Practising the Flutterby Motif

First of all...thanks to everyone that responded to my last post. I received each comment via email! Yah!

Now to some serious quilty talk...practice, practice practice!

I have the last charity quilt to complete

...a full on 'Garden Quilt'. For some time now I have been thinking about doing a butterfly design on it. So, I did some practice of a motif that I had seen on the internet...I think by Adria (sorry can't remember her last name but she comes up on my FB with classes that she offers). As the charity quilt is a large lap size quilt I made myself a quilt sandwich out of calico and tried this out.

Not too bad but somehow did not like the shape of my butterflys. Then I remembered the Handiquilter Flutterbys Minute Motifs and gave that a whirl on a small piece of fabric.

Not that great but I liked the shape much better. Definitely needed more practice on a bigger piece. Then I remembered my UFO quilt. I have had that quilt for several years. It is basted (just goes to show how long a good baste will last) and I have used it in my workshops for beginning freemotion quilters to have a trial on their domestic machines with a 'real' quilt. The purpose is to demonstrate how disorientating it is to have a scrappy (and very colourful) quilt under the throat of your machine and how to plan and structure your edge to edge design, i.e. know the path you are going to take and how you change direction when quilting. This has been very difficult for most people as the pure riot of colours and bulk of the quilt usually leads to a fair amount of confusion. It's been a great teaching tool but after the last class I thought that I would retire this quilt.

Spent some time taking the quilting attempts of various classes out, steamed it up and off we went. I am not sure what this quilt is going to become...maybe another quilt for the cats or a floor rug for the soon to be new addition to the family. Not sure yet. The quilt has some amazing blocks in there, all a bit wonky (that's why they became UFOs) but never mind...I even found the first fabric that I ever bought in there.

Here is the path of the design

So I started with the Flutterbys on the quilt. Was not sure exactly how big I wanted to go but thought it would become evident once I started on the quilt. I think I ended up doing the Flutterbys about 1.5in - 2in. As you need some speed as you are quilting it it did get a bit wonky here and there...it was particularly challenging to keep each side approximately the same. Could at times not see where I had been before.

Soon realised that it did not matter that much because you cannot actually see the design that well on a colourful quilt like this. I am still quilting with the light green Mettler Silky Finish 50 on the machine. Have several cones of that and it's about time that I make a bit of an in-road into my thread stash.

Overall the butterflys looked alright, every now and then a bit wonky, initially too skinny but I soon got in the swing of things. Looking at the Handiquilter Minute Motif now I can see that I have done the design a bit different to what they have, i.e. my top wings are a bit longer but that was a way for me to be sure of where I was going thinking 'top wing, then down to the bottom wing and up again'.

Finished it today but you be hard pressed to see the design unless you hold the quilt in your hands.

However, after having done this I feel a bit reassured that I can execute this design on the charity quilt. Had no problem travelling along, maybe need to make my loops slightly smaller but even when you get yoursef stuck on top of a butterfly you can always reverse out and start looping again from the bottom of the motif. My only other issue was to swing out far enough to actually make the motif. Every now and then I had to give them a smallish bottom wing as I was getting too close to a neighbouring loop. But apart from that this design works very well as an overall design.

Will bind this with my leftover scraps of binding...bit excited about that because I almost used them all up by now.

Karin

Email Comment Notifications

It's been a while now that I have not received any email notifications for comments left on my blog. Every now and then I would look at the settings, try different things but had no success in fixing it. It's a hassle because that meant that I had to remember to look at my blog to see whether anybody commented and of course, sometimes I did forget to do that so comments would sit there waiting for moderation.

The other day then both my husband and myself spent hours looking at this problem. I think we fixed this now. After some research I did come across a blog post at Life and Linda 'Hopefully a fix on blogger's No-Reply'.

We tried this out several times and it seems to work when my husband commented from his Ipad on my blog.

Could I please ask for a few people to give me a comment just so that I can test this out on a wider audience. This would also then show me whether or not the No-Reply blogger has been fixed. Apparently that is an issue again.

Thanks in advance!

