A bit of Ruler Quilting

For the last charity quilt I did not feel like anything major and decided to just put an allover meander over it. Then I remembered having watched an Amanda Murphy video on FB where she uses the Star template to spruce up her meander. Decided to give that a go to make it a bit more interesting and to see how this would flow when doing the meander. 

I used the 2-1/2in Star shape

Here it is in action

As you can see I have the needle in but the foot up while moving the template in. I am always very careful with rulers as I don't want to hit the ruler by mistake. I only lower the foot once the template is in the middle...only then do I position the template into place.

The meander with the Star template was much easier then I thought. Did not give me any issues at all in terms of quilting the overall meander. Fitted nicely into the overall scale. Not that you can see much of it on this scrappy quilt, but I know it is there 😀

Onto the next charity quilt...

This is a bigger quilt and as usual I basted it first before doing anything else.

Contemplated my thread choice for a long time...in the end I decided to run with the blue colour of the rectangles. Also laboured over the quilting choices as I am a bit busy with other things at the moment and still got another 4 charity quilts to complete after that. I have got about a week to complete this before visitors arrive from overseas! In the end though the quilt won...I think it wants an allover Baptist Fan design! This is going to take a while but the quilt is perfect for this design. The bottom edge is nice and straight and also the local group gave me cotton batting for some of the quilts in this lot, so it is very flat...really enjoying quilting on cotton for a change as the charity quilts usually come with wool batting.

So I made a start today using my fantastic Baptist Fan Rulers again. Can't recommend the Baptist Fan rulers from Michael Quilts enough! I do think that they are the best on the market. The set I have has 1in spacing which I enjoy as it takes up a lot of space (3in, 5in, 7in, 9in and 11in template). On the sitdown of course the size can be somewhat challenging but if you take your time, go slow and deliberate it is all do-able. I have done a number of quilts now with these templates and still think they are the best thing since sliced bread.

So nice!

Apart from this I am still working on my scrappy log cabin quilt...I am up to 65 blocks...only 5 more to go. Must say that I lost my mojo for this. It would have been easier to just use 1-1/2in strips for this rather than strips of all sizes. At times I had difficulties judging my strips to get to the right end measurement of the block which at times was a hassle. Happy to say though it has made a noticeable dent in the strip department.

Also have been doing some quilt pattern work and promptly started another design for an Eye-Spy Quilt. I have got this stack of fabric that needs putting together but I do not want just a traditional squares quilt. Lots more work to be done on that before I can actually start on this

...and I got so many of those 😬

So, no time to waste...got lots to do!

Karin

Edge-to-Edge Quilting

Have finished another charity quilt, this time though with an edge-to-edge design. Could not resist, using the beautiful 'Ambrosia' design by Hermione Agee. It is a feather design about 6.5in wide. Given that I am now back on the sit down machine I had to use my trusted Golden Threads paper to draw this one out, row by row, then align each row to the next and slowly working my way across the quilt. This is probably where I most miss the frame...really enjoyed that on the frame. Mind you there is equally lots of alignment that you have to do on a frame. I feel the real difference is in the time it takes to take all that paper out of the quilt which I usually do as I go along. The stitching out takes very little time as the design is bigger and flowing nicely with bigger open curves so you do quilt them in BSR1 with a little bit of speed. 

The charity quilt lent itself beautifully to this design. Old-fashioned floral type fabrics in a simple railroad like set up.

Also, this quilt had cotton batting for a change which I really enjoyed.

Some closeups

And then I got side tracked...

Started knitting a little jumper for the grandchild. As so often with me I had my heart set on a top down rolled collar jumper pattern. You can find that pattern on Ravelry under Top Down Roll Raglan by Melinda Goodfellow.

I used to be a very prolific knitter when I was younger, so went ahead to re-work the whole pattern to suit my wool which had a different gauge. This took me ages to do...

Started knitting...this is really quite an easy jumper to knit, but boy I am out of practice. It is knitted top down, then split for the arms and continued in the round, so really very simple. When it came to the arms I started to have some issues with having big unsightly holes from the stitches stretching. Was not impressed and had to re-do this a number of times. Also had to use DPNs for the arms which was a bit of a hassle as the arms were so small. Lucky I had done some sock knitting in recent years, so at least that part worked out well.

