FMQ October

Now that it is October I am back to FMQ. Just blissful! I did notice with the last quilt however that I probably should be piecing a bit more regularly, as my accuracy was woeful.

Never mind. Did some practice for the upcoming October 2015 FMQ Challenge over at Quiltshopgal. This month expert is Lori Kennedy from the Inbox Jaunt. Got her Craftsy class and started some practising the other night

Not sure what I am going to produce yet, but rather like that square flower and probably will design something around this. Maybe a sampler pillow of the different designs...Lori had some very nice border designs in her class, one of them being the paperclip design (see on top of first photo)...very neat.

Apart from that I have been spending much time on Instagram. You can find me @the quiltyarn...my kids got me into this and I must say that I am rather enjoying this, particularly over the last two weeks as I have been super busy at work and also at home. With Instagram I was able to just quickly put up a photo and move on. While scrolling around I came across Hexies for Healing about Carrie of @gotchacoveredquilting who was asking for some hexies so she could pass the time following some major surgery. The cause is close to my heart and so I spent Friday night making this little number

Just need to send it of...

While doing this hexagon I also stumbled across the Hexie Down Under #2 swap run by Bendigo Lioness. I was so tempted and nearly signed up...40 hexies until the 31/12/15! After much thought though, I resisted...calculating this through this would have meant about 3 hexies per week which does not sound that much, but with work, FMQ and life in general that had the potential to become stressful. They are running another hexie swap from January to March which I decided was much more feasible for me. Sounds like great fun.
However, having stitched that hexagon the other day  I again felt that this was so therapeutic, sitting there, hand stitching. So I went to work and cut out lots of hexagon shapes in all sorts of blue and white to stitch together at my own leisure.

But for the time being, back to FMQ...

Karin

WIP: Stretched Star Revisited

Well, what an adventure this quilt has been. After some discolouration after I got it wet to remove some marking I embarked on treating the quilt with Dylon Colour Run Remover. Did two treatments on the weekend and discovered to my horror that every alternative white patch in the last two rows had changed into this yellow-greenish colour! Did not take any photos...too horrendous to put on film. Not sure what happened... I wondered whether I had used a different type of white fabric, maybe in the last two rows?

Anyway, treated it again...well, this time the yellow-green discolouration had grown to cover most of the alternative patches, so at least I knew it was not another type of white I had used. I decided that this was it...I was not going to treat it again but just washed it (again!) in some wool wash. To my surprise, this seemed to make a difference in the yellow-green disclouration, so after this I washed it another two or three times. This time though I used normal washing powder, albeit on the gentle cycle. Yep, that did the trick...quilt is back to normal! You have to wonder what happened...maybe the yellow colour ran from the backing?

All told this quilt has been washed in the washing machine 6 -7 times. I must say I was very impressed that the quilt came out in one piece. Crinkly, but intact. So this morning I went ahead and blocked it as I had lost a good inch all around in crinkles.

Here is my very scientific method...I use the tiles as a reference point for straightness and then gently pull the moistened quilt into shape. As you can see there is some fullness left in the star blocks which really is to be expected as I did not quilt them down. All in all, a good result!

While I was mucking around with the quilt for the last two days,  I have been practising FMQ in preparation for this months' pillow challenge featuring expert Christina Cameli.

I love variegated thread

Not quite right

Looks better when the leaves interlock

I noticed that my machine does not like to go backwards in a straight line when stitching dead straight away from yourself...this makes sense really, as the thread goes from front to back through the needle and going backwards the thread places itself either left or right from the needle when stitching, creating a few wonky stitches when the thread switches from left to right. I mucked around with this for a very long time, trialling different thread and needles etc. only to find that it is the speed and movement that will make the difference. This was an interesting exercise...as you can see I do not practice for long on one thing and usually start breaking out into just stitching swirls and plumes. Yep, my machine definitely got a bit of a workout...mind you, these are just a few samples. I did use a lot of fabric up just practicing.

Time to get that pillow done.

Karin

FMQ fun

After a month of pure piecing I finally made some time to FMQ. I think I am almost enjoying the FMQ more than the actual piecing...

So, the projects on the floor got left behind ...were in use anyway as you can see

and I set out to play...

Gone a bit overboard with it...went around several times with different thread (white and light orange Aurifil 50/2 thread) to hide some imperfections (will post about the actual intent behind this later) and to also have a bit of a look at what this would look like. Looks actually a bit like a chalk drawing...amazing what you can do with thread...

This was most enjoyable...yep, obviously started another project.

Linking up to Anything Goes Quilt & Sew over at Marelize's blog Stitch by Stitch

Karin

More FMQ Practice

Done a bit more FMQ practice. The first design is from Angela Walter's Book 'Free- Motion Quilting' and is called Concentric Circles. My squares are 8 inches which is a bit limiting, however I decided to give it a go. The design is surprisingly easy to stitch and looks great...fairly dense but great texture. I think this is about the size of the circles that is manageable. Any bigger and I reckon one looses direction...at least that is what happened to me on the domestic machine.

 And here is Circuit Board, a design that we have been doing earlier on Leah Day's Quilt Along Wednesdays. I like the design but had not yet done it on the practice quilt. Bit of avoidance behaviour on my part, because I basically suck at it. Funny though, the design continues to look good even if you stitched it a bit wonky.

Karin