Still Here!

We are by now in the midst of our kitchen renovation...all the contents of the kitchen are placed across the family room and it is very messy indeed. We have set up a tiny coffee station with the microwave on a table, but have no sink or water in the kitchen, hence need to run to the laundry for every little bit. It's interesting to say the least. Dinners are a hassle as we also have no cook top as yet. During last week the work men were in and out so I did not do much at all other than trying to keep the place reasonably clean.

In terms of quilting not much is going on. I almost finished my wholecloth but cannot show any pictures of the whole thing as yet as I am thinking of putting it in the upcoming quilt show. However, here is a little picture of how intense this has become in terms of backfilling

I decided on those tiny echo lines as a backfiller to really flatten out the surrounds. Currently I only have the outside of the last border to do but I reckon that it will take a few more weeks...just in time to put my entry form in for the show. As I need to concentrate in order to quilt this I have not continued on that during the last week.

I did however manage to do one of my fox blocks. I am using up the last of the Dryad fabric from Shannon Brinkley. Just love the colours of that.

Planning to do a couple of those every week once things have settled down a bit.

In the week that the kitchen was demolished and the new cupboards were put in I just sat there knitting one of the socks that I had started earlier. My sock obsession started last year...very enjoyable once you get the hang of it, however it is best to continue to knit socks because it is very easy to forget the intricacies of how to do them as I found out last week. I finished one sock

Looks a bit funny because of the ribbing however looks very nice when put on. this one is for my daughter who has got slightly bigger feet than I have so I just extended the foot a bit more. Am onto the second sock however am trying something new. I got these new knitting needles last year, called the Addi Crasy Trio Needles. Normally you knit socks on DPNs which is ok but takes a bit longer due to the handling of the needles. When I saw the Trio needles I thought that this might be the solutions to go a bit faster. They are developed by a German woman, Sylvia Rasch and there are a few videos on the net on how to use them. So, for the second sock I am knitting with them

You have only three needles which are flexible, two for your stitches and one working needle. My blue stitch markers indicate where there would be a break normally if you would use four needles. Very unusual to knit with as they are very small and I felt at times as if I had two left hands, just could not coordinate myself. However you do get used to them very quickly and the knitting does go quicker as you only have to change needles twice. There is absolutely no way your stitches are going to slip off as they are safely tucked away on the flexible part. Since this photo I had to do it again as I missed a stitch, so got more practice than I wished for. While I was at it also tried the cast on with these needles and must say that that worked incredibly well and was ten times easier than casting on with the DPNs. We will see how the shaping works...in theory this should be easier on these needles as you have got more room to accommodate the increase in stitches. We shall see...

Anyway, for the coming week I will

- continue to knit up this sock

- continue with the backfilling of the wholecloth

- maybe piece another fox which is already cut out and ready to go.

Was going to link up to Quilt Schmilt for the To Do Tuesday #69 however it seems that that linky party has ended. May have to come back tomorrow to have another look. 

Karin

Working With Invisafil

It's been a couple of weeks again since I posted last. We have been incredibly busy with our upcoming kitchen renovation. All of a sudden it was all go, go go...we have been running around literally the whole week looking at appliances, getting things organised and life in general.

My wholecloth quilt is coming along however came to a standstill last week. I finished all the feathering, framing and grid and was about to start backfilling, however I did not like my thread choice. I am quilting the main elements of the wholecloth with a 50/2 Aurifil cotton thread. This is the thread I use most of the time and up to now I have also used this for backfilling. However, ever since I have done Bethanne Nemesh' online classes I have developed a taste for 100wt Invisafil thread from Wonderfil Speciality Threads. As I did not have a matching colour I had to order another spool in which came last weekend. I started to backfill a little bit last weekend and yes, this was the right choice for filling in the background against the 50/2 thread. Looks absolutely fabulous...I bought a spool of Soft Gold Invisafil which is almost identical to the light gold Aurifil colour that I have used to stitch the main parts. This way, the background stitching is not overpowering the main elements but gently stays in the background.

Here I am filling in the space behind the first lot of feathers with tiny, tiny echoes. Looks very nice but is quite labour intensive. Unfortunately I have left some space in the outer border where the Amish feathers run along. Still a bit undecided on how I will fill this. Definitely will echo around twice but not sure whether I will carry that echo filling into the outer border. Had a look around on the net and was reminded that Diane Gaudinsky uses the echo filling quite extensively around her feather work. It does look good when finished but is very time consuming. We'll see what I feel like when I get to that point.

This is all I have done quilting wise this week and I am almost getting a bit stressed as there are other projects that want to be done.

In case people are wondering how I am stitching this on the Bernina Q20.