Eventually though this got done and came out very cute. Even my sizing almost worked out. I was aiming for a 2 yr old jumper but with my re-calculations it came out at a maybe 18 mths old jumper, so the child will be able to wear it this winter. Bonus!

Took me the longest time though...still got more of that green wool left and will be on the lookout for another jumper in a bigger size.

But for now it is back to quilting for me. This is what is on my list:

- got a whole container full of charity quilts, 

-some new I spy 10in fabric squares for an I spy quilt, 

-another 10 blocks for my scrappy Courthouse blocks quilt

-got the batting for a jelly roll rug

-...and several finished quilt tops in the cupboard waiting patiently to be done!

Happy Quilting!

Karin

Finishes For This Month

Well, where are we at?

I have continued practising my quilting on the new to me studio frame. Was very encouraged by my evolving pantograph skill and went ahead and finished one of the panels I had sitting in the cupboard

I tried one of the new pantographs on there that arrived just before Christmas. It's a new design from Hermione Agee from Lorien Quilting called Airy Clouds. Very cute for little baby quilts.

While still a bit wobbly here and there I am definitely feeling that I am getting the hang of this.

After that one I continued on the charity quilts and did this beauty.

The photo really does not do it justice. Really liked this quilt and decided to quilt it with the pantograph that came with the Bernina pantograph kit. It was a bit bigger than the ones I had done before, so I thought that this would go rather quickly. The pantograph paper roll itself was fairly large and after much head scratching I cut a little bit off on both the top and bottom as my laser was just too far away. Did not make a difference in the pattern as the cut off parts were empty paper and a little bit of the ghost rows. Anyway, my assumption that this would be quick was a bit wrong as the design meanders rather dramatically over the roll and the advancement is in fact very small. The pattern though was just right for this quilt...it is called Zest by Patricia Ritter. I did not practice this beforehand and went straight onto the quilt and to my amazement felt that this pattern was even easier than the one before.

Came out beautifully

Really enjoyed doing this one and looks absolutely fabulous on this quilt.

Then I had one more charity quilt to finish. Now this one gave me a bit of a headache as I am not used to think through an entire quilt before I even start, however with the frame it is absolutely necessary in terms of considering the space you have got available, the quilting path (i.e. minimising the starts and stops) and in general how to tackle the whole beast. This quilt was ackward in the way it was pieced. Very pretty with very pretty fabrics but in the centre it had only 4in blocks set on the diagonal which left an enormous amount of negative space. If this was my quilt that would be great as one would densely quilt the background down...so many possibilities! However for the charity quilts the brief is not to over-quilt them so that they stay nice and soft to the touch.

Thought long and hard about this one and in my mind it became 'The Art of Minimal Quilting'. In considering this quilt I knew that I had to put some sort of secondary design in that vast open space. This is what I decided on

Nothing fancy just some simple line design and the motif thrown in for good measure. Again, if it was my quilt I would have put a feather wreath in there and maybe a grid behind it, however I don't mark these charity quilts with the blue marker as they are likely not washed beforehand...the risk of bleeding is just too high in addition to being a lot more work. So whatever I do on these charity quilts has to be done without marking (or very minimal tick marks with the air erasable marker) unless it is a dark quilt where I can use some chalk.

The quilt turned out lovely

I also had thought to do more in the triangle border, however discovered that the maker had pressed the seams open at times and to the side at other times so I abandoned that idea and just did some 1/4in echo lines in there. When I started I realised that I had not considered the outer border. Wanting to keep this as simple as possible, I just put some large piano keys in there. This meant that I could stop in the batting and then advance and start again. My secondary design was tricky as I had to advance the quilt, do the top of the design, then go back and do the echo lines and the motifs in the area above...not something I had thought about beforehand. Also had a definite plan this time for the ditching but then did not follow it! So again there was a lot of stopping and starting but this time it all looks very nice and tidy on the back, so I seem to be getting better. Very happy with how this turned out.

