A Bit Of Practice

I was thinking of doing a bit of rulerwork on the next charity quilt, however when I opened the bundle up it was not what I thought it was. In fact it had whole rows of embroidery on there and no four or nine patch blocks (which it looked like when I first looked at the bundle). As a matter of fact, I am going to take this bundle back to the group as there are a number of problems...the 3 rows of very detailed embroidery is still attached to its stabilizer and sewn to the next pieced section.  The checkerboard rows underneath bulged out to no end because of that. On top of that somebody ironed the embroidery presumably with some steam from above, so it is all crinkled up...I stood there looking at it for a long time, unsure what to do, but decided in the end that that one is not for me. Anyway, that is a different story...

What I was going to try out and show you was something I had seen on Natalia Bonner's YouTube channel. Loved the look of it (you can find it in the Shorts section under the title 'Less is More...Who am I?)...In the video she is stitching out a seemingly very simple design on a quilt that has alternating four patch blocks and white empty blocks. It looks really crisp and fresh and it appealed to me straight away as it is particularly suited for such a simple, yet effective layout.

So I tried this on a piece of scrap fabric to see how easy (or not) it would be to just stitch this out with some rulers and freehand with some minimal marking. Also used this to free up some half filled bobbins and kept going with a bit of a feather spray on top...that bobbin just kept on going! Natalia, of course, is using her new Sway rulers for this task. As I do not have them, I used my trusted small Pro Echo ruler but also the long Bernina ruler which came with the ruler table when I still had the frame. Kept this as a souvenir.

I could have used the longer Bernina ruler for the entire task (except the circle in the middle of the second block) but found that the smaller Pro Echo ruler was more convenient to do some simple curves.

I did this from memory and did some simple Nine Patch blocks when in fact Natalia's demonstration was based on Four Patch blocks as I saw when I watched the video again. Never mind!

My drawn squares were 6in and I was curious how I would go adding the petals around the flower in an orderly way. I made the circle of the flower 2in which in retrospect was a bit too small. Looking back at Natalia's video I reckon the circle is something like 2-1/2in. Not that you have to follow exactly what somebody else does, however I did find my petals a bit too long as it was a harder to keep them nice and straight. The other thing learned was that you should not turn your piece around as you go around the circle. Firstly, you would not be doing that anyway if you have a larger quilt under your machine, but I also found that it messed with my brain. It was far easier to have it not turning and slowly but deliberately move around the circle. 

Turned out ok for very little effort in terms of marking, basically you just need to know where the center of the block is and have a circle guideline for the outside and off you go...easy to do and an effective way to dress up a very traditional layout. While there are a few inconsistencies, I don't think that would feature a lot if you had this design in every alternate block over an entire quilt. I had a bit of uneveness in terms of the size of the petals in the bottom but overall not too bad. If this was a quilt, I would probably leave that and try to do the next one a bit more even.

Also baked a bread while I was doing it, so overall felt very productive that day!

Happy Quilting!

Karin

Edge to Edge Quilting

Could not resist doing a pantograph over a very, very scrappy charity quilt. While I don't normally do this on charity quilts due to the time it takes to do this on a sitdown machine, this quilt literally screamed to have the design put on it. Funny how some quilts do seem to speak to you instantly.

The design I had to do was "Happy Times' by Hermione Agee. It is a 5-1/4in design, however I used a slightly enlarged copy as I already had a roll of that taped together ready for use. I have detailed the process of preparation and quilting it with Golden Threads paper elsewhere on this blog, so I will not go too much into the details again (you can also search my blog using Edge to Edge Quilting and it will bring up a number of posts on the topic).

I did however do something a bit differently this time to speed up the process. Normally I trace every single row with blue water erasable markers, however this time I traced it only once, then laid about 6 rows of paper underneath and stitched through my first row with a bigger sized needle (unthreaded) on the domestic sewing machine. So I had about 7 templates of the design ready to go. Personally I prefer to have the rows traced individually but that does take considerable more time. With the paper that had the design as punctured lines it was marginally harder to see, but also felt a bit more precarious to stitch out...as you are travelling along the line, depending on how accurate you are, you are going to hit the punctured pre-stiched line which will then slightly separate the paper in some places. Not a big problem and makes taking the paper out later easier, but it feels a bit more unsecure as you go along.