I am using the open toe foot with an 80/12 Jeans needle. This foot can be a bit tricky...I have had the foot catching on previous stitch lines in the past, however was relieved that it has not happened on this project. Behaving itself absolutely fine and visibility is great. I have been stitching in Manual mode most of the time except for the times when I have used the ruler foot #96 with a straight/circle ruler to do the framing and the circles. Find the manual mode a bit easier for detailed work as it gives me that rhythmic humming of the motor which almost puts you into some sort of Zen mode in terms of precision stitching. Regulated mode is somewhat faster and is harder to control when stitching tinier elements.

Well, so far so good...will be interesting to see how this progresses amongst the chaos of the household. Also want to put together a new pattern and have two more charity quilts to complete. The days are just not long enough...

Karin

To Do Tuesday #57

Hi there!

I have had an interesting week. My goals for the week were:

- 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.

I did sit down and did some major planning...too many projects in my head. I lost count after the 13th project. No wonder I was getting so confused! Carefully went month by month and really thought about what I can and cannot achieve. Split some tasks across the months and also build in the charity quilts which do take on average 2 days to complete. Used my Goodnotes App on the Ipad for this and spread out the projects over the year...will be interesting to look back on what I did and did not complete. Hoping that some projects will take less time as there are a few other things which are not even in there, but we shall see. Feel less out of control with what's going on in my head 😂

So, started off with making a test block for a pattern I am looking at doing for my Etsy shop. Posted about it HERE. Well, after I thought that I had it all worked out I went ahead starting to make the blocks.

It is a simple block that really should not have given me a lot of trouble, but after yesterday I thought that I might have to go back to Quilting School. I started off on the premise that I could actually piece this starting with two Square in Square blocks, cutting them into into quarters and using this to construct the unit. That worked and I arrived at a measurement of 6-1/4in for the finished block. Went with that as I had spent hours calculating this through. Also checked this with EQ8 and yes, this seemed to have been correct.

Yesterday I did piece a few blocks using the Freezer Paper Piecing method for those coloured units and started to have problems with squaring off the block. When I checked my measurement I seemed to be ever so slightly off when I measured those squares of the block. Checked my foundation print out...also off by a few thread widths. Now, this got my attention as the EQ8 program is never off! 

Went through the printer settings...did I inadvertently change something on there? But no, all was as it was supposed to be, so I went back to the EQ8 program.

Well, learned a few things! I still got the older EQ manuals in book format, so started searching and ended up in a section which talks about 'How to avoid rounding mistakes in rotary cutting. In essence, EQ8 applies conventional quilters wisdom to its measurements, i.e. it adds 1-1/4in to the finished size of quarter square triangles for cutting, just like you would when working it out yourself. The inaccuracy produced by rounding of to 1/8 or 1/16 however can become significant when the size of the finished patch cannot be easily measured on a common ruler. Had another look at my block...my setting was set to rounding of to the nearest 1/8. When I went deeper though and rounded of to the nearest 1/16 and to 'no rounding' at all it showed me that my square was in fact uneven, meaning that I had a block that did not easily fit into a grid of any kind and the unfinished block was somewhere a bit less than 6-3/4in which explained why I had such difficulty squaring this up. In short, my amazing calculations were wrong somewhere.

I did test this further and made my block 6in...checking this on EQ8 produced a consistent value of the square, rounded to the nearest 1/8, 1/16 and with no rounding at all, coming out at 2-1/8in in the finished block. Checked my foundation print out...yep, all correct and sewed the block.

The block came out perfectly and the problem with squaring up had disappeared. Who would have thought that such a simple block would give me so much trouble. My work space looked like this which shows you what was going on in my head...total chaos!

This has taken so much longer than it should have but it just goes to show how important it is to spent the time on making a test block, for any project really.

Also spent some time printing my revised version of my wholecloth and spending a bit of time with the Affinity Designer program again. Good fun...did a few more lessons as I am still thinking about purchasing the program for the desktop. It is a one-off payment which is more attractive than the Adobe Illustrator subscription service. At the moment I am still working on the Ipad which is great but when it comes to printing I need to export my drawing, then get it onto the desktop as I need to print the thing as a poster, i.e. spread the design over multiple pages to get a 100% copy of my drawing which is somewhere around 35in.

Spent some time sticky taping this together...always painful as you get slight inaccuracies on the home printer but we got there in the end.

Looks crooked, but is actually a perfect square. So now I am ready to mark this onto the fabric and think through some of the elements...its been a while since I looked at this, so some of the things might change. Happy with my measurements though and the revisions I made.

For this week I am planning to:

- start the new pattern with the block from above

- start the marking of the wholecloth and maybe

- do a little bit more knitting

- baste another charity quilt 

That's probably enough...we are in summer down here and the weekend will be uncomfortably hot, so I might just fade out.