So, I am getting more used to it, but the different process is what throws me a bit. Also discovered that my leader cloth has not been attached straight on the top take up bar. Was unsure about this but have noticed that it does make a difference in terms of rolling it up straight, so this needs to be attended to. I will have to fix this by taking it off, replacing the tape and putting it on again. Not looking forward to that but it will have to be done. 

Apart from this I have been doing some piecing for Natalia Bonner's 99 Strip Design series.

It's a free quilt along aimed at improving your freemotion quilting skill. For me it is a good opportunity to improve my control of the machine on the frame while learning some fun new designs. The quilt along will stretch over four of those strip quilts...I think I might do a second one however that will probably be enough for me. Should be fun though.

Happy quilting!

Karin

More Ruler Work and Two More Finishes

Its been a productive couple of weeks...managed to finish all of the charity quilts ready to be delivered next week.

Had a lovely 'I Spy' quilt to finish. Given its colourful fabric I just meandered over it. Still find that the most effective and fast ways to finish some of the more scrappy type quilts.

Nearly got side tracked again in going through my stash to find similar fabric that could be used for an 'I Spy' quilt. Such a good isea and a fun project! Restrained myself though and kept going with the next charity project.

Now this one took a bit longer as I had to ditch the seams first but then I got going with some simple curves in the blocks. What started out as just wanting to do a motif in the larger yellow squares turned to an allover design. Really enjoy using Lisa Calle's Pro Echo rulers!

Put a piano key border around it as well using a blend in purple colour. Came out great and finished it off nicely.

Next will be another baby quilt panel that I will quilt up for one of my daughter's friends who is expecting and then my machine will go in for a spa day. I had some issues with my stitch regulator...minor, and maybe related to the particular project I was working on. Experienced some racing of the needle at odd times. This has since stopped and could very well be attributable to the sliding mat I have around my needle plate...not sure. I thought that maybe the edges of that might have been catching the fabric, so I have now taped this down a bit better and have not experienced this again. But in speaking to the dealer we decided that we may as well have a bit of a look and while at the shop the machine might as well get cleaned and oiled on the inside. Not strictly speaking necessary, but can't hurt...I have had this machine now for over four years and while Bernina talks about it only having to go for service at 30 million stitches I have since heard different viewpoints. In the end I contacted Bernina some time back asking around service and they had said that it was recommended to have your machine looked at every couple of years to make sure everything runs fine. As I am thinking about putting my machine on the frame at some stage later this year I thought it might be a good idea to get the machine running as best as it can. (assuming that I will have a horrendous adjustment period).

That's all from me today...have a nice quilty weekend!

Karin

Gridwork on a Charity Quilt

Have not completely finished my baby quilt, however the binding is on and it just needs to be handstitched to the back.

Was itching to stitch so I made a start on the pile of charity quilts I have sitting here. First one I picked up is a cute ballerina panel quilt in pastel pink tones. Decided to try a new thread on this that I purchased at the last quilt show. It is 50wt Konfetti from Wonderfil threads. 

Now when trialling new thread I go by what experience has taught me over the years. This thread is different to Aurifil 50/2 thread in that it is thicker and feels more cottony, so I assumed it was 50/3 thread. In fact it felt very much like the Mettler thread cone I used for the last few charity quilts. So I decided to use the Mettler setting (i.e. tension and speed) that I kept on my machine for this thread and no surprise, it was just about right. Also used this thread on the bobbin which turned out to be a bit of a hassle in terms of the tie offs. On my machine which is a Bernina Q20, I have a programmable tie off function.

It is set to something like 4 or 5 stitches before you start off. With Aurifil 50/2 that gives me a very neat tie off. With this thread it was more like a horrendous knot...very unsightly and hard to digest. Absolutely a nightmare to bury in your quilt. Tried different ways to counter-act this, i.e. starting off carefully in Manual, making a few stitches on the spot and then taking off in Regulated mode but still, the thread kept making these unsightly knots. This slowed me down there for a while...in the end I used the Manual mode to start off with some very small stitches and then moving over to the Regulated mode. I think if this was my own quilt I was quilting I would put something like Decobob in the bobbin which is an 80 wt thread...I think the knotting issue would be far less. Anyway, I have a whole cone of this so I continued with it, as the stitching looked fine otherwise and one big plus...this thread has absolutely no lint!

