Quilt Along #13

The little wholecloth quilt is finished.

That looks nice and straight, doesn't it? Well, that is not exactly how it turned out. I did soak it and let it dry on the line for a while...when it was almost dry, but still moist enough to be stretched I taped it to the floor...this worked well and it came out dead straight.

I then tried Leah's method of attaching the binding by machine. Used a leftover binding that I had, trimming it to 2".  Initially I was going to use a more fancy stitch , however got a bit lazy and just used a zig-zag stitch. This was difficult ...at first I pinned two sides but found that did not work that well for me. The pins were in the way and I did not seem to hit the line underneath. I then moved along without pins, using my trusted 'unpicking tool' to hold the binding in place. This was extraordinarily slow, but worked. Went around the whole thing in a painstakingly slow fashion, surprised that the mitred corners worked without a hitch.

The problem occurred afterwards...not sure why, but my edges were like tidal waves...I sprayed the piece with water and stretched it out again and it looks a bit straighter but it really wants to be wavy.
Not exactly sure what went wrong but something sure did...never mind, next piece will be better. Possible causes:
- usually I stitch my edges down about 1/8" from the raw edge just to secure the piece...maybe it needed this for stability.
- could the zig-zag stitch be too tight?
- did iron the binding over before attaching it and ..oops!...forgot that I was dealing with polyester batting...may have singed it in at least one spot...hm...that would not account for the wavy binding all around though.
- maybe I need to attach the binding a bit tighter all around. Had a similar problem not so long ago with a quilt that was fairly heavily quilted.

Overall, I did enjoy this immensely and would not mind trying another one.

Questions:
- bit confused about the blocking...do you always do the blocking before the binding?
- wavy binding...what could have gone wrong?

Until next time

Karin      

The Importance of Scale

Finishing my baby quilt (Kool Kats). Decided after all to stipple it ...went ahead and did about half of it the other day only to discover that I stippled far too close together. The loose scale I used was about 1/2 inch and everything seemed to be going fine but after a while I was getting smaller and smaller (probably because I was really wanting to finish this in a hurry so I did not check much). When I finally had a good look at it, I did not like it at all. While I could have lived with the inconsistency of the stipple I obviously did not put much thought into what sort of 'feel' I wanted. Looking at it, I definitely knew that I wanted something much softer...hence a scale of about 1 inch would have been much better.

To unpick or not...? Well, decided to unpick this and start again, otherwise this would likely bother me for weeks to come. Also just heard that I am to become a Great Aunt ...perfect! Pressie already in the making and the 'mum-to-be' is a cat lover...this was meant to be.

Took me about 3 hours today to finish the entire quilt

 



 A bit hard to see. Sorry, photography is not my thing. I used light green Aurifil 50/2 thread and aimed for a stipple about 1" apart...I reckon I managed about 3/4" on average (the white feature square is 4").  Overall, I am happy with this. Now for the binding and then it is finished. Feel very productive today.

Karin      

Craftsy BOM

Got side-tracked once again. While my baby quilt is still waiting to be quilted, I am sort of in between projects and nothing really grabs me at the moment, hence I decided to participate in the Craftsy BOM. Completed the January blocks yesterday. The blocks are 12.5"...not a size I usually work with.  Had all sorts of issues with the first block (Asterisk). The seams are too bulky and it does not lie flat. If I want to use this then I will have to do this again. The wonky one was much better ...fun block to make.

This was fun...only 3 months to catch up.

Karin

Quilt Along #12

Wow...this was very challenging indeed. The first time I looked at the wholecloth quilt on Leah's post I was not sure whether I could do this. Must admit I was very pleased with my little quilt last week, thinking that this was all going really well.

So with my new found confidence I tackled the microstippling. While it looks alright, I found it incredibly difficult. My first problem was to stay in loose rows when filling out shapes, i.e. the hearts. You would think I would get it after so many hearts to fill in, but for some reason I started filling out one area, making it across, back again and then usually ran into trouble of not having enough space left. I tried all sorts of ways, changing direction, starting at a different spots but somehow did not quite get there. Not that it really matters as it is not very noticeable...however in some hearts, I ended up stopping on the side of the curve rather than neatly at the point.

The next issue was consistency. As Leah suggested I did complete sections in one go as I knew that would be an issue for me. I did the middle section first then the surrounds, hearts and finally the outer section. I did  complete the outer microstippling in one hit...it was huge. I noticed that I was getting bigger as I was approaching the end, so those two areas don't really match up all that well. Also, because I had to really concentrate on the scale I often have whole fern frond shapes due to not changing the direction of the shape much...this happened a number of times when I was losing concentration or focusing in on the scale...some more practice is required with this.

I paid no attention to the actual stitches. I could only do this with the speed set at the highest level and really going for it. My stitches have all sorts of issues in there, i.e. some build-up of stitches when I hesitated, some squared up loops, jerky stitches and a stitch length that is probably no more than 0.5 - 1. Hence, undoing any of this was not an option...given the stitch length, unpicking any of this would have been a nightmare. I also think my needle wore out. In the end I had some skipped stitches and the needle eventually broke after I had finished the piece and was just playing around on a practice piece. Every now and then I was in the zone and it went very smoothly but as soon as I thought that, I would loose it again and loose my rhythm when getting into tight spaces. Overall, good practice though...very pleased that I actually finished this. I do like the look of it ...very effective...but very labour intensive.

The final product

Don't really have any questions...Leah's post was really informative and the issues I did come across seem to be a matter of practice, practice, practice...

Until next time

Karin

Quilt Along #11

Well, of course I chose white fabric and then wondered afterwards what colour thread I was going to quilt this with. As I was running behind,  this was all a bit rushed and I only watched Leah's video and read all instructions once I had already started. Never mind...this is a practice piece, I had to remind myself.