Linking up to To Do Tuesday #57 over at Quilt Schmilt

Karin

Vision Sort Of Accomplished!

I had a vision for this quilt and when this did not exactly go to plan I abandoned the project. Well, it has been resurrected and I have definitely been reminded why it became an UFO in the first place.

I have been working on the border for the last 1 1/2 weeks. What a hassle this was!

My initial thought of stitching this out using Golden Threads paper proved too difficult...the motif is just too frilly and to my horror I also had not taken into account that the borders were all slightly different, so it was back to the drawing board for me. The motif comes from EQ8 - Quiltmaker, Vol.8 and is called 'Curly Plume'.  Went back into the program and tried to adjust the sizing to my border. This proved very difficult indeed. While I could manage this on paper (and within the program obviously), getting this to fit my actual border was starting to become a nightmare because my measurements were a bit off to start with (due to compaction of the whole piece) and EQ8 is very precise. My border is 42 1/2in, give and take a little...after my first attempt to print out and glue together the whole border and it then not fitting my border, I started again, this time thinking this through a bit better. I sectioned the border into 4 equal parts, this time though making one of the motifs in one section a tad smaller in width (even though according to the program it should have fitted my border perfectly) to account for variation in my measurements (and to be able to have one section smaller to make necessary adjustments in the other borders).

Hard to see but I think you get the idea...painstakingly put together, section by section...allowing for adequate space at the bottom and top. Unfortunately for me this border relies on the correct placements of the motifs, particularly in the corners. Does not help that this is not a continuous border but individual motifs! You would think that this makes it easier but it did not as the beauty of the border relies on the correct placement of the motifs. After this I took one section at a time and made myself a stencil with Golden Threads paper, i.e. tracing it, then stitching it out without thread and then using it as a stencil with the chalk pounce.

Ready to stitch and hoping for the best

Bingo! See that white line on the left...I needed it exactly there, not close to it but exactly where it ended up. The first trial I did run into trouble on this very first line by being slightly over which made the placement of the next few sections too difficult, i.e. my other corner motif would have been misplaced.

So, I continued... and am happy to report it worked out.

Had some trepidation re the left corner but ended up in exactly the right spot with not a millimetre to spare. Writing this now, it sounds so very simple but I must say this nearly did my head in and the project was in danger of going back into the cupboard.

This truly must be the most crazy thing I have done for a long time and I definitely will not repeat this, just too labour intensive. But I had this vision of this quilt and it obviously needs to be completed. Not sure actually what exactly this will look like as I had a few issues. For example, the corner motif did not work out at all and I am now leaving that blank, probably just going to echo the space. Will have to wait and see. Also, there is a 1/4in space separating the border from the centre...that was also not part of the equation! Not sure whether I like the look of that, but it is what it is...will fill this with pebbles after I finished the border.

A word on the motif...very easy to stitch out but a hassle to keep consistent. You have to stitch this with some gusty to make it flowing and sometimes that works better than other times.

As I am not a machine and I am stitching on charcoal, you can see every little wobble and hesitation but I think , that is just too bad...it is, after all, done freehand, and this is as good as it gets.

Hopefully I am not running out of steam on this!

Karin

Background Work on Wholecloth Practice Quilt

This is a bit of fun. As this is for no particular purpose or reason I felt a bit freed up to try all sorts of things. It's easy to see that my quilting follows Patsy Thompson's love for hyperquilting.

I will mention again that I have got Patsy Thompson's DVD Feather set. If you want to learn how to quilt feathers I can highly recommend it...it is lovely to watch and packed with information. In one of those videos Patsy introduced hyperquilting...I think you either love it, like I do, or you don't like it. I got completely addicted to it and use it most of the time. I recently heard or read somewhere that you should not use in-lining in formal feathers...can't remember who said that or where this was, but I thought...here we go again, people trying to put restraints around what one should and should not do in quilting. I think you should do whatever you feel like with your quilt. After all, it's your quilt! In this piece my choice of colours is maybe a bit bright for me (looks like a smack in the face), but it's all good practice. Patsy also has a few classes on Craftsy where she demonstrates her skill. Another option, if DVDs is not your thing.

On a side note, I did attend my Handiquilter group and checked out my assumptions about the thread I am using (Magnifico from Superior), as we did talk mainly threads this month. To my surprise what I had been thinking and doing was 100% correct. I am dealing with a very strong thread which is normally used at high speeds, hence you need to crank up your bobbin tension to a level which then does not correspond with how bobbin tension is normally taught on all those YouTube videos. I was very pleased with myself, to say the least. Definitely gave me a confidence boost!