For the ballerina quilt I initially decided to do the center panel in a meander and then do some ruler work in the borders, however I did not really like that idea. The problem with the charity quilts is that I cannot really mark them a lot other than using a bit of chalk. The fabric is likely not pre-washed and getting rid of the blue marker with water could lead to disasters (think colour run). Maybe not so relevant in this pink quilt but it is also winter over here, so I would have problems getting that dried in a hurry.

Looking at it I thought a grid would look nice over the ballerinas. Have not done this on the sitdown machine before over an entire quilt, so that was going to be a good challenge. Now, if this was my own quilt, I would definitely pre-mark this before basting and then just follow my lines but that was not an option here. So I needed to come up with something different. In the end I used masking tape.

Found the center of the panel first. I did not trust the straightness of the panel, so that is why I did not start in the corners. Maybe it would have been fine, but I don't know...could not think that through. Started in the center and did my 45 degree angle from there. Put two lines in for good maesure to see how accurate I would end up after the first line because I did this after the quilt sandwich was all put together and this has a puffy wool batting, so I was not quite confident that this would work out. Did the first two lines and it did look alright, so I continued without the tape basing every subsequent line on the previous one, going very slowly with carefully aligning my ruler. I used the Handiquilter straight line ruler for this which is about 9 in long, so it was bit by bit, moving the ruler along, following the previous line. I made the lines 2 in apart to match the pieced second border. Was not that confident that it would turn out accurately when I started the crosshatch as I had to move a fair amount of quilt around on the diagonal with a fair amount of puff from the wool batting. Aligned my straight ruler on the previous lines but also used some additional 45 degree lines to keep the angle as consistent as I could. But wow...to my surprise, it turned out brilliantly

Even measured the squares...yep, more or less 2in, looking nice and square. Not that it matters that much if it was out a bit but I was expecting much more inaccuracy. Now to that checkerboard border. Will put some curves in there and finish off the outer border with a bit of a scallop. Still undecided whether I will quilt the smaller 1-1/2in borders down or leave them unquilted.

This, of course, is all taking a bit longer than anticipated, but I felt a bit like experimenting. For a kid's quilt this is quite long and larger than usual. Given that this worked out well, a simple grid is a really good option for a smallish baby quilt. Definitely will do this again.

Karin

Progress Report

Well, the AMQF has come and gone. Four days of all things quilting. I went every single day...not exactly how I had it all planned out but with having to drop off my quilt and picking it up, retail hall and one class it just turned out that way.

My quilt looked nice on the black background. It won third place and got a beautiful yellow ribbon. Loved it!

Got to do one class with Bethanne Nemesh 'From A to Zen' which was very good (as usual) and a group of us got talking to her after the class. Was able to have a very close look at some of the quilts she had brought over, including some class samples of the classes that I had done previously online. This was a bit special, I must say.

I did allocate a whole morning to exploring longarm frames and machines...have been thinking about this for a while by now and before I went to the show I did a fair amount of research into the topic in order to be a bit prepared. As so often happens when consulting the internet, I got quite confused with all the different choices (and we don't have that much choice in Australia!). Anyway, I was wondering how difficult it would be to get used to quilting on a frame versus on the sitdown machine...in previous quilt shows I have had a few moments here and there on various machines, but nothing ever quite seriously. So this time I really had a very good look and try on some machines to see how difficult it would be for me to maybe make that switch.