Anyway, here are some photos of this beauty...this design is so right for this quilt and gives it a really nice texture on top of securing some of the more precarious seams ( I think this is quite an old quilt top that had a few seams that were coming apart and a bit of fullness in some areas). The thread choice was also interesting as the quilt had a bright red pieced backing. As I am slowly but surely using up some older thread, I chose a red variegated Gutermann 50/3 thread to quilt this out. Was not sure how that would go...I don't often quilt with red thread as they can be a bit finnicky at times in terms of tension (why do I even have this thread in my stash?), however had no issue with it and definitely adds to the 'happy' look of this quilt.

The finished quilt

Close up

The very bright backing

The thread choice was definitely right, even in places where there was a lot of blue fabric. Just looks really cool. Also used the same thread in the bobbin which makes the back of the quilt look great. The variegation is hardly noticeable due to the vibrance of the red fabric.

 This was very enjoyable...love it when it turns out just like you had imagined! I think for the next charity quilt though I will move on to some ruler quilting...something I have seen on Natalia Bonner's YouTube and I just got the quilt for it.

Happy quilting!

Linking up to Finished or Not Finished Friday

Karin

Loose Thread Design

In order to finish another charity quilt before delivering the last lot to the Orange Tree Quilters, I had to come up with a simple allover design that I could execute with some speed. The quilt was lovely...just strips sewn together like a jelly roll quilt with some diamonds in between. At first I was just going to meander all over it but then I decided to try something different. Saw Susan from StitchedbySusan do this loopy design which I have come to know as the 'Loose Thread' design and decided to give that a go.

Not too difficult and goes quite quickly. Noticed that me going row by row was a bit too even so I started to go slightly diagonal over the areas...somehow that was much easier and made for better interlocking of the design. Consistency-wise I must say that I had no issues...whenever there was a slightly bigger unquilted space I just went in and did a few ordinary loops to fill that in, no problem at all! My roundness of the bubbles left a lot to be desired, however, as this had to be finished I did not worry too much about it...almost round was good enough.

Turned out lovely

With the spotty fabric in there it was just the right design and the texture was great. I quilted it with a soft pink Rasant thread which complemented the pastel colours in this quilt and looked very nice over the darker fabrics. A fun quilt for a little person!

Next is a floral log cabin quilt where I am currently trying to work out how to best quilt that. It sort of screams 'feathers' but that would be quite a lot of work if I do individual feather sprays in each of the blocks. Hmm...could be good practice though as I am running a workshop on feathers in November and doing a bit more of an involved tasks will assist in getting my head back into the feather game.

We'll see...decisions, decisions!! 

Karin

Basting A Quilt

Still doing the charity quilts as I took more than usual home with me last time when I went to drop off the previous batch.

Thought I share my process as I do baste my quilts, charity or not, every time I prepare for quilting. As I am now back on the sitdown machine I do spent some time pinning my quilts first. Then I use the basting function on the Bernina Q20 to baste the quilt in an overall meander. There are three options on the machine...1/4in, 1/2in and 1in in terms of length of the stitch. I usually use the 1/2in option. When I say meander I mean this very loosely...basically I noodle around the pins in a somewhat meander way. At present I use older thread (Gutermann) to do this in any colour that I can see reasonably well. 

I baste at a fairly large scale, i.e. above... those little squares are about 3in, so I baste probably at an approximate 4in scale just going around the quilt starting at one quarter and then move clockwise around the quilt taking the pins out as I go along.

I also baste the edge, however for that I use the 1/4in stitch length and a ruler to keep the edge stitch at about 1/8in from the edge. 

Do I ever use the 1in stitch length? I have in the past basted a wholecloth (which I baste in a grid) with the 1in stitch length but found that I got my sewing foot caught up in it or even my fingers...just too much of a length of loose thread, so even for wholecloth quilts I now use the 1/2in stitch  length.

Why do I baste my quilts? 

- once its basted I don't have to worry about any pins (obviously) getting in my way. Easier for ruler quilting and gives me peace of mind in terms of inadvertently hitting a pin.

- any fullness which happens a lot in the charity quilts stays in its location rather than being quilted out to other areas.

- I use up older thread and leftover bobbin thread to baste.

- I can leave the quilt for years in its basted stage...nothing will shift, distort or become undone over time. Very handy, meaning I can start something completely different and more exciting if the inspiration bug strikes 😉

- I do like basting...I always think that the quilt is not really a quilt until it is fully basted.

