My Colourwash Jelly Roll Quilt

I have been working on my tasks from last week and before I know it, it is Friday! 

My list from last week included

- work out the tension for that blasted orange thread so that I can start for real on the background filler project. Interesting to note that the white Invisafil thread does not usually give me such a headache.

- finish the colourwash quilt top...another 6 rows to go and then putting all the rows together. Still undecided as to whether I will put a border on this quilt. Will have to see the completed quilt top...

- continue on my strip quilt, i.e. make another stack of blocks (I think I need something like 56 blocks)

- look at the newly picked up charity quilts and make a start on basting one (very hopeful here)

Well, I did not do too bad. I did work on my tension issue with the Invisafil thread. I unpicked all my stitching on the new project as I just could not face starting a new project with wonky tension. I just cannot stitch if the tension is not right. Spent hours on the tension exploration last week one day when I felt particularly relaxed. Have detailed the process in my previous post.

Re-stitched the section that I had unpicked after I spent some time rejuvenating the fabric.

Was happy with that. The thread buried into the fabric and I had no orange pokies on the back! With that resolved I can now begin the stitching of this project. This will take a while as it is bigger than the last one but now that I pieced this together I am determined to get that done.

I also continued on my colourwash project...and yay, finished it!

If anybody is interested... I followed a very easy pattern that I found on Bethanne Nemesh' web site called the 'Colorwash Quilt'. Saw it first on FB and thankfully I then located it on her web site. It is free and as Bethanne remarked, more of a guide as each set of precuts has its own personality.

Close up of mine

I was curious as to how one of my Bali Jelly Rolls (recently went to Bali and purchased way too much fabric) would come out as it is definitely a bit more dramatic than the Jelly Rolls I am used to. My daughter helped me sort the colours and I must say that I was not convinced about the abrupt change in colours to the white. There was a bit of a temptation to open some of the other Jelly rolls that I had bought to get a better colour match but in the end I stayed firm and stuck to working with one Jelly Roll at the time. Bethanne had mentioned that most Jelly rolls have two strips of each colour. Well, obviously the Balinese people do their own thing. I sometimes had two, but also three or just one of the colours. In the end I decided to just run with it and see what happens. I did take out two strips, one were I had three of the same and another one where the colouring just did not match anything in this lot. Still made it to 200 little blocks which I laid out as 13 blocks by 15 rows. So I have some leftovers which I will use for tension/thread testing.

In the end I also put a border on with one of the remnants I had purchased in Bali. I was the only one in the household who liked this really. When this happens I always have to think of Cindy Needham. When I met her in a workshop, but also in some of her videos she always says 'you are the boss of your quilt'. Sounds somewhat funny but has stuck with me all this time. So I attached the border and I love it! The quilt comes out at 48in x 54in, so just a small lap size quilt. Have put it away for the moment with the other five quilt tops that are patiently waiting to be quilted.

Also continued on my strip quilt and am up to 37 blocks...will need about 56 of them so that should not take too long.

So, for the remainder of the week I am planning to

- continue making those strippy blocks, so that I can get on cutting out the sashing and put all this together

- continue on the background filler project

That's probably all I am going to achieve until next Tuesday. Felling a bit overrun with all those different projects I have on my mind. Also need to get onto the charity quilts and finish that last stack before December.

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #96 over at Quilt Schmilt.

Karin

Invisafil Thread on the Bernina Q20

I have been a big fan of 100wt Invisafil Thread from Wonderfil Threads ever since I did Bethanne Nemesh' online workshops. Up to then I had been using Invisafil mainly for stitch-in-the-ditch but was encouraged through those workshops to give it a go for background quilting.

Usually I have no tension issues with the thread having understood that it needs a lower tension on top and maybe a little bit of an adjustment on the bobbin tension. I recently started another background filler project using the same orange thread that I had previously used on an earlier wall hanging. I had a vague idea that I had some issues with the thread but once the project was finished I obviously put that out of my mind.

Started last week

Nice, but not good enough. I struggled through the quilting as my tension just was not right. It was somewhat too high pulling up the white Decobob 80wt bobbin thread to the top, leaving some ugly little knots. Remembered that I struggled with this previously and undertook to really look into this. Do not have that issue with a white Invisafil on the top so was aware that the colouring also may play into this. So spent hours last week to take all this out and rejuvenate the fabric (steaming it, spraying it again with water and letting it all dry in the wind)

First thing I did was ordering a cone of thread as I was still using a small spool that I had used on the previous project which drove me crazy as it kept catching on the rim. So, set that up

The thread is so fine you can hardly see it. Put a new needle in (80/12 Microtex) and gave it a whirl with the preset that I had entered previously on the machine (tension sitting at 2.25, bobbin tension at about 180). This is what I found:

- no more issues with the thread snagging on the rim ✅

- tension way too high, i.e. could see the white bobbin thread looking up through the holes and the stitch looked not that nice and did not feel right to stitch suggesting that it was being stretched.