Must say that I got a bit side tracked in my research, lured by the cost of various set ups. As I really would want to do edge-to-edge quilting I started looking at computerized set ups which is insanely expensive. I would absolutely love to have a set up like this but am reluctant to give up my sit down machine. So I started looking at cheaper set ups and was able to test these at the show. Not to mention the brands but what I thought was a great deal (longarm, frame plus computer) felt absolutely horrendous to stitch on. Tried a higher model of the same brand which was better but that would mean that I would again hit over $20000 if I wanted a computerized set up. In the end I went to the Bernina stand. One try on the Bernina Q20 on the frame and I was sold...it was like day and night. I know my machine and I obviously think it is a good machine but the difference in operation on the frame compared to others was astounding. The machine was extremely light and easy to manoeuvre and I was able to stitch basic meandering patterns in about 5 minutes. Obviously I would need more practice to do the fine detailed quilting that I am used to but at least I was able to ascertain that I would be able to make that transition after a bit of practice. I had a really great time with the sales person...she even let me try some rulers which was also quite easy going. Talked through all the options, different frames, accessories needed etc., marvelled at the quality of the frames and this helped me greatly to get my thinking straight. I have got the machine and now that I know that I could make that transition with a bit of practice, this really opened it up for some decision-making in the future. All I would need is a frame and the space for it...the computer that comes with the Bernina is out...just too costly. Unfortunately I cannot justify that expense ($24000 for the computer system alone) as I am not intending to set up a business. However went away really quite happy after having done all the research and reassured myself that indeed this would be an option for me, now it is just a matter of time and space. Will have to wait a while...we are planning some renovations over the latter part of the year and various other things are happening. But there is no hurry, I love my sitdown Bernina and when the time is right I just plonk my machine on a frame rather than looking at getting an additional machine of a different brand. 

After this little adventure I have started back on the charity quilts. Managed to pin and baste two quilts in one hit

Really felt like some ruler quilting and started today after having spent a day stitching -in-the-ditch.

As this is a charity quilt I only ditched the major seams otherwise I would have had to spent another day just ditching. The intersections of this quilt were horrendous...at times like little hard pebbles. Also think that the fabrics used in this quilt are quite old or maybe the quilt top is quite old. Everything felt a bit more movable. In order to secure all this I decided to quilt a simple line design, semi-continuous depending on whether I remembered where to go next. Would have liked to do an individual motif in the white squares, however that would have taken forever. This way I literally zoomed along finishing half of the quilt in one go today. I stitched the curves with the Pro Echo curve no 6 which made a nice deep curve in the coloured squares and was also the right size for the white squares. Looks quite nice and will hold this all together. Also tried a different thread today...Mettler Silk Finish 50wt...no problem at all, stitched very nicely, but then again my machine stitches nicely with any thread, just a matter of getting the tension adjustment right.

So, that's where I am at...next on the agenda is some piecing of a sweet little baby quilt.

Karin

The Great Illusion

I have been hard at work finishing the last charity quilt out of the pile that I had. With this particular quilt I was just not feeling it and decided to do a minimum of quilting-in-the-ditch on it just to get it done.

So I went around all the blocks only to realise in the end that this just would not do. The blocks were way too large to just leave them at 8in unquilted. As much as I did not want to do any further work on it, minimally quilted like this would make the quilt literally unusable. One wash and the pieced blocks would have puffed out like there is no tomorrow.

This is actually why I like quilting the charity quilts...there is a lot of problem-solving that one has to do. As with some of the other charity quilts the mere mortals who pieced this together did a fairly haphazard job...not bad, but literally none of the intersections met, some of the seams were changing direction half way through a row and the measurements were a little bit out here and there. Nothing too bad, but definitely something to consider when quilting it. I could already see that some of my ditched lines were a bit crinkly because of non-matching seams. First at all I had to stitch down every single alternate block. To make it more interesting for myself I decided to practice securing my thread when starting and stopping in order to just cut it off. I do struggle with that as I am used to burying my threads, however for this piece this would have taken ages to complete, so I bit the bullet and decided to cut off my threads. 

The Q20 has an automatic tie off which works really well in the beginning of a line but not so reliably at the end of a line. Thought about Amanda Murphy's method of beginning and ending a line...she uses the stitch regulator to set it to about 22 or more stitches as she starts off and then switches back to normal stitch length. Must say that that has never worked really well for me...the machine races to produce the tiny stitches over a tiny length and it just feels really unnatural. So in the end I decided to go back and forth with tiny, tiny stitches in manual mode to start off, then switched to stitch regulation to sew my line and do the ending in the reverse, i.e. tiny stitches towards the end back and forth in manual. Then I cut the threads off and lo and behold, the world did not come to an end! My stitches appeared secured. Maybe not quite as clean as I normally like it but it saved a lot of time.