Definitely more work but worth it in my humble opinion. Never had a pucker yet and have left quilts for a  considerable amount of time in this state not having to worry about unsightly holes from degraded pins...literally can just pick them up and go.

I have tried spray basting once. I know there are a lot of quilters who swear by that. I found it incredibly messy. I did it on the tiled floor next to the kitchen. I thought that I had used very little spray but it seemed that the spray had gotten everywhere! I mean everywhere...I obviously went into the kitchen in between several times and back again and found that I had some sticky residue all over the place. I had to wash the floor...not once, but twice to get rid of the sticky spots. That was it for me! Also did not like how the spray basting gummed up my needle while quilting. But, some people find it very easy and unproblematic to do which is fair enough.

For this little quilt above I did a simple allover loop design

Suits this little quilt which is about 48in square. Quilted with Gutermann thread which I am re-discovering after some years. Strong cotton thread at 50/3 weight behaving very nicely, no problem at all.

Well, still got two more charity quilts to do!

 

Karin

Baptist Fan Quilting...The Fearless Way!

So I continued to quilt a Baptist Fan design over one of the charity quilts using the Baptist Fan templates from Michael Quilts.

Not having done it for a while I forgot to secure my templates with some extra grip. While I have got the normal grippy things on the back of the templates, sometimes you just need a  little bit more grip. For that I use a material that one uses for drawers or sometimes under carpets. I just cut myself some small pieces that I place under the template so it does not move around as I go around the template.

I only started doing that after about the second row so my rows were already starting to be a bit out of shape. Having done this though a number of times by now I do know it will all work out in the end (that's why I called the post 'fearless quilting'). Trust your ability to fudge correctly a bit here and there to get the rows in line with the row underneath, no matter what the template points to in the current row.

I was out with most of my rows by anything up to a 1/4in which was annoying but there was not much I could do to get that exact anymore other than fudge the alignment of the template over the row. My rows were also starting to wander off to the left a bit, however that was alleviated by turning the quilt around and quilting from right to left. 

It got done though...not exact and definitely not consistent, but in the end looking at it you would not notice unless, of course, somebody comes along and follows individual fans all across the quilt. I quilted the fans in a thread colour that matched the blue/green rectangular shapes and it just blended in.

The final result...in progress

...and finished (in daylight!)

Was very happy with the outcome..the design spells consistency due to the consistent spacing of the arcs. The discrepancies from one row to the next, i.e. whether they are exactly aligned is a different matter. This design though fits this quilt really well and offsets the strong angular lines beautifully.

Always an adventure quilting the Baptist Fan over a slightly larger quilt!

Karin

New Listing - The Large Throw Sized Quilt in Bold Colours

Had a request the other week as to whether I could extend my Colourful Geometric Baby Quilt Pattern to Throw Size.

So I sat down and started doing that last week thinking that this would be a quick and easy update on the original pattern. Not so...as it turned out I had to completely re-work the pattern, making the blocks bigger but also change the whole layout around a bit. As this is a custom layout that took a while to get right in terms of colours and shapes.

So here it is: Large Trow Sized Quilt Pattern in very bold colours

It comes to 64-1/2in x 72-1/2in, so quite large...it is made of different types of simple shapes in a custom layout. Very easy to do though and will come together quickly given the block sizes. The pattern comes as a PDF instant download and includes detailed instructions, including lots of diagrams on how to put this together. 

Head to my Etsy shop if you are interested in this pattern. 

Karin

A bit of Ruler Quilting

For the last charity quilt I did not feel like anything major and decided to just put an allover meander over it. Then I remembered having watched an Amanda Murphy video on FB where she uses the Star template to spruce up her meander. Decided to give that a go to make it a bit more interesting and to see how this would flow when doing the meander. 

I used the 2-1/2in Star shape

Here it is in action

As you can see I have the needle in but the foot up while moving the template in. I am always very careful with rulers as I don't want to hit the ruler by mistake. I only lower the foot once the template is in the middle...only then do I position the template into place.

The meander with the Star template was much easier then I thought. Did not give me any issues at all in terms of quilting the overall meander. Fitted nicely into the overall scale. Not that you can see much of it on this scrappy quilt, but I know it is there 😀

Onto the next charity quilt...

This is a bigger quilt and as usual I basted it first before doing anything else.

