Update on Baby Quilt

Before I get into the baby quilt, here are some photos from the Garden Charity Quilt I talked about in previous posts. Noticed the other day that I actually had not put up any photos of the finished thing...and that after I did all that practice to be sure that I actually could execute thatt design. For readers who have not read about it as yet, I decided to do the Hndiquilter Flutterby Design over this charity quilt. Had to practice a bit to be able to do this though over a larger area.

This is what that looked like

Bit hard to see as I used a lightgreen blend in thread, here is the back

I was so sure that I had talked about his, but maybe I just posted it on IG or Instagram.

Anyway, for this baby quilt I decided to do my favourite edge-to-edge design called Daisy Dotz #2 available through Urban Elementz. I have done this design numerous times but still enjoy doing it, so I made a start today. I am using Golden Threads paper to get the rows onto the quilt 

Labour intensive...yes, but the result is always stunning and given that this is a bit of a special quilt, I do not mind the extra time. In the picture above you see the first two rows stitched out already. I secure the paper with removable glue dots but also use pins as you can see in the picture above. I am quilting with Aurifil 50/2 cotton thread in regulated mode at 10 SPI. I am going not too slow but also not too fast in terms of speed just moving along those lines. I do use a blue erasable marker for drawing out my lines, basically becuse I am used to that blue colour and it also ensures that I do not inadvertently transfer any pencil marks or similar onto the quilt. After I finish the first two rows, I take the top and the first row out, i.e. remove the paper. Firstly to see how my stitching went, but also to free up the quilt (as you go along some compaction happens and I feel it is easier to free everything up for the laignment of subsequent rows. Aside from that I also enjoy just sitting there quietly taking out the paper after each of the rows. i don't think I would want to do that in one hit for an entire quilt...that would take ages!! With the second row still there and a partial row drawn in I align the next two rows and continue...so relaxing to stitch out.

What about mistakes? Yes, they do happen...sometimes you deviate from your lines a bit but I reckon as long as you keep them nice and round and in line with the design, that does not really matter. I do put more effort in on the second row to stay exactly on my lines as this is where I will have to align the next two rows, but I must say, I do not stress over it as you really cannot notice it if you are a bit out. What if you thread breaks or some other small disaster happens and you need to take something out and redo a section? Absolutely possible...the paper is wafer thin and delicate, so any unpicking will have to be done from the back. I unpick my section stitch by stitch in order to keep the paper on top intact. As you can see the holes where the needle went really well, you just start again in one of those holes, secure your thread and continue on. Must say that I have never messed up an entire row but if you do, you will just have to re-do it, i.e. draw out more rows and start again.

Had a new mishap today though...my mind must have temporarily wandered off

Did not stitch out one of those leaves...noticed it, but continued and then when I finished the rows went back and stitched that one leave in there (with the paper still intact).

This is how far I got today...

Managed four rows (the thread running through is my basting)...not that much,but it is a start and I am taking my time with this as I do enjoy this process. Tomorrow I will draw out another few rows and continue slowly but steadily. Love this design! 

Will keep you posted...

Karin

To Do Tuesday #56

My goals for the last week were

- complete the dinosaur charity quilt using the edge-to-edge design from above.

- continue knitting my brown sock

- developing a plan of attack in terms of projects for the coming months. I know that I do want to start my wholecloth but also need to be working on some patterns for my Etsy shop, so that needs to be thought through a bit.

I finished the dinosaur charity quilt and it came out really beautiful. I used an edge-to-edge design called 'Happy Times' by Hermione Agee available through Urban Elementz.

It is the cutest thing. The design is new to me and comes with 2 rows printed out so I wanted to see how that goes on the sitdown longarm.

Starting off...

Going very well but I am astutely aware that I am spending a lot of time on this. Not that I think these charity quilts don't deserve that but when I started quilting for the local charity group I did consider that I need to keep the quilting fuss free and relatively quick unless like in this case I do want to try out something specific. For this quilt also, when I do look at them closely and see the work and commitment that has gone into it, I often feel that they deserve the best. This quilt is a panel and the group just sewed two small borders around it. However, the batting...somebody has sat down and sewed batting strips together at about 3-4in width for the entire batting. Was very impressed by this.

Anyway, to speed up the process, I traced my next row of design and then placed 5 more rows behind and sewed through this with an unthreaded machine, so that I now had 5 stenciled rows ready to go. Normally I trace all my rows however wanted this to go a bit quicker and also try it out again.

Well, it was very hard to see (maybe should have used a bigger needle!) as you can see in the picture below.

