To Do Tuesday #42 - Making a Start

Well, let's see how we went. This is what I had on my list

- once my thread arrives make a start on the filling of the quilt above once I worked out a bit of a plan on how to go about that✅

- baste another little charity quilt and hopefully start the quilting on that ...maybe another clamshell allover✅

- cut the pieces for a couple more cat blocks ❌

- continue on my knitting projects✅

As I was waiting for my thread, I completed the last two (of the four I was given) of the charity quilts. The first one was a little scrappy baby quilt which I again did a simple clamshell design over it. Still love doing this, particularly for little baby quilts.

The second quilt was a very bright 'Crazy' quilt which I ended up just doing an allover meander over it. This ensured that I caught some of the fullness in some of the blocks and bonus, also almost straightened out some wonky sashings. Win-win!

My thread arrived yesterday. I ordered a pastel grey 100wt Invisafil for my Indigenous looking quilt in the hope that I would be able to just use one thread colour to go over the whole lot. So far I tried white, several tan colours, peach and now the grey. The grey turned out not too bad...definitely could get away with that but due to the frequent and heavy backtracking that I am planning to do, not really my cup of tea. It blends in just fine on both the white and the orange, but as soon as you backtrack the grey does become a bit more visible. I actually preferred the white thread in the end on the orange.

So today, after all this mucking around and indecision, I looked at my project again and decided that I would change colours in the white and burnt orange sections. The Indigenous fabric is multicolour and I can comfortably just continue to stitch  with the white colour over it as long as I do not do a huge amount of backtracking. So in terms of colour changes this should not be too bad.

Made a start on this today

This is quilted with a strong Invisafil orange colour and I do like the look of it. As the whole piece will be heavily quilted, given the thin 100wt thread will hopefully not overpower it. This should be very interesting. The idea is to fill all the different areas with different designs. Initially I was going to plan this out, however today I just went with the flow and started with a design that was not even on my list. Felt like doing this particular design, so just made a start and am now looking for a design that will go into the white area...needs something with lines so I need to have a bit of a think about that. After this I will section off another area and choose another few different designs. Good fun...

Also started yet another project that was not on the list...an Australian Christmas Panel!

Picked this panel up a while ago from our local sewing shop. It is called 'Bush Celebration' from the  Devonstone Collection. Acquired some backing and more wadding the other day and attached the borders today. What is the idea here? Not entirely sure yet but am thinking to use this as another practice piece for some Nemeshing (this was demonstrated in Bethanne Nemesh' class 'Feather Faster'). Maybe a bit of a variation of that, i.e. instead of a lot of feathery type plumes, maybe go for a leafy type arrangement. We shall see...the grey Invisafil thread that just arrived is just right for this and will blend right in which will be handy as I will have to outline some of the animals that make up the Christmas tree.

So my list is constantly changing as I keep jumping from one thing to the other. For the remainder of the week I will

- continue to fill my current freemotion-quilting project. I want to take my time with this a bit to really try a few unfamiliar designs in order to just practice and hopefully commit them to muscle memory.

- continue on my knitting projects ( I did continue in the week and I will show you my new socks once they are completed...have about 30 rows to go)

- continue on the cat quilt, maybe do just one more cat block.

That's it...I know that I will not do anything else as my passion is with the freemotion filler project at the moment.

Linking up to 'To Do Tuesday #42' over at Quilt Schmilt.

Karin