I now filled all the blue sections and am back stitching with the yellow thread which seems a bit easier anyway. Still got a fair way to go though. In-lined the featherette with yellow thread which produces a fair amount of thread build up. Not sure I like the combination of red and yellow, but that's what it is. Came out a bit messy as my featherette is just about lying on the circle, so that is something to watch out for if intending to in-line one of those.

Another shot of the compaction that is happening

I am using two layers of batting...thin cotton and some wool on top, hence the puff in the wreath.

Karin

Progress on Practice Wholecloth

My practice project is coming along. However today, when I finally sat down to continue we had a power outage, so I did not get as much done as I would have liked.

I have been stitching this wholecloth to practice a number of things
- to try my new circle and arc rulers
- to try a new thread - Magnifico from Superior threads
- to continue to explore the HQ Sweet 16, i.e. how different will it be to stitch something that is quite familiar to me but obviously will feel completely different on the Sweet 16

and then I added to the list
- used the wave ruler to put in a spine line for my feathers
- stitched my feathers freehand around just for fun

This is how far I got today

The thread continues to give me trouble...I used Bottomline in the bobbin. Funny enough the yellow thread is no problem but the blue and the red appear much more fiddly to me. Periodically throughout the piece I have had moments when I had to adjust the tension and literally go through the whole process of testing and re-testing etc. In between also watched several YouTube videos on tension. I think I know how to set the tension correct but for that blue thread, it just wants the bobbin tension so much tighter than I thought.  I will take the thread to my HQ group and asked about this. However I also have discovered that a different thread in the bobbin, something like SoFine 50/3 or Rasant  (i.e. something closer to the weight of Magnifico) works much better for me...the stitches look better and I get the correct tension without much trouble. So that is something for me to remember. If it does not work so well with one combination of thread, try another...
For this piece however I continued with the Bottomline...also a very good exercise for me personally to have something that is less than perfect. The feathers were a lot of fun to quilt. I felt in a pretty happy place with the machine...still going snail pace (how slow did I stitch on my DSM?) but getting into the rhythm of this machine. Stitching the feathers completely freehand was great. I used the backtrack method even though the bump back method would have probably been more appropriate, but I like backtracking...this worked very well for me at a slow speed and I was able to keep my feathers more or less consistent. Lesson learnt...the corners should really be marked in! I did them also freehand thinking that I could just have a little look of how I did them in the first corner but by the time you concentrate on your stitching, that reference point is gone and you are locked in fitting them into the space you are quilting. Let all of this go and was pretty happy with myself. Still looks quite respectable. Once I echo around that a few times the differences will not be that noticeable. Also did some in-lining in blue and practiced some speed. What a hoot! Made it up to 20% and had a laugh as I am very far away from being able to do them properly, even though the feathers are easier to quilt at that speed, i.e. they come out a bit smoother but my stitches were way too short at that speed for the time being. Will have to continue at my snail pace for a while.

From here the plan is to do a bit more filling in the center and to put some background quilting around the center and then I am thinking that I might put some piano keys as an outer border using my favourite ruler, the Line Grid ruler. I love this about wholecloth quilts...there is always something more you can do. However for this one that will then be the finish. I had ordered some fabric from the Fatquartershop for my next wholecloth which has already arrived, so I am already thinking about the next quilt.

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

Karin

Practice Wholecloth

I am making progress and learning a lot by my mistakes, mainly to do with my lack of planning with this little quilt. Absolute must to put your framework in first before filling anything else! I am sure I have said this before somewhere but obviously have not committed this to memory. Maybe it will stick after this time ☺

Decided my wreath needed something else and ended up putting another circle in underneath the arcs. Must say that this got a bit messy because of the compaction already happening so this is not going to be a 100%. However I did want to have a look what that looked like. Yep, like it!

Now, back to the filling.

Karin

Compaction Issues

Still stitching away on my Wholecloth...

Thought I show you a picture of the compaction that occurred having stitched the broad structures first and then working my way back into the middle to do the background quilting

This was taken in front of the window on a fairly sunny day, hence the shadows. Even I got a bit nervous about the amount of compaction that I had and wondered whether this would actually be able to be quilted down.

Too late to do anything about it other than giving it a shot...

 You would not have thought that this could be flattened, but it did! Amazing...all I have left is to fill in the grid and go over the feathers again, doing some in-lining. Not sure actually whether I still like this piece, but so be it...just needs to be finished now. This looked so easy when I started, but probably one of the more challenging projects I have done in a while.

Karin

More on the Clarity Ruler foot

So, I am seriously 'playing' with the new Clarity Ruler foot by Accent in Design. I am in the midst of stitching out my wholecloth, having changed the choice of fabric at least 3 times. In the end I settled on some lovely shot cotton in a blueish/yellow colour which allowed me to use my favourite blue Aurifil colour (#2975)

Clarity Ruler foot

I posted a few photos on Instagram after I had stitched out my motifs. Mental note to self: next time when you design a motif, make sure it can be stitched out without breaking thread...this was a bit of a hassle, to say the least. While a bit apprehensive, I decided to stitch the surrounding lines with the new ruler foot...after all, what did I get it for!

