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

Feather Doodling

I have been out of action since last Friday (including all of the weekend) with a mediocre migraine. Not uncommon for me so I take it in my stride. Have not progressed much with any of my projects but managed to do some doodling in some of my lighter moments.

As posted earlier I have been following the 2012 Freemotion Quilting Challenge at SewCalGal and while I am not actively participating I do try a few things here and there. Well, I obviously got the Feather bug (have a look at the great lesson on feathers by Diane Gaudynski featured in February 2012). I started practising some basic feather shapes freehand, concentrating on trying to get the shape right. This, initially did not work for me...my feathers were fairly mis-shapen and looked somewhat like spoons attached to the spine which affected each subsequent feather and the whole thing did not seem to work at all, i.e. as I went up the spine each subsequent feather tended to become even more elongated.

Then, all of a sudden, I seemed to 'get' it. The trick for me was the curve back to the spine and the spacing. I then proceeded to feather doodle over my whole sample and did not have any problems with filling up and evenly spacing my feather shapes along the spine....like magic.

How good does this look?  I was thorougly amazed with this (if I may say so myself)...here is the rest of the sample I doodled on. In the end I literally ran out of space otherwise I would have just continued and this, I guess, is how an addiction starts.

The only other thing to add is: While I am a bit time challenged and hence not able to participate in the Challenge itself I really appreciate  the effort of SewCalGal for organising and hosting this and would encourage others to check it out. But also, how absolutely generous is it of those teachers at the SewCalGal's Freemotion Quilting Challenge to share their time, skills and knowledge with other people across the globe. Sometimes it is just that one little thing or tip that will resonate and have the biggest impact.

Until next time

Karin