Given that the design was really quite easy to stitch out, I managed with the extra light from the machine and completed the quilt quite quickly. However, for the future I probably go back to tracing row by row as this was more difficult to manage.

However look at the bottom

Was impressed with how straight this turned out.

Close up of the design

Great design, definitely will use this again. Came out really cute and suits this panel.

So what else did I manage? I did not continue my knitting however spent a lot of time on the computer looking at new patterns and while I was at it, cleaned up my EQ8 program a bit. Have several possibilities of new patterns and have been spending the last few days on trying to work out one particular pattern in terms of math to make it more user friendly. Will have to do a test block to see whether my calculations are correct, will probably start on that pattern. Apart from this I did spent a lot of time in my head trying to work out a plan for the next 3 months or so, but have not written that down as yet, as I am constantly side tracked with new ideas. Definitely need to develop that plan to stay on track.

For the next week I am planning to

- make a test block of the new pattern (and take some notes this time!)

- put my plan for the next 3 months on paper starting with the wholecloth quilt (which is still waiting to be printed)

- continue on my sock

- pull out the fabric for a new Fox quilt and get ready to tackle that.

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #56 over at Quilt Schmilt

Karin

To Do Tuesday #52

Looking for my list for this week I realised that I forgot to put up a new list up on my post last week. Well, never mind, I did work on finishing off my cat quilt.

For the cat quilt I decided to do an edge-to-edge design over it. I am doing this on a sitdown longarm machine and I have talked about this on my blog several times on how I do this (for example, HERE). I purchased the Ginger Paw design from Urban Elementz designed by Melonie J. Caldwell and Apricot Moon Designs and went to work. The design is 8-1/4in wide so first of all I had to reduce it a little bit as I was not sure how I would go with such a wide design. I made mine 7-3/4in, printed out multiple copies and sticky taped this together into one long row.

The quilt measures 56.5in x 66.5in and I was unsure whether I could pull this off with using paper over the entire width of the quilt. Normally I do little baby quilts with this method which works really well, however they are usually not bigger than 36in. Was quite nervous about it, but if you never try, you'll never know. Took my time with aligning my row and used both pins and sticky dots to hold the paper on the quilt. This is what this looked like at the machine.

I have a Bernina Q20 with the very large Koala table, but still needed to crunch this up a fair bit so that it did not hang off the table. Starting it was a bit of a nightmare as I was struggling against the weight of the quilt. In addition, the weather over here was incredibly humid and I think that affected how easily my quilt was gliding around on the table. Sometimes I used gloves to hold it but sometimes I was doing better without gloves. It got easier after the first row, however then I started struggling with those little toe pads in the design. Funny enough the width of the design did not give me any problems and I found that I could do the long sweeping curves with ease and some tempo. However then doing the little paws with those pads was really quite difficult.

It got better as I moved along. I do trace every row...this helps me to familiarise myself with the design and cement that muscle memory of the design, however I can honestly say coming to the end of it I am utterly sick of tracing the same thing over and over again. I do take the paper out as I go along, only leaving the bottom bit in as it has part of the next row on it which is used for alignment. I do trace with the blue water erasable pen...this is to avoid getting any pencil marks or similar onto the quilt. Not that I ever tried to do it with a pencil, but I am just a bit paranoid.

Moving along

I did two rows per day and took my time both with the alignment and the stitching of the rows. I am not going to say this was easy-peasy. At this width (of the quilt and the design itself) it was actually quite hard to do and I definitely have a few wobbles here and there. I used a different thread this time...So Fine (50/3wt) in a brown tone (both in the top and bottom) and I was grateful that this blended in so nicely. Curiously enough, my curves are nice and sweeping, the wobbles usually occurred in the little cat paw, but with this thread this is not that noticeable.

And it's done! Happy to report that my rows were absolutely dead straight as I hit the bottom in line with the edge of my paper row.  Always relieved at that. Both sides are also nice and consistent in the way the design sits...on one or two rows maybe out by about 1/8in but that does not matter at all as the binding will take care of that.

Currently doing the binding. This quilt will go to my daughter who loves everything brown and she is already very excited to have this quilt on her bed. Can honestly say that this linky party is partly the reason for finally getting this quilt done. Putting it on your list week by week adds that subtle pressure to actually do it, so big 'thank you' to the linky party...one UFO conquered!

So, for next week I will need to keep it simple as I there is Christmas planning and shopping to be done. However, I am planning to 

- finish the binding on the cat quilt.