- lowered my tension down, initially all very structured, going all the way down to 1.5; found that the thread was definitely too loose at that setting as I could see it wobbling as it was laid down

- strangely enough, was also getting orange pokies on the back.

This is were my more structured approach left me and I started to play with the bobbin tension. Normally bobbin tension for the Bernina Q20 is set at 220 however I have found that this needs to be adjusted at times for different threads (and different colours of threads). I had read somewhere on the net that people dial down their bobbin tension for Invisafil so I started lowering my bobbin tension. This is when it all got a bit messy. Must say one should be really relaxed going through an intense tension exploration...it can really drive you crazy when you loose sight of what you are adjusting in what order. When I had the bobbin tension quite low ( approx. 160) my tension was completely out of whack. My upper thread was still too tight while at the same time producing orange pokies at the back. Spelled complete mismatch to me on both fronts (top and bobbin thread) and after I had gathered my thoughts, I went back to the top thread...this time going by feeling more than anything else. My thread felt good to stitch at 1.75. Anything lower than that and the machine arced up, i.e. stopping and giving me a tutorial about threading! So decided to run with that and adjust my bobbin tension to tackle the pokies in the back. This took a while as just minute changes on the bobbin tension can change how the top appears. 

Also should say that I tried different needles while I was at it, first a 70/10 and then even a 60/8 needle. Must say I did not observe all that much of a difference in how the thread behaved, so this was definitely an adjustment issue. Eventually arrived at a bobbin tension of 180 -190, top tension at 1.75 with a 70/10 Microtex needle:

- top thread felt good to stitch, i.e. was not stretched and buried into the fabric; while I could see the white dots coming up while stitching, this disappeared instantly as I went along; had no ugly little white knots coming up every 5 seconds when hesitating in my stitching

- the back looked half decent; every now and then the orange would show slightly but I decided that this was negligible and possibly had to do with my speed or movement.

This is what this looked like

Hard to believe but this took well over 2 hours of needle changes, bobbin and top thread adjustments, so definitely something you only want to do when you are in a bit of a Zen mood.

Went on to stitch out the section of the quilt that I had taken out

Tension was fine, i.e. felt good to go along which meant that I could solely concentrate on the stitching. May have one spot were I hesitated for way too long so the white shows a tiny bit, but that was ok as I knew that the tension was otherwise alright.

The back

Bit hard to see but almost no pokies except for the odd spot here and there. Now that can probably be attributed to how I stitched the shape but could also point to the quality of the fabric. While nice, the backing fabric is just that little bit more loosely woven than the solid front. 

So what am I taking away from this little tension exploration today...STICK WITH THE PLAN and systematically go through the variables. Even better still...take notes as you do it.

But seriously, with a bit of patience and thinking through of what is happening you can fine tune just about any thread.

Karin

Progress on Colourwash Quilt

My list from last week included:

-make a start on my background filler project from way back

-continue on my scrap quilt blocks (have made 15 so far)

-continue on the new 'colourwash project

Worked consistently over the week which was a good feeling. Started my background filler project

Nice, but won't do...had all sorts of problems with Invisafil 100wt thread which was not totally new (the adjustment can get fiddly at times) but somewhat unexpected as I had used the same thread before on an earlier project. My tension was somewhat variable and I just could not get the fine tuning right. I was stitching with a little spool which on top of everything else got the thread stuck in a particular spot at the rim from time to time. When this happened my tension went sideways. Not sure about everyone else but when the tension is not a 100% I find it very difficult to stitch properly. It distracts and then leads to very wonky stitching. You can't see it in the photo well but my bobbin thread (prewound deco bob in Antique White) came up from time to time leaving very ugly white knotty dots all over the place. Went through the usual problem solving exercises...changed my needle and had thread breaks, adjusted the bobbin tension plus the top, tried the spool on the side spool, put the spool higher up on the mast etc. As I was mucking around also noticed that my screw which tightens the needle was either stripped or my screw driver was getting faulty and slipping when tightening...

As this is a bigger quilt I decided to take out my stitching and start again. I ordered the same colour of thread, but on a bigger spool which came today. My thinking here is that the thread will come off easier from the bigger spool and definitely won't get caught!

I am hoping that this will be easier stitching. Also went down to the shop to address my screwdriver. We tried it out on their machine and no, nothing wrong with my screwdriver, so it must be the screw that holds the needle itself. Luckily I have got a spare screw, so I will attend to that in the next few days. Got myself some 80/12 Microtex needles while there to see whether that will make a bit of a difference to the normal 80/12 needles that I used. Will start this week to tackle the tension problem...I do know where I want my tension to sit for comfortable sewing, just will need to get the bobbin and thread to play nicely with that. As there are a lot of orange spaces I do want this to be stress-free sewing otherwise the whole project just becomes a bummer.

