Little Doilie Project Finished

This was a lot of fun to do...it’s the first time I tried this and must say, I really enjoyed this. Got the doilie from the local Op shop for a dollar and placed it in place with spraybasting. Not quite round, but close enough.

I ran out of ideas for the delicate border of the doilie, so left that alone. If I had stitched that down I think it would have turned out too flat. Could not resist though and hyperquilted a little bit in the feathers, then decided that that was enough.

If you have read my previous posts, I used Bethanne Nemesh’ Lily Line ruler 3 for the frame around the doilie. The frame turned a bit into an overall background fill, but I like it. The ruler was an incredible time saver and the design was easy to execute (once I had decided on which parts of the ruler I was going to use). Fantastic tool!

Had a few issues with my tension for the pebbles on the new Capri. Lots of flatlining and cursing. I used Aurifil 50/2 for the quilting and similar to the Sweet 16, the thread behaved quite fiddly. I recently purchased the horizontal spool holder and ended up putting the almost empty spool on that, this time threading the thread straight down rather than looping the thread around the thread guide (as you are

supposed to do)...and to my utter surprise, no more tension issues! Have long suspected that the fiddliness of the aurifil thread has to do with the thread path rather than the tension setting. Will do some more testing around this...tried it the other day with a different colour thread, but with the spool on the ‘normal’ thread mast, again threading the thread straight down the thread guide and again had much better tension. Go figure...

Karin

Planning around your FMQ design

So you've decided on a FMQ design to go on your freshly completed quilt top...you sit down on your machine...and off you go!

Wouldn't that be great:)

Unfortunately, it is not quite as simple as that. I was thinking about this the other day and thought I might like to capture the steps that I go through to start FMQ on the actual quilt.
1. I start with doodling the design when I am coming to the end of construction of my quilt top...repeatedly...to see whether the design will flow for me and what areas are going to give me some trouble.
2. After doodling for a few days, I start drawing a bit more purposefully - drawing the design into rows, going from left to right and returning back from right to left ( this is in preparation for the quilt which will be quilted in quarters in a clockwise direction)

This is the design I chose for my baby quilt: Jester Hats by Wendy Sheppard. Saw this on SewCalGal's FMQ Challenge in 2012.

3. As you can see lots of doodling going on here...next I start thinking about scale.  For an overall design this step is important as I want the design to be somewhat consistent.  Would be great if one could just sit down and rattle it off, but I would not think that many people could do that. For my current quilt, I looked at the blocks which are 8" square and decided I would use them as a bit of a grid. The idea is that I would fill half of the block with the design as I travel along from the centre of the quilt to the outer border, hence my design would fit into a 3-4" space as I go along.

4. Next, trialling the design...I usually have a bit of a practice before I start on the quilt, and this involves a number of samples, as I am also trialling different threads, tension etc.

As you can see I used a fairly large sample and while this may appear quite wasteful in terms of fabric this is quite useful when aiming for a larger scale design. On my sample I started out a tad too narrow for my liking and then was able to spread it out a bit more to a nice open design only to loose the plot when I came down to the border fabric...I started to become a tad too big where my spaces in between started to be about 1" apart. Seems that my limit is somewhere around the 1/2" - 3/4 " spacing. That level allows me to stay reasonably consistent in the design. More practice is probably indicated to work a bit more on interlocking the design a bit better. Next one looked definitely better.

6. Now for the big step of actually going on the quilt. As odd as this sounds but I usually have a drawing of the design at the scale that I am aiming for close by so that I can look at it while I am sewing...this helps me to stay on track.

Incidentally I also am trying out my new Pinmoors. Only got one packet to start with, so I am using both, Pinmoors and basting pins on the quilt. 

Well, this is how far I got on the quilt...certainly gives a lot of texture to the quilt. Took me a while to get into a rhythm with this design and I struggled a bit with the scale at times, but I am glad I pushed past this and did not fall back into the familiar meandering.

Popping over to Leah Day's FMQ Project Link Up to see the progress of the Building Blocks Quilt that Leah has been working on.

Karin