FMQ Friday- Table Runner Finished

Finished my feather border design on my table runner. Absolutely loved doing this, although going around took a very long time. Almost has a meditative quality as you have to stitch it in a fairly slow and controlled manner.

Already posted about this on Wednesday but thought I share some more info about the FMQ. The border design was done using a stencil, hence it looks super even.

Yep, would be great if one could do this completely freehand. I want to practice more feathers in the near future on one of my other quilts and will have to do them freehand for that. I wonder whether I should draw in not only the spine but also a line at each side of the feathers. That would then give me a very defined area to work in. Mind you, chances are, I will not get my lines to match up  (ha, ha...). 

The feathers compacted my piece more than I thought they would and I then had some puffiness in the blocks. That certainly put a spanner in the works as I had been so focussed on the feathers that I did not really think much about the blocks. In the end I decided to embellish the blocks with simple line designs. The trick here was to get all the lines on the white fabric as consistent as I could...that way some wonkiness in the printed fabric was hardly noticeable.

While ok, I still think there is something missing. It seems to need more of something, but I am not sure what else one could do with this block. Thought about doing some filling of the white patches, however this is fraught with difficulties, as it will make the shadowing of the seams underneath really noticeable.

Anyway, this piece was all about the feathers. All that's left now is the binding unless I come up with some other brilliant idea (and I might given that I keep staring at it all the time).



Linking up to FMQ Friday on the Freemotion Quilting Project with Leah Day.

Karin

FMQ - Beautiful Feathers

As you can see I am hopping from one project to the next...well there is some method to this madness.

Firstly, I am not keen on leaving those basting pins in for too long on my white table runner. 

They leave pretty big holes as it is and are well used...I have had marks from them in the past when I have taken my time with the quilting. Next quilt show I will look for those Pinmoors!

Secondly, I am in need of practice before I let myself loose on an all-over design for my baby quilt.
So I decided to continue on my table runner with a feather border. As usual, this took me ages to work out...I used a commercial stencil, however did not have a corner element, so I had to draw one in. No particular reason as to why I used a commercial stencil other than that I had one handy and it had the wavy-ness that I wanted. It would have taken me ages to get a consistent wavy line across the length of the runner (I need to get one of those flexible curvy rulers). Must say I do not enjoy marking a quilt and definitely do not enjoy making a stencil fit a particular space. Bit of a challenge to get that consistent. In the end it was ..."close enough is good enough".

I think I prefer doing feathers freehand, maybe just having a wavy line to follow as I believe you develop a bit of a style of your own with feathers. Having done a freehand feather border not so long ago, it felt strange following these pre-drawn feathers. Mind you all good practice.

Here is a bit of a look...I am approximately half way through...I am using Aurifil 50/2 thread (love this thread), backtracking over the top of every alternate feather. I am taking my time and apart from a few glitches here and there it is going really well.

Absolutely love the look of this. I really enjoy doing feathers...actually going a bit through a feather phase at the moment. Very pleased with my efforts, I think it sets the blocks off really nicely. This is exactly how I had visualized this project...ha, ha, that does not happen that often!
Should have this finished by next week.

Linking up to Leah Day's Freemotion Quilting Friday.

Karin

FMQ Friday

More FMQ fun...

After a month of piecing I really felt the need to do some FMQ, so I decided to repeat the little exercise that Patsy Thompson had set in SewCalGal Freemotion Quilting Challenge in December 2012. This time I chose black fabric...(see my previous version HERE)

Also tried Don Lin's method of marking the fabric with black tulle which was demonstrated on SewCalGal Freemotion Quilting Challenge during April 2012...yes, that worked absolutely fine. I used a white marker to trace the design on the black tulle, heat set it and transferred it to the fabric with a silver pencil. To spice things up a bit I decided to do some trapunto...now that was interesting. Probably should have done a bit more reading around that. I only used one additional layer of cotton batting and secured the design with water soluble thread. I cut away the batting with my little embroidery scissors and was quite amazed that I did not cut into the fabric...after layering and basting the piece I then chose a light orange thread to stitch out the design, trying to stitch next to the white water soluble thread...this was really hard to do and I must say the white thread was very distracting. Once finished, I sprayed the design with water and the thread dissolved, however....yes, there is always a however, the thread might not have been the best quality and while it dissolved, it left some sort of sticky residue in some places and I also noticed that in some places it had pulled up the bobbin thread slightly, so I had these tiny white dots everywhere. Also, in retrospect, I should have put two pieces of batting behind the design as it hardly showed at all...