Then came the thinking about what to actually quilt in the alternate block. This is what I went with

The area around the tiny square should have measured 2-1/2in but rarely did and the surrounding intersections did more often than not not match. I decided to put the lines at 3/4in apart starting from the outside in and leaving the tiny square unquilted, so it would pop out. There was method to my thinking, i.e. the x- blocks were not aligned properly hence my 3/4in was always a bit out, however going inwards and trying to meet each line as I went around it looked fairly consistent due to the 3/4in space. This left an approximate 1in space unquilted, big enough to hide any inconsistencies that occurred in the tiny triangles. Had I gone one more line I think it would have emphasized the inaccuracies. If you go with a ruler you would of course see that there was hardly any consistency, however the overall look signaled consistency. Was fairly curious of how this would turn out.

To my surprise I quite liked the look of it in the end

Glad this is done and very surprised on how neat this turned out. Added bonus...I was finally forced to get a hang of cutting my threads off! (otherwise this would have taken ages!)

Getting back to To Do Tuesdays: I am weeks behind as we went on holidays in between, then I had to quickly write up my Etsy pattern and then I got going on the charity quilts. So I achieved a fair bit but just not in the order that was on my previous list. And who would have guessed, I did start something else, i.e. new project since I have come back from holidays.

So my list of things to do looks something like this now

-make a start on my background filler project from way back

-continue on my scrap quilt blocks (have made 15 so far)

-continue on the new 'colourwash project

That leaves several UFOs unaccounted for but I just need to get back to some structure first before I can add more things.

PS: When I came back from holidays I noticed that I had several comments on my blog going back several weeks. I do not always get an email notification now (no idea why) but also had forgotten that I had switched on comment moderation, hence those comments were just sitting there. My sincere apologies...I do love comments and try to respond to each and every one either by email or here on the blog. Definitely not ignoring you...must have been one of those senior moments!

Linking up to To Do Tuesdays #94 over at Quiltschmilt.

Karin

Back to Quilting

Well, it's been a while...

We have been on holidays in Bali in the second week of September for 9 days. It was great...beautiful country and beautiful people. We had a great time although I must say it was uncomfortably hot and humid for some of the days. We did splurge out for this getaway with a villa in a very nice resort with a private pool. Incredibly beautiful surrounds.

 

Private pool 

View from restaurant onto one of the infinity pools and beyond.

Also did some fabric shopping while over there. Bought an embarrassing amount of batik after a 2 hour drive to Denpasar. Only went to one shop really...had found the address on FB...apparently most of the quilters from Australia go to this particular shop and having been there I can see why. The shop was full of fabric obviously but what blew me away were the precuts. In the back of the shop the floor was covered in 3 - 4 layers of those round jelly rolls all neatly stacked up. The choice was so difficult so I ended up with more than I actually wanted to buy...then there were Fat Quarter bundles, more jelly rolls in packets, backing fabric and then the shop owner showed me the remnants! Suffice to say I spent about double to what I actually wanted to spend. 

On a different note, I had no problem with the food for the entire time in Bali until the very last day. Got the dreaded Bali belly which made for an interesting flight back home. Luckily it only takes about 5 hours to fly from Bali to Australia. Was glad to be home and was 'housebound' for about a week. Did my pattern write up in that time for my cute little cat quilt which I had finished before we left.

Was really hanging out for some quilting after our time away and finished another one of the charity quilts.

As this is a very floral and busy quilt I just ditched it and then did a simple line design in the pinwheels. Turned out nice, I think.

Following this I made a start on the Bali fabric. Came across a colourwash pattern that Bethanne Nemesh had put up on FB some time ago. Had a look at that and opened one of my jelly rolls. Bethanne said in her pattern that most jelly rolls have usually 2 strips of the same colour...well, my jelly rolls had some duplicates but not all of them. Decided that I will overlook this and just do the pattern with what I got. Sorted my jelly roll into a graduation of colour and made a start.