The foot is just a dream...there was no fiddling, just attach it, set your machine to springfeet freemotion mode, shift your needle to the +1 position and off you go. A little bit of fine tuning in terms of getting it to the right position height wise, but that was it. I tried different waddings on this  sample...in the end I decided to use one layer of cotton and a thin wool batting on top of it to give it more definition.

All set, off I went to stitch my surrounding lines...only problem was that my marked on lines (the second big square in the project), while straight, were distorted in the corners, hence did not give me a perfect square. This was not due to the quilting but must have occurred when marking the fabric...just sloppy marking as usual. This caused me several headaches...the rulers that I was using were no longer than 6in, hence this left a lot of room for additional error in terms of them slightly shifting while I went along. I cannot tell you how many times I re-stitched those lines! In the end, after several unsuccessful attempts it occurred to me that I needed a bigger ruler that went down the length of my line if I had to have any chance at getting it to come out square. In addition, I found that those little stable tape blobs for those rulers did not do the trick in terms of holding your ruler in place.

So, I used my normal ruler (yep, gasp!). After inspection, I determined that my normal ruler was really only a smidgen higher than the Westalee rulers...as I was not going to do anything else but stitch a straight line, I thought that this would be alright...next thing I tackled the movement. The stable tape that is sold through Westalee is adhesive on one side so that you can stick it on your ruler, but apart from that is exactly what I have in my kitchen draws from keeping the cutlery from sliding all over. So, this is what I did...I cut a piece the length of the ruler and put it on my quilt...the stuff is pretty sticky even without the adhesive. I then placed my ruler onto it, adjusting the way I placed it until I was sure everything was aligned and straight (which in itself was a nightmare).

This is what this looked like. Clumsy...time consuming...yes, absolutely! But I was getting desperate, as there was no way to re-mark the lines on the quilted piece and the only way to achieve a square was with a ruler. I spent most of my time aligning, the stitching was no issue...the foot produces a very straight and tidy stitch (not one skipped stitch!). In the end, I got there and was able to stitch the 1/4in echo with a bit more ease once I had the first line down.

This was such a relief. Then I tackled the next section. In my initial enthusiasm I had decided to do an orange peel design using the Westalee clamshell template to speed up the process. After the lines I was dreading this a bit, but stuck with it as there is no other way to learn than to do it! Well, first issue was that my piece was shrinking from the quilting, hence my nicely worked out measurements of how many clamshells I would fit into that section obviously no longer worked out exactly. Oh, wow, you have to laugh...so, fudging was the name of the game! This was an interesting experience...ruler in one hand, sticky material on the quilt, going snail pace with the stitching, I went around the border. As you are stitching on the outside of a curve, I had to really concentrate not to stitch away from the template while at the same time observing the markings of the center of the template and where the clamshells meet. To my huge surprise, the fudging was easy...I made myself a mark on each high point of the clamshell and then shifted the template ever so slightly to reduce its width on a few selected ones and this worked out fine. In fact, it looks really good

You just cannot achieve that level of evenness in the curves by doing this freehand. I forgot to take a photo of the completed orange peel design...obviously I went around it another time in the reverse which produced the design and this turned out to be super easy by aligning the stitched clamshells to the template. So, overall the clamshell experience was much easier than the lines.

Will show you a photo of the progress the next time because no doubt there is going to be another major issue to be tackled...I have got more lines coming up and I am not sure how straight they are...we shall see.

Karin

Wholecloth Essential

One of the things that I thought was important to mention in the construction of a Wholecloth was the marking and the washing...

I used a blue water soluble marker (and made an amazing mess in some areas) to get the main designs onto the white background. As I went along I sprayed the Wholecloth with water to get rid of some of the lines as I find them quite distracting when stitching.

Towards the end, most of the marks were gone, however for my last few photo shoots, I had a few pockets of re-appearing blue marks on the front and on the back. For the purpose of taking photos I managed to shift them, so that it looked as if they had all gone, however I knew that I  had just managed to spray the blue marks into the wadding and was aware that they would eventually re-surface.

It is winter here and not the ideal time to wash quilts, however I felt uncomfortable leaving this as I have seen in the past how these blue spots can turn slightly brown over time. With a whitish Wholecloth, not a good idea. So, on the weekend we had a bit of sun and my quilt took the plunge

Always makes me nervous, however given the amount of marker in this quilt, this had to be done.

