To Do Tuesday #64

My list from last week was smallish

- 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.❌

So I made a start (finally) on the wholecloth. I was thinking to do a post in the next few weeks on the trials and tribulations of wholecloth quilting...things never go as expected!

I started off by testing my new Echo feet attachments for the Bernina Q20. Ended up finally getting those as my wholecloth design incorporates circles for which I do not have the right size rulers (funny that with a draw full of rulers!).

Was a bit worried about these as I had read that they are fiddly to put on and also prone to breakage. Gave them a whirl though and was pleasantly surprised. They do clip on very easily and are also very easy to remove. Had no issues with them at all. Tried them out on a practice piece to get a feel for my design. This is what that looked like.

My practice piece turned out nice and I was ready to go

Pinned and then basted my wholecloth and as you can see I baste my piece very heavily, approximately every 3 - 4in, always in a grid as it distributes the puff evenly.

My batting is wool and it is much more puffy than I expected. In the past I have used two lots of batting, wool and cotton, but did not want to go there this time as this is quite a sizable project and quilting with two battings does make the quilt very hard and heavy.

I did have some issues with putting my frames in as the puffiness distorted my lines and I am a tad out of practice. Took me a moment to get a grip on that but eventually got there. After having done the square frames with a ruler I then looked at my feather sprays. Inititally I was going to stitch the spine out on the inner feathers but not the Amish feathers...for those I was going to stitch the spine as I go along. Too easy I thought!

Well, when I stitched out my first feather spine I could feel how the puffiness was working against me and I had a little bit of an issue keeping my lines straight. Then looking at my Amish feathers I thought that there is no way I am going to keep that nice and round just going along backtracking to create the spine. Additionally I did consider that Amish feathers depend on their nice roundness to look good and by then my perfectionism had truly started taking over.

The Amish feathers in this design are based on a 4in circle, however to fit them into the border the circle had to reach out to touch the next circle, so it was not just a matter of stitching a circle with a ruler. I had to stitch against my ruler moving it along ever so slightly to stay on track. Needless to say, this took ages to do. I used Amanda Murphy's 4in circle ruler for this which has a bit of a maybe not non-slip, but harder to slip backing which makes it easier to handle the ruler. I did not put on a more rough Handiquilter grip strip because I needed the ruler to be able to be gently moved as I went along. 

Also, as the feathers go in opposing directions I had to do each circle element individually, so start and stop, tie off and start again. I have by now finished this and for the most part slowly stitching against the circle ruler worked really well and I am happy with my spines, but promptly encountered a new issue, i.e. my blue markings are fading which is almost funny given that I had a problem with the marker leaving brown marks in the first lot of fabric. So I am forever reinforcing some of my lines, but have also been stitching every day to get the framing done. After that is done it does not matter so much whether the markings are in there or not. I have drawn the feathers so much that I will be able to follow my own stitch path without an issue, just have to make sure that I reinforce where my feathers end in relation to the border and frame. I think it is our weather over here. It has been hot and sticky and the air conditioner is running most of the time. Couple that with sweaty hands which is probably enough to make some of those marks fade.

Anyway, finished the frame and the spines by now and am onto the feathers. I am stitching this with a light yellow Aurifil 50/2 thread which just blends into the fabric. Now wish that I had chosen something a bit darker as it blends a bit too well and is at times a bit hard to see. But so be it, looks great on the patterned backing.

So for next week I am planning to 

- continue on the wholecloth by stitching out the feathers (and then probably have a bit of a break from it)

- 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

- write some instructions for my Mini Wholecloth in order to put that in my Etsy shop.

Bit ambitious, but we'll see...

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #64 over at Quilt Schmilt.

Karin