Contemplated my thread choice for a long time...in the end I decided to run with the blue colour of the rectangles. Also laboured over the quilting choices as I am a bit busy with other things at the moment and still got another 4 charity quilts to complete after that. I have got about a week to complete this before visitors arrive from overseas! In the end though the quilt won...I think it wants an allover Baptist Fan design! This is going to take a while but the quilt is perfect for this design. The bottom edge is nice and straight and also the local group gave me cotton batting for some of the quilts in this lot, so it is very flat...really enjoying quilting on cotton for a change as the charity quilts usually come with wool batting.

So I made a start today using my fantastic Baptist Fan Rulers again. Can't recommend the Baptist Fan rulers from Michael Quilts enough! I do think that they are the best on the market. The set I have has 1in spacing which I enjoy as it takes up a lot of space (3in, 5in, 7in, 9in and 11in template). On the sitdown of course the size can be somewhat challenging but if you take your time, go slow and deliberate it is all do-able. I have done a number of quilts now with these templates and still think they are the best thing since sliced bread.

So nice!

Apart from this I am still working on my scrappy log cabin quilt...I am up to 65 blocks...only 5 more to go. Must say that I lost my mojo for this. It would have been easier to just use 1-1/2in strips for this rather than strips of all sizes. At times I had difficulties judging my strips to get to the right end measurement of the block which at times was a hassle. Happy to say though it has made a noticeable dent in the strip department.

Also have been doing some quilt pattern work and promptly started another design for an Eye-Spy Quilt. I have got this stack of fabric that needs putting together but I do not want just a traditional squares quilt. Lots more work to be done on that before I can actually start on this

...and I got so many of those 😬

So, no time to waste...got lots to do!

Karin

Edge-to-Edge Quilting

Have finished another charity quilt, this time though with an edge-to-edge design. Could not resist, using the beautiful 'Ambrosia' design by Hermione Agee. It is a feather design about 6.5in wide. Given that I am now back on the sit down machine I had to use my trusted Golden Threads paper to draw this one out, row by row, then align each row to the next and slowly working my way across the quilt. This is probably where I most miss the frame...really enjoyed that on the frame. Mind you there is equally lots of alignment that you have to do on a frame. I feel the real difference is in the time it takes to take all that paper out of the quilt which I usually do as I go along. The stitching out takes very little time as the design is bigger and flowing nicely with bigger open curves so you do quilt them in BSR1 with a little bit of speed. 

The charity quilt lent itself beautifully to this design. Old-fashioned floral type fabrics in a simple railroad like set up.

Also, this quilt had cotton batting for a change which I really enjoyed.

Some closeups

And then I got side tracked...

Started knitting a little jumper for the grandchild. As so often with me I had my heart set on a top down rolled collar jumper pattern. You can find that pattern on Ravelry under Top Down Roll Raglan by Melinda Goodfellow.

I used to be a very prolific knitter when I was younger, so went ahead to re-work the whole pattern to suit my wool which had a different gauge. This took me ages to do...

Started knitting...this is really quite an easy jumper to knit, but boy I am out of practice. It is knitted top down, then split for the arms and continued in the round, so really very simple. When it came to the arms I started to have some issues with having big unsightly holes from the stitches stretching. Was not impressed and had to re-do this a number of times. Also had to use DPNs for the arms which was a bit of a hassle as the arms were so small. Lucky I had done some sock knitting in recent years, so at least that part worked out well.

Eventually though this got done and came out very cute. Even my sizing almost worked out. I was aiming for a 2 yr old jumper but with my re-calculations it came out at a maybe 18 mths old jumper, so the child will be able to wear it this winter. Bonus!

Took me the longest time though...still got more of that green wool left and will be on the lookout for another jumper in a bigger size.

But for now it is back to quilting for me. This is what is on my list:

- got a whole container full of charity quilts, 

-some new I spy 10in fabric squares for an I spy quilt, 

-another 10 blocks for my scrappy Courthouse blocks quilt

-got the batting for a jelly roll rug

-...and several finished quilt tops in the cupboard waiting patiently to be done!

Happy Quilting!

Karin

Overall Feather Design

Well, I am back on my sitdown and very happy. Cleaned up the sewing room and made use of the now empty spare room to put the computer in. Feeling less crowded and things are much better organised.

Started on my workshop sample, just trialling different things that I want to cover in class. The sample gives me an idea on how long it approximately takes to stitch out the class content and also what size of practice samples should be cut out for class

I got side tracked, of course...started playing with rulers, tried different things, realised I had not covered what to do when your space is much bigger than you comfortably can stitch out. Overall very useful which will be used to finish off my handout. The class has now been scheduled for November so I am now well ahead ( which is handy as we are having overseas visitors at the end of July). Also found a new favourite feather border arrangement.

