WIP: Wholecloth - Skeleton Complete

Completed the major stitching on my Wholecloth (except for one little line that is missing which has gone completely unnoticed).

Did some major stitching this morning to finish this off as my machine is due for a service and if I don't do it now I will never get around to it).

This was a lot of work, however I thoroughly enjoyed myself...very relaxing process if you take it easy and just go bit by bit. You cannot see it very well but I made a right old mess out of the marking and I was keen to give my Wholecloth an initial spray with water to get rid of it. I don't like leaving the markings in for too long...don't quite trust it, even though I have not had any major disasters with it. For this piece though, I did make a few mistakes and had several markings on this top, one in blue and the other one in purple to distinguish where I wanted to go. I had to wait with the rinsing as I needed to stitch in the spine for some feathers on the outside...first marking was nice except I had it all the wrong way around which mucked up the corner, so today I went over that drawing with my purple marker to complete the spine. All looked pretty messy, so I was keen to get rid of that.

Nice day today, so here it is on the washing line, drying

Now you can see that I am using two different Aurifil colours...grey and light beige.

Also discovered a fair number of little flaws...some sloppiness on my part in burying the threads and some marks that I did not see before. Not too bothered with it, as it still will go for a wash when it is finished and the flaws...well, can't be helped. Looking forward to start the FMQ on some of the areas that still need filling. Also will do some more work on the grids...the fun is just starting...

This is my Wholecloth quilt version from Cindy Needham's class ' Machine Quilting Wholecloth Quilts'. I can't recommend this highly enough...the class is very good and I am learning a lot...also, how good is it that you can ask questions! You literally have expert advice at your finger tips. I did have a question and posted it on the discussion pane and Cindy answered virtually straight away. I have used this feature before in other classes and this is just so helpful and actually quite incredible...like being in a class room. If you never taken a class, or are to busy to attend classes physically, I can really recommend this.

Linking up to Let's Bee Social #120 over at Sew Fresh Quilts

Karin

May 2015 FMQ Challenge

This is a very long post...I reckon I need to split up process and product a bit in the future.

The expert this month is Cindy Needham. Again, I was able to make use of the Craftsy classes that I have purchased in the last two months. I have both of Cindy Needham's classes and have watched them with interest over the last few months. I am yet to make  the Wholecloth quilt...got as far as enlarging the design and taping it altogether.

One of the things that struck me when I was first watching the classes was Cindy's exploration of ready-made stencils and what you can do with them. Actually I was blown away with some of the quilts that she had produced using two very simple stencils, just alternating them. So, for this challenge I used this idea and had a look around for a suitable stencil as I did not just want to repeat what she had done with the Double Wedding Ring stencils.

I recently got the Score of Four stencil from Full Line Stencils and decided to use the ugly duckling on the far right in the top row.

Was not sure whether it would work repeating this design over a larger area, but thought it would be fun to try out. The stencil comes to 5" placed on point and of course, I chose the more fiddly approach, putting it on point. Actually not a lot of planning went into this, it was more like...let's just see where this will take us.



I did not use white chalk to mark this as I could hardly see it on the beige fabric and also did decide against the blue chalk as the blue chalk marks do not come out easily (did a trial on some calico and the blue marks literally needed washing and scrubbing to come out...will not be using the blue chalk again). In the end I traced the design using a light box.

Stitched out repeated design placing stencil on point

After stitching out the first few, I decided to make it into a tile design rather than spreading it over the entire top. Had to erase some of my other blue markings carefully which looked messy, but I needed to make room for the next idea of putting grids on the sides. Ever since the first pillow I have become rather fond of grids (rather odd as I used to really not like them at all).

Got carried away and stitched out all four sides with a 1/2in grid which, in itself, looked great.

But can you see what is happening? I now had the blobs of unquilted area really come to the foreground. Yep, did not consider this at all...after some indecision, ended up stitching them down with just a simple cross through them. This made the whole picture look much more uniform.

Much better...after this, I tried some of the grid designs that Cindy teaches in her class "Design It, Quilt It".

And here it is...the finished product

Finished pillow

For some reason this did not photograph that well...very rainy, low light day today!

My favourite - 1/2in cathedral window grid

Double grid

Checkerboard grid

Combination grid (not part of Cindy's class, just gave that a go)

The back - oversized cathedral window grid

Linking up to the May 2015 Freemotion quilting Challenge over at Quiltshopgal. Thank you Darlene for hosting this and thank you, Cindy, for those wonderful classes.