While waiting for the thread I made some headway on my colourwash quilt. Managed to get to row 9 of 15 with my tiny blocks

Still labelling each row as it is super easy to get very confused with the colouring. Even while labelled I had to look at a photo I took earlier of all the blocks laid out a couple of times because it is so easy to turn the blocks while picking them up or sew the second one as the first. Particularly in the darker part they all look a bit the same.

While doing this I also continued on an earlier scrap project and made another 15 blocks while sitting on the machine sewing those tiny blocks together. This made the sewing less boring...did some tiny blocks, then stopped and just sewed strips together for a while, then went back to the tiny blocks and so forth. Quite relaxing

This will be a strippy quilt where the strips are placed vertically like in a Chinese Coin arrangement. Have not completely thought this through but already know exactly how to quilt it. Planning to put some mustard yellow sashing in between the columns of strips...another spot for lots of FMQ. Looking forward to that.

So my list for the remainder of the week includes:

- work out the tension for that blasted orange thread so that I can start for real on the background filler project. Interesting to note that the white Invisafil thread does not usually give me such a headache.

- finish the colourwash quilt top...another 6 rows to go and then putting all the rows together. Still undecided as to whether I will put a border on this quilt. Will have to see the completed quilt top...

- continue on my strip quilt, i.e. make another stack of blocks (I think I need something like 56 blocks)

- look at the newly picked up charity quilts and make a start on basting one (very hopeful here)

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #95 over at Quilt Schmilt.

Karin

The Great Illusion

I have been hard at work finishing the last charity quilt out of the pile that I had. With this particular quilt I was just not feeling it and decided to do a minimum of quilting-in-the-ditch on it just to get it done.

So I went around all the blocks only to realise in the end that this just would not do. The blocks were way too large to just leave them at 8in unquilted. As much as I did not want to do any further work on it, minimally quilted like this would make the quilt literally unusable. One wash and the pieced blocks would have puffed out like there is no tomorrow.

This is actually why I like quilting the charity quilts...there is a lot of problem-solving that one has to do. As with some of the other charity quilts the mere mortals who pieced this together did a fairly haphazard job...not bad, but literally none of the intersections met, some of the seams were changing direction half way through a row and the measurements were a little bit out here and there. Nothing too bad, but definitely something to consider when quilting it. I could already see that some of my ditched lines were a bit crinkly because of non-matching seams. First at all I had to stitch down every single alternate block. To make it more interesting for myself I decided to practice securing my thread when starting and stopping in order to just cut it off. I do struggle with that as I am used to burying my threads, however for this piece this would have taken ages to complete, so I bit the bullet and decided to cut off my threads. 

The Q20 has an automatic tie off which works really well in the beginning of a line but not so reliably at the end of a line. Thought about Amanda Murphy's method of beginning and ending a line...she uses the stitch regulator to set it to about 22 or more stitches as she starts off and then switches back to normal stitch length. Must say that that has never worked really well for me...the machine races to produce the tiny stitches over a tiny length and it just feels really unnatural. So in the end I decided to go back and forth with tiny, tiny stitches in manual mode to start off, then switched to stitch regulation to sew my line and do the ending in the reverse, i.e. tiny stitches towards the end back and forth in manual. Then I cut the threads off and lo and behold, the world did not come to an end! My stitches appeared secured. Maybe not quite as clean as I normally like it but it saved a lot of time.

Then came the thinking about what to actually quilt in the alternate block. This is what I went with

The area around the tiny square should have measured 2-1/2in but rarely did and the surrounding intersections did more often than not not match. I decided to put the lines at 3/4in apart starting from the outside in and leaving the tiny square unquilted, so it would pop out. There was method to my thinking, i.e. the x- blocks were not aligned properly hence my 3/4in was always a bit out, however going inwards and trying to meet each line as I went around it looked fairly consistent due to the 3/4in space. This left an approximate 1in space unquilted, big enough to hide any inconsistencies that occurred in the tiny triangles. Had I gone one more line I think it would have emphasized the inaccuracies. If you go with a ruler you would of course see that there was hardly any consistency, however the overall look signaled consistency. Was fairly curious of how this would turn out.

To my surprise I quite liked the look of it in the end

Glad this is done and very surprised on how neat this turned out. Added bonus...I was finally forced to get a hang of cutting my threads off! (otherwise this would have taken ages!)

