The Ultimate FMQ Challenge 2016 - Linky Party2 - Doodle/Sketching

I have had the most relaxing Friday night in a long time. The new Ultimate Shape Stencils from Cindy Needham arrived at my doorstep and before I knew it, I was doodling away. Just could not stop...

Ultimate Shape Stencil in 4 different sizes

Started doodling...at first just randomly filling up the spaces of the stencil

Then I remembered that I needed a 4" motif for one of my quilts...something frilly and a bit feathery as I will do a feather border on that quilt.
This is what I came up with

Like it! This was so easy to draw up with the lines running through the stencil. Looking at this I am thinking that I probably seen this somewhere. Such a cute motif.

Then I thought 'why not put a motif into the stencil' being the slightly lazy quilter that I am

The motif is one that I particularly like from an EQ7 add-on program 'Quilting Designs'  No 8...I think it is called Curled Plumes which lends itself to blocks that are set on point.

Here it is a bit reduced with feathers running up and down. The idea is to put this on point and make into an allover Wholecloth. I will make some copies of this and try that out. I think this would look great!

While I was doodling and listening to one of my favourite Craftsy classes, I then got out the Ultimate Square Stencil and combined it with the Ultimate Shape, using only elements from the Ultimate Shape, i.e the little triangular section of the stencil the other way around and also the curves. This is what I came up with.

You see my blue lines which I would omit if I drew this up as a final design. I don't have a transparency that I use with the stencils. For me, marking the lines that I need in blue works best. Then I start drawing over those in pencil first and when I think I got something, I go over it again with the fine permanent black ink pen. This way, the main design stands out and any background quilting, like the lines surrounding the design will be a little bit in the background, similar to what the quilted design would like like. I was absolutely amazed with this...looks very interesting and again, I would not mind doing multiple copies to see what this looks like as an allover Wholecloth design.

This was a lot of fun and I had to force myself to stop...the ideas just kept coming. Those stencils are truly the best. It literally enables you to draw up any design your heart desires...highly recommended.

Linking up to Quiltshopgal's Ultimate FMQ Cahllenge 2016 - Linky Party 2 to show off my designs and to demonstrate how easy designing interesting elements for your quilts can be.

Karin

The Ultimate FMQ Challenge - Summer 2016

I should call this 'See what You Made Me Do!'. It started with Cindy Needham's Craftsy Class 'Machine Quilting Wholecloth Quilts'. Absolutely loved this class and undertook to do a Wholecloth with the stencil provided in the class. Getting annoyed with all my good intentions and constantly dragging my feet I finally started this earlier in the year. Changed the center stencil a bit to make it my own and also used a darker background colour just to be different:)

I ordered Cindy's Ultimate Stencil Collection over Christmas and decided to combine an exploration of the grids with the Wholecloth. This was not a particularly well planned out approach and the little Wholecloth just grew and grew...in the end I had some space left on the sides and threw in a feather border which I then hyperquilted (see also Patsy Thomson's website)

The end result is rather insane

Grid Sampler 35inx35in

Texture galore

Some of this worked and some of it did not...was not too fussed as this was declared a practice project early in the piece. Here are the stencils that I used

1/2in square grid, Diamond (baby size), Twisted grid (Mama size) & Twisted Clam grid (Mama size)

With 20 stencils (Six designs in 3 different sizes) to choose from there was plenty of choice...

Cathedral Windows

How cool is this filler? - Diamond grid filled with lines

Twisted clams filled with alternating lines

Fail - Twisted grid stitched into oblivion

The compaction I had from stitching out these grids was pretty unreal...hence the pebbles around the feathers...that was super intense and definitely something I want to avoid in the future. Initially I was going to flatten it with lines but then realised that this would not work as I had the lines in the Diamond grid directly next to it. Yep, planning was not that great!

I absolutely loved stitching this out...even the crazy diamond filler! Just took my time and seemed to find more and more things that I could do. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Cindy is absolutely right in saying 'The only ones you ever need!' about her Ultimate Stencil collection. I have used the Ultimate Stencil collection on various projects since then...marking 1/2in dots in a sashing to guide my FMQ design, using the Lines stencil for marking a Baby blocks quilt and developing a Mandala design with her Circle stencil. Just brilliant!

Linking up to Quiltshopgal's Ultimate FMQ Challenge - Summer 2016

Karin