Kringe!!...not a pretty picture! In order to get the marker completely out, you do have to totally submerge the quilt, rinse it several times, and at the end you are left with this crumbled up mess.

After that I had it outside on a flat surface for a while to get it to a stage where it was reasonably damp and now it is nicely blocked, taking up some space in the kitchen area. This will take a few days to dry in this climate and I will just have to make sure that the cats stay off it.

I did spent some time on this, gently stretching it into shape...this is as good as it gets! I am a bit short in the width by about half an inch. I am pretty sure you could probably stretch it even further, but I decided to leave it as it makes perfect sense to me that it is more compacted on the crosswise grain and the quilt was not entirely square before the wash.

So while the temptation is there to just spray the blue water soluble markers off I would urge others to wash their quilts after finishing...just not worth the hassle after. I had a few brownish marks in one of my pieces recently and I thought that this probably happened as I had just sprayed my designs and then left it sitting on the sewing table where it would have gotten a fair bit of sun in the day...that was enough to set the marker.  

Karin

2016 FAL Second Quarter - First Finish!

You can find my goal list for this quarter HERE

Bit of an ambitious list this quarter and very little chance of completing all of those projects. However, I am thrilled that I am making progress. The list definitely helps as I nearly got side tracked again into starting something new when new fabric arrived through the post!
 
And here we have my first finish!

Wholecloth Grid Sampler

Insane Wholecloth measuring 35in x 35in.
Entirely freemotionq-quilted using Aurifil 50/2 (#2000) thread
Little fun fact: I used an entire spool of thread, so that makes it 1300m of thread in this project! (actually probably more as I used a slightly different colour in the bobbin)

I am very proud of this little beauty and I must say that I enjoyed every little stitch of this, as insane as it looks. The quilt design stems from Cindy Needham's Craftsy class 'Machine Quilting Wholecloth Quilts' using the center stencil design provided in that class. I varied it a bit and used the project as a practice piece for various grids. Needless to say, stitching out the grids took forever!

I will be blogging more on the this project in the next few days as I am using this to participate in Quiltshopgal's Ultimate FMQ Challenge - Summer 2016 when the link is up. If you own Cindy Needham's Ultimate Stencil collection, consider participating in this fun event. Have a look - kicks off today with a Linky Party, then a Sketch/Doodle Linky Party on the 15 July and a Virtual Quilt Show on 15 August. As always, a great way to promote FMQ...can't wait to see some FMQ goodness!

Linking up to she can quilt for the FAL Q2 Linky Party

Karin

Mandala

So I finally started on my Mandala.

Bought some Bella Solids fabric and ended up with the same colour that I usually choose... a sort of burnt orange. Took me ages to select, there are just too many choices. Whether this was the best choice to make for this project remains to be seen. I marked the fabric using my light box and the trusted blue water soluble marker. Was not as bad as I thought and I even managed to not mess it up too much...except for the grid. For the live of me, can never get the orientation  of the grid right first time around, so need to re-mark this when I get to it.

My thread choices seemed great. Used the new Aurifil thread from the Shannon Brinkley Dryad box. Chose a nice watermelon colour (#5002) as my base and added some accent colours (#2975 and #6728). For the center I chose a brilliant blue (#2725). Not sure about the result as yet...at the moment I am thinking that I should have selected stronger colours, but we shall see...bit hard to tell as you go along.

Funny (not) thing happened when I started stitching this...the machine did not behave itself and it felt as if I was having two left feet. The speed was doing something funny, i.e. I did not seem to be able to get into any sort of rhythm. I kept looking at the stitches and everything seemed fine. The back also seemed fine except after a while I kept noticing a few 'fuzzy' stitches. Weird! The other thing I noticed was that I was absolutely not getting any body in the quilting...even weirder as I was using the same cotton batting that I had used for my other Wholecloth. Thinking that it had to do with me somehow I continued and put the inner frame down...
When it was time to change the needle, I realised what happened...I had taken the wrong needle and was stitching with a 60/8 needle. Duh! Now looking a bit closer at the stitches in the back I could see what the machine was doing...given the needle was a tad too small for the 50/2 thread it did 'nick' the thread every now and then while forming the loop on the back creating this somewhat fuzzy appearance. Overall though, I had done really well considering that I  had stitched this with the wrong needle.
The perfectionist in me (of course) needed to fix this, so today I re-stitched the inner frame and yes, with the right needle I now had the right amount of structure or puff in the piece. So obviously the whole tension was not right with the smaller needle even though it looked perfectly alright from the front.
Anyway, so this is what I have been up to...
My white Wholecloth is nearly finished...taking a bit of a break from it...looking very pretty draped over the table

When these two are finished I really need to clean up my sewing room...it is a complete mess.

Linking up to Let's Bee Social over at Lorna's blog.