Here is a little close up of the quilty goodness from the other day

Love Lisa Calle's Pro Echo rulers. They work so well for me each and every time.

Karin

Progress Report

Well, the AMQF has come and gone. Four days of all things quilting. I went every single day...not exactly how I had it all planned out but with having to drop off my quilt and picking it up, retail hall and one class it just turned out that way.

My quilt looked nice on the black background. It won third place and got a beautiful yellow ribbon. Loved it!

Got to do one class with Bethanne Nemesh 'From A to Zen' which was very good (as usual) and a group of us got talking to her after the class. Was able to have a very close look at some of the quilts she had brought over, including some class samples of the classes that I had done previously online. This was a bit special, I must say.

I did allocate a whole morning to exploring longarm frames and machines...have been thinking about this for a while by now and before I went to the show I did a fair amount of research into the topic in order to be a bit prepared. As so often happens when consulting the internet, I got quite confused with all the different choices (and we don't have that much choice in Australia!). Anyway, I was wondering how difficult it would be to get used to quilting on a frame versus on the sitdown machine...in previous quilt shows I have had a few moments here and there on various machines, but nothing ever quite seriously. So this time I really had a very good look and try on some machines to see how difficult it would be for me to maybe make that switch.

Must say that I got a bit side tracked in my research, lured by the cost of various set ups. As I really would want to do edge-to-edge quilting I started looking at computerized set ups which is insanely expensive. I would absolutely love to have a set up like this but am reluctant to give up my sit down machine. So I started looking at cheaper set ups and was able to test these at the show. Not to mention the brands but what I thought was a great deal (longarm, frame plus computer) felt absolutely horrendous to stitch on. Tried a higher model of the same brand which was better but that would mean that I would again hit over $20000 if I wanted a computerized set up. In the end I went to the Bernina stand. One try on the Bernina Q20 on the frame and I was sold...it was like day and night. I know my machine and I obviously think it is a good machine but the difference in operation on the frame compared to others was astounding. The machine was extremely light and easy to manoeuvre and I was able to stitch basic meandering patterns in about 5 minutes. Obviously I would need more practice to do the fine detailed quilting that I am used to but at least I was able to ascertain that I would be able to make that transition after a bit of practice. I had a really great time with the sales person...she even let me try some rulers which was also quite easy going. Talked through all the options, different frames, accessories needed etc., marvelled at the quality of the frames and this helped me greatly to get my thinking straight. I have got the machine and now that I know that I could make that transition with a bit of practice, this really opened it up for some decision-making in the future. All I would need is a frame and the space for it...the computer that comes with the Bernina is out...just too costly. Unfortunately I cannot justify that expense ($24000 for the computer system alone) as I am not intending to set up a business. However went away really quite happy after having done all the research and reassured myself that indeed this would be an option for me, now it is just a matter of time and space. Will have to wait a while...we are planning some renovations over the latter part of the year and various other things are happening. But there is no hurry, I love my sitdown Bernina and when the time is right I just plonk my machine on a frame rather than looking at getting an additional machine of a different brand. 

After this little adventure I have started back on the charity quilts. Managed to pin and baste two quilts in one hit

Really felt like some ruler quilting and started today after having spent a day stitching -in-the-ditch.

As this is a charity quilt I only ditched the major seams otherwise I would have had to spent another day just ditching. The intersections of this quilt were horrendous...at times like little hard pebbles. Also think that the fabrics used in this quilt are quite old or maybe the quilt top is quite old. Everything felt a bit more movable. In order to secure all this I decided to quilt a simple line design, semi-continuous depending on whether I remembered where to go next. Would have liked to do an individual motif in the white squares, however that would have taken forever. This way I literally zoomed along finishing half of the quilt in one go today. I stitched the curves with the Pro Echo curve no 6 which made a nice deep curve in the coloured squares and was also the right size for the white squares. Looks quite nice and will hold this all together. Also tried a different thread today...Mettler Silk Finish 50wt...no problem at all, stitched very nicely, but then again my machine stitches nicely with any thread, just a matter of getting the tension adjustment right.

So, that's where I am at...next on the agenda is some piecing of a sweet little baby quilt.

Karin