Finishing Off and Starting Something New

It's been a while again...I tend to forget what I post and where, so some may already have seen pictures of some of these projects.

I finished my Koi wall hanging quilt top. Had to wait for some new applique foundation paper to arrive before I could continue. I had some Dupioni silk from my kit left and decided to make a second fish. This was somewhat nerve wrecking as there was not a lot of room for error. I had all these very small fins to make and turn the silk over so I was very careful not to stuff up as there was only just enough silk to make this one fish. Went very slowly and deliberate trying not to stress and it worked out fine.

Looks really nice, very pleased with it. The Breaking Boundaries class will start this weekend...should be great!

Also continued on my Nemeshing piece. As this is a lot of pebbles I did this over a couple of weeks, doing a little bit every now and then. It is hard to finish something when you know it has not turned out exactly how you had imagined it, however I thought it would be  good to finish this, so I would have a visual reminder of where I went wrong. 

I am calling this...'Pebbles with a Hint of Nemeshing'...as many of my smaller swirls have disappeared through the pebbling. Just did not make them fat enough and also thought that the double batting that I used was not the best idea. Live and learn! Will do some more feather practice in the blue border to finish this off.

Then I started another Baby Panel quilt. Discovered that I have done this panel before but when I bought it obviously did not remember this. Had to laugh, as the whole time I was thinking that I really liked this little panel...no wonder, bought it before because I liked it then! The Panel is called 'Jungle Fever' designed by Rebecca Jones for Clothworks Fabrics.

Did my favourite design over it again the other day...clamshells with the HQ Multi Clamshell Ruler. Love doing this on baby panels/quilts.

I do not mark the entire quilt top to do this. What I usually do is mark the first 2 rows, in this case two lines across the width of the quilt top 2in apart. The largest clamshell of the HQ Multi Clamshell tool is 2in x 4in, I then quilt the first row and mark a little tick half way on top of each clamshell. Then comes the second row, making sure I hit that little tick mark as I go along. After that I do not mark the horizontal lines anymore as my first two rows should have laid the foundation for being pretty much straight. I do however, continue to make little tick marks on top of each clamshell as I go along to just double-check that my clamshell are centred correctly. 

As you go over an entire quilt there are inaccuracies that creep in which I think is unavoidable. A slight shift in the ruler can make your clamshell slightly smaller or a bit of sliding and you are a bit off centre. I do make small adjustments as I go along like lengthening or shorten some clamshells however do have an eye on whether they are remaining straight and centred on each other. It is always a bit of a surprise to come to a space in the quilt, like a seam or similar where you then can see how accurate you have been. In a panel though there is not much you can go by and the real test came right at the end with this quilt top when I hit the first border. You can see that the top of my clams (the added lines in there is my basting) are approximately half an inch away from the first border. Not every single one was exactly the same but overall this was looking pretty good. There is no way that you are going to perceive little inconsistencies when looking at the finished quilt. Happy with that...this will be a cute little quilt for my Etsy shop.

Now onto the binding and then I will concentrate on the Breaking Boundaries class.

Karin

Not Everything Works Out Every Time

We arrived at Nemeshing in our Feather Fiesta class. So I prepared that little pre-printed panel that came with the kit and made a start on it with some gusto.

Really thought I 'got' this...shapes flowed easily and gracefully over the area. I have extended my panel to make more room for practice and was slightly overwhelmed with all the space, however managed to fill it in  rather nicely.

Then I started the pebbling...

Can you see what's happening! My shapes are just not wide enough and I am losing some of the smaller shapes in the pebbling. Bugger, really thought I had this worked out but probably spent too much time concentrating on making the feather sprays (which was also a bit challenging as I tend to do them smaller being on the sitdown machine...every time I thought I was making them really long, I maybe moved 1.5in at the most). 

On the plus side...I am stitching with 100 wt Invisafil (Wonderfil) and love it. Not sure why I have never used that before for back filling. Usually use it for stitch-in-the ditch and it is brilliant for that, literally blends in anywhere. It is absolutely perfect for back filling and doing those pebbles.

