The Quilt Yarn: 1/2inch scale meander

Wednesday, 14 May 2014

Cheryl's quilt - Update

Well, my idea of using my Sensormatic FMQ foot was an epic fail. Had I thought about it a bit more, it would have been obvious that this was not the right foot to use. Had a bit of a 'duh' moment ...

Anyway I started off and the foot was gliding over the quilt until it hit the first major intersection where several seams meet. Could not negotiate this, so I altered the pivot height to 1 and then to 2...more mucking around. Finally I set it to 3 to get over all those humps and bumps, but then the thread started to break a couple of times. When I thought about it, this made sense...this foot does not raise and lower with every stitch when going fast and while going over an even surface this is fine, but with Cheryl's quilt there were issues of bulk at the intersections and also some bulging out over certain areas...this was not going to work with this foot. As I lowered the speed to avoid the thread breaking, it started pushing the fabric too much for my liking. Not sure whether these problems were just due to this quilt or whether this is a problem in general.

After one row of pain, I switched over to the Dynamic FMQ foot and off I went. I quilted half the quilt in 5 hours...no thread breakages and no issues with the bulk. I must say, stippling remains one of my favourite designs. I know that it probably is a bit boring but for this quilt I was really grateful that I chose this design. I never noticed this before but stippling is the design to go to when you want to quilt out some problems. I was able to adjust my meander as I needed to get rid of some bulk, turning in the opposite direction to pull the fabric down a bit, then going for some sharp turns to even it out a bit. Or, on occasions when I could see some suspicious fullness coming up, I just made my meanders a bit bigger and more generous...I was very impressed with how well this worked. I quilted the top fairly densely to cover the seams, as Cheryl had sewn the seams with a wider stitch which had become precariously loose in some parts. Also managed to go over some holes, so this baby is not going to come undone.