I chose the solid off-white fabric as the marking was going to be easy. All I had to do was to put the design under the fabric and trace it with a blue water-soluble pen. That worked really well as the design was easy to see. I did use Polyester batting, as Leah suggested...this was a first for me. Being a self taught quilter who has mainly learnt from books and magazines, Polyester batting is rarely suggested so I have never used it. Initially I was going to use cotton but then  reminded myself that I am participating in the Quilt Along to learn new things and broaden my skills, hence gave it a go.

For the outline quilting I chose a light green Aurifil 50/2 thread with a 70/10 needle in the machine working at the slowest speed level. White thread would have looked better but I really wanted to see how I was going to go with the stitching. I did the centre hearts and lines, then watched the video and chuckled to myself as I had duly started in different spots, going the other way around, breaking thread a couple of times, but never mind, this did teach me to work out how to quilt the straight lines surrounding the hearts...took me ages to figure that out. I was surprised with the Polyester batting...quilted just like Wool batting but felt much softer. For some reason I was under the impression that Polyester would be much harder to quilt. Had no issues whatsoever with Polyester.

Middle section

Love the feathers

Outline quilting of the corner hearts

So far so good! Well,  the most weirdest thing happened...my husband had a nose bleed standing right next to my little wholecloth quilt (what are the chances!) and some blood splattered across the quilt. I then tried to dab the spots with some water and yes, ten guesses, wiped out a few of my lines, hence had to abandon trying to get the spots out. I then had to complete the rest of the quilting all in one go so that I could start working on the spots of blood which by then had dried up and were much harder to remove. Normally I would have left the markings in until I was finished and then spray the quilt to remove them. I cannot imagine what a disaster this would have been if it had been a major piece of work. Would you then maybe just wash part of it or wait until you are all finished (which could be weeks if not months) and then hope that you can remove any mishaps. Anyway, I used some vinegar and Preen stain remover and got most of it out.


End result looks great. Very pleased with it. This would make a lovely pillow.

The finished design

Closer look 

The quilting of the feathers was interesting. I have done some feathers before using the 'bounce back over the top method'  and that had worked for me. I think I chose that method before because it had the least amount of backtracking. So for this little quilt I used the other method Leah described,  travelling back over the side of the feather back to the spine having to do much more backtracking.

I worked really slow on the backtracking and found that the neatest result was obtained when I was able to stitch back into the holes of the stitch already there. Obviously that did not work all the time but on the whole gave a good result.

Here are some close-ups of the stitching (thanks to my husband's skill in photography)

Overall I am really happy with the stitching. Those little irregularities are hardly noticeable and I was actually amazed that this worked so well on my first attempt. In relation to how I actually stitched this, some more practice is needed. I think that I did not keep to one particular direction and did sew them going up, then down and sometimes even slightly sideways to get a better view (and this time I watched the video before I did it but obviously did not retain the information on which direction to go). In the end I tried to determine a way that was the most comfortable for me which I think was starting at the top and going down (so I could see where I was going). I did turn the piece around a number of times to get a better view - that's obviously not an option if you are going to work on a bigger piece.

Questions for Leah:

- do you always start with a spine ? I have wondered about this for a while because when you do the bounce back method the going over the spine line then could form the spine without having to backtrack.
- would you mix feather technique in a design or do you stay with one particular technique for the entire design?
- length of stitches...should one aim for a particular length or is it more important to be consistent? I am asking this as I think that my stitches are in general on the shorter side but consistent in appearance. When I try to make them a bit longer it all becomes a bit more inconsistent.

Until next time...wondering about the micro-stippling. There does not appear to be a lot of room in between the spaces. This will be interesting.

Karin

Quilt Along with Leah Day

I'm back and I am running seriously behind...moving and settling into our new home took heaps longer than I had anticipated. We are now in, half way settled, Internet has been sorted out (needed to change my email address all over the place which took some time) and life is becoming a bit more normal again. I have not quilted at all in this time - my physio is very happy with my progress and I did not have the heart to tell her that this is probably because I have not been sitting hunched over the machine. I need to seriously consider getting a sewing table in the near future where I can lower my machine to be level with the table...our dining table is just too high and causes all sorts of shoulder issues.

I listened to Leah's instructions on marking quilts the other day and got started on this today. I am going to use white fabric so I am thinking that the lines can be seen through this and I will just trace them onto the fabric with a blue erasable pen. Hopefully this works as I do not have a Lightbox. If this fails the windows will probably do the job as well.

I will also finally baste my baby quilt and try to get the quilting done over the weekend...and then link up again next week, hopefully with some photos of my progress.

PS: the cat is doing very well and is now outside. While quite humourous, taking the cat for walks on a leash in the garden at least twice a day did pay off...when we finally let her go she felt quite comfortable with the area.

Karin

Moving house

Well, we have managed to move the household. After 12 years in the same house this was fairly traumatic. I did not realise, or rather, did underestimate how much stuff we had to move. It seemed like an endless chore of packing and more packing. Then once this was done the unpacking has been  equally as overwhelming. However there is an end in sight - only have a few more boxes to unpack and then continue to clean up a bit more.

Our cat suffered during the move. She is a stray cat that adopted us about a year ago. Not exactly the trusting kind, however has made her home with us. She actually got quite distressed during the move and at some point I thought she was going to pass out. It was hot, confusing, lots of people and generally she appeared completely disorientated - I actually felt quite sorry for her.

Thought I share this photo of her speedy recovery that was taken the next day.

What is it with cats and quilts?  Obviously completely relaxed and oblivious to her surroundings.

Well, a few more days and I will be able to set my machine up again and re-join the Quilt Along. Can't wait!

Until then

Karin