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