Not to worry, I then stitched over my design in white thread and again in the light orange thread just for good measure (as you can see I had quite a bit of fun with it) to have a look what this would look like and to cover up some of those more suspect areas. To my amazement it turned out quite nice...if you like your design to show up like a chalk drawing (ha, ha...). And then I played...this was so relaxing...did some microstippling and started filling the piece with various borders. My stitching is a bit 'wonky' in parts, not having FMQ for a while, but I soon got back into the rhythm of it.

I just love FMQ...the effects you can achieve with thread are just amazing.

Linking up to Leah Day's Freemotion Quilting Friday to have a bit of a look what others have been up to.

Karin

FMQ-McTavishing

Finally...

I have been piecing since Christmas (non-stop) and have 2 items ready for basting...while I was doing that, I nearly stopped half way through to continue to FMQ. Had to be really firm with myself to keep on task. Have another project that needs finishing before I can devote my time to FMQ again. Don't you love those self imposed targets!

Really, two sewing machines would be great, then you could hop in between. Mind you, I would still have the same problem in that I would be drawn to FMQ rather than the piecing. Bit of a dilemma at times.

Anyway, had to have a play and tried McTavishing after watching Leah's video. Not that easy actually in terms of working out where to go next. Love the texture though and am thinking about where I could incorporate this design im my projects.

Back to piecing...

Linking up to Freemotion Quilting Friday on the Freemotion Quilting Project.

Karin

Freemotion Quilting Friday

Looking at Leah's Goddess Quilt, I began to think about what message I would like to give to myself this year and without hesitation I thought "Be kind to yourself". Coming into the New Year I already had started to feel the subtle pressure of joining in on several different things, plus have about five different projects of my own in my head (and two already started) and also have to complete some tasks that are leftover from last year. As I have a tendency to stretch myself too thin all the time, I thought that I might put on the brakes a bit for a while. For the time being I will concentrate on the tasks that I have set myself for the beginning of the year. I will follow along on the progress of the Goddess quilt and see whether I have some time later on, but if I start that now, everything else will just fall behind and I will become hopelessly overwhelmed. Maybe I just do a little practice sampler again to try out different designs. Not sure yet.

My new FMQ project is a Wholecloth quilt, albeit in its infant stages. Have played with the idea for a while, however must say that I do not have any experience with this. I took my little design and played around with it and managed to come up with an idea for the centre. The next problem was how to draft this into a whole design that I can transfer to fabric. Played around with paper for a while but in the end decided that I needed to get it drawn into the computer so that I could resize it and print out a quarter section of it for marking onto fabric.

I had some time over Christmas to tackle this and here is my first unpolished attempt:

This needs serious adjustment as the little hook picture does not fill out each square, hence just stands disconnected. However, on the upside, this gives me something to work from...

Have no idea on how big to make this, but started out with each hook being about 4 - 5 inches. Also seeing it in print, I thought that I might need something in each corner. Actually finally getting it into the computer was great as it allowed me to play around with it and try different orientations and arrangements.

I like this as a centre...no idea yet what I will do in the surrounding area. Also got a bit discouraged the other day when I started to look around on the internet, however had to remind myself, this will be my little wholecloth and it may just turn out very simple and plain and that  will be alright. For some reason I am a bit fixated on this. Isn't it strange how some things just need to be pursued...

Linking up to Leah Days Freemotion Quilting Friday




Until next time

Karin