 Karin

Amy's FMQ Adventures Link Up

Have been playing around with the new ruler from Accents in Design that arrived in the mail on Monday. So, I am a bit behind everybody...but just had to try it out

Did some grid work, practising some straight lines with the ruler and then filled the squares with some random designs

The ruler works fine, except I had to experiment a bit with what FMQ foot to use...in the end, my Sensormatic FMQ foot was the best as it is fairly broad on the sides, so it glides very nicely against the ruler. The only problem I had was that I do not seem to be able to make nice 90 degree corners with it...maybe that is just practice.

Then I got really sidetracked...as I do. I have this book "One Line at a Time" by Charlotte Warr Andersen which is about grid work. She uses both FMQ and quilting with the walking foot. The book contains an array of designs and I was really in the mood to just play a little bit. I have had this book for years and have not actually used any of the designs.

So, this is what I trialled

The book has a few strips of Inchie Ruler Tape, so I used this to guide my sewing. I based the design on a 1inch grid. This was a design that would have been stitched with a walking foot and after having done it using FMQ, I would have to agree that it probably would look sharper if I had used the walking foot. As you can see I could not keep my lines entirely straight. But how cool is this design... you can see I have some 1/2inch lines in there...ignore them, I was going to do something entirely different initially.

Box Kite pattern

While I used the Inchie tape, in the book, the author also shows how to mark the design on the grid with a marker of your choice. I must say, having tried out the Inchie Ruler tape, I am sold. I will need to get me some of this...that was super easy. All I had to do was stick 3 Inchie tape sections on my block, remove the middle one and then stitch the design in the middle following the markings of the ruler tape. Then the process was repeated, row for row, and column for column. Brilliant !

Linking up to Amy's FMQ Adventures

Karin

UFO Sunday #5

This week was much better. I felt back in control and got started on quilting my English Paperpiecing WIP/UFO.  Doubts were put aside and I just pursued what I liked for this quilt top.

In the end, I decided on a grid which took me ages to work out, as it is an irregular grid across the quilt top, quilting 1/4 inch off the seams of selected 1 inch squares. The overall grid that emerges is about 2.5" X 3". While the rectangles should be true rectangles in a perfect world this grid is slightly uneven as I thought it was more important for the overall look to keep to the 1/4inch spacing approximately correct rather than stress with the measurements. This is not how a normal grid would be done however that was the only way that I could think of placing a grid over the hexagons where I would be able to avoid the seams. If this was perfectly pieced (which it is not) one could extend the grid and place 1/2inch lines on either side of the major lines in a different colour to make it a bit  more interesting, I thought. I did not do it because in the end I thought that this might really draw attention to some of the inaccuracies. Like this it is not noticeable , I think, unless you get a ruler out and measure it (which I, of course, did do). Measurements aside, I was really happy with the end result and then tackled the border design.

The grid:

Normally I FMQ my borders, just winging it around the corners, but for this little piece I wanted a more formal border. Found a nice continuous design in Quilting Dot to Dot by Cheryl Barnes, however could not make it fit within my border.

As you can see the design actually reverses around the corner. I made several copies on paper trying all sorts of ways to place this. In the end I drew the corner elements for the top border and then tried to link up the design in the middle....problem was that the design does not link up as it is coming towards the centre in a reversed way (angles are completely different). I then tried to come up with another way to combine this, putting another heart in, having it literally freestanding in the middle...all a bit odd.

In the end I came up with this after many hours of trying to put this together only to decide I did not like it that much (ha, ha...the trials and tribulations of quilting). Totally wrong design (what was I thinking?), I needed something more dainty. (Definitely keep my drawing though, this would look nice on a country quilt).

I definitely dislike working out and marking border designs...I am no good at it and I continually struggle with trying to make a design fit into a space. Actually this is the reason I originally started FMQ  as this allowed me to just stitch a border design free form in that space. I did mainly leafy type of designs and with time they became pretty consistent. The only problem is that it limits me to a few selected designs.

Anyway, found another stencil (which was adjustable) and this is the end result....

This was a great exercise in trying to follow straight lines. The thread on the photo looks white...it is actually dark rose (Gutermann 50/3) which will blend in more once all the chalk is removed from behind the thread.


















I am actually finished (almost)...cannot believe it!! Yep, while a bit frilly and old fashioned, I like it. In fact, if I had been better organised and planned out, this would have looked great with a scalloped border around it to match the stencil design. Never mind, I am thrilled to bits that I finished this...I was so out of my comfort zone with this. While I am actually not a great fan of hexagons, there is something about this I really like...and I do like the fabric.


Linking up to UFO Sunday on Leah Day's Freemotion Quilting Project.

Karin