- finish attaching the hanging sleeve to my background filler project.

Joining the To Do Tuesday #52 Linky Party over at Quilt Schmilt.

Karin

Edge-to-Edge Quilting

I finished my little panel quilt. 

It's busy enough, so I just put a sashing and border around it. Very cute! Felt like an allover design and started looking at edge-to-edge designs at Urban Elementz. Of course I found something straight away...could not resist.

A new design from Hermione Agee called Lorien's Festival. It is a 6.5in wide pattern which is a good size for doing it on the sitdown longarm. When looking for designs that I can do on the Bernina Q20 I do look for designs that are nice and open given that I am quilting it using Golden Threads paper which will have to come out when finished. While I do not mind taking the paper out it is obviously easier to have bigger shapes that come out readily and with relatively little effort. When you purchase the pattern you download this one page and then print as many as you require sticking them together with tape to make a row.

When quilting this it is definitely an advantage to have a lot of space

As you can see I can spread out my quilt over the entire surface quilting it going from left to right without having to crunch up anything. The paper is secured with 'sticky dots' and also some pins so that there is no shifting. Can you do this on a DSM? I think you can, however it would necessitate you having a flat surface and you would need to quilt it vertically because of the orientation of the DSM having the majority of your quilt in your lap as you start. Now I have to admit I have never tried this, however I would imagine that that is quite fiddly (mind you, not impossible). Having said that though I do think you can quilt smaller pieces like table runners and borders with this method without any problems.

The design was easy to stitch out

I do trace every row, however you can trace just one row and then put up to eight rows behind it and stitch through the paper without thread to get multiple rows stenciled. I have done this before and it works ok, however I prefer to trace every row. While tedious and by the eights or ninths row you are absolutely sick of it, it does prepare you well for the quilting as the design starts to commit to muscle memory which makes for better results. This design in particular flowed really well and it took no time at all to get the hang of it. In stitching this you follow the lines however you will never be totally spot on. My hands are about as big as the design, so when quilting within the span of your hand you swing out at times as you gather speed. The trick with this is in the alignment of the rows. I rarely align on the row that I stitched. While I do look how I stitched the row and align my points as best as I can, the alignment happens on the faint bottom row. When I get a new row, that bottom row has to align perfectly with the row to be stitched which will ensure that you keep your design nice and straight as you make your way down the quilt. 

Love doing this. While a bit more work intensive I find this very relaxing. Don't have to think much, just follow the lines, then I sit there quietly taking some of the paper out after each row, leaving the bottom row in place for the next row. Quilting the row literally takes only a few minutes. I use the stitch regulator of the Bernina Q20 for this task, so my stitches always look fabulous which makes for very relaxed stitching.

Finished this yesterday...I did spread this over two days mainly because of the tracing of the design. Usually I trace two or three rows, then quilt them, and then trace again.

Turned out lovely...a busy little quilt for busy little people.

Always like looking at the back

Now I just have to do the binding...have a fun striped fabric that I might use and then this quilt will go into the Etsy shop.

On to the next project...

Karin

Edge-to-Edge Design on a Sitdown Longarm

I finished my little charity quilt. Normally I would not do anything too involved on theses charity quilts...not because they are for charity but simply because I am volunteering my time and resources to quilt them. However I absolutely fell in love with the last charity quilt. Not sure what it is about this one, but I really like the very simple design and the colours of that quilt. The fabric reminds me of something but I cannot quite place it.

Such a pretty quilt and nicely straight. So I decided to do an edge to edge design over it. If you never looked into this check out the designs at Urban Elementz...so many choices and I am not sure whether I mentioned this before but there is also a whole section of some 50 plus designs that you can use for free. Really appreciate this.

For this design though I chose a panto that I had bought from Urban Elementz - the self print Cloud Nine Design from Patricia E. Ritter. I think that is the third design that I purchased from Patricia E. Ritter. Coincidence or maybe her design appeal to me because of their openness (for my purpose I do need the design to be a bit more open). 

I have mentioned in previous blog posts (e.g. HERE and HERE) how exactly I go about doing this on a sitdown longarm machine. I use Golden Threads paper to trace rows of the design. this time though I wanted this to go all a bit quicker and I used 8 sheets of Golden Threads paper and stitched the traced design through that rather than tracing off the design 8 times.

As you can see I trace with a blue erasable marker. This is because when you rip out the paper there are always little specks left in the stitching and I just want to be careful not to transfer any markings onto the quilt.