This should be interesting. The blocks end up very small at 3-1/2in square and my accuracy did suffer a bit as there is a lot of strip cutting, but we shall see. Will end up with something like 200 blocks...very curious how this will turn out as the strips are a riot of colours. Bethanne's examples looked very muted and the graduation was very orderly. I think mine will look fairly dramatic with all the different textures and designs on the batik. Could be really good or a bit of a flop...we shall see.

Also went to a demonstration of the HQ Moxie on a loft frame with Prostitcher Lite...that was super interesting and gave me a lot to think about. Loved the Prostitcher capability of course...the machine did a fine job of stitching out one row of a pantograph. Was quite amazed at what it takes to make all this work. In terms of time, it takes me about the same time to do this on the sitdown with the paper in terms of aligning and making sure it is straight. The computer driven row looked fabulous of course but given the limited throat space of the Moxie you then had to advance your quilt for the second row and put some commands into the computer to make it start the second row. Quite work intensive or I should say that I had no idea what is involved in setting this up. The limited throat space certainly is an issue and I wondered how you would go about stitching an allover design like meandering for example...I forgot to ask but imagine that you would have to stitch it from left to right, then stop and advance your quilt. The lady demonstrating said that you do not advance the quilt with the needle in the fabric, so that would mean you have to break thread. With the meandering in a 15 in space which is decreasing as you roll up your quilt you would really only be able to stitch one or maybe two rows and would probably leave half of that visible when advancing so that you can interlock the shapes somehow. That sounds incredibly difficult to me. Pity we did not discuss this in the demonstration. I was ditching another charity quilt today and thought about how you would do that. I guess what I took from this demo was that you need a much bigger machine (haha...). Must say though, loved the Prostitcher. Would love to have a machine on a frame just to do that. What a toy!

Felt really good this week to get back to some productivity. Hopefully I can keep that up a bit more consistently again.

 

Karin

The Nude Quilt

Finished the quilting on another charity quilt which I ended up calling 'The Nude Quilt'. It is an exceptionally well made quilt top...the seams mainly line up and the maker has taken great care in painstakingly cutting out a motif to put into the corner stones for the sashing. Those little corner stones are just 1-1/2in squares, so that would have taken a lot of patience to cut out. The motifs then re-appear in the striking border. 

The corners are neatly mitered. Love the muted colouring of this quilt and am assuming that the fabrics are quite old. Love doing these charity quilts. When I am quilting these, I am always wondering who made this, for what purpose...was it meant to be a gift or did somebody just love the colours of the fabric.

Anyway, initially I was going to do some ruler work in the charm squares, however then decided that this quilt would look best if I just ditched it. It is wonderfully flat and having just stitched in the ditch lets the fabric choices shine. I decided that this is what the maker must have had in mind.

See those little corner stones...too cute! Like little diamonds all over the quilt.

I have not done stitching -in-the-ditch for a while and thought I practice cutting my thread tails off rather than burying them. Well, that did not work for me...I did cut a few off but went straight back to burying my threads. Not that it does not work...it does, I just find it really difficult to trust that and straight away fall back into burying those threads.

A little bit about my machine. I am stitching on a Bernina Q20 and was reminded the other day that some people might find it useful to read about the settings and how I use this machine.

I stitched in the ditch with my favourite ditch ruler from Handiquilter (the right one in the photo below)

I like it because it has the quarter inch notch on both sides, so I can easily switch between stitching on top of the seam or next to it which is handy when you are stitching down a quilt and the ditch side of the seams of each block alternate as you go down the quilt.

In terms of settings, I do all my ruler work in BSR2 (which is the Precision Mode on HQ), i.e. the needle stops moving when I stop moving the fabric in contrast to BSR1 where the needle keeps going when you stop moving the fabric. Find that just a bit precarious with a ruler next to the needle.

For this quilt I had just the right coloured thread, in fact it was a perfect match with the red of the sashing.