Karin

Progress on the Feather Border

First of all...thanks for the many comments on my last post about making my own feather stencil. Very much appreciated! Please make sure though that you are not a No Reply blogger...I had a few comments that I could not reply to.

I am making progress on my Whole Cloth quilt. Bit of a slow progress, but progress it is!

The stencil I made with the Golden Threads Quilting paper works great. As it is made from my own drawing the stitching flows nicely even when some of the chalk lines are becoming faint as I am used to the way that I draw them. This left me with a nice and even looking border and the right size for each plume to do some in-lining with a different thread colour later on. None of this is exact...when quilting along, I do not always follow the line exactly, hence the individual plumes on each side are not exact mirror images of each other. They don't really have to be...what counts here is the overall impression of consistency as I stitched them from the middle out. Very happy with the result and slowly will work my way around the border. 

A bit closer - same quilt under different light

Here are some tips for feather quilting:

- when you are drawing feathers, draw them the way you would stitch them...this will instantly show you when something does not flow right and will make it easier when you are stitching them.

- I have found that taking the plunge and putting feathers in borders is one of the best ways to learn. Even if you only do a small project, stitching feathers all around will mean that you are doing the same shape hundreds of times, over and over again...one of the most effective ways to get the shape imprinted on your brain. 

- I do not watch my stitch length, but concentrate more on the shape. With practice in FMQ you will eventually arrive at a stitch length that is right for you

- not every plume will look great...happens all the time. I don't sweat about it, but just keep going, as it will most likely not stand out at all.

- find your most comfortable way of stitching feathers. I use the backtracking method most of the time. When backtracking along the length of the plume I try to aim to stitch directly next to each stitch...the funny part is as I am aiming for that, I usually end up stitching back directly back over each stitch. In contrast, when I try to concentrate to go back in the same stitch, I do anything but that. If you find backtracking too bothersome, leave a little gap...looks just as good.

- I find it easiest to stitch feathers towards me. In this border though, I started in the center, so when I do the plumes to the right side of the center, this is not practical, as I have most of the bulk under the machine. In that case I start off with stitching the plumes away from me and then move slowly but surely to stitching them sideways. Trial and error works best here and I have accepted that this occasionally will lead to some wonky shapes.

- I often stitch feathers without the gloves... it gives me more control over the stitching
- take it slow and get into a rhythm. Feathers is not something you can hurry along ...I set my machine to the slowest speed and keep the speed fairly constant. I rely a lot on the sound of the machine and usually can hear when my rhythm is not right ( this sounds odd, a bit hard to explain).

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch which is hosted today by Diana from Red Delicious Life
Also linking with Amy's Free Motion Quilting Adventures as she is featuring feathers for the month of July.

Karin

Bogged Down

Have nothing to link up anywhere much this week...very unsatisfactory.

I really got bogged down with my second feather border for my Wholecloth quilt. I don't know what it is but somehow the whole quilt took on a momentous importance. I started off marking a bit of a wavy line onto the border, even leaving a half inch space at the bottom, but not sure what happened then. Started my feathers on one side and then stood back to have a look at it...they looked nice, yes...but how was I going to match this properly on the other side?

Seems that I did not think that through at all. Paying no attention really to how I was travelling I just stitched the feathers how I felt like it, sometimes going right to the bottom and sometimes not...herein lies the problem...there was no way to reproduce this on the other side (unless I want to really drive myself mental)...I started half way down and then stopped. Have to rethink this somehow.  Either do informal, free flowing feathers or do the more formal approach of actually following the wave that I have drawn in keeping the plumes a similar shape and size, so that both sides match somewhat. While the stitching above looks nice, once the binding is on, it will be obvious that I followed the wave more closely on the right side.

Funny actually, as I have done this border before in a slightly smaller border and had no problem whatsoever. It seems that the little extra width has totally confused me. I also had to remind myself that this quilt was just for me to practice...it is not going to be the master piece of the century, nevertheless I got completely carried away over the week.

So, I put it to the side and just started to work on my Squares quilt, just sewing squares together...so calming and relaxing.

I think I will have to do some more thinking around this second feather border and make a decision before I start to stitch about what I want this to look like. Maybe I just overestimated my abilities or was not in the right head space. Probably need to mark my reference points better. The stitching of the feathers was fun though.

Watch this space.

PS. On the plus side, I worked out my issues with my Springloaded foot on the new Pfaff 4.2.  I use this foot now with the Dynamic Spring Freemotion quilting mode. When I was at the dealer the other day we talked about that the opening of the foot was creating a bit of an issue in the new model, not grabbing the thread at just the right moment some of the time. The Dynamic Spring Freemotion mode fixed that, but I also put one of those Magic Genie Bobbin washers in the bobbin to just lift the bobbin that little fraction. Stitched beautifully with not one skipped stitch.