A brief look at what this looks like stitched through

I remove the paper as I go along, except for the last bit which I need for the alignment of the next row

I have done this design before so it went rather quickly. However, this time I did a bit of a stuff up in row 3...it was getting close to dinner time and I was hurrying along placing a row onto the quilt ready to go  for the next day. When I started it again the next day, my natural perfectionism was a life saver. I made a very sloppy petal about 2 swirls in and decided to take it out...only to realise when turning to the back that I had aligned my row on the previous already stitched one, so I had 2 swirls stitched twice! I was happy that I discovered it and proceeded to take my stitching out which is something you can absolutely do with the paper, however you have to be super careful. The paper is wafer thin and rips easily. Complicating whas the fact that I had stitched my design through the 8 layers with a very large needle which made the paper even more likely to just split. After I removed all the stiches, put my frazzled paper in place

You can see here how the paper is starting to split. I decided to ignore that bit and stitched as best as I can around those split papers. Worked fine as I was used to the movement of the design by that stage, but did make me somehow anxious, as it is very hard to see how it is turning out with all the paper on top.

In general I follow the lines as best as I can however this particular design is stitched with a little bit of speed...I can imagine that on a longarm on the frame you would really lean into that which also happens to a lesser extent on the sitdown, so lines are not always followed precisely. I have learned not to worry about that too much, however I do make sure that I hit the points correctly as when I align the next row, I can be assured that they are in the right place. In addition I check how my row aligns against the pieced seam lines...not measuring, however  having a bit of a look whether I am still straight and whether design elements hit the same spot as I go along. Works absolutely perfectly every single time.

The quilt looks just lovely

...and the back

Now I can say with some confidence that none of the swirls would be exactly the same, however it reads as consistent and looks absolutely spectacular. So happy with how this turned out.

Altogether I used 9 rows to quilt this. Had to trace one more design to finish off and must say I do prefer to stitch on the drawn line rather than those little dot lines, however it was much quicker of course, using the stitched through rows.

So satisfying. 

Karin

To Do Tuesday - 21/12/22

Last week was a whirlwind of Christmas shopping. Not very organised this year...went to the city about four times! Now there is only food shopping left which we will have to do later in the week. I am looking forward to just relaxing.

Last week's goals were small, but achievable

- stitch a simple charm square quilt together from fabric that has been sitting in my stash for many years. 

- make a start on a new pattern, i.e. get the cutting of the fabric done

- prepare for Christmas which of course we left to the last minute again!

Well, Christmas shopping done ✔

Made a start on that little Charm Square Quilt. Had the squares already ready to go and managed to baste it and start the quilting. ✔

So pink and very cute. Decided beforehand that I wanted to do one of those edge-to-edge designs over it and made a start on it.

Explained this elsewhere on the blog (see one of the posts HERE) how I do this on a sitdown longarm machine. In brief...I use Golden Threads paper for this where I trace the design on and then stitch over this. Time consuming...yes, but so rewarding in the end.

Chose the Daisy Dotz design from Urban Elementz again, even though I have a number of other flower designs on hand. Thought that the leaves had to be in there as the fabric has little ladybugs on there. Love doing this...so relaxing.

This is what this looks like

I trace the design with a blue water soluble pen (you could also stitch through several pieces of papers without thread to avoid having to re-trace this over and over again). This ensures that I do not get accidental marks on my fabric. If anything it will be the blue residue of the marking which, of course, washes out.

Here are the first two rows

Love that design! As you can see I do take the paper out as I go along except for that little bit down the bottom...this is where the next two rows line up. Its got the last row stitched out and bitses of the next row drawn on, so you have two places to line up the next lot. Also check my stitching at this stage...tension, points and generally to get a bit of a look what that looks like. I do leave the basting in until I am totally finished and the pins on the bottom definitely will be removed when the next row is placed. I do attach the paper with removable glue dots (and the line of pins on the bottom and top) so that nothing moves too much as I go along.

Have several more rows to go since then and will finish this hopefully before Christmas.

Also made a start on a new pattern, however realised that my block sizes were wrong (like a nine patch that measured 10in???). As this is going to be a custom layout that meant painstakingly going in (EQ8) and changing every single element of the design to accommodate the change in block size. Got it done, however have not cut out my fabric as yet. That will have to wait for another day.

Linking up to Texas Quilt Gal for To Do Tuesday and wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas with lots of nice food, good company and hopefully some quiet time for a little bit of relaxed quilting.

Also linking up to Freemotion Mavericks at Quilting & Learning- What a Combo

Karin