It is one of the small Aurifil spools that I acquired a long time ago when I was still stitching on the DSM. I have a side spool for the machine, however the thread is wound crosswise, so I put it on the top as per normal and it worked just fine. No problem at all.

Also used a different thread in the bobbin as the backing was multi-coloured. Chose a soft pink that just sunk into the fabric. Had no pokies either top or bottom as both threads were Aurifil 50/2 weight. With a little bit of care when setting the bobbin and top tension you can absolutely avoid pokies. The domestic sewing machine needles that this machine uses of course helps with that. I stitched this with an 80/12 Jeans needle. Strong needle with a fine point and good to use when you quilt with some speed.

What next for me?

Missed out on the To Do Tuesday Link Up again for 2 weeks, I think. Since then I finished my wholecloth and am currently preparing it for the show. Will show photos of the wholecloth in July once the show is happening as my entry is a juried one so you cannot have photos of it circulating. Am I happy with it? I am, however it does look rather plain so not sure how it will go. Always interesting at quilt shows...you must be interested in FMQ to recognise the amount of work and effort that goes into a wholecloth even a seemingly plain one.

For the week ahead I am planning

- to sew up a cover for my label for the wholecloth and also prepare the hanging sleeve

- maybe make a start on my next background filler project

- seriously look at a new pattern for my Etsy shop (which I have neglected over the last few months).

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #77To Do Tuesday #77 over at Quilt Schmilt

Happy Quilting

 Karin

To Do Tuesday #56

My goals for the last week were

- complete the dinosaur charity quilt using the edge-to-edge design from above.

- continue knitting my brown sock

- developing a plan of attack in terms of projects for the coming months. I know that I do want to start my wholecloth but also need to be working on some patterns for my Etsy shop, so that needs to be thought through a bit.

I finished the dinosaur charity quilt and it came out really beautiful. I used an edge-to-edge design called 'Happy Times' by Hermione Agee available through Urban Elementz.

It is the cutest thing. The design is new to me and comes with 2 rows printed out so I wanted to see how that goes on the sitdown longarm.

Starting off...

Going very well but I am astutely aware that I am spending a lot of time on this. Not that I think these charity quilts don't deserve that but when I started quilting for the local charity group I did consider that I need to keep the quilting fuss free and relatively quick unless like in this case I do want to try out something specific. For this quilt also, when I do look at them closely and see the work and commitment that has gone into it, I often feel that they deserve the best. This quilt is a panel and the group just sewed two small borders around it. However, the batting...somebody has sat down and sewed batting strips together at about 3-4in width for the entire batting. Was very impressed by this.

Anyway, to speed up the process, I traced my next row of design and then placed 5 more rows behind and sewed through this with an unthreaded machine, so that I now had 5 stenciled rows ready to go. Normally I trace all my rows however wanted this to go a bit quicker and also try it out again.

Well, it was very hard to see (maybe should have used a bigger needle!) as you can see in the picture below.

Given that the design was really quite easy to stitch out, I managed with the extra light from the machine and completed the quilt quite quickly. However, for the future I probably go back to tracing row by row as this was more difficult to manage.

However look at the bottom

Was impressed with how straight this turned out.

Close up of the design

Great design, definitely will use this again. Came out really cute and suits this panel.

So what else did I manage? I did not continue my knitting however spent a lot of time on the computer looking at new patterns and while I was at it, cleaned up my EQ8 program a bit. Have several possibilities of new patterns and have been spending the last few days on trying to work out one particular pattern in terms of math to make it more user friendly. Will have to do a test block to see whether my calculations are correct, will probably start on that pattern. Apart from this I did spent a lot of time in my head trying to work out a plan for the next 3 months or so, but have not written that down as yet, as I am constantly side tracked with new ideas. Definitely need to develop that plan to stay on track.

For the next week I am planning to

- make a test block of the new pattern (and take some notes this time!)

- put my plan for the next 3 months on paper starting with the wholecloth quilt (which is still waiting to be printed)

- continue on my sock

- pull out the fabric for a new Fox quilt and get ready to tackle that.

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #56 over at Quilt Schmilt

Karin