Working With Invisafil

It's been a couple of weeks again since I posted last. We have been incredibly busy with our upcoming kitchen renovation. All of a sudden it was all go, go go...we have been running around literally the whole week looking at appliances, getting things organised and life in general.

My wholecloth quilt is coming along however came to a standstill last week. I finished all the feathering, framing and grid and was about to start backfilling, however I did not like my thread choice. I am quilting the main elements of the wholecloth with a 50/2 Aurifil cotton thread. This is the thread I use most of the time and up to now I have also used this for backfilling. However, ever since I have done Bethanne Nemesh' online classes I have developed a taste for 100wt Invisafil thread from Wonderfil Speciality Threads. As I did not have a matching colour I had to order another spool in which came last weekend. I started to backfill a little bit last weekend and yes, this was the right choice for filling in the background against the 50/2 thread. Looks absolutely fabulous...I bought a spool of Soft Gold Invisafil which is almost identical to the light gold Aurifil colour that I have used to stitch the main parts. This way, the background stitching is not overpowering the main elements but gently stays in the background.

Here I am filling in the space behind the first lot of feathers with tiny, tiny echoes. Looks very nice but is quite labour intensive. Unfortunately I have left some space in the outer border where the Amish feathers run along. Still a bit undecided on how I will fill this. Definitely will echo around twice but not sure whether I will carry that echo filling into the outer border. Had a look around on the net and was reminded that Diane Gaudinsky uses the echo filling quite extensively around her feather work. It does look good when finished but is very time consuming. We'll see what I feel like when I get to that point.

This is all I have done quilting wise this week and I am almost getting a bit stressed as there are other projects that want to be done.

In case people are wondering how I am stitching this on the Bernina Q20.

I am using the open toe foot with an 80/12 Jeans needle. This foot can be a bit tricky...I have had the foot catching on previous stitch lines in the past, however was relieved that it has not happened on this project. Behaving itself absolutely fine and visibility is great. I have been stitching in Manual mode most of the time except for the times when I have used the ruler foot #96 with a straight/circle ruler to do the framing and the circles. Find the manual mode a bit easier for detailed work as it gives me that rhythmic humming of the motor which almost puts you into some sort of Zen mode in terms of precision stitching. Regulated mode is somewhat faster and is harder to control when stitching tinier elements.

Well, so far so good...will be interesting to see how this progresses amongst the chaos of the household. Also want to put together a new pattern and have two more charity quilts to complete. The days are just not long enough...

Karin