in early September

Linking up to To Do Tuesday 8/16/22 over at Texas Quilt Gal.

Karin