Its the last one in the lines of feather shapes. I think I took that inital feather arrangement from the 'Ambrosia' pantograph and then just continued with the same shapes in an arbitrary playful way. Looks quite nice and helps me to quilt in a little more informal way which I usually find quite hard. It seems that my muscle memorey is hardwired to do really formal feathers and any deviation is almost painful to execute. That was really fun to stitch out.

After that I continued on my mission to put an overall feather design on one of the charity quilts. I had practised this a bit both on the frame and now on the sitdown after seeing it on the website of StitchedbySusan. Like the texture of that design and thought that it could be potentially an easy way to get some charity quilts done.

So this is stitched edge-to-edge rather than allover, meaning I am going from left to right and then back again. This was certainly a challenge and I thought for a moment about doing an allover design - in which case I would have stitched this out in quarters turning the quilt clockwise after each quarter. However that would have meant that the feather plumes would go in different directions and I was not sure whether that would look any good so I stuck with the idea of edge-to-edge.

I found going from left to right easier than going the other way. Started in the middle of the quilt finishing off one half and then turned the quilt to do the other half. Must say, initially struggled a bit as I am also quilting on a larger scale but soon got into the swing of things. Happy to say that I did not get stuck anywhere and was able to move along quite quickly from row to row.

Came out ok, but not sure whether this is almost a bit much. It certainly has got a nice feel to it and looking at individual sections is lovely, even though the overall picture looks a bit crowded. I think I have another few scrappy quilts in my bundle of charity quilts. Might try it again maybe paying a bit more attention to the scale as some of my shapes are a bit irregular ( like instead of getting stuck I would make really long and big shapes to fill out a space 😆). Good experiment...took two afternoons to completion, so a good option for those charity quilts. Mind you, also could see this with a nice pantograph stitched allover!

Well, we shall see what I feel like next.

Karin

Saga Ended

I have been working away on some charity quilts

Got a new pantograph called 'Hot Rod' which I really liked

...and put it on two charity quilts that had embroidered blocks

All while I was struggling with the bent pole which pulled the quilts to the left. Did some more freemotionquilting practice as well but apart from that was pretty much out of action for the last 5 weeks. This gave me a lot of time to think the whole frame business through and in the end I decided to give the frame a miss.

I was missing the therapeutic slow stitching of the sitdown machine a lot. While there are a lot of benefits to quilting on the frame (most notably the easy loading of the quilt) I had more and more the feeling that it is not for me. Given that I had a lot of problems with the set up this put a very negative slant on things which in the end I just could not got over. The new pole arrived but by then I had decided to call it quits as it would have taken me another few months to really feel comfortable with it. Mind you, I am doubtful that I would have advanced to the standard that I am used to in just a few months. While I have quilted a fair few charity quilts on the frame since it first arrived I did not get a great deal of satisfaction from this as I did not feel that I was gaining control of the machine for some of the more detailed work. This meant that I have done none of my own quilts or my workshop sample and I was getting further and further behind.

All in all though a valuable lesson as I had to really think hard about which direction I wanted to go and what makes quilting enjoyable to me. I do like to stitch slowly and deliberately, look at the entire quilt adding a few things here and there where I think it needs more quilting. Obviously I like precision and control which I feel I got more with my hands than with handles I have to hold, particularly for more detailed work. Clearly this is something that one can learn with time and sustained effort, in fact I was already getting quite good on the pantograph quilting. It was easy-ish, very fast and meant that I could knock off the charity quilts in no time at all. However, this is not the only thing I want to be able to be doing and that is what got me thinking about what I prefer.

Anyway, so we took the machine off the frame and put it back in the table and I am back to my normal quilting. Will need to finish off a workshop sample for a Feather workshop that will run in the second half of the year. Bummer...I will have to pinbaste again...that was such a great thing about the frame...just roll it on and you are ready to go. 

Karin

Saga Continues...

Well, the saga with my frame has continued. We did replace one of the ratchets and also the handle bars (as they were sticking and giving me error messages) and then replaced half of a pole. Now this was situated in the dead bar so it was relatively easy to do. I have been using the frame since then but recently discovered that my deadbar is bent, i.e. when you advance your quilt and the deadbar rolls with it due to the bent it then tensions the quilt differently every time you advance. I had noticed that my quilts were more taut in the middle but did not really put two and two together until I saw it the other day when advancing a quilt standing on the side of the frame. Very peculiar! This could be very well why I continued to have problems with controlling the machine in the middle as it would create a diagonal pull.