Will finish this off despite the slight mishap...will just look like a lot of pebbling and will be a good reminder for next time. Might have to do a bit more practice around this to challenge my muscle memory as it is clearly working against me here. Have surrounded this with a blue border which I might use to do more feather variations as practice really is the key to master new concepts and executing a new design. 

Karin

Bird on the Wire Wall Hanging

Running behind in my blog. Here is a quick shot of the finished wall hanging.

Still have the binding and hanging sleeve to do. Turned out nice however I would have liked my batting with a bit more loft. It is just too flat and the heavy background quilting just about obliterates some of the feathering. Obviously did not think that through well enough. I had used a heavier thread to do the feathers and thought that that would be enough. Did not really think too much about the loft. Well, live and learn.

Here is the wall hanging that I did some years ago.

I thought that it would give me a bit of a comparison of 'then and now'...but not really. They are both quite nice, but different, as I got a bit carried away in the current one with all those feather variations, so cannot really compare the two.

Now onto the next project...in Bethanne Nemesh Feather Fiesta class we are up to her signature backfill 'Nemeshing'. Had a bit of a play already and must say that it is just great...flows...comes relatively easy and just looks great. Bit of a messy practice piece, but have a look at the border about half way down. Stitched that out without any marks and relatively quickly in one go. Perfect organic border treatment. Loved doing that.

Will stitch out a small printed panel next with this backfill. Should be interesting.

Karin

Multi-tasking and New Pattern

I am still multi-tasking. In fact, I have added things to my list...🙀

Finished the third quilt top for Bethanne Nemesh February online workshop 'Breaking Boundaries'. No problem at all after all those borders I did. Fabric selection maybe a bit odd, but I do need to make some space in my 'fabric cabinet'. I reckon this fabric is a good 10 years old and with the binding cut out it will all be gone. 

Then I continued on the feathering. The class on variations was 3 hours long...a marathon of online watching. I could not do it in one hit and spread it over a few days. Given that I had started on the 'Bird on the Wire wall hanging, I thought I might as well give some of those variations a try. Also did start on some of the backfilling today but forgot to take a photo.

Close ups

That was good fun...tried all sorts of weird and wonderful things on that. Some of them worked great and some maybe not that well, but all good practice. I am stitching the feathers with Superior Fantastico variegated thread. I am using Bottomline in the bobbin and while it is better on the Q20 I still feel that I am struggling with that thread...this time it was pulling the bobbin thread up a fair bit (and actually just as I am writing this I realise that I should probably have tightened my bobbin more). I was following the settings that were given on the Superior web site, but maybe I just need to run my bobbin thread tighter. Mind you, I am also using a fairly thin batting of 60/40 Cotton/Poly blend of average quality which may have also played into this. Anyway, I managed to get a decent quality out of the thread for most of the time, so I did not worry too much about it.

I was really happy about how my curves turned out. In general I can do them better if I have feather variations in there. Not sure why that is happening.

This is stitched following Bethanne Nemesh' method of spineless feather quilting, i.e. you do not pre-stitch your spine, but stitch the feathers and spine all in one go. I deliberately chose the variegated thread to see how well that would work for me and I must say, you cannot really see any difference unless you look really closely trying to follow the feather path. Happy with my efforts.

Also sold a little quilt in my Etsy shop this week...great! That of course got me thinking that I need to get going on continuing to fill my inventory, hence sat down to do a new pattern (and another little quilt).

Here is a stylised shot

Nothing too drastic...a variation on the good old pinwheel. I have a lot of bright tone-on-tone prints left over. Not strips, but also not enough to make an entire quilt out of the colours that are left. So I gathered the bitses and pieces and decided to use them up for this idea. This will be colourful and again fairly bold. Still need to decide on placement and also I am eyeing off those cut off triangles to maybe incorporate them as well...we shall see. Love those quilts. While I was at it, also cut another panel to size to use for another round of clamshell quilting.

So, fairly busy over here and I don't think it will be letting up as I keep adding to my list of tasks.

Karin