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

Can't Help Myself - Another Project

Started another project as I was missing FMQ. This rate I am not going to get a a pieced quilt done any time soon.

As I have been posting before in March of this year , I am still watching my Patsy Thompson DVDs and learning heaps. I cannot recommend those DVDs highly enough. Check out Patsy Thompson's website for tons of inspiration. Actually just looking at her blog now...creating a feathered frame for her quilt block (a wreath). This is actually what I am thinking of doing, although I am not so sure I can pull this off as there is a fair bit of mirroring involved.

While I have been playing and trying out different things, I thought that I might as well do a simple wall-hanging similar to some of the ones I have seen on those DVDs. I absolutely love the repetitive rhythm of feather quilting and having a couple of borders will allow for some wavy feather arrangement. Picked out my favourite solid, a type of maroon colour and just did a simple inner border in a greyish colour and presto, I had a blank canvas. Initially I was going to use my trusted Golden Threads Quilting Paper again to stitch out the design (i.e. stitching over the paper), however decided to do the marking a bit differently this time (mainly because the motif was over 10" and I thought that this might become a bit tricky with the paper trying to get that to sit neatly in the middle of my square.

So, I traced the design onto the Golden Threads Paper and then stitched over the paper (with a bigger needle) following the lines without a thread in the machine. Here is a close up of the perforated paper. This is fairly neat as you can also use this to make multiple copies of the same motif...just make yourself a stack of squares, pin them together with your drawn motif on top of them and stitch through all of them at the same time.

Paper Stencil

Anyway, I then positioned my motif in the middle of the quilt top (bumpy side up) and used my Quilt Pounce. You are supposed to just gently glide the Quilt Pounce over the whole stencil.

 

As you can see I overdid the chalk component a little bit...I reckon just going over it once would have been sufficient and definitely no patting the Quilt Pounce (mine was too saturated). Nevertheless I was impressed with this and stitched out my motif . This worked very well. I was not overly concerned re the chalk...had used it before and knew that this would just disappear with a bit of steam.

Stitched out Motif

Oh, glorious fun...doesn't this just beckon for some jazzing up! I am planning to do some hyperquilting in the outside plumes and to also try myself at putting something in the spine. I am using Aurifil 50/2 as always...I love that thread and so does my machine...in terms of colours I am limited to what I have at the moment. Probably will use a type of gold colour and some musty pink.

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

Until next time

Karin

WIP: Colour Adventure Almost finished

Well, the main quilting is done. Can't believe how long this takes. I like the way it turned out, warts and all...

 
 



 Trying to photograph the back...it is astounding how this animal comes out from resting to sit on quilts just when you are ready to take a photograph.

Here is the back ...might hang it up this way. Love it.

 I was considering jazzing it up a bit with some unobtrusive hyperquilting. This could be fun or a complete disaster. So I quilted inside the plumes in the second border with the purple thread used in the inner border. Given that this is such a colourful quilt I did not want to overload this...I was hoping that the purple in-lining might just take some of the stark light thread a few notches down.

As you can see you can hardly see the in-lining (such is the power of light thread). A higher weight thread would have been better, I think. Well, never mind...maybe next time. This is just for me and the in-lining is part of practising the plume shape. I cannot recommend in-lining your plume shapes enough because there is simply no better way to do the same shape over and over again. When this is finished I will have done the plume shape and the movement, rhythm and speed that goes with it about 800 times.

Initially I thought about quilting inside the plumes of the yellow star, but I am having second thoughts here as you would only really see the hyperquilting...now that might look a bit odd on the light background.

Oh, decisions, decisions...

Linking up to Anything Goes Linky Party at Stitch by Stitch

Karin

More Feathers

Yep, this is shaping up to be the year of the Feather for me...

I have been spoilt with some feather DVDs from Patsy Thompson for my birthday recently. Have to say they are very good and I am getting a lot out of it. Only a quilter can sit there listening to the rattling of the sewing machine on a DVD and be completely mesmerized...much to the amusement of the rest of the family.

Here are a few samples I made...

Warm-up

 Warm-up was interesting. Just went for it without much thinking...some of my plumes got a bit too large. Probably pays to think that through a bit beforehand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next sample I gave it my best shot and thought about how I wanted the plumes to look like beforehand. This worked well...actually did not try to achieve a consistent look but concentrated on getting around the corner in an orderly way. Not that easy judging the size of the plumes while you are stitching them, probably could have gone a bit bigger on some on them. Also wonder how I would go with staying consistent if I did this across half of a border, and then placing a mirror image on the other half of the border. I guess there is only one way of finding out...

 

Yes, and I think I have been bitten by Patsy Thompson's need to fill her plumes with hyperquilting. Tried one of her examples of just stitching some lines into them (did not look that exciting initially) and was amazed with how this transformed the look of the feather. I love this effect. I used Polyester thread to stitch this feather and the orange thread on top of the white just about jumps out at you. Yes, definitely hooked.

Very happy with this....I am getting more confident in the quilting of feathers having done two feather borders recently, each using a different method of quilting the feathers. The freeform feather above has a playfulness about it that I like and probably hard to believe,  I find this almost more difficult to stitch than the ones were I needed to backtrack. All comes down to practice, I suppose.

Why am I doing this??? ....I want to be able to use this on my Colour Adventure quilt in the outer border and as previously mentioned I prefer to do as little marking as possible (yep, I will practice for hours just to avoid this). Nothing too fancy, just a nice free flowing feather arrangement around  the border. I am planning to put another feather arrangement in the yellow star in the middle (that one will be definitely marked), some filler in the coloured section....and beyond, I am not sure yet. Bit of a loose plan so far.




Looking at the picture now after several weeks, I am thinking that I should have made the black border larger....maybe that's it...there was always something that was not quite right with this. Will ponder on this for a while...this quilt has taken me way out of my comfort zone. It is too bright, too many colours and I am not sure how this will all work out.

Linking up to Anything Goes Quilt & Sew over at Stitch by Stitch and Let's Get Acquainted Link by Plum and June Hosted by Busy Bee Quilts

Karin