Getting back to To Do Tuesdays: I am weeks behind as we went on holidays in between, then I had to quickly write up my Etsy pattern and then I got going on the charity quilts. So I achieved a fair bit but just not in the order that was on my previous list. And who would have guessed, I did start something else, i.e. new project since I have come back from holidays.

So my list of things to do looks something like this now

-make a start on my background filler project from way back

-continue on my scrap quilt blocks (have made 15 so far)

-continue on the new 'colourwash project

That leaves several UFOs unaccounted for but I just need to get back to some structure first before I can add more things.

PS: When I came back from holidays I noticed that I had several comments on my blog going back several weeks. I do not always get an email notification now (no idea why) but also had forgotten that I had switched on comment moderation, hence those comments were just sitting there. My sincere apologies...I do love comments and try to respond to each and every one either by email or here on the blog. Definitely not ignoring you...must have been one of those senior moments!

Linking up to To Do Tuesdays #94 over at Quiltschmilt.

Karin

Back to Quilting

Well, it's been a while...

We have been on holidays in Bali in the second week of September for 9 days. It was great...beautiful country and beautiful people. We had a great time although I must say it was uncomfortably hot and humid for some of the days. We did splurge out for this getaway with a villa in a very nice resort with a private pool. Incredibly beautiful surrounds.

 

Private pool 

View from restaurant onto one of the infinity pools and beyond.

Also did some fabric shopping while over there. Bought an embarrassing amount of batik after a 2 hour drive to Denpasar. Only went to one shop really...had found the address on FB...apparently most of the quilters from Australia go to this particular shop and having been there I can see why. The shop was full of fabric obviously but what blew me away were the precuts. In the back of the shop the floor was covered in 3 - 4 layers of those round jelly rolls all neatly stacked up. The choice was so difficult so I ended up with more than I actually wanted to buy...then there were Fat Quarter bundles, more jelly rolls in packets, backing fabric and then the shop owner showed me the remnants! Suffice to say I spent about double to what I actually wanted to spend. 

On a different note, I had no problem with the food for the entire time in Bali until the very last day. Got the dreaded Bali belly which made for an interesting flight back home. Luckily it only takes about 5 hours to fly from Bali to Australia. Was glad to be home and was 'housebound' for about a week. Did my pattern write up in that time for my cute little cat quilt which I had finished before we left.

Was really hanging out for some quilting after our time away and finished another one of the charity quilts.

As this is a very floral and busy quilt I just ditched it and then did a simple line design in the pinwheels. Turned out nice, I think.

Following this I made a start on the Bali fabric. Came across a colourwash pattern that Bethanne Nemesh had put up on FB some time ago. Had a look at that and opened one of my jelly rolls. Bethanne said in her pattern that most jelly rolls have usually 2 strips of the same colour...well, my jelly rolls had some duplicates but not all of them. Decided that I will overlook this and just do the pattern with what I got. Sorted my jelly roll into a graduation of colour and made a start.

This should be interesting. The blocks end up very small at 3-1/2in square and my accuracy did suffer a bit as there is a lot of strip cutting, but we shall see. Will end up with something like 200 blocks...very curious how this will turn out as the strips are a riot of colours. Bethanne's examples looked very muted and the graduation was very orderly. I think mine will look fairly dramatic with all the different textures and designs on the batik. Could be really good or a bit of a flop...we shall see.

Also went to a demonstration of the HQ Moxie on a loft frame with Prostitcher Lite...that was super interesting and gave me a lot to think about. Loved the Prostitcher capability of course...the machine did a fine job of stitching out one row of a pantograph. Was quite amazed at what it takes to make all this work. In terms of time, it takes me about the same time to do this on the sitdown with the paper in terms of aligning and making sure it is straight. The computer driven row looked fabulous of course but given the limited throat space of the Moxie you then had to advance your quilt for the second row and put some commands into the computer to make it start the second row. Quite work intensive or I should say that I had no idea what is involved in setting this up. The limited throat space certainly is an issue and I wondered how you would go about stitching an allover design like meandering for example...I forgot to ask but imagine that you would have to stitch it from left to right, then stop and advance your quilt. The lady demonstrating said that you do not advance the quilt with the needle in the fabric, so that would mean you have to break thread. With the meandering in a 15 in space which is decreasing as you roll up your quilt you would really only be able to stitch one or maybe two rows and would probably leave half of that visible when advancing so that you can interlock the shapes somehow. That sounds incredibly difficult to me. Pity we did not discuss this in the demonstration. I was ditching another charity quilt today and thought about how you would do that. I guess what I took from this demo was that you need a much bigger machine (haha...). Must say though, loved the Prostitcher. Would love to have a machine on a frame just to do that. What a toy!

Felt really good this week to get back to some productivity. Hopefully I can keep that up a bit more consistently again.

 

Karin