Karin

Insanity Plus

YES!, I finished micro stippling the centre of my wholecloth. This took forever ... as much as I like the texture and look, this was insane. The area to stipple was huge and I nearly gave up half way through. Came up with all sorts of excuses why I had to be doing something else...in the end, I perservered because I was also aware that if I stopped, it would be so much harder to pick it up again (and maintain the approximate size of the stipple).

Centre of Wholecloth finished

Look in the left hand corner...I bought some Pinmoors when I was ordering some supplies from the Internet the other day.  Leah Day uses them a lot so I am going to trial them a bit. Bought one packet which is not enough for a whole quilt but it is such a shift in what I am used to. Somehow they don't look secure enough, so I put the two in to see whether they fall out during the handling of the quilting. Of course, they don't, actually I was surprised how firm they are and am a bit amazed that they stay put. What I like about them is that they don't leave big holes when you pull them out and also they are of course, much easier to put in and pull out.

Anyway, for  the whole week I was going to start on a new baby quilt, washed all my fabric etc. but could not begin because I had this enormous area of the wholecloth to finish off (would be great to have two machines). Promised myself not to do this again...famous last words! In the end, I did not even like it anymore and thought it looked pretty boring. Mind you, also perfected my approach to micro stippling, i.e. be recklessly imperfect, stay in rows and vary your shape slightly for a nice interlocking design. Overall, I did a good job and any inconsistencies are really not noticeable ...the thread colour (I used Aurifil Mako 50/2) that I have chosen blends in perfectly and the 'bumps' across the quilt look quite natural.

I did this on my new Pfaff Expression 4.2 with the new Dynamic FMQ foot which is round rather than square. I had very good visibility with that foot and found that if I stayed in rows it was easy to anticipate how to interlock the stitching...problems only tended to present themselves when I got into an area where I had done some unexpected stitching, i.e. gone down too far on the previous row or left a bit of a gap in the previous row. In terms of shapes I think of Micky Mouse ears...as funny as that sounds...having that mental image helps me to stitch out a stipple. If I let go of that I find that I start losing myself in the shapes and end up just doing snake type lines.

 

The new machine has 3 LED light...very happy with this. This photo was taken at night while I was stitching (yep, any excuse did do to just do something different for a moment)...see the light in the right hand corner...just brilliant, made such a difference. I will have a break from this quilt now for a moment. For the borders I want to put in more feather designs both in the inner and outer border. This requires some marking and a lot of concentration.

Now I can set my machine up for piecing and finally start that baby quilt. Mind you, while I was stippling away I also had a brain wave for another design...I reckon I probably start  both because I am a bit curious as to what that would look like. Thinking about a multi coloured Dresden Plate where I could use up some leftover Jelly roll strips. Watch this space...

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Until next time

Karin

Progress on Wholecloth

Continued on my microstippling of the centre of the wholecloth. While I was doing this I was thinking that I need to definitely branch out into other filler designs.  Microstippling is great but fairly work intensive...my hands were positively cramping after doing a particularly long stretch. It's not that I do not know other designs...there are plenty around and I can do a number of them. I struggle with visualizing the outcome and keep coming back to the microstippling as this is something I know in terms of its texture and looks. Also with this piece I worried that a different filler, like swirls for example might just be too much (as I am planning more feathers in the two borders). In retrospect though, a swirl patterns or something similar would have gone quite well as the thread blends in just perfectly...

Anyway, got the centre of the piece done

Happy to report that  I was less picky on how this all turned out...finally settled into a happy medium of  yes, this will do with all its little irregularities and bumps. Very pleased with myself as I can be extraordinarily perfectionist.

The whole thing compacted considerably and I wonder whether I will have issues doing a less compact design in the first border

And last, not least...the back. As usual I like the back almost better than the front and was thinking why I did not do this quilt on black in the first place

Linking up to Leah Day's FMQ Link Up

Karin

Continuing On My Wholecloth Quilt

Remember this beast?

Sat down yesterday to start to fill the middle section. In retrospect probably should have made the wreath a bit bigger. There is a lot of space to fill. Thought for a moment about what filler to use but not having FMQ for a while I thought I better stick with the microstippling. Used my new Dynamic Spring foot which worked like a dream. Visibility was very good which still surprises me given that it is a closed foot. And the 3 LED lights in the new machine were fantastic, definitely made a huge difference in seeing where I was going. This is how far I got in one sitting. Had to stop there ...can only do microstippling for a few hours and then I start losing the rhythm...

Microstippling

Close up of Microstippling

Not bad for an evening's work...really want to get this finished as it has been lying around for a while. And then there are other UFO's to finish...

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch



Karin