I seem to be extraordinarily unlucky with these things. The dealer has since been out again and will replace the pole...as we discovered one of the screws that holds the two deadbar pieces together is slightly bent creating this problem. It means that I have to wait again which has been quite frustrating. I am honestly not too sure about all of this, but have promised myself that I will give it a good go before making any major decisions about the future of this frame.

I have been practising in between all of this even though it was quite hard to keep a positive attitude going.

Bought a very nice panto from Lorien Quilting called 'Ambrosia' (actually purchased through Urban Elementz as a single page digital download). So pretty, so me!

Love this and also thought that it was a bit more of a challenge as there is a tiny amount of backtracking involved, so went to work on one of the charity quilts

Not too bad...struggled a bit with the backtracking (as expected) but was pleasantly surprised with my shapes. They are not too bad at all!

It looked really quite nice and those little wobbles and hesitations are very hard to see on this busy scrap quilt.
After that I went for an exploration of an overall feather filler. There is a free workshop over at StitchedbySusan which caught my attention. Not that difficult but also not that easy as I found out.

First attempt

Not bad but too linear and I found that I had limited control over the machine as well as forgetting where to go next. I started watching a number of Susan's YouTube videos and started to think that I was doing something not quite right. Susan's quilting looked rhythmic and even whereas mine seemed to be a tad more frantic. So next I tried the design in Manual mode.

Found that I definitely am going too fast...when stitching in Manual mode I literally had to force myself to slow down (as my stitches got too long). This was not easy at all but after a few moments of playing with the speed setting I managed quite well on a smaller scale design (except for the middle where the problem with the pole is situated). Towards the end of this piece I did a little bit of the design in stitch regulated mode again as I need to be able to make it a bit larger for the charity quilt that I have in mind for that. Not sure yet whether I will attempt this as I tend to go faster when in stitch regulated mode and some of the shapes then fly away from me...will ponder more on this. I have done a few practice pieces since then and it is a matter of either biting the bullet or coming up with a different design for that particular quilt.

Anyhow, while there I also tried attaching a binding on the frame. Had seen this on YouTube and wanted to see how difficult this would be (as I hate doing this on the small DSM). Very easy and worked really quite well even on this more sloppy attempt. 

It was fast and effortless...I went around the quilt like I normally would and had no hassles. The left side demanded a bit more attention in terms of where to place my two left hands but I guess this is just a matter of getting used to it. I was impressed! I started on the side which of course I could change by starting on the horizontal on top and then going down one side first and then the other side. Might give that a go as well to see what is easier. But yes, not as fiddly as I imagined and definitely something I will do from now on.

Hopefully I will get the new poles soon and that will be it in terms of the set up!

Karin

Complications

It's been a while again since my last post but I have had some trouble with the new frame. Once I got used to it a bit I noticed that I had a 'bump' in the middle. Ever so slightly but it meant that the machine would just veer off to the right...very noticeable when quilting along. On top of that my rails were not tightened  properly in the middle which meant that they had wedged once I started quilting. Not a huge deal, but important if I wanted to sell the frame. The dealer has been out a number of times to fix things. While all this was happening we also noticed that my handle bar buttons were sticking which led to them not working at times. A few other issues that need attention, so all in all very frustrating. I am not sure whether I will keep this frame but have decided to hold on to it for at least 6 months to see how I am going with it and whether I actually prefer it or not. At the moment I am missing my sitdown set up where I can just go and quilt. We shall see...the 'bump' has been fixed (it was due to a loose screw underneath the rail), so I am now up and running again. One of the rails still needs replacing which should happen some time this week, so let's hope that everything is going to go smoothly...not sure I can handle any further delays.

On the plus side, I finished my strip quilt for the Natalia Bonner Strip Design quilt-a-long.

I did put a border around it as well, not sure why I did not take a picture of that. The Strip-Along features 99 designs so I figured that it does not matter when I join. I think I might just pick and choose once I am ready to put that on the frame.

Also did some more practice before everything fell into a heap

Have a bit of a problem with small circles not wanting to be round. Finding this very infuriating as I cannot figure out exactly how to hold the handles.

