New Listing in Etsy Shop

Finally finished my latest project and put it up in my Etsy shop. A bit on the late side, but better late than never...here is the Quilted Christmas Table Runner/ Wall Hanging with the three applique sheep.

The runner measures 18-7/8in x 37-5/8in and looks also great on the wall as a bit of a Christmas decoration. In terms of quilting, I put a loop design in the background behind the sheep, then put a wavy line in the red sashing with a wave ruler. This took me the longest time to work out how the wave ruler would end up in the same spot in every corner but I eventually got there and the actual stitching took a mere 5 minutes. In the black border I just put straight lines as there is really nothing that would show particularly well. 

Also, again, had chosen a light backing which necessitated some fine tuning of the tension. I often read in the Bernina FB group about people's frustration with the pokies being shown either on the front or back. Must say that I have got little problem with that...it truly is a matter of patience and fine tuning your tension and it is absolutely possible to stitch with two different colours. Mine was a tad more challenging as I did use a thin cotton/polyester batting for the table runner, however the back did look great.

You are looking at a sheep sideways here. The background was stitched with an Aurifil 50/2 thread  of grey on top and white in the bobbin. The sheep needed some darker colours for the applique, i.e. the hat was stitched down with a red colour and the face, ears and feet with a dark grey colour. I used Invisafil in the top for this and the Aurifil white in the bobbin. Worked absolutely fine, not one pokie in sight. I think people are afraid to play with the bobbin tension. I must say that I find this super easy on the Bernina Q20, just needed a little nudge here and there and we were ready to stitch...nothing too drastic.

Also solved my problem of having the black feet of the sheep shining through the white fabric. Used a thin fusible woven interfacing between the fabric and the fusible applique paper. Made all the difference!

Now I only have to write up the pattern which now will probably be postponed until after Christmas. That, of course, was not the idea, but so be it...I will put up the pattern for the sheep after Christmas ready for next year's Christmas!

Well, back to my little Mini Wholecloth No 2 now...

Karin

Feather Faster Wall hanging

Making good progress on my Feather Faster wall hanging. What a great practice piece! Learned so much from stitching this out. As mentioned before this wall hanging came from a class called Feather Faster that I did earlier this year with Bethanne Nemesh. In her class Bethanne taught us her method of producing gorgeous, free flowing, no marking feathers that are easier and faster to execute.
I was very curious about this and stitched out one of my more formal feathers first. I am a self taught quilter and have come to like the backtracking method (in comparison to the bumpback feathering technique). I find that backtracking is most useful as I can tidy up my feathers as I am backtracking...however I have become so used to it that I found Bethanne's method quite challenging.

So here is my first more formal feather

You can see how painfully orderly I am. Given the backtracking, this feather is dense and formal as I am only slightly changing shape and size. This is my muscle memory in action...I always stitch them like this and they do look very similar.

I threw in another challenge into this...to only mark the spine and stitch the feathers out without any assistance. To my surprise, this worked very well. Usually I will draw in a few feathers at the start and then stop after a while to draw a few others just to keep the shape and size a bit consistent, but obviously I have done this so often that it just happens anyway now.

Bethanne's method...this is me trying to loosen up in the second feather...not that easy

While I had some different shapes in there, I struggled with not to backtrack and even that is still looking fairly orderly

Third feather was getting better but the real change came right down in the last one. The bottom feather is much more relaxed. Really enjoyed stitching that out and felt that I really had gotten the hang of this. Was able to be a bit more freeflowing and also discovered that Bethanne's method allowed me to make slightly larger feathers. Very useful!

Also really liked Bethanne's way of stitching the curl with her Feather Faster method. In the beginning, I did make myself a bit of an outline what I wanted to stitch, but did not need this in the next few...found that this works really nicely with those curls and leaf shapes and turns out beautiful, no matter what you stitch. Much easier than the formal feather curl

Only got some filling in to do in between the lines and then I can attach my birds.

Karin