To Do Tuesday #63 - Slow Going!

It has been a couple of weeks again. My last list was very small:

- baste and quilt another little charity quilt

- start the marking of my wholecloth quilt.

Well, I have done two little charity quilts...

Just did an overall stipple on this and the next one as well as I am still struggling with my shoulder. My cortisone shot has only worked for about two months and then I injured the same shoulder again. As it is the right one this time there is not much I can do in terms of resting it so I just have to be super careful. Very much a hassle!

The next one is a little quilt with a flannel top.

Enjoyed quilting on the flannel...never done this before and was not sure what to expect. Really like the softness of the flannel. Had some slight tension issues in the border but apart from that, no problem. The only thing that I did find was that the stitching was harder to see as it just sunk in which was not helped by the light lavender thread that I was using.

So with that done, I tackled my wholecloth. Last time I attempted this I had some marks left on the fabric and also had some inconsistencies when tracing off my design. Went super slow in my preparation for this and took my time. Basically took most of today to trace the whole lot.

Probably a bit hard to see. The new fabric is 'Shadow Play' from Maywood Studios in a creamy colour. For some unknown reason this turned out quite big and was quite hard to align. Initially I just traced off a quarter of the design, however that did not work that well. Too much movement in the fabric while tracing. This time I traced the entire half off and then flipped and did the other half. That worked quite well, mind you I spent a long time making sure everything aligned. 

My tracing is a bit untidy in spots as I also corrected a few things here and there as I went along. As I had drawn this design out on the Ipad I was curious to see how that translated into actually drawing it out to scale. Must say that that went really well...the feathers were easy to draw with my particular angle and thickness and I did not have to spent a lot of time making it look pretty as I drew them exactly as I would stitch them. My husband remarked that he thought I was going to stitch this freehand! Yes, I could, but it would not turn out very consistent I would think and as this is a rather involved project. I did not want to risk it. You probably wonder why I drew the pebbles in...this is not so much to stitch them out exactly as they are drawn there, but rather a way to ensure that I end up with a pebble at the end of the row. If it was smaller you could eyeball this but not over the distance that I made that section and there is nothing worse than going along and realising in the last minute that you cannot fill out the corner properly.

Thought a lot about the stitching as I went along...did not leave myself enough space at the outer edge and added 1/4in in width and length and also had to correct a few feathers to ensure that there was a gap between the binding and feathers. Also thought about whether to stitch the spine out or stitch the spine as I go along. Both methods are quite fine and I think I will definitely stitch the spine as I go for the Amish feather. Not sure about the other one yet. One annoying thing though...I developed this wholecloth many years ago before I got used to using rulers in my quilting. Would have been easier to stitch if I had designed this around particular rulers to use. Was looking today at various rulers I could use...not sure yet...if I use one of the Pro Echo rulers for the centre frame it will be slightly different. I will wait and see how difficult that is going to be when I get there. For now I just want this stitched out...it has been hanging around for such a long time that it is almost annoying. There are definitely a few things where I thought that I could have done that a bit better, but so be it...there is always next time.

My list for next week includes

- pinning, basting and making a start on the wholecloth; backing fabric is ready to go, just needs to be cut and then I will need to make a decision on thread.

- wash the background fabric for the Fox quilt

- maybe make a Fox block to get started on that project which will be ongoing until I have enough blocks for a quilt.

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #63 over at Quilt Schmilt

Karin