Also tried a new pantograph...Billowy from Lorien Quilting. Very enjoyable and relatively easy to do. Really like the pantograph feature.

Currently waiting for the new rail to come so I cannot actually load anything major. Doing some practice again focussing in on those blasted pebbles...getting there but it is not easy at all. Every time I think that I am managing it goes haywire. Did some circles yesterday which were not too bad and then tried to echo around them for a stacked rainbow design and just did not get together. Very frustrating...I am obviously not good at being patient. We shall see how this all evolves!

Karin

Finishes For This Month

Well, where are we at?

I have continued practising my quilting on the new to me studio frame. Was very encouraged by my evolving pantograph skill and went ahead and finished one of the panels I had sitting in the cupboard

I tried one of the new pantographs on there that arrived just before Christmas. It's a new design from Hermione Agee from Lorien Quilting called Airy Clouds. Very cute for little baby quilts.

While still a bit wobbly here and there I am definitely feeling that I am getting the hang of this.

After that one I continued on the charity quilts and did this beauty.

The photo really does not do it justice. Really liked this quilt and decided to quilt it with the pantograph that came with the Bernina pantograph kit. It was a bit bigger than the ones I had done before, so I thought that this would go rather quickly. The pantograph paper roll itself was fairly large and after much head scratching I cut a little bit off on both the top and bottom as my laser was just too far away. Did not make a difference in the pattern as the cut off parts were empty paper and a little bit of the ghost rows. Anyway, my assumption that this would be quick was a bit wrong as the design meanders rather dramatically over the roll and the advancement is in fact very small. The pattern though was just right for this quilt...it is called Zest by Patricia Ritter. I did not practice this beforehand and went straight onto the quilt and to my amazement felt that this pattern was even easier than the one before.

Came out beautifully

Really enjoyed doing this one and looks absolutely fabulous on this quilt.

Then I had one more charity quilt to finish. Now this one gave me a bit of a headache as I am not used to think through an entire quilt before I even start, however with the frame it is absolutely necessary in terms of considering the space you have got available, the quilting path (i.e. minimising the starts and stops) and in general how to tackle the whole beast. This quilt was ackward in the way it was pieced. Very pretty with very pretty fabrics but in the centre it had only 4in blocks set on the diagonal which left an enormous amount of negative space. If this was my quilt that would be great as one would densely quilt the background down...so many possibilities! However for the charity quilts the brief is not to over-quilt them so that they stay nice and soft to the touch.

Thought long and hard about this one and in my mind it became 'The Art of Minimal Quilting'. In considering this quilt I knew that I had to put some sort of secondary design in that vast open space. This is what I decided on

Nothing fancy just some simple line design and the motif thrown in for good measure. Again, if it was my quilt I would have put a feather wreath in there and maybe a grid behind it, however I don't mark these charity quilts with the blue marker as they are likely not washed beforehand...the risk of bleeding is just too high in addition to being a lot more work. So whatever I do on these charity quilts has to be done without marking (or very minimal tick marks with the air erasable marker) unless it is a dark quilt where I can use some chalk.

The quilt turned out lovely

I also had thought to do more in the triangle border, however discovered that the maker had pressed the seams open at times and to the side at other times so I abandoned that idea and just did some 1/4in echo lines in there. When I started I realised that I had not considered the outer border. Wanting to keep this as simple as possible, I just put some large piano keys in there. This meant that I could stop in the batting and then advance and start again. My secondary design was tricky as I had to advance the quilt, do the top of the design, then go back and do the echo lines and the motifs in the area above...not something I had thought about beforehand. Also had a definite plan this time for the ditching but then did not follow it! So again there was a lot of stopping and starting but this time it all looks very nice and tidy on the back, so I seem to be getting better. Very happy with how this turned out.

So, I am getting more used to it, but the different process is what throws me a bit. Also discovered that my leader cloth has not been attached straight on the top take up bar. Was unsure about this but have noticed that it does make a difference in terms of rolling it up straight, so this needs to be attended to. I will have to fix this by taking it off, replacing the tape and putting it on again. Not looking forward to that but it will have to be done. 

Apart from this I have been doing some piecing for Natalia Bonner's 99 Strip Design series.

It's a free quilt along aimed at improving your freemotion quilting skill. For me it is a good opportunity to improve my control of the machine on the frame while learning some fun new designs. The quilt along will stretch over four of those strip quilts...I think I might do a second one however that will probably be enough for me. Should be fun